Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Evidence based content for medical articles on Wikipedia

The EBM page
Hello. Could I put in a shameless plug to look for help in improving the Evidence-based medicine itself. Maybe I'm just biased, but it seems to me that it's a relevant page which would benefit from the right sort of attention from contributors who actually do happen to know something about the subject. —MistyMorn (talk) 19:42, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure. :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:44, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Great! #:-) —MistyMorn (talk) 19:51, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

December 2012
This sounds exciting. Where might interested editors be needed to help? What might they do? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 20:29, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We are looking for someone to go over all the new articles put out by the Cochrane collaboration and than add or update our current content. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a worthy cause. I would help train someone from Cochrane how to do this. Does Cochrane have a mailing list that they could use to announce that experienced Wikipedians will happily volunteer to train someone on this? I can't say I'm ready to commit to volunteering for it yet though. Maybe someone else will step up. Biosthmors (talk) 02:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Conversely, a list (or maintenance category) of all wikipedia articles citing Cochrane sources would be useful, and could be ordered by the relevant subject group. I'd love to see a concerted effort to advance the use of  in lieu of  etc.  We should also be able to provide some tools to assist the process of identifying where WP articles cite outdated Cochrane reviews.  This is a particularly easy case of the more general problem (finding usage cases for superceded sources).LeadSongDog  come howl!  19:09, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There are new issues of The Cochrane Library published each month. You can see a list of new articles in the December 2012 issue here. You can also subscribe to one of the feeds available on the home page to get notifications when new issues are published. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Manum56 (talk • contribs) 06:55, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

A new edit made
Check out the section on the treatment of Giardiasis. I just made this edit based on a new Cochrane Review. --Manu Mathew (talk) 06:48, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding a section "What's the evidence?" as standard part of contents on drug and healthcare intervention articles?
Hi all,

What if we had a standard section in the Contents for drug and intervention articles called "What's the evidence?" or simply "Evidence" or similar to both insert evidence into these articles in a standard spot but also to just introduce the notion of needing to refer to evidence and to validate efficacy claims for healthcare interventions?

Feedback on this idea welcome! Thanks, Chris Mavergames (talk) 13:49, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I would call this the medical uses section where the evidence should be discussed. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:23, 23 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, correspondingly, for disease related articles the treatment section would be the place to add information regarding evidence. I think what Chris is asking is, if there are any guidelines that suggest evidence from a systematic review would be a preferred sentence, or if there is a standard template where evidence is a subsection in the treatment/medicinal use section? Manu Mathew (talk) 13:56, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The whole thing should be based on the best available evidence as per WP:MEDRS. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:45, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Editing content with "A Cochrane Systematic Review found that"
Some of the editors were starting their edits with "A Cochrane Systematic Review found that". I have generally advocated against this because I didn't want it to appear as though we were advocating a brand and thought it was sufficient enough that the source will always be seen as The Cochrane Library. But may be its worth discussing this and would be nice to have an official guideline on this?? Comments? Manu Mathew (talk) 18:17, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes we need to advise against this. 98% of the time we just want the conclusions. Only if there are systematic reviews that directly contradict each other like in the situation of breast cancer screening do we state "Cochrane found X" "USPSTF found Y" Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:37, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Google Knowledge Graph, new feature
Hi there, I am working for IQWiG in Germany, and I am participating in the medicine project of de.wikipedia. In both roles, I am concerned about the consequences of Googles new feature, rolled out this week: medical information from the Knowledge Graph. I think this might have devastating effects on the page impressions of other sources of reliable, evidence-based medical information like those on Wikipedia. I would appreciate your thoughts about this development: Are my concerns just a case of German angst? ;-) Do you plan to analyze the effects of this Google feature on the visibility of Ebm resources in general and on Wikipedia pages with medical information in particular? As Google plans to expand this feature to other countries (possibly including Germany), do you have any suggestions on how to avoid negative effects? --Andrea Kamphuis (talk) 09:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * We have had those google boxes for a long time. It just appears they are improving them. It does not appear that the data they contain is very indepth even now though. It is more at the level of the Mayo Clinic and the NLM.
 * Not sure how it will affect readership of Wikipedia. Only time will tell. Not that concerned though. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 11:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)