Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 48

I actually hate it here and I'm leaving
After this incident I have truly had enough of this place:

My current GAs olfactory reference syndrome and leukoplakia need closure, unless another editor can be found to complete them. Apologies to LT and Ian Furst who have put effort into the review on Leukoplakia.

For your info,, I was an experienced editor with over 12,000 edits, mainly to topics around oral medicine and oral pathology, and I was apparently one of the top 10 most active editors on medical pages in '13 ... but hey none of that matters. All that is important is that people like you their daily fix of belittling and bullying people who are trying to do the right thing. And, ofc you get to keep the obnoxious POV-pushing editors so good luck with that. Lesion 09:01, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The ANI discussion was re-opened. Link to the complete archived ANI discussion. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:48, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear that, it will be WP's loss. I just noticed the discussion at WP:ANI about Electronic cigarette and in my view it wasn't well-handled. From past involvement in that article, I think there has definitely been a behaviour problem there (which it seems, is continuing). I guess it's part of the Wikipedia editing experience to discover there are some things here which really suck and can't be fixed ... at least not in a timely fashion. Alexbrn talk 09:11, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Am sorry to see you leave, . You have always been a reasonable and conscientious editor with a very down-to-earth attitude about editing, and I wish you all the best in your future, LT910001 (talk) 09:22, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Lesion, I'm really sorry you had this upsetting experience. I hope you take a very well earned wiki-break and come back when you feel ready and refreshed. Always feel free to join me in the mire of obscure agricultural villages of the subcontinent requiring copyediting. ;-) Take it easy, Myrtle G. Myrtlegroggins (talk) 09:41, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Two things: 1) my thoughts on Lesion's departure, and 2) would you want to be added to WP:MISS, User:Lesion? Jinkinson   talk to me  13:53, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Your work has not gone unnoticed, and it would be a massive shame to see you go. I was near wiki-burnout in late 2005 and came close in 2008 after unpleasant interactions with even more unpleasant people. But in the end it's worth it. Don't bolt the door. Please. JFW &#124; T@lk  14:50, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes much of Wikipedia sucks and we all unfortunately have to deal with those part from time to time. Yes one needs a very thick skin to edit in certain areas. Remember "Illegitimi non carborundum" and we are here for our readers. Hope you change your mind. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:13, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I saw the ANI discussion after it was closed. I don't think the request was clear enough for most of the people who usually hang out there, who seem to spend no more than ten seconds reviewing a situation on average.  That forum isn't effective for open-ended requests for help.  If you try to be fair and non-prejudicial by saying, "Here's this problem, what do you think?", it will likely fail while they engage in a game of hot potato.  If you say, "I request a topic ban", you still might get no help, but at least they won't tell you that RSN is a good forum for dealing with WP:CPUSHing.
 * Would someone else like to take over this? An RFC/U would not be an unreasonable way to collect information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I too am displeased that Lesion says they're retiring. Of course, I cannot and will not shoulder all of the blame.  As I have already said elsewhere, yes, I stooped to sarcasm ... unfortunately, I did that after the conversation had already gone south.  I should not have been tempted to do that.  Lesion's edits have been able to move the project forward.  The sole error I find was the way they approached the ANI filing, and then the post-closing - it's probably a good thing that Lesion does NOT have extensive experience at ANI, and that's a credit to them - those who spend a lot of time a ANI are jaded :-) .  It's unfortunate that the way the ANI was filed/introduced left no other option but to close it with no action - and by the way, it wasn't me who closed it.  Lesion, I apologize rarely, but I do apologize that my attempted humour led to sarcasm that was unfortunately taken the wrong way.  It is also my sincere hope that you return to the work you've been doing.  If you have questions on how to appropriately file the concerns, please contact me - although I see some of your wise colleagues are already taking up the mantle.  Best,   the panda ₯’  19:05, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for everything you have done and contributed. I listed WikiProject Medicine at the List of cabals so that people in the future can know that they can come to this forum and ask for more opinions about the reliability of sources. This board is almost always of one mind about acceptable medical sources and anyone coming here asking for comments about a source ought to get predictable comments. I would like to think that people like Lesion can depend on this board providing people to give comments request, and I hope that there was not a problem in help being requested and this board failing to provide it.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  22:01, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * As an update,, NuclearWarfare has blocked the editor FergusM1970. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)


 * , it's sad to see you leaving, since I regard you as a very supportive coeditor. I've once taken what was meant to be a permanent leave, but I gradually returned to editing, and I hope you will too. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:58, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Really sorry to see you go Lesion; you've definitely contributed a lot to WP and WP:MED in particular. I just wanted to say thanks for all your efforts in editing and improving wikipedia; you've been a valuable asset to the project and will be missed.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 05:22, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I note with sadness that Lesion hasn't edited since 20 April. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Dosing
Can anyone point me to a good site for finding dosing recommendations. Specifically, I'm looking for evidence about metro 500 bid v qid, but there's not much in pubmed and I couldn't find a link in the article. Ian Furst (talk) 13:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't it depend on why the person was taking metronidazole in the first place? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:09, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Per the MOS we do not have dosing info on Wikipedia. We have linked to these from all medication articles in the drug box  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * thanks James - I was looking for the drugs.com link and didn't see it at the top. Appreciated.  Ian Furst (talk) 17:01, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It is labelled AHFS/Drugs.com Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:09, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Term to refer to people with autism/autistic people
Started discussion here  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:46, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Emergency Care Coordination Center
Dear medical experts: This article has just been created (not by me, I just noticed it). Perhaps someone at this site would like to check it over. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 18:02, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Anne. It looks OK to me. I've done a minor clean-up. I haven't tagged it with . Not sure if we tag government health department subsections. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email)  18:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Favoring Cochrane
I think that several people (because you might have some diversity of opinions) here should give their opinions about who is allowed to add citations to Cochrane papers in the discussion at Jimbo's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:15, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

"Category:Medicine" in Wiktionary
One possible goal is having a Wikipedia article for each medical topic categorized in wikt:Category:Medicine. —Wavelength (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I clicked one at random: ady:Medicine. I clicked through to this page. I don't see how this would be helpful for Wikipedia. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:50, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The page to which I linked has 29 topical subcategories followed by 413 language subcategories. English Wikipedia can perhaps have an article for each English word that is categorized in one or more of the 29 topical subcategories.  For example, wikt:Category:Embryology contains wikt:Category:en:Embryology, which contains tailbud ("[t]he proliferating mass of cells found at the caudal end of an embryo"), but English Wikipedia does not have an article "Tailbud".  If there are sources conforming to WP:MEDRS, perhaps there can be that article.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:00, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The article you are looking for is caudal cell mass, which is a stub. I've created redirects from tailbud and tail bud. Risker (talk) 03:03, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Nootropic - the opposite of WP:MEDRS
So, I started editing (mass-deleting text, sparing what I could, or replacing bad refs with reviews) this article... it was more or less a paragon of what MEDRS says not to do. IMO, it's now it's decent above Nootropic, mixed good/bad in Nootropic†, and abhorrently bad in every section below it. There's still a fair amount of redundancy that has yet to be deleted as well.

Given that this article is still somewhat of a WP:MED/WP:PHARM travesty, anyone want to lend me a hand? ;)

†Some have decent review refs. For the ones that don't, I thought I might be able to adequately ref them over the next week or so.

 Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 03:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Edit: Just in case it's not apparent what the problem is, the drugs section (most of the page) is basically a bunch of drug category subsections, sometimes with overly general or uncited claims regarding cognitive effects, followed by a list of related drugs. The claims about the drugs in those sections either have no ref, a primary/animal ref, or a ref on general pharmacodynamics instead of their effects on cognition (i.e., they say something along the lines of: "XYZ is a ABC agonist" as opposed to "ABC agonists like XYZ improve working memory").  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 05:12, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Additional problem: the page's nav template - Antihyperkinetics - more or less suggests that everything on there that isn't a psychostimulant (excluding clonidine/guanfacine which are nonstimulant ADHD drugs) has a cognition-enhancing drug effect. Based upon the template heading, it should just reflect the  much smaller  group of N06B ATC-coded drugs. Currently:155 drugs - should only have 36 listed.
 * Any objections to me cutting the template to a quarter of its size?  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 05:53, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

the template above  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) I just noticed that nootropics is completely off as well... ATC code N06 is the "Psychoanaleptics" group - we're calling it "Nootropics." The template doesn't look at all like the ATC classification for N06.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 06:17, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I just deleted the N06 reference in the title. I'm not going to even bother with this before I fix the article.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 00:29, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes I waded into this article a few years ago. May take another look. Trim poor quality sources. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:51, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I deleted about 2/3rds of the article. I think that's all for now - I'll try to cite what I can with reviews and delete what I can't from here.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 04:02, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject CRUK
WikiProject CRUK (involving Cancer Research UK) is listed at Database reports/New WikiProjects. —Wavelength (talk) 15:35, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm doing an announcement soon, & explaining the aims, but I've been formally in position there a week now, & have discussed what I'll be doing with some individuals here. So I'm refining what the plans are with CRUK, and will put them up for comment here, before doing a wider "launch". There's a draft start on my user page. Meanwhile I'd be interested in specific requests and thoughts - at either my user talk or the CRUK project talk, or perhaps it's best here initially. (also User:Johnbod and User:Wiki at Royal Society John) Wiki CRUK John (talk) 09:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

BBC Health
While doubtless a great source for many things, perhaps not meeting MEDRS? List of 1560 links to the site, many not from medical articles of course. I'd make a medical articles only list if I were allowed. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 8 May 2014 (UTC).


 * On a quick look, most articles with links are not medical. Unfortunately they don't link or cite properly to the stuff they are reporting - eg #1165 is a link from Alcohol and cancer to this story, as footnote 12/164 (#s from memory). Wiki CRUK John (talk) 17:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

New class! Fun students! New partnership?
Hello! Medical students of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are organizing a Wikipedia club. I have already met with some of them and will be joining their first editathon next week, scheduled for 14 May. , we were just talking about more transparency between the education program and WikiProject Medicine. This could be a pilot case for setting a precedent, and I could make an effort to do whatever we want to be our standard procedures.

Education Program:Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Expanding Wikiproject Medicine (2014 Spring)

Something unusual about this case is that these are students, but this is an extracurricular project organized by a group of classmates who want to learn Wikipedia for themselves and not as part of a class assignment. I still suggested to them that because they want to look at each others' work that using the education program course page would be right for them. Also, it is my understanding that when someone posts to the talk page of the course page, the entire class is notified of the message.

 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  19:51, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That is great. How many hours do you think you'll put in at the editathon, Blue Rasberry? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hopefully you can convince most of them to come to WikiConference USA Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:36, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * This next event starts at 7pm so I expect it will be over at 9. In New York City we have a six hour editathon of some sort every other month, and shorter meetings at least twice monthly. I met with the organizers here 3 hours already and have talked a lot since, and my hope is to be at any meeting they wish to have if we can establish a regular club for the class. Yes James, they are invited to the US national Wikipedia conference, which is just a few subway stops away. I will keep you posted.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Even though it's a club rather than a class assignment, you might want to suggest that they read WP:STUDENTS. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Seborrhoeic dermatitis
Additional eyes needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Amyloidosis
Hello - The amyloidosis article is a bit of a mess right now. The article confuses the generic term amyoidosis with the various different specific types of amyloidoses. It seems to me that this article should be describing the category of diseases that encompass the amyloidoses and that specific information about the various types (light chain amyloidosis or AA amyloidosis or whatever) should be contained in their own articles. I'm not really sure about how to go about doing this....would appreciate any help. Wawot1 (talk) 16:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with your assessment, especially after reading the treatment part. That article definitely needs some work. Heyinternetman (talk) 05:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Distributive shock
Bold rewrite done. A looking over would be appreciated. A source I don't have access to was removed, if important someone with access could add content and restore ref (see talk). Thanks.

PS considering doing some work on Septic shock guidance welcome. - - MrBill3 (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I responded on the article's talk page Heyinternetman (talk) 05:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Biochemic tissue salt
The article Biochemic tissue salt is a total MEDRS fail, needs some serious work. - - MrBill3 (talk) 06:11, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Pelvic pain
One would have thought from the title this is a legitimate topic (though - is it? or is pelvic pain just an incidental consequence of other things). Anyway - this is one weird article. Salvageable? Alexbrn talk 15:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It is a fine topic. It is like testicular pain or sore throat. A presentation / sign / symptom rather than a disease. These are a key part of emergency medicine Book:Emergency_medicine that I plan to get to. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:43, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Errors in an article
I've received permission from Kelly Martin to post her comment in another forum here:

"I do occasionally look at Wikipedia after I finish doing my research, just to see what is there. In the case of Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor, the article materially misstates the survivability rates by lumping together several different categories of tumor with very distinct presentations and characteristics.  Articles written professionally for laypeople honestly state that survivability is highly variable and difficult to predict due to the very low incidence of this class of tumors.  Articles written professionally for practitioners give much more specific information, identifying factors (e.g. tumor size, tumor location, whether the tumor is rhabdomyoblastomatous) that allow the practitioner to reasonably advise their patients and their families as to the likely prognosis.  The Wikipedia article mentions that rhabdomyoblastomatous tumors have a different name, but does not note that this is the single most significant factor in predicting survivability. In addition, the Wikipedia article is inconsistent with generally accepted practice guidelines, as published in 2012, which reflects the fact that all but one of the sources to the Wikipedia article are at least seven years old. (No excuse, though; they're also inconsistent with this well-balanced article for practitioners, from 2006.) The article's statements about the use of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are inconsistent with current best practice; recent clinical evidence has indicated that chemotherapy is problematic in patients with neurofibromatosis as chemotherapy agents may exacerbate existing benign neurofibromas (a critical fact that the article only hints at).

"I'm seriously glad I read the NIH material before I read this article; I would have been far less sanguine for the chances of my son living to see his next birthday had I read the Wikipedia article first. And I am even more glad that my son's doctors don't rely on Wikipedia for medical advice."

This is beyond me. Anyone? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Would be good to encourage them to jump on in and fix it. Some of our best articles are written by parents with kids with the conditions in question.  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Advice needed on four draft articles
Graduate students on the Mechanisms of Disease course at Roosevelt University have been editing Wikipedia in April to create and expand articles for diseases that are currently undocumented or under-documented on Wikipedia. See the Education Noticeboard here. They seem to be doing good work. For example, they turned the article on Renal vein thrombosis from this sorry state to this and created the article Otodental syndrome.

There are four drafts for completely new articles pending review at Articles for Creation. I am inclined to move them into article space, but would like this project's advice first.

Draft:Floating-Harbor syndrome (also known as Pelletier-Leisti syndrome)

Draft:Lutembacher's syndrome

Draft:Adult-onset immunodeficiency syndrome
 * This already exists as an article: Adult-onset immunodeficiency syndrome --WS (talk) 14:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I thought I had weeded out all the ones that already had articles. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Diabetes Mellitus Type 3. This one was declined by a reviewer solely on the basis that Diabetes mellitus already exists. However, Diabetes mellitus type 1 and Diabetes mellitus type 2 exist as separate articles.

Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:46, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Type three diabetes is like the Eighth Wonder of the World. It is not generally accepted. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:31, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * They need to have their references fixed and heading formatted properly. To many caps. To much bolding. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The guideline at WP:CITEVAR says they can use all the caps and bolding they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Reducing taskforce neurology's scope
Would members of this taskforce be amenable to adding to task force page: This task force covers pages relating to neurological disease and symptoms. It does not cover pages relating to peripheral or central neuroanatomy (WP:ANATOMY, WP:NEUROSCIENCE) or physiology (WP:PHYSIOLOGY).
 * Scope

Reasons:
 * This is consistent with our scope (WP:MED?), where articles pertaining to disease or injury are kept under WP:MED. ("This project supports articles related to medicine, such as diseases, conditions, and treatments for humans")
 * There is an active neuroscience wikiproject (WP:NEUROSCIENCE) which already holds these articles, and WP:ANATOMY and WP:PHYSIOLOGY articles which are already co-tagged.
 * There are a lot of the articles that could and may potentially be added to the task force, which surely under WPMED would like to focus on disease and symptoms, and under WP:NEUROSCIENCE could focus on other articles
 * Lastly, as I have already encountered, editors may waste colossal amounts of time tagging or co-tagging articles with this task force.

I'm not advocating anything other than ensuring this task force focuses around disease and symptoms rather than being constantly tagged with all manner of neuro articles that are already well tended to at the active WP:NEUROSCIENCE, and to reduce the wasted efforts of future editors. I have posted this on the talk page for the neuro taskforce but closed that thread to centralise discussion. Thoughts? --LT910001 (talk) 23:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation help needed for Elephantiasis
Greetings! Elephantiasis was recently made into a disambiguation page, and we are in dire need of medical expert help to fix about 70 incoming links from various articles. Please help if you can, thanks. bd2412 T 01:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Most likely need to go to Lymphatic filariasis Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:35, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ugh. I tidied some, but it's a mess, conflating agents, diseases, and stages. LeadSongDog come howl!  04:57, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, any help is appreciated. Please feel free to organize the page in whatever way makes it most helpful to the reader, and with whatever descriptions will make it easiest to fix those incoming links. Cheers! bd2412  T 20:20, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, I think the dabpage is workable now, if someone would please check it. LeadSongDog come howl!  03:57, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Impact factor for textbooks?
Some are held in much higher regard than others. Is there a shortcut for readers outside the specialty to tell which are the most widely used and relied upon textbooks? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:26, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * One can go to there local medical school bookstore. Each specialty usually has one or two standard textbooks that nearly all students use. My field has Tintinalli and Rosen. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:27, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Some other clues, perhaps. Has it seen multiple editions? Is it widely held in the libraries of medical schools? Is it held in the NLM? Checking worldcat can usually help with answering these. LeadSongDog  come howl!  15:06, 19 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Difficult to tell. Number of editions is a possible indicator, agree. Textbooks which are essentially compilations of chapters each written by a small group of different authors always feel more reliable than textbooks written by one or two authors. Dare I suggest that the nature of the advertising on the cover and the qualifications of the authors are useful indicators too? How many pages does it have? =) Lesion  17:37, 19 April 2014 (UTC)


 * http://www.worldcat.org/ will give you how many libraries hold a work (very biased towards western, english speaking, libraries). I consider being held by more than a 1000 libraries 'widely held' Stuartyeates (talk) 06:38, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe there would be some point in creating a list of widely used medical books here, for reference purposes? Or a list of books that we find are exceptionally good? CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 14:26, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, http://www.worldcat.org/, tells me what I want, I think. Thank you, Stuart. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:31, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * That website works if you already know the name of the book that you are considering. I sympathise with CFCF's suggestion. There are a number of books that I own because I regard them as highly authoritative—these are typically books found in all medical school & hospital libraries. I also have a few books that are specialist to my area and I consider authoritative in the field. But how would we collectively draw up such a list? Any attempt to make a comprehensive list will be accused of favouritism by editors whose preferred text is not on the list. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  10:21, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Well. We could contact the campus bookshop at every English language medical school and ask for their prescribed reading lists. A big project, but something we should be able to get funding for from the WMF, so we could pay someone to set it up. We could promise the bookshops anonymity, since we surely only need to publish the raw totals. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to start small, with a handful of medical students (or similar) posting lists of the ones that they have and/or think are common among friends at other schools. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm struggling to see the value of that. Can you expand? It might be a skewed sample, and with a bit of funding (and cooperation from the schools, of course) we could have a true survey that would be useful to us - but also useful to publishers, schools, readers, historians of medicine, etc. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't see why publishers, readers, etc., would care. (Publishers probably already know these things at least approximately anyway.)
 * The value is twofold: that we could see whether anyone would use such a list, and that we could start using it today instead of next year.  We don't really need to know that a textbook is the most popular to decide whether it's reliable.  (There are even good reasons not to artificially limit your information only to the most popular:  "popular" is often "traditional" rather than "best".)  However, people need to know that there's a common one called Janeway's Immunobiology, because knowing the title of a decent textbook helps you find a reliable source.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:06, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * There would be some value in knowing the name of the textbooks used at one or two schools. The benefit of a complete survey would be knowing how popular a textbook is with course designers. I agree that doesn't say everything you want to know about a book, but it tells you more than just knowing at least one or two schools use it. I'll have a think. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:16, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a collaborative effort with wp:Wikiproject Books and wp:Wikiproject Education? Something tells me the textbook industry already has best seller lists that might help. LeadSongDog come howl!  04:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Autism Research Institute
Tons of biomedical information with no MEDRS. Edit warring. I have worked up the references that are there and applied appropriate tags, made a detailed explanation on talk page, AN3RR report. A new editor has made a poorly formed (it doesn't even point to the article) Dispute Resolution Noticeboard filing, then proceeded to make multiple reverts without waiting for any input or doing any consensus building. This group continues to push the vaccine autism connection and has a laundry list of beyond questionable treatments including chelation for autism. For a little background on their current director see this QuackWatch article. See this publication from the organization for their ideas of biomedical treatments and research. Some quality project medicine input would be valuable. - - MrBill3 (talk) 08:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Medical articles and jargon
I'm getting to the point where I hesitate to look up medical information on Wikipedia because nearly all the articles are too technical and seem geared to medical professionals and students rather than the average Wikipedia user. Is this the kind of thing that can be reviewed and changed by some kind of Wikipedia board or science group? Thank you very much. Rissa, copy editor 01:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Wrond desk for this query - try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. Nthep (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Risssa, I agree with you, and so do a lot of us here. It's difficult, because the people who understand the material best are kind of used to all these technical terms and don't realize how difficult it can get for other people.  We also have people who want to use medical jargon because it's more accurate (sometimes it is, other times, it's just showing off).  The goal is to WP:Make technical articles accessible, although sometimes it's extremely difficult to write entire articles in plain English.
 * I'd consider it a favor if you posted here whenever you found an impenetrable section or paragraph in an article. Just give us a link to the article, paste the most important parts to fix here, and tell us that you can't understand it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I would rather say that lack of additional explanations is the real issue. There are many things that are wrongly presumed to be quite obvious. Well, they are actually, but not for regular readers. -- Winter eu (user talk) 00:50, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I would like to see more articles with both the precise technical language, where this is not easily simplified, and more generally accessible language, especially in the lead, where I think the problems are often most prominent. This can be achieved in normal prose, but it might be good to have a convention where we have a box in the lead with an accessible summary, rather like the "in a nutshell" boxes for guidelines, but rather longer and perhaps not at the top.  For example, many articles on drugs, which start out very technical, could benefit from this approach. Johnbod (talk) 01:03, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's a good idea, but a bit tricky. The encyclopedic character of the article could be altered. -- Winter eu (user talk) 12:03, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Creating Simple English translations of articles is another option that would leave the original article available for advanced readers. I want to voice my agreement with above statements that the biggest problem is a lack of realization of when articles are getting too technical and urge readers who don't understand part of an article to tag the section with and post on the talk page what specifically you can't understand. --ITasteLikePaint (talk) 13:17, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Category:Glossaries of medical terms might be helpful in this matter.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with WhatamIdoing and Johnbod. Please feel free to post links to the awkward sections here, and one of us will attempt to simplify it. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  10:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I would wholeheartedly agree with much of what is said here. As well as impenetrable jargon, medicine seems to reinvent its terminology frequently.  I would suggest that there is a place for articles to acknowledge and explain historic and common terms.  As a concrete example: I have been documenting the 1952 Easington Colliery disaster.  Two rescuers died (along with 81 others), one due to "emphysema" and one due to "bullous emphysema".  Emphysema is a simple redirect to Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the lead does at least mention emphysema.  Bullous emphysema however has no link and on suggesting the article should mention it was told it did.  There is one mention in the second sentance of section 4.3 other tests of "bullae".  I do not want to hold the COPD article up for criticism; it is clearly well written and researched (GA status).  It is symptomatic though of the problem being written about here.  I was tempted to "be bold" and add the explanation gleaned from the Mine Inspector's report but I think it would be neither welcome nor right for a non-specialist to interfere with important medical pages. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I have added a couple of sentences to the "Pathophysiology" section, with a reference. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  20:02, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Axl. That deals with the particular, but my general comments still stand; many of Wiki's medical articles are impenetrable.  It is difficult to strike a balance between on the one hand WP:RF (which indicates high school students or non-tabloid readers) and WP:MEDMOS (in particular section 2) and on the other a desire to use precise technical language which is translatable and understood by trained medical practitioners world-wide.  Indeed, this is a general problem for Wiki and all encyclopedias; would knowing that a figure in a wall painting was "nimbed" help unless you were a specialist in iconography or heraldry? Thanks once again Axl. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:42, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. At WikiProject Medicine, we are all familiar with this problem. We do try to write using comprehensible language, but this often isn't easy in medical articles. As I mentioned above, if you come across articles/sections that are unusually obscure, please post about them on this page. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  09:48, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Medicine At Wikimania 2014
Are you looking to recruit more contributors to your project? We are offering to design and print physical paper leaflets to be distributed at WIkimania 2014 for all projects that apply. For more information, click the link below. Project leaflets Adikhajuria (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Who is paying for these leaflets? Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:24, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As I was told, Wikimedia UK, who are hosting the conference, would like to pay for the leaflets so that attendees to the conference can better engage with other attendees. I proposed a draft for WikiProject Medicine already. I would love for someone else to look at the text and help draft a statement of what WikiProject Medicine is.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  20:56, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the clarification, Lane.


 * There seems to be some sort of disconnect in the first sentence, as though it has been hastily changed. "Expect a future in which all health information Wikipedia is the most accurate available in every language and backed by medical consensus of every authority." How about something like: "Aim for a future in which Wikipedia has the most accurate available health information in every language and is backed by medical consensus of every authority."


 * In the second sentence, I recommend replacing the second instance of "which" with "and".


 * In the third sentence, I don't think that there is any need to mention physicians/doctors.


 * I'm not convinced that everyone has the "right" (implying civil right) to accessible healthcare information. It's certainly not on a par with the right to absence of racial discrimination, or the right to vote. If Wikipedia did not exist, this would not impinge on people's civil rights. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  21:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Your viewpoint is orthodox and mine is unorthodox, and our leaflet should present the orthodox view. I am talking about a civil right as in the Consumer Bill of Rights. People have a right to health, and to have health they need a certain minimal amount of information to guide their health decisions, and since Wikipedia is unique in the world both for asserting that all such information should be presented and for actually being able to deliver the information, I feel that people have a civil right to Wikipedia. The right to Wikipedia ends whenever something else reasonably purports to replace the role Wikipedia serves, but at this time, no one else even shares the ideology that people should have access to this kind of health information.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you mean that the ability to acquire information about health is a human right? It's not really something related to governments (like the right to vote for the government, which is a civil right), and I have the impression that this is the distinction.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "Your viewpoint is orthodox and mine is unorthodox, and our leaflet should present the orthodox view." I presume that there is a typo in there.


 * "I am talking about a civil right as in the Consumer Bill of Rights." I suppose that you are implying that the provision of healthcare is a business where the patients are consumers who pay for a service/product. In many situations, that is true. (The Consumer Bill of Rights only applies in the USA of course.) The Consumer Bill really looks more like a series of laws that were enacted to protect consumers. Most countries have similar laws, but they are not extolled as "civil rights". Even if such a right exists, the onus is on the business to provide the relevant information. In this case, that means that the doctors and other healthcare professionals must provide appropriate information. Reliance on a third party is not acceptable.


 * "I feel that people have a civil right to Wikipedia." I strongly disagree. Wikipedia is no more than an encyclopedia. In my opinion, it is the best and most useful encyclopedia&mdash;but it remains just an encyclopedia. As I implied above, if Wikipedia and its mirrors disappeared, this would certainly not impede people's rights. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  10:25, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if we should list specific things we are working on and looking for help with? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:11, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Made a few change but I am not sure if it is an improvement. Still needs a little bit of clarification. Wondering about breaking this sentence up "Participants from all backgrounds are invited to participate in developing the general health reference work which is becoming the accessible public face of health education which for the first time in history, anyone may read." Short sentences are key for people speaking English as a second language. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * For the long bit, incorporating many of the above, and not using American English:

"We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us in developing this general health reference. Globally, it is already the most-used source of health information which, for the first time in history, anyone can read. Doctors cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their doctor questions."

I'm not sure about the last sentence (too patient-directed?) and looking for a reference for the cn bit. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:19, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I don't like the last sentence because it is too doctor-patient focused and we try to avoid promoting that specific use of Wikipedia articles. As well, I would go with a more general term for a health care provider than doctor since loads of health care and instruction is done by people other than physicians. Sydney Poore/FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 22:37, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, & I've softened the claim re WP reach, so now:

"We aim for a future in which all health information on Wikipedia is accurate in every language version and backed by authoritative sources. Participants from all backgrounds are invited to join us in developing this general health reference. Globally, it is already one of the most-used sources of freely available health information. Professional medical advice cannot be replaced, but everyone has a right to learn enough to make their own informed health choices and ask their advisors questions." Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:17, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: With no further comments before archiving, I've changed the text to the last above. Johnbod (talk) 12:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Poor paper on Wikipedia
There are some serious issues with this paper: Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:06, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Why did they not check if the references provided for the statements in question supported the statements in question?
 * 2) Up-to-date is not exactly a high quality source. I have found errors in it that when brought to their attention they did not seem very interested in fixing them. (The FDA did eventually pull the treatment in question)
 * 3) They did not mention any specific examples of these so called "errors" so that the reader of their paper could decide themselves. Nothing here we can use to improve Wikipedia.
 * 4) What they showed is that "peer reviewed" literature makes contrary claims. But they missed stating this actual conclusion. This is why we at Wikipedia try to use meta analysis.


 * Erm... Although 9 of 10 articles demonstrated discordance between Wikipedia articles and the peer-reviewed sources, the article on concussions did not. This finding may have occurred because Wikipedia has a number of different contributors to each article and the contributors to this particular article were more expert. [wikilinked for emphasis]
 * The following paragraph should be more like "the present study had 5 6 main limitations... Sixth, we used an arbitrary metric to select ten articles – a very small fraction of the total number of medical articles on Wikipedia – from which we used a stupid inductive fallacy to make this point. Because, after all, if we used the next ten people we saw today to draw up demographics about the US or world population, that would clearly be representative as well.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 17:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Ironic that an investigation on the accuracy of Wikipedia is poorly designed however,

One could easily interpret the results that Wikipedia is the gold standard and UptoDate has many errors (and the conclusion would be equally valid). Ian Furst (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) The intent is to compare the accuracy of key articles on Wikipedia to a gold standard. The gold standard, should be the sum of knowledge on a topic as defined by experts.  Instead, the gold standard was "uptodate", or other references as decided and interpreted by internal medicine residents.
 * 2) There is no account made for the internal variation seen in differences seen within "peer-reviewed" literature. E.g., if the compared uptodate to pubmed (both of which could be used as a gold standard) would the same differences exist?
 * 1) It would be interesting to see the claims they identified. Maybe we have inaccuracies that need to be fixed.
 * Ironic that ... ← What do you expect from a fringe journal? ;-) Alexbrn talk 19:29, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Have requested further details from the author. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

It's interesting to compare that paper to "Quality of information sources about mental disorders: a comparison of Wikipedia with centrally controlled web and printed sources". That paper found Wikipedia was the most accurate among 10 sources examined in each of two subject areas. The other sources included everything from Britannica to WebMD, the NIMH website, Mayo Clinic, even a major psychiatry textbook. The authors of that study didn't even seem surprised by the results, writing "These findings largely parallel those of other recent studies of the quality of health information on Wikipedia", and citing eight other studies. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 04:46, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Post-publication peer review
← I don't doubt that we need to improve the accuracy of our medical articles, but I agree with James that this particular study is utterly meaningless and isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. Since "post-publication peer review" (aka "publish crappy studies and let the bloggers sort it out") is all the rage these days, here's mine: I'm actually considering whether to write to the corresponding author and ask for a copy of the raw dataset. Partly because I'm intrigued, partly because I want to calculate an actual kappa statistic to confirm my impression of the lack of inter-observer agreement, and partly because I'd like to see if there are, in fact, significant errors in our coverage which need to be corrected. MastCell Talk 20:13, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The reviewers chosen to adjudicate the correctness of the articles were interns and residents. This is a very curious decision, since house staff are typically at the very beginning of the learning curve when it comes to utilizing and interpreting the peer-reviewed medical literature. Specifically, the medical literature is permeated by conflicting evidence, and weighting and interpreting this evidence is a challenge even for physicians who have years of experience with it and use it every day, much less beginning house staff.
 * Probably as a consequence of using under-qualified "judges", the manuscript states that reviewers were instructed to use UpToDate as a surrogate for actually reviewing the medical literature. Now, every physician I know loves UpToDate. It's great. But UpToDate is a shortcut. It's something you do when you don't have time to personally review the literature. I don't think that even the authors of UpToDate would claim that it's a substitute for a personal review of the medical literature in a situation like this.
 * The level of agreement between the two reviewers is horrendous. That is, two reviewers applying the same set of criteria come to different conclusions much of the time. Hell, they often didn't even come close to agreeing on how many assertions each article contained, much less whether those assertions are correct. The implication is that the metric being used here is completely unreliable and unreproducible. If I felt ambitious, I'd try to calculate a kappa statistic (something the authors should have done, and the peer reviewers should have insisted upon), but I'm sure it would be in the coin-flip range. If the only measurable data item in your manuscript is based on a completely unreliable test with zero reproducibility, then your results are meaningless and it's unclear to me why this paper ever saw the light of day.
 * The way the data are presented (in the one table that actually contains data) is extremely hard to parse. I've looked at it for awhile and I'm still not quite clear what the authors are trying to demonstrate&mdash;which is the mark of a poorly constructed table.
 * There is really no excuse for not presenting the raw data, at least in some form, either in the article or in supplementary materials. (I mean, it's not like the manuscript is exactly overflowing with data, so there's room). On a basic level, we can't correct errors if they're not identified. On the level of data integrity, it's impossible to verify what the reviewers considered an "assertion", much less an accurate or inaccurate assertion, which makes it impossible for the reader to interpret the data meaningfully.
 * Yeah, go for it - you have my moral support on this one. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:36, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Correction: I think I finally understand Table 3. And because of the methodology of the paper, it will be impossible to calculate a kappa statistic, even with the raw data. Each reviewer was allowed to come up with their own set of "assertions" and then test them, so there are actually two levels of unreproducibility in the study design. A marginally better design would have been to extract a set of assertions from each article, and then assign the two reviewers to independently rate the correctness of each assertion. That approach would allow a statistical assessment of the reliability and reproducibility of the authors' claims. As is, I don't know how you can calculate a kappa or any other measure of inter-rater reliability when the raters don't even agree on what they're rating. Maybe someone with greater statistical know-how could devise an approach, but I think this study design was poorly thought out to the extent that it defies standard, straightforward statistical analysis. MastCell Talk 20:38, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I actually can't figure out the meaning of the terms used in Table 3, even with the definitions used in Table 2. I initially thought that the "similar" assertions were meant to be the instances where both reviewers identified and evaluated essentially the same statements in our article, which would therefore be fodder for at least an incomplete apples-to-apples comparison between the evaluations of different reviewers.  But the numbers don't match up for that, so I can't even say for certain what they're analyzing.  I'm guessing wildly that the authors might have treated as "similar" cases where Reviewer A evaluated a paragraph as a single assertion, but Reviewer B treated the paragraph's sentences as two or more separate assertions&mdash;but I can't find this explained in the text.  (In that situation it is also not clear how to resolve cases where Reviewer B endorses some of the sentences in the paragraph, but not all of them.)
 * The statistical analysis also seems kind of weird. I haven't used McNemar's test, so I could be misreading or misinterpreting it...take what I say next with a grain of salt. Very broadly speaking, it seems to be designed to detect whether or not the reviewers agreed with each other in the proportion of errors they detected, rather than whether or not the articles contained a large or small number of errors, or even whether or not the reviewers each detected the same errors.  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:33, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Could you write a brief summary review for the upcoming Wikimedia Research Newsletter at Wikipedia Signpost/2014-04-30/Recent research? I think this paper is still not covered there. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Post publication peer review II
FYI the definitions of similar and disimilar are located in Table2, but it doesn't help. Similar assertions are defined as an "implication or statement of fact found by both". But in table3, the number of similar assertions for each reviewer of a given article are never equal! Here's my review, Choice of articles: The authors claimed to use the “corresponding articles” to The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s top 10 list of costliest diseases. However, several have not been used. For the disease “cancer”, Lung cancer was selected despite Wikipedia having an article called Cancer. For “heart disease”, coronary artery disease was used, despite the redirect going to cardiovascular disease. In some cases, there where GA or FA articles available when a lower rated article was used (e.g. “back pain” used instead of lower back pain for “back problems”). For “trauma”, the article concussion was used. In short, I don’t believe the selection of Wikipedia articles was as objective as the authors would lead the reader to believe. Significant selection bias may exist.

Choice of observers: Ten observers were either “internal medicine residents or rotating interns”. The distribution of articles to observers reads like a grade 8 math problem, ‘If ten articles are given to 10 observers, and each is asked to read 2 articles, how many times is each article read’. The result is a serious lack of consistency in the manner in which the observations and gold standard was applied.

Observations: Regardless of who made the observations, the application of a gold standard has horrible observational bias. Because the same person made the observation and determined the gold standard, there is a high probability that observational bias occurred. In other words, knowing that the article came from Wikipedia, the observer is likely to interpret it with a cognitive bias (depending on whether they believe Wikipedia to be accurate or not).

A gold standard: The gold standard is, in short, ridiculous. At the very least a gold standard should be consistent. E.g. what is the “truth”. In this case, the various observers were allowed to use almost anything in the world’s literature to determine “truth”. Wikipedia’s standards are far higher than this (secondary source rules). Given that the gold standard was inconsistent and inconsistently applied it was not a gold standard. Therefore, any comparison made to it is pointless.

Table 3: Is very misleading. They label Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, where there were actually 10 reviewers. They also label similar assertions (e.g. both reviewers believed a statement in the Wikiarticle to be an assertion) and dissimilar assertions (e.g. only one or the other found a statement to be an assertion; see Table 2 for definitions) but the numbers don’t add up. One would expect the number of similar assertions should, by definition, be the same for reviewer 1 and 2 for any given article. They’re not. The interobserver variation is made obvious in this table. For “Major depressive disorder” Reviewer 1 found 72 assertions and Reviewer 2 found 172! Additionally, the number of “dissimilar” assertions (e.g. only one or the other found the statement) represents major portions of the total assertion pool. This means that a single person determined a unique gold standard to a major minority of the assertions in any article.

Stats: Someone with more knowledge could look at this, but I think the appropriate test is a chi-square (proportion of assertions that are similar) but I’m not sure.

The more I read this article the more I want to pull my hair out. The study design is, imo, horrible. Ian Furst (talk) 19:34, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * My first thought when glancing at the paper was the journal itself: The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association immediately makes me cynical. More importantly, the number of "dissimilar" assertions (where the two reviewers disagree with each other) is huge! In the case of the "lung cancer" (the article I am most interested in), there are 67 dissimilar assertions out of 268: that's 25%. There is even a big discrepancy in the total number of assertions counted. In "major depressive disorder", reviewer 1 counted 72 assertions while reviewer 2 counted 172.


 * The most appropriate conclusion from these findings is that their reviewers don't know what they are doing. This is unsurprising when they are "physicians-in-training". I have no doubt that all of us here are far better at seeking out evidence via literature search. And I absolutely guarantee that there are not 27+ "discordant" assertions in the article "Lung cancer". Axl  ¤  [Talk]  21:17, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the biggest problem is what they're trying to pass off as statistics when generalizing to the rest of Wikipedia, not so much what they're trying to pass off as problems with medical info in these articles. You can't just take some arbitrary convenience sample like they did and expect it to have any semblance of generalizability.  Because of that, I have no clue what the asymptotic distribution of their sample might look like, but i can guarantee that it's NOT normally distributed and probably not consistent (the distribution parameters, I mean); or in English, that study is a brown paper bag containing a pile of shit which happens to be on fire.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

The author has not replied to my email. Not really surprising. Yes there is a lot of poor quality peer review literature that disagrees with our Wikipedia articles. That literature also disagrees with the best available literature. There is also a lot of old literature which disagrees with the newer literature. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I just met with him online and gave him my usual tour of Wikipedia's health content. He told me that he was a fan and user of Wikipedia and that he might like to host a workshop in his school to have some med students participate in the Wikipedia Education Program as developers of articles. He seemed surprised to see how Wikipedia works, asked me questions, and said the presentation was fun. We will see what happens.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Would be good if they shared some of the issues they found. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Stats
In this table it unclear how they are calculating their p values. http://www.jaoa.org/content/114/5/368/T3.expansion.html For depression one concluded that their was 72 statements of fact. The other concluded there was 172 statements of fact. No idea how they could have agreed with each other 93 times and disagreed with each other 79 times? Anyone have any idea what they are getting at here? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:57, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Short answer; no. Long answer; it makes no sense to me.  Reviewer1 supposedly found 45(36+9) assertions that matched R2's assertions.  R1 determined 36 of 45 to be backed by research.  R2 found 79 assertions that matched (48 of which where backed by research).  How there can be an unequal number of similiar assertions between 2 reviewers is beyond me.  Ian Furst (talk) 23:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes same here. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:49, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * So what it seems like to me is that when Wikipedia is found to be in conflict with peer-reviewed studies, you try to dismiss the peer-reviewed studies as flawed simply because they are inconvenient for your constant pushing of the "Wikipedia-is-awesome" line (i.e. WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT). Personally I think this just highlights the long-established problem that many of our well-written articles aren't on important topics (and vice versa), which therefore provides another reason that Improving Wikipedia's Important Articles is such an important goal. I don't however think that just because a study's conclusions are inconvenient for us doesn't mean we should expressly exclude it from every article on a relevant topic. Jinkinson   talk to me  17:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Except of course that Wikipedia is not awesome. Much of it sucks including much of the medical aspects. Less than 1% of medical articles are either GA or FA. There are errors.
 * It is not about this studies conclusions. It is about the fact that this studies methods do not support this studies conclusions. And the study is published in a poor quality journal. What it does prove is that peer review can be meaningless. And in this case obviously it was meaningless. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:06, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Specifically the issue is that Wikipedia is extensively used and has some quality issues. So we can do one of two things to 1) try to convince people not to use it (lots of academics / teachers are trying this) 2) try to improve it and convince other to improve it (what I am trying to do)
 * Both groups have not had great success achieving either. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

, when this article was posted, my first thought was that the process we use to improve Wikipedia articles might be flawed. I consider what they did analogous to a new diagnostic test. In other words, to determine whether or not an article is "good", have two reviewers compare it to peer reviewed literature with the current method being to put it through consensus and the GA process. So, I applied the same standards that I would when reading an article about any other diagnostic test to their methods. What I found, was that the scientific rigor of this article was extremely poor imo. Far from excluding it because it was inconvenient (as scientists, I think we all enjoy those "inconvenient" moments that lead to something greater), I do not value it's conclusions because I believe the methods are deeply flawed. Ian Furst (talk) 19:17, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The lead author of the report seems very familiar with Wikipedia's norms. Does anyone know him? Has he identified his user account? I've never looked at our osteopathy content. Are we being mean to them? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:39, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * No idea. Osteopathy is really just a United States thing. He comments in the Atlantic interview seem reasoned. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "Are we being mean to them?" ← There has been a lot of friction over Wikipedia's description of Osteopathic manipulative medicine as the nonsense that it is, and particularly for making mention of this in the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine article (see e.g. the final para of the lede there). I did have half a thought that this article was "payback". Alexbrn talk 12:16, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

"" So what it seems like to me is that when Wikipedia is found to be in conflict with peer-reviewed studies, you try to dismiss the peer-reviewed studies as flawed simply because they are inconvenient for your constant pushing of the "Wikipedia-is-awesome" line. ""

- Jinkinson


 * I am very surprised to see you make that assertion. Firstly, we are talking about a single study, not several studies. Secondly, all of us who have commented (Doc James, Seppi333, Ian Furst, MastCell, TenOfAllTrades, Anthonyhcole, Cas Liber, and myself, and possibly the others too) are skilled in analyzing medical studies. We do this every week, both as part of our work and for our editing here on Wikipedia. I don't mean to patronize you, but do you know how to analyze a medical paper? Given your summary dismissal of our criticisms, I find it hard to believe that you do.


 * I accept that as Wikipedians, we have a conflict of interest. However that does not mean that our opinions can be dismissed because we consider the study "inconvenient".


 * If you really believe that this study has merit, please comment on the discrepancies between the two reviewers in the numbers of assertions found, and the differences in "discordant" assertions.


 * For what it's worth, I welcome good quality studies that investigate the accuracy of Wikipedia's articles. These can help to show us where our weaknesses are and therefore direct us to improve the content. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  11:59, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I should make it clear that I have no expertise in either medicine or medical editing. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:08, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * POSTSCRIPT: Further discussion of the Hasty et al paper at : Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine - Likely all to end up in Archive #49. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

This conversation is notable
If anyone wishes to start Draft:The WikiProject Medicine discussion about that Osteopathic article then I will be right behind with other sources as I find them.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  18:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a good balanced report. Would anybody here support the Foundation commissioning a good, well-designed, comprehensive independent study of Wikipedia's medical content and/or a rigorous review of the studies to date? Most of the latter are pretty poor quality in my opinion. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I would favour the idea (and like to be part of the design) but I think others would look at who funded it and view any results with skepticism. We might be better to involve an arms length group of peers. Otherwise, we might consider some sort of contract with the foundation that's included in the study which spells out the conflict of interest and how results are protected from undue influence. Ian Furst (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the best proof against skepticism is rigor and transparency in design and execution. I think funding will have to come from the Foundation but they should have no veto on design. If they approve funding it should be based solely on the aims of the study. Do you have any preliminary thoughts about design? Do we measure Wikipedia against other online offerings like Merck and Mayo? Do we pay good money to genuine scholars to do the reviews?


 * I agree that an arms-length group to manage the thing would be good. Someone with an excellent track record and lots of experience would be ideal. Any ideas User:MastCell? (I've mentioned this in principle to MC before.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 21:53, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Happy to put something together, have to run now but why don't we start a project page (as above) and we can hash out the details. The first question would be; what is our hypothesis? My opening suggestion would be, "That Wikipedia's 20 most frequently visited medical articles contain statements of fact that are in agreement with the consensus of the medical community and have no major omissions of facts." Ian Furst (talk) 22:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Let's keep it here for a while, so others can watch and chime in. I'd like to know more than that hypothesis covers. I'll think about it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, the Draft: namespace is for exactly what it says on the label – drafts of new Wikipedia articles under active construction – and shouldn't be used for meta-chitchat. (And I think we can safely say that neither the Osteopathic journal article, nor our subsequent discussion of it, are likely ever to be important enough to warrant a standalone article.)
 * In any event, we already have an article on the Reliability of Wikipedia, that seems to do a pretty comprehensive job of summarizing the extant research and commentary on Wikipedia's (assessed or perceived) reliability. I can't help but notice that research on this topic which is published in better-quality, vastly-higher-impact journals (e.g. Nature, BMJ, etc.) simultaneously does a far better job of presenting their data and generally expresses a more favorable opinion of Wikipedia's quality.  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The Nature article was a travesty, and our characterisation of it in Reliability of Wikipedia was, the last time I looked, worse. The last time I listed all the peer-reviewed articles addressing Wikipedia's medical content there were these




 * And those are what need rigorous review by an independent expert on scientific study design. I predict their conclusion will be that, due to the poor design - including tiny sample size and dubious or unreported selection criteria in most studies - it is not possible to conclude anything about the accuracy of Wikipedia's medical content. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:38, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Samir and I tried to do a study but had difficulty with ethics approval at the U of T. We wanted to give a exam with one group with access to Wikipedia and one group with access to medical textbooks. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:51, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd be very interested to see the results of that, but I'm looking for something a bit more comprehensive as well. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What sort of methods are you thinking? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:20, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * At the risk of stating the obvious, any study should begin with a random sample of medical articles exceeding a certain number of annual page views. (I only mention this because this appears not to have been done in the case of the Epic/Oxford study.) Andreas JN 466 00:28, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I like that. And I was thinking of a much larger sample. Two hundred or more. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure and how would it be done? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

If the goal is to evaluated hundreds of articles, ideally, we would have a test that is easily done (or better yet automated) that can give us a “probability of goodness” with respect to the reliability of a medicine article. That way, the entire project is constantly monitored and poor articles improved. To create that, we need a gold standard and a test that can be validated. That way, the “test” itself doesn’t need to be labour intensive, just validated. I suspect there is some magical algorithm that measures frequency of updates, number and age of references and page views that when put together is proportional to the “goodness” of an article. Maybe the first step is to take some FA articles and compare the stats to some C-class articles and come up with some ideas about what might be used as the test? From there, we can come up with a gold standard to calculate the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the testIan Furst (talk) 01:21, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, an automated test is not what we're looking for here. You need an actual person who knows the field reading what the article actually says, and judging whether the information is correct, appropriately written, and so forth. Andreas JN 466 01:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Intially yes. But  is proposing the evaluation of hundreds of articles which would equate to thousands of experts.  We don't have that.  What I'm proposing is we create a test with some validity to it.  The 'actual person' with expertise in a field is the gold standard which could validate the test. Ian Furst (talk) 01:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There are a LOT of possible measures, but most highly-accurate measures are only indicators of badness (membership of maintainance cats, warning templates, copyright infringement, etc). Maybe the thing to do is to measure a couple of dozen indicators and throw them at Weka (machine learning) and attempt to learn the WP Medicine article quality metric? Stuartyeates (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be interesting. The first step for that would be to create a cohort of articles as matched samples.  E.g. FA/GA articles and C articles of similiar size and usage stats? Ian Furst (talk) 01:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I haven't made myself clear. Sorry. I'm talking about painstaking review by highly-regarded experts in the relevant fields - an average of three different reviewers per article I would expect, in order to cover well all the sub-disciplines in each article. Yes, it will be expensive. (I'll be out of touch for a few hours.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:02, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Even better would be to put all that effort into simply making poor articles good. If we can rope in a few thousand experts. Give them each a couple of topics. Teach them how to write in Wikipedia style. Etc. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:23, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The foundation will never fund paid editing. They will fund reviewing, though. We - the world, actually - need to know how reliable Wikipedia's medical content is. I'm quietly optimistic that the Foundation will pay whatever it takes to get an unequivocal answer to that. I'm also confident they can be persuaded to fund peer review of our very best medical articles (not editing - reviewing). And when an FA passes strict expert review, we can put a big badge at the top linking people to the reviewed version. I think that will encourage a lot more volunteer editing, and people will be able to cite the reviewed versions because they'll be at least as reliable as the sources we cite. (Though it would be preferable from the COI perspective if the funding for the latter came from an independent educational foundation like B&M Gates.) Sorry, I have to go out now. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:49, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As I've said on the mailing list, press coverage of a study like the one Anthony is envisaging might actually be an excellent recruitment tool bringing in experts to help improve and curate these articles. Andreas JN 466 03:54, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * How good is our content? Having looked at much of it I have an okay idea. We have about 100-200 high or excellent quality medical articles. We have about 20,000 that are short and just starting out. We have a couple thousand that are okay ish. We have another few hundred to maybe few thousand or so that are a complete disaster. So in summary article quality is variable with a randomly selected article likely to be of moderate to low quality.
 * With respect to a badge am working on that. We will have our first Wikipedia article published soon in a peer reviewed journal soon. Beside the gold star at the top will be placed a same sized journal. This journal when you click on it will bring you to the Wikipedia article at pubmed. That is of course if I can convince the community to accept this. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That's great, James. Which journal? If the community opposes a prominent link at the top of the article to the expert-reviewed version, we should all go on strike. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The journal is Open Medicine. I got the email two days ago that they finally accept the article on Dengue fever. I have created this template Template:Pubmed_indexed and will make it such that when you click on it it will bring you to pubmed. I will create something that will go on the talk page as well. This was way more work than I had hoped it was going to be. The peer review was easy, it was all the adjustments the editors wanted. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a major turning point. Major. Thank you. That little icon is so cute. (Couldn't it be 4 times bigger?) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:00, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes wish to make it a bit bigger :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Congrads on the publication James. About a dozen times now, I've contact high level experts on a topic (e.g. the author of one of the major textbooks that I'm using) and universally, they've offered to help with an article.  However, none have been willing to actually come on Wikipedia to edit.  Each time, I've sent them the article or part of the article by email and they've helped build that part.  Some have also donated pictures.  My experience leads me to believe that the experts will gladly help but on their own terms and not on the live article. Have others experienced this?  As a side note, one of the questions I've been repeatedly asked is, "How do I include this on my CV?".  Should we consider some honorific we can tell people who participate in this way? Ian Furst (talk) 09:50, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I list all the GA/FAs I have written on my CV under publications. Have also had people willing to contribute but not want to contribute directly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a very typical experience, that I've had in the GLAM world, eg with curators at the British Museum and British Library. I don't really blame them, especially when they have big jobs and are very busy. I have my horror stories with academics trying to edit helpfully, and I'm sure others do. These examples were more discussions & help with sources at the start, followed by reviews of articles I'd worked up to FA. In both those cases face to face meetings were possible. In my work at the Royal Society as WiR I've been pushing to their "Research Fellows" (not the members, FRSs, but mid-career researchers they fund) an approach that doesn't involve much editing other than talk pages, but building a short watchlist of article & project talk pages, looking out for FAs, and offering or doing reviews and comments. All designed to become someone the local editors can call on when really appropriate, but at a very low time-cost.  At Cancer Research UK there will be editing training offered to researchers, but I will be pushing this sort of route, and also just doing direct reviews by email or whatever, because I'm clear it is more realistic in the majority of cases.  Retired experts are actually the best bet for actual editing, though of course there is the issue of how long they keep up with the latest research.  Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * A honorific might make sense. Something like Expert consultancy to Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine on topic area X. There could be a page listing them somewhere, and the duration of their involvement. Andreas JN 466 17:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not keen on spending the Wikimedia Foundation's money to tell us how good we are at writing an encyclopedia. I am sure that the money could be spent on more productive projects. Moreover, any study funded by the WMF will immediately be suspect, no matter how much the WMF tries to distance itself from the details of the study. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  12:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The money might come from existing charities with a budget for public information, and the service could be provided by the same scholarly societies that currently publish the best journals. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Emedicine
It appears that emedicine has changed all of their urls without leaving redirect. We link to emedicine in most of our disease boxes.

Is it time we get a bot to change these links to something different? I am proposing we change all the links to patient.co.uk

Patient.co.uk lists everything on one page. Uses inline refs like us and doesn't have advertising. User:Boghog or User:Zad68? Could you do this? Emedicine also supposedly adjusts their content to appease advertisers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:54, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * If we just want the broken links to "disappear" (from the reader's perspective), then the quickest solution is to disable the parameter in infobox disease. That would keep the information about the pages in the articles, but would stop displaying it to readers.  It would be very easily reversed if they created redirects at some point.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

They actually changed their url structure way back and have now disabled the old redirects. Most of our links were added before the url change. Newer links that use 'article' as the specialty parameter still work (e.g. in autonomic dysreflexia). I don't think it is easily possible to let a bot change all the links, as the old and new article numbers did not seem to be related in any way. Also they have merged many articles, multiple old links would lead to the same article. The best short term option is probably to disable the infobox parameter. Furthermore, as we are going to do something about this, I would suggest moving the emedicine links to the external links section of the articles which seems a more proper place for them. --WS (talk) 16:26, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes disappear and replace with patient.co.uk Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:41, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Igor Galynker
Hello, medical experts. This AfC submission has a lot of primary sources, but there are some others as well. Are these suitable? If so, the primary ones can always be changed into a publication list. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 13:40, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Another draft at AFC
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sigma Anti-Bonding Calcium Carbonate (SAC) - My gut says this looks like snake oil but I'm no expert - high school chemistry and physiology, almost 30 years ago, is as far as my education went in relevant fields. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Roger, my background in these subjects is like yours, but over 40 years ago, hence my query above about some other AfC drafts. However, a bit of web sleuthing suggests that "Sigma Anti-Bonding Calcium Carbonate" is a proprietary name used by the only company that seems to make it (and sell it), Marah Natural. They claim it's a super-fab form of Calcium carbonate. They use it in a variety of their diet supplement products. The only mentions of it anywhere are on their web site and in a couple of articles from an obscure Korean journal, Laboratory Animal Research, where it was tested on "post-menopausal" rats and allegedly improved their bone density. Needless to say, the company's web site refers repeatedly to this study. My suspicions were first aroused by the professionalism of the images and graphs, which (surprise, surprise) come straight from the Marah Natural web site, e.g. File:Marah Sports fig.3.png from this page and File:SAC2.png from the home page of their website. It looks to me like an attempt to legitimize their product by having a Wikipedia article about it. Voceditenore (talk) 16:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Spamish. Should not have its own article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Aside from that spam name, there are two variations mentioned in the PMC source, but it seems to boil down to chalk with a buffer (e.g. ascorbic acid). Sounds pretty much like standard stuff in any vitamin aisle. Would need much better sourcing to get any respect. LeadSongDog  come howl!  04:36, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Update. It appears another reviewer at AfC accepted it yesterday and moved it to article space at Sigma anti-bonding molecule calcium carbonate. I have nominated it for deletion. Discussion at Articles for deletion/Sigma anti-bonding molecule calcium carbonate. – Voceditenore (talk) 16:08, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Milestone
I'm not sure if anyone else saw this, but Doc James just reached 100,000 edits. Thank you James. Ian Furst (talk) 14:55, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Ian :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Three cheers, Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah! Thanks for all of your work! - - MrBill3 (talk) 11:05, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well done! Johnbod (talk) 17:32, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Hereditary gingival fibromatosis
Is it possible that someone has a look at Hereditary gingival fibromatosis. The article has 12 links to disambiguation pages that needs fixing. The author seems to be inactive for the moment. The subject is far out of my field of knowledge, so I keep my hands off it. Every bit of help is appreciated. The Banner talk 16:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

dab fixed. the references are a mess, with the entire text of each repeated. I've cleaned up the first one but will have to do the others later. Ian Furst (talk) 17:28, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I had noticed it already. Thank you very much for your effort! And also thank to the two others who worked on the article. The Banner talk 17:36, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Articles for Peer Review
If anyone is interested, I've listed the Gynecomastia and Plantar fasciitis articles for peer review. Any constructive advice is welcomed. Just putting it out there if anyone is interested in reviewing some high importance articles that I think are approaching GA. Someone who hasn't worked on the articles a good amount would be preferable so new eyes are looking over the articles. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 22:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Elsevier "Medicine" journal ISSN 1357-3039 (formerly published by Vivendi Universal (Health) and Mediamedia)
Is the Elsevier "Medicine" journal highly read? A standard source in the UK? Due to the title, it's incredibly difficult to source info in this AfC Wikipedia_talk:Articles for creation/Medicine (journal). I can't tell whether it meets the journal notability standards, and all the info that's easy to turn up on it is in Elsevier sources. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 08:55, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Anatomy
Just thinking it'd be good to buff this to Featured Article status. It was made a Good Article late last year but I think can be improved in its flow and comprehensiveness. I'd welcome some comments on the talk page. I did think about setting up a formal Peer Review but I am reluctant to split up the discussion for the time being as I feel there is a momentum there. All input welcomed. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * See also section has terms that are already in the text. The see also section should really be merged mostly into the article. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes - agree with this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Is anyone from this project watching the "Iatrogenesis" article?
Hi, everyone, I've had Iatrogenesis on my watchlist for a while, and I can tell that it is imbalanced and very poorly sourced, but I don't personally know better sources to nudge it toward neutral point of view and more reliable sourcing. So I'll mention to all of you here that like most of the other articles on medical topics here, the Iatrogenesis article badly needs work. This one is used a lot as a "reference" in off-wiki advocacy, so maybe it deserves higher-priority attention from those of you who can help fix it. I will keep the article on my watchlist to make sure that the editing environment is constructive and aimed at fixing the article according to Wikipedia policy and sound sourcing. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 13:33, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I work for an advocacy organization, Consumer Reports, which coordinates a United States national network of people, the Safe Patient Project, who do public health education, outreach, and lobbying related to medical harm. Some people in this group have edited Wikipedia a bit with me, and lots more have attended a couple of hours of workshops and training with me. As you say, this content is used a lot in off-wiki advocacy. When I first started doing a lot of outreach to non-Wikipedians I never anticipated that it would be so difficult to meet the needs of activists who wish to learn Wikipedia, but so far I have been unable to provide this demographic with the support they need to contribute on Wikipedia constructively. I have some initial thoughts on getting started to more deeply reach such people posted at Consumer Reports/Safe Patient Project. I also have ideas based on how this and the range of related articles could be developed to better meet the needs of activists.
 * I have little time to develop these articles on my own but I watch them too. If there was an attempt to reform them I would participate. If they got to a certain level of quality then I could present them to the advocacy community for comment back to the Wikipedia community, and also be more persuasive in asking activists to come to collaborate with us.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * , It's interesting that you mention that some external advocacy organizations specifically visit Wikipedia to edit articles within the scope of this project. On my part, I give WikiProject Medicine a lot of credit for its meticulously developed content guideline on reliable sources for medical articles, which apply to a lot of the articles I edit (which are mostly about individual differences psychology or human population genetics or behavior genetics). It's a really good idea for any new Wikipedian to pickle himself or herself in that guide to finding good sources, as well as the general Wikipedia  reliable sources guideline for all articles. I am currently discussing coming on board one of the new Wikipedia scholar in residence positions at a research university library, and I may soon have more access to good sources than ever before, which I hope to apply (with collaborative suggestions from that university's researchers) to improving more Wikipedia articles. See you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:10, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Stay in touch. I just made and applied Template:Medical harm to the article you mentioned and a range of others. Now at least if anyone wants to sort out this article they can readily find the others covering similar information and interlink them all more thoroughly.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:54, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Epithelial-myeloid transition
Hi, I'm new to this so tell me where to go if this is the wrong place to put this. I've been doing a bit of reading on Epithelial-mesenchymal transition in cancer metastasis on WP as well as in a couple of journals. I came across this article in the journal of cancer which doesn't conflict with but puts forward a very strong case for a different interpretation of current data. It's a trusted source and a fairly recent article so there's little else I could find on the same line. Personally I think it needs at least some mention on the EMT page and possibly others. The problem is I don't know if this is enough material to warrant mention and I could never do a good job of editing the page if it did. Moreover, the current Epithelial-mesenchymal transition theory in metastasis has been around so long it seems to be taken as fact on the page when this isn't necessarily true. Any help would be appreciated Edward.ward92 (talk) 17:33, 13 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That's certainly an esoteric paper. I presume that these hypotheses are specific for carcinomas, i.e. epithelium-derived cancers. I don't see how they could be relevant to haematological malignancies, and even relevance to sarcomas seems unlikely.


 * I think that it is worth mentioning a sentence or two about this paper's implications in the "Epithelial–mesenchymal transition" article. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Edward.ward92, this is a great place to post questions like this. The source you've found  is a recent review, and as such, its ideas seems to qualify for inclusion in the article.  Since it's a "minority" viewpoint (at this point in time, at least), it should only get a brief mention.  We can help you sort out what to say, but since you've been reading up on it and I haven't, why don't you just tell me what the source says, and then we'll see if we can get something into shape for inclusion in the article?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Livestrong source - Methamphetamine neurotoxicity
has been repeatedly adding the text " Dextromethamphetamine is the potent form in terms of dopamine-stimulation, although both forms are neurotoxic. " to the Breaking Bad article. In spite of the controversial medical claim being made, is there anyone here that thinks this statement shouldn't require WP:MEDRS? Also, does anyone think that Livestrong is an even remotely satisfactory medical source?  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 00:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)


 * It is just a tv show page by the looks of it. Not a good source for medical content. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, Breaking Bad is a TV show, therefore the article is not a medical article. Moreover, this is not even medical information per se. The Livestrong foundation article cites more than enough notability. Chunk5Darth (talk) 01:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In the first paragraph of MEDRS: "Therefore, it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published secondary sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge." The fact that it's a tv show is irrelevant. The medical claim is the only issue here.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 03:13, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * If it is true one should be able to find a better source. Yes it is medical information. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:42, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Not that it's much, but the writer of the Livestrong article, Melissa Lingohr Smith, seems to be a medical writer who published this book. Chunk5Darth (talk) 10:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I checked PubMed; there are only three articles that mention this substance, and the newest was published in 1996. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What does that have to do with her credibility as a medical author? Chunk5Darth (talk) 19:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It has quite a lot to do with the likelihood that you will be able to find a WP:MEDRS-compliant source on the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Chunk, you obviously haven't read WP:MEDRS.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 05:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies
An editor has made very bold, large changes to this article, removing reviews, adding primary studies/editorials about rat brains, and removing any material that provides any positive information about the safety or efficacy of ADHD medications. The article was a MEDRS disaster area before, but I'm afraid it is getting worse now. More eyes and comments on the talk page would be welcome. Yobol (talk) 19:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The changes to the headings looked good. One does not need ADHD in each heading as that is implied. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:32, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello from Icahn at Mount Sinai
Hello cool wiki people,

We are medical students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and we have just started a club for editing medical related pages on Wikipedia. Most of us are first years, and we are currently suffering through finals... But we still think wikiproject medicine is cool!

We welcome you to come and check out the pages we edit, and give us feedback and encouragements. We would greatly appreciate your support!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:Icahn_School_of_Medicine_at_Mount_Sinai/Expanding_Wikiproject_Medicine_(2014_Spring)

Thanks!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruirui511 (talk • contribs) 00:50, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome. Great having you here.
 * The three most important overview articles are
 * WP:MEDRS about referencing
 * WP:MEDMOS about language usage and ordering of sections
 * WP:MEDHOW about formatting refs
 * Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Video game controversies
Hello to all at the Medicine Project. I made a copy edit of this page a while ago. More recently a fellow editor made a very thorough expansion of the section scientific debate. (It falls in the realm of psychology and MRI studies). Our joint enquiry to you, now, is whether or not you think the section should be re-written in a more encyclopaedic style. I think it carefully could be to the advantage of the article. I feel that my good wiki-colleague, David A, places importance on presenting the detail of the studies, such as their methodology and I respect his conviction. If you have a spare moment, might you take a look and give us some guidance? Regards, Myrtle G Myrtlegroggins (talk) 09:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I responded at Talk:Video_game_controversies.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:07, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for your input. Regards, Myrtle Myrtlegroggins (talk) 08:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Neuroscience editathon at the Royal Society, 7 June 2014
An edit-a-thon on Neuroscience will take place on Saturday, 7 June 2014 from 10:30 to 13:30, see the event page. The form of the event will different from our previous events aimed at scientists, and those with an interest in science, who wanted to learn about editing Wikipedia. This time there will be smaller groups of scientists and experienced Wikipedians who will work together to improve articles. So there will not be the usual workshop-style training, though the scientists attending will certainly come to understand Wikipedia editing processes. We also welcome online participants, and suggestions of important articles in a poor state. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 18:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

New articles for review:
Please see Atherogenic Diabetic Dyslipidemia and NGR-hTNF (antitumor recombinant protein). The first article probably needs additional citations, and latter article appears unduly promotional of the company MolMed (which also needs review), especially with excessive citations of press releases.--Animalparty-- (talk) 21:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Concern about Dysbiosis article
I put a "citation needed" notice on the Dysbiosis article recently. In truth I do not know whether the statement I marked (the first sentence in the article) is valid information lacking a source OR whether it is "fantasy information" for which no reliable source exists.

It is a specialized subject. I cannot fix this myself as I would not know how to find a reliable source in the field.

I'm raising my concern here as I suspect the article does not get much attention from editors and that the "citation needed" notice could linger for a long time unnoticed and unattended to.

To be specific, I wonder if "dybiosis" is a diagnosible medical condition or just a concept. The first sentence seems to try to define dysbiosis in general terms. After the first sentence, the article is about dysbiosis in specific body areas, not dysbiosis in general. I get the feeling that wool is being pulled over my eyes with this approach.

I would much appreciate your attention to this concern. CBHA (talk) 21:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Physical medicine specialists
Are there any DOs, DPTs, DCs or physiatrists here willing to comment on manual therapy interventions for MSK conditions? Regards, DVMt (talk) 23:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Let's start with the primary source. You restored a primary source without a valid explanation. There is a discussion on the talk page but you have not specifically commented about the problem. QuackGuru  ( talk ) 00:38, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * My god, are you seriously stalking me here too? QG, please, I'm asking a question to see if there's any physical medicine specialists out there. Stop following me, stalking me, tagging me and trolling me.  I'm looking for experts out there who may be more qualified than others to discuss topics that aren't exclusive to chiropractic, but also involve osteopathic medicine, physical therapy, physiatry and other professions that practice in musculoskeletal medicine.  DVMt (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

A good start when dealing with controversial topics is for everyone to use high quality secondary sources per WP:RS and WP:MEDRS. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm well aware. Primary sources can be used with respect to non-medical claims, like discussing sociological aspects of a profession.  Also, I notice you trimmed this source (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922917/) but did not trim the many other primary sources in the article.  The claim being made is that 81% of DCs practice in an MSK context (mainstream chiropractic) and 19% practice in an unorthodox or fringe manner.  Is BMC not a legit source?  Also, I'm asking for editors who specialize in physical medicine.  Regards, DVMt (talk) 01:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * So you have taken a Canadian study and used it to support "Chiropractors retaining unorthodox views are in the minority, holding beliefs contrary to modern understanding of biology" We should be using secondary sources generally.  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I haven't done anything. This is the most relevant passage:  "The data in this investigation suggest that only 18.8% of chiropractors in Canada today define themselves in accordance with Langworthy’s original premise. This figure is consistent with McDonald’s data in the United States from 2003 [22], whereby a survey of 647 chiropractors suggested that 19.3% of practitioners could be identified in this way relative to their scope of practice. McGregor-Triano [3] found 17.2% of 64 chiropractors from around the world, responding to a survey at a chiropractic conference, could be identified as belonging to the subgroup of practitioners for whom subluxation was considered an obstruction to human health.".  We're trying to specifically delineate to what extent chiropractors hold anti-scientific viewpoints.   This sociological study suggests that not only in Canada, but this trend holds internationally as well.  Regardless, this doesn't involve a biomedicine claim.  DVMt (talk) 01:53, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * But you did do something. Try to collaborate a little more. QuackGuru  ( talk ) 07:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The details of this study are incredible and the summary provided, doesn’t do it justice imo. It defines “unorthodox beliefs” as the practices of a portion of a professional group that are dissident (from the remainder of the professional strata) and destructive (potentially harmful).  In this case, anti-vaccine, use of radiographs that have little or no diagnostic value and “scope of utilization” issues (prescribing treatment for illness or perceived illness where it offers no benefit).   18.8% of all chiropractors (in Canada – but the number is similar in the US and other countries) fall into this category.  1 out of 5!  But, that’s only 1 or 6 strata.  They don’t share the details in the study, but if a chiropractor prescribed radiographs of no diagnostic value but was otherwise evidence-based, then they would have been categorized as orthodox.  Maybe a “minority” (18.8%) have all three harmful beliefs and practices, but based on this study, there’s likely many more who hold fringe views. Ian Furst (talk) 13:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ian, you're interpretation is quite speculative. The main take away from the paper is regarding what % of chiropractors view dysfunctional spinal articulations as the cause of disease and others which view it under a biomechanical/MSK context.  The radiographs section is regarding overuse, or not following EBM guidelines, as published by Descarreaux et al in 2008.  We must be careful as to what constitutes 'fringe', otherwise off-label Rx could easily fit into that category as well.  Anyways, I'm still searching for physical medicine specialists out there whose practice expertise is MSK medicine.  DVMt (talk) 13:58, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a primary source in a fringe journal, and should not be used per WP:FRIND for anything other than mundane claims. Alexbrn talk 14:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * BMC is fringe? Any evidence to support your claim or is this a case of "I don't like it".  DVMt (talk) 14:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Altmed is fringe by definition, and chiropractic is largely an altmed/fringe thing. This is an altmed journal, and not independent of its fringe subject area. Fringe people write fringe articles which are peer-reviewed by other fringe people: it's an industry talking to itself. Best to use sources which are independent. In any case, this is a primary source so would be unsuitable in any journal. Seems to me the problem here is the chiropractors working on our Chiropractic article who want to burnish their profession's reputation and downplay its quackishness: one hand on the keyboard, another on their wallets. Alexbrn talk 14:26, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * AltMed is not "fringe by definition". The actual definition refers to "esoteric claims about medicine".  Traditional herbal medicine, basic manual therapies like massage, and other common altmed systems are not "esoteric claims about medicine".
 * Furthermore, even if they were, the fact that the study is published in a peer-reviewed journal whose subject is altmed does not make the source "non-independent". As you and I discussed last week, an altmed journal publishing a study about altmed is no less independent of its subject matter than a surgery journal publishing a study about surgery.  "Independent" does not mean "unbiased" or "possessed of a mainstream POV" or "an editorial position that agrees with you".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I hear what you say, WAID, since you have said it many times before. But, with respect, I think you are quite wrong and out-of-line with our policies on fringe topics: your equation of altmed practices with a mainstream field like surgery exemplifies this. There is medicine (which, yes, might well include massage) and there are "alternatives" to medicine. Anything falling in that latter category is fringe by definition and Wikipedia should not be promulgating the "quackademia" used to boost it. Your reasoning would have us using the journal Homeopathy, I think. Alexbrn talk 14:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input, WhatamIdoing.  Alexbrn feels it's ok to use primary sources (op-ed piece and letter to the editor) to state that osteopathic manipulation is pseudoscience such as this source  but he, QG and Doc James feels that the BMC source is a no go to describe the factions within the chiropractic profession and the critical differences between "mainstream/orthodox" chiropractic which is primary spine/MSK based and the unothodox faction who are see spinal manipulation as a panacea.  Are using  manual and manipulative techniques for MSK disorders really fringe when when, by and large, they show comparable benefit to standard medical care?  After all, JAMA seems to acknowledge that chiropractic (and acu) may be useful for LBP .  Alexbrn, you keep going down a slippery slope.  There is no evidence of effectiveness for homeopathy unlike manipulation and acupuncture.  You're also being very dichotomous,  there are shades of grey which we must acknowledge. DVMt (talk) 15:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * All we need to do is reflect the information contained in independent, secondary sources of sufficient quality. That way, all difficulty is avoided. Alexbrn talk 15:07, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * All we need to do is not make blanket statements that osteopathic/chiropractic manipulation is pseudoscience and fringe while using an op-ed primary source to support the entirety of the claim. I think you're liberally calling anything not medication or surgery "fringe" by default.  This is a hardline stance that misses the middle ground.  DVMt (talk) 15:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Let's see you follow your own rules, then Alex: Where's your independent secondary source saying that manipulative medicine is pseudoscience?  An op-ed in a business magazine is not exactly a stellar example of a reliable secondary source.  And if you think that "being a chiropractor or DO" means that an author is inherently non-independent, then "being the direct competitor to DCs and DOs" are equally inherently non-independent—especially when, as is the case here, the main purpose of the piece is to encourage customers to use your services instead of theirs.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It's stellar enough. I do not agree (as you seem to be saying) that - say - a surgeon has a conflict of interest passing judgement on homeopathy. You seem to be engaging in some kind of relativism. Science is not a point of view. Alexbrn talk 15:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You're using a straw man argument, Alex. We aren't discussing homeopathy, a red herring tactic. Are you comparing the evidence levels of MM and homeopathy? Manipulative medicine for MSK disorders seems to be mainstream whereas non-MSK applications could be considered controversial or fringe.  But making a blanket statement that MM is pseudoscientific or fringe proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this needs some serious discussion so we can get a consensus on the matter.  DVMt (talk) 15:46, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * According to the journal Homeopathy there's plenty of encouraging evidence around the medical use of homeopathy (just read it). There are plenty of people who believe this, and who advocate for its inclusion here on Wikipedia. And that's the point. Homeopathy is perhaps the most high-profile example of why we don't use fringe journals for exceptional claims around fringe subjects. I haven't mentioned "manipulative medicine" - that seems like a very broad term which could encompass both useful things (e.g. massage) and outright quackery (e.g. craniosacral therapy). What's your point about it? Alexbrn talk 16:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Alex, I don't think that an op-ed in a business magazine, to comment on a treatment modality used by licensed physicians, is what PARITY is talking about when it says " if a notable fringe theory is primarily described by amateurs and self-published texts, verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory need not be published in a peer reviewed journal". I'm not actually asking you for a peer-reviewed journal article.  I'm asking you for an independent secondary source, instead of a primary source written by someone who seems to be bashing what he perceives as the competition.  I'm asking you whether you can produce a source that won't require WP:INTEXT attribution to a single individual if we're going to comply with WP:RSOPINION.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What text are you referring to? We're reporting opinions, no? Alexbrn talk 03:24, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

, I’ve reread the paper. The main point of the paper was to identify what percentage of chiropractors have “unorthodox” views because it has been shown to hamper interprofessional relations (specifically with orthopaedic surgeons). Unorthodox was defined as a belief that subluxation is “an obstruction to human health”. They also asked about anti-vaccine and excessive radiograph use because those are also major concerns for interprofessional relations (all this is from the paper – not speculation). 18.8% believed in subluxation as “an obstruction to human health” and there was a strong correlation between this belief, the overuse of radiographs and anti-vaccine beliefs (see regression analysis Table 2). It was speculation that the number who believed in 1 of the 3 opinions would be greater than 18.8% but that’s only because the data was not in the paper. We can email the author if the paper is going to be included. However, I am still amazed at the high percentage of chiropractors that hold these beliefs. Ian Furst (talk) 20:59, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ian, the ironic thing is that most skeptics and physicians believe that the 18.8% are the majority of DCs. That's that interesting thing about this paper.  It identifies the factions, and presents what is mainstream within chiropractic and what is fringe within chiropractic.  Mainstream chiropractic=primarily MSK specialists.  DVMt (talk) 21:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Does every article published by an organization's journal carry the force of endorsement by the organization?
At Talk:Low_back_pain, editor is suggesting that every article published in a medical organization's journal is endorsed by the medical organization. For example, DVMt is suggesting that a statement in an article published in JAMA carries the full force of recommendation by the AMA. pointed out, there is this statement, written in every single journal of JAMA, which reads, "All articles published, including editorials, letters, and book reviews, represent the opinions of the authors and do not reflect the policy of the American Medical Association, the Editorial Board, or the institution with which the author is affiliated, unless this is clearly specified." Input please? 20:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Misleading. I'm asking a question if a) the article is a RS and b) "JAMA suggests chiropractic therapy may be of benefit for LBP"  is an accurate representation of the content.  DVMt (talk) 20:34, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Why don't we wait for other editors to read through the discussion and see if they think you're asking what we thought you were asking. In the actual discussion on Talk:LBP you really do seem to indicate that you think a statement in an article in JAMA carries the endorsement of AMA.  Are you saying here that you do not think that?  Then you agree that the JAMA article is not an official position of the AMA--you cannot use the JAMA article to say that the AMA recommends chiro for LBP, correct?   20:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * How about I state what I am asking rather trying to interpret what I am asking. JAMA suggests chiropractic therapy may be of benefit for LBP.  I'm not stating the AMA endorses chiropractic.  That would be loco at this point in time.  Yobol thought I was trying to use a backdoor, and I wasn't, nor was I trying to circumvent systematic reviews.  I don't know why you would assume that, doesn't necessarily suggest good faith.  I'm keen on discussing the matters, as you can see from my edit Hx.  Regards, DVMt (talk) 20:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What exactly does "JAMA suggests..." mean? And how does that square with what Yobol pointed out above?    20:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I means exactly as read. I don't think it's up for much interpretation, IMHO.  I think that Yobols main concern was that I was trying to infer that the AMA endorsed chiropractic.  That was not my intent.  Furthermore, I'm asking the question bc I don't want to be part of any edit warring, I truly want to build consensus.  Anyways, I agree this is tricky, but let's see where it goes.  Cheers. DVMt (talk) 21:16, 16 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The source reads more like a patient information leaflet than a review article. No in-line citations are provided. I do not consider this to be a suitable reference per WP:MEDRS.


 * DVMt's claim "JAMA suggests chiropractic therapy may be of benefit for LBP" is misleading. The paper is not a position statement by JAMA. It is an information leaflet written by Goodman et al. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  21:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree with Axl. This is a patient page and not a suitable source. Not listed as a review by pubmed  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:05, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Polychlorinated biphenyls and non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Could somebody take a look at polychlorinated biphenyl (both the lead section, and the "Cancer link" section) and how its possible connection with non-Hodgkin lymphoma is covered?

This is a followup to my recent request; responded to that, and after doing independent research, rewrote the relevant section on the NHL article: non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That effort satisfies my concerns about the NHL article, but the PCB article still covers the relevant science in a way that is misleading.

As I mentioned before, I am connected to a lawsuit that involves this issue, and I have been advised to avoid making substantial changes to the articles myself. I hope this is a straightforward enough request, that somebody with relevant expertise can make some much needed changes to the article. Please let me know if you have questions or comments. -Kdelay13 (talk) 05:47, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

ORCID
Those of you working in medicine may be interested in ORCID. ORCID is an open system of identifiers for people - particularly researchers and the authors of academic papers; but also contributors to other works, not least Wikipedia editors. ORCIDs are a bit like ISBNs for books or DOIs for papers. You can register for one, free, at http://orcid.org As well as including your ORCID in any works to which you contribute, you can include it in your user page using Authority control thus:  (that template can also include other identifies, such as VIAF and LCCN - there's an example on my user page). ORCID identifiers can also be added to biographical articles, either directly or via Wikidata. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:43, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Iminosugars
Dear medical experts: Is this old AfC submission about a notable topic, or should it be deleted as a stale draft? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 12:28, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * This article looks fine. The topic is genuine and there are several suitable papers on PubMed that could be used as references. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  20:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree. Several mentions of this topic in existing articles and several chemicals in this class have articles themselves. However, the lede thumb image is a poor choice...it's 1-deoxy, so it lacks the cyclic-acetal (properly cyclic-aminal for this class) of "sugar" structures. It's a notable chemical, but it's an analog/derivative of the topic of the article itself. DMacks (talk) 20:34, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Most recent WT:CHEMISTRY comments I can find say this sort of article should be titled as the singular not plural. DMacks (talk) 02:50, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have accepted it and it is now at Iminosugar. I have no idea about the categories, though; someone here who has a clue what the article is about will have to take care of that! &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Are nutritional articles within project scope?
After hearing about this paper, I looked at the WP articles Inuit diet and Atkins diet and I was struck by the number of health claims made without MEDRS sourcing. Neither is tagged for this project, though Nutrition is. Do we need to do a scan of all the diet articles? LeadSongDog come howl!  17:00, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * These are the wild borderlands of the project, are they not? And try a Wikipedia search on "Health effects of", but have a stiff drink first. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 17:12, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there's a pre-existing consensus on this question, but my view is that nutrition/diet articles do fall under this project's purview. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Heli-FX
Dear medical experts: Here's one more of those old Afc submissions soon to be deleted as a stale draft. Is this information covered somewhere in another article, and if not, is this a notable topic that should be kept and improved? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 15:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Needs secondary sources. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello, Doc James. There are a lot of sources there. I presume from your remark that you found them to be mostly primary sources.  Or is it that they don't have information about the topic? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Out of the first five, only #3 was a secondary source.
 * Also, "Heli-FX" is supposedly the subject, but it's not mentioned in the article at all. I couldn't even figure out what it is.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:03, 13 May 2014 (UTC)


 * All in all, this sounds like a mess. If there's little properly sourced content, and the subject is not clear, should it just be let go? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 17:54, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Gone. Thanks for your input. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 11:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Rough draft of video for new editors
Here's the rough draft of the video for new editors. Thought I'd share before working on the more technical stuff. Ian Furst (talk) 22:07, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * A wonderful initiative, and a lot of work! Assuming you put it here wanting criticisms, two points:  1.) For me (and I'm familiar with what Wikipedia pages look like) it went way too fast.  Stretch it out to double the length.  2.) The sound isn't good.  It sounds mushy, almost like there is an echo.  Your voice, enunciation etc. are excellent.  Thanks for the chance to report my reactions.  --Hordaland (talk) 06:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback Hordaland. I can work on the voice post-production.  I've used a high quality mic and removed all the background noise, but made some changes to deepen the pitch and that made it a bit mushy.  If we're going to use this alot, it may be worth the $300 or so for a professional voiceover.  Re the speed, this is a double-edged sword.  My intent was to provide a general overview without a lot of technical details.  I've done videos like this before, and we saw huge drop-off past 2 min (e.g. people would back out the further past 2min we went).  Also, the longer the video, the less likely peole will be to start.  We also tried some (as flash productions) where we'd put an e-Learning question in the middle of the video in an attempt to reengage the viewer and that only made it worse.   It may actually be better to remove some content and slow it down rather than lengthening the video.  I'm hoping others will offer feedback and that  or  can get some student feedback.  I'm also going to see if I can find some stats on video viewership dropoff.  To the best of my knowedge, our video viewer doesn't provide any stats. Thanks for watching. Ian Furst (talk) 10:43, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Ian Furst. And excellent first draft that captures what I want new medical article writers to see. I agree with much of what Hordland said. One suggestion about content to cut the mention of translating articles and number of Wikipedias as that is not essential information and maybe not relevant. We don't want them to think that their content is going to be translated right away into other languages. Also, maybe simplify and abbreviate the section about how to specifically add high quality medical content by sending them to one primary place to see how to add referenced content. From there they can find the other pages. When we get a stable video, I can show it to the folks that I'm working with at Cochrane Collaboration to get their feedback. Overall I think that it is great. :-) Sydney Poore/FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 15:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Sydney. I've trimmed some out. I like the idea of the different languages, because it gives a greater sense of purpose to the project but you're right, so I removed some copy from it.  I'll ping you once the video is stable.  I'll be working on this tonight if anyone else has any feedback. Ian Furst (talk) 18:07, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Quiddity and User:The Interior might be interested in this project. Both of them know something about video.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ian, great work on this, well-scripted, good visuals. A couple technical nit-picks. If you are going to do another run at the audio, I'd do two things.  You have some Spanish guitar on one track - you should crossfade this in with the video fade-in (maybe stretch out the fade-in/intro a bit for pacing - let the viewer absorb the image before you make the pitch), then level it down when the narration kicks in, then back up at the end.  Currently, I didn't notice it until about halfway through.  Second, bump all the audio tracks up a bit, if you can without getting incidental noise/buzz (it sounds pretty clean, so you should be able to). Ideally, it should be at a comfortable listening level on the viewer's computer/device at 30-40% percent volume (currently, I turned it up to 70% in a quiet room).  Otherwise, nicely done!  The Interior  (Talk) 21:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ian, thanks for pinging me, and I want to echo the praise that other editors have given you here. If you add any further content to the video, it would be good to tell them to say on their user page or user talk page, after they register an account, what institution and class they are in, ideally with a link to the class assignment page. Failure to do that tends to be the biggest predictor of class assignments where students get "bit". Perhaps you might also want to show the students how to use Template:Educational assignment on the talk pages of the articles that they edit. Because you asked me specifically about getting student feedback, I don't personally have any student editors working with me whom I could ask. But, when you feel ready, I suggest that you post at WP:Education noticeboard, and ask for that kind of feedback there, and you'll be quite likely to get it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think that we should advise new editors to out themselves. Most new editors aren't involved in class projects.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with you about those points, but I think we misunderstand each other about this situation. There's nothing in anything I recommended that provides a venue for student editors revealing their identities, outside of the fact that they are editing as part of a particular class assignment. Everything I'm saying conforms in spirit as well as letter with Privacy. And this isn't something that is directed towards new editors, broadly. We are talking here specifically about editors who have come here as students as part of a class assignment. If you look around WP:ENI for a while you will see just how important it is for student editors not to find themselves in the middle of a content dispute that they do not understand, and that they were not prepared for, particularly if the non-student editors they have come across are unaware that the new editors are students, and do not know how to communicate with the course instructor. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * If you posted, "This is a student at ____ school", you would violate WP:OUTING. The bit about "workplace address, job title and work organisation" applies to students:  going to school is their work.  The fact that a student is a student is protected "personal information".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In this case, we are talking about editors posting this information about themselves, not having it posted about them without their consent, but we are talking about other editors encouraging them to post it. I think that you have raised a thought-provoking point, however, and I thank you for making me aware of it. I think that further discussion really isn't about WP:MED, so I'm going to start a discussion about it at WP:Education noticeboard, to examine it more closely. I'll also leave a note at WT:Harassment. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Love it, great job! Heyinternetman (talk) 15:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that it is ready for live use exactly how it is without further development. If I had one wish it would be for better voice recording. If I had a second wish it would be to add nothing but to cut even more to make it 2 minutes instead of three. I have watched the video several times and there is no content I would want to cut, so I do not know how it could be shortened.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:18, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * A new video is up with some of the suggestions incorporated. If anyone wants to try using this one for new editors please feel free, I'm going to leave it alone for a couple of weeks now (unless anyone finds something majorly wrong in it).  Please leave any notes for improvement down the road on my page User:Ian Furst/welcome.  Hope you like it. Ian Furst (talk) 00:02, 14 May 2014 (UTC)  Update: the videos some times take a while to sync to the servers, not sure how long until the new video makes it to this page Ian Furst (talk) 00:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Ian, I think that it is great. :-) And will definitely preview it to the Cochrane folks for their feedback. I'll let you know if they have any suggestions. Sydney Poore/FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 15:00, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Next week I'm going to try and improve the voice quality and amplitude but I think it's "good enough".  Please send any feedback. I'm slowly learning how to do this stuff. Ian Furst (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Ian. I've made a link to it at WP:ASSIGN. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Have added it to WP:MEDHOW. A great video. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:08, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Asthma and paracetamol
Have added content per here []. Further opinions requested. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:34, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't object to such a statement, but I prefer saying "The majority of the currently available evidence does not; however, support a causal role for paracetamol". We could add that the observed associations may be due to various forms of bias, as mentioned by the authors. -A1candidate (talk) 15:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Bioregulatory medicine
New article, which appears to be a mash of dubious sources (Max Gerson as a MEDRS?) promoting yet another form of alt med. Might be a neologism. May need to be taken to AFD, is there anything worth salvaging? Yobol (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Where are the articles for the average Wikipedia user?
Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for everybody but many, if not most, of the medical entries read like they are journal articles or textbooks. They are way too technical for the vast majority of Wikipedia users.

What Wikipedia is not

"Scientific journals and research papers. A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead (and also maybe the initial sections) of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic. While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text.

"Academic language. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not just for academics. Article titles should reflect common usage, not academic terminology, whenever possible."

For example, this is from the entry under Myocardial perfusion imaging

"Interestingly, the concern over radiation hazard has undermined the risk associated with the allergic potential of radiocontrast (dyes) used in CT angiography and coronary angiography. In myocardial perfusion imaging, radioisotopes are used in nanomole quantities, practically devoid of any risk of allergy with normal saline being used as the vehicle and no known adverse reaction to the chemical molecules (sestamibi or tetrofosmine)."

This article wasn't written for the average Wikipedia user, it was written for medical professionals. Plus, it is missing numerous citations and links that might make it easier to understand.

I used to come here whenever I had a medical or health-related question but many times the articles are so full of jargon as to make them incomprehensible to anyone not possessing a degree in medicine or nursing. I often get the feeling that the people who are writing these entries believe their target audience is their peers.

I don't oppose Wikipedia supplying a special place where medical professionals and students can engage in ideas and discussion (a blog?) but where are the articles written for the average user?

I think this issue needs careful examination and discussion, and a wholesale rewriting of the entries that are too complex for most people. Thank you.

Rissa, copy editor 23:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome. Yes we are in need of more people willing / able to simplify medical content. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome indeed, Rissa. Wikipedia is not only an encyclopedia for everyone to read, but also an encyclopedia for everyone to edit. This means that each of us are equally responsible for the readability of our content. Why not re-write the parts of Myocardial perfusion imaging that you have recognised as difficult for the average reader to understand? Very often editors who are immersed in a subject don't spot when they are using jargon and it's valuable for someone outside that subject to join in and help make articles more understandable. --RexxS (talk) 10:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't find them in the archives, but I'm sure we've had a couple of other threads like this just recently. Academic studies of Wikipedia (eg ) also support readability being one of our weaknesses. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 11:32, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't find them in the archives, but I'm sure we've had a couple of other threads like this just recently. Academic studies of Wikipedia (eg ) also support readability being one of our weaknesses. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 11:32, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Help desk
Here's a request at the Help Desk that relates to a medical article. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 13:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The editor who was having trouble seems to be okay now. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  14:11, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/APCs and Atherosclerosis
Dear medical experts: The information in this old draft supposedly was copied from Antigen-presenting cell and then returned, but I don't see this information in the second article. If it's not there, should the draft be made into an article instead? If not, it will soon be deleted as stale. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Plantar Fasciitis GA Review
Hello all, if anyone would be interested in reviewing plantar fasciitis for GA, I would be very grateful. Regarding the review, I ask only two things and I think both are reasonable. The first is to offer only constructive advice to help improve the article and the second is that if improvements need to be made to achieve GA status, please put it on hold and I will make those corrections in a timely manner. It saves everyone time instead of having to do it all over again. Thanks :) TylerDurden8823 (talk) 17:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Is anyone here today? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:33, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Some people gave some comments. I added some information to the article. Other comments from others would be welcome.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:47, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Mesonephric duct / Wolffian duct nonclemature
I have opened a thread at WP:ANATOMY regarding whether we should be calling these structures by their eponymous names (Wolffian, Mullerian) or as the mesonephric/paramesonephric ducts. I invite other users to comment, and the discussion is here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy. Kindly, --LT910001 (talk) 11:56, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, do consider joining the discussion. LT910001 alerted WP:MED to this discussion at my suggestion. I suggested it because these topics also concern the medical field and therefore MEDMOS, and because WP:MED has a lot more participants than WP:Anatomy and is significantly more active as a WikiProject than WP:Anatomy. Flyer22 (talk) 12:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Disability: style guide
Editors are invited to comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disability (version of 14:35, 21 May 2014). —Wavelength (talk) 14:43, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Clinical trials on glucosamine and chondroitin
Hello! I just made Clinical trials on glucosamine and chondroitin. I created this entirely by cutting and pasting information about clinical trials on osteoarthritis from the articles on glucosamine and chondroitin.

In some fields of medicine Wikipedia tends to collect reports and critiques of medical research. The German acupuncture trials was one instance of this happening, and this is similar.

I posted on the talk page of that article why I did this. I am informing this board of what I have done because a lot of the information which I posted to that article is like a bad literature review by a non-scientist, and yet I thought it would be better to keep the content in its own article than argue for its removal. Now that it is in that space, at least people can develop the content in one place rather than try to integrate it into the Wikipedia articles for glucoasamine, chondroitin, or conditions like osteoarthritis.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  18:55, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The commitment to reliable health and medical information on the internet img HON was founded to encourage the dissemination of quality health information for patients and professionals and the general public, and to facilitate access to the latest and most relevant medical data through the use of the internet.

http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.237.229 (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hum. Not a huge fan of these. Getting a little overly specific IMO. And they sort of support the use of primary sources rather than just summarizing the conclusions of the most recent secondary sources. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not like these articles either only because I have never seen a well-made one and it may not be possible to make them good. Regardless, I hope that everyone agrees that the articles for glucosamine and chondroitin are better now that all of this information is forked from them and placed in this other space.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  16:22, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata game
Hello! Wikidata is a Wikimedia project which provides a database back end for other Wikimedia projects. It currently only manages interwiki links between various language versions of Wikipedia, but when it is more developed, it will do all kinds of things.

On the Gender Gap mailing list there is discussion about new Wikidata games which are live now. Players get asked questions which help sort Wikidata entries, and which soon will be integrated into Wikipedia articles.

I encourage anyone here who wants to see a Wikidata application to check this one out, and also to begin thinking about how we can use any similar system to sort our 20,000+ health articles in some way.


 * Wikidata Games

 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  21:11, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Should we add patient.co.uk to Infobox disease?
See the archived emedicine discussion. The links to emedicine were removed. The question now is, should we add new links to patient.co.uk? Is anyone already planning or working on doing this? Klortho (talk) 15:17, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It should not be done manually. I cannot estimate how much time it would take for someone to automate the process and anyway I am not sure that automating this is a favor I would request of anyone. For the long term, I suppose this function should be taken over by Wikidata, which is neither live nor scheduled to go live with this capability, but which I presume will be introduced within three years. If I had a wish about this it would be for someone to plan to capture the lost information in Wikidata somehow and not plan for this information to be managed in local infoboxes.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:52, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes fairly easy to automate. User:Boghog did this for drugs.com Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Super-spreader student problem
Super-spreader is a person who spreads a lot of disease. There is controversy at that article which has gotten more than the average amount of attention, but I thought I would share here.

A professor blogged that her student was trying to improve the article but the edits were reverted. The professor makes some serious accusations of hostility against WikiProject Medicine member who reverted the student, including exercising their seniority and personal gender bias. Based on what I see in the article's history for April 2014, it seems that Malke 2010 reviewed the students' edits piecewise and gave what by community standards is the usual sort of criticism of why those pieces were reverted. The student and Malke talked on the article's talk page, but the discussion did not go far.

I am not at this time going to comment on how the Wikipedia platform's inherent gender bias harmed this new user's experience other than to say that the claim should be taken seriously. A problem more concerning to me is that there was some failing which resulted in the student's contribution history showing that this student did not feel comfortable addressing their problems on Wikipedia. I regret that Wikipedia did not seem welcoming enough for this student or the professor to respond on-wiki. It would be my wish that when any user's content is reverted and they are given an explanation why it was reverted then in those circumstances they would realize that they can respond to the criticism on-wiki without escalating the issue to the Wikimedia Foundation's senior staff, and it seems by the posting on the Gender Gap mailing list that this happened. As this case exemplifies a problem affecting the education program and medical content, I am posting on those boards. I thought you all should know.

It would be my wish that everyone involved in this understand that the Wikipedia community supports them and that problems here are the failing of Wikipedia as a communication platform, and not because of failings of individuals who intend to improve Wikipedia and participate in the community. Malke especially is being harshly criticized and I do not want this person to have a bad experience. It is not immediately obvious to me that Malke did anything out of the ordinary or against Wikipedia community standards, and even if something is wrong, I do not like seeing a good contributor treated badly on-wiki and off by people who feel empowered to deliver punishment and shame. Even when something goes wrong Wikipedia is supposed to be a supportive place.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:40, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks to everyone for their comments and interest in this, especially Blue Rasberry. Bringing the issue here was the best thing to do.


 * The Wikipedia community needs to be aware that I made several attempts to post on the instructor's blog explaining my rationale about spotting a vandal, the need for communication on the talk page, and that I am a female and had no bias against her student. She refused to allow the post, and did so in an extremely unpleasant manner. She also refused to allow posts from several of my work colleagues vouching for my professional credentials, as well as supporting comments from several Wikipedia editors. She constructed a narrative about females being bullied by males on Wikipedia and apparently no information that contradicted that narrative was welcome. Not to mention, she has failed to show how the user name, Dballouz, suggests a female. So assuming I was one of those 'bullying males' on Wikipedia, how would I know this was a female?


 * When I saw the student's edit, I checked her contribs. I thought the use of the sandbox was a good sign. But her false claims on the talk page that there is a controversy as to whether asymptomatic carriers are super-spreaders, and her failure to show sources for that claim, as well as her revert before leaving, made her appear to be a vandal. If she had persisted, I would have reported her and she would have likely been blocked because she wasn't demonstrating constructive behavior. Jamie, on the gendergap thread, noted that dropping a 'blob' edit, as she called it, into an article is disruptive. The instructor claimed on her blog that she has a registered account on Wikipedia and has edited here. She stated she was aware of the WikiEd program but decided not to use it. The instructor had all the information and the tools to make this a positive experience for her student, and a constructive edit to a Wikipedia article. She chose not to do that. Neither Wikipedia nor myself are responsible for that. What's that saying, "You can lead a horse to water. . ." Malke 2010 (talk) 14:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Malke 2010, I'm concerned about the "vandal" language here. She added some plausible but unsourced information.  Okay, that happens a thousand or more times a day.  Why does that make her a "vandal"?  Is adding unsourced information automatically proof that the new editor is actively intending to hurt the encyclopedia?  Is reverting the removal of material that you believe to be good (by someone you've never seen or heard of before, and who—for all you know—might know nothing at all about the subject) automatically a bad-faith action?  Or is this situation perhaps better described in some other way (like WP:Edit warring or failing to meet a WP:CHALLENGE to the material)?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Have to agree with WhatamIdoing here. Regardless of anything else, vandal or vandalism seems to be the wrong word and that's from Malke 2010's own description (I haven't looked that well in to the actual case so can't completely rule out the possibility vandalism is a fair call). I hang out occassionally at AN/I and I can say regardless of whether the editor would have been blocked or not, calling them a vandalism based at least on the description Malke 2010 has given would likely have resulted in an admonishment for misuse of the term. It's important people get it right because WP:Vandalism or calling some a vandal is quite a loaded and offensive term and our policies and guidelines clearly establish not all bad edits, let alone all edits someone disagree with, are vandalism.
 * BTW, I find the gender issue somewhat uninteresting and I'm not even sure this is the best place for a discussion about it anyway. But since you User:Malke 2010 mentioned it, I don't see why you believe you were expected to know the other editor was female as I can't find anything in tbe original blog post suggesting you were expected to know. The main point of the author of the blog post appears to have been that their student who's female, was bullied and otherwise treated poorly and this may partially arise because of the differences in the way male and females communicate but also because of other things like the wikipedia culture they consider unwelcoming to newcomers, protective of established editors and harmful to expanding the encyclopaedia. In other words, while the person who wrote the blog post did raise gender issues, I didn't see any suggestion from them the solution was that editors (male or female) need to treat female editors differently.
 * Actually, my impression is they are suggesting things need to change at wikipedia to be more welcoming to all editors although particularly female editors who they feel are seriously underrepresented at wikipedia (edit: and as per their followup, more likely to be turned off by aggressive or other behaviour the blog author feel is unwelcoming). In fact, they seem to acknowledge we are only talking about averages which would imply they are aware of the problem of treating female editors differently (since some female editors won't fit in to those averages and some male editors will probably be close to the female average). Instead, I think they are trying to suggest that all editors need to be careful in how they respond, perhaps with particular awareness that different people may respond differently for a large variety of reasons without their meaning, certainty etc being different. (An astute observe may recognise that the blog author probably should take this in to account themselves.)
 * Really I feel the gender issue is overblown since as I hinted at earlier, it doesn't seem to have been the main point of the blog post. I have no particular comments on the fairness or accuracy of the blog post otherwise, and I understand you feel it unfairly attacks and maligns you. (And I do think it is unfortunate the author didn't phrase the blog more neutrally re your gender since they couldn't be sure, as shown by the fact their suspicion was wrong).
 * But ultimately in my opinion you are partially misreading what the blog is saying if you believe you were expected to know the editor was female and respond differently because they were. Actually I think it's clear they believe you should have responded differently point blank. (The only real relevance of gender regarding you was that their student was female and they believe commented in a manner more typical of females and you who they believed were male at the time, in their opinion communicated in a manner more typical of males.) Again I'm not commenting on the fairness or accuracy of their characterisations, just what they seemed to be saying.
 * Note that I didn't look at the follow up (edit: briefly read it after finishing this), the comments and little of the subsequent discussions, perhaps these issues were raised by the author there, if so I apologise. I do understand that this was raised in other places relating to gender issues, but that doesn't make it the fault of the author unless they themselves were the one who did it.
 * Nil Einne (talk) 18:27, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I read with a lot of interest what the instructor's blog described. In a way, this is a very typical case study of what can go wrong in these situations, and I find it very interesting that the blog update talks about all the helpful feedback about how the instructor should have told the student to make the edits in pieces, instead of dropping the whole page out of a sandbox. True that! And I also wish the student could have been guided better into using the article talk page to understand what was going on. I wish that the instructor had found out about WP:ASSIGN before the assignment was made, because that could have made all the difference in the world. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I read the comments to the blog, and was happy with the good advice, and how it was received. We still have some work to do, as this type of situation is likely to occur again, so my current concern is - while it is easy to identify some things that went wrong, it isn't immediately obvious what to do to prevent a repeat. S Philbrick (Talk)  17:32, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You are right about the need to find ways to prevent repeats. In a general sense, it seems to me that the right kinds of advice to instructors exist on-wiki, but it's difficult to ensure that they see the advice before, instead of after, the problem. I think a starting point, but obviously not the last word, is to try to make more editors aware of where to point instructor editors. According to the blog, the instructor tried quite hard to find the right information ahead of time, but no one really pointed her to the right place. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * People can always ask here. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I had quite a few edits under my belt before I even knew there was such a thing as a Wikiproject. I'm sure it was months before I had heard of the student assignment initiatives. My point is, I don't think it is reasonable to expect a new editor to even think about asking the question. Maybe we need to be more forceful about asking new editors to check in at the Teahouse, while making sure the regulars there know how to spot student assignments and get them on the right track.
 * I'm also intrigued by the notion that smaller initial edits might have led to a different outcome, and I'm musing about whether that can be encouraged in a post at the Village pump idea lab -- S Philbrick (Talk)  19:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "I'm also intrigued by the notion that smaller initial edits might have led to a different outcome." With smaller initial edits, mistakes&mdash;such as unencyclopedic or unreferenced content&mdash;by a new editor are likely to be spotted more quickly by experienced watchers. This allows the experienced editors to direct the new editor in the right direction, before the new editor has undertaken a lot of work.


 * Whether it would have changed the outcome in this particular case, I don't know. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  19:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Responding to both S Philbrick and Axl, I tend to be a bit of a broken-record in pointing out WP:ASSIGN, and it does include advice about some do's and don't's about moving content into mainspace from a sandbox. I like the idea of reaching out to the Teahouse about recognizing new editors who are students or instructors, and pointing them to the right places to get advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I've wondered about whether, instead of directing promising editors of medicine-related content to the Teahouse, if we could direct them here. But I'm not sure that people (the ones here now) would like this, or if we would be as good at supporting new editors as the "specialists" over at the Teahouse.  We can be very critical of people who don't already know our standards.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it is a good idea to send them here. They will likely come into contact with those from this group anyway. If we have a chance to explain our standards there may be less issues. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:22, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * After reading the blog and the article's talk page discussion, I think this was a case of rejecting synthesis, failing to mention WP:MEDRS, and doubling-down with WP:OWN. It was an unnecessary conflict. I think the idea of making "small edits" first is understandable but unrealistic. Students build in their sandboxes so they can do it without interference and they dump it all into the article the day it's due for it to be live. I've been asking students to post on the talk pages prior to publication, but I might consider the idea of small edits to start. How amenable is this WikiProject to notifications of WEF courses? Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 23:43, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * How we respond to that will have an enormous amount to do with how well the people at the education project are doing their job. If teachers and their students are well-prepared by the project with a confirmed thorough understanding of the need to use secondary and tertiary sources, and a couple of other basics, I think most here would welcome the opportunity to at least glance at their work.


 * Actually, I wish that project would give us the chance to comment on all proposed new medical articles or proposed significant additions to existing articles - before the student starts work. Recognising an actual gap in our encyclopedic coverage of medical content is not always easy, and getting it wrong can cause distress and waste a lot of time and goodwill. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I could tell you whatever you wanted to know about the functioning of the education program as I follow whatever the program is doing. Everyone in the education program knows that WikiProject Medicine wants to be aware of all medical classes. No other WikiProject gets in their business like WikiProject Medicine.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:22, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Blue Rasberry.
 * Do all teachers using Wikipedia as a teaching aid and all students carrying out class assignments on en.Wikipedia medical content get a thorough grounding in WP:MEDRS?
 * Do the students and teachers get supervision and guidance from an expert Wikipedia medical editor in choosing a topic?
 * Can you link me to a page that lists all the current classes affecting medical content and lists the articles each are/will be creating/adding to? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:44, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks.
 * No. Sending people to WP:MEDRS probably is not a sufficient replacement for some specialized presentation for this population, although at least sending everyone there would be a good start and even that does not happen.
 * No. There are problems on both ends - there is no formal communication channel for notifying this project of classes from the education program and on this end, there is no designation of overseers for classes. I would not favor any obligatory commitment from this project, but for example, it would be nice if for every class at least someone from this project would post a welcome to the class on their course page.
 * No. Perhaps that ought to be here on this talk page, and then archived somewhere else in this WikiProject.
 * I think you just identified three fundamental problems which ought to be addressed. I suppose this should happen in the reverse order that you asked - first the education program should commit to notifying this project of all health courses, then this project should acknowledge awareness of those classes, and finally the education program should help this project develop a specialized MEDRS training for professors. Does all that seem reasonable?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:59, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * By "a thorough grounding in WP:MEDRS", I really mean a ten-minute tutorial from someone - ideally their teacher (who in turn has been thoroughly grounded in WP:MEDRS by a campus/online ambassador). None of them needs to actually even look at the actual policy. Just the basics: explain primary/secondary/tertiary and how we use them; explain WP:NOR/WP:SYN. That's enough for me.


 * A formal commitment is probably unnecessary. Every couple of days someone from WP:AFC turns up here with a request for eyes. I'm pretty sure those requests are always (almost) addressed. If someone pinged us when a teacher posts a list of proposed medical articles/sections, I'm pretty sure someone from here would be happy to scan it and weed out the clangers.


 * Others' thoughts on this would be appreciated, though. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Anthonyhcole, I watch the education noticeboards pretty closely, and the problem about reaching out to class instructors is that there is no guarantee that they will find, or even bother to think about, any of the training materials Wikipedia makes available to them. Often, someone teaching a course will just set students loose on Wikipedia with no guidance, and may even be dismissive of experienced editors who try to get in touch with them. In the case cited here, the instructor actually tried very conscientiously to learn about Wikipedia before assigning the student, but didn't find the information that would have been helpful, even though the information is already available. At some point, I think we are going to need something that shows up while anyone opens a new editing account, saying something like: "If you are a class instructor, please look 'here', and if you are a student in a class, please look 'here'." But we don't have that yet. For those instructors who make the effort to do things correctly, the education program has some very good training materials. I'm sure that Sage Ross would be very helpful in adding anything (such as the video discussed below) that this Project would like into the training materials. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:04, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

it would be pretty simple to make a quick video tutorial for people who are going edit on medicine project articles. make the length 4min or so with the essentials of editing medicine. exclude most of the technical stuff (which can be learned elsewhere) but go over why we do what we do. Ian Furst (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I've put a potential script for an "Intro to Wikiproject Medicine" here. If anyone thinks it would be a good idea, let me know and I'll do it up with animations and stuff. Otherwise, I'll let it die.  Feel free to edit. Ian Furst (talk) 21:01, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ian, that is awesome. I can't fault it (except for one comma). --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:08, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I really like this. Maybe we need to have a bot put it on the talk page of all new medical editors :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:36, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Just curious - how does this project identify  new medical editors? XOttawahitech (talk) 15:07, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Mostly by accident, when checking RecentChanges or our watchlists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:27, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Will create the video and post. give me a couple of days. Ian Furst (talk) 21:07, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Once the script becomes a video, I'd be happy to put a link to it at WP:ASSIGN. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

We could have it automatically applied to everyone who edits a medical article with a red link for a talk page? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:03, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd like that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, I like the idea of a video that specifically addresses editing medical topics. Different people like different media for learning. And there is definitely a large group of people who do well watching how-to-do-it videos. Right now I'm developing a tool set to be used when I train Cochrane Collaboration folks. If you create this video I would test it with a group to get feedback about how helpful it is. Sydney Poore/FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 22:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * See section below, Sydney. Btw, I'll be playing this on the 3rd as part of a presentation to medical writers, so if there is a later version please let me know. I'll gather some feedback. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 09:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Potential complications of tooth extraction
Editors are invited to examine "Draft:Potential complications of tooth extraction". —Wavelength (talk) 21:40, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Tooth staining
Editors are invited to examine "Draft:Tooth staining". —Wavelength (talk) 21:41, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Eyes needed
I've just tagged diabetes and testosterone to be merged into androgen replacement therapy. Both are problematic, apparently with some real-world drama going on around lawyers, Lancet, NEJM, a large study group, and claims that a paper reporting adverse effects was defective. Additional eyes would be helpful, particularly if they grok endocrinology. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 04:50, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Move request of Melancholia
A discussion is taking place on the title of this article at Talk:Melancholia. All input welcome. Thank you. walk victor falktalk 11:13, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking for a third opinion, sort of
Could someone with maybe ten or fifteen minutes on hand please go to this section: Polychlorinated biphenyl and strip out anything that seems to be supported (or, ideally, supportable) only by primary sources? I'm not exactly worried about lower-quality sources (like the Mayo Clinic website: technically, that's a secondary source); I'm currently only concerned about the long strings of primary sources.

There are two inexperienced editors watching this section related to a court case about whether PCBs cause cancer, so I'd like to have this done by someone who is not connected to the court case and has not been involved in the discussions so far, but who does know what MEDRS says about secondary sources. I think that doing this would make it easier to figure out what to put in, even if stripping out the bad stuff means that we end up with an entirely blank section for now (although that's not necessarily going to be the result). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 20 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "ten or fifteen minutes"? It took me 1 hour to go through two-thirds of the relevant references. :-) Axl  ¤  [Talk]  11:40, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Reducing taskforce neurology's scope
Would members of this taskforce be amenable to adding to neurology task force page: This task force covers pages relating to neurological disease and symptoms. It does not cover pages relating to peripheral or central neuroanatomy (WP:ANATOMY, WP:NEUROSCIENCE) or physiology (WP:PHYSIOLOGY, WP:NEUROSCIENCE).
 * Scope

Reasons:
 * This is consistent with our scope (WP:MED?), where articles pertaining to disease or injury are kept under WP:MED. ("This project supports articles related to medicine, such as diseases, conditions, and treatments for humans")
 * There is an active neuroscience wikiproject (WP:NEUROSCIENCE) which already holds these articles, and WP:ANATOMY and WP:PHYSIOLOGY articles which are already co-tagged. We also have respective categories.
 * There is no triage utility if this task force covers every neurology-related article under the sun, as the point of the task force (focus on a few select articles) is negated
 * Editors interested in the medical side of neurology (disease/symptoms/tests) can come to the taskforce, and those interested in anatomy or all neuroscience-related articles can go to those respective wikiprojects.
 * Without this statement explicitly written, editors may add neuroscience articles to the taskforce and visa versa. This is a waste of time and amending the scope could prevent this. Lastly, as I have already encountered, editors may waste colossal amounts of time tagging or co-tagging articles and this small change may prevent this.

This task force, like WPMED already does, should keep a tight focus, and neuro articles are already well-tended at the active WP:NEUROSCIENCE. I suggest this change to reduce the fruitless workload of well-intentioned future editors. I have posted this on the talk page for the neuro taskforce but closed that thread to centralise discussion. I have also reinstated this thread after it was automatically bot-archived shortly after I posted. Thoughts? --LT910001 (talk) 04:40, 17 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. JFW &#124; T@lk  16:38, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Not sure that explicitly needs to be stated, but I agree. This is what the task force (and project) have always covered, just not explicitly stated on the task force page (but has been on the project page). Also, this doesn't just apply to neurology, but every medical specialty. WPMED tends to cover just the clinical medicine aspects and pathophysiology. It's pretty simple: structures -> WP:ANATOMY, how they work together normally -> WP:PHYSIOLOGY, when they don't work normally -> WP:MED. I know that WikiProjects are groups of people that can create any scope that they want, but these 3 projects tend to be in agreement regarding scope and the delegation of articles to the most appropriate project. These projects have similar memberships, work together closely, and are okay moving articles out of their scope to the more appropriate project. So generally, for any article pertaining to the human body or medicine, there would only be one of WikiProject Anatomy, WikiProject Physiology, or WikiProject Medicine tagged. Specific to neuro stuff, I'm not exactly sure where WP:NEUROSCIENCE fits in. If WP:NEUROSCIENCE wants to double tag along with WP:Anatomy/Physiology/Medicine, so be it. I don't think they have really collaborated with any of these 3 projects specifically regarding scope and potential overlap. --Scott Alter (talk) 05:35, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed completely. If to add anything I'd mention that WP:Phsyiology hasn't been around for all that long, but it is reasonably active for a new WikiProject. As for WP:Neuroscience I think it fills a role in a niche project that can collaborate with the other projects. There is a more in common with anatomical structures of the brain and their physiology than there are with bones and the liver, and neuroscience would also include quite a significant number of computational neuroscience articles.
 * I've seen a number of purely physiological neuro-articles tagged with WP:MED, and instead of removing them I've let them be, but I will remove them in the future and tag properly. I don't think overlap is a bad thing as long as we keep each tag within the scope of the projects. CFCF  (talk · contribs · email) 08:07, 23 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Support ∞  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 12:03, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 22/05
I'm not sure whether this should be merged with any of the other reflex articles, such as Withdrawal reflex...Draft:Cutaneous reflex in human locomotion. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There are a number of problems with that article. Some of the statements are very general and sections are lacking sourcing. My own understanding is that these actions are not reflexive in the traditional sense, but are developed by learning, much like micro-slip actions are as a learned automatic behavior Odd article.
 * I realise these topics might be overlooked on Wikipedia, and the only source I can find of the top of my head for micro-slips is . I'll have to source a bit before I can say anything else. CFCF  (talk · contribs · email) 08:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, not sure if the section on General Reflex Pathways is considered main-stream. Supraspinal reflexes are somewhat discussed whether they are reflexes at all in the community, especially if they activate cortical regions (not mentioned in the article) . CFCF  (talk · contribs · email) 08:22, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * P.P.S. This is not only an issue with the article in question, but the entire Reflex article is very poor and in dire need of improvement. CFCF  (talk · contribs · email) 08:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Second article

 * Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Non-islet cell tumor induced hypoglycemia. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I have commented, and had someone at CRUK look it over too, and added that. I haven't "reviewed" it though. New endocrinologist editor. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:22, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

MEDLINE versus other databases
Hello everyone. I have opened a conversation on WT:MEDRS about the reliability of journals not indexed in MEDLINE – Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). If you have a moment, I would certainly welcome your input. Thank you, NW ( Talk ) 14:54, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

""
FYI, The usage of is under discussion, see talk:Mehmet Oz -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 15:06, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Bioregulatory medicine
Where does this stuff come from? LeadSongDog come howl!  06:51, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Obviously comes from the two mentioned in the lead. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:50, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I found nothing relevant in PubMed. This looks like a neologism. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  09:41, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes exactly. Invented by the two listed. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:05, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Articles for creation/Acta Radiologica Short Reports
Dear medical experts: Here's yet another of those old drafts. Is this a notable publication? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 23:56, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Photo for the lead of gout
Is under discussion. Others thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the picture falsely suggests that gout may be caused by an insect bite, rather than a pathophysiologic accumulation of purines, so we should look for a more accurate illustration. -A1candidate (talk) 14:37, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It is a very famous picture. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Many of the medical articles have lead pictures that take a certain artistic license with the subject. My vote would be to keep it Ian Furst (talk) 02:37, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Definitely keep it. It's ideal for an encyclopedia article aimed at a general audience. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:49, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Anthonyhcole and User:Ian Furst Might need to comment at the RfC for it to count. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry James. I'm in a remote location with limited internet access. (We were told internet was reliable but for now it involves climbing a rather high hill in the rain.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Caesarean section
User appears to be repeatedly added content not supported by the refs they are using. Further opinions needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:23, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I gave him a welcome template and included the WP:MED welcome. I always welcome them first. SW3 5DL (talk) 06:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:58, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Cite button
The "cite" button in the editing panel has disappeared. I particularly miss the autofill PMID and DOI functionality. Does anyone know why? JFW &#124; T@lk  10:36, 25 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to the RefToolbar? It still works for me.  Check to see if it is still enabled in your preferences panel under Special:Preferences (see Editing section). Boghog (talk) 10:54, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It works off and on. Typically if one tries again in a few moments it will work. I wish the WMF would make it works all the time by adding it as a core part of the underlying software. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:15, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Another thought. The RefToolbar is based on JavaScript. If for some reason, JavaScript is not enabled or malfunctioning in your web browser, RefToolbar will not work. Click for example here to test your JavaScript installation. Boghog (talk) 11:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Feedback request - accessibility
I've done something a little unorthodox on amphetamine and Adderall. I was wondering anyone had objections or feedback related to linking between a technical description and a lay description using different articles on drugs/chemicals with identical MoA/pharmacodynamics. Accessibility is a concern because I'm still trying to get amphetamine to FA status.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 13:14, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Add: If you happen to know of a simpler, more lay-friendly way of stating anything in Adderall, please feel free to copyedit it!  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 13:16, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks ok to me. I'd still like to agree standardized approaches to getting both technical and plain English accounts into articles though, but this is a reasonable approach. There won't always be the 'somewhere else' to send people to, though. Wiki CRUK John (talk)(Johnbod talk) 16:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

History of psychosurgery and psychosurgery
Two editors are squabbling over these articles. The subject seems to be rather important to me (inclusion of criticisms and ethical considerations) and I think their discussion could benefit from the input of some knowledgeable editors here. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

New Electronic Cigarette Review
I thought those working on the E-cigarette article would be interested to know that a new review article out of UCSF on the topic is out. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/129/19/1972.full TylerDurden8823 (talk) 14:00, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Great find Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:39, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, a nice review article, but also realize that Stanton Glantz and his group are anti-tobacco activists. While I agree with his agenda, use the conclusions they come to with care. --Mark viking (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That advice fell on deaf ears, Grana et al(2014) is now the most cited paper in the whole article. --Kim D. Petersen 21:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Isotretinoin article
There has been some disagreement regarding some edits to the Isotretinoin article, some of which is MEDRS related. I was wondering if we could get some more eyes on this and some input on the article Talk page. The discussion to date on the article talk page begins with the section entitled Edits of "May 10-17 2014" Many thanks Formerly 98 (talk) 12:12, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Sahaja Yoga
There is substantial biomedical information in this article that does not meet MEDRS. I made a substantial comment on the talk page listing this info and explaining how MEDRS applies here. Some help clarifying this would be appreciated also if an uninvolved editor thinks this information should be removed that would be helpful. I hesitate to make such cuts as I have been involved in ongoing discussion on talk. I'd like to hear what some Project Med editors think. - - MrBill3 (talk) 04:42, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes please trim primary sources and replace with secondary sources if available. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:15, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

RFC
I've started an RFC at Talk:Super-spreader about applying WP:MEDDATE to that article. All opinions are wanted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The ACE Study
Minutes ago, I saw this edit by FeatherPluma at the Child abuse article with regard to the ACE Study. The text could use the help of WP:MED editors before and after it is transported to WP:Mainspace. I'm also sure that, per WP:TITLE, the title of the article should be Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (or lowercase?), not ACE Study. Flyer22 (talk) 18:08, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, the article name will need to be as you mention if the proposed article is advanced to mainspace. Renaming is easily done at the advancement workpage. Yes, the series of edits is substantial enough (more than I realized at first) that I've moved the partially integrated material back to draft temporarily. It was clear that the extant recipient article did not have standard form referencing precisely tethered to relevant text content; the draft text served as a good resource to help reorganize and correct the Child abuse article. Pitch in with edits if you wish. FeatherPluma (talk) 18:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Structured cognitive behavioral training
This really needs some attention from specialist editors... Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 19:49, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter
, I, and others are intent on creating a newsletter for WPMED in order to engage users, mark our progress, and communicate information about the project. This directly follows on from a newsletter started a year ago at a meta level. The newsletter is currently in a very rough draft form here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter, and is intended to be released at the end of this month. I invite users to comment on the newsletter's talk page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter --LT910001 (talk) 03:49, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Name
While the newsletter is in progress, it has been under the moniker The revival. Are there any other suggestions for the name of our nascent newsletter? --LT910001 (talk) 03:49, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * ProjectMed? MedNews? Something short, like The Bugle in the military history project. SW3 5DL (talk) 03:12, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What about The Galenian? SW3 5DL (talk) 03:16, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "Scope", "The portal", "Acuity", "Occam's Obs", (not "The Orifice" please), "Output", "Fleming's Flannel", "The Obturator", "The Discharge Daily" (eewwww), "The Slippery Scalpel" (that sounds like an English pub)...Myrtlegroggins (talk) 11:37, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hah! "The slippery scalpel"! Not very confidence inspiring but certainly has a nice ring =P. --LT910001 (talk) 22:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It can be called "Pulse" or "The Pulse". However, those might be already used and copyrighted.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You mean trademarked. But there's no need to worry about that. Pulse would do. Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Pulse would work well. If we're ivoting, I support that. SW3 5DL (talk) 18:28, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I count six users in favour of "The pulse" (including at the newsletter's talk page) so I have made the change. --LT910001 (talk) 22:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:MEDMOS Thought
Hello all, it was recently brought to my attention that under the anatomy section of WP:MEDMOS is a statement that says the following: "A link to the common's image category for images may be provided in the 'see also' section. If article makes use of anatomical terminology, please add or  as the first link in the 'see also' section." I personally don't think this particular policy or guideline makes all that much sense. This is basically saying that this anatomy terms link should go at the bottom of the page. This makes little sense to me since readers who would have use for such a link would likely have struggled through the article by the time they reach this link and may not even bother going that far. I think it makes a lot more sense to put such a link offering a page detailing anatomical terminology near the top of the page instead.

So, I would like to hear other opinions in the Wikiproject Medicine Community and see what you all think. Please weigh in-do you agree with the policy and think this link should be kept at the bottom of the page or do you think it makes more sense to have it higher up where it's more visible and more likely to be used by readers who would need such a link? Comments will be more helpful if you explain your answers and don't simply just say which one you like better. Citing Wikipedia policy is always helpful, but I think this is an instance in which we might want to consider revising this guideline. Thoughts? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You should also alert WP:Anatomy to this discussion, and this discussion would perhaps be better had at the WP:MEDMOS talk page for documentation. Flyer22 (talk) 08:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, please do consider this next time. We're a active WP and not all users follow both talk pages. --LT910001 (talk) 09:09, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * My apologies, it didn't occur to me to post on anatomy. Next time I will. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Anatomical terms should just be linked the first time they occur. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:37, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I discuss this in greater detail below. I feel this is impractical and, if possible, we should find another solution, such as providing links to Anatomical terminology in article infoboxes. --LT910001 (talk) 10:18, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, WP:MEDMOS is not a policy (it's instead a guideline) and, other than WP:Linkfarm, there is no overlinkng policy. There is a WP:Overlinking guideline, however, and I generally follow that. For example, I will link once after the link has first occurred in the lead if I think it is beneficial to readers; this is acceptable, per WP:Overlinking. On a side note, WP:Anatomy has been alerted to this discussion; I think that most of them, like I do, watch both WP:Med and WP:Anatomy, however. Flyer22 (talk) 09:16, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I know it's not a policy and it's a guideline, but my question is if the banner would be more suitable at the top of the article. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Simplifying anatomical terms
I've created a subsection to do this justice, as this topic is one that I've been focusing on for a while and feel quite passionately about.

It is impractical to link all instances of anatomical terms, as Flyer22 alludes. We should assume that users have some acquaintance with the terms in the articles they're looking. We do the same with medical articles that have medical terminology, linking only to concepts rather than medical terms. There is an entire anatomical vocabulary and I think it is very impractical to link each term -- as it is, for one thing, piecemeal. Technical language is used in specific sections of the article and may be more prominent in more technical articles: in anatomy articles, this is usually the blood supply/innervation etc. sections, and is a topic we've discussed previously re. Pharmacology articles. In this case, if a user knows the names of the blood vessels or nerves, we really ought to assume that users are somewhat familiar with terms used to describe them. In addition, if we do link these terms, they should be pointed to wiktionary, as they are definitional, but if they are definitional (eg in other articles), then users could surely look them up themselves. Many of these terms are found in almost every anatomical article, and I think it would definitely be overlinking to link them in most articles. In addition, we have over 4,500 articles in WP:ANATOMY's scope and a better solution is a systemic one, rather than one that must be applied individually to each article. Lastly, most of the definition pages link to disambiguation, and editing content with piped links is much more cumbersome.

For that reason, and I created the Anatomy-terms template and worked on anatomical terminology and the related articles. This can be put in articles so that users can be aware of the issue and can be linked to an article that has an entire overview, but so that authors don't have to link every instance of Anatomy terms. If users visit any articles about muscles now, they will see the link in the infobox itself. It has been my plan for a while to, with consensus, add this link to the anatomy infobox, however I haven't really got around to proposing it.

With regard to a hatnote link, I think there is a policy somewhere (possibly HATNOTE?) that states we shouldn't put terminology or explanatory links at the top of articles, which is why it hasn't been done already.

Lastly, wherever possible anatomical terms should be simplified. I have a Wikiessay in my sandbox here: User:LT910001/sandbox/Simplifying anatomical terminology and invite you to contribute. --LT910001 (talk) 10:15, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not disagreeing that readers should have some baseline familiarity with the terms in the articles they're reading. I agree that it is cumbersome and undesirable to link every instance of an anatomical term. Certainly, the ideal is to use simplified language throughout the article whenever that is possible, but as you mentioned LT, certain sections often have more complex terms. I happen to think the anatomy terms template is an excellent idea, I just wonder about its placement in the see also section rather than near the top of the article. I would say that's my central concern. IMO, having the link near the bottom of the article seems to defeat the purpose of having the link in the article and I think it's less likely to be used if placed there. Adding it to the anatomy info box sounds like a great idea to me. If this is complying with some policy like HATNOTE that states we shouldn't put terminology or explanatory links at the top of the articles, then that's understandable though I would then just disagree with that policy in that case. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Also with you on that point. I would suggest adding the terminology link to the infobox, and I would think we could make an exception if it is only a guideline, and if it is policy I would argue for trying to change it. CFCF  (talk · contribs · email) 14:52, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:Hatnote is also a guideline instead of a policy. Flyer22 (talk) 14:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There can be "Glossary of human anatomy" in Category:Glossaries of medical terms and in Category:Glossaries of medicine. Each article with terms of human anatomy can have a conveniently placed link to the new glossary.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 00:19, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

There seems to be some consensus for this change. Unfortunately Infobox anatomy is completely protected, so we need to wait for a user who has template-editing rights to make this change. The specific change would be to add this code to the template: --LT910001 (talk) 23:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * belowstyle = font-style:italic; font-weight:bold
 * below = Anatomical terminology

AfC submission - 28/05
Draft:Pressure ulcer risk and dressing treatment options in adults with spinal cord injury. Looks like OR and how-to, but maybe some of it is worth keeping? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:03, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Lung cancer & diet
There is a disagreement over the phrasing. Please comment here. Thanks. Axl ¤  [Talk]  11:51, 28 May 2014 (UTC)