Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 24

I want a picture of an HF burn
HAve written to two docs with papers on HF burns to ask for donations, but neither replied. Help?96.238.184.111 (talk) 16:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes it is hard to find images. Many people do not reply. Next time you see one ask them if you can take a picture of their HF burn... Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 16:25, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmmm...we have those weirdos posting pictures of their weeners on Commons. Maybe I could convince one to "take a bullet for the cause" and burn himself?96.238.184.111 (talk) 17:57, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Diffuse panbronchiolitis pre-FA
I've gone through and completed the peer review, but I want to run the article by MED before the FA trial! My first FA as an author, so all input welcomed! :)  Rcej (Robert) –  talk  06:01, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Vaccine controversy
See Talk:Vaccine controversy. More opinions welcome. -- Colin°Talk 17:36, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Brain juice?
Could someone see my comment here and let me know I'm not crazy. NickCT (talk) 17:32, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, and since everybody appears to agree, I've gone ahead and switched the redirect to point toward the Goosebumps book with that title. Looie496 (talk) 17:52, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the hatnote from Goosebumps Series 2000 because I could find no evidence that "brain juice" is a synonym for CSF. NickCT, you are therefore certified sane. Of course it bears remembering that prothrombin time assays used to rely on Magimixed cow brains. JFW &#124; T@lk  19:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Aniru Conteh
I'm reviewing Aniru Conteh, a biography of an African medic. The nomination says that Conteh's professional career did not start until 1979 (in Sierra Leone), and that all of Conteh's earler work, in Nigeria (1968-1979), was part of his training. My concern is that Conteh got a medical medical degree in 1974, and that his professional career started in 1974, in the same hospital. Please response at Talk:Aniru Conteh/GA1. --Philcha (talk) 21:57, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * His career started when he became a Lassa fever specialist and clinical director. After he graduated from medical school, he taught at his alma mater teaching hospital for four years. I've since changed the heading to "early life, education, and teaching".  Is there something wrong with it?  In any case, we go with the sources: "Aniru Conteh spent 25 years in his native Sierra Leone dedicated to treating patients with Lassa fever...In 1979, Dr. Conteh returned to Sierra Leone, beginning what would be a 25-year career dedicated principally to the fight against Lassa fever." 2004 - 25 = 1979. Viriditas (talk) 23:58, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Reference check!
Can someone look at this article and give a sense of the source of the data it's talking about? I'm guessing it's a summary of phase 2 development data for the vaccine. SDY (talk) 23:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

RfC regarding pregancy image
Another go round here  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The link is Talk:Pregnancy. The previous RFC ended 3:2 in favor of including a fully dressed, non-white, pregnant woman in the lead, but was declared "no consensus" over the confusion early in the RFC about the licensing status of the art nude.  (I believe that the admin basically ignored the opinion of anyone who mentioned the licensing concerns, which have since been fully resolved as being correctly licensed.)
 * Also resolved in the previous discussions (which fill two and a half talk page archives):
 * The image shows no pregnancy-related stretch marks, which is obvious to anyone who knows what those look like (but not, it appears, to single, white, childless males).
 * The image (in fact, any single image) is a poor illustration of pregnancy-related breast changes (most of which appear in the months after this image is taken, and the reader doesn't know what her breasts looked like pre-pregnancy anyway).
 * If you have an opinion (either way) about which image is most appropriate, please come to the talk page and share your opinion. I'm concerned that people might be so sick of this that they won't bother to reply, and we really do need opinions from people who haven't been bickering about this for months.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Retrocolic hernia
Hello. This is a new article, tagged as db-nocontext. I've added an external link and some wikilinks, but I have no idea what this is about. Thanks for any help/explanation. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 14:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Oral history for 1952 polio epidemic in US
We still have living witnesses who suffered the 1952 polio epidemic in the U.S., who are still in  fairly good health today. It would be good to capture their testimony now, before they can no longer inform us.

If anyone were interested in participating in such a project or task force, might Wikipedia be an ideal source for coordination of such a project? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:50, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It would be original research and we couldn't host it here. Looking at our sister projects, Wikisource is also limited to documenting published works.  Wikiversity is somewhat looser, but I'm not real clear as to their inclusion criteria.  A wiki might be a good way to run such a project, but Wikipedia itself is not the right place.  SDY (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No, that is the very definition of wp:Original research. Perhaps recorded audio or video interviews could go on Wikimedia Commons if the interviewer and the interviewee agree to CC-BY licensing, but that wouldn't be very useful to WP until someone first published about those interviews in the general literature, thus rendering them notable. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You could also check out this . Remember (talk) 19:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks is a possibility, but there are lots of non-WMF places better suited to such projects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Refs to a journal call "THE LAUNCESTON JOURNAL OF ANAESTHESIA AND INTENSIVE CARE"
These are being added to many pages by User:Ljaic http://anaesthesiology.specialist.name/specialist.php?exp=1

Does not appear that reputable... Comments? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:09, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, doc, i have discovered this journal several days ago! As for me its articles seem to be relevant and reliable, as they're authorized and have reference listing. Launceston is somewhere in Australia, isn't it? Some kind of kangaroo medicine... :) Ljaic (talk) 12:00, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "authorized"? Last I checked, both Tasmania and Cornwall (there are two Launcestons) both operated under the freedom of the press, so no "authorization" would be required to publish a periodical.
 * The journal does not appear to be indexed at PubMed, which is usually an indication that it is a trivial operation with no reputation for editorial control and no reputable publisher behind it. (You can see a short summary of what makes a source reliable here.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm getting 404 error every time I try to look at these references... &mdash; Scientizzle 18:37, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also getting a 404. Doesn't appear reliable, MEDLINE indexing is a pretty low bar to hurdle...Yobol (talk) 03:57, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Despite the user's claims that he chanced upon the journal and found its content relevant, it cannot be a coincidence that his username is an initialism of the journal's title. JFW &#124; T@lk  20:45, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you implying that there may be a conflict of interest? Axl  ¤  [Talk]  21:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes. JFW &#124; T@lk  04:33, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Plausibly just newbie errors. One of the edits cited Lalwani K, who has got several anaesthesia papers listed on pubmed. The intended journal may be . According to this history Launceston figures in the earliest use of ether anaesthesia in Australia, in 1847. It may be that a gentle warning is all that's needed.LeadSongDog come howl!  06:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Overhaul Proposal
I would like to clean up the article on emergency tourniquet. Any input is appreciated. Details in the talk page. Wafflephile (talk) 19:05, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Vitamin D
More input welcome! Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Hypernasal speech
Created via AfC by a Dutch editor; the article could use some clean-up/formatting/etc. Uʔ (talk) 19:17, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Individualized Auditory Stimulation
I have prodded this AfC-backlog-purge-creation. It's entirely possible that the topic is more commonly known under a different name, but my lack of domain knowledge prevents me from finding it. Uʔ (talk) 21:24, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

RetractionWatch
Today I started an article on RetractionWatch, a blog which tracks retractions of scientific papers. If anyone would like to improve it, please stop by. MastCell Talk 03:22, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks pretty good to me.
 * I love hearing about what other people are doing here. Perhaps more people will follow your example and post some "shameless plugs".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Some books
These books have temporarily come into my possession. I'll only have them for a couple weeks. Is there anything anyone wants me to get out of them?

--v/r - TP 18:04, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Our general articles about surgery and anesthesiology are pretty weak. A decent overview of major issues (which you might be able to outline just from the table of contents) might be helpful.
 * In terms of simple stuff, it seems to me that the surgery book might have a decent description of the various positions (e.g., lithotomy position, lateral decubitus, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Respiratory Care (journal)
Hi, I'm a bit surprised that this article got a "High" importance rating for this project. Perhaps somebody here could have a look at this and check. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 08:06, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right. It should be "Top" importance. Just kidding. I've changed it back to "Low". Axl  ¤  [Talk]  17:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Lupus erythematosus
Lupus erythematosus is seeing several thousand hits a day, and it's still a nine-sentence stub. If anyone knows a bit about it so it could be expanded, please do what you can. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, it is an umbrella term used to describe several different, albeit vaguely related, diseases. I'm not sure that there's much scope for expansion.
 * I suspect that many of the people who come to this article are probably looking for systemic lupus erythematosus. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  23:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The LE page is essentially a disambiguation page. Cutaneous lupus is not the same as systemic lupus (although they may coexist). The SLE page is still a terrible mess, and I have given up trying to understand it. After all, it's never lupus anyway. JFW &#124; T@lk  00:11, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I took the ✄ to educational therapy
Perhaps I've been too harsh, but I've deleted a bunch of external links and self-referenced claims of importance for some therapists. Perhaps they are notable, in which case someone could find secondary sources for them. I'm hardly an expert. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 09:16, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:DYK
Anyone want to help make a WP:DYK article? I started an article on epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma complete with images. If it were a bit longer it would qualify. Nephron T|C 03:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

McDonald criteria
I just added a new section with the revised 2010 McDonald Criteria for MS diagnosis from the Annals of Neurology. I'm really new to Wikipedia and would really appreciate it if an experienced editor in this area could take a look for me and make sure I didn't mess it up :) FutureInfoPro (talk) 15:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That is some fairly complex formatting. Congratulations on making sense of the table.
 * We don't use Ibid; I'll fix that for you. Perhaps others more familiar with the subject will want to take a look at the content.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Yes, the table formatting was kind of scary but I just copied and pasted the existing one and modified it (with a lot of previewing back and forth to fix my errors). I really appreciate you looking into this for me and fixing the formatting. I will be sure to learn the proper citation format going forward. Cheers! FutureInfoPro (talk) 16:34, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Stephen Faraone
The section Stephen_Faraone is a WP:PRIMARY farm. My thinking is that the section probably doesn't belong. Our articles are supposed to be "based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". If no reliable source has bothered to summarize a researcher's work, then it's not our job to go scrounge around and find all your publications to summarize them. Right? Jesanj (talk) 17:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I generally agree with you, except that it is actually useful to have some idea of what the person is known for. I just wouldn't have done that by stringing together a list of sixty-nine papers by the author with a few words.  A ==Publications== section could list a few (use your best editorial judgment to pick out which ones to list), or perhaps his own webpage might be a suitable descriptive source to support a summary (you may use primary sources (which are not the same thing as non-independent sources); you just need to be careful about how you use them).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Where is the Reference generator??
Hi all, i wanna know where was the reference generator moved?? i am talking about this generator " Diberri Citation tool ", any idea?? M aen K. A. Talk  22:01, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * http://diberri.crabdance.com/cgi-bin/templatefiller/index.cgi --Anthonyhcole (talk) 22:39, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much M aen K. A.  Talk  11:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, great! I hope this template filler will continue to work now. Anyone know why Dave got locked out of the Tool Server? JFW &#124; T@lk  16:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know anything about the specific situation, but the usual reason seems to be that the account holder didn't login for six months. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Sublingual immunotherapy
Please could experts take a look at recent edits to Sublingual immunotherapy; I am not convinced of either the accuracy or neutrality of several of these. I've reversed a good few, but it's now got into areas where I have no specialist knowledge. Thanks. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:48, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Vitamin D again
Have attempted to update the page using review articles to replace primary research. Some are against this for whatever reason. Could some people have a look? -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:03, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Diffuse panbronchiolitis
This article is a Featured Article Candidate and comments from members of the project would be valuable. Graham Colm (talk) 12:00, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Graham -- Featured article candidates/Diffuse panbronchiolitis/archive1 Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:15, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Great article! Corrected minor lapses in grammar. Wafflephile (talk) 17:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

DBS
I've got an IP who won't engage talk at Deep Brain Stimulation, continually inserting the same partially incoherent text based on non-MEDRS, and even duplicating the one piece of his/her text which is from a MEDRS that I already added. It's a dynamic IP, so reporting it to 3RR won't help -- any ideas? Help appreciated. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:14, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I've reverted again. I suppose if it continues semi-protection will be the best option. Looie496 (talk) 18:17, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd say semi-prot for a while is clearly the right course now. It should force any good faith editor to the talk page. It's always a pity when we have to do this, but there's not very much editing of the page by IPs recently (except for adding YouTube external links!). --RexxS (talk) 19:06, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a good chance the editor will give up, so no need to go there quite yet. Looie496 (talk) 19:26, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Can this article be within WikiProject Medicine?
Hey everyone, I just wanted to ask the general group here if they think that Folding@home belongs on this WikiProject. It currently resides in WikiProject Computational Biology, WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, and WikiProject Computing. Folding@home is of the same general categories as Rosetta@home, which is in this WikiProject. If you read the article you'll discover that it's doing disease research, (cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, etc) so I think it should fall within the scope of Medicine. If we agree, can someone add mark it as such? My goal is to take it up to Good Article status very soon, so it should reflect well upon this WikiProject. Thanks, Jessemv (talk) 06:43, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think computational molecular biology is a branch of clinical medicine. I think it belongs firmly under the MCB project. JFW &#124; T@lk  13:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Have you looked through the article? The first section, "Biomedical Significance," explains how Folding@home is tied doing disease research. Rosetta@home is a Featured Article and it fits under Medicine as it's doing disease research as well. Folding@home has the same, if not more so, impact towards the studies of cures for many of our scariest diseases. Moreover, studies performed using Folding@home have implications towards drug design, which again is a part of Medicine, is it not? Thus I believe it does fit under WikiProject Medicine, but I felt I should ask the community before marking it as such. Jessemv (talk) 14:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If there's someone here who might be interested in working on the article, then by all means go ahead and tag it. This project has come to focus almost exclusively on clinical medicine, so while there are undoubtedly clinical implications of computational biology, it's outside the scope that we've generally focused on. That said, I don't see any harm in tagging the page if it might draw someone with an interest to work on it. MastCell Talk 19:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've tagged the article, but thanks for clarifying the scope of WP Medicine. Jessemv (talk) 21:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Healthcare in the United States
Could someone provide a 3rd or 4th opinion at Template_talk:Healthcare_in_the_United_States? Thanks. Jesanj (talk) 01:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Consequences of surgery
In a dispute, an editor insists that, in an article about a surgical procedure, information about the health consequences of that procedure are "not the main topic of this article" and should, therefore, be excluded.

Oddly, WP:MOSMED does not seem to provide content guidelines for surgical procedures, although (by analogy) the suggested headings for drugs include suggested headings for consequences such as "adverse effects". Looking at other surgeries, discussion of at least complications seems to be standard practice.

What's the consensus on this? Should articles about surgeries include information about potential health consequences or not? Thanks, Jakew (talk) 13:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Back in 2005, someone had a suggested system for orthopedic surgeries; you can see it at Talk:Reduction (orthopedic surgery). Perhaps that could form the basis of a suggested pattern for articles about procedures in general.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I assume that editor is me Jakew (correct me if I'm wrong). What I actually argued was:


 * "'Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin (prepuce) from the penis.' That's the article topic, defined in the first sentence of the lead. That is an act of surgery. That is not the wider issue of what might happen once that act of surgery has been performed. Conditions directly affecting the foreskin are obviously, and intrinsically, related to circumcision as defined in the lead. Methods of performing the surgery are obviously intrinsically related to it. These things deserve prominence in the lead. A condition whose chances of being contracted are statistically reduced as a consequence of not having a foreskin, is not intrinsically related to the act of performing the surgery defined as the topic of this article, and does not deserve the prominence in the lead it currently enjoys. When sources refer to circumcision, in terms of reduction in the chances of contracting HIV, they are not asserting that the surgical act (the topic of this article) itself reduces the chances (whereas the surgical act itself does directly affect conditions affecting the foreskin of course), because that would be inaccurate: the surgical act itself, for example, carried out on someone who never has sex has no impact on that person's chances of contracting HIV, therefore the act of surgery itself is not intrinsically related to HIV reduction. HIV reduction only becomes a factor when the consequences of the act of surgery are considered in combination with subsequent sexual activity. Sources employing the term circumcision, when discussing HIV reduction, are employing the term with a wider sense than that defined at the beginning of the lead. The HIV aspect does not deserve the prominence it currently enjoys in the lead of this article. It does deserve prominence in 'medical aspects' however."


 * I don't think your presentation of the dispute really does it justice Jakew. Beejaypii (talk) 19:18, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Merging Adolescent development with Adolescence
This seems relevant to this project in some aspects, so I'm posting a note here to hopefully get responses from a few, if not all, of you at the article talk page. See Talk:Adolescence.

As I stated in my edit summary when tagging the articles for a merge: The Adolescent development article is a much better article on this topic and should be merged into the Adolescence article. It covers everything the Adolescence article should cover, and more.

With the two articles existing at once, it's like "Why have an Adolescence article when there is an Adolescent development article that covers this time period in much better detail?" I'm not seeing how the two topics can be distinguished, seeing as (like I said) the Adolescence article should cover exactly what the Adolescent development article covers.

It was turned away from a redirect on October 22, 2011, and the article building started on November 3, 2011. Like Talk:Adolescent development says, "The original version of this page was written by students in the Adolescent Development seminar at Oberlin College."

The rest of what I stated is at the article talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 06:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Klazomania (college projects)
Klazomania is (unbeknownst to me until the sandbox text showed up in one edit) the object of a university course (User:NeuroJoe/BI481 Fall 2011). While generally the quality of other college class edits has been a Plague on my Watchlist (resulting in, well, just about nothing salvageable, editors that don't engage on talk, and a whole lot of wasted time for me), these students put up some salvageable content and a reasonable first expansion of the article. It has taken me a lot of work to bring it to where it is now (from User:Fowlerta/Klazomania draft), but it still needs a lot and the content there is worth the effort-- I can't advance any further without the sources. I have or am familiar with some of the sources because of the overlap with Tourette syndrome, but could someone e-mail me two articles: the Wohlfart and the Bates ones? I'd also appreciate a lookover and cleanup from anyone else who can help here (I left a list on talk), particularly in the messy text I moved to Pathophysiology. Regards, Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have sources to work up an article on sham rage? It gets 26,000 hits on Google scholar.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * One might want to start with:

The above seems to refer to: I haven't actually seen these sources, though, so no promises... :-) LeadSongDog come howl!  20:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks LeadSong-- I don't feel equipped to take that on, but I do have Bates and Wohlfart now-- I'm finding the article more problematic than I first realized, so additional eyes would be nice. I'm getting ready to start through Wohlfart, and I have to dig out a book to recall what Jankovic said in 2006.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, $34 later (Bates article), it turns out that most of the article was original research, and that no one since 1960 has linked klazomania to TS (that I can find), the most recent secondary review that I can find says its part of encephalitis lethargica or parkinsonism, so I deleted a lot of the article as original research (text chunked in from TS sources that didn't even mention klazomania). I'm out $34, and I don't think college undergrads should be trying to write articles on obscure and difficult topics like klazomania. Still don't know what sham rage is. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 22:12, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch! Next time, try resource exchange, they might be able to save you some dinero. It still bugs me that AJP want to charge (full pop to boot) for a paper published in 1925! Also not a lot here. Seems pubmed doesn't like the klazomania term at all, is there an equivalent? LeadSongDog come howl!  23:28, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Basically sham rage is behavior such as biting, clawing, hissing, arching the back etc, produced by brain manipulations rather than by giving an animal a stimulus that makes it angry. It is a topic that fell out of popularity sometime in the 1960s, but was intensively studied in the 1950s.  As with many such topics, even experts in the field have difficulty working with the literature, because people in those days used techniques that are no longer used and that only a few very old people still deeply understand. This freely available paper may be helpful; see page 109.  Looie496 (talk) 00:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * ugh ... thanks Looie! Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:10, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Did my best, pls check Sham rage? (It needs a category.) Thanks, Looie496. Not touching the next one, I already paid my dues with G-Spot amplification. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:08, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Need help
I am a student working on the klazomania article. Does anyone know if the 1918 flu pandemic refers to the 1916-1927 pandemic of encephalitis lethargica referred to by Jankovic in the journal article ? Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you, (Adondaki (talk) 02:54, 10 November 2011 (UTC))


 * The first paragraph of the lead section of "1918 flu pandemic" includes this statement: "The flu pandemic was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s." Reference Axl  ¤  [Talk]  10:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

TS reviews
Is anyone here able to send me the full text of these article? I've recently gotten hold of a 2011 Mary Robertson review that I haven't yet read, but some of her past reviews are full of her own opinions, often based on tertiary clinical populations without examining broad-based samples, so I'd like to get my hands on more recent reviews and then digest and incorporate all of them. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help (btw, there's a query above about the 1918 flu epidemic, in the Klazomania section, if anyone can help). Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Got two, one left-- thank you SO much :) Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Got all three, thank you! Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:52, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a room in Friendfeed if you need such papers: http://friendfeed.com/references-wanted NCurse work 09:44, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Medicine Biographies Task Force
I'm unsure as to whether it's been discussed before or not, but is there any interest in a Biographies or People task force to fit under the Medicine WikiProject umbrella? The Haz talk 18:52, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Sounds interesting. Many 19th and early 20th physicians made discoveries that transcended particular subject fields. It makes perfect sense to bring biographies of famous doctors and medical scientists together under a task force. JFW &#124; T@lk  20:01, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * We already have many biographies more or less attached to this project, it would be a blessing if there were such a taskforce as some are quite problematic (David Horrobin). Richiez (talk) 22:34, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Question of style - abbreviations
I have just stumbled upon the recently created Discovery and development of antiandrogens - the article uses an abbreviation style like that in many academic papers. What is the opinion on this? Richiez (talk) 22:56, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Some use of abbreviations can make for simpler reading style, but this should only be for a few introduced terms or where the subject of the article is commonly abbreviated. The article at present defines I think 15 abbreviations, and a sentance later on in the article such as "In another study, bicalutamide treatment of LNCaP cells resulted in two LBD mutations, W741L and W741C, causing bicalutamide to acquire agonist activity to both mutant ARs" is incomprehensible and requires the reader to constantly search back for the definitions. David Ruben Talk 00:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Epidemiologist needed.
Someone who understands the basics of Epidemiology would be useful at Talk:Men's_rights, where a brand new editor is attempting to compare death rates of prostate cancer and breast cancer, ignoring onset age and treatment rates, in an attempt to make it look like too many resources are devoted to breast cancer vis-a-vie prostate cancer. I don't know what more I can do. Hipocrite (talk) 22:34, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Is this, by any chance, someone who hasn't ever heard of basic concepts like years of life lost?
 * Fundamentally, it doesn't much matter if "too many resources" go to this or that. Wikipedia would report only that some source complains about the allocation of resources, not that this is the Truth™.  (The actual truth is that both prostate and breast cancer get too many resources compared to the real problems, e.g., lung cancer, which is both more common worldwide and far more deadly than either of those.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Or colon cancer that is just beginning to get greater attention.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You could add infectious diseases and mental health... to the above mentioned. Both are underfunded, if you compare it to what is spent on cancer. Nephron T|C 23:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

COI at Labiaplasty ?
I wonder if I could get an outside opinion on Labiaplasty ? I was struck by the changes in tone and presentation in the article between 2 October and the current version 26 October that have been made by, who according to his user page as well as lecturing at Northwestern University's medical school is himself an aesthetic and reconstructive surgeon, and judging by the pictures he has provided would appear himself to carry out this operation.

The effect of the recent edits has been to make the article greatly more technical, but also arguably less accessible and easy to read; at the same time the less accessible, more technocratic tone has substantially blunted the more general concerns (cf this Guardian article a couple of weeks ago, or this recent review PubMed) as to whether a normative stance against healthy natural variation is deliberately being promoted to encourage a growing industry of lucrative unnecessary surgery.

I appreciate that Dr Placik has credentials as an educator, and knows a lot about this field; but I wonder if perhaps unwittingly there may be an element of WP:COI in his most recent edits. It's difficult to make a lay assessment, so I thought I should bring it here where there is the most experience of detailed medical articles. Also, in view of WP:TECHNICAL, that articles should be made as accessible (at least initially) as possible, with technical detail if possible minimised and deferred from the initial sections, perhaps experienced editors here could review these recent changes, perhaps with a view to -- dare one suggest it -- some aesthetic trimming or reshaping? Jheald (talk) 01:26, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your note. Being an expert or a licensed healthcare practitioner is not a conflict of interest.  To have a COI on Wikipedia, you have to be both helping yourself (e.g., citing your practice's website rather than medical textbooks or high-quality review articles) and hurting Wikipedia (e.g., deleting all mention of side effects).  It is highly unlikely that either of these conditions is being met (violating WP:MTAA is not considered "hurting Wikipedia" for COI purposes).
 * You might like to read WP:MEDCOI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * At WP:MEDCOI I read in the list of things to be very cautious about:
 * * Adding or removing information so that a patient will make the "right" choice * Removing information that patients don't "need"
 * I presume that also covers not just outright removal, but also choices made to emphasise or de-emphasise particular content in an article.
 * That is a concern that I believe ought to be taken seriously in this case, and I would appreciate an actual assessment of the effect of the changes that have been made. Jheald (talk) 10:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree there was a slight, probably unintentional bias introduced by the edits. Also, in my opinion the leading picture caption is pretty poor and does not need to stress "corrected". Richiez (talk) 11:16, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * upon closer look the article is written so obfuscated I wonder if it is salvageable. Richiez (talk) 22:23, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The changes is almost completely in medical-speak and likely not of much use to a general audience. Yobol (talk) 22:27, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I believe that Jheald's concern centers on the now-tripled ==Criticism== section, which does not strike me as having the same problems with jargon as the sections focused on anatomy and surgery. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Helpfulness of data in infobox
I first came upon a disease infobox in Leprosy, and found that none of the data in it is helpful unless you're a disease researcher. Classification numbers are useful to look up secondary sources, but contribute no actual content to the article, and really should be in the 'more information' or refs section at the very end. Basic information should be clearly stated in disease articles. It would be far more helpful to feature the date discovered, estimated number currently/previously affected, natural immunity rate, and other applicable information people come to the encyclopedia to look for. What is the reasoning behind putting a dozen meaningless numbers in the featured summary, rather than a numerical overview of the disease and how it affects? Mamyles (talk) 02:07, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This has been the practice for a long time and this data exist for nearly all diseases. The other numbers you mention do not. But the adding an estimate of prevalence is a good idea. Not sure about the need for date discovered / natural immunity rate. Signs and symptoms cannot be summarized to this degree.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Search the talk archives here. I've long objected to some of the junk foisted upon our infoboxes, but have made no progress.  In the case of Tourette syndrome, the infobox forces us to link to outdated and inaccurate info.  For example, this record doesn't even give the correct DSM definition of the condition, and there are similar problems on just about every link in the infobox (at least there were when I last checked a few years ago).  Another example: this linked in the infobox doesn't define tics correctly and incorrectly identifies GTS as the first to describe the disorder (the NIH does that all the time-- it wasn't GTS, it was Itard.) Similar here (I once went through and picked out everything wrong there, perhaps that's in archives.)  I wish we could lose a lot of that junk, but I've never made any progress on that argument-- perhaps the data is better for clinical medicine than for DSM conditions.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I support keeping medline plus. It is in simple language and an NIH site. Yes anything can be wrong including us sometimes even :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 02:44, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * For TS, that's one of the worst-- partly outright errors, and partly because of oversimplification. Why can't we get all of them out of the infobox, and create instead a template that goes at the bottom of the article, so our readers don't have to encounter wrong info first thing in the article?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

My issue isn't on what classification numbers to keep, but why we have any classification numbers featured in the article. They should be at the bottom near the references section, or at least after more useful infobox information. I understand that changing the templates would be a large task, which may be why no-one's started yet, however that's what WikiProjects are for (and I have little knowledge of medicine to do it myself). I think changing this would improve the readability and content of many articles. Mamyles (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I assume you mean the ICD numbers? I think they're one of the few things there worth keeping, because they're accurate, and they are precisely the sort of data that is put in other WikiProject infoboxes (while external links are not, typically, with the exception of websites for BLPs or companies-- it seems like someone got the idea to use our infoboxes to push External links, which belong in ... tada ... external links).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:29, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree the external links presently in infoboxes would be much more useful in the External links section. I'd be far more likely to follow a link that says something like
 * U.S. National Institutes of Health article on Multiple sclerosis
 * under "External links" than a cryptic MedlinePlus - 000737 in the infobox. The general reader who clicks the first meaningless link in the infobox, "ICD-10" and gets taken to this useless page is hardly likely to keep clicking meaningless infobox links. The ICD links may be useful to practitioners (I'd like to hear more opinions on that) and if so, since we know doctors use WP med articles, perhaps they should stay. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * External links should be in the external links section. As Anthonyhcole says, we can give a proper link there, not some obscure code. External links are WP:NOT what Wikipedia is about, yet our medical articles have them in a prominent position because of the info box. The template encourages us to link to all sites listed when in fact only a few meet WP:EL requirements. It makes it appear that those sites are blessed by the project, but in fact they were collected enthusiastically many years ago when we were grateful to find any reliable resource online, whether or not they actually met policy. I fully support the idea of transferring them to the correct section and additionally reviewing them against policy. The first step could be done by a tool that scrapes a reasonable link name off the website -- so let's not allow the apparent effort to stop us making this change. Colin°Talk 09:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I am one who has always argued that proper identifiers that lead to more info (however minimal) should be linked from an infobox. Sure, they often do lead to specialist information, but (like it or not, and whether it is appropriate to use Wikipedia or not) specialist do use Wikipedia, often as a 'point of entry' (and sometimes even, low and behold, to really use the info in the article). Having that data clearly organised in an infobox does help specialists to information more quickly (I once heard a story about ambulance personnel using Wikipedia as an entrypoint about drug-data, as it is fast, and leads quickly to basic information which is then easy to check against proper sources, which are generally also linked anyway).

Sure, most readers are not specialists, they want more info - but those are more likely to read the prose anyway. The question, as with much stuff, is not 'what I personally find useful', the question should be 'what information may be useful to some'. And I don't think that the casual reader is bothered by some numbers in an infobox - maybe more by a linkfarm in the external links section. Of course, all needs to be correct.

Using an identifier in an infobox keeps the links uniform throughout Wikipedia - no different types of pages linked on the same server (different modes of linking). And it also works the other way around. When identifiers are linked, even the ones which one does not like, enables others to use thát identifier in e.g. Google to come back to Wikipedia - and that is also making an identifier useful.

The point is to find the optimum between it. Infoboxes can become very long, and then they more obscure than that they are useful. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:45, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

ICD codes
I don't personally find the ICD codes helpful. Let's look at one example. "Tuberous sclerosis or tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a rare multi-system genetic disease that causes non-malignant tumors to grow in the brain and on other vital organs such as the kidneys, heart, eyes, lungs, and skin". A reasonable definition and classifies this disease as rare and genetic. What do the ICD codes tell the reader?
 * ICD-9 759.5: Congential Anomalies > Other and unspecified congenital anomalies > Tuberous sclerosis.
 * ICD-10 Q85.1: Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities > Phakomatoses, not elsewhere classified > Tuberous sclerosis.

These are very poor classifications for the reader. All we learn in ICD-9 is that it is a "Congential Anomaly" so it could be caused by birth trauma or a drug taken or infection caught while pregnant. ICD-10 uses the ancient classification of "phakomatoses", which is of little value. Both websites completely fail WP:EL but do meet the requirements for sourcing and I guess that providing an inline link to full citations for both could be regarded as overkill.

Assuming someone does find these codes useful, can we move them down to the bottom of the article? Their current placement is over-prominent for what is essentially an accounting code. The link violates WP:EL and would certainly put readers off clicking those other infobox links (though I want those moved too -- see above). Colin°Talk 09:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If nothing else, they're a confirmation if the reader is comparing two sources of information that might call the disease by different names (the ICD codes aren't one-to-one, of course). Giving them as alternate names in the text would be silly, but that's part of the thought process of leaving them near the top.  That they're links is irrelevant, the number is the message.  They might be more useful as a categorization tool than as a spot in the infobox.  The infobox we have for chemicals (q.v. Artemisinin) is equally number-heavy, and it's the same logic: these are essentially identifiers for finding additional information.  SDY (talk) 23:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * At least that infobox for chemicals has some useful data, like the chemical formula, mass, and clinical data. Mamyles (talk) 01:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

A few thoughts in response to several points above:
 * This infobox states that it is for "classification and external resources", so there should be no surprise that it has external links in it
 * The suggested data items such as date of discovery are obscure for many diseases/disorders/conditions
 * Disease prevalence can only be measured through the use of clinical statistics gathered from the very ICD codes some want to reject
 * ICD codes, in whichever revision are not "accounting codes". The fact that in some countries health funding is derived from them does not mean that they are inherently linked to money.
 * I am a clinical classification specialist and I frequently use WP to assist with determining the most appropriate ICD-10 code for a condition or syndrome that is not well indexed. I am also educating colleagues in doing the same.
 * In the past, when clinicians have asked for data they have not been clear on what they want. (E.g. "I want a list of people who had problems with their appendix.") Now, when they come they have the codes they want because they have looked on WP. (E.g. "I want a list of people who had appendicitis classified to K35 or K37, but not K36.") Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to be sure I understand; you'd like the ICD codes to remain in the infobox at the top of the article. Would you like them to link out, or would just the black ink code suit you? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I know ICD codes have more use than the financial one in some countries, but the point is that they are for the collation of data, not for the education of the readers. Nobody ever learned anything from an ICD code they didn't know already. Colin°Talk 22:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree; the codes are sometimes as valuable as including the scientific name for animals. If you know the code, and the common names vary, then getting a match on the code confirms that you're on the right page.  While this isn't going to be useful for the average person, our medical articles attract a lot of medical professionals, too.  Also, sometimes (perhaps the UK is different) you end up with healthcare-related forms that contain the ICD code followed by unintelligible, abbreviated garbage.  Providing the ICD codes in the article would let readers figure out what the paper is about.  More generally, if you know something about the ICD-10 system, then the codes themselves are informative:  anything starting with "F" is mental/behavioral; anything starting with "O" is pregnancy-related, and so forth.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm unconvinced that the ICD-10, OMIM, MedlinePlus, eMedicine, etc., numbers/links in the infobox are of any value to readers. This is a general encyclopedia. Surely readers want general information? The information at those websites may be more detailed than the expected FA quality article here. Or it might not. In any case, it certainly isn't general information. It is directed at health care professionals. I do not endorse blanket posting of these external links. Axl ¤  [Talk]  21:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Following that line of reasoning one might be unconvinced that cited sources should not be linked either. In fact we link them largely because the links are very useful to editors, who ultimately produce better articles as a result. Those better articles are useful to readers. LeadSongDog come howl!  22:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, LeadSongDog. There is an important distinction between "should not be linked" and "doesn't need a link".

"" We link them largely because the links are very useful to editors. ""

I am unaware of any policy or guideline that states that. My interpretation is that citations are required for verifiability. Linking assists with verifiability. Axl ¤  [Talk]  22:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think I said we had a guideline or policy to that effect. Neither do we have a policy that local gravity shall be in the downwards direction. It just is. Would we take the bother to link things unless we found the links useful? Very unlikely, in my opinion. LeadSongDog come howl!  20:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Poor analogy. You have no evidence to back your assertion. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  01:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Only personal experience, but I'm not trying to cite that. Do you think that unlinked references are somehow more verifiable than linked ones? I'd be interested to learn how. LeadSongDog come howl!  06:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Your straw man argument and sarcastic response are unhelpful. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  14:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I see no point in replying to that. Please allow my remarks to stand on their own. In exchange, I will refrain from characterizing yours. LeadSongDog come howl!  14:30, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * We're all friends here, remember? I'm really glad that we can get different opinions and ideas in this discussion, but please make an effort to be pleasant to the people holding other opinions in public.
 * If you're having a difficult day, then take a break. There's no deadline for replying to comments here.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

An example
This is a user-interface disaster. There's a confusing mix of wikilinks and external links in the ICD codes -- the reader completely unaware why some should link to WP articles and others to external databases. Some of the codes are natural database keys that might be printed in a publication (ICD, MeSH) others are merely artefacts of the URL used by the website, not intended for human consumption (MedlinePlus, eMedicine). And those two websites have pages on polio that completely fail WP:EL (our FA is much better). The amount of information directly presented by this "info box" is close to nil (excepting those who actually wanted to look up the ICD code of polo and decided to use WP rather than the WHO website -- which has a great search box and is 100% accurate). Compare the two info boxes on Rotavirus -- one contains information, the other doesn't. Can you spot which is which? Colin°Talk 22:35, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The ICD codes are part of the content of the article, much like giving the telephone code in a country infobox, so I could see dropping them as links but retaining the number. Having both -9 and -10 might be redundant.  Some of the other EL's have been challenged recently, and some of those links include content that we by policy cannot include here, such as Medline Plus providing medical advice.  eMedicine is a link to consider clipping, as it's written for a different audience than Wikipedia but contains basically the same type of information.  OMIM is a standard type of external link: information that is too detailed for a featured article, and might be better as an external link proper, included where it's of interest rather than as a standard element of the article.  MeSH and DiseasesDB I'm not sure about, I've never used either resource.  SDY (talk) 22:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * One or two important classification numbers can and should be included, similar to ISBN numbers for books. However, the sheer multitude of links in the infobox, and lack of any helpful info for general readers, is what brought these templates to my attention.
 * Note that my previous suggestions for what to include are proposed from a non-medical background. Feel free to suggest your own - there must be some significant statistics or relationships that can be highlighted in an infobox. Mamyles (talk) 23:07, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Mamyles, I'm confused. Click on the MedlinePlus link in this infobox.  Can you honestly say that page has zero helpful information for general readers?  Do the same for the two eMedicine links.  Is all of that information completely unhelpful?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think Mamyles is saying the infobox itself has nearly-zero information, which is also my point, not that the linked pages have zero information. Other info boxes actually contain info. Colin°Talk 22:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I find the ICD codes useful aswell as the pubmed and emedicine links. I think we should keep them.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:00, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The links are useful and this is not a "user-interface disaster" but a very compressed presentation of a lot of classifications and sources (which amounts to more than "nearly-zero information") that otherwise are difficult or overly complex for inclusion in free text - if we thought all information should be included in articles then there would be an outright ban on all infoboxes and all external links in favour of verbose text with manually inserted linked footnoted in various styles, and all drug articles would need find a way of getting chemical database links worked into the main text in some non-disruptive manner. For any reader not understanding the various links provided - each has a linked header (to Diseases Database, MedlinePlus etc) and so the nature of the links and the data that these sources provide is quite plain for those readers who wish to explore further - this is not a "lack of any helpful info for general readers". Surely no article is going to start describing the nature of MedlinePlus articles before giving a link to that external source. Diseases, like drugs, are a large but well defined sub-set of wikipedia articles and comprehensive & consistent provision of links to sources by an infobox is, IMHO, an assest (we have enough difficulties introducing WP:MEDMOS, to have to set out and then oversee editors trying to manually add the broad range of information links currently provided would be unrealistic) The Diseases database provides a consistent source of what an entity might be caused by or in turn the symptoms it might cause, and provides list of synonyms - I have found it useful (and that's when acting as a mere reader of topics I know nothing about, rather than as a doctor or as an editor of topics I might know something about). The IC10 help ensures articles are named for the accepted worldwide term (yes I know it’s a little imprecise, gets vague over certain distinct conditions and occasionally chooses a terminology not commonly used by any major English speaking country) – but it is international and authoritive. Furthermore, for any readers comparing articles in different languages, sometimes the ICD10 codes are essential to ensure that the same condition is being described –wikipedia is more than just English. There is no need to get too frustrated by the presence of the infobox items - I personally gain nothing from seeing the molecular diagrams, formula or mass with the drugbox/Chembox seen on say diclofenac, but clearly someone interested in whether this is a simple compound or likely to come as various salts will look to the structure and see that it is an organic acid. Likewise how diseases are classified by the WHO both noe (IC10) and in the past (ICD9) is helpful and OMIM links can be interesting, even if a condition is only sometimes associated with specific mutations. David Ruben Talk 00:57, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Information to consider for the infobox
Just brainstorming a list of things we might theoretically include. For many diseases some of this would be n/a since the data isn't available or explaining it is too complicated for an infobox, but just as options as they come off the top of my head without any filtering:


 * Primary organs or body systems affected
 * Specialized branch of medicine involved? (e.g. oncology, psychiatry)
 * Global cases per 1000 (morbidity)
 * Case fatality rate (mortality)
 * Areas where disease is endemic
 * Vectors ("hereditary" and "environmental" aren't vectors in the usual sense)
 * Pathogen (if infectious disease)
 * Reservoirs
 * Incubation period
 * Date or era first described (proposed above)
 * Author of first known medical description (proposed above)
 * Distinctive signs
 * Distinctive symptoms
 * Common comorbidities
 * Species susceptible (may often just be humans)
 * Typical duration of disease (may want to split between "until death" from "until recovery" and may have to include additional terms for "with treatment" and "without treatment")
 * Common diagnostic tools and methods
 * Common treatment modalities (e.g. broad terms like medication, surgery, etc...)

Obviously a lot of this is article content, but infoboxes are typically a little redundant on that account. One of the real challenges to an infobox is including something like "vector" which makes sense to anyone who speaks medicine but may as well be Greek (well, Latin in that case). SDY (talk) 22:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I like the items about the branch of medicine, morbidity and mortality. The rest seems kind of focused in infectious disease.  There's almost nothing usable here for a general-subject article like Heart disease, and very little for specific subjects like Myocardial infarction or Down syndrome.
 * Infobox templates aren't impossible to work with, so let's take it out for a spin. I'll set up a sandbox section.  Anyone can add anything that he or she thinks might work.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Would it make sense to have a separate infobox for infectious diseases? They have a lot more "sound bite" info bits.  Honestly, the fields can be there for all diseases and just not be used.  Might be useful in case we get another Heliobacter pylori type of surprise.  I thought the infoboxes didn't display a field unless you put something in it, so having extra unused fields shouldn't burden down an article, unless I'm mistaken.  SDY (talk) 00:34, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I could see adding some of these such as "vectors", "number of cases", and "infectious agent". Not sure how we would add "common comorbidities" and "distinction symptoms" and do not think these would be a good idea. Adding these however is separate from the issue of removing the others. If you look at the chem infobox they are much much longer. Not saying this is the direction we should go though.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Such classification of disease been discussed before and rejected (but nothing to stop reconsideration). Simple classifications soon become difficult: is premature onset of heart disease a cardiac condition, or but one facet of familial hypercholesterolaemia (Metabolic medicine) for which peripheral vascular disease (Surgery or Vascular Surgery?) and strokes (General Medicine or Neurology?) also associated. What of Rheumatic fever - a topic of Microbiology, Immunology, Nephrology or Cardiology ? Finally what of lupus, other than its never lupus ?
 * Number of cases needs qualifying - which country or globaly, at its peak in the past (eg plague) or currently. Anything claiming to be current would need annual updating.David Ruben Talk 01:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * As long as it's stated where (global obviously preferred) and when (recent obviously preferred), any decently recent number should do. As for the classification, we can probably follow the ICD codes on this, and if there are multiple specialties involved there's nothing stopping us from including several.  SDY (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Sandbox section
Try it out: Below is the code for Infobox disease, taken from the Heart disease article and simplified a bit. Ignore the frightening code at the top and bottom. Replace "Example" and "Something" with whatever you'd like. Duplicate the whole "Infobox/row" bits if you need more lines. You can use preview just to see what it looks like for yourself, but if you come up with a line that you think would be good to add, then please save it for the rest of us to see, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Template DorlandsDict
The links generated by have been invalid since the service was withdrawn: "As of June 25, 2011, MerckSource.com is no longer available as a health information resource."(transition note)

This was pointed out on the template talk page three months ago, but so far there has been no action. Please can someone from the Medicine project have a look and take appropriate action (sort out a new link, delete the template or whatever)? Thanks. --Mirokado (talk) 23:55, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Sounds like that the template should be put up for deletion. It will then be scrubbed from every page where it is used inline. It will break a fair number of references, but there is obviously no alternative. Apart from manually changing all the instances to the print version, which sounds nightmarish. JFW &#124; T@lk  00:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The linked definitions are available at archive.org, e.g. this. It may be possible to separate the baby from the bathwater.LeadSongDog come howl!  07:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Since we are reasonably confident that the definitions online and offline are identical, I don't think that converting them to a manual citation is actually nightmarish. It should just be a matter of ignoring the URL-creating parameter, and expanding the rest of the text, so that  produces something like "Simmonds disease", Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co. (2003) ISBN 0-7216-0146-4." rather than "Simmonds disease" at Dorland's Medical Dictionary".  No educated person is going to require that we produce page numbers for dictionary definitions; the definitions do not change when the format does.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If the same content can be found (elsewhere) online (from a credible source), I'd say delete the template. Nephron T|C 23:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * In the meanwhile, I've tweaked the template so it links to the wayback machine's image instead. LeadSongDog come howl!  02:35, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Maternal nutrition needs a look
Could someone take a look at Maternal nutrition. I stumbled across it as part of the copyvio clean-up stemming from the students on the India Education Program. First of all, it duplicates (more or less) the pre-existing subject Nutrition and pregnancy, itself not a very stellar article. In fact I just removed an entire section from it as copyvio in the process of cross-checking the two articles. Secondly, it is poorly written and some of the references are rather dubious for a medical article, e.g. blogs. I don't want to waste my time doing a lengthy copyvio check and clean of the student article if it's just going to be re-directed. Voceditenore (talk) 18:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, the more I look at Nutrition and pregnancy, the more I suspect that it too may have considerable lifted verbatim material apart from what I removed. Voceditenore (talk) 18:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like a merge is in order, and the copyediting associated with that might deal with any remaining copyvios, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I also agree that a merger is in order and I've added the template to the Maternal nutrition talk page and Nutrition and pregnancy talk page. Though neither name is great, for now Nutrition and pregnancy is clearer and I've named that as the destination, though feel free to discuss that as well. The Haz talk 23:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I also agree that a merger is in order, but believe that both should be merged with Prenatal nutrition and birth weight. Please discuss at Talk:Prenatal nutrition and birth weight The Haz talk 00:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Poliomyelitis: major revision to an FA proposed
Please see Talk:Poliomyelitis. Does anyone here understand what the complaint is and what is being proposed? -- Colin°Talk 09:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:AGF-flavoured message left. JFW &#124; T@lk  11:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It sounds an awful lot like certain AIDS denialists, except that the AIDS denalists say that HIV is a common, harmless virus, and this person seems to be saying that Poliovirus is (or was) a common, harmless virus (until people quit being exposed to it regularly). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

New page toy
User:Fred Gandt has just built us a cool new toy for processing brand-new medicine-related articles. It's in Javascript, so it takes about ten seconds to set up.

You need to edit your common.js file—Special:MyPage/common.js will take you there—and paste in this text:

importScript("User:Fred_Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js");

Then you save the page, and go to User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult, where you should now see a large button on the top right that says "Show unpatrolled". Click that button and wait (go do something else for a minute or three: it has to talk to the servers about more than 100 files, which takes a bit). When it's done, you'll find a new gray button at the end of some lines that says "Patrol". Click that button to go to the page and "Mark as patrolled" (click the link in small type at the bottom of the new article).

These are all new pages about potentially medicine-related subjects (based on fairly expansive keyword searches). When we leave these pages to the WP:New page patrol, they're usually reviewed by people who don't know anything about the standards for medicine-related articles, or even what kinds of articles already exist. The NPP, partly because it attracts some very inexperienced people with imperfect understanding of major policies, also has a bit of a reputation for being unfriendly to new editors, which is not a path towards growing the number of editors doing useful work on medicine-related articles.
 * Why you care about this:

I believe that by doing more of this work ourselves, we can achieve three major goals:
 * reducing the NPP's workload,
 * attracting and retaining more subject-matter experts and other potentially valuable members for our group, and
 * finding and fixing up new articles within our scope.


 * How to properly patrol a page:
 * First, click that "Mark as patrolled" button! It disappears as soon as you edit the page, move the page, or take any other action.
 * If the subject is completely, hopelessly, obviously inappropriate, then tag it for speedy deletion.
 * Boldly WP:MERGE and redirect duplicate pages into existing articles.
 * Helpfully clean up formatting messes. Two minutes of work from an experienced editor can solve a multitude of problems and encourage, rather than biting, the newbies.
 * Tag problems that you can't WP:HANDLE yourself. Focus on the biggest problems, e.g., the need for, without WP:TAGBOMBing the page.
 * If the subject suggests that the person could become a valuable editor, welcome the user and invite him or her to join us. Feel free to leave {{subst:MedWelcome-reg}} on the user talk pages of registered users.
 * Add the WPMED project banner to the page, if it's a page that is actually medicine-related.

Especially since this is a brand-new script, I would really appreciate it if several of you would install it and try it out. There are currently about 30 pages needing to be patrolled, so if you could patrol a couple and report back here, that would be great. Fred is concerned that it won't work for people using Internet Explorer, so if you encounter any sort of problems, please let me know what browser you're using. Finally, if you like this (it's certainly more fun than dealing with disputes at controversial articles), then please consider bookmarking or watching User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult and checking in with it every day or two.

Thanks! WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi. Just adding that the script will allow the searching for unpatrolled articles on any AlexNewArtBot results pages. So any other subject you also wish to patrol can be done more rapidly and easily using Tedder's search results combined with this script. I'll be tweaking the script as time goes on in the hope of making it faster and more efficient. I'd appreciate any feedback (as WhatamIdoing has already suggested), complaints and/or bug reports included Face-smile.svg fg 11:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I just installed it, will send you feedback later. Thanks for setting this up! NCurse work 09:47, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I pasted the text into my js page, saved and refreshed, but when I click "Show unpatrolled" at User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult, no matter how long I wait (an hour last time) the "Patrol" button doesn't appear. I'm using Firefox 4.0.1. When I use IE 8.0.6001.19120 the "Show patrolled" button doesn't appear. This is a great idea and I look forward to being able to use it once it's sorted. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:31, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks to WhatamIdoing I just found out about your post. I'll look into it and report back here. Give me an hour or so though as I was literally just about to take the dog out (not a euphemism) fg 20:32, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you get any response from the button at all? When I hover over it, the color of the text changes, and when I click it, the text changes to say "Gathering data: X of Y unique authors".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up WhatamIdoing. fg


 * Try changing your common.js to:


 * - and let me know the results please. fg 21:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. I replaced the common.js with the above and saved. In Firefox, I clicked "Show unpatrolled" at User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult and waited half an hour. Nothing has changed and the "Patrol" button hasn't appeared. When I hover over "Show unpatrolled" the text colour changes to a pale aquamarine and the "waiting" symbol (a small spinning circle) appears. In IE8, there is no "Show unpatrolled" button. This is the same as was happening before I replaced the common.js. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll Assume that you've cleared your browser cache and the new script is running. Do other JavaScripts work ok? Try importing another script that you can be sure is working. There are loads here. You may find some handy scripts so whilst testing you wouldn't be losing anything. FYI, when it works it will be over in less than a minute and show progress as described by WhatamIdoing so there is no need to wait more than 2 minutes for a result. Also, I wouldn't bother trying with IE. I don't get a button with IE either but I'm not going to waste my life trying to fix that. IE is a horrible buggy diva that is never happy with anything.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">andt</i>  03:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. It is possible that this is a compatibility issue between the script and your chosen skin. Which do you use?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">andt</i>  03:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * For reference here are two screenshots. during and after the process.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">andt</i>  04:13, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. I changed skin from Monobook to Vector. Now it works as WhatamIdoing describes above in Firefox. I patrolled Rhamnolipids successfully. But in IE8, there is still no "Show unpatrolled" button at User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult. It's not a problem for me though, because I never use IE. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah thank you for making that effort. I'll look into why it's not compatible with the other skins and try to fix that. Sorry it was such a pain in the back side. I'll add a note here when I know one way or the other about cross skin functionality.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">andt</i>  17:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Updated script
I've updated the script to work on most skins. It works on: Vector, Monobook, Chick, Modern, MySkin, and Simple. This is if no changes have been made to the page structure by any other script. If anyone really needs this script to work on any of the other skins, I can probably fix that. I'm loathed to fix stuff if it doesn't need fixing though, so will only do it by request.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:60%;">andt</i>  22:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

New article
Someone just built this page Medical animation. I am not sure if it corresponds to what the medical community at large does, or does not. Could one of you guys take a look, rate it, comment, etc. I assume there is no commercial angle pre-built therein. But the content looks good - pretty good for a first article in fact. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure about commercial angle. The contributor seems to have started out with some commercial spamming for online newsmonger Brafton.com, but I don't see any signs of that in this article. LeadSongDog come howl!  21:32, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly so. That was why I did not say it was spam. But the article looked too good to be a first attempt, unless the editor is amazingly talented - a possibility that we will AGF on. I was however, fascinated by the concept (which I am sure does not apply here) that at some point people may "establish the field" for products, so general information can be found in Wikipedia so the sales cycle can be smoothed in the future. If Wikipedia gets a good article out of it, so be it. That was why I wanted to see if this article corresponded to general medical norms. Most of the other computer animation articles are a mess - this one shines with quality... go figure... But it may push me to fix the non-medical ones at long last... History2007 (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Student reviews needed
Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations lists a handful of articles in need of a reviewer for student projects. Several are at least sort of medicine-related, including Bipolar II disorder and Dysgraphia. Please consider reviewing an article (it's not hard) or at least reading the article and adding any comments you have when someone else reviews it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Eyes needed at Talk:Veterinary_chiropractic
There is a discussion regarding the interpretation of MEDRS and the use of primary sources (IMO very poor quality and inconclusive) in the absence of secondary sources. Please take a look. -- Brangifer (talk) 20:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I read the discussion page. Can you please point to the 2 refs about which you are most concerned, as well as the relevant wikipedia text? ( you called out the third ref clearly).FeatherPluma (talk) 23:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Vitamin D disagreements
It might be helpful if someone knowledgeable on the subject could take a look at the edit-warring going on at Vitamin D. The dispute appears to revolve around some tricky issues of how much weight to give to primary sources, like individual published studies. I'm not sufficiently familiar with this area to sort it out, though. --Delirium (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, please, we need more voices on that page. People are restoring a version of the article rife with primary studies, and removing secondary reviews added by Doc James and Sasata. Yobol (talk) 22:04, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Will third this request. We need more comments to resolve the issue at hand. IMO primary sources are being used to not just refute secondary sources but in place of secondary sources. I tried to update the page but the secondary sources keep getting removed.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:30, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Published studies, if peer-reviewed are not considered by WP to be completely primary, and by WP standards, very reliable. The introduction and conclusions are generally considered secondary sources, and therefore the article itself can be used extensively, provided the data is coming from the introduction or conclusions, which most in a WP article will. See Examples of Overlap of Primary and Secondary Material in a Single Source and Use of peer-reviewed sources. The Haz talk 03:44, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh and I basically wrote the same thing on the talk page. The Haz talk 03:50, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I can sort of buy that, but as an academic I do think it's a bit generous to say, as a blanket matter, that introductions and conclusions of peer-reviewed articles are secondary sources. In fact, a large number are primary sources, or even opinion, and we review them that way; there are things you could not get away with saying in a proper review article or meta-analysis that you will be given leeway to say in the introduction or conclusion of your own article. So I think some care is warranted with individual scientific articles, as opposed to articles that clearly express consensus views, such as surveys, widely used textbooks, meta-analyses, etc. --Delirium (talk) 03:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Haz's comments are neither what we have at WP:MEDRS nor my reading of the literature. Are there refs to support this statement? -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:05, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Haz, Primary Secondary and Tertiary Sources is not only a failed proposal, it was also written back when certain editors wrongly believed that "secondary" was a fancy way to spell "independent" or otherwise a synonym for "good source", which it isn't. The proposal failed in part because some of the information it gives is actually wrong.  I would not rely on that failed proposal for figuring out what sources you should be using.
 * More relevantly, the official guideline at WP:MEDRS addresses this issue directly: "Research papers that describe original experiments are primary sources; however, they normally contain previous-work sections that are secondary sources (these sections are often incomplete and typically less useful or reliable than reviews or other sources, such as textbooks, which are intended to be reasonably comprehensive)."
 * So, yes, some parts of most peer-reviewed papers (though not the parts you identify, and never the authors' original conclusions) are secondary sources, but they are likely to be an incomplete, cherry-picked, or otherwise biased secondary sources, and you should reject them whenever better types of sources (like a narrative review or a practice guideline) are available. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:10, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, if you read my discussion on the talk page you would have noticed that because I was following anchors, I didn't notice that it was actually a failed proposal. I understand what people are getting at. The Haz talk 04:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * And as I also noted, I definitely agree that true secondary sources should always be considered over any part of a journal article. It can be tough to find a good balance between primary and secondary sources in a WP article and I hope they're able to get through that. The Haz talk 04:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that people are restoring versions of the article rife with primary studies. One of the worst primary study (although disguised as an impartial review of primary studies) is the IOM report that is loaded with original research and concludes that vitamin D has no health benefits other than bone health. To prove that this conclusion is false, only one reliable journal article is needed that reviewed several primary studies that showed other health benefits besides bone health. I referenced one such review (Yamshchikov, et al in Endocrine Practice) that reviewed nine studies that showed beneficial effects of vitamin D against tuberculosis and some other infectious diseases. The Yamshchikov review proves the IOM report conclusions are false and therefore the IOM report is an unreliable source and not suitable as a Wiki reference. But one of the Wiki editors deleted my reference to Yamshchikov's review. Regardless of how much of the IOM report was well researched, since the main conclusions of the IOM report are provably false, the report is flawed and should be relegated to a seperate article where both sides of the controversy can be represented, including Dr. Michael Holick's criticisms of the IOM report. Greensburger (talk) 04:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh dear. The IOM report is a secondary source. You may agree or disagree with it, but your personal disapproval does not transmute it into a primary source. Seeing your comment makes me think that there is in fact a pressing need for more editors to get involved with this article, if these are the sorts of arguments being put forth. MastCell Talk 04:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Even if 99% of the IOM report was faithful to the primary studies being reviewed, the provably false conclusions make the IOM report a primary source of those false conclusions. That taints the entire report. Greensburger (talk) 05:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Please take this discussion back to the talkpage for the article. We cannot have multiple threads all over the place.
 * "The IOM report is wrong" is usually the sign of someone with very strongly held views. Consider having a look at WP:NPOV. Honestly. JFW &#124; T@lk  08:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If we are having edit warring problems, then perhaps one of our admins would consider placing the page under short-term protection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If we could get some support that the use of mostly/all review articles including the IoM is preferable to the use of primary sources that would be great. This is my reading of WP:MEDRS Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 07:28, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Migralepsy in template
I want to add Migralepsy to one (both?) of the general templates used at the bottom of Epileptic seizure and Migraine, but i'm not sure which of the two should have it added and also where in the template Migralepsy would fit. Can someone help? Silver seren C 21:57, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I think I'd add it to two of the five templates in those articles. According to this source, the IHS seems to list it as 1.5.5 for the IHCD system, so that will require a new line in Headache.  They also give the ICD-10 number as "G43.3 + G40.x or G41.x", which might be useful for an infobox, and an alternate name of "Migraine-triggered seizure".
 * I'd also add it to Seizures and epilepsy, but I don't know where to put it in the navbox. (The navbox seems to divide seizures by type, and the definition seems to suggest that any type of seizure counts.)  Perhaps Colin will have an opinion.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Since this isn't an area i'm deeply involved in and I wouldn't want to touch those templates for fear of messing them up completely, can you or someone else add the article to them? Silver  seren C 20:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added Migralepsy to Template:Headache, but where exactly to put the other is still a mystery to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Psilocybin
Hello all. Am wondering if the above article should have this WikiProject's tag, based on the proliferation of recent studies that suggest the drug may have a future as a "medicinal compound" (the analogous LSD is similarly tagged.) I am planning on taking the article to FAC soon, and was hoping someone here might read through the "Use in medicine" Medical research section and see if there are any issues that might hamper the article's promotion... I hope to make the FAC as smooth as possible. Thanks in advance for any advice or comments. Sasata (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Pretty dreadful POV section, using prelimary small-scale single primary source studies to imply a medical consensus on efficacy and accepted treatment modality. Psilocybin stated as being the only drug to halt cluster headache cycles, yet one of the other provided references noted higher succes rate with LSD, and 25 of 48 psilocybin users having a successful response is not "most cluster headache patients" but at 52% more neutrally described as "half".
 * Finally none of this is available accepted treatment but small preliminary research, so "Use in medicine" is inaccurate - and I've renamed "Medical research". David Ruben Talk 00:03, 22 November 2011 (UTC) (Initial edits)
 * Excellent feedback, thanks! I'll work on it. Sasata (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Popular pages
There are some really interesting popular pages for the month of Oct. For example breast cancer received 5.5 million pages views. Wondering if their was an error? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:09, 22 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No, that will be an artifact of Pinktober. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

ECGs and Echos
Dr. de Jong has released about 3000 ECGs and 700 echos under a license we can use. I have requested a batch upload to commons. Anyone here available to help with the integration of these images into Wikipedia/now how to do a batch upload? -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

ICD-10 codes overhaul proposal
Hi, I noticed the discussion above about the ICD-10 codes, and I have been thinking about a new way of using these codes. My idea is to use the ICD-10 codes as a way of validating interwiki links on medical articles, since the international translation of the codes should be accurate, even though not all countries use all the codes. If the codes were independent of the descriptions, then the interwiki links would be easier to maintain since the codes are basically independent of language. Making the codes in an international template where more than one language is available would also be an improvement, since the terms are hard to understand in English, let alone trying to translate them. The WHO has had the list translated, and many insurance companies have financial systems that rely on them, so the translation of the codes is happening anyway, whether or not the various language Wikipedia's use these official translations or not. My proposal is to create a wikiproject in all participating language-pedias, and then link up the ICD-10 lists in each language. That way there can be a central place on each language wiki to spot redlinks and gaps in code usage. For the mental health codes, a similar thing can be set up for the DSM-IV codes and as far as I am concerned, most of these can just link back to the ICD-10 codes. I would be interested to hear if anyone thinks this plan is worth a go. Jane (talk) 19:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Update: I received email that the WHO never granted Wikipedia the permission to use the ICD-10 codes, and this is the reason they are not in other language Wikipedias today. On the ICD-10 page, I noticed that each code links individually to the WHO website. Is this the reason it's OK for publishing this? Now I have another question and that is, can one search on Wikipedia pages for specific links (like to the WHO's website) in the history (I am thinking of trying to trace back the original decision to publish the ICD-10 codes here). Thanks in advance for any ideas. Jane (talk) 08:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Quack Medicine
Are there policies that deal with articles that are viewed to be quackery? Specifically, I'm wondering what, if anything, should be done about The Lightning Process. It has coverage in a number of newspapers, but there are no MEDRS sources in the article, and even the newspaper articles seem to be mostly about the controversy/fad or they're reporting hearsay evidence. While that might qualify it for inclusion right there (à la Flat Earth), it's currently an orphaned article, and I really don't think it's appropriate to de-orphan it by inserting mention of a scientifically questionable process into otherwise science-based articles. Do we keep articles like this or are there criteria for them to be deleted or what? – RobinHood70 <sup style="line-height:0">talk 16:40, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * In practice, once something has been mentioned in a newspaper (even the Daily Mail), it's extremely unlikely to be deleted. The best approach (in my opinion) is simply to make sure that the article correctly reflects the status of the "Process", its components, and its relation to and reception by mainstream medical entities. That can be a challenge; if it seems like it's becoming an issue, drop me a note and I can take a closer look. Other folks here may have other ideas or approaches to suggest as well. MastCell Talk 19:04, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) Robin Hood, have you tried searching google books? Sometimes if you can't find reliable sources in journals and newspapers, you can find an expert discussing finer points in academic books.-- Literature geek |  T@1k?  19:27, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:FRINGE would be the place that I started. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * D'oh! I knew I was missing something obvious. I'll review FRINGE in detail tomorrow and see if there are any other actions that need to be taken based on that. Thanks, WAID! – RobinHood70 <sup style="line-height:0">talk 05:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:PARITY has been a good place to start in regards to sources for medical fringe articles. Information about the fringiest stuff won't be published in high quality reviews in journals. Yobol (talk) 14:09, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Yobol. That section in particular seems to indicate that the article is fine to stay as it is, since it covers the topic with at least some degree of neutrality and appears to be notable, even if it's considered fringe. That resolves my concerns. – RobinHood70 <sup style="line-height:0">talk 20:54, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * RobinHood70, it looks like you've gotten some excellent advice and resources to guide you. As a skeptic I find it distressing when other editors start deleting articles and content simply because it's nonsense, scams, quackery, etc.. They are forgetting the purpose of Wikipedia, and that is to document (after the fact, using RS) the sum total of human knowledge, and unfortunately that includes all kinds of nonsense, foolishness, unscientific BS, etc.. The advice and resources you find above will guide you in how to deal with all the BS we find in this world. It often has a place here, IF it's notable. If it's notable, there will often be RS that can also be included that debunk it. That makes the article a good place for people to find the "truth" about the matter. Good luck!


 * BTW, if you want to help, I've got a subpage with lots of stuff that needs organization into an article: Alternative medicine critics. Use the talk page there. -- Brangifer (talk) 19:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Request opinion regarding sources
First, forgive me if this is the incorrect forum. If so, please feel free to move this discussion (or ask me to) :) We are looking for some neutral opinions on the credibility of a source for the chiropractic article. The first sentence in the lead of all health care profession articles in Wikipedia is the definition of the profession. When it comes to chiropractic, there can be some controversy over the ‘correct’ definition, hence the dilemma.

Some editors believe the World Health Organization to be an impartial, credible and internationally recognized medical organization, thus, a great stand-alone source for the definition of a controversial topic. The WHO does not make mention of chiropractics CAM label, but it is discussed in the second sentence of the Lead:


 * Potential First 2 sentences of Lead #1
 * "Chiropractic is a health care profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health.(ref:WHO) It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)...(ref)"

However, there have been some concerns raised that the WHO may be biased, and that the definition needs to be balanced by including text from additional source(s) to ensure inclusion of the CAM label in the first sentence of the Lead. It has also been suggested that the CAM discussion should still take place in the second sentence of the Lead as well, because it discusses a different issue regarding the CAM label:


 * Potential First 2 sentences of Lead #2
 * "Chiropractic is a form of alternative medicine(ref) concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health.(ref: WHO) It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)...(ref)"

The pdf of the WHO source can be found here: www.who.int/medicines/areas/traditional/Chiro-Guidelines.pdf Any comments would be appreciated! User:Puhlaa 23:01, 23 November 2011


 * WHO is a very well respected source and I have no concerns with use it first and foremost. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:35, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The WHO is a very RS and can be used. No problem there. My objections are only to using it alone, since it doesn't describe/define the subject completely. There is no single definition from any source that really describes the subject fully, since they are all written from some particular POV, either a blah "duh" neutral statement, or too favorable, or too critical. That's why we often create our own definitions, using content and wording from many RS. Our definition ends up being better than any found elsewhere, and that's what's great about Wikipedia. We cover the subject from every angle. No one else does that.


 * Chiropractic is a complicated and controversial topic and the WHO is basically providing a neutral/incomplete picture, much of it provided to them by the promotional and wishful thinking of the World Federation of Chiropractic, who would love to turn our article into a sales brochure.


 * Other definitions and descriptions should also be included in the article, and some of the other aspects gleaned from the article need to be included in the lead for the sake of giving a total picture. We've actually done that quite well, but now someone new to the article has turned over the applecart, so to speak. I would just like to avoid a return to edit wars. That article has suffered plenty of that and has been relatively stable for some time. As long as there is real improvement, and that real problems are addressed, I have no problem with change, but the subject has always been a minefield, so we need to progress slowly, using the talk page, and not going back and forth on the article. -- Brangifer (talk) 19:33, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I have looked at the document. It looks fine, and is suitable as a reference in Wikipedia. Chiropractic is in the process of moving from "alternative" to "mainstream" medicine, hence why sources (and editors) may have different views about this. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback Axl...in general I think most would agree with you. However, there have been some dissenting views so I wanted to get some additional opinions. Again, thanks! Puhlaa (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate articles about musculoskeletal system
A new user, in an attempt to turn a dictionary definition stub (neuromusculoskeletal) into an article, has simply copied the lead from nervous system and the whole human musculoskeletal system article, and added them to the stub. Now we have two articles with huge duplication. The history of the new article tells the story.


 * Human musculoskeletal system - original article
 * Neuromusculoskeletal - stub --> article (using previous article's content)

What to do? Is there really any justification for this? If we keep the new one, it should be renamed by adding "human" and "system", and then we should delete "Human musculoskeletal system". This is a chiropractic concept, but certainly not foreign to medicine. The whole is interrelated, so at what point do we combine all anatomical articles into one huge article and deleting the smaller ones, and at what point do we keep them separate? This tends toward combining them. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I created the page because the term is becoming increasingly used. It is term used in physical medicine.  A pubmed search yields 247 hits for the term 'neuromusculoskeletal'.  Please see following link.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=neuromusculoskeletal.   I see no proof that it is a 'chiropractic' concept when the term is also used non-chiropractic journals.  I think BR is missing the point.  The 'neuro' in neuromusculoskeletal refers to the anatomy of nerves, particularly peripheral ones which form a major component of the soft tissues asides from muscles, fascia, connective tissues, etc.  It is a term used in physical medicine and I have demonstrated it to be verifiable and coming from reliable sources.  Does BR object to the PubMed sources provided?  Edit: the term neuromusculoskeletal also appears to be used by the National Library of Medicine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/mesh/2011/MB_cgi?field=uid&term=D026882 DVMt (talk) 07:01, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Calm down. I'm a Physical Therapist and know perfectly well how the term is used. It's not a rare term. I'm just wondering what to do about this situation. We don't normally create articles this way with such large duplication, but who knows, we may end up accepting this. I'm just seeking guidance and third party input from the medical experts here. -- Brangifer (talk) 08:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I propose that we redirect the term to musculoskeletal system. We can add a couple of sentences to that articles addressing the issue of this term. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 08:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * That would certainly be the simplest way. -- Brangifer (talk) 09:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia article titles are nouns (WP:NOUN) and 'Neuromusculoskeletal' is an adjective. If we make it into a noun by appending something like 'system' then we're back at the original article. In addition, is a breach of the CC-BY-SA licence for Human musculoskeletal system since it uses work but fails to make the necessary attribution to the original contributors. I'm not willing to see the breach of licence continue now that I'm aware of it, so I've done the quickest thing and converted Neuromusculoskeletal to a redirect to Human musculoskeletal system as I believe that is the closest in content. I'd be just as happy, however, if someone changed the redirect to a different article if they know better. For what it's worth Musculoskeletal system is already a redirect to Human musculoskeletal system. --RexxS (talk) 00:53, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Good catch and good solution. The content is all available in each article anyway. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with the proposal by DocJames. Would it be OK if I added a few sentences like you suggested?  Also, would this permit inclusion of the nervous system into the musculoskeletal article as I proposed?  I just want to be clear before editing and want to build consensus. I apologize if a breached a license, I realize attribution was important and didn't realize I had committed a breach.  My goal is like yours, simply to make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia.  DVMt (talk) 03:42, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Nerves and nervous system are already mentioned in their appropriate places. Is there something unique you'd like to add? -- Brangifer (talk) 05:00, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Come up with a section you wish to add to the MSK system article. Post it on the talk page their. Than leave a note on my talk page and i will look at it.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

AL amyloidosis
Hey all,

Quick question for y'all. I thought I'd take my hand to expanding/cleaning up the entry on AL amyloidosis. My understanding is that AL amyloidosis encompasses any situation in which you get immunoglobulin light chain amyloid deposits. As I understand it, one instance in which this can occur is in patients in multiple myeloma.

I'm a bit confused after looking at a reference from the Amyloidosis Foundation, which asserts "AL amyloidosis .... is similar in many ways to multiple myeloma, another plasma cell dyscrasia.". This line suggests that somehow AL Amyloidosis is different from and unrelated to multiple myeloma. That doesn't jive with my reading of other sources. Could it be that the Amyloidosis Foundation got this wrong, or is phrasing it poorly? Is AL Amyloidosis a possible outcome of multiple myeloma, or is it distinct from it? NickCT (talk) 15:23, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems clear at Wechalekar et al. (2008) that they are quite distinct entities with differing genetics. LeadSongDog come howl!  16:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm.... This paper?
 * I presume you're looking at the line "The t(11;14) immunoglobulin heavy chain gene ......... AL amyloidosis than in MGUS or myeloma"? I'm still a little confused by this. The article seems to say that some of the genetics AL amyloidosis is similar to MM. It talks about the two conditions like they are distinct, but doesn't explain the exact diagnostic difference. I still don't understand why people whose MM is causing amyloid immunoglobulin light chain deposits aren't said to have both MM and resulting AL amyloidosis. NickCT (talk) 18:32, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Myeloma and AL amyloidosis are separate conditions, but they can coexist in the same patient. Both myeloma and AL amyloidosis are plasma cell disorders, and both are characterized by a monoclonal serum or urine paraprotein. Myeloma typically also involves >20% bone marrow plasma cells and lytic bone lesions. Whereas AL amyloid involves amyloid deposition in tissue combined with clinical amyloid syndromes (massive proteinuria, cardiomyopathy, GI symptoms, etc). If a patient has both lytic bone lesions and evidence of amyloid deposition, then they have both conditions. It's hard to find good statistics, but probably about 10% of patients with amyloid have concurrent myeloma. Typically, in patients with both diagnoses, the myeloma manifests first; it's uncommon for a patient with isolated AL amyloid to subsequently develop myeloma. So the bottom line is that these are two separate conditions, but they can and do coexist in a minority of patients. In terms of separating the diagnoses in patients with monoclonal protein: if there's evidence of amyloid deposition, that's AL amyloidosis. If there's evidence of lytic bone lesions and extensive marrow plasmacytosis, then myeloma is present. If both are present, then both are present. I'm not sure that cleared anything up, though. :\ MastCell Talk 19:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps this makes it more clear: "All forms of systemic amyloidosis in which the fibrils are derived from monoclonal light chains, regardless of the nature of the underlying plasma cell disorder (eg, MGUS, multiple myeloma, or Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia) are considered AL amyloidosis." So MM is a subset of AL amyloidosis. LeadSongDog come howl!  20:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that interpretation quite right. Myeloma isn't a subset of AL amyloidosis, because you can have myeloma without amyloidosis. MastCell Talk 20:49, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll defer to your expertise, though I'm not sure the source supports that reading. Gotta run now.LeadSongDog come howl!  21:05, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * @MastCell - Thanks for an in-depth and scholarly answer. I mostly get what you're saying, but I still wonder if in a scenario where the same batch of clonal plasma cells are responsible for both AL amyloidosis and MM (i.e. one batch of cells is producing amyloid deposition and lesions) does that not mean that the two conditions have the same etiology, and hence, are the same disease/non-distinct conditions? NickCT (talk) 07:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe. After all, if you think about it, a lot of these disease categories are somewhat arbitrary. AL amyloidosis and myeloma are two distinct clinical syndromes, distinguished by their clinical manifestations. They may share some underlying pathophysiology, but that's not reflected in the disease definitions. MastCell Talk 05:31, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey Mast - Thanks for thinking this one through with me. I guess a lot of this has to do with semantics. As you point out, AL amyloidosis and MM are clearly different syndromes, though they may in some cases be part of the same disease. I still think the "similar in many ways to multiple myeloma, another plasma cell dyscrasia" language I cited above is confusing, b/c it seems to discount the possible sharing of "some underlying pathophysiology". If I do further work on this article, I'm going to avoid language which implies that MM and AL are necessarily unrelated. NickCT (talk) 15:46, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

List of vegetable fats
Does anyone know how to go about compiling a list of vegetable fats? In this discussion, two other editors and I have determined that the vegetable fats currently listed on List of vegetable oils should probably be split off into their own list at List of vegetable fats, but we're unsure how many other vegetable fats there are or how we might determine what they are. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Neelix (talk) 03:04, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Try WP:FOOD... -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:27, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If there aren't very many non-oily fats, then the list should simply be renamed to the broader title and left alone.
 * Are you trying to limit the list to edible fats? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Human Exposure to Thimerosal from Vaccines Labeled for Use in Dogs
Can someone with knowledge in this area please have a look at this new article? It seems to be the work of a class project and could probably use review of its content. Human exposure to mercury due to vaccines given to dogs seems quite unlikely to me. Deli nk (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I have nominated it for deletion. I don't think it is notable and I suspect there are WP:SYN issues.-- Literature geek |  T@1k?  16:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Problem with a list article
List of people diagnosed with Crohn's disease is categorized in Category:Lists of people with disabilities. User:Lugnuts and I seem to have a disagreement as to whether that category is appropriate. I believe that a disease and a disability are separate items, not due to visibility or anything like that, but because they aren't comparable in their fundamental definitions. Lugnuts does not share that opinion. However, Lugnuts is the only major contributor to that list, and therefore we will clearly never reach a consensus. I would therefore like some outside input on the talk page from editors in the discussion to reach some sort of group consensus. MSJapan (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Replied on the talk page. Colin°Talk 21:21, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Are phase 2 trials notable
I attempted to removed some phase 2 trials here at

Onychomycosis as not being notable. They where not supported by reviews. Comments?-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:22, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * i think all trials are notable.... but they should have a separate article imo. "research / clinal trials relating to xxxx" 68.61.150.75 (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's probably confusing to use the word 'notable' when you mean sources 'worthy of inclusion', as 'notable' is normally used here to determine whether an article should exist, rather than whether a source is suitable for use in an article.
 * Putting that aside, it should be obvious that not all trials are worthy of inclusion. Trials are always primary sources. WP:MEDRS makes it clear that we should be using secondary sources (reviews, etc.) and that primary sources are only worthy of inclusion in exceptional circumstances. MEDRS contains the consensus of many editors and its guidance needs to be respected unless you can establish a good reason for doing otherwise. A good article will have a section on Current research and it is never a good idea to create a fork into a new article for any reason other than the original article is too big. Daughter articles are not to be used as a method to avoid sourcing restrictions in a main article. --RexxS (talk) 17:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)


 * RexxS is correct. James, you need to be careful with your terminology. "Notability" should be used to refer to the justification for having an article about the topic in Wikipedia. "Reliability" refers to the justification for using a given source to support a statement in a Wikipedia article.


 * The overwhelming majority of phase 2 trials are not notable; they lack significant coverage from reliable third party sources. The trial of TGN1412 is an exception.


 * Regarding reliability, journal articles describing phase 2 trials are inherently primary sources. As RexxS points out, our guideline discourages the use of primary sources as references for Wikipedia articles. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:21, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say specific trials are not worthy of inclusion in any detail. The fact that something is in phase two trials is probably worthy of inclusion, even if it needs to be supported by primary sources.  Basically, the progress towards approval is "notable", but who is doing the studies, and where, aren't really.  JMO.  Canada Hky (talk) 13:39, 26 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I looked at some of the recent diffs. Some of it's unsourced, and some of it was poorly sourced and basically uninformative.  Statements that amount to "Biotech, Inc completed a Phase II trial for a possible new treatment" are not appropriate, especially for a very common disease like this, and especially not without independent sources.  (It cited the company's own website and ClinicalTrials.gov.)  That information could, however, go into an article about the biotech company, but it's basically spam here.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the research pipeline for a disease is both relevant and informative. I think deleting this information is a loss to Wikipedia. The spammy bits should go though.  pgr94 (talk) 11:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If there are review studies that show the significance yes. But adding primary research just because it has been done or is ongoing I do not see as the purpose of Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't agree, but that's just my opinion. I have removed the research section as it is now unsourced. pgr94 (talk) 17:26, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't have kept it. Wikipedia is not a directory of clinical trials.  I would support general statements, like "Clinical trials are underway for a variety of treatments, including topical ointments, laser-based treatments, surgery, and some new compounds.  Additionally, studies are comparing the effectiveness of some existing treatments to determine the best doses and routes of administration"—or something like that.  That's appropriate information, with low potential for problems.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I do not mind research section as long as they are supported by review articles. Review articles do sometimes make mention of ongoing research in a subject area and typically puts it in better context. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:36, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * James, I know that you believe everything in the world should be sourced to a review, but a review is actually not the best type of source for a section on research directions. Reviews require the work to have already been published, so there's something specific to review.  Reviews are always and inherently backwards-looking.  The point behind ==Research directions== is about looking forward, not looking backwards.
 * Books, media reports (especially in the financial press), expert summaries, and opinion pieces are better sources for what's underway or being planned. For example,  on the research directions in heart disease prevention is an excellent secondary source, even though it is not a review.   is a good source for research directions on adults with autism-spectrum disorders.  These are not reviews, but they are great sources.  They are, in fact, better sources than any review that happens to mention future research in passing.  A source dedicated to describing future research is always better than a passing (and quite possibly biased) mention.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes secondary sources are reasonable. But just listing all the studies that are ongoing. That is not particularly encyclopedic. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:34, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I have misgivings about the inclusion of "Research directions" sections in Wikipedia articles. While there are secondary sources (review articles) that include this sort of information, the information is limited, and may be outdated by the time it reaches publication, let alone by the time Wikipedia editors use the info in Wikipedia.


 * The sources that WhatamIdoing indicates are, in my opinion, good sources. However I am concerned about the likelihood of poor quality sources being used, perhaps even with COI issues arising with less experienced editors or single-purpose accounts. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  15:42, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's often a problem. However, there's quite a range, and so our responses need to respond to that range.
 * In some instances, the existence of research is itself WP:Notable: we could write an entire article about the "breast cancer research industry".  Vaccine research, especially for HIV and malaria, is also independently notable.  I'm personally not going to volunteer to write those articles, but that doesn't mean that they're inappropriate articles.
 * In other cases, it's more appropriate to merely acknowledge that research is happening. When this is done concisely and in general terms (see the first two paragraphs at Leukemia as an example), then there is relatively little risk of the information becoming outdated.  It is a bit of spambait (see the third paragraph of that section), but it's also a spam solution, since it gives us a simple way to redirect the efforts of people who want to first-in-human testing to be described under ==Treatments==.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Anaphylaxis
Have finished a major rewrite of anaphylaxis and nominated it for GA. Comments / help welcome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Fantastic job! One minor thing: a picture about skin allergy test could be included. NCurse work 19:32, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Excellent article, both my Dad and sister have this condition, so is of interest. The article reads excellently apart from the non-immunological section; as an ignorant lay person, I was at first interested in that temperature could cause anaphylaxis, but then left wondering, 'how?', 'why only one sentence?'. I would suggest expanding this section and giving a bit more information; it is too short and us interested non-professionals crave more info to satisfy our curiosity.-- Literature geek |  T@1k?  20:35, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay will see what I can do... -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:50, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried to die twice (antibiotics and aspirin) but got lucky to be very close to an emergency room, so I had to take a look. Watch for repetitive prose, hyphens vs. endashes, percent ranges, and a comma separating last three digits of numbers.  Looks good!  Should you later expand it, a more vibrant description of the severity of the symptoms might be of interest-- folks may not realize the child probably doesn't have his eyes closed (they're probably swollen shut), or that it takes days for the swelling in your face to subside to the point that you're recognizable to friends and family. Or that hives on the bottom of your feet hurt like hell.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hyphens fixed in a jiffy using GregU's awesome tool. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I may review this in a few days, unless someone more eager has gone for it first. JFW &#124; T@lk  20:36, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Diffuse panbronchiolitis could use some additional comments as well on its featured article candidacy. It has come a long way since it was nominated a few weeks ago. --WS (talk) 20:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The last time I looked (some time ago), it still relied too heavily on primary sources-- has anyone checked for that? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:20, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Most of them have been removed and/or replaced. --WS (talk) 23:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, WS! Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I checked all of the sources (in "Diffuse panbronchiolitis"). I identified the primary sources and Rcej removed them. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  15:06, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks again. I haven't looked, but am wondering if you ever revisited brain? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I presume that you read my last statement at the FAC for "Brain". There was an outstanding point that I discussed on my talk page, which has now been fixed. Otherwise, my position has not changed. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  16:02, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:06, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I am reviewing "Anaphylaxis". Axl ¤  [Talk]  22:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Sourcing of hepatitis
I'm involved in a disagreement with on the sourcing of recently added content to the article hepatitis. In my mind, the 10 KB list of infectious agents that can cause hepatitis should be sourced to WP:MEDRS-compatible secondary sources (e.g. textbooks). DrMicro persists in relying on case reports and other low-quality sources. We have previously have an exchange on Whipple's disease.

Before I remove the long list of causes from the article again, I thought I'd get others' opinion on this. Would we want an article like hepatitis to be built on such sources? 14:59, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Ugh, what a laundry list. Seriously:  the entire article is one screenful of ==Signs and symptoms== and then hundreds of list items under ==Causes==.  And the sources!  An editorial from 1975?!  A case series from 1984?!
 * Honestly, I suspect that the only permanent solution to this problem is for someone to sit down with a decent, modern source and re-create the list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I was hoping I could persuade DrMicro to do that. Sadly, my request was not well received. JFW &#124; T@lk  23:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree completely that this is what needs to be done. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I wonder whether he's having trouble believing that secondary sources really are strongly preferred on-wiki. They're pretty commonly prohibited by journals, and some of our real-world experts have a knee-jerk "secondary=bad" belief.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Need an anatomy-oriented person
Humeral avulsion of the glenohumeral ligament has a small copyvio problem in the ==Diagnosis== section. I've temporarily, but I think it will be easy to clean up... assuming you understand what it's saying, and I'm not quite sure that I do. Probably anyone who's taken a decent anatomy class will find it straightforward. The source is the "Explanation" section at http://radiology.rsna.org/content/232/3/725.full Would someone mind trying to re-write it into plain English? Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and rewrote the section and did some clean up.AerobicFox (talk) 22:34, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Picture needs fixing


Can someone with image skillz fix this picture (from Wikimedia Commons) please? "Cricoid cartilage", "Lingular division bronchus" and "Intermediate bronchus" are mislabelled. Thanks. Axl ¤  [Talk]  14:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Scheuermann's disease article poorly written
Scheuermann's disease: Please consider for a rewrite - many poorly written sentences - likely written by a patient. 16:38, 25 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.61.150.75 (talk)


 * It's not half bad. JFW &#124; T@lk  20:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's actually quite good. As a sufferer, I found that this article answered many troubling questions that I wish could have been answered when I was a teenager. It needs a few more references that are in-keeping with WP:MEDRS, but it is a valuable contribution that many worried teenage boys (it affects boys more than girls) will find some little comfort from.Graham Colm (talk) 21:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Hrm. I seem to recall a total of 4 categories of it: Nonprogressive non-genetic, progressive non-genetic, nonprogressive genetic (which I and a couple of relatives have), and progressive genetic. I'll try to take a look for references. Allens (talk) 15:59, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Weakness and Muscle weakness
Should they be merged? They seem to be about the exact same thing, and the articles are almost identical. Fences &amp;  Windows  00:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * At first glance, I'd say yes. Merge "muscle weakness" into "weakness". You could probably go ahead and start a proposed merge. NickCT (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge. -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:29, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I support Merge. NCurse work 11:04, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Added merger tags and discussion here. Please vote and comment. Wafflephile (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Makes more sense to merge Weakness into Muscle weakness IMO. Everything from steel to morals to beer can be weak.  Hordaland (talk) 17:37, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Medicalopedia
There's a COI editor adding links all over the place to a site called "Medicalopedia". I'm not sure in how far that is a reliable source, but it strikes me as a bit spammy. Perhaps someone from this project can take a look? Thanks. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:24, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a blog.  I notice he's been warned off linking to the site by JFW. I've advised him that citing it is not OK either. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The website also gives some virus warnings and he has created a wiki here that infringes extensively on our copyright (ie he does not attribute Wikipedia or releases it under the same license) -- Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 13:59, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * And were all that not enough, he don't right very good English. Hordaland (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Sites with possible malware should be reported to the spam folks via WP:BLACKLIST. Mirrors and forks should be listed at WP:Mirrors and forks.  Mirrors and forks are always ineligible for listing under ==External links== per WP:ELNO.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've advised him of his rights and obligations with regard to attribution and license, and listed the site at WP:Mirrors and forks. James, if you think there are virus problems, can you contact WP:BLACKLIST? I haven't encountered any warnings. The user may benefit from being told about your concerns too. Thanks for the advice WhatamIdoing. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:43, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I have emailed this user in the past to inform him of these concerns. He is attempting to advertise his work to a larger group of physicians. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:08, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Field hospital article
Hello, I came across this article, Field hospital, which appears to be in bad shape. It however has a fair amount of traffic. I was wondering if anyone here might be interested in taking a crack at it? It's an old article (2005), but has not seen an improvement despite having some tags on it since Jan 2010. Any help would be nice. Thanks :) Outback the koala (talk) 07:14, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Ossification of
There are a number of articles named according to the pattern "ossification of <bone_name>". They are linked to from –among other places– this template. These titles are all slightly ungrammatical/abbreviated. Some articles now have redirects from "ossification of the <bone_name>".

On the one hand, it might be worth considering whether to move all of these articles to their respective "ossification of the <bone_name>" titles, and turn their "ossification of <bone_name>" titles into redirects.

However, I am not convinced that having these articles exist separately from the "<bone_name>" articles is a good idea in the first place. Evidently all of these articles came into being because they were chapter or subchapter titles in an out-of-copyright public domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. It may potentially be a better idea to merge the ossification articles back into the respective "<bone_name>" articles and have both the "ossification of <bone_name>" and the "ossification of the <bone_name>" titles be redirects to the appropriate sections in the the main articles. 31.16.124.131 (talk) 22:52, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The merge idea appeals to me, but that would require someone to go to the trouble of actually doing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Good changes or not?
I am wondering if it is good practice or bad practice for editors to change references to the 'cite pmid' form? See this diff for an example. I have seen it done before and it resulting in a loss of the 'full text link', which makes me think that it can be counter-productive.-- Literature geek |  T@1k?  01:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's probably a bad idea to change functional references to use cite pmid. The change yields no real benefit and, as you point out, removes the opportunity to link the title to a full text version manually, should it be available before a PMC version. It's also now worth being aware of the load that citation templates place on the servers since an article with 100+ cite templates may take a server over 30 seconds to render a page for editing. A quick test confirms my suspicion that cite pmid requires slightly more processing time than cite journal and although this doesn't matter for short articles, I'd question the wisdom of converting very large numbers of cites to the pmid type in a bigger article. If the intention is to unclutter the text, then implementing list-defined references for the article will produce a much more useful result with no noticeable extra processing. --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I hate it. The problem is that it is than easier to break. And I like seeing the full ref as I edit. I need to know how old the ref is in question and I tire of clicking to the end of the article.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Cite PMID is sometimes manually filled, and sometimes has errors-- hate it, wish it would be deleted. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree we should propose that they all get filled in and this style be discouraged. Strong support here. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

In defense of cite pmid: I changed many citations to this style and it repaired a lot of inaccuracies. There is an advantage in that the resulting cite journal template is shared, so that many articles using the same reference get one centrally maintained version. In case of available fulltext url I patched that into the template, so nothing got lost. Doc James remark about the date not being immediately evident is a striking point, this is indeed a disadvantage or tedious when checking the validity of references. Usually I read through the resulting refs section and then go back to edit or replace outdated ones. Please take a look at before/after of articles I have worked. I tried to clean them up in the detail. 70.137.152.169 (talk) 04:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Overall the results from the citation bot in cite pmc, cite pmid and cite doi improved the references in my limited experience.

Let me just complain here. I want my Diberri tool back!!!! I don't like spending the time switching between screens to fill in a citation. I'm using cite PMID whenever I can. BTW, I know that Diberri is gone forever, but it could have been that complex. Why can't someone resurrect that somewhere? Orange Marlin Talk• Contributions 06:28, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Never mind. I found the love of my life, my Diberri Tool.   Orange Marlin  Talk• Contributions 06:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

As well as the points raised above, I am concerned that the reference requires an active connection to PubMed. If the PubMed server is down or otherwise becomes unavailable, the reference becomes inaccessible. Our article text alone should provide all the info that a reader needs to check the source. Axl ¤  [Talk]  12:09, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it only requires PubMed to be up when the bot is running, not when the reader is viewing. But it creates a sub-page for every reference using it. That can't be good for WP servers. This and the other citations templates should all be binned. If editors find it hard to format a citation, we have editing tools now that can help them -- those tools should drop a proper citation on the page, not a template that requires yet more processing. I'd support a XfD on this. Colin°Talk 12:50, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

So: no pubmed required to use/display cite pmid, they get only once expanded to e.g. cite journal by the bot. This is an advantage, given the many sloppy citations I have seen (garbled, typos, two cites unintended merged into one when moving around text etc.) The other advantage is that these expanded templates are shared, if several articles cite to the same ref the template subpage is only created once for all citations! This is savings in space and allows centralized maintainance. In case of e.g. pharmaceuticals of one class, like benzodiazepines or barbiturates or beta-blockers a good deal of references is meaningful for the whole class and cited in all articles. A surprising amount of medical references is then shared. This is like the advantage you get from subroutines in programming. If this is additional load for the servers or if it is actually a reduction of the load depends on how well the servers deal with fine grained references, it is among other things a matter of caching. It is well possible that over all a reduction in storage size results with the sharing. I found surprisingly often that the template already existed and just was referenced. Cite pmid resolves to cite journal template once, by the bot, when you create it, not every time you look at it. Then you have your proper citation. Is there an aversion against templates like cite journal? Without them we could gain the ultimate advantage by programming all in HEX! I love it, 0xDEADBEEF etc. etc. etc. Has somebody here ever programmed in TECO (Text Editor and Corrector)? 70.137.152.169 (talk) 14:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Seems to me as if the physicians here methodically first try to take a deep look into the rectum of the computer and then to see the sour cabbage it had for dinner? 70.137.152.169 (talk) 14:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yer, but the thing is, it's not like "subroutines in programming". It's like embedding routines inline in compiled C++ - the expanded template will have to be included into every revision of every page that uses it when demanded, and that is not related to caching or grain. Caching does happen of course when a stable page is served, and that removes server load for subsequent requests. However, every time you edit a page, the server then has to expand every template in the source, often recursively. It's easy to check: open a whole page for edit; hit 'Preview'; examine the last line of the source for the resulting preview page – this page shows Served by srv203 in 0.304 secs for me. Now try it with Israel, where most of the Served by srv246 in 34.991 secs is citation templates. Templates do have a real value in Wikipedia as they make maintenance easier in several ways, but there is a severe downside in making large articles almost uneditable at times, and a balance has to be struck. It's important to understand that on the web there's no such thing as a free lunch (including sour cabbage). --RexxS (talk) 19:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I understand the free lunch issue. But it is largely a matter of implementation, e.g. what is cached, is there any precompile, what is stored etc., the expansion mechanism, do they keep an expanded version of the template and just copy from there etc. In fact its all the problems you get with a macro language. Such items like cite pmid would allow optimizations, as they do not have variable parameters, but just an integer constant. You can then compile to the final result and keep that, as there are no dependencies to the invoking text. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 22:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the sour cabbage, this association is not coincidential, when you look at most of the edited text it is write-only and lousy job to maintain if it is written w.o. any formatting for readability, just tape worm style. A few spaces and line feeds in the citations help a lot. I have stumbled on several cases where people had merged two references into one without noticing, when moving blocks of text around. The cite templates and also cite pmid help a lot to unclutter that, apart from the benefit a little text formatting would bring. I understand that many people are not in favor of formatting, because it is easier to just write tape worm style, but it is write-only then and no-read and no-maintain and no-bugfind. Or maybe I am just getting senile, or I have programmed for too long years. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 22:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I sympathise with you on both counts - as my first language was FORTRAN which I learned in 1969 (if my fading memory hasn't failed on that) and languages don't come much less structured than that. If you want to unclutter the text, then use list defined references (LDR) that move all of the full citation definitions to a list in the References section and have only named refs in the text. You can even use one parameter per line like that as it no longer interrupts the visual flow of prose in the article body. The downside is reduced portability, since if you want to re-use a block of text containing citations, you have to copy both the block and the relevant references from the bottom of the article. I just open multiple tabs to do that, but some find it awkward. On the other hand, if the article makes extensive use of named refs anyway, it can sometimes be a nightmare trying to find which section actually contains the full cite; at least with LDR, you know that you have to look at the end. Happy editing, --RexxS (talk) 00:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Two thoughts:
 * I thought that there was a bot that occasionally updated refs using the cite journal templates.
 * If you use Diberri's tool, then you get the same information that the cite pmid template will eventually use, without the opportunity to manually fat-finger the contents that hand-typing it creates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The bot that fills the cite pmid is a bit better than the diberri tool, I noticed. It is also possible to manually edit the template afterwards at every time to patch in an url for fulltext, so the url thing is a nonissue. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 01:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In what way is the bot better than the tool? I think it's worse, because it provides zero ooportunity to preview and correct mistakes (e.g., strange capitalization) before the ref is added to the article.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The citation bot is a strong argument for the use of cite journal vs. free handwritten refs. The same is true for cite pmid as they expand to a cite journal in the template page, which may be updated by citation bot. So cite pmid as well as cite journal support bot automated maintainance, eg. when fulltext becomes available. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 01:39, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Good grief, RexxS, FORTRAN. This was my second language, the first was ALGOL60 on a Zuse Z23, in 1965. See Z22 (computer), the Z23 was the successor. But you know you can program even in FORTRAN IV in a structured way, with some discipline, as you can in assembly, in particular if you have a good Macro facility. You then essentially use branches/gotos only for constructing structured flow control. In Macro 11 on the PDP11 you could define yourself macros for if-then-else, while-do etc. which would give Macro11 almost the character of an intermediate level systems language like BCPL or Bliss. If you think FORTRAN is unstructured, please try TECO. Every character including control characters is a command. You could essentially write a "video editor" like Emacs in TECO, the program looked like line noise over V24. It would drive the VT100 by escape sequences, which also looked like line noise. Have you tried Ratfor? (no it is not Fortran for rats.) If you had no Ratfor, you would write Ratfor-generated-like code by hand, it was then structured, see example in article Ratfor. The kids today have lost contact with the bare-metal, but you need that if you do something new. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 01:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Bare metal? Not in FORTRAN. Even meta-assemblers aren't really bare metal. Real programmers coded on paper in binary, from rote memory of a tiny set of 16 opcodes, then hand loaded the code into core on a bank of toggle switches. We were usually recognizable by our bleary eyes and hiking boots, worn to be ready when a mountain suddenly sprang up in the lab. ;-) LeadSongDog  come howl!  04:50, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That sounds suspiciously like my Intro to Microcontrollers class a couple years back... Personally, I think the ideal solution here is to use what an editor finds most convenient. Volunteer programmers would happily write a bot to comb through pages converting tags if you only WP:BOTREQ. Mamyles (talk) 05:14, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes it would be great to have a bot that converts edits over many line to over one line such that I could use it before I begin working to improve an article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No, you've got that backwards: I'd like the bot to covert all citation templates to the far more legible, far more intelligible one-parameter-per-line style that we use for infoboxes.  ;-)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, the PDP11/05 and 11/10 had such toggle switches with blinkenlightsen and also the programming card contained various boot loaders in octal to toggle in. But only the conoisseurs would learn that by heart. Of course bug hunting was in octal, think of ODT and micro-ODT octal debuggers. You would deposit BPT breakpoint traps in octal and then single step by hand and watch the lights. AMD distributed a meta-assembler together with their Am2901 Alu bit slices and Am2912 microcontrol sequencer slices. Microprogramming is fun, in particular when the machine has a lot of microtranslation and microtrapping in PLAs to assist instruction decode. Thats instant headaches. Unfortunately nobody asks for such experience today. I wonder where the new machines come from, probably designed by sinister cult members in dark robes who stay strictly among themselves and maybe invoke satanic entities during their work in the laboratories in some catacombs. For Docjames squeezing the formatting out of cite journal refs should be easy, reformatting in readable style 1 item per line should be easy too. What we need is a language-specific editor with highlighting of constructs and automatic fill by a bot during edit, such that you only hit a button and enter the pmid and zoof appears the complete citation, coupled to the pubmed search and pmc etc. And next we do the information extraction automatically too, such that a bot writes a standard medical article based on WP:MEDMOS guidelines by piecing together information extracted from pubmed and monographs and filtered for secondary sources. Then you just give it a final manual polishing. 70.137.140.141 (talk) 06:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I spent far too much of my best years with AMDASM coding for and debugging a custom-built and incompletely-debugged 2901 Harvard architecture machine to do hard real time DSP: (every conditional branch had to take exactly the same number of clock cycles or the code failed). Talk about painful.
 * I can certainly conceive of a datamining son-of-citation-bot that would compile a megastub with LDRs for all the recent reviews on a given MESH key. Could save editors a whack of time. LeadSongDog come howl!  17:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Speaking of WP:LDR, I have a vague recollection that someone put together a script that would convert an article over to LDR a while back. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Every conditional branch had to take the same number of clockcycles... Just like the VLIW on which I worked in my last project. It would execute the next 3 instructions after a branch and THEN branch. And the loads from memory would leave the old value in the register for the next 3 instructions until the value from memory arrived. And other instructions would also finish after several instruction and until then the destination register kept its old value. And it would do 5 instructions per clock in parallel. (but pipelined with the above delays, so you could issue 5 new instructions every clock ) Did I say instant headaches as a strawberry flavored concentrate granulate, just shake with milk? 70.137.145.223 (talk) 21:36, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ooo, that would have been nice. Think multiple levels of subroutines in each arm of the conditional branch. Think hundreds of modules of microcode. Now, think "how many cycles in each branch, exactly?" But I think we've strayed pretty far from WPMED territory... LeadSongDog come howl!  23:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

In the VLIW you would fill the three instruction groups of 5 (one clock per group) after a control transfer with something that had to be done "before" the branch without the branch being dependent on it, essentially kind of reordering of the instructions with the peculiarites of delayed branches, loads and executes in mind. ( e.g. you would put the index calculations there, which would have to be done anyway, regardless of the branch ) You would write a schedule like for a rail station with 5 rails. Also you would turn loops by a "half revolution" back and then replicate the loop entry and exit outside the loop, so that the loop would run with consistent pipeline state, established by the outside loop prolog and cleaned up by the replicated outside exit code... Does that sound like "instant headaches"? The processor is real and finished, you can buy it for approx. 10 bucks with lots of fast peripherals on chip. Yes thats far from WPMED, but nice to talk to real programmers here. I wish more people had a need and understanding for such technical issues, but nobody wants to know. 70.137.145.223 (talk) 00:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Klazomania again
This is the rare case of students who are doing a good job on the article! They've found some text about L-dopa in a source that I'm not sure how (or if) to incorporate-- could one of the docs on board have a look at the snip at the bottom of Talk:Klazomania? Thanks! Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Google books
When you do a google book search we now appear at the top which is kind of cool :-) -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is :) NCurse work 20:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Immune system
Immune system is an FA; it was suddenly rewritten, and this needs discussion here. Materialscientist (talk) 05:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This is the same editor who proposed making major edits to the Polio FA (Talk:Poliomyelitis). Colin°Talk 12:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Antoine Béchamp was just expanded by this editor, who is clearly a supporter of Béchamp and his theories. Probably needs attention, there seems to be a lot of cherry picking of sources, irrelevant commentary about Pasteur and Koch, and original research. Fences  &amp;  Windows  20:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Coeliac crisis
I dont want to disrupt the FA status of Coeliac disease but I think the article should at least mention the Coeliac crisis as possible presentation and crises. Note that I have just created this article and I welcome any comments -- M aen K. A. Talk  17:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The recent major reviews on coeliac disease devote practically no attention to the concept. I do not deny that it exists, but I think we need to be careful with regards to emphasis. JFW &#124; T@lk  23:33, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with you on that, but I think we should at least mention it M aen K. A.  Talk  00:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * A sentence or two might not be inappropriate, but what section would you add it to? We don't have a ==Complications== section, which was my first thought.  ==Treatment==, maybe?  A new ==Prognosis== section?  Something else?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I would suggest a section in the ==Signs and symptoms== section, or creating a ==Complications== section, by the way dont we need a ==Prognosis== section here? M aen K. A.  Talk  08:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I have moved this article temporarily to my user space until I address the concerns expressed here, and I redirected Coeliac crisis to Coeliac disease M aen K. A.  Talk  10:56, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Potential formatting issue
We have an editor here that is putting large amounts of text into colored tables. What are peoples opinions on this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:00, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My view is that every table in the encyclopedia should be a wiktable with default style. Unless someone makes a good case for a different colour-scheme – in which case they are mistaken, and it should still be a wiktable with default style. --RexxS (talk) 02:26, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree completely and we have some more here by the same editor -- Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 03:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Dubious health claims in Yerba mate
How have we handled these in the past? A lot of it is preliminary research that suggests vague things, and the article should definitely include the claims, but should also give some idea of the likely validity of those claims. Anyone have an example of an article that does that well? SDY (talk) 01:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I drank gallons of this stuff and it is really very good. A lot like green tea. Health claims however sound dubious. Simply put they need to be supported by review articles not primary research. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 03:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems like there is little desire currently to replace primary sources with review articles even though review articles are available.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

How to flag article as biased / inaccurate
Hello - I am new to editing Wikipedia and I would like to be involved with Project Medicine. I have made it my personal mission to clean up the article "Physician Assistant" to bring it up to the manual of style standards. The article is disorganized, and has many factual errors and uncited claims. I my opinion, it is more deserving of a C-class on the quality scale. It should also be flagged for bias (please see my comment on the article's talk page).

--NorthCoastPA (talk) 01:19, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello. As in templates? WP:TM in general or WP:TC for clean-up. Happy editting, Cold Season (talk) 01:34, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * AH OK.. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. --NorthCoastPA (talk) 01:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a quick link: physician assistant. Make sure you stick to WP:MEDRS-compatible sources. JFW &#124; T@lk  10:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * For medical claims, we love the medicine-specific reliable sources guideline, but that article shouldn't actually contain any medical claims. Plain old WP:Reliable sources ought to be good enough.
 * I'd guess that the bigger problem will be remembering that the PA system in "my" country is not the only PA system in the world. There's a fair bit of diversity.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

A bunch of students
We have a large group of psych students who have begun editing Wikipedia. There are issues with there referecing... I am trying to get a hold of the prof of the class to make sure that they are getting proper instruction on how to edit.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:21, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Lordy. That's a lot of students. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:26, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Note - the professor is User:WoodSnake - not sure who the campus ambassadors are, but they can perhaps be found with a bit of digging. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, this class has also been mentioned at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:06, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Another department
I have come to realize that we need a place on Wikiproject Medicine where classes who plan to work on Wikipedia's medical content can make themselves know and thus be watched closely / helped by the main community of editors. -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * How exactly are we supposed to watch or help 1500 unsupervised newbie editors who's only purpose is to add a single "appropriately" referenced sentence to a psychology article? I've spent half an hour clicking on the contribs from some of these editors. It is clear they haven't been trained how to write for WP at all -- perhaps just given links or handouts. I haven't seen any decent edits. Plenty plagiarism. Scholarly citations tended to have web links to inaccessible uni websites. Others added citations to "some random website" or a patient info leaflet. Adding general refs or even external links rather than inline citations. Edits where the article subject didn't correspond with the text added. These students have done their homework now and are off enjoying themselves. Are those running this course are qualified or able to judge what has been produced?


 * We had some students a long while back now who really struggled to produce FA quality material and were well supervised. To be honest, I thought the demands on them were too high. But this, "Please add a sentence with an appropriate source to Wikipedia" level of coursework isn't helpful to WP, especially when it is clear they can't even do that properly. Can you imagine if every university in the English speaking world asked their students to do that? WP would fill up with random factoids -- it has enough of that already. Colin°Talk 16:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately that seems to be the case. I have created this page WikiProject_Medicine/Classes_editing and have asked if there are classes from anywhere else working on medical content. User:Jbmurray has done and continues to do great work with his students but he had his whole class concentrate intensively on a single topic.


 * What we need if all 1500 students are going to edits is that people from the class need to 1) verify content 2) verify proper referencing. All thus must not fall upon members of this project.-- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it's because I watchlist obscure TS-related psych articles, but this problem has been hitting my watchlist for at least three college terms, and I've sounded off about it at length, to no avail. The WMF prefers more editors and more articles over better editors and better articles, there was some kind of ill-conceived recruitment roll (see WP:IEP and WP:USEP) to offset the declining editorship and the damage done by templating and huggle/twinkle-happy children by replacing them with students, as WMF spokespeople decry the drive for better quality in the top content areas as being driven by the Essjay controversy and the Siegenthaler incident. WMF has lost its way (assuming they once had one). My record of one obscure stub I had to work on after student editing (klazomania)-- and a lot of commentary-- is in three talk page sections beginning here. The rest of the problems being furthered by WMF spokespeople who rarely engage the encyclopedia and don't seem to understand what we do here is towards the bottom of my talk. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:10, 27 November 2011 (UTC
 * But some classes of students have done great work ala User:Jbmurray. And I think having more students edit is a good idea. These efforts are still in the pilot phases. We need to provide feedback. I am somewhat involved with the program and thus will help mediate. I do not think the "make one edit to Wikipedia" is a good idea. IMO the students who make poor edits/plagiarize should loss one mark. Those who make get edits get one mark. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There has been one and exactly one Jbmurray, he was engaged and knowledgeable, he didn't have hundreds of students, and he had an entire team of FA writers helping him (WP:FAT). No other class has done anything remotely close to what Jbmurray accomplished, and the WMF pushed too fast too far on this, resulting in a massive waste of time and article deterioration.  In other words, it's a huge mistake to think that Jbmurray represents the norm or what we're seeing here.  Doc, could you please try to talk some sense in to User:NeuroJoe?  I think you worked with him before. It would be very nice if the man would log on occasionally, monitor his students, respond to talk page messages, and not assign articles to his students for which there is exactly one paragraph written in a MEDRS-compliant source.  It is also unhelpful for his students-- who know little of Wikipedia-- to be parking 11 unhelpful peer reviews at Talk:Klazomania.  They all say the same thing, and most of them are wrong.  As far as I can tell, NeuroJoe is about as unengaged as it's possible to be, while I clean up after his students.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Homework guidelines?
I've largely kept out of the whole issue of students editing WP for homework. I was impressed by the material Jbmurray's team achieved and remember Awadewit getting involved in this area (though haven't seen much of her on WP recently). But those are two exceptional people and exceptional Wikipedians. I shudder at the thought that some uni prof, who's never edited WP before, is persuaded that it would be a good idea to have thousands of his students add factoids to WP as part of their homework. This area has grown considerable in a few years. It surely is time that the WP community develop some formal guidelines or even policy on editing WP as homework. I see there's lots of negativity around the WMF but the WMF don't write the guidelines and policy. Editors do. Some initial thoughts: Do we have guidelines like these anywhere? This has gone beyond experimentation. We should insist that colleges submit a proposal for review prior to starting classwork and that WP can refuse classes that are unlikely to be well run. Colin°Talk 20:00, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't ask your students to do something you've not done yourself. You need to have a WP account and have made a positive contribution to articles.
 * The teacher should be a considerable step ahead of the students. You need to have produced a GA and ideally an FA.
 * Know the rules. Are you capable of producing content that meets our content guidelines? Do you know how to behave yourself?
 * You are responsible. Can you control your class? Can you fix what they break? Can you restrain them? Or were you expecting the site's volunteer admins and editors to help you?
 * Don't overstretch yourself. Someone feeling positive about the above requirements might be able to look after a classroom of students. Thousands of students is a different kettle of fish.
 * Take baby steps. Try small scale first. Have students use a sandbox till they are capable of writing and sourcing their work to guideline standard.
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not homework. We're here to produce an encyclopaedia that contains great articles. We aren't just a collection of factoids.
 * I don't fancy your chances of getting consensus for formal guidelines or policy selectively 'restricting' a group of people's editing on the libertarian encyclopedia that anyone can edit; also such a guideline could be seen as biting the newcomer. A better idea in my view would be writing up a polite informal guideline, which could be emailed to a professor and perhaps also an WP:ESSAY which could be 'cited' on talk pages on wikipedia to students. :)-- Literature geek  |  T@1k?  21:14, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking the guideline applies more to the course organisers than the students. At the student level, we can do little more than review their work and individual behaviour. There's a conflict between the goals of the encyclopaedia plus the volunteer nature and very limited number of most editors, and that of required (or bonus) homework. An essay has no teeth. These students have had WP handouts and guidelines and policies given to them but they still don't understand or follow them -- and who can blame them. All they have to do is add one sentence to one article and they get an extra 1% mark. Why would you wade through WP:V or WP:NOR or WP:MEDMOS before doing that? We can surely put pressure on colleges and unis not to run inappropriate course on WP. Asking 1500 people to do something on WP that isn't in WP's best interests is just disruptive and naive. Colin°Talk 22:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The main problems I'm finding are:
 * 1) No notion whatsoever of WP:MEDRS-- doesn't even appear profs have pointed out our sourcing guidelines at all
 * 2) Plagiarism-- point them to WP:PARAPHRASE and Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches
 * 3) Plopping text in a) that is already there or b) to the wrong section.
 * 4) Not engaging on article talk or user talk; the students plop their text in and are never heard from again
 * 5) No copyediting, very poor writing skills

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there will ever be an official policy restricting new editors, due to our founding pillars, but an essay is a great idea. I suggest you relocate this discussion to the village pump so editors from other projects know to help. Mamyles (talk) 00:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * By chance, I did an outreach day with Harry Mitchell, Phil Knight & Marek69 at Liverpool University just last week. The highlight was a tutor who wanted to create a course that included some editing of Wikipedia (not in a medical field). Initially he didn't have a very high opinion of our quality control, but was bowled over when he was shown MEDRS and the editing popup for making a citation. I believe that MEDRS is one of the most valuable assets we have in demonstrating to academics that they don't have a monopoly on decent sourcing strategies.
 * Naturally, I'm not surprised that Sandy thinks profs don't point out our sourcing guidelines. I'm certain most tutors don't know of their existence, but I'd be willing to bet that they would use MEDRS if introduced to it. We ought to be collecting together a kit for the busy lecturer to refer his or her students to before they start, and the more we can do to make it easy to use, the less work we have to do cleaning up afterwards. --RexxS (talk) 01:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Mamyles, let me repeat that such guidelines would not be aimed at the students. I agree we can't restrict who can edit. But running your college class on WP is not editing. The teachers are not editing. We need training prior to running classes, the course should begin in a sandbox until the student has mastered things, the students should have an appropriate degree of knowlegable supervisors, and the aim of the coursework should align with the aims of Wikipedia. Colin°Talk 08:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is some of the instructions the students are given  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 11:29, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I saw those instructions and they aren't bad but TL;DR for the assigment given. There's no requirement or incentive for students to do more than skim enough of them to work out how to add a sentence and a reference and then go down to the student bar job done. The work should be structured so that students make edits in a sandbox, which is then reviewed by their supervisors, before giving them an assignment to edit real articles. And we need instructions/guidelines for teachers and supervisors, not just the students. It is pretty clear that the teachers and supervisors in this example don't have a clue about WP so I don't really understand how they could review the contributions. Colin°Talk 12:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * James, do you know what procedure these unis go through before starting a course on WP? Are they given a talk? Do they register before starting? Does the WMF talk to them? Colin°Talk 12:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * They aren't required to follow any procedure. Anyone can edit, and anyone can tell his/her students to edit.
 * However, if you want support through the GEP, then you need to work with one of its projects, and they have some procedures and rules in place, which are briefly outlined at United States Education Program/MOU. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If it is ok to butt in and reply here rather than above,,,,. Yes, some guideline for professors/supervisors at educational facilities would be a better move. Who is going to write it though? I vote Colin! Hehe. :-P -- Literature geek |  T@1k?  16:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not too upset about this. How could 1500 university students be any worse than 1500 other newbies?  Sure, they all appear at once... but, so?  There is no deadline, not even for cleaning up after 1500 newbies.  And at least they're trying to do something vaguely helpful, rather than spamming in advertisements for products or insults about classmates.  If it's not good enough, fine:  someone will eventually remove it.  But this isn't the end of the world.
 * Of course their work will have to be reviewed by the instructor. How else will s/he assign grades?  So if it's truly awful, presumably it will get reverted at that time.  We can encourage the instructor to do that, but really:  no deadline.  So what if a redundant sentence hangs out for a year on some stub?  So what if a badly formatted citation isn't cleaned up right away?  We need more hands.  If we can "recruit" only the top 1% here (and previous classes suggest that our typical rate of converting one-time students into long-term, experienced editors is closer to 3%), then we've effectively doubled the number of people working on one of the most neglected areas of Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The 1500 students were just from one college. It doesn't scale. Others have classified these things as pilots, which implies it may go nationwide/worldwide. If 150,000 students made the kind of edits I've seen from the contribs so far, every semester, we'd be drowning in plagiarised factoids. It doesn't have to be that way. This isn't some radio presenter asking his listeners to go edit WP. It is a class. So there can be stages where the students are taken through the steps necessary to become proficient. If this class was like a driving lesson, the teacher has asked his students, on their first lesson (after sending them the Highway Code in the post) to drive one mile down the motorway on their own, without insurance. The "please add a sourced sentence to a WP article in the domain of the class subject" sort of initial task isn't a good one. There are lots of early tasks they could ask students to do on live articles and also tasks they could do in a sandbox. How about review a paragraph in the body of an article against the WP policies and write a critique on the talk page? If these students were taught to edit on WP, rather than just let loose on it, the retention rate could be huge. Instead, these students are likely to see their work reverted, which is a slap in the face. Colin°Talk 09:13, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Will be discussing these issues with the prof in question. From my understanding the edits are not going to be reviewed just will be seeing if an edit was made. A guideline is a good idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This is irresponsible and is terrible news. Although WhatAmIDoing is correct that "Anyone can edit, and anyone can tell his/her students to edit." we have behavioural guidelines for editors that influence what editors think is a good way to behave and ultimately sanction them if they misbehave. The same should go for teachers using WP for their class. Colin°Talk 09:13, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree that the proposed project is not as good as it could be. But getting students in general involved is an excellent idea. Hopefully we can come up with some better idea. We all must get involved as we have 7 classes from Canada joining us in the spring -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Does anyone know whose idea it was to have 1500 students editing Wikipedia supervised by a total of one professor, four campus ambassadors, and zero online ambassadors? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:47, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It was the idea of a bunch of people from the University to the WMF to the Wikipedia community. It is potentially good just needs tweaking. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:03, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If it was a community initiative that would be unusual, as most of this type of large-scale class projects do not seem to be initiated by the community. Can you point me to the community discussion where it was first suggested? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Here are WP:MEDs efforts to get people from Universities involved WikiProject_Medicine/Editor_outreach Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 16:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Where to raise issues?
I've spent some time browsing the Canada Education Program, the United States Education Program and the extensive Wikimedia Outreach - For Educators materials. As I suspected, I'm totally ignorant of this huge programme and there are already lots of pages devoted to running classes, written by folks much wiser than me. For example Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool: Learning Objectives and Assignments Types. I see there is some discussion at Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program but the Canadian equivalent has no discussion. Where do we raise concerns about particular classes and where should we discuss wider issues?

From looking at several classes, it seems like the small scale classes work much better. The students are generally improving articles and using sandboxes. However, there still isn't much feedback at all and still quite a lot of plagiarism or direct copy/paste. Students are often asked to improve poor articles. There are advantages to this approach but it means they are seeing some bad examples such as using general references rather than inline citations; unformatted refs rather than formatted or templated; and articles without a proper lead (that summarises the body) so they often add new material to the lead where the body should be improved first.

The biggest issue, the outlier, is running a class of 1500 students with no support. All of the other US and Canadian classes are 10 to 200 times smaller than this. The second biggest issue is the choice of assignment, which wasn't ever going to be reviewed, that is not particularly helpful for Wikipedia. My current feeling is this class should not run again in the Spring and the WMF should review guidance about class size, support levels and choice of assignments. Where do I post such concerns? Colin°Talk 17:57, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, my understanding of the course pages is that the 1500-student class in the spring will not be 1500 new students doing the same tasks again, but the same 1500 students doing different tasks. For example, they will be moving on to making WP:DYK nominations. This may reduce the impact somewhat, especially if the participating students have actually learnt anything about plagiarism in the meantime. Equally, it may cause problems in different ways and different areas.


 * I agree that making the WMF aware of the issues is a good idea. In the absence of clear information about who is responsible for organising this program, you could start at User talk:Sue Gardner. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:40, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I've just discovered that some of the very good assignment material was written by User:Awadewit, so if anyone knows what makes a good assignment she will. I've left a message on her talk page. Colin°Talk 19:20, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Have listed the people involved here  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 09:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Students by edits
Have come across this useful method of reviewing student work here. At this point we have 301 who have made edits from Canada. And here is a list of a few dozen more classes from the USA here. Most of them are dealing with social sciences rather than medicine. Bots where used to clean up some of the issues related to the India students editing trial. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 11:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * And #1 from the Introduction to Psychology, Part I we have User:Fang48316596 with contributions that are 100% copyvio, including pasting a scientific paper (complete with "View as a larger version" and "Download as PowerPoint Slide" link text) on top of a disambiguation page. Just great. Colin°Talk 22:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Their is academic consequences for this sort of activity as it is against U of T ethics. Will discuss what needs to be done further. Have reverted the rest of this users edits. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:15, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion with the prof.
I spoke with the prof. of their class yesterday. We agreed that the marking method is not a good one at this point. The class for this term is finished but there is going to be another 1700 students next term. The proposal I put forwards which he accepted is that for next term


 * 1) Students will gain marks as before
 * 2) They will lose one mark for copyvio (and get academic reprimand)
 * 3) They will lose one mark for not formatting refs properly
 * 4) They will lose one mark for not responding to talk page comments.

We will see how this works and adjust if needed.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:15, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I still don't see how that will address the concerns. These are students doing an elementary three-hours-per-week course on psychology and yet we think that such students will improve "any psychology-related article" in an encyclopaedia by the addition of one sentence. And do so without any personal guidance or review of their work. It was clear from many of the edits that they didn't really understand the article topic they were adding to. There are loads of other assignments that these students could be given (Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool: Learning Objectives and Assignments Types where, for the limited time and the limited help they will receive, would produce better results for WP and be better for the students too. Colin°Talk 19:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
 * An analysis is being carried out to see if the work is beneficial. I am looking into where U of T will give us resources to help deal with these students. Will keep you posted. I too have concerns. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 3 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm concerned about the "not formatting refs properly" line. Students should be held to the same standard as any other newbie, which is to say that if we get something useful, that's okay—even if they can't figure out how to use a citation template in an article that has adopted them, even if they use a citation template in an article where they shouldn't be, even if they add parenthetical citations rather than ref tags (or the other way around), even if they omit PMIDs and other things I would automatically include, etc.  We need citations to be functional, not to be "properly formatted", and it's not fair to expect anyone to be able to decode the many "proper" forms of inline citation.  (WP:Inline citations lists seven different systems, and that's just covering differences that are visible to the reader.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with WhatamIdoing about the formatting not needing to be perfect, but what we're seeing is folk adding general refs to a textbook, or even external links. It is hardly surprising they get this wrong as many stub/start articles do the same. I hope you agree that such references are next to useless if they are only used for one sentence. These students should be using inline refs: they are academics doing an academic activity so they should be held to higher standards by their teachers. We're not talking about Wikipedian's holding such edits to a higher standard. I don't think even a useless general ref is harmful so wouldn't deduct marks for that but the original +whatever mark they get should require appropriate text AND an inline citation (of any form, as long as it is more specific than an entire book and not an internal weblink to the university's own intranet -- we need some clue). The teacher should not deduct marks for merely making a mistake -- that's what the ambassadors and other tutors are there to help with. Marks should only be deducted for serious transgressions like copy violations. I think the talk page response thing is another aspect that their helpers should be giving guidance on and checking up on informally. The actual classwork points are for doing work properly and deducting points for "crimes". Colin°Talk 08:28, 4 December 2011 (UTC) I still think this is a deeply suboptimal assignment and, to pick up WhatamIdoing's point about newbies, adding encyclopaedic material to an academic subject that the students know next to nothing about is not a typical newbie activity. If students are to be expected to attempt such things, then they need a lot more help and a lot longer to learn the ropes. Colin°Talk 08:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Many of the citations are not functional. Some of them are using a cut and pasts of a url from inside the U of T and that is all. This is an optional activity for the students. These are bonus marks. We need them to take it seriously. This is a pilot of (can we get a large number of students to positively contribute with minimal resources) and if we cannot do this than the prof in question is going to end the assignment. This is not newbies editing, this is a class of 1700 bright academic students from one of Canada's most prestigious Universities. They are held to the same standard as other newbies on Wikipedia but not by the U of T (which is going to hold them to a higher standard). They have also been given in class instruction on how to edit...

Plagiarism is potentially more than the lose of 1 mark at U of T and involves a conduct review and potential expulsion from school. I remember from my University years that for some multiple question questions one would lose a mark if you got it wrong and gain a mark if you got it right. If you do not know the answer, you do not answer the question. The prof. is very open to our feedback. He is excited to make this work and using the appropriate amount of carrots and sticks it might. Other suggestions to make this work? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * What does he see as the goal of using WP in his classwork? There may be a different kind of assignment that would achieve that goal with the resources available. Colin°Talk 13:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Introducing students to Wikipedia and having them improve its psychology content. WP:PSYCH is not that active. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Pervasive developmental disorder
Please watchlist, student edits. Be gentle, but this will require a lot of work; I can't to it all-- this sort of thing is hitting my watchlist all over the place. User talk:Ychan9; I don't have time to finish up now (need to get my tree up), but I don't believe s/he's removed the copyvios or the text that belongs in other articles, s/he has reverted me twice, and we need to find out which class and why the article talk isn't tagged as class project. At least he's responding on user talk now. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:37, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Clarification of the projects
Have been in further discussion and here is a bit of an update: -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:44, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) This is being run as a pilot project to see if it is possible to have a large class of students edit productively. The editing is being analysed to determine if it is more positive or more negative overall. The pilot will be stopped if it isn't.
 * 2) The students are editing voluntarily. With respect to issues of copyright they are currently looking into resources/measures to deal with it.
 * 3) The prof has been very open to our feedback and I agree with him with respect to the importance of getting University students involved. Hopefully more people from the editor community will become involved with this process as it would be excellent if we can get it to succeed.

Analysis of edits
I had some spare time this afternoon so I've analysed the edits for the first 20 of the 300+ students on the list of those who have registered their account with the programme. I've also fixed/reverted where necessary but there is a limit to my abilities here as I'm no expert on psychology and don't have access to all their sources. See User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, Part I. Feel free to extend or add comments to that page, appropriately attributed. Positive, constructive comments particularly welcomed, because it is hard. Colin°Talk 19:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing this. Great data here. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 05:37, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I've now analysed 116 students (though only 63 of those actually edited articles). I've documented what I discovered and some thoughts on User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, Part I. Comments welcome. Colin°Talk 22:58, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You have some interesting preliminary findings there, Colin. I presume that the scoring system runs from 1 to 5, with 1 being best and 5 being worst? Do you have a guide on how to score the edits? Axl  ¤  [Talk]  23:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My scoring system seems to have caused confusion and Peter.C has chosen an entirely different scheme (which is also valid). I'll try to make it clearer when I get a chance tonight -- there's a brief summary at the bottom of the page. It is not so much a score than groupings. --Colin°Talk 15:20, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

This sounds distressingly familiar
I'm involved with the India Education Program cleanup; from what I've read here, it appears the WMF are repeating many of the same mistakes: unmanageable numbers of students, failure to stop frequent plagiarism and copyright violations, rapid expansion without regard to community health, editors have no clue who's in charge, etc. Skim WT:IEP for more.

If you want to try contacting the Foundation, it's User talk:Ldavis (WMF) and/or User talk:Alin (WMF). However, I have found the Foundation to be unapproachable, unaccountable, unhelpful and totally unaware of how Wikipedia works. Don't expect much in way of action and don't be surprised if you are drowned in walls of text or ignored implicitly.

As part of the IEP cleanup effort, I programmed a contribution surveyor that can handle hundreds of students which lists their major contributions. Output is similar to Contributor copyright investigations/Indian Education Program. Please let me know if you want a similar listing. Providing a complete list of students helps immensely. (As with the IEP, I suspect the student listing is hopelessly incomplete and poorly maintained. It helps if the students have stopped editing.) MER-C 13:40, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have had better luck with the WMF. I am in contact with a number of profs involved and have been providing them guidance. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 05:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Wrt student lists. I've been working off the list: Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/Introduction to Psychology, Part I (Steve Joordens)/Students. I looked also at the leaderboard here and found a fair number of the students in the first list were not on the leaderboard (even though they had made edits). If I get time, I'll try to work out who is missing, and whether the leaderboard has additional students not on the first list. There may well be students on neither list. If you know of another way to get a student list, that would be very useful as knowing the percentage who contributed is important. The contributions on this particular assignment were much more limited than the Indian one. --Colin°Talk 09:04, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Next semester
While there where issues this semester the prof of this class has been very receptive to feedback and with the changes being made I hope to see better results next semester. I will be keeping an eye on things and he has agreed to share his analysis once complete. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Orthostatic hypertension
I have repeatedly asked the creator of the new article Orthostatic hypertension to read WP:MEDRS. The outcome of this (after a few days) is that they are very interested in the phrase "If an important scientific finding is so new that no reliable reviews have been published on the subject, it may be helpful to cite the primary source that reported the original result". Possibly some others here would be able to help them further - unfortunately my knowledge of such things is less than limited. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I would welcome any help on the new page Ive been putting together "Orthostatic hypertension". It is still a fairly new field (very little known about it) so havent been able to find secondary sources just 16 or so primary sources on it so have had to use all those as per what the WP:MEDRS says as the accepted exception to secondary references being prefable. If anyone knows of better sources eg secondaries instead of primaries for a field which Ive seen refered to as the "last frontier of BP research", please put them in. None of the primary sources Ive listed are in any kind of medical dispute of their validity. Demiurge has kindly pointed out to me that Ive been writing the page too much like medical journal page, so Id appreciate it if it could be made more encyclopedic like or ideas on how to get it more encyclopedic looking. Ive been doing a lot of things on the page in point form as list easier as I cant figure out how to as clearly put them in another form.

The other issue Ive been having, is knowing where to put reference links in the case where one reference link actually supports things in various different spots in the article (hence then readers arent aware that what Ive said in one place, the link for it is by something else it also supports so I didnt know which to put the link by, there is several things in the article which the reference to is in other places of the article so not appearing supported. (Im new to wiki and this is the first time Ive done editing etc, so dont know what is done in this situation). Taniaaust1Taniaaust1 (talk) 06:18, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Have found two reviews


 * -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Tania, I'd like to emphasize the words "so new" in the MEDRS guideline. You've got five sources from the 1980s and 1990s.  Those are seriously old sources.  In fact, they probably violate the section titled "Use up-to-date sources", which recommends using nothing more than 10 years old.  "So new" generally means published within the last few months.  It never means something published in previous decades.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

oh this newbie was well and truly lost and it took me a week again to find where I'd posted my question. Thanks guys :)

Doc James. I did reference one of those I think. Not sure about the other one, I'll check it out and see what I can find to use in the article. thanks for you help

update: I checked out the other one and I already have that one in my references too. (Ive realised from your post that I may be confused about what the difference between what a review is compared to what a study is as one of those I thought was just a study).

WhatamIdoing Love your nic :) thats exactly how I feel.

I was wondering about that one and thinking about how new could be defined differently with different things and hence have different meanings. Some fields of medicine are growing very fast and a study may be outdated in just a few years due to new findings. Other fields of study, often less known illnesses which arent getting funding are growing extremely slowly, hardly grown and findings havent yet changed at all. Many doctors (or most) doctors would say the whole field of Orthostatic hypertension is a new field of study still and none of the studies I put down have actually been medically outdated by newer studies.

"new" generally means published within the last few months." Nods yes I agree with that for "most" things. In a field like Orthostatic hypertension they dont have studies being published every few months, would be "very lucky" to get a new study being done every few years, so that in itself gives a different meaning to what new is in comparison to what is going on in other fields of medicine. Thanks for the comment, I will keep trying to put down newer studies. Greatful for any new studies or reviews anyone can find. --Taniaaust1 (talk) 09:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The point about the length of time isn't about the number of publications that exist. It's about the opportunity for those publications to have been discussed in secondary sources (like textbooks or reviews).  Obviously, just as a matter of practicality, something that was published a few months ago isn't going to be in last year's textbook or this year's review article.  Equally obviously, something that was published ten or twenty years has had plenty of opportunity to be discussed in later sources.  The "review cycle" (the length of time that you might have to wait for papers to be discussed in subsequent reviews) is very short in some big-name diseases, but it's almost never more than a few years even for incredibly rare diseases.  So if a really old source wasn't mentioned by anyone else, then we have to start wondering why:  Has the science changed significantly since then?  Was the author of the old paper considered a crackpot?  And that's why we get nervous about using such sources.  We just can't be experts on every field, so we try to go with the latest expert opinions.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for further explaination. Yeah I can understand that people would wonder if an illness which was in such a situation had the papers done just be crackpots :) (there certainly are some bad studies which happen in medicine!). I do hope anyone who gets nervous about this, does look into it. There is not one bit of controversity about there about this not existing or against anything which has been published on it.


 * With this one, it's discoverer certainly wasnt a crackpot but was a well respected internationally known researcher, who is known for other scientific discoveries in the field of medical science. (He'll probably end up with a wiki page about him at some point). He also authored a medical text book "Orthostatic Disorders of the Circulation" which is nowdays seen as a classic in medical fields and is still at times refered to (he was an international world leader in medical fields). Unfortunately he's now deceased or there would be more research being done in this area as it was his special interest. One needs studies to do reviews on. Crazily there has only been 17 published studies/reviews on this subject which dates from the 1970s to today (so that is quite spaced out). The field of medicine is really letting humanity down with this one (probably lots of other illnesses out there who too arent getting the attention they deserve).


 * I really hope that anyone who thinks this illness cant be a real one cause of spaced out studies, look up who Dr David Streeten was, its discoverer to see he isnt a crackpot (http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/86/2/471.full.pdf Emeritis Professor of Medicine at the State University in New York when he died, he wasnt some small little unknown researcher. He won all kinds of awards including one from the American Heart Association for his contributions to medicine).


 * There was the professor of pathology from our states main city hospital talking about it on the radio the other day, so maybe it will become more recognised after that, (currently doctors arent even aware to test for it so they miss it and mistake it for either normal hypertension or miss it entirely as how many doctors test their patients BP while they are just standing? or standing after laying down?). That was probably the very first time its been ever talked about on air. (another well respected international researcher is looking for it in people and hence then finding it and treating people with it, so I think helping to make it start to be more known). Ive met a couple of people online who werent that old who had it and ended up with heart complications as they werent diagnosed due to lack of knowledge out there about it till it was too late.


 * I hope the wiki rules have some common sense clauses in them or something which allow for consensus discernment? (or the above may get only left with only few references by the time its been sorted out).
 * --Taniaaust1 (talk) 16:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Common sense is a good thing, and often in short supply. But we're not trying to assemble a complete list of every paper ever published on the subject.  Citing only the best sources (recent, comprehensive, broad-focused, etc.) is just fine.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Im have a question for someone over how Im trying to reference stuff on that page. eg
 * Essential hypertension
 * Other kinds of dysautonomia may coexist, e.g. postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome is common with it, orthostatic hypotension with the BP going both high and low at times due to autonomic dysfunction
 * Type 2 diabetes[1]"

The reference on the end of the diabetes also relates to the essential hypertension and the dysautonomia, should I be repeating the same reference at the end of those words? or is it okay just at the bottom of that whole section due to also relating to the diabetes? Do people check the closest reference to something if wondering if its referenced even if it isnt right near it? thanks

and does the fact Ive highlighted the dysautononomia so it can be clicked and if people go there they can see the relationship with the postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and orhostatic hypotension, does that cover what I stated which I know is true or not? or are I needing extra references for the POTS part even thou its clear in the wiki for dysautonomia, POTS can be part of it?

I just noticed Im being too vague eg "common with it" I'll fix that. I dont know how orthostatic hypertension should be properly abbreviated or even if it does have a common abbreviation for it, so I have to keep writing in the whole two words every time.

Is this the okay place for me to be asking questions to improve the article? or is there another place I should be asking the questions Im asking? --Taniaaust1 (talk) 13:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a great place to ask any questions you want.
 * People take all sorts of approaches to providing WP:Inline citations for lists like the one at Orthostatic hypertension. People should always check the closest citation, but the "safest" option (the one least likely to result in someone getting confused or hassling you) is to repeat the citation at the end of each item, especially if not all items in the entire list are from the same source.  If they are, then one popular option is to create a sort of 'introductory sentence' like "Orthostatic hypertension is associated with the following other disorders:[1]" and list the source at the end of the introductory half-sentence.
 * Although it's a hassle to type it out, some people think it's usually best to avoid abbreviations. Always spelling it all the way out is particularly helpful for people who click a link that goes directly to the middle of an article (like the link I give above to the "Connections" section).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that link you put on my talk page so I could find my way back here :)
 * Looks like I wont be running out of stuff to do on that page anytime soon. After reading your comment, I think I will do some changes when I have got some more time, to make it clearer with the references. TY

--Taniaaust1 (talk) 16:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for eyes on Antoine Bechamp
In response to a post further up the page, I took a look at. He was a 19th-century biologist who believed that something called "microzyma" caused disease, and the bacteria were in fact the result rather than the cause of disease. As you might imagine, his ideas have long since been dismissed by the scientific community, but he retains an avid following in some fringes of the alternative community which reject germ theory.

Anyhow, the article had recently been bloated into a extensive rehash of revisionist history, complete with primary sources and original synthesis, presented as if it were undisputed fact (version in question). I took a stab at rewriting it from the ground up using independent, reliable secondary sources, and this is the result.

I'd like to invite any interested editors to review, edit, expand, or otherwise critique the article. MastCell Talk 20:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I read the old version and was very distressed by the additions of . Does anyone else see an issue here that needs administrative attention (via ANI, which I dislike going to), or do you all think that something else might help? <b style="color:navy;">NW</b> ( Talk ) 03:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In a situation like this, where a single editor makes edits that multiple other editors see as unacceptable, it is usually more profitable for the multiple editors to cooperate in reverting bad edits than to seek administrative action. This places the rogue editor in the position of either giving way or blatantly edit-warring against consensus. Looie496 (talk) 17:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * He's doing this to a few articles. I've explained here that we report the consensus expressed in WP:MEDRS and pointed him to WP:FRINGE, and he seems to have abandoned that article, Immune system, but I don't think he's got it. He may need another editor to politely explain WP:DUE and WP:FRINGE. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm actually fairly concerned. This appears to be an editor who edits prolifically, across numerous articles, and who is familiar with the medical literature but committed to using it to promote his minoritarian viewpoint. Some of his contributions may be fine or even constructive, but they will all require a laborious and time-consuming review for appropriateness, based on his approach thus far. MastCell Talk 20:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm concerned too, this editor - User:Kusername - is quite the POV warrior. Pleomorphism (microbiology) is another of their targets. Fences  &amp;  Windows  21:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should point him here for a polite chat about our concerns. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I dropped the user a note pointing them towards this discussion. <b style="color:navy;">NW</b> ( Talk ) 21:30, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The immune system is not even a medical topic. I tried to inform people, you are confusing medical sciences (applied science) for biology (basic science).  The very first sentence of the "Immune system" article starts with an utter falsehood.  But it's as if you all refuse to to learn anything.  Even physicians lack clue about immunology, but somehow you all thing you know more than someone who has spent years studying these topics [Smith KA, "Medical immunology: A new journal for a new subspecialty", Med Immunol, 2002 Sep 30;1(1):1, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12437786].  Yet no one can tell y'all anything.  Somehow no one can point and cite what I'm wrong about.  These people just delete reliable sources—in biology and history of science and philosophy of science and history of medicine.  Do people think I just fabricated all that data about the immune system?  The article is missing about 80% of the immune system, and entire functions of it.  The individual told me I need systematic reviews to the immunology article.  "Yet medical journals often contain poor science. Basic scientists who work in biology and chemistry are regularly scornful of the, mostly, applied science that appears in medical journals" [Smith R, "The trouble with medical journals", J R Soc Med, 2006 Mar;99(3):115-9, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16508048].  What immunologist in the world uses evidence-based medicine to arrive at knowledge of the immune system?  These individuals cannot tell the difference between medical microbiology (applied science) and microbiology (pure science).  To begin with, Pasteur got germ theory from Bechamp.  It was Joseph Lister and Robert Koch who established germ theory, not Pasteur.  Pasteur's microbian theory is plainly proved wrong.  There are entities called spheroplasts and protoplasts that remain when the bacterial cell is destroyed.  Yet no one can tell any you anything because y'all just deleted all the reliable sources that I post and then insert your own opinions about the body of reliable sources.  Y'all are the ones violating WP:NPOV.  Yet no one can teach y'all the difference between medical sciences (applied science) and biology (basic science) [Clarke NJ, "The paradoxical reliance on allopathic medicine and positivist science among skeptical audiences", Soc Sci Med, 2007 Jan;64(1):164-73, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17045377].  This is like the withhunting mob, trashing any information that doesn't fit your own presumptions. Look at what I did with the Major histocompatibility complex article.  You think I can do that because I'm delusional?  I mean, I try to not insult people, but it seems people have no qualms about insulting me although it's obvious that none of you have read a pure immunology, virology, or microbiology textbook or much literature. Yes, I'm frustrated.  Before you go making accusations, point something out and cite, not just allege.  And how about actually studying the topics before just assuming you cannot be confused just because you all agree with each other.  Wikipedia opens, "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources", not excluding significant views published by reliable sources. NPOV explains, "Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public". NPOV explains, "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts". It says, "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents". I never claimed my edits were flawless or could not be further balanced or, with the immune system, better clarified.  Yet the other Wikipedia editors, who actually think that immunology and virology are part of medicine, are so far off the map of science that I usually give up even trying to speak because they just accuse and have not a single thing they can cite that I lied about.  They just delete every reliable science.  If one doesn't know that the immune system is not a medical topic, and one cannot take correction of that infinite error, then one insists on quasireligion [McCormick J, "Scientific medicine—fact or fiction? The contribution of science to medicine", Occas Pap R Coll Gen Pract, 2001 Jul;(80):3-6, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19790950] Kusername (talk) 00:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Your claim that Pasteur "got germ theory from Bechamp" is wrong, or at least an extreme minoritarian viewpoint which most authoritative sources do not support. Your claim that Pasteur played no role in the establishment of germ theory is wrong to the point of being ludicrous. Your claim that "Pasteur's microbian theory is plainly proved wrong" is incorrect, or at most half-true in that Pasteur's hypotheses have been refined and enlarged by 150 years of advances in microbiology. It's obvious that your motivation in contributing here is not a general desire to improve our coverage, but rather a specific desire to diminish Louis Pasteur and promote a range of minoritarian ideas about microbiology, in particular those associated with Bechamp. I get it - you think Pasteur was a fraud lionized on the basis of falsehoods, and Bechamp an overlooked pioneer, but you have to understand that Wikipedia is not the place to set right Great Wrongs. Until you understand that, I think you'll find that other editors scrutinize your contributions, because they're often out of step with this site's goals and policies. MastCell Talk 01:18, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Citations, please? You're just talking your presumptions. You're clearly unfamiliar with pure microbiology, where L forms of bacteria were identified by Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel in 1935. Your claims are severely paranoid—projecting all kinds of motives that have nothing to do with pure microbiology, physiology, or history of science. Your statements reveal unawareness of the theories even in question, as you're spouting populist simplism.  It would be more useful to make less accusations about your imagination of my motivatios, and to start citing some literature, not merely deleting 110 citations but leaving only one to make your emotional argument about something that was never proved.  You clearly do not even know what can be proved.  My god.  Would people who have never studied pure microbiology read first before lighting the stake with their paranoid allegations. Kusername (talk) 03:09, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Since you're the one making rather extraordinary claims, perhaps you could supply sources. What sources say that Pasteur "got germ theory from Bechamp"? What sources say that he played no role in the development of germ theory? What sources say that Pasteur's "microbian theory" has been proven wrong? MastCell Talk 05:54, 17 December 2011 (UTC)