Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 42

COTM: December 2013
This month's COTM has been selected as Psoriasis! The COTM, here (WP:MCOTM), is selected be affirmative voting. Editors are encouraged to post any projects on the page so that they may be voted in as future endeavors. Last month's effort was a bit of a flop, so let's hope that this month's effort is somewhat more encouraging!

Ping to the following users who have expressed interest:, , ,. Any other interested editors are of course welcome to participate, and with any luck we can bring this article up to GA-status by the end of the year. --LT910001 (talk) 07:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't it be great if we got into the habit of bringing the COTM to GA status each month... The last one didn't have much interest ... maybe too ambitiously scoped. This is a busy time for me but I will help out where I can. Lesion  ( talk ) 08:59, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The article looks pretty good in its current state, so with a bit of concerted effort a GA is not impossible. JFW &#124; T@lk  14:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the article is already good enough to justify a GA nom. It definitely needs work, but that work could occur in the context of a GA review.  The real question is whether there are editors with sufficient topic knowledge who would be willing to do the necessary work on the article. Looie496 (talk) 16:42, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This reminds me that I haven't seen User:My Core Competency is Competency around for a while. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I suggested a while back that we focus on the students in WP:MEDUCSF in December, which generated press in the New York Times. Anybody? I suggest saving the other article for another month. I'd rather January just be "get the numbers down" in regards to cleanup templates. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 01:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Expert input
May I suggest that we ask The American Academy of Dermatology, whose mission is to promote "leadership in dermatology and excellence in patient care through education, research and advocacy", to provide us with one or two interested experts to collaborate on this? They don't expressly have a remit for public education but they may be willing to help - especially considering the number their students and medical professionals that use Wikipedia. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Would anybody object to me approaching the AAD, in the name of this project, asking for their assistance? If they agree, would they be welcome here? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:06, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good idea. Ofc they would be welcome. Not sure if request will be fruitful-- >50% of my Wikipedia-related requests to authors/organizations go unanswered. Lesion  ( talk ) 06:44, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Ask and buffer them from the idiosyncratic policies that tend to discount experts. It will only take one edit by a Dermatology doctor to start the COI machinations of the layperson "expert."  --DHeyward (talk) 06:47, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Seeing that much of our dermatology content was written by a dermatologist the issue is not with "layperson's" discounting "experts". It is that most experts are clueless regarding how Wikipedia works. That one cannot plaster their most recent study of 25 individuals across 50 pages while removing all the secondary sources that disagree with your work.
 * If you read WP:MEDRS you will see that this project values the positions of experts as published and in review articles. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:44, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a professional relationship with this organization. can we talk by phone soon? Yes this is a good idea.   Blue Rasberry    (talk)   15:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Unless it's confidential, I prefer to discuss this sort of thing on-wiki. If you'd rather talk, though, I'll email you my number, or email me yours. Or I can Skype: ahcole2. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I ask a lot of people to voice chat. We already have each others' phone numbers and Skype from like 18 months ago - I think it has been a while. If you like I can setup audio recording of our talk and post it on-wiki; confidentiality is not my concern. Conversations just go faster with voice than on-wiki. Let me know what you think. If we talked I would say that one strategy for going to an organization is to present them with an example of how their work can be used, giving them some metrics reporting, and asking them about the extent of their interest in taking a tour of Wikipedia's health content. After that I would ask them if they have a single staff person who could commit three hours to putting their own scholarly MEDRS-compliant content onto Wikipedia sometime over a period of a month, then watching the impact of what they did over 2-3 months. If they like the outcome, then I would probe for deeper engagement. I do not have this documented anywhere on wiki but that is what I have done in the past. Thoughts? Do you want to discuss this right here in this thread?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   19:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Blue Rasberry, what is your connection with the AAD? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , part of my employment includes the suggestion that I share health information curated by AAD on Wikipedia when doing so would be welcomed by the Wikipedia community and in accordance with Wikipedia community guidelines. AAD has provided the Choosing Wisely health campaign some statements backed by what seem to me to be WP:MEDRS compliant sources. As part of the public educational outreach plans of this campaign, I am to consider whether any of what they have to share is appropriate for inclusion into Wikipedia's health articles and if so, to integrate it. The messages which they want to share and the sources backing their statements are on the campaign site. I have not yet done anything with these messages. To what extent might you have interest in joining me in looking at this content?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:35, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Blue Rasberry, I've just looked at a few lists-of-five and they all seem to have a home somewhere on Wikipedia - articles on the relevant diseases and investigations/procedures. They seem like the kind of scholarly society guidelines we incorporate as a matter of course, where they're relevant. I'd be pleased to work with you on incorporating this here. Have you had any blow-back against incorporating these recommendations in Wikipedia?


 * Regarding approaching the AAD, do you know if Consumer Reports liaises directly with a contact at the AAD, or do they get the recommendations from the ABIM Foundation? (I'm thinking that if we can approach someone at the AAD who is involved with the Choosing Wisely initiative - someone at least familiar with the task of translating and disseminating medical information for a lay audience - we may get a more sympathetic initial reception.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Is this the kind of thing you've got in mind for the Choosing Wisely recommendations, Blue Rasberry? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , you are raising several issues.
 * Yes, there have been a few comments about this being promotional and outside of wiki-spirit, but I think those comments dismissed the premise of this project without considering it. I personally think this project is different from many other COI projects and that, while it could be criticized, it should not be dismissed without consideration. The major differences which I identify include that the information shared is uniquely well sourced, the organizations whose content is being added are at least as cautious about Wikipedia as Wikipedia is about them so they are not engaging Wikipedia eagerly as is typical in troublesome COI editing, there is potential for long-term partnerships with the providers of information, and the information being added is already long desired by the Wikipedia community. Besides COI criticism, my other concerns include the accuracy of any summaries of this technical content, the unorthodox practice of making bundled citations which pair MEDRS-compliant journals with less-technical less-MEDRS-compliant purported summaries of those MEDRS sources, the information providers' concerns about the wholesomeness of Wikipedia, and the difficulties I have in making everything that is done transparent. I have not identified any difficulty or criticism for which I can fail to see an actionable way of addressing the problem to the mutual satisfaction of stakeholders.
 * The question you asked about the liaison seems to me not the right question to ask, although I cannot briefly clarify in my own mind or to you why I think this is so. I think you are presuming an organizational structure which does not exist. I am new to mass media publishing and I am sure I could be wrong in describing what I am seeing, but let me describe the structure as I understand it and maybe that will clarify something: AAD gives their list to ABIM Foundation, who arrange as best they can for a second opinion on the writing (not peer review as this is grey literature, but everyone here is academic) while recognizing that the society already is representing the consensus of a medical specialty and that a higher authority would be difficult to arrange. Such as they can - and it is my opinion that they find broad insight - they provide feedback and send it back to the society. The society finalizes their list, then sends it to ABIM Foundation and Consumer Reports for dissemination. Consumer Reports, as a consumer partner, seeks to share the information as broadly as possible with consumers. Where the Wikipedia community could intervene in this is that if information were put onto Wikipedia, then I could make an assessment of impact based on metrics of pageviews. If an interpretation of the metrics provided supporting evidence that Wikipedia was a significant channel for sharing health messages, then staff at Consumer Reports using media expertise may assess the validity of the metrics report and interpretation. The societies might have difficulty interpreting any media claims about Wikipedia otherwise, because they usually focus on medicine and not usually massive campaigns like Choosing Wisely. If their information were on Wikipedia, if there were some metrics which gave some supporting evidence of impact, if an organization like Consumer Reports made some interpretation of those metrics, and if all this were demonstrated to a society, then I think we could get that sympathetic initial reception you wanted. It is my opinion that societies would not consider contributing to Wikipedia unless they thought that it would advance their goals, and the rationales for contributing health content to Wikipedia are not found persuasive outside WP:MED. Some metrics reporting would be one strategy for establishing a minimally acceptable rationale.
 * Yes, what you did with the link is exactly the kind of reference which I and this campaign desire. You have cited a layman document which is pseudo-MEDRS-compliant and matched it with technical documents from the profession which are more MEDRS-compliant. This is what I think should happen. However, another variable in this is that document you found is a derivative work only made and written by Consumer Reports for the benefit of consumers. The issue is that the societies are able to make technically correct statements, but Consumer Reports reduces the accuracy of these statements while increasing the readability and accessibility using techniques of medical translation of the original statements into simple English. While what you did is what I think should be done, it skirts non-compliance with MEDRS because MEDRS does not take into account readability of sources or describe this kind of reference bundling strategy of technical and non-technical sources.
 * Thoughts?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   13:12, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have thought about the problem of readability for years. IMO MEDRS ought to encourage well-developed articles to use one or two good-quality, non-scholarly, ideally free/online sources (that do not contradict the high-quality recent academic literature).  This would put good sources into the hands of younger students and English language learners.  We don't really need a review article behind summary statements like "Acne is a common skin condition" (even though that's a "statistic") or "Pneumonia is usually treated with antibiotics".
 * The source really only needs to be strong enough to support the actual claim being made. We're not providing sources to make ourselves look impressive.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The readability of the few Consumer Reports lay summaries that I have so far read is superb. I started with the first recommendation of the first society on this list, which is also a recommendation of two other societies. So I named them in text and cited each society's position statement, along with Consumer Reports's lay summary thus:
 * Lay summary:
 * Blue Rasberry, I based my edit on the Choosing Wisely summary and the three position statements, each a WP:MEDRS-compliant source, but I added the Consumer Reports summary to the citation because it gives a lot of useful detail from the position statements that is too much for our article and (per WhatamIdoing's rationale) is much more readable than the position statements. Do I have your OK to continue in the same fashion with the remainder of the societies and their recommendations? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Blue Rasberry, I based my edit on the Choosing Wisely summary and the three position statements, each a WP:MEDRS-compliant source, but I added the Consumer Reports summary to the citation because it gives a lot of useful detail from the position statements that is too much for our article and (per WhatamIdoing's rationale) is much more readable than the position statements. Do I have your OK to continue in the same fashion with the remainder of the societies and their recommendations? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Blue Rasberry, I based my edit on the Choosing Wisely summary and the three position statements, each a WP:MEDRS-compliant source, but I added the Consumer Reports summary to the citation because it gives a lot of useful detail from the position statements that is too much for our article and (per WhatamIdoing's rationale) is much more readable than the position statements. Do I have your OK to continue in the same fashion with the remainder of the societies and their recommendations? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Blue Rasberry, I based my edit on the Choosing Wisely summary and the three position statements, each a WP:MEDRS-compliant source, but I added the Consumer Reports summary to the citation because it gives a lot of useful detail from the position statements that is too much for our article and (per WhatamIdoing's rationale) is much more readable than the position statements. Do I have your OK to continue in the same fashion with the remainder of the societies and their recommendations? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. You never needed my okay for this but you unequivocally have my support. I have been going about this in a way that is a bit different from what you are doing. It seems to me that you are tracking down your own sources. This is fine - you are pulling great sources, and even from the societies which are authoring the papers. However, I am getting some sources provided to me by the society itself. Since we were talking about AAD before you raised the feeding tube example, see Choosing Wisely/American Academy of Dermatology. I have a list of sources there. I have always been citing the "5 things" paper, and then the sources from which those statements are derived as they are listed on that paper. The layman summary that you are citing does not suggest in itself MEDRS-compliant sources, which you sought yourself.

Additionally, this project was proposed on the premise that Wikipedia is a useful platform for sharing this information, and the measure of utility which I am able to capture is pageviews to a Wikipedia article. When I integrate information from this campaign into an article, I am also making a note of what I have done at the project page I make for each society. While the AAD page is currently empty, this AAHPM page has some items recorded and how I reported on the feeding tube information that you researched. Perhaps it would be good to put that layman summary in there as well, but my concern has always been connecting non-MEDRS layman sources with MEDRS sources and only that list of 5 makes a solid connection. I regularly report traffic back to the monitors. If you want to contact AAD, then I would propose to complete this project page and integrate the five items they requested of me, then show them what has been done as a demonstration. If I were to request something of you, it would be comments on these practices as an outreach and partnership strategy between Wikipedians and any organization.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   17:45, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Stub merging
A list of 1-2 sentence stubs are proposed for merging into the main psoriasis article. Comments here:. Many thanks, Lesion  ( talk ) 08:44, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for MEDRS
I have resurrected my attempt at adding language regarding identifying possibly poor journals for WP:MEDRS here. Would appreciate comments. Yobol (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to rename "Epigenetics in psychology" article
A request for comment has been made at the above link. Your input is welcome. Boghog (talk) 19:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Tumescent liposuction
The page Tumescent liposuction was tagged as disputed in June of this year, but since it was not in this WikiProject, no one who might settle the dispute noticed. I have just added a WikiProject banner (I also added class and importance ratings, but someone more knowledgeable than I should probably review those). I'm also bringing it up here, in the hopes of speedier resolution. I gather from the talk page that the disputed issues relate to tone and lack of discussion of the procedure's risks. Cnilep (talk) 04:37, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of it is unreffed. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:06, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not anymore. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Neural masculinization
Another case of student editing; can anything be done with this or should it be prodded? It was sourced to a single rat study, several student papers, and a book where page nos aren't given. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 08:53, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Back to sandbox? CFCF (talk) 11:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Agree. It seems that the nuclear option is the best option to maintain Sandy and other users' mental and physical well-being, and is also much easier to enforce. --LT910001 (talk) 11:41, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * My problem is that I can't even decipher what the article is about, so I'm having a hard time even making the argument at the WP:ENI thread. Google scholar gets one hit on a rat study, so wouldn't prodding it after the student inevitably leaves Wikipedia when the term ends today (they always do) be fastest? ENI thread.    There are at least two beginning neuroscience courses, and probably a dozen other courses this term, hitting medical content, and getting through all of the content they've added isn't doable.  We need to find a fast way to deal with them, and I think prodding them after the term ends may be the most effective; I've never yet seen a student come back and care about an article.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:27, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

More eyes on Breast cancer screening
There is a new editor editing the molecular breast imaging section. More eyes would be helpful. Yobol (talk) 18:55, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Have commented. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

G8 Dementia Summit
Someone might wish to start an article about the G8 Dementia Summit. —Wavelength (talk) 18:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * G8 dementia summit | The Dementia Challenge (11 December 2013)


 * Might it be a better idea to mention it as part of the dementia article? JFW &#124; T@lk  18:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, it might be. My Google search for "dementia summit" reports 57,800 results, so there might be enough information for a separate article.  Please see Lumpers and splitters (version of 15:03, 16 November 2013).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Branchio-oculo-facial syndrome
Dear medical experts: This article has just been submitted at Afc. Any opinions? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 18:00, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The topic is notable imo: . I could only see the submitted article in the history of the above linked page, but the earlier version appears to have 5 refs from scientific journals. Lesion  ( talk ) 18:36, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Sounds legit. JFW &#124; T@lk  18:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I have accepted it.  There was a formatting error that hid the text.  Maybe someone here can add some categories - It doesn't seem to fit into any of the musical ones that I like to add... &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 20:11, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've started to wikify it. Added category:genetic disease for now. Hopefully the page creator or another interested party will show up at some point. Lesion  ( talk ) 20:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month-- thoughts on how usefulness could be maximized
Just talking with James, and I thought that it might be an idea in the immediate future to restrict the COTM article selection to articles which 1. are not GA or FA, and 2. are top importance. Often these topics have broad scope and might also therefore attract more interest from WPMED members. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lesion (talk • contribs)


 * I think as far as priorities for this WikiProject go, this sounds extremely sensible. There's plenty of obscure topics that can wait until we have a steady base of high-quality articles on common and important conditions. JFW &#124; T@lk  22:19, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think I'd include high-importance articles, too. You want something that interests a wide range of people, and that might not include articles like Physician.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I am wondering if we should change physician to high importance? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd include 'high' importance articles. The other thing Id' do is take away the time period and make it that the collaboration lasts until the article reaches GA status, at which point the next one is selected. The auditing points act as points of reference. Any article that doesn't get there won't have it as it inevitably erodes in the face of editing. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:25, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I support this sentiment. We should then discuss some concrete criteria for what constitutes a 'Top-importance' article and then systematically apply that. As it is, this seems to be dominated by psychological conditions and infectious disease. Have nominated two top-importance articles for next month's COTM: Pregnancy and Cancer. (vote or nominate here: WP:MCOTM) --LT910001 (talk) 14:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Alternate proposal. I agree with the sentiment but am not in favour of 'iron-cast' rules. How about we give every Top-importance article (+2) votes each round, and every High-importance article (+1)? That way we can still promote the nomination of these articles, but popular choices can also be selected, and there won't be the need for a future RfC or large discussion when, inevitably, a user wants to nominate high-importance article.--LT910001 (talk) 14:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes we should not take the articles importance rating as set in stone. I am sure there are top importance articles that should not be top importance, and some lower rated ones that should be top.
 * It is also worth noting that since COTM has restarted, the articles that are being nominated tend to be top importance anyway. OK instead of an iron cast rule, suggest add a sentence to the top of the nominations section suggesting that top and high importance articles are desirable (at least until we get more of these important articles to GA). Lesion  ( talk ) 12:29, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've always encouraged folks to treat the 'importance' rating of an article as the degree to which members of this project want to edit the article, rather than attempting to relate it to some marginally appropriate external criteria like Template:Importance scheme tries to. We make best use of our members by helping them with articles that they are keen to edit. --RexxS (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Norplant might need eyes
Appears to be the subject of a student assignment with potentially problematic edits. The issue was raised first at the NPOV Noticeboard where more details are available. Course and instructor currently unknown. Voceditenore (talk) 12:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It appears to be a course, see WP:ENI.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 08:51, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Articles for creation
Whilst I am very thankful for the AfC team for monitoring new articles and contacting us about it, I worry that these queries soak up a lot of time for, essentially, articles which will have a tiny, minute audience and often end up very short in length. I feel that, as with the student editors problem openly festering here, ideally there would be more time for users to work on articles of higher priority. I would like the opinions of other users on this, and how to deal with it? I propose three mechanisms: Yes, AfC is important, but I feel working on getting the top 1-100 most visited articles, or the top-priority articles up to GA status would be much more productive.
 * 1) Set a separate page or list, like article alerts, where these queries can be isolated.
 * 2) Nuclear option after a certain amount of negative votes is reached
 * 3) Set time limit for these articles: if, after 1 week, no change has been made, AfC coordinator has discretion to either delete the article or transfer to mainspace. Query is then archived immediately.

Thoughts?--LT910001 (talk) 11:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A problem with dedicating resources to AFC (as much as I admire anyone willing to take that work on) is that it is often a) poor-quality student work, or b) paid editing. I'm a bit miffed at finding myself more than once a sucker to go do the cleanup on crappy work that someone else was paid to create.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:20, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Adding it to Article alerts, especially if it can be done automatically, might be convenient from the perspective of the AFC folks. But I don't mind them posting notes here.  People who aren't interested can ignore the message.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Electronic cigarette again
After one month of the article being protected it has been opened up at once to editing by a group who hold a very clear point of view, and strongly believe that WP:MEDRS is only to be followed when it is in favor of their view. I would hope some editors from here could take a look and see whats been happening.
 * Just to be clear we are among other things talking about this edit adding primary sources . CFCF (talk) 18:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Except of course that the edit that you are referring to adds a secondary source, a review in fact (Meier et al 2013<) and was earlier discussed on talk. I suggest that editors who are interested in the topic, add their contributions to the new talk section (Talk:Electronic_cigarette) instead of blindly assuming that CFCF is presenting a correct view. --Kim D. Petersen 20:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "After one month of the article being protected...[blablabla baseless attack]" you were the first to revert again, ignoring discussion and facts and not even leaving an edit summary. Just picking up where you've left off despite escaping a block for the same. A warning, which you received, you showed clearly has no impact on your approach. And again, the first thing you do when not getting your personal way is to canvass here, again, to get an edit reverted. Good faith is for editors who show such; You (again) didn't show any of that kind.TMCk (talk) 00:38, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

How long is this dragging on? We have a minority of editors who clearly are unable to treat this article with neutral POV. I think topic ban is very appropriate considering the history. You cannot always push one POV on an article and expect other editors to assume good faith. Lesion ( talk ) 00:47, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Don't know which side of the argument you are if at any but to answer your question, it has been dragging on for some time now and after the lock was lifted, it started right where it was left of on the article [See my comment above], while the talkpage was neglected, a familiar case on WP. Topic bans might be indeed a necessary remedy at some point, but not yet, or at least I hope so.TMCk (talk) 01:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Society and Medicine Taskforce
After two months of work, I here formally announce the creation of the Society and Medicine Taskforce This taskforce is intended to collect and maintain articles relating to the intersection between society and medicine, specifically people, companies, charities and any other relevant articles. As many users will know, these three groups constitute the majority of new articles, and not only compose an increasing workload but an increasing amount of discussion on this talk page. This taskforce is intended to:
 * Collect statistics on these articles
 * Serve as a contact point regarding these articles
 * Allow a more accessible way of identifying and maintaining these articles.
 * Promote neutrality and improve the quality of these articles.

Collecting and centralising information about these articles is the first step in productively dealing with this issue, and has been noted in the past by myself,, , quality issues noted by , and I'm sure many others.

'''To tag an article for this task force, please add society=yes |society-imp=Mid to the assessment status on the talk page. Please do this for all new biographical entries. ''' I have made a simultaneous edit to our scope so that article assessors (eg. ) will know.

Special thanks to for discussions during the creation of this task force, and  and  for helping automate the assessment criteria. --LT910001 (talk) 11:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Does this tag replace the WPMED tag, or should both be placed? Lesion  ( talk ) 12:33, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Neither. Just add a bit of text to the existing tag like this:


 * You get this in return:


 *  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:38, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Since this is a **task force** of WPMED, I just realized how stupid my q was. Lesion  ( talk ) 14:56, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Could others comment on this template, please! It is likely that this template will be applied to thousands of articles and will have influence on how articles within it are managed.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think this is fine. I think it would also be good to get a list of articles that it should be applied to (MZMcBride might be willing to generate one?).  If we can get a list, and have one or two people carefully check the entries and remove anything inappropriate, then we could get a bot to add the task force label to all of them.  (This could be done for any task force, but it would be particularly easy to find BLPs that are tagged as WPMED.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * An easy starting point is getting a list of articles in both WPMED and WP:Biography. This can be done with the WP:1.0 tools on the toolserver here.  --Scott Alter (talk) 00:19, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! We're working on that at the moment. The other large group that needs tagging is articles concurrently tagged with WPMED and WP:Companies. There are a large group of charity-based articles, which I'm not sure how to tag. Perhaps all articles under Wiki with 'charity' in the title could also be tagged. --LT910001 (talk) 11:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you want an intersection with WikiProject Organizations. You can also look at mainspace cats, which will help you find articles that belong in this group but haven't been tagged as belonging to our (and/or their) project.
 * BTW, if you get a good system (one that isn't too much work), then I'd like to see if we can do this again for other task forces. For example, stuff under Category:Cancer probably needs to be tagged for WP:HEMONC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's a good point. In order to expedite the bot request, I think the best option would be to get the bot working for the SAM task force, and then make additions for the other task forces as they crop up. I worry that if we continue to increment requirements, we may not end up with a finish product. That said, I've created a separate thread for this, below. --LT910001 (talk) 01:46, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed change to MOS for Anatomy articles
Per many discussions on WP:ANATOMY, and a current attempt at a GA status for one article, I have proposed a change to the MOS for Anatomy articles here (Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles), and have outlined the reasons on the said page. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 02:30, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Human Liver article
The Human Liver article was recently created as a split from the Liver article; some WP:MED members might want to take a look at that and analyze whether this split was needed. A lot of the times we dedicate our articles significantly more to humans with an Other animals section, as MEDMOS shows, because the topic has been studied significantly less with regard to non-human animals and our readers will usually be looking for the human aspect of that topic.

The article was tagged for speedy deletion, but that deletion has been contested on its talk page. If the Human Liver article is to be kept, it needs to be retitled to Human liver (meaning without the capitalization), per WP:Article titles. Flyer22 (talk) 11:31, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This is reflective of a trend among anatomy articles, which doesn't always produce useful results. I think it is reasonable to have articles specifically on human anatomy. One reason I am in favour of this is because the scope is immediately clear, and writing these articles can be more specifically focused. --LT910001 (talk) 11:41, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As the instigator of the split I did it for just the reasons that LT910001 presents. There is a real risk that articles that focus on anatomy are filled with nonsensical paragraphs, for example in the article in question; on liver as food in the middle of a discussion of transplantation, further the value is diminished when different images of animal livers are placed in the article, and there is no way to argue against their inclusion. There is an active veterinary and organismal biomechanics community working on making articles less human focused, and if a single article is remain coherent regarding human anatomy it will become very large. The simplest way to avoid being caught in a fight with other Wikiprojects is to split. The trend goes on, as before there are articles on; Heart & Human heart, lungs etc. etc. Even if there are not immediate results improvement will be simplified with these articles. CFCF (talk) 12:02, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Such splits are sparingly useful, from what I have seen because, like I stated above, it is often that these topics have been studied significantly more with regard to humans than with regard to non-human animals. When there is little to say about the non-human aspect, a split most certainly should not be made; that is needless WP:Content forking, unnecessarily causing our readers to go to more than one article for that information. And often no benefits come out of such splits; examples in this regard are the very poorly-written/constructed Penis article, which was split into Human penis, and the very poor/stubby Anus article which was split into Human anus. The default titles get significantly more traffic in such cases because our readers are not usually looking for the non-human aspect of the topic. So these moves also disturb WP:Common name. When made, the default title should at least be about humans, and a specialized title should be created for the non-human aspect. Further comments from me on these types of splits can be found here and here (though I've commented similarly elsewhere on Wikipedia as well). Flyer22 (talk) 12:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll respond in two separate places. There are some organs (sexual organs, the nose) that are generally associated with humans, but other organs (heart, lung, spine) about which a significant amount of study and variation exists in animalia that makes it impractical to have them in the same article. --LT910001 (talk) 12:32, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It's also a trend that is not prevalent; nor should it be. Flyer22 (talk) 12:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I feel that one of the points of contention here is that the primary point of call is not the 'human' liver. What would thoughts about this structure:
 * Liver is the main article about humans. Human liver redirects here. At the top, the article states This article is about the human liver. For other animals, see Liver in other animals
 * Liver in other animals is a secondary article with information about the liver in other animals.
 * It seems reasonable to retain the focus on humans, but I feel also reasonable to allow a fork to allow a more comprehensive presentation of the liver in other animals. This approach could be replicated for other organs and retain the pragmatic human-centered focus. --LT910001 (talk) 12:32, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * It might also be worth pointing out that after such a split, most newly placed wikilinks which refer to a human anatomy topic point to the main article rather than the article about the human structure. What about this wording: instead of human mandible and mandible, we name the article on human anatomy "mandible" and the one on non human anatomy "Mandible (non-human)"... Non-human is shorter than "in other animals". Thoughts? I think we should seek external input for this too, it will be easy to achieve false consensus in the microcosm of WPMED, which will be biased towards human emphasis. Lesion  ( talk ) 12:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * if s/he is around. Lesion  ( talk ) 12:40, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * In response to the summons above, I think the key is how much diversity exists for an organ/structure/system. The liver, for instance, is pretty much the same in every vertebrate aside from trivial differences in morphology and absolute size, and the only taxon using it in a notably different way is sharks using it to store squallene for bouyancy (which can be tacked on as a small section at the end of the article).  For something like the eye, where there are dramatically different forms throughout the animal kingdom, it makes sense to have a dedicated "human eye" article that's linked from the main article.  However, it's also crucial not to let human terminology or anatomical peculiarities eliminate articles for homologous structures, however short - consider the "zygomatic bone", properly termed the jugal in the majority of species, or synonomizing the mandible with the dentary (when most species have mandibles comprised of multiple bones).  In short, I like to ask myself two questions about these issues: "Can a pre-med student quickly and easily find the article and information they need?" and "Can a vertebrate (or invertebrate) zoology student quickly and easily find the article and information they need?"   HCA (talk) 17:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with your points on ease of finding relevant articles, but isn't this possible through links in the header as I've attempted? Also as far as I'm aware although physiologically the liver is rather uniform across species I was under the impression that anatomically it wasn't. As far as I know variation is larger in the anatomy, for example lobulation on one hand varies considerably between for example rats and mice (lab-animals) and humans, does it not? CFCF (talk) 17:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * True, though I dismissed those as trivial because they don't really seem to effect the function and they're really just variations on a theme. I'd analogize to stomachs: while every one is different in size and shape, it's only really notable when the difference is extreme and majorly alters function (such as the chambers in ruminants or the gizzards in birds).HCA (talk) 18:26, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with LT910001 concerning the use of article names such as mandible for the human and mandible (non-human) for potential animal articles. Regarding high profile articles there is a great deal of information on livers, kidneys, lungs etc. that isn't necessarily non-human or human, but concerns food and cultural aspects etc., and I think it may be hard to fit in either article. I think it is less demanding of a reader in search for info on the human liver to go to Human liver, than a reader in search of food-preparation to go to Liver (non-human). This question does not only cover liver, but all the other articles as well. I'll be around to help improve the articles on liver which I split regardless of consensus. CFCF (talk) 12:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * LT910001, titling the article with "other" in its heading is not a good idea for reasons that I stated in this recent move discussion. "[U]sing the word other begs the question as to what comes before 'other.' In human-focused articles, use of other is clear because the article is [mostly or only] about humans." I'm not so much concerned with the Liver article split, since there is likely a lot that can be stated about the non-human aspect, whether anatomy-wise or food-wise.


 * LT910001, CFCF and Lesion, I'm concerned with such splits being unnecessarily made. Again, if a topic is barely studied, or otherwise significantly less studied, with regard to non-human animals, I believe that it is a terrible idea to then create a content fork for that information instead of covering it with the human material. I will never be in favor of such splits. We should strive to have our articles be as comprehensive as possible (WP:Summary style-wise of course). For Wikipedia articles regarding topics that pertain to humans and non-human animals, unless that article is specifically about humans or specifically about non-human animals, such a Wikipedia article is more well-rounded if there is information in it about both humans and non-human animals. Non-human information should only be made into a separate article when a split is needed, per WP:Content fork. If there is no WP:SIZE issue in such cases, I see no issue. See the Vulva discussion I linked to above; there is absolutely no valid reason that there should be a vulva article about non-human vulvae; the vulva topic is barely studied with regard to non-human animals. And, ideally, a WP:Requested move discussion should always be had before such a move. Flyer22 (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I feel that the disagreements on this issue reflected here are also shared on both sides by others in the WPMED/Anatomy/Vet med communities, and that it will be more productive to have a wider-ranging discussion with members in all three communities in the context of an RfC. I have started an RfC on this here (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy) and invite comments. --LT910001 (talk) 03:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Use of "Human" in Anatomy article titles RfC
Per the discussion above, I have opened an RfC about the use of 'Human' in anatomy article titles, here (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy), and invite comment from members of the WP:MED community. --LT910001 (talk) 03:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

See-also links inappropriate?
Reinnervation has this:


 * See also
 * Reinnervation process and deRe
 * Targeted reinnervation

The first of these links seems commercial to me; can't tell about the second.

Thanks -- Jo3sampl (talk) 22:55, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The first link is even if it is viable improperly linked, and should if anything be under External links Seeing as Targeted reinnervation has "Targeted reinnervation enables an amputee to control motorized prosthetic devices and to regain sensory feedback. The method was developed by Dr. Todd Kuiken at Northwestern University and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Dr. Gregory Dumanian at Northwestern University Division of Plastic Surgery.", and cites 5 articles from that author it seems like promotion (haven't checked review status). Thank you for bringing up these articles. CFCF (talk) 23:18, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes would say that "see also" links are generally inappropriate. This is supported by WP:MEDMOS. It is okay to use them temporarily but most of the time they are of undue weight. We are neither a collection of external nor internal links. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Addressed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:28, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Access to HathiTrust
Anyone with access? If so please take a look: here A number of institutions in the United States have access. CFCF (talk) 19:17, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Access is available through a US IP-adress. 13:08, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Spanish refs with one author in common
This user seems to be adding these Wondering what people think? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:07, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we are looking at a subject expert editor here, and some of the sources seem at least at a glance to be sound. I think it would be best to inform about policy and inform that English sources are preferred unless translation is available. That said quite a few of the sources (if not all) are from Luis Joaquín García López, who seems to have published numerous (200+) papers on the subject, a number of which are CC-BY. Its difficult because if the sources are sound there is no reason to remove them, but on the other hand review is more difficult.CFCF (talk) 07:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I will look at them later today-- I've spotted one problem already. (Authors translating from other languages frequently commit copyvio.) We also have a likely COI. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I speak fluent Spanish, but I didn't even make it to the Spanish-language sources at Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory before finding copyvio. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I went through all of this editor's contribs, found two instances of cut-and-paste, multiple instances of adding sources where we already had them (that is, pushing one researcher's publications into entire suite of articles), and several instances of off-topic text. Addressed everything DocJames hadn't already gotten to.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Keratoconjunctivitis sicca
This article could use some eyes. [pun excused] A bunch of new primary studies being added, some self-citing as well. Yobol (talk) 15:41, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Watchlisted. See also Sicca and Sicca syndrome, which has been a redirect to Sjogren syndrome for a long while, which is correct according to some sources, but it appears that other sources define sicca syndrome as non-autoimmune oral and/or eye dryness. Unsure what is best. Lesion  ( talk ) 15:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Question about non-medical information in WP:MED tagged articles
I work regularly with a class at Rice University titled Poverty, Justice and Human Capabilities. Last semester's class is here, for example. More than once a student has worked on a topic that relates to medicine; recent examples include diarrhea in developing regions, social determinants of health in Mexico, Zimbabwean cholera outbreak, and media portrayal of HIV/AIDS.

Here are my opinions about this sort of content -- I suspect not everyone here would agree with these opinions, which is why I'm posting here. I'd like to get some consensus on these points, not just for next semester but as a general guideline for this sort of topic.


 * Sociological/political/historical information belongs in the same article as the main medical topic. If the article becomes too long as a result, the topics can be split out via summary style.
 * This material should not generally be subject to MEDRS rules except where the statements are specifically medical. In other words, what governs MEDRS rules is not whether an article is tagged for this project; it's the nature of the content.

Both the above rules are to be applied with common sense and without weakening any other rules -- we still require reliable sources, after all, regardless of MEDRS. The question is whether non-medical material, governed by non-medical guidelines, can be added to MED articles. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with you on both points. RS generally, not specifically MEDRS, should apply to content on sociological/cultural etc. The "history" and "society and culture" sections generally do not need MEDRS, even though much of the rest of the article should follow MEDRS. Lesion  ( talk ) 14:34, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I suspect that you will have little disagreement here. WP:MEDRS specifically states, "Sources for all other types of content—including all non-medical information in medicine-related articles—are covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources rather than this specific guideline." IOW, historical, legal, political, economic, etc. information is not governed by MEDRS, but by WP:RS. Of course, MEDRS compliant sources may also be good information for such information, as they are still scholarly produced sources. Yobol (talk) 15:19, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with Yobol and Lesion except that when WP:MEDRS-compliant journal sources are available that are superior to or contradict the non-MEDRS or inferior sources, then RS prefers the superior MEDRS sources ("When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources."); we wouldn't use inferior sources to cite content in a health-related area (even on the history, for example) when we have better sources. In other words, as in all RS discussions, we choose the best sources, and if students are citing the history of a medical condition to a random website, and that content is much better covered in a journal review, then we would prefer the review.  In many cases with that course, we've seen students citing text to organizations or sources with a known POV (eg James Baker Institute) when they haven't necessarily engaged the MEDRS-compliant sources that may be available on well-covered topics.  There have been problems with that course, so we shouldn't give them carte blanche to avoid learning best sourcing techniques.  Education noticeboard/Incidents/Archive 1 Ha, just saw that  stated it better here.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:56, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * But that's true even when there is no health-related content whatsoever. If you're writing about, say, Oprah Winfrey or iTunes, and you've got access to "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks" on those subjects, then you will normally prefer those excellent sources to newspaper articles.  That doesn't mean that you can't ever cite a source that has other desirable qualities (e.g., one that is written in plain English or is free online), but you would normally prefer the better sources to the worse-but-still-acceptable ones.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Sandy, I got my question answered; I think you're making a separate point about expectations, as opposed to requirements. Are you saying that students should be held to a higher standard than non-student editors, because of the non-long-term nature of most student accounts?  Of course I agree with you about preferring the best sources, but for example, if a student were to write some content cited to an RS, and that content could have been better sourced, are you saying that that's unacceptable content from the student, rather than just something to be improved in the future in the usual eventualist way? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 18:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I'm saying they should be held to the same standards as everyone else, and that the answer to your query is not binary. Students-- much more so than regular editors, although there are regular editors who do the same-- don't engage sufficiently either RS or MEDRS, and the answer to the dilemma is to expect them to do so, just as we expect regular editors to do so.  The additional problem with students is that they never return to correct their work, so when one points out that they have used inferior sources and that better sources are at odds with their text, they won't be around to fix it, so we're better off just removing it.  The time we've had to expend on verifying the bad additions is more than should be expected of us, since they won't be participants in the cleanup when we identify poor sourcing.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:17, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a collection of student essays. Most of these pages end up being more or less duplication of the main article. I have no issue with a sub article called "social and cultural aspects of HIV/AIDS" that is than summarized in the main article. But that is not what is being done. Agree with Sandy that the students need to be held to the same high standards as everyone else. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:03, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Student accounts are much more long-term than normal accounts. Of all accounts that are registered (and excluding all those that never make an edit), 70% (seventy percent, that is not a typo) only make one edit.  If the new users makes two edits, or comes back on a second day, then you are already dealing with a much higher level of engagement than median.
 * The problem we have with enforcing "the same high standard" is that simply removing suitable, encyclopedic material that is cited to a (barely) reliable source, when it ideally would be sourced to an academic secondary source, is a violation of WP:PRESERVE. So the workflow that the students encounter is this:
 * Student adds a statement and sources it to (for example) a reputable charity's website or a peer-reviewed primary source.
 * One of a very small group of editors sees this and says, "Ah ha! Not a MEDRS-type source!  Immediate revert!!!"
 * The workflow that ought to be happening, if everyone were following the policy PRESERVE, is this:
 * Student adds a statement and sources it to (for example) a reputable charity's website or a peer-reviewed primary source.
 * A more experienced editor sees this and says, "Not such a great source, although someone who doesn't know MEDRS inside and out might accept it. Let's see:
 * Does this exact statement even require a stellar source, or is it really okay? We don't need a Cochrane review to say that the common cold is caused by viruses, after all.  Could it be re-written in a way that would make the existing source okay?  (For example, MEDMOS has advice on how to report single-study results.)
 * Can I find a better source? I'll do a quick search at Pubmed and Google Books.
 * Should this information be in this article at all? Should it be moved to a subarticle?  (You wouldn't believe how often someone wants to add something to a main article like Cancer that obviously belongs in a subarticle.)
 * Is this overemphasis of a minority viewpoint? Is someone cherry-picking sources here?
 * Looking at the article, rather than just following "rules", is this addition a net positive or a net negative? It's not perfect, but is it an improvement, however slight?  If I were removing one poorly sourced statement from this article today, is this the right one to remove?  If I pull this, am I going to look stupid for removing a peer-reviewed journal article while leaving behind a patient's blog or an advertorial?
 * What's the chance that the original editor knows more about this? I'll leave a nice note for him to see if he knows about a better source.
 * While I'm at it, I'll post a note on the article's talk page to see if anyone watching it knows of a better source, or if anyone else thinks that this should be removed. I'll check back in a few days to see if anyone replied.
 * But as you can see, that's a lot more work than automatically reverting anyone who didn't add the exact kind of source that we currently think is best. So from a practical perspective, the people doing this kind of patrolling have a choice between enforcing MEDRS on all the recent changes that they have time to look at, or complying with PRESERVE on only ten percent of that number, while leaving 90% entirely unreviewed (by them, and there aren't enough people doing this work to check every change).  There is no perfect solution that gets all changes reviewed properly.  Editors have to choose between doing improper, PRESERVE-violating reviews or doing no review at all for a majority of changes.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Featured image nomination
I've currently nominated the image Image:Sobo 1909 260.png for feature image. The reasoning behind my nomintion is that it is a high-quality image from a respectable anatomy text-book without any similar images on Wikipedia. It is in my view easy on the eyes, informative without being overly explicit, and a very high quality retouched scan. It holds both artistic and educational merit. See here for the nomination Featured picture candidates/Sobo 1909 260. Please add any relevant comments or if you wish your support. Voting ends on the 19th. CFCF (talk) 19:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Medical claims in Scientology doctrine...
So... this is a "notable" medical WP:FRINGE theory, but the whole page (cited by 8 self-published scientology or news media sources) fails MEDRS. It doesn't seem to cover or link to the equivalent mainstream views either.

Seems like its worthy of an XFD, but I have a feeling that might be a contentious can of worms. Thoughts?  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 06:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The very fact that the article itself describes these as "claims" is reassuring. MEDRS really is needed to say that a particular treatment is efficacious, whereas this article merely is reporting health beliefs of a particular group. The tone of the article is NPOV, I think there is no need to delete this article. Lesion  ( talk ) 10:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Lesion, but I do think there may be need for some cleanup. The article does at least at first glance seem to point out that these claims are not proven in any sense, and are simply ideas within Scientology.CFCF (talk) 11:43, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * "Polly Pseudo says that sleeping with your head on a pillow causes Alzheimer's" is not biomedical information. "Sleeping on a pillow causes Alzheimer's" would be.  The claim that a person or group believes something needs RS (possibly BLP-complaint RS), not specialized MEDRS sources.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fair enough - if only RS is required, then the sources and XFD are a non-issue.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 04:56, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well its a fine line, every statement needs to be clear on that these aren't real medical views, just claims. I'll take a look. CFCF (talk) 07:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC) Looks sound enough as it is now CFCF (talk) 07:26, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Anatomy edit disputes
Posting here as I believe it will garner the most attention. I have been working on adding images from Commons:Category:CNX to Wikipedia as they are a very good source of medical illustrations, just the type we are currently lacking. I started in the far end of the book, also going for one of the articles I knew I would probably meet most resistance: Human penis. Any edits at all are very difficult to do, as there are forces intent on keeping the article from containing images of anatomy or physiology. I know these articles may be a cess-pit of incoherent argument, but if anyone were to quickly look over the recent edits, for example this revert and see if there is any reason behind it, I would be glad. CFCF (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Can you explain why you decided to start with one of the most contentious areas? I'd have taken the opposite approach:  use them in all sorts of articles, and then come back in a couple of years and say, "Look what normal anatomy articles are doing.  Why don't we do the same here?"  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't start there, but after preliminary work on various articles I started systematically at the back of the book. I don't think waiting will help as there is a group of editors who believe it is important to see all different forms of variation and from all angles instead of images that actually are informative. The same is relevant at Vulva, which has maybe 20 different images of variation which I have not removed despite lack of encyclopedic content, due to risk of the same type of resistance met at human penis. CFCF (talk) 21:01, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * CFCF was also reverted at the Erection article. CFCF, keep in mind, if you have not, that I don't object to any specific image you added to the Human penis article; I objected to you going against WP:Consensus with regard to the infobox image used at that article and WP:Edit warring at that article to maintain your image preferences. I also questioned the inclusion of the Additional images section, but I have no strong feelings on that either way (just like I have no strong feelings about the Human penis article). The images you have been adding to anatomy articles are informative and needed in some cases, as you well know and have received barnstars for. That stated, you need to be careful about adding too many images to an article. And I agree with your inclusion of the image you added to the Erection article, but the size should be reduced; see MOS:IMAGES and MOS:IMAGES. Flyer22 (talk) 21:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the pointers on MOS:IMAGES, I will follow the maximum size rule more closely. I'm going to give these articles (no other articles were as strongly disputed) this article a rest, even minute edits are questioned, and its taking to much time. Maybe its naive to think that an article like that would reach higher standard before other less contentious articles. CFCF (talk) 07:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I do not believe we should be adding image galleries to anatomy articles. We have Commons for that. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:01, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Cochrane Wikipedian In Residence Applications
Hey folks,

Just a reminder that Cochrane is taking signups for a Wikipedian in Residence: COCHRANE/WIR.

Cochrane is a fantastic organization which publishes systematic reviews about medical treatments and efficacy.

Wiki Project Med Foundation is helping to coordinate the search for great candidates.

The Wikipedian in Residence would ideally be:


 * 1) An active Wikipedia editor, a Wikipedian in good standing, for at least 1 year and with 1,000 edits (more is preferable)
 * 2) A science and/or healthcare enthusiast, preferably with a background as either a student or professional
 * 3) An ambassador, capable of interacting between Wikipedia's community and Cochrane groups
 * 4) A teacher, helping Cochrane contributors to properly and successfully navigate and use Wikipedia
 * 5) A collaborator, comfortable working in and among a distributed network of professionals
 * 6) A remote facilitator, adept with email, scheduling, online meetings, and conference calls
 * 7) A passionate individual, both about Wikipedia’s mission and Cochrane's approach and goals

The position is open to anyone who can meet these criteria but may be particularly suited to students or recent graduates looking to expand their skills and experience, or those who work part-time in another job. Candidates should have an excellent level of written and spoken English, although those that speak more than one language are particularly welcome to apply.

Cochrane is structured as a network of groups located throughout the world to which people contribute in different ways, but primarily as authors of Cochrane Systematic Reviews. The WiR will work remotely from their chosen location and will interact with a number of groups and their contributors via email and online. Cochrane will provide a selection of online collaboration tools to facilitate communication.
 * Location

The WiR will report to, and be guided by, Cochrane’s Head of Communications & External Affairs, and a Senior Editor of The Cochrane Library. They will also interact regularly with other members of Cochrane’s senior management team and representatives of its publishing partner for The Cochrane Library.
 * Reporting

The WiR will be expected to work flexibly at different times of their day to suit their schedule and to help support Cochrane groups throughout the world (some work in the evenings is likely to be required). The exact number of hours per week will be agreed with the successful candidate, but is likely to be in the region of 7-12 hours per week.
 * Working hours

The WiR will receive a stipend of up to $6,500 USD/£4,000 for the initial six month term, which will be paid in two instalments at the beginning and middle of the term. In addition, the WiR will be funded to attend and present a session at the 22nd Cochrane Colloquium in Hyderabad, India, 21st-25th September 2014.
 * Remuneration

We want to learn more about you and see how we can best give you an opportunity to work with Cochrane. Signup! WP:Cochrane/WIR.
 * Applying to be WIR

Cheers, Ocaasit &#124; c 18:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Chronic allograft nephropathy
Hi, I'm it:user:Doc.mari from Italian Wikipedia. I see that English Wikipedia has an article about chronic allograft nephropathy, while "chronic allograft dysfunction" is a more appropriate term according to many authors (see for example, ). The histologic changes found in chronic allograft injury are very variable according to the specific factors involved, so we can't really talk about "nephropathy". The same opinion is expressed by Floege et al in Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology, fourth edition, chapter 103. I think we should move the article to "Chronic kidney allograft dysfunction", as I did on it.wiki and I'd like to add some informations, but my English is very poor so I need your help and your advice. Thank you. --Doc.mari (talk) 22:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello and welcome. When deciding how to name pages, we should follow the most commonly used term in the sources. This is not always the most accurate term. E.g. we have sinusitis and not "rhinosinusitis".


 * If the term you say is better is the one which is more commonly used in up-to-date sources, please feel free to move the page. Click the drop down menu just the right of the watchlist star thing, and click "move". Then type in the term that the page is to be moved to.


 * Or I am sure someone will happily move the page for you, but I would like to confirm it is indeed the most common term. Lesion  ( talk ) 23:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello Lesion, I still knew how to techically move a page but I'm not very familiar with your policies. "Chronic allograft nephropathy" is in fact a very common term, altough dated and uncorrect. Maybe it's better to leave the current title but this article needs to be updated as soon as possible. Thank you again for the explanation. --Doc.mari (talk) 21:05, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Apologies. The policy is here: WP:MEDMOS


 * "The article title should be the scientific or recognised medical name that is most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources, rather than a lay term (unscientific or slang name)[1] or a historical eponym that has been superseded."


 * If "Chronic allograft nephropathy" is outdated and most modern sources are using the term "Chronic kidney allograft dysfunction" then yes we should update the article title. Lesion  ( talk ) 21:13, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Possibility of a bot for taskforces
The possibility of a bot has been made available to automatically tag articles under WP:MED with the Society and medicine taskforce. It seems reasonable that this could also be the case for other task forces. Although I'm strongly in favour of getting it working for Society & Medicine first, and tweaking afterwards, as I feel we ought to strike while the Iron is hot, this bot could be expanded later to tag articles for other task forces.

As I understand it, a bot could tag using three criteria:
 * 1) An article is concurrently tagged with another Wikiproject (eg. all WP:BIO articles under WP:MED will be added to the society & medicine task force)
 * 2) An article has a keyword in the title (eg. all articles with "charity" will be added to the society & medicine task force, as these are not reliably added to additional WPs)
 * 3) An article belongs to a category (am not sure if this is technically feasible).

A list of taskforces with proposed criteria is here:
 * Cardiology
 * Dermatology
 * Article contains 'skin' in the title. Article belongs to Category:skin diseases
 * Emergency medicine and EMS
 * Gastroenterology
 * Hematology-oncology
 * Article contains 'blood', 'cancer', 'leukemia', 'leukaemia' or 'lymphoma' in the title, article belongs to Category:Cancer or a subcategory.
 * Medical genetics
 * Nephrology
 * Neurology
 * Ophthalmology
 * Pathology
 * Psychiatry
 * Pulmonology
 * Radiology
 * Reproductive medicine
 * Article is under both WP:MED and WP:SEX
 * Society and medicine criteria developed
 * Toxicology
 * Translation
 * Articles tagged with Top-Importance?

The aim here is to produce results that are 90-95% accurate with some reasonably simple rules. If we miss some articles, or some articles are added to a taskforce in error, the sky will not fall down. Articles that are subsequently removed from a taskforce may be able to be permanently removed so that they are not consistently re-added. --LT910001 (talk) 02:07, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

As a sidenote, one major taskforce we appear to be missing is an infectious and/or chronic disease taskforce. --LT910001 (talk) 02:07, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that there is no deadline for this.
 * I would like to have a stage of manual review: generate a list of candidates and have people remove anything that they think is inappropriate.  This will reduce false positives.
 * I am not sure that we need to include all subcats. Category:Cancer organizations, for example, might not be something that HEMONC wants to track.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If there are any interested taskforces, we could certainly do this piecemeal. Ah! I think I understand what you mean. Yes, we have already thought about this. I feel the easiest way for this to be done is for all articles to be added to the taskforce under the ??? rating. Articles with this rating can then be triaged and either removed or given a set rating. This facilitates manual review. It would be possible to abstract the process by having a separate list somewhere, but I feel that just adds another layer of complexity without actually achieving additional benefit. --LT910001 (talk) 06:00, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is the additional benefit: If you first make the list, then I can edit one list, one time, and remove anything that seems to me to be irrelevant.  Under your tag-first system, if there are 500 businesses, organizations, or biographies that have been categorized under Category:Cancer, then they'll all be tagged for hemonc, and the only way to fix it will be for me to edit five hundred separate talk pages.  Now perhaps someone would prefer to edit hundreds or thousands of talk pages to correct the bot, but I would not.
 * Also, there is no "???" rating. It's yes, and you can optionally add hemonc-imp, but adding "???" is the same as leaving it blank.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello, sorry, I mean the ??? rating rather than the ??? rating (which would be quite ambiguous). The discussion is here (Wikipedia:Bot_requests), and if/when the bot gets going, I'll ping you. --LT910001 (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

1,000,000+ images posted on Flickr by British Library
See. Bound to have some gems for WP:Med. Not quite sure how to deal with that quantity of images though. --LT910001 (talk) 05:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Are they under an open license that we can use? If they are we can upload them all to commons. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * They appear to be in the public domain. --LT910001 (talk) 05:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That's amazing, I'm going to take a look to see what I can get hold of from there. The good thing about flickr is that there is a bot script to upload a very large number of images. I won't even pretend to be able to look through the images properly, but will see if there is any way to quickly single out medical images. (Currently working on other medical image sources, will post here once I have amassed a small collection). CFCF (talk) 09:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately not so navigable, it isn't possible to search for specific books as far as I can see, sorry, but I will stick to my other sources. CFCF (talk) 10:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We need a mass upload. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * They are available for re-use - and they may be interested in organizing them for Wikimedia Commons. Do they still have a Wikipedian-in-Residence? The images are as I understand it tagged with descriptions on github, but not on flickr. If so, then it would be more useful to get them from github. Hildabast (talk) 04:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That makes it instantly more interesting, is there any way to upload quickly from github, or even to search for categories/certain words in the titles?CFCF (talk) 22:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Courtesy of on the Wikimediauk-l mailing list, I was pointed to a blog describing one person's efforts to search through the BL images on Flickr using Ruby (programming language) and Elasticsearch.
 * British Library Commons Images
 * Judging by the comments on the blog post, there is a chance of tagging images on Flickr in an automated manner. Perhaps we could ask nicely for tagging of particular keywords relevant to WPMED? --RexxS (talk) 17:09, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Animal models of autism
I just created this, feel free to work on it. Jinkinson  talk to me   What did he do now?  19:10, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, it's a DYK now. That's awesome. Can I get some thoughts on whether there is a problem with the hook mentioning the connection between thimerosal and autism? Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  02:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Autism Speaks as a source
As some of you may know, I have created many articles on autism researchers. I was wondering if Autism Speaks' blog (blog.autismspeaks.org, later moved to http://www.autismspeaks.org/blog) was a reliable source for such biographical articles, or whether it should be avoided given that it is a "blog". If not, I will remove it from the bios to which I have added it. Jinkinson  talk to me   What did he do now?  22:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Good question. While blogs have previously ALL had a bad rap as sources here, that is changing, but we must still be cautious. Bogs are now being used as the official newspaper/TV column for journalists and politicians, and as the official website for politicians and corporations, so just because it mentions "blog" doesn't mean we should automatically disparage it.


 * Since it's their official blog, it can be listed in the external links of the Autism Speaks article. Use as a source there and elsewhere is another matter, and the comments would nearly always be off-limits. If it has an editorial board, or employees who are clearly listed, and their articles speak for the organization, such references could be used in the article, and possibly in other articles. I suspect it would have to be done on a case by case basis. What articles have you used it on? You might even try leaving the links and see if other editors object. (Then be careful about defending them.) If they don't, that may be a tacit sign of acceptance that it's good enough. I recall when I was fairly new here, someone other than myself added a link to my own blog. I didn't know about it for a long time, and later discovered it in the process of defending myself in an ArbCom process (which I survived). It turned out that others had defended the link many times, even though it was a blog, so it all depends on the content.


 * I looked at the blog and didn't find a list of editors or such like. Maybe you can find something. BTW, I added some convenience links to aid use of your content above. I hope you don't mind. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:56, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * When looking at blogs, it's also worth keeping in mind WP:SELFPUB. In the absence of secondary sources, it is acceptable to use self-published blogs as a source of information about the self-publisher as long as: the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim · it does not involve claims about third parties · it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source · there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity · the article is not based primarily on such sources.
 * So, used carefully and sparingly - as you would with any primary source - blogs can often fill in the gaps in biographies, but shouldn't have a whole article resting on them. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 02:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

If you want, you can look at the articles in which I have used it, including: Jinkinson  talk to me   What did he do now?  11:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Valerie Hu
 * In this instance, attribution covers any concern (we can assume but not be assured that a prominent organization like Autism Speaks has checked this info before publishing it on a blog). Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Joseph Buxbaum
 * This is not cited to their blog, it's cited to their website. Please complete citations when you add them, which is something experienced editors should do, and saves everyone time when answering your queries here.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Raymond F. Palmer
 * This is an example where your use of their blog is perfectly fine. Autism Speaks is in a position to authoritatively say who is doing research with grants awarded by Autism Speaks.  But please indicate it's a blog in your citation.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Jill James
 * This one was problematic. First, again, please complete your citations so others don't have to do it (and so checking your work will be easier).  We don't expect new editors to know how to cite, but experienced editors should.  In this case, you were using a blog source to say that James had "produced evidence" relating to a medical condition (MEDRS applies).  The blog wording was that she had "found".  I slightly reworded and attributed the statement.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The biggest challenge is making sure that the BLP is somehow "part" of the org whose website you're citing.

Any regular website, whether a blog or not, is self-published: the people writing the contents are the same people who are making those contents available to the public. Who writes Coca-Cola's website? Coca-Cola's employees. Who made that website available to the public? Coca-Cola's employees. This is in contrast to traditional publishing, in which the author and the publishing house are separate entities: Who wrote Harry Potter? JK Rowling. Who decided to make that book available to the public? Bloomsbury's employees.

We have strict rules against using self-published sources, including almost all non-newspaper/non-news websites, as sources of information about living people who are not associated with the source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Under this reasoning, the NYTimes is a self-published source (and has been ever since it started using its own printshop). I don't see it. II  | (t - c) 20:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Publishing and printing are completely separate issues. You're a publisher if you're the one who decides to make it available to the public.  You're a printer if you make copies of things.  It is possible to be a printer without being a publisher (e.g., the printshop formerly known as Kinko's) and common to be a publisher without being a printer (e.g., every publishing house that hires a Chinese printshop).
 * This is an important distinction, because under your definition, anyone paying a vanity publisher is "properly published" on par with having sold their book to Random House (the largest traditional book publisher), solely because the printshop isn't owned by the author.
 * (American newspapers in particular as an awkward case to explain, because their publisher is always a specific person. The sole publisher of The New York Times is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. (who is also the chairman of the board of directors).  The owner of The New York Times is The New York Times Company.  There are many dozens of editors, and over a thousand writers.  But even there you can see the separation:  the publisher is not the writer.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I wasn't really trying to use that definition, but I was trying to understand where you're making the distinction. OK, so under this reasoning any website which designates someone as the official "publisher" (separate from the writer) is not self-published? In addition, anything which is written with no specific writer identified, could be self-published (how do we know the publisher himself didn't write it?). Not trying to create a strawman, but this seems awkward indeed. II  | (t - c) 05:42, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You might find the dictionary definition more useful than a series of questions: "The publishing of books and other media by the authors or creators of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers."  Similarly, M-W says, "to publish (a book) using the author's own resources".  If the author is ultimately in control, then you have a self-published piece.  If an established, third-party publisher is in control of publication, then you don't.  If you don't know, then you don't know.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Also, Animal models of autism uses Autism Speaks as a source. Perhaps, given that it is currently linked from the main page, we should ascertain that it is being used properly in this article. Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  02:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

BLPs

 * See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 40

I realize I still owe you work on the issue of whether the bios you are creating meet notability. (See WP:PROF). Since the earlier question was archived without a single other editor here weighing in, perhaps no one cares. But I do wish you would give WP:PROF serious consideration; I'm not sure some of those bios would stand up to close scrutiny. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:08, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Hypothyroidism prep for GA
has been hard at work preparing hypothyroidism for a GA nomination (and taking away my coffee per levothyroxine absorption :) I've looked in and the sourcing is 100% sound, the prose looks competent, and WP:MEDMOS are followed. If some other folks would look in and opine whether it's GA-ready, I believe it would be a solid investment of your time. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, feedback is welcome as is constructive criticism. Thanks =) TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:36, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Anybody home? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:02, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If you open a peer review, I shall review the article. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  10:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 13:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

"Relatively inexpensive ways" for parents to "possibly prevent" autism

 * See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 40

There is a Articles for creation submission, at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alycia Halladay, to create a biography article about Alycia Kay Halladay, a senior director of Autism Speaks.

It currently ends with a quote from Halladay, sourced to the Huffington Post, that taking folic acid during pregnancy is "a relatively inexpensive way that parents can take action to possibly prevent risk of tube birth defects and autism."

I think this and other statements may need some input from this project with regard to MEDRS.

It is also unclear to me whether Halladay is notable under ACADEMIC or not; the sources provided in the submission thus far do not appear to prove her notability under GNG. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 13:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * First, I think has been editing long enough that s/he should be cleaning up his/her own citations by now (citations that specify who the publisher is make it much easier for others to check work).  Second, we don't string together primary sources (PMIDs) to make a claim about someone's research specialty.  Third, as to whether his BLPs meet notability, I haven't gotten anyone to help go through his last round of BLPs (linked above in the Autism Speaks section), so ... Fourth, I did some minor cleanup in there but I'm not going through another Jinkinson AFC unless someone else is willing to look at these.  Fifth,, I enjoy shopping and it's gift-giving time.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Please decline the submission, and I'm sorry for wasting your time and not listening when you told me to find more independent sources a month ago. I'm also sorry I couldn't respond sooner, but I have been busy in real life lately. Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  19:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Don't have kids. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  11:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Wait, Axl, were you telling me to not have kids? Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  22:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * *sigh* "Relatively inexpensive ways for parents to possibly prevent autism". Axl  ¤  [Talk]  23:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yup, not having children is an inexpensively way for parents to definitively prevent autism. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia, needs eyes. It has long needed an update for DSM5, no one did it (to my dismay, grumble), and now it is being hit by numerous editors who are not familiar with the featured article standards, are changing citation style, aren't familiar with WP:OWN, are dropping text based on old sources into the lead without developing the body, and are using sources not compliant with MEDRS. Yes, it needs an update-- if the update is not done correctly, the article will end up de-featured. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have tried my hand at updating it.  Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  18:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm beginning to wonder if you intentionally drop in incomplete citations throughout Wikipedia. Off to clean up more of same from you at cannabis suite, in spite of having asked you to complete your own citations now dozens of times. Shizophrenia still needs experienced eyes.  Or perhaps I should just send it to WP:FAR.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm really sorry for using cite pmid templates. I think I'm still used to using them because I have done so for months now, whereas you told me about the Vancouver citation about three days ago. Sorry I haven't broken the habit yet, nor have I realized that cite pmid templates are unacceptable no matter which article you're editing. However, I think "dozens of times" is a drastic exaggeration. Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  21:39, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As an aside, and bear in mind I'm coming at the topic cold, what is the technical issue with the way Jinkinson used the cite pmid template in that edit? It looks like it generates a proper numbered footnote&mdash;I haven't really kept up with the reference formatting templates, so I can't immediately tell by looking what's broken....  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * WP:CITEVAR-- citation consistency is a requirement of WP:WIAFA and Schizophrenia is a Featured article. Almost no medical FAs use the horrid formatting generating by cite pmid (they use Boghog/Diberri). Besides that cite pmids are generally horrid anyway (when in edit mode, you can't see the date, the title, anything, so you don't know what you're editing).    Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Anyway, OK, Schizophrenia is one of our few Featured articles and I am tired of babysitting it; since no one can be bothered to update or help maintain it, I shall give it another week or so and submit it to WP:FAR. A medical FA needs to be tended, and no one seems to care about this one, and it's becoming a headache to me, so time to get it defeatured. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 23:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The pmid template generates citations using the Cite journal template. As it states on the pmid template documentation, it shouldn't be used in articles that use other citation styles. Since Schizophrenia overwhelmingly uses the Vcite template, generating Vancouver system citations, the pmid template simply isn't suitable for use in that article. It is possible to make allowances in a new article where the style hasn't yet settled down, but Schizophrenia is a featured article and consistency of citation style is a requirement. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 23:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Just got back and my copy of the DSM 5 arrived today. People love when new books come out even though this one is not universally accepted. The author of the DSM 4TR does not consider the DSM 5 an update. I have not seen the NIMH change their position on not using the DSM 5. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You seem to have missed a few citations on Long-term effects of cannabis, some of which are still using the pmid or doi templates. I am currently in the process of fixing them. Jinkinson   talk to me   What did he do now?  03:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I didn't miss any-- the ones I didn't fix don't belong in the article as they aren't secondary sources. I didn't think it worth my time to fix citations that will eventually be removed.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This really ought to be a bot task, replacing cite pmid or cite doi with the supportable cite journal (etc) on articles which use them. Citation bot does some similar things (e.g. picks the majority choice between citation and cite xxx), but I'm not aware of any bot that does the equivalent for vcite vs cite. That said, those choices are made by human editors one article at a time. If they agree to change it (either to or from vcite), that could of course be done very easily. At one time extensively-referenced articles switched to vcite simply for speed (giving up linkages and metadata), but that reason has evaporated with the switch to Lua-based CS1.  It may be time to encourage articles to make the switch back and reduce the number of variations at play.LeadSongDog  come howl!  04:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I am happy to see the article switch back to cite. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:41, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could ask to run through articles that use cite journal and replace the cite PMIDs and cite DOIs, which are dreadful.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:42, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter if we agree. If an article is not using cite journal, then you really can't make wholesale conversions without at least leaving a note on the talk page to see if anyone objects—especially not if you're planning to do this at multiple articles.  WT:CITE has discussed this pretty extensively because of WP:CITEVAR.  We've had a number of editors in disputes over exactly this.
 * Now, if there's a mix of templates on the page, then you should be able to make it match, and that would probably take care of most of these. But you can't just say "WikiProject Medicine prefers this other style, so we're changing the citations style that was chosen by the editors who are actually working on the article".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As I said, "Perhaps we could ask to run through articles that use cite journal and replace the cite PMIDs and cite DOIs ..."  No one mentioned changing citation style. I'm not aware, for example, of any medical FA that does not use cite journal and that does use cite pmids. Furthermore, since the horrid cite pmid template was only invented in 2009, it's unlikely it was the chosen citation style on any established article.  Just sayin', since no one should be adding them to any FA.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The choice of which citation template to use (or whether to use one) is usually considered to be part of the article's "citation style" and therefore subject to CITEVAR, even when that template's existence is invisible to readers.
 * NB that I'm not saying that it should be, only that this actually is the conclusion of repeated discussions on this subject at WT:CITE. So if it's a cite journal kind of article, then you shouldn't use cite pmid—and vice versa.  Wholesale removal from all articles is not acceptable, and if there are mixed styles, then you need to manually decide which is the "established" style for that article, rather than stripping all of them with a bot (or script) run.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It is unclear who you are aiming these posts at: is there someone in this discussion who doesn't understand WP:CITEVAR? Are you unaware that bots aren't always fully automated?  That when it is determined that an article uses cite journal, a bot can be manually triggered that will remove the cite pmids? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree this would be done via talk page discussion. I think User:Zad68 had designed something like this? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:19, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

New draft namespace
I know a lot of you don't watch the drama pages, so here's a heads-up that we now have a new "Draft" WP:namespace. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 121 and Village pump (technical)/Archive 121 discussions for more information.

WP:Articles for Creation is expected to move to the Draft: namespace, although old AFC pages will probably remain where they are. Editors are still allowed to create new articles in their userspace or in the mainspace (the regular place for articles); you don't have to use the new draft namespace unless you want to. Eventually, it might be possible to automagically connect draftspace pages to regular articles (just like talkspace pages), so that you could easily use the new namespace for testing or proposing complex edits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I like this idea of attaching the draft page to the article like its talk page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:07, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good thing. One major problem which this would address is that it could be used as a technical solution to grant students in the WP:Wikipedia Education Program a place to propose mass changes to an article and have their proposal connected to the article in a more obvious way than using their own sandbox or userspace.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   16:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Student editing, Cerebral atherosclerosis
I've cleaned out student essay material, off-topic text that belongs in other articles, and primary sourced material (which was mostly off-topic as well). What remains is (somewhat, needs checking) sourced to reviews, but a) it's not clear to me that all of it is ontopic, and b) it's not clear if what is left should be merged to atherosclerosis. Could a doc take over? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:37, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there a good university-level how-to-edit-Wikipedia course?
One that turns out students proficient in editing Wikipedia? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:37, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We keep hearing that Wadewitz's courses are the model, but we have this mess, sitting there with no response. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not that I have seen. Editing Wikipedia takes a long time to learn. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:05, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * you are going to need to robustly define "proficient in editing Wikipedia". There are certainly some courses that have resulted in reasonable edits.©Geni (talk) 01:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We are discussing within the medical domain. We have had some tentatives positives. But they are few. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:26, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The best I ever saw was the attempts by jbmurray. Check out WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem also read []. Remember (talk) 15:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Years old, never replicated. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes and not medical. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Efficacy of redback spider antivenom
Could someone familiar with the reliable sources guidelines take a look at this article, currently Today's Featured Article. I removed a paragraph based on a single unpublished study, cited to news reports on a conference abstract, and pointed to the WP Medicine reliable sources guidelines, but it has been reinstated with the comment "the page you link explicitly states "Finally, make readers aware of controversies that are stated in reliable sources." If we were stating this as a medical truth, we would need better info, but at the moment it is carefully and correctly explained as a controversy." Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * nominated it; promoted it.  I can't find the paragraph you said you deleted?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Presumably it's this edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, WAID ... I didn't look back far enough ... and ... that text is still in the article. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:45, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * My removal was reverted with a note to seek consensus before re-removing; refer Talk:Redback spider. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:23, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I tend to favor WP:NOT (News) and WP:RECENTISM in applying WP:MEDRS strictly. Now, Casliber edits with his real name, from Australia, and from a position that can be considered one of authority on Wikipedia, as an ex-arb.  Why we have MEDRS?  Let's say someone decides not to use the anti-venom as a result of our article, and dies.  I'd not want to be in that position, but since the text was re-instated, if any editor doing that is willing to take on that responsibility, let me not stand in their way.  PS: See the need for a disclaimer on medical articles, discussed above; here we have another example of why.  We should be clearly telling people NOT to rely on our articles for medical advice.  This is as good of a demonstration of why as I've seen lately.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * And now that I've seen that it was not Cas who re-added it, I have removed it. Gross irresponsibility.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:52, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Sandy. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If you had provided all the diffs earlier, I would have gotten it done sooner :) Thanks WAID for directing me.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * So if it was User:Casliber who re-added it you would not stand in his way, but if it's me, then you re-revert and call it "gross irresponsibility"? Nice. --99of9 (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it was always irresponsible; as I indicated above, I was surprised that Cas (as an editor who edits under his real name) was willing to take on that irresponsibility. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * But I made it grosser? By the way, my real name is also easy to find, does that make me more surprising and less gross? --99of9 (talk) 23:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, actually, the gross irresponsibility belonged to the FAC review, but now that Cas has pointed out that the news came near the very end of the FAC, not even. So, it was just a mistake that happened, as mistakes do.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not everybody agrees with this, but I think that editors are well-advised to give the benefit of the doubt to editors who have worked most on an article - particularly if they have steered it through the Featured Article process - if only because they are most likely to know the sources well. If I saw something that appeared wrong, but Cas Liber had added to an article he'd taken to FA, I'd suspect my own understanding first. It is quite within the bounds of human nature to give extra deference to those editors whose work we are most familiar with. My advice is never to take reverts personally - both sides are normally acting in what they think is the best interests of the encyclopedia. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:18, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Medical disclaimer
After discussion on multiple talk pages, it was revealed that multiple other language Wikipedias do have medical disclaimers. Initially, I was concerned about the decline in participation at WT:MED, where basic concerns are no longer being addressed: Separately, I have been concerned with the effect of the education program on medical content-- considering declining participation in Wikipedia, I don't believe we can keep up with the bad content being added by students: Those discussions led to various proposals at:
 * 1) Archived with no resolution
 * 2) Most of these moved into mainspace with limited feedback, and now need to be dealt with
 * 3) No one else helped with these, archived without further feedback
 * 4) This problem was raised here and on an external website
 * 1) Problems with student editing, discussed at WP:ENB, moved to newly created WP:ENI: original thread
 * 2) Continued discussion at User talk:SandyGeorgia
 * 3) Continued discussion at User talk:MastCell
 * 4) Separate but related discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales
 * 1) User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer

Proposed
This proposed version for use on en.wikipedia emerged from discussion at User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer and several other on-Wiki talk pages and external websites: I am planning to install it on Tourette syndrome (where I am the only significant contributor) unless a significant consensus against emerges. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:28, 29 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Are you proposing to blanket this template on all medical pages, or just a selection, and if so how are the articles to be selected? Lesion  ( talk ) 20:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And for those of is that have missed all those discussions elsewhere, could You explain the reasons to add it? --WS (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added the discussions I'm aware of above; there may be some I missed. I'm not "proposing to blanket this template" anywhere yet, but I do believe it's time to reconsider and discuss.  There is too much evidence that people take Wikipedia medical content seriously, and aren't aware much of it is written by RandyFromBoise.  As I am the "RandyFromBoise" author of a medical FA, I am more than happy to be one test case, and install the disclaimer.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I would support adding it to the bottom of all medical articles by bot. Additionally would want it centered. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I want it at the top of drugs, conditions, but not BLPs. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * We have WP:NDA. Much content exist on the web that is wrong. Maybe we need to convince manufactures of computers to add a warning when people turn their computers on or log onto the internet.  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * When you buy a power tool, it says "Warning, death may result". Not, warning if you're a dork and don't know how to use this tool, death may result.  Anyway, thanks for the link to the NDA page (which I note is guideline, not policy)-- I will point that page here. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:07, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I would support a trial if it combined a stronger statement inviting people to edit. I think anthony proposed somethinglike this a couple of years ago. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:NDA, it's weird that we consider recent death and current reason enough for a disclaimer, but not potentially life-altering content. I wouldn't mind working in some of your wording, but I'm still in favor of a more prominent disclaimer. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the reason that those are acceptable is because they are temporary and provide information to experienced editors (namely, that they shouldn't be surprised by edit conflicts). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Disagree 100% with your take. Both of those templates most clearly contain wording to warn readers (rather than "experienced editors" as you say) that the information may not be correct, as it is changing rapidly.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what they say. But IMO what they say is not the most important reason why they are permitted.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

How about this version (below)? It links the disclaimer more subtly to make the box smaller and makes the text a little less semicolon-happy. I also think "medical content" sounds a bit weird, like "content used as medicine", so I thought "do not rely on it for medical guidance" is a bit more clear. (I'll add this to the versions in my userspace as well.) alanyst 04:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I like Alanyst's version. Would be interested in trialing it to see if it increases the frequency of positive edits. I know last time we tried this people came around and removed them. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I like the bottom-most one as it doesn't state not to rely on medical content, but to be cautious when it comes to guidance. Saying do not rely on its medical content is like completely undermining the hard work we do here, and saying its all rubbish not to be trusted. CFCF (talk) 08:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I shortened it and made it sound less negative. Not sure we should be using such a template. The rationale that because other language wikipedias use these templates should be qualified with the fact that their medical content is likely of lower quality then the medical content on the English Wikipedia. Lesion ( talk ) 09:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I only support a trial of this template at the top of the page if it clearly invites people to come and fix the content in question. Additionally IMO we should keep it to one line. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Something like this was tried a while ago, but I don't think that the data were ever analyzed completely. And we did have problems with people removing them "per NDA".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think we have a moral obligation to warn our readers that what they're reading is unreliable, and that the warning needs to be prominent at the top of the article. Whether that warning has a measurable effect on the quality of editing is completely irrelevant. But that said, I think WhatamIdoing's version is concise, to the point, and may help to educate potential editors. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I have not proposed any versions. I don't know who wrote the unsigned one above my earlier comments.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, so we have six versions up here now, and it's no longer clear to me which is which or if any have consensus. Could we address the principle of a disclaimer, yes or no, and then sort out the specifics over at Alanyst's page or a proposed template page? Because I no longer know who supports what, if anything. The last one on the page now is fine with me. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:25, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Medical disclaimer: yes or no?
Should Wikipedia have a warning about our reliability at the top of each article or section that contains health-related information? (Let's address the nature of the warning in a separate discussion.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yep. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. For all the reasons I listed at the top of this discussion. We can't keep up, RandyFromBoise writes our content, we have bad student edits, internet readers hit us first from Google and take us seriously, and unlike other "bad" medical content websites, ours changes by the minute. Readers ned to know that they are reading content that anyone could have added, not even someone qualified to trim a toenail.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * All things considered, No-- whilst I appreciate the ethical arguments for, I think this template makes things look unprofessional and will further crowd the lead of articles. The rest of Wikipedia makes do with linking the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. By placing such a template we are saying that medical articles are more important, when other types of articles could also be "dangerous" to readers if they used them for guidance. The argument that non English wikis use a disclaimer template is also not particularly strong imo, since I imagine the medical content on other wikis is less well developed. Lesion  ( talk ) 19:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes in principle, though I'd phrase it as allowing disclaimers on pages with health-related information, and (as a rule of thumb) encouraged for articles or sections discussing serious maladies or treatments; but ultimately the question of whether the disclaimer is appropriate for a particular article or section should be a matter of local (article or Wikiproject) consensus, and neither mandated nor prohibited as a matter of site-wide policy. (For instance, I'd support a disclaimer on heart attack but not skin cream even though both are health related.)  But this is an improvement over the standard site disclaimer, which is hardly visible enough to alert the reader to potential misinformation in what they read.  IMO "help readers avoid being misled" outweighs "looking unprofessional" or "treating one type of article different than another". alanyst 19:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Only as a trial and only if it is brief and contains an invitation to edit. Otherwise no. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:12, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Tentative yes. I agree with Doc James, we need to be inviting readers to become editors rather than simply warning that our content is questionable. If these criteria are filled I will support a template message for a limited run after which evaluation can occur.CFCF (talk) 22:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with James. Trial first, clear indication that better writing improves the content. Anything else will make us look like a joke. JFW &#124; T@lk  22:47, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. I feel conflicted about this, but since so much of the medical material on WP is poor I think there is really a moral obligation at least to trial it. I think it would also be useful if, when editing an article within the scope of Wikiproject medicine, the text that appeared above the edit box very prominently pointed editors at MEDRS (analagous to what happens for BLPs): that might help address the problem "at source". Alexbrn talk 11:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, yes, absolutely yes. An "invitation to edit" is irrelevant. —  Scott  •  talk  15:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Have insert my comment here so that it follows the above edits. I feel the harms of such a proposal outweigh the gains (detailed below). --LT910001 (talk) 07:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose any disclaimer which includes anything saying "Do not rely on it for medical guidance." Wikipedia is not a resource for the exclusive benefit of the upper classes of society who are empowered to be able to use Wikipedia as a supplement to the other privileges they have to access medical information. It would be unfair and oppressive to people with less access to medical resources if the community which maintains medical content here perpetuate the false idea that most of society has better choices for access to health information than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a radically ambitious project and its failure to be a perfect medical resource highlights society's failure to provide good medical information, and not the Wikipedia community's failure to deliver this. Readers should use Wikipedia as they like and not get a bogus consumer disclaimer that they should do otherwise or even that they could do otherwise if they wished. Readers might be fairly warned of the many problems with Wikipedia's content but for most people in the world, Wikipedia is and will be for the foreseeable future the best or only medical guidance they can have for most purposes. I would sooner favor a demand that every health organization in the world drop all their other educational projects and devote all their resources to Wikipedia than I would discourage people from using Wikipedia in favor of other resources. People who have better access to better services will use them. Online and for most people, Wikipedia is the best the world has to offer despite its many faults. If this disclaimer is used then it should explicitly state what people should do instead.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   16:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support the proposal. Given the nature of wikipedia - that material is not vetted, that it is open to anyone to edit anonymously, and that content on WP can and does contain errors and distortions - I think that a prominent disclaimer is necessary for medical content in particular. I think that this is ethically necessary regardless of how WP medical content compares to other online sources, the putative impact of such a disclaimer on any readership (readers have their own responsibilities), or whether such a disclaimer might be used to attract editors to medical articles. As a largely anonymous body of editors and in the absence of any formal system of article curatorship, fact-checking or peer-review, the relationship of writers to readers is somewhat abnormal on WP. As a reader of WP content I cannot trace responsibility for content back to any individual or accountable body in any meaningful way. Given that no WP editor, even those who have eschewed the comforts of anonymity, can reasonably stand over the content of any article throughout the article's lifetime to say "I am responsible for this", there's an minimal obligation to communicate to a readership that medical content has not been verified.
 * The placement of a hyperlink to a general disclaimer at the bottom of the article, as is current practice, appears to me insufficient. This disclaimer is, practically, invisible - I wasn't even aware that it existed until I read this thread.
 * However, I think that any disclaimer should not demoralise those editors who have made good and often excellent contributions to medical content by suggesting that all such content is or should be treated as uniformly awful. I would therefore favour a more standard and moderate disclaimer, in a reasonable prominent position, to the effect that medical content "does not constitute medical advice and should not serve as the basis for any medical decision" which would link to the general disclaimer. Communicating honestly to any readership the limitations of WP content is not an act of oppression - it simply informs people and puts them in a better position to negotiate their own decisions. FiachraByrne (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I support the disclaimer because our medical content is unreliable, and a good number of our readers don't know that. It is the morally necessary thing to do. Not doing so is highly negligent. Would Lesion, James, JFW, CFCF or anyone else who opposes putting a disclaimer above all health information please explain to me the harm/s a disclaimer would do to outweigh the obvious good it would do in informing our readers? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support In the u.S. practically every health care provider has a disclaimer that basically says "If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911." It's not there to deprive callers of medical advice from their doctor, rather it's an acknowledgement that persons with emergent conditions may call their doctor instead of an A&E hospital or 911.  We should at least be cognizant of the fact that before someone calls their doctor, they may consult Wikipedia to their peril.  We need a similar "Hang up and call your doctor" message just like every healthcare professional puts on their call system.  --DHeyward (talk) 03:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support - Lots of people are not really properly aware how exactly wikipedia works and how easily various inaccurate crap can slip in. Argument that there is even worse crap out there in internet is irrelevant, its our job to ensure that our readers are properly warned, also most of those even worse sites will not be among first google search results. "Badge of shame" complaint is just plain silly. If stating reality is "shameful" then too bad, gotta get used to it.--Staberinde (talk) 18:29, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There are many less reliable sources on the internet than Wikipedia.  among hundreds of others. So yes if the warning drive people to other less reliable websites it will do harm. Some physicians provide advice that is less good than here
 * Any evidence the disclaimer will do any good? What are people going to do instead? Read Cochrane reviews? Find systematic reviews in the Lancet / BMJ / JAMA regarding their condition? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Evidence that a clear warning about the reliability of our articles would be a fair, reasonable, inexpensive, morally necessary thing? No. I can't prove that. I'm speechless that anyone would even have to ask for proof of that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Anthony, you're being asked for evidence that it will work. If we slap a banner on the top of the page, will the typical reader exhibit the well-documented phenomenon of banner blindness or will the typical reader suddenly acquire and apply critical thinking skills?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks. Let's do a trial. But let's measure both the impact on the reader's grasp of our reliability and the impact on editor behaviour. Study design and sample size is everything. If our volunteer community can't throw up someone with demonstrated expertise in this kind of research, do you think we could hire someone? It's tedious and exacting work. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the vast majority of people who do not contribute to Wikipedia tend to have a low opinion of the information on Wikipedia, and those who regularly contribute certainly understand that it is advisable to take this information cum grano salis. What we are actually doing is then duplicating information already supplied by the disclaimer at the bottom of every article, and telling people what they already know. It may just be more clutter a the top of the article imo... Lesion  ( talk ) 11:14, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You don't know that. Do you? Vast majority, eh? Where's your source? What you just said there doesn't match my experience at all. There is a wide spectrum of understanding about the reliability of Wikipedia among the people I know - it seems to be related to how much time they spend online. We have to duplicate the information found in the current disclaimer because most people don't read it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yep, a lot of the people coming to the web for health information are not web-savvy research-savvy people like most of us, but often people who aren't necessarily heavy information consumers, who may have just been diagnosed with some scary disease and are desperately looking for more information. The web is notorious bad for this: it would be good if WP could become an oasis of reliability, but right now it's not. Alexbrn talk 11:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Here I trace out a roadmap to that oasis. I'd very much appreciate your feedback on that, if it interests you. It's off-topic for this thread, but I'd welcome your thoughts on my talk page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * @Anthony: I based that view on my conversations about Wikipedia with people offline and online (not wikipedia). Vast majority have generally low opinion of Wikipedia in my experience. You ask for a source yet you provide no source for your own opinions apart from your own experience. It could be argued that there is no real evidence that people use medical information on Wikipedia and end up harming themselves. Perhaps your link is evidence that people don't read the disclaimer, I don't know. Perhaps people do read it, but only once and then not again. This whole thread is opinion in fact, so kindly do not selectively ask for sources for my opinion =D Lesion  ( talk ) 12:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah. You sum this up nicely. You propose we wait for someone to get hurt before we act. I think it is just self-evident that we have a duty to advise our readers of the unreliability of our content. I've seen comparisons above with crap medical sites and the impenetrable user-unfriendly scholarly literature. Are you, James, saying we should model our transparency on that of those crap sites? And no, due to its density, the scholarly literature is no substitute for Wikipedia. We own the encyclopedia space. And we have a duty to our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Unless we can show that it improves the quality of our articles I oppose its addition. Will clutter the page. Emedicine has issues and is better than many sites . They put their warning at the bottom. Doc James  (talk ·contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Precisely as I said, Anthony. We already have a general disclaimer, and there is plenty of rubbish health content online that doesn't have a disclaimer at all (e.g. people's personal web pages about obscure medical theories). That is the status quo. What would I like to see in a disclaimer that makes it worth the implied embarrassment of saying "what you are about to read may or may not suck"?
 * Firstly, I want the decision to be reversible. Therefore, a trial seems reasonable. Ideally we should have some way of determining whether the trial is achieving the desired effect. We could look at article feedback results with and without a disclaimer.
 * Secondly, we want people to understand that if an article does suck, its informative vacuum is not forever but it can be fixed provided people improve the content based on sources that everyone can trust.
 * I share Sandy's frustration with the accumulation of bad stuff in so many articles, but I think we need a little bit more faith, and we need to support people like James who are systematically attacking the highest-impact articles and working them up to impeccably high standard (as evidenced by GA/FA status). I am saddened that with work and other commitments I currently lack the uninterrupted editing time to make beautiful articles (although I still want to get aortic dissection to GA and get Barend Joseph Stokvis to FA - one day....) JFW &#124; T@lk  13:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "Support James?" What are you talking about?
 * Why do you want it reversible? Please tell me, what harm does a disclaimer do that clearly outweighs the obvious good it would do those who are unaware of an open wiki's inherent unreliability? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:21, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * . What I am talking about is this: James has been systematically working on high-impact articles, and that is an effort that deserves all the support it can get. Even if it's cheering from the sidelines and the occasional GA review.
 * I think it is very easy to support a disclaimer on the basis of the precautionary principle (more warnings = better), but I prefer to start from the premise that people currently know that our content is likely to suffer from variations in quality, and any warning must therefore confer a measurable benefit compared to the status quo. JFW &#124; T@lk  15:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * What do you base that premise on, JFW (people currently know that our content is likely to suffer from variations in quality)? Have you never met anyone who is amazed to discover Wikipedia can be altered by anyone at any time? Never? Not one? Your position is morally bankrupt. And all of this mewling that "Oh, warnings don't work; it might make people stop looking stuff up on the internet; there are worse sites; etc., etc., ad nauseam simply disgusts me. I don't know if I have the stomach for this. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:19, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Anthony, I am surprised at the sudden rhetoric. If you are disgusted by other people's positions you should leave the discussion. I am certainly not planning to respond further. JFW &#124; T@lk  14:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * That works both ways: it will warn the reader off both the good and the bad information.  The reader does not actually know which is which.  Because of cognitive biases, people who are told "This is unreliable" are prone to believing that the stuff they personally disagree with is the unreliable stuff and the stuff they agree with is the reliable stuff.  So let's imagine an article that really is correct, but the reader doesn't agree with it:  do you want the reader to say, "Huh, it says that when your blood pressure is 160/100 that you really should take your meds, but it says at the top that this is all unreliable anyway, so I'll just skip taking my blood pressure pills."  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, we don't have to put it on articles that are reliable. Here I outline a proposal to create a class of reliable article. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * @JFW: the difficulty lies in getting that mini-essay message across in one concisely worded line-- see above discussion =D Lesion  ( talk ) 13:39, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I cannot speak for James, but I don't think there is "obvious good" (unless one simply assumes that the disclaimer will have its intended effect) and the harm is clutter. I agree with doing this as a reversible trial, because the argument for doing it is unconvincing (i.e. not clearly "better" than what we have now). A similar argument could be used to support pop-up disclaimers with required acceptance, etc - I know that's a bit of a straw man, but it's along the same path without a clear barrier. -- Scray (talk) 13:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I honestly think this will be eye catching clutter, which will trigger a mental "Well duh" from 95% of readers. I don't believe it will stop someone using Wikipedia for personal medical information. Lesion  ( talk ) 13:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If this is to be a trial, we should agree on some method of quantifying the baseline status of article(s) compared to the status at the end of the trial period, and how to distinguish this from any change in the article that would have occurred anyway. Someone mentioned analyzing reader feedback. Lesion  ( talk ) 13:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If this is intended to be a trial, we should get plenty of people to do the boring work of analyzing the data, so that it's not just one (possibly very busy) person stuck with the grunt work. Good design is important, but unprocessed data is worthless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If there's to be a trial, yes. Does anyone know of a volunteer who has genuine expertise in this kind of study design, and who might be interested in taking this on? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The intended effect we're discussing in this thread is informed readers. We can, in fact must, survey the readership before and after deployment to see if they're better informed about Wikipedia's reliability. If you want to discuss trialling WP:Invitation to edit, please do so in another thread. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The reason why we are discussing an "invitation to edit" is that I (and it appears others) only support a banner if it results in improved articles / more positive edits. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem with your proposal for me, if I'm reading you correctly, is that you'll remove the disclaimer if the "invitation to edit" aspect fails to show an impact. Have I got that right? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes I would not support full rollout if the "invitation to edit" aspect does not have a benefit. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem with that logic, Doc J, is that we'd be initially (per these samples) inviting people to contribute only if they have access to high quality medical sources ... not everyone does ... it may not be a fair trial. For example, if we start by me putting a template on  Tourette syndrome, and no edits result, does that say a) the article was fine, b) readers didn't have access to journal sources, or c) something else?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We discussed various trial designs in the archive of WT:ITE. I'm sure a fair trial could be run on that aspect. You'd need a big sample size. The problem with this discussion is we're not being engaged on the merits or demerits of a prominent medical disclaimer. James and JFW are just saying a prominent stand-alone disclaimer is out of the question - and not justifying their position. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not sure we should put such a notification on any FA? Maybe should choose non GA/FA articles... Lesion  ( talk ) 16:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * On the point of surveying readers: This is currently very difficult.  And I'm superbusy for the next couple of weeks.  But if you'll remind me about it, say, after Christmas, then I'd be happy to see whether something like WP:AFT5 could be used for gathering reader feedback on specific articles.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Sue, a bonus please. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, with the mild qualification that the exact optimum wording be worked out soon, and perhaps some indications regarding whether or not some articles of this type, which could perhaps result in serious negative consequences for people who might follow them blindly, should perhaps be included in "pending revisions" and, maybe, a new form of "expert pending revisions" of people perhaps vetted by the community to be considered trustworthy in such matters. Maybe an RfC or some other means to get broad input would be best. I myself, as a non-medical editor, might like "Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia anyone is allowed to edit. As such, it can happen that less than reliable information or biased information can and often is added to various articles. While we do everything in our power to ensure that such information is quickly appropriately edited, and welcome all editing based on high-quality sources, wikipedia should not be considered a substitute for professional advice." or something like that. John Carter (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Musing on this, ultimately I think I support - prefer the disclaimer to have a request and link to WP:MEDRS which I think we need to promote any way possible. I'd try and slot this in the top of the infobox at the top RHS rather than a tag at top-centre. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:59, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose, per the reasoning of LT910001 given below. --WS (talk) 04:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose It is unnecessary and will clutter up the article to have a banner 'of shame' saying basically our content is not worthy of trusting and therefore don't bother reading it as it may very well be garbage. Why not just delete all the medical articles if they are potentially harmful and shut down the medicine project. What is the point? It will discourage people of writing never mind reading our articles. A disclaimer at the bottom of the article are sufficient. Undoubtedly some people will indeed use wikipedia and the internet to diagnose themselves but most of the treatments are prescription only medicines or therapies and thus they will have to seek out a healthcare professional to get the treatment so how can wikipedia be causing any significant or widespread harm? I am of the view that overall wikipedia is a force for good but we live in an imperfect world. Further we already carefully word our content so that it is factual and not instructional in tone. I understand the drive to protect people from harm though - I guess if there is a consensus to add some warning I feel that it should not be done so as a blinding banner but a brief warning in the info box or such like but no blaring banner please.-- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  08:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * On the "banner of shame" claim, I basically wrote all of Tourette syndrome and I would proudly wear a disclaimer.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Article proposal
OK, I see some resistance to putting a template on an FA (personally, I disagree ... autism is not in good shape, and I was willing to be a guinea pig at TS, but whatevs). How about if someone who knows how to figure such things out (I don't) determines which is our most important and most viewed GA and we trial that? While we're here dickering over the small print, Wikipedia is busy promoting massive poorly sourced POV medical content (in an area upon which our readers surely based medical decisions) throughout the walled garden of Cannabis articles, which two sections down, you'll find more work than the two editors who are engaging can pretend to deal with. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I do not see a consensus to add these templates and am become more and more hesitant that we should pursue this after reading the above discussion. I see a bunch of potential problems and have a lot of unanswered questions regarding it:
 * Does it make any difference? People may just have banner blindness and ignore them all together. Thus it may be wasted effort that could be better spent on improving content.
 * And if it does make people's change their behavior will this change be positive or negative? What do we view as positive and negative behavior changes in our readers and how do we measure these? If people stop using Wikipedia, which I think is unlikely, what will they use instead? Nothing, emedicine, the websites of manufacturers, uptodate? Is this a positive or negative change?
 * Have we done a comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia to other sites? Samir and I tried to do an analysis with medical students at the U of T. We had a protocol drawn up using medical students with access to Wikipedia versus uptodate versus nothing. We wanted to look at tests scores on a licensing type exam. The ethics review committee denied the application.
 * If people decide to use nothing and become less educated about their own condition is this a good or bad thing? There are people who argue it both ways. IMO you want people activity engaged with the literature around their condition.
 * While this increase or decrease the number of positive / negative edits being make? Could this banner increase poor quality edits to articles? How does one determine this? With respect to the education program we have groups that state that it is an over all benefit to Wikipedia's quality and groups who say it is an overall harm. Who and how do we decide if this works if we trial it?
 * How much time are we going to spend working on this? It will require broad reaching consensus for implementation. This is exceedingly hard to get and requires a lot of time. Think of VE and pending changes. And determining if it works and what we define as working will be equally hard.
 * We cannot even agree on the wording to start with. Some want harsher word. Some want wording to invite people to edit.
 * There are requests that "experts" should be involved with running the trial. We of course have no money to pay said experts. Convincing the WMF to fund something is difficult / a full time job. I would say that having the foundation work on WP:Turnitin is more important.
 * What is an "expert"? This is far from a single unified group. I have asked a good dozen lawyers questions regarding the copyright of X-rays and have gotten more than a dozen different answers. The same occurs in medicine. With respect to breast cancer screening we have people come to Wikipedia and curse us as we contain the conclusions of the Cochrane collaboration and we have people come and curse us as we contain the conclusions of the US services task force among others. The conclusions of these two groups are more or less opposite. And each camp things we at Wikipedia are killing people if we provide any space for the views of the other camp.
 * Anyway I am not convinced and going back to editing content. One of may favorite teachings from medical school is "don't just do something, stand there" used in the context of interventions of unknown benefit. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * James:
 * 2. Does it make any difference? We won't know until we try. Some not-completely-stupid people think it may and is therefore worth doing - some such people disagree.
 * 3. Have we done a comparison with other sites? Why are you asking that? That other sites are more or less reliable would be good to know but you have failed to show what relevance that has to this question.
 * 4. People may stop looking things up on the internet. Really?
 * 5. "Will this increase or decrease the number of positive / negative edits being make? Could this banner increase poor quality edits to articles? How does one determine this?" Intelligent, non-biased before/after study. The few "studies" I've seen of the education program have featured none of these qualities.
 * 6. You don't have to do a thing. In fact, given your and JFW's attitudes, I'd rather you both stay right out of it.
 * 7. "We cannot even agree on the wording to start with." We're still discussing that. We (those who actually want a disclaimer) will agree on wording easily enough if those who don't will stop throwing spanners in.
 * 8. "There are requests that "experts" should be involved with running the trial. We of course have no money to pay said experts." The WMF does. You're the one who insists we "prove" that warning our readers of our unreliability is a good thing. Please don't turn around and say, "Oh, but that can't be proven because we can't afford the expertise, it's too hard to convince the WMF, they should spend their money on other things."
 * 9. What is an expert? In this instance it's simple, since we're doing a straightforward reader survey. There are polling companies in every civilised nation whose expertise is for sale.
 * Frankly, unless you can come up with something better than this to oppose a disclaimer, I'd rather you did go back to editing and JFW went back to whatever it is he does. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:07, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This discussion is increasing my opposition. We should all go back to improving content. At least we all agree that that is something which needs to be done and will likely have a positive effect. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments from LT910001
Have made a separate section to stop this getting too messy. I do not support this proposal. Although I agree that we should strive to keep information accurate, reliable, and sourced, and I agree it's noble goal, I don't support this for the following reasons:
 * 1) It will probably drive many users away from Wikipedia to other sites that do not contain this tag. The majority of which will be less reliable.
 * 2) I think that at some point we will need to acknowledge our readers as free agents liable to make their own decisions about reliability (as flawed as this may be), there is no claim to reliability anywhere.
 * 3) This tag does not appear in every article on other (print) encyclopedias, of which we have been shown to be of equal or greater reliability.
 * 4) Putting the tag on pages is very effort-intensive and there doesn't appear to be consensus, so if consensus is built around removing it this will be equally intensive.
 * 5) I shudder to think of the appearance of pages with several tags already and this additionally.
 * 6) Additional tags already exist for information that is not reliable: a tag for articles of unknown reliability, tags for pages with poor sourcing, tags for pages with disputed neutrality, and so on. These serve a similar purpose.

We could create a new tag along the lines of ('this page appears to be written like medical advice, of which it is not '), and then treat this like a cleanup tag. From my read of the above text, at this stage there does not appear to be consensus in either direction. --LT910001 (talk) 07:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think User:Casliber's version, below, is going to scare anyone away - it conveys the need for caution without insulting the authors of our better work. Can you live with that wording?
 * "There is no claim to reliability anywhere." Yes there is. We claim it for scholarly reviews, high-quality textbook chapters, government and professional and scholarly society position statements, etc. Our articles can achieve that level of "reliability" with scholarly review but until an article has received that attention from the same calibre of scholars who bestow "reliability" on our reliable sources, our readers deserve to know.
 * The Nature study that found our quality comparable to that of Britannica was tiny - as have been any subsequent similar studies. Randy can't impose his theory of cannabis and cancer on Britannica.
 * Adding and removing the disclaimer can be done by a bot, automatically.
 * Sorry. I have no answer to that criticism. Other than to say that 90% of the tags I see at the top of articles can safely be dispensed with - but not this one.
 * None of our content is WP:MEDRS reliable. It can all be. It should all be. We have a duty to make it so ASAP. But presently it isn't.
 * Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Version Cas Liber

 * I oppose a disclaimer trial as unnecessary. I especially oppose a trial whose success or failure is determined by whether it measurably affects readers' conversion to editors. But if we're to persuade the wider community, we'll need unanimity within WPMED - all of us behind it, including long-time contributors such as James, JFW and new chums. None of us will get exactly what we want but I think we're approaching something most of us can support.

User:Casliber has proposed version CL here (Please read his thoughtful reasoning): Is this a version you can support? (We can discuss issues such as the nature of the trial and where to place the disclaimer elsewhere.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * sandy recommends removing the 'us'. I am okay with that. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this thread potentially a waste of effort? There is no clear consensus for any extra disclaimer to be inserted at the head of medical articles currently. Lesion  ( talk ) 06:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Seppi333's 2¢
Too lazy to read through the whole thread, so I'll just give my thoughts/advice: "A medical disclaimer is a good idea, but some people personalize things, so don't address the reader directly when disclaiming and, more importantly, don't tell the reader what to do. A disclaimer of any kind, be it investments, medicine, or, more important than both of those, your skydiving parachute, should just be cautionary (if legally possible), not a request or command.  An unnecessarily strong statement just runs the risk of alienating/offending the target audience."

no.
Okey lets go through the basics. There is a very long standing consensus that such disclaimers are a bad idea. No localised position on single wikiproject can overturn that. You want to introduce them I'm afraid its the slog through the village pump and similar.

The idea that medical is a special case doesn't really hold. For example cooling towers which I doubt you would classify as medical have a multiple square mile kill radius (ah Legionnaires’). And despite what you may think the number of unregistered ones the HSE tends to find after each outbreak suggests not everyone with one knows what they are doing. Our articles on aspects of driving and motor vehicles again have a fairly impressive risk profile. Forestry industry, american football (given the head industry risk) the list goes on. Then there is the usual stuff on law and finance.

Oh and your notices don't even work on the mobile site so general disclaimer it is.

©Geni (talk) 21:10, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The guideline at the top says "occasional exceptions may apply" Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Agree that we should hesitate before claiming that medical articles are a special case. Lesion  ( talk ) 06:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The guideline lists the exceptions and the entire run of our medical articles doesn't qualify as "occasional".12:58, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Aaah yes, this that became a guideline in July 2005 with the participation of about 15 people - before we were inlining references etc. @Lesion, medical articles are a special case due to the considerable issues with sources and claims that are much less prevalent in other articles. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Which means it has been accepted for ~8 years while being debated often enough to make the perennial proposals list. That isn't something a single wikiproject can overturn. Your assertion that they are a special case is meaningless without evidence.©Geni (talk) 16:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

This sort of "it's against the guideline" doesn't impress me. Yes, it's against the current guideline. So? If people want to do this, then they can make a WP:PROPOSAL to change the guideline. WP:Consensus can change even at guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree we would need a wider discussion. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not 100% opposed to medical disclaimers, but I do have to remind people here that any decision made from a discussion here is largely a local consensus specifically confined to WikiProject Medicine. In order for such a proposal to become valid, it would require overall community consensus Wikipedia-wide, since No disclaimers in articles is an existing guideline. The current consensus is that we do not place disclaimers within articles, because we have pages such as General disclaimer, Medical disclaimer, Content disclaimer et cetera which fulfil this purpose. Sure, there's no specific policy on the issue, but the existence of a content guideline is enough to justify seeking overall consensus first prior to making such a huge change from the status quo. I recommend starting something over at the WP:Village pump. -- benlisquare T•C•E 01:10, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , I think starting something at the Village Pump in the New Year would be better than doing it over the holidays, when many are busy. Also, the discussion here is to help tease out which version we would even be proposing.  Going forward to a broader audience without better definition here would be, IMO, premature.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:29, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

, do you not find it interesting that you are the only editor who has removed the disclaimer, and you've removed it four times? Are admins immune to edit-warring blocks? You seem to be the only editor troubled by the disclaimer. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:21, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Four time over a period of two weeks while trying to debate the matter? Yeah I'd expect that to fall within the limits of what is allowed.©Geni (talk) 03:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Version L

 * Latest proposed version, per User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The necessity of disclaimers
This piece in the Boston Globe, by a medical student, underlines the importance of making our readers aware that our medical content is not authoritative. (Diff link added for reference.)

—  Scott  •  talk  18:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Another 2¢
My viewpoint may change as I think about this more, but I think I would support the versions that refer readers to a medical professional but oppose the others. For some wordings, I think that disclaimers on certain articles, like vaccination (or MMR vaccine controversy), are likely to do more harm than good - it will become an argument for anyone who wants to discredit the scientific consensus on these topics, and a prominent reason for a reader (who might otherwise have been educated on the topic) to reject that consensus when it is presented in Wikipedia. On a similar note, many templates can be used for POV pushing, but without the right wording, I think this would be one of the worse ones (when does an article or section have enough medical content to deserve a template? etc). So I would probably oppose any template that contained the phrase "Do not rely on..." but I would probably support the template "Wikipedia is not a substitute for the advice of a medical professional. Please help us improve our medical content using high quality sources."

Of course, I do see the problem this is meant to solve, but I'm not sure this is the best way to address it. Is it possible to write some scripts to identify (and maybe tag) non-MEDRS sources being used in medical articles? That would probably meet with a lot less opposition and wouldn't require a community-wide discussion. Or, if such a discussion is to be initiated anyways, I think raising MEDRS to policy might be a better goal, and one which I would support unreservedly.  Sunrise    (talk)  05:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Suitability of our FAs
Some participants in these discussions have expressed the idea that our FAs don't need a disclaimer. (We used to have a nice chart of our FAs on the WP:MED mainpage, which seems to have disappeared along with a lot of other helpful content, but I digress ... ) So, looking at FA, I can say that at minimum the following have isssues: Those are just the ones I know about; I would guess that 50% of our medical FA content would not stand up to WP:WIAFA scrutiny. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Asperger syndrome has not been updated since Eubulides (its main author) left, although I did update it for DSM5.
 * Autism Ditto AS, Eubulides author, not only is it outdated, but DSM5 completely changed the scheme in autism spectrum disorders, so this article needs major work.
 * Major depressive disorder has always been a sourcing problem, needs attention, and may be outdated per DSM5.
 * Menstrual cycle isn't being watched, you only need glance at the References to see the aricle has likely fallen from FA status.
 * Schizophrenia is outdated and has some sourcing issues.
 * Water fluoridation is another Eubulides FA, and I doubt it has been maintained to standard since he left.

Draft RFC started in user space
I haven't gotten very far on it yet, but want to have an RFC ready for after the holidays, when it can be moved out of my userspace and announced at the Village Pump, other central places:


 * User:SandyGeorgia/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer.

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:55, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Did you want comments/edits done in your userspace? There are some interesting background discussions at Wikipedia_talk:Medical_disclaimer, worth reviewing first.LeadSongDog come howl!  17:04, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You can comment either here or at User talk:SandyGeorgia/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:05, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Picture on Neck pain
The lead image for neck pain has been a photo of a guinea pig with torticollis for at least one year (first talk page objection raised in 2012: Talk:Neck pain). Comments? Alternative images? Many thanks, Lesion  ( talk ) 01:32, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This image was free File:Day 80 - A Pain in the Neck (2347498204).jpg. There were a few other potential candidates at Flickr, but as Flickr has done an interface revamp I haven't been able to access copyright info. I'm not unsure whether this image is allowed seeing as his face is visible, but it is in any case freely licensed. CFCF (talk) 10:45, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your search. I placed a suggested anatomic diagram of the cervical spine on talk:neck pain. With regards this image, sorry, but I don't like it ... this kind of image should be avoided on Wikipedia imo... they have a kind of artificial, advertising tone ... see also the lead image on sleep for what I am talking about. Lesion  ( talk ) 14:11, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it may be hard to find a less specific image without the undertones of artificiality and advertising. An image of a neck with red color for pain is hardly better, as is the case at Lumbago. The author claims to genuinely have experienced neck pain even if the posture may be slightly forced. The image on Pain is clearly real but is in my view pretty much the same thing.
 * Looking elsewhere, there are a number of X-ray images on Wikipedia that may suffice, showing different diagnoses that would be relevant for neck pain.File:Cervical fracture dislocation C6-C7.jpeg, File:Retroabscess10.JPG, File:RetrolistheseC35grade1.PNG, File:Morbus_Bechterew.jpg CFCF (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, it is going to be difficult to portray pain in a picture. I don't have a problem with the lead image on pain. It is not artificial. Regarding the first image you suggested however, given this:, I do not think we should pander to this exhibitionist, for want of a more polite term. For that matter, was there any need for the subject to be topless in this photo?
 * Not sure these x-rays are suitable either...
 * What about a diagram of nerves ... this is indirectly relevant to pain... I was looking at our Cervical plexus article, not sure if you would be happy with any of those? Lesion  ( talk ) 23:10, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the Sleeping photo is a problem, and while the Neck pain photo is a little "artistic", I think it's good to provide a photo that anyone can understand (i.e., not X-rays and nerve diagrams). What some people call "artificial" or "advertising", others will call "professional".
 * I've seen people complain about professional-looking photos before, e.g., saying that we should show a casual snapshot of a blood glucose sitting on a wooden table rather than a photograph that was carefully arranged and has a neutral background. I haven't been convinced by these arguments in the past.  I'm actually glad that Colin's amazing, very professional photo is in the lead of Clothes iron.  We should encourage high-quality images.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not attacking professional images in general, just this particular flavor of image which I am finding it hard to describe. They are the kind of photos you get from commercial image repositories. E.g. these I found on getty images by typing in "pain" (not free images, for illustration only):
 * for neck pain?
 * for toothache?
 * ] for low back pain?
 * They are artificial, devoid of emotion, and you see them all over the internet on sites which are selling something. They set the wrong tone for Wikipedia since the eye is so used to seeing them accompany some ad or other. I know this is not a particularly strong argument, but for this reason I think it is better to stay with an anatomic diagram of nerves for neck pain... Lesion  ( talk ) 02:26, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Gut-brain axis
I came across this article, which was apparently created about a month ago. Seems to rely a bit too heavily on primary sources, and needs reorganization. Help would be appreciated. Jinkinson  talk to me   What did he do now?  16:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Gut-Brain Axis is the article. It is a hot mess. Yobol (talk) 16:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Unsee! Unsee! Alexbrn talk 16:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like an educational assignment. Looie496 (talk) 16:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I removed some copyvio, and would appreciate a check by someone who has access to journals to see if the rest of article may also be copyvio. Yobol (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I moved it to lowercase title. The topic is getting a lot of attention as being relevant to irritable bowel syndrome, other types of dysmotility, and potentially obesity. JFW &#124; T@lk  17:27, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Not even the article cited in the lede is a secondary source. First thing that came to mind for me was in relation to anatomy Rostrum (anatomy) (which I see now is a very poor article indeed). I'm not sure this article can persist in the form it is in now. CFCF (talk) 12:06, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Refering to neuro-axis CFCF (talk) 11:50, 14 December 2013 (UTC) [[Image:Human Neuroaxis-en.jpg|thumb|150px|right]]

This still needs attention. I don't have journal access-- has anyone checked the remaining text for copyvio? Does this article need to be redirected? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Tumescent liposuction
The page Tumescent liposuction was tagged as disputed in June of this year, but since it was not in this WikiProject, no one who might settle the dispute noticed. I have just added a WikiProject banner (I also added class and importance ratings, but someone more knowledgeable than I should probably review those). I'm also bringing it up here, in the hopes of speedier resolution. I gather from the talk page that the disputed issues relate to tone and lack of discussion of the procedure's risks. Cnilep (talk) 04:37, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of it is unreffed. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:06, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not anymore. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I retrieved this section from archives because ... it's baaaack! I've been reverted. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow it reads so much like an advertisement. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Relatedly: Blepharoplasty & Breast reduction. Alexbrn talk 08:02, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Vital articles level 4
Looking at Vital articles/Expanded/Biology and health sciences there seems to be a bias away from medical content and towards non-human biology. There are there 159 articles on birds and 110 on medical content. Furthermore the articles on anatomy are mixed between human and non-human articles. Any thoughts? Who makes these lists? CFCF (talk) 13:04, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is an overview of the selection process Vital articles/Expanded. I don't really think its proportionate that there are 1050 articles on organisms, and around 220 on medicine or health. CFCF (talk) 13:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what to do in response to this. Here are my thoughts, but I can make no conclusion.
 * The Vital Article listing project has been contentious, time consuming, and does not actually produce content.
 * It is not obvious that in the past listing articles here has resulted in significant development of those articles, but I do feel that some day, articles listed here will be targeted for development in a useful way somehow.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation has always pushed for development of these articles, and since it is rare to get their support for particular community projects, that has value.
 * People at this WikiProject like medicine but most of the rest of the community has an aversion to touching medicine. This project gets a lot of respect and most people show that respect by staying hands-off, which is is both good and bad. I expect that this means that many people would be adverse to developing health articles even if they were listed there.
 * Not only are the health articles on Wikipedia extremely popular as compared to health information elsewhere, but also, the health articles on Wikipedia are extremely popular as compared to other Wikipedia articles. I do not have data to back either one of those claims, but eventually that data will have to be compiled, and when it does, it will give a huge amount of insight into what medical articles should be on the list. For example, the Wikipedia article on Metformin is probably the most consulted publication on metformin, and it is among the top 0.1% of Wikipedia articles by popularity as measured by pageviews. This means something - I am not sure what. Wikipedia is being used heavily as an information source for particular treatments and medical procedures. Perhaps 300 of them are super popular (within the top 1%) among all Wikipedia articles, and perhaps only 15 of these are currently listed as vital. The vital article list is more of a setup for a category structure than development of the topics which people are actually demanding. I think the article on metformin is "vital", but right now, vital articles are being defined in some way that would not accept articles like this in the list. I am not sure how to describe what is happening there.
 * Birds are awesome but for example, the upper limit of popularity for a bird (pigeon) is 40,000 when many mediocre health articles get that much traffic. Most organism articles are much less popular. Most "vital" articles are much less popular.
 * For as long as vital articles are just a theoretic construct unrelated to reader demand, I think medical editors will have a bad time contributing there.
 * For as long as there is no data about reader demand to specific categories of articles, there is no way to make a sound argument that lots of readers are demanding health content.
 * There are great tools to track traffic in categories but right now there is no precedent for making statistically sound statements on these things.
 * I want the vital article project to be a success, and I think that WikiProject Medicine should watch it and have stake in it, but I cannot at this time recommend that it would be useful for anyone here to spend their time there. The return in utility is not yet good. I have hopes that in the future non-Wikipedians or new Wikipedians, perhaps from the Open Educational Resources movement, would develop this kind of content if they recognized Wikipedia as relevant to their interests.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   15:57, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I looked at it once and than went back to writing articles. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:49, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Just checking so that it wasn't something that had been overlooked. Noticed it as some of the articles I was working on newly got vital class 4 templates added to their talk-pages. You bring up good points, and I'll forget about it for now as I have a whole list of things to do.CFCF (talk) 19:20, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, myself and another editor are now expanding an article because it was tagged as level 4. Didn't really understand what it meant apart from someone thought it was a relatively important article. Lesion  ( talk ) 16:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

What are the definitions of "alternative medicine" by "major world health organization[s]"?
At Talk:Alternative_medicine I responded to a query from a user on Reddit about the state of the article. He says that the article's definition of alternative medicine does not reflect the definitions of alternative medicine from "major world health organization[s]".

I don't specialize in science-related articles, but I would like to know what these definitions are, and if there is a need to tweak the definition in the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:56, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If an editor has challenged the current wording of the definition of alt med, let them find the sources to support their own argument... no need to do their work for them imo. If you really want to however, would suggest World Health Organization perhaps? Hope this helps.  Lesion  ( talk ) 16:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * WHO lumps together Traditional medicine, Alternative medicine, and Complementary medicine, and contrasts "TCAM" with Modern medicine (some, not not all, of which is Evidence-based medicine). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Hypothyroidism help
Hi everyone, I just wanted to make a brief second announcement about this article. The hypothyroidism article is on its way to GA status, but would really benefit from a few more experienced medicine editors discussing what revisions need to be made to make that happen. Axl has graciously been helping me, but I would really appreciate a few more individuals helping me get this important article up to GA. Thanks, happy holidays everyone! TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:04, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * It's on peer review. JFW &#124; T@lk  20:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese medicine
FYI, a cleanup request for has been filed at WT:CHINA -- 65.94.78.9 (talk) 22:55, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Bacterial Pneumonia
My husband was diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia today, he is 72. He had a ruptured colon in Sept. which resulted in removing a part of the colon and a temporary colostomy. Today they prescribed Alubuterol Inhaler and Amoxicillin 875 Mg. He was on his third day of a Z-Pack, Zithromyacin, 500 mgm. which he has now completed.

What can cause this type of bacterial pneumonia They did not tell us the type of bacteria, gram 1, gram 2 etc.

1. He does use a cpap machine

2. We are careful with his bags and bag changes with his colostomy.

3. We were in the San Joaquin valley of California for Christmas, and they also checked him for Valley Fever, but did not give us any results??? We were staying in our large building, in an office we changed into a place to stay while there as we live 7 hours away. So we stay while work is being performed. They tore out an old cold box(like meat storage or cold storage, and there is a lot electrical, dropped ceiling and flooring going on. Could this be a possible source of the bacteria?

Any opinions about this, what we should do, look for, ask for. etc.

Thank you. S. Anderson — Precedingunsigned comment added by2605:E000:F280:C400:8515:EC7B:C209:5637(talk) 03:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry. Our function here is to write articles about medical topics, but we are unable to give advice about specific situations. Looie496 (talk) 06:34, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As Looie496 states we can not give medical advice on Wikipedia, and those doctors who may be in contact with you directly are also better suited as they can discuss and review the situation in its entirety. It may be very difficult to pinpoint where bacteria come from, the only thing we can suggest is to speak with your doctor.CFCF (talk) 12:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy
I don't have a lot of time on my hands right now, but we should probably have a close look at the very new article,, as well as the biographies linked from it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This looks problematic to me. Do we have RS that proposes there is such as category as "scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy", and is there RS placing the listed scientists in this category? There's also a fringe issue: by producing a unchecked catalogue of scientists' fringe views we are (in my view) creating an article that advances/implies a certain position without the necessary context. I also have to wonder how I knew which editor had created this article before even looking at the edit history. Alexbrn talk 10:12, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * (Add) Relatedly (and sorry I have not idea how DYK works) one of the current hooks for DYK on WP's front page today is "... that an animal model of autism was used by Mady Hornig to implicate thimerosal in autism?" - which has been raised as problematic e.g. at WP:FRINGE WP:FT/N. Alexbrn talk 10:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You mean WP:FTN. :-) The extent of my understanding is that if the hook is to be altered or removed, it requires admin intervention (requested here, but none is forthcoming yet). I think that the hook being based on a non-MEDRS-compliant medical statement should be sufficient reason.  Sunrise    (talk)  11:04, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The hook is no longer on the main page. It rotated off before anything could be done - see .  Sunrise    (talk)  16:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * you're raising this important issue in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have been screaming (really) at DYK for years that they need to get some admin accountability for MEDRS and BLP issues they put on the mainpage, offering to check any DYK they will bring to my attention.  DYK refuses-- and has for years-- to put any accountability into place, and admins pass hooks to the mainpage, knowing they are medical content or BLPs, without requesting checks.    is one of the few adults over there, and she alerted me on my talk page sometime yesterday of two DYKs on the mainpage, but by the time I saw them they had a) already been promoted, and b) already pushed on to the mainpage, and it was too late for me to do anything.  The problems with DYK have been repeatedly and for years raised at DYK and at ANI-- they don't want to hear from me again, so feel free to go over there and take it on them, where it will fall on deaf ears. I've checked your contribs, and although you indicated somewhere you had raised this at DYK talk, it doesn't seem that you did.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Jinkinson posted a note on this page that directly asked for advice on this particular hook before it went live.
 * DYK is supposed to be surprising or otherwise catch the readers' attention, not to tell the whole story. It sounds to me like this one met the goal.  So long as the article told the whole story, then I don't especially mind.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * @WAID: I am assuming that when he posted at 02:47 UTC saying "it's a DYK", it was already live; that message is in fact how I noticed it. (But even if it was before, it wouldn't have been enough time to get meaningful feedback on the hook.) The article actually did not "[tell] the whole story" until I edited it at 07:20.
 * @Sandy: yes, when I left that comment I meant to refer to Main Page/Errors which I had found through a link from DYK. I did leave a message there later though.  Sunrise    (talk)  23:12, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I couldn't find sources to support the notability of this topic. The list article should be taken to AfD. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  11:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm having an flashback. JFW &#124;  T@lk  20:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I have notified the creator. We need to keep in mind that list criteria are extremely broad. We have a parallel situation at List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. In an overall sense, we have an undue weight issue, but I'm not sure that counts on the creation of lists. It does place all the fringies in one place. Maybe we need one for all the homeopathetics NOT. Maybe a case could be built using the rulings on improper fork articles. I assume they would apply to lists as well. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought that project Steve had rather demonstrated the problems with such lists. I'd suggest AFD.©Geni (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have never seen anything like this before. I just made Category:Lists of scientists known for opposing a mainstream scientific assessment.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   16:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That "known for" is a nice turn to exclude the incidentals, but the included lists don't seem to use it in their titles. Even so, these lists present a real-world problem. They tend to lock people into the position once uttered, making it more difficult for them to change that position in the face of new information or even new understanding of existing information. We also have no way of knowing when they do change their minds unless they choose to publish that. Ultimately they come down to a strange sort of argument from authority. These lists should be nuked from orbit.LeadSongDog come howl!  17:43, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Note: the article has been nominated for deletion. Comments and discussion welcomed and encouraged: List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:35, 26 December 2013 (UTC)