Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)

Add image to WP:MEDASSESS

Wonder what peoples feeling are about adding this type of illustration to the MEDASSESS section. It shows some different ways to balance evidence. I've recently had the feeling that many new editors are having trouble understanding why we use one article over the other, and this would perhaps make it easier to explain why we chose secondary over primary sources.

There are different ways to rank levels of evidence in medicine–they are similar in that they put high level reviews and practice guidelines at the top.

Please give your thoughts, and I can also prepare more of these images for different pyramids as well. Best, -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 09:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

very clear and informative, I think MEDRS would benefit from this/ posted talk/Med--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Interesting. The pyramids differ on some important points about ranking sourcing. Let's use both, say where they are from, explain that conflicting advice is the norm, and also look for other differing views. Something that stands out to me is the idea that "clinical practice guidelines" are more authoritative than systematic reviews. Obviously these become outdated as compared to the latest systemic reviews, and sometimes they are not even evidence based, but I really like that one of the pyramids shows this as the highest authority because in many ways, CPGs are. Thanks for making more than one.

I wonder if we could have one that is "WikiProject Medicine's Ranking of Priority", and dictate to the world how information ought to be evaluated. We use different terms and emphasis. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:04, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Our "ranking" depends upon multiple factors. The "pyramid" would look a lot like the table at WP:CANVAS: several unrelated criteria, and being "strong" on Criteria #1 might not outweigh being "weak" on Criteria #2. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I added references in the captions to the images, but I don't really know how to best explain their differences and rationales. I also like the pyramid at [1] which makes a distinction between meta-analysis and systematic reviews. Unfortunately it has too many steps, so I'd have to make a new image for those.

As response to Bluerasberry – CPGs should ideally be at the top, but that isn't always that case. WhatamIdoing – what different criteria do you propose for such a table. I surmise you mean something like this:

Higher quality
	↕		↕		↕		↕
Lower quality

-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 23:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for messing up on the formatting on adding a comment to this section, but I noticed that Medical textbooks are missing from the pyramid. I use texts all the time. Best Regards,

  Bfpage |leave a message  00:06, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, CFCF, that's exactly the table I have in mind. A comprehensive list of criteria is too long to be useful, but some of the major ones are primary vs secondary, newer vs older, independent vs conflicted, and better evidence vs weaker evidence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

References

Request for Comment: Country of Origin

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should we change MEDRS, which currently reads:

Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.

to

Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, country of origin, or conclusions.

This proposal is to address only the addition of high-quality sources into the guideline. LesVegas (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Comments

Support Wikipedia should never get into the business of discriminating against high quality sources because of where that research might have been conducted or published. However, this has happened before, where multiple Cochrane reviews were rejected while trying to replace an old source with them, partly on the basis that "all but one of its authors were Chinese," and therefore, they must be biased. This is not an isolated incident either, with some editors rejecting all sources published in China not on the basis of case by case analysis of the source's quality, but stating they're published in China and assume they must all be unreliable. Low quality sources that, for instance, are not peer-reviewed, should always be rejected. But MEDRS does not yet make it clear whether or not high-quality foreign sources should ever be rejected on the basis of country of origin, whether it be the authors of a publication or place where high quality research is published. And interestingly, MEDRS currently allows for industry funded research not to be rejected on the basis that it's industry-funded, while it says nothing about a particular country's research. And yet, despite whatever potential problems could exist, it is very clear that industry funded research can be very problematic to add into Wikipedia. Just recently, Coca Cola came under fire for funding scientific research showing that Coca Cola doesn’t cause obesity. And bad as that may be, MEDRS currently doesn’t allow us to prohibit such research. It states:

'Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.'

There are also many well-documented problems with industry-funded research in the way of psychiatric medications failure to warn about cancer risk with certain drugs, as well as showing a huge statistical increase in "positive findings" for various pharmaceuticals.

However, just because there is a documented problem with some industry funded research, that doesn’t mean there is a problem with ‘’’all’’’ industry funded research. And oftentimes, new drugs only have industry-funded research for sources. No other sources can be found. Reasons like that are why it's not permitted to reject high quality sources on the basis of them being industry-funded.

At the same time, some editors currently reject some sources on the basis of them being published in another country. One such example is with acupuncture where a 1998 research report showed that in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia/USSR, China and Japan higher reports of positive findings occurred when compared to England. In some ways findings like these could possibly mirror the problems in industry-funded research. And at the same time, as with industry-funded research, it’s difficult to discount all of it on the basis that there is a chance some of the more positive findings might possibly be due to publication bias. Further complicating the issue is that more positive findings might be due to cultural differences in scientific research between various countries, such as ethical dilemmas with using placebos where the Chinese have shown statistical deviations from non-Chinese trials, creating conditions where placebo alone is not ethically justified as a control. There are many other possible confounding factors similar to this which may explain differences for findings between various countries once found within this specific modality. Undoubtedly, this seems to cloud the issue. But making the issue more problematic, for us as editors, is that some of the research mentioned in the Vickers source might not even be of high quality, thus causing making any argument against high quality research moot.

Adding "country of origin" seems to put the wording more in line with Wikipedia’s project Countering Systemic Bias, as well as our WP:BIAS policy. By ensuring Wikipedia editor-level peer review doesn’t extend to country of origin, it also makes it consistent with our current stance on liberal allowance of sources no matter what types of funding may be received.

UPDATE For anyone who thinks this issue isn't happening at all or was just one isolated incident, let me show proof it is still happening. Within the past few days, an editor rejected research in a high quality journal, Medicine, because the "authors are Chinese." Like it or not, rejecting sources based on ethnic origin of authors is a real problem. We need to examine sources, rejecting or accepting them based on their own merits and nothing else. LesVegas (talk) 20:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

LesVegas (talk) 23:51, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose I see no reason why this proposal is needed. We could also add that we shouldn't oppose inclusion based on authors skin color–because racism is bad, but it isn't needed. Level and quality of evidence is far more important. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 00:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

There have been incidents where high quality sources were rejected for reasons that could've been prevented with amended language, such as this. I modified my first comment, adding in one example of such a rejection, although there have been others. Therefore, it appears it is needed. Let me know if you still think this way after reading the link. LesVegas (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• Question What does "country of origin" in the proposal refer to? The country where the study was conducted, nationality of researchers or subjects, or country where the publishers of the journal or book are located? The first two are fine but perhaps unnecessary as CFCF says above (can LesVegas point to instances where such criterion was cited and prevailed?) If the last, I'll be opposed to the change since assessing the quality of journal and its publishers is crucial for assessing medical and other sources, and neither high-quality nor sham publishers are distributed uniformly across the globe, and we on wikipedia cannot solve this real world problem by simply turning a blind eye to it. Abecedare (talk) 01:04, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Good question. "Country of origin" is all-encompassing, meaning country of author, country where research was conducted and where it was published. Keep in mind, this RfC is asking about high-quality peer-reviewed publications that meet every other standard of quality in MEDRS. LesVegas (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• Comment This appears to be an attempt to allow Chinese studies about acupuncture published in Chinese journals to be used to support acupuncture. We need to use high quality journals with a reputation for reliability. So oppose the underlying attempt. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:27, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, there was an incident where an influential editor opposed the addition of a Cochrane Review because its authors were from China. DocJames, please limit your comments to high quality sources. This is what the discussion is pertaining. LesVegas (talk) 01:52, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

To which Cochrane review do you refer? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, several. One of them was a review on fibromyalgia which had several authors that were Chinese. High quality sources should never be rejected on such a basis, don't you think? By the way, upon re reading your comment, are you suggesting Chinese studies or Chinese journals are all inherently low-quality? I certainly hope that's not what you were saying. Tell me I read that wrong. LesVegas (talk) 04:24, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes that Cochrane review is a fine source to use. No I am not saying all Chinese journals are inherently low-quality. Many journals in many places however are low quality. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:29, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• Agree with Doc James. I have seen zero examples of any attempt to reject high-quality foreign sources on the basis of simply being from another country. The Chinese studies about acupuncture published in Chinese journals were rejected not because they were published in China, but rather that they were not high quality journals with a reputation for reliability. There are plenty of fringe journals pushing pseudoscience in the US and UK, and plenty of good, peer-reviewed science gets published in China. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:48, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Guy Macon , you might check out the diff below where an editor rejected one such source on this very basis. You can't get much higher quality than Cochrane Reviews, and you can't get much lower editing than to reject one all because "all but one of its authors are Chinese." It's sad we have seatbelt laws and equally as sad we have to tell editors not to reject high quality sources because of things like where they're published, but I'm afraid that's the case. It's exhausting to waste time on such silly matters and doesn't hurt anything to add it in because we're talking about high quality, peer reviewed sources here anyway. LesVegas (talk) 02:34, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I did check out the diff. As others have pointed out, it does not say what you claim it says. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I've seen you around and know you're a good editor here. I know it's shocking to think another editor would ever argue such a thing, but I was in the middle of that one and I can tell you that's what was meant regarding a set of Cochrane Reviews used to replace old research. Kww argued it shouldn't be used to replace an outdated review per WP:MEDDATE for several reasons, one being that the Cochrane Reviews used Chinese authors. If you would like more details on that, I'm happy to provide them. Again, I know it's hard to believe editors would ever say or argue such a thing, but sadly they do. The other Guy constantly rejects sources because they're Chinese, and you can see for yourself how he stereotypes them as universally unreliable. No regard for peer review in statements like that, just outright rejection of sources because they are Chinese. We shouldn't even have to discuss such matters as ethnicity of authors or place of publication on talk pages, it's distracting and disruptive; editors need to be focusing on quality of individual journals and that's it. LesVegas (talk) 06:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Pending further info Is this change meant to address a non-hypothetical problem? Excluding a study based solely on country of origin is so strange that I'd be surprised to see that anyone had attempted it, let alone done it successfully, but has it happened? What were the circumstances? When I first saw this RfC, I thought "This looks like it's probably about something else" and DocJames' scenario seems consistent with this. Other comment: What counts as "personal"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:07, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Darkfrog24, you might want to check a diff out where an editor opposed updating an old source with a series of Cochrane Reviews because all but one of its authors were Chinese. Yes, rejection of high quality sources based on country of publication or origin of its authors is a real problem. As long as sources are high quality, issues like country of origin or ethnicity shouldn't matter. LesVegas (talk) 02:28, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Well this diff doesn't show someone saying, "Exclude these sources because they're Chinese." It's more like Kiwi saying, "I think this guy wants to exclude the sources because they're Chinese," but whatever. I'm changing my comment to mild support. The idea that we shouldn't exclude sources solely on country of origin is so obvious that we all should be doing it already and if a source really is unreliable, there should be other reasons to exclude it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

+support based on the diff linked above, where an editor simply assumed that a study was biased because other studies by other authors of the same nationality had been accused of bias. This is out of line. DES ^(talk) 03:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Darkfrog24 and DES what you see operating in the diff is WP:REDFLAG. The key word in the diff is "suspect"; which is very different from "excluded". Jytdog (talk) 13:50, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The key phrase in the diff is "I also note that of the supposed refutations, all but one include Chinese researchers on the papers: we've discussed that bias problem extensively, and there's no reason to believe it doesn't apply here" This is drawing a conclusion that the mere presence of Chinese researchers equates to bias. This is not acceptable. DES ^(talk) 13:57, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

DES, thanks for replying. LesVegas and others have been pushing and pushing and pushing to include Chinese sources on acupuncture in our article - the issue has been discussed a zillion times but keeps coming up, and it gets frustrating, and people write things quickly that are easy to misconstrue when diffs are cherry-picked, as LesVegas has done with KWW's statement. Jytdog (talk) 14:07, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Jytdog, would a rule saying, "do not exclude based solely on country of origin" make it harder for you to exclude low-quality or otherwise problematic sources? I'm not familiar with this particular dispute, but it sounds like those sources are no good regardless, so this shouldn't make any difference. Would it help if another line were added elsewhere saying, "Sources that have not survived peer review may be excluded" or "sources from publications known to routine publish and fail to retract unreliable material may be excluded"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:34, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The background facts are:

a1) our article on Acupuncture has been highly contested for a long time and is subject to DS per Arbcom - the core dispute is between science-based editors and believers in acupuncture (as with many alt-med topics);

a2) some acupuncture believers actually try at some level to deal with the relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines (NPOV and particularly PSCI, FRINGE, MEDRS);

b1) Research (and reviews) produced in China about acupuncture (and other TCM) overwhelmingly come to positive conclusions about the efficacy of TCM for various diseases and conditions, and they come to positive conclusions way more often than research and reviews produced in the West.

b2) This discrepancy is explained by believers (in published sources) in various ways (e.g Westerners don't do TCM properly or there are special facts about TCM that make it impossible to conduct sound scientific research on it); scientists have explained this discrepancy in published sources by pointing to the immature level of development of Chinese scientific institutions.

c1) When you put a) and b) together, you get some acu-proponents pushing to use reviews originating from Chinese scientific institutions to support content in our article about the benefits of acupuncture (content that is not supportable with, or even contradicted by, other sources), and science-based editors tending to reject that content and its sourcing - especially when no other sources are brought (see the first bullet of WP:REDFLAG). This has been discussed extensively on this Talk page as well as on the article Talk page and the consensus has been to treat sources about TCM originating from China as "suspect" for the time being - not excluded, but not "green flagged" as high quality. This RfC was posted by an acu-proponent. You can see my response to it below. Jytdog (talk) 15:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, what is your opinion on rejecting Cochrane Reviews because its authors are Chinese? Are there no publications in China that are reliable? Do you have a source that all are unreliable and engage in publication bias? Do you think there could be other possibilities for differing results, such as ethical dilemmas with placebo controls in more instances? And since scientists have documented the same issues you complain about in Chinese research, as with industry-funded research, why do you hold a different standard for Chinese sources? LesVegas (talk) 15:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• oppose The framing of serious issues with Chinese research publications on acupuncture as "discrimination" is the worst kind of red-herring, bad-faith, manipulative argument imaginable, especially when Chinese scientists themselves point out the problems. This RfC is the pits. There are solid sources describing the problems:
  • Li J, et al The quality of reports of randomized clinical trials on traditional Chinese medicine treatments: a systematic review of articles indexed in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database from 2005 to 2012. BMC Complement Altern Med. 2014 Sep 26;14:362. PMID 25256890
  • Vickers, Andrew (April 1, 1998), Do certain countries produce only positive results? A systematic review of controlled trials., Control Clin Trials {{citation}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  • Ferguson, Cat (November 26, 2014), Publishing: The peer-review scam, Nature {{citation}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  • Qiu, Jane (January 12, 2010), Publish or perish in China, Nature {{citation}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

The quality will surely improve with time but LesVegas' effort to wave a magic wand and make the actual problems disappear under the banner of "discrimination" runs hard against everything we try to do at WP:MED with regard to using high quality sources. Jytdog (talk) 04:37, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, this RfC is about high-quality sources, not low quality ones which are clearly not allowed. But your inability to differentiate between these two categories and continue stereotyping all Chinese studies and Chinese authors the way you just did isn't surprising since you posted that scientific institutions in China aren't independent or mature, and therefore all of their journals are unreliable. Frankly, comments like that are why RfC's like this exist. But back to the discussion at hand. You never addressed high quality sources, which is what this RfC is pertaining to. You are opposing low quality ones, which we all should oppose on the basis of things like lack of peer-review and things of that nature. But opposing them simply because they are Chinese isn't acceptable, don't you think? LesVegas (talk) 04:57, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

You continue to mischaracterize the situation and to employ circular reasoning. The systemic problems with Chinese research on acupuncture are well documented and so the assumption going in, is that they are not high quality; per Guy's diff they are "suspect." The burden is on the person bringing any such source to show that the specific source is high quality. Per WP:REDFLAG one way that could be done would be to show that sources that are high quality say the same thing. This is not racism, it is dealing with immature level of development of Chinese scientific institutions, just like it is not racist to say that the institutions of Chinese law in the fields of environment and intellectual property are not mature. The air quality in Chinese cities is often poor; copyright infringement is rampant in China; Chinese publications on acupuncture almost always have favorable outcomes. Those are simple statements of fact, reflecting a society in development. They are not essentialist, racist statements - they are existential statements of fact and will change over time, as the situation in China changes. So WP:DROPTHESTICK. And I suggest you be much more careful in deploying this tactic of cherry-picking diffs and trying to discredit editors as racist. Jytdog (talk) 13:50, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, just the other day you said "we do not perform peer review on sources and should never reject industry-funded sources that almost always have positive findings. But Chinese research? Nope, Chinese scientists aren't independent or mature. I'm not trying to characterize you as racist, but frankly by defending one standard for industry-funded studies, and enforcing another for Chinese research while stereotyping all Chinese research as unreliable, never to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, makes it difficult for me not to find a diff that characterizes you any other way. But let me allow you the opportunity to prove that you're not racist. Simple question: why should we allow one standard for industry funded research despite documented publication bias issues, and another standard for Chinese research, rejecting the notion that we should evaluate Chinese sources or Chinese authors on a case-by-case basis like we do everywhere else? LesVegas (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Your mischaracterization of what I wrote and of MEDRS is malicious, incompetent, or both. This is not about conducting peer review, which involves critiquing the quality and extent of the experiments that were done, the presentation of the resulting data, and the conclusions drawn from the data. This has nothing to do with research funding. And I said nothing about "Chinese scientists" - I addressed institutions. Jytdog (talk) 15:14, 6 September 2015 (UTC) (strike; should not have written that. my apologies. Jytdog (talk) 15:48, 6 September 2015 (UTC))

Oh but it is about conducting a peer review based on industry funding. Those have the same documented issues you complain about in Chinese research, although I would argue, worse, since there are more confounding factors between Eastern and Western cultures (like different scientific ethics) and those can explain reasons for discrepancies in results between East vs. West, not simply publication bias. Simple question: why should we not reject research on the basis that it's industry-funded, but we should reject research because it's Chinese, instead of evaluating it on a case by case basis? LesVegas (talk) 15:33, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

You do not seem to understand what happens during peer review of scientific papers; I explained that above. Jytdog (talk) 15:48, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, this is not about peer review in the publication process. I hope you aren't WP: IDHT'ing Yes, scientific papers are peer reviewed before being published in reputable journals. But the peer review we are talking about is that "Wikipedia editors should not perform peer review", specifically, in this instance, by rejecting high-quality sources on the basis of industry funding behind piece of published research. Again, please answer the question: why should we not reject research on the basis that it's industry-funded, but we should reject research because it's Chinese, instead of evaluating it on a case by case basis? I really hope you can answer it. LesVegas (talk) 16:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

We already do evaluate on a case-by-case basis, and since this hasn't been a problem we don't need a clause against it in our guidelines. In order that they be followed–guidelines need to be succinct. We can't indiscriminately add clauses in order to address hypothetical problems or noone will read them–making it far harder to police.-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 05:44, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

On the face of it, the OP appears to want to get his low quality pro-acupuncture sources into our Acupuncture article by claiming they are high quality. I don't think the community is quite that silly. -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 10:28, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Previously uninvolved editor here: 1) Even if the sources were rightly excluded, "they're Chinese" should not be numbered among the reasons for this; their own failings should be enough. Question: Why would "don't exclude based on country" make any difference? 2) Aside from this acupuncture issue, is the argument of exclusion-based-on-country a common enough problem to merit explicitly banning it? Do the words "don't exclude based on country" earn their keep for the space they take up (in Wikipedia's already Byzantine rule structure). Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:34, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

"They're Chinese" is a poor shorthand for a complex discussion and is not how the issue should be discussed nor should that phrase be used as a description of the stance of those opposed to this RfC or who treat sources about TCM produced by Chinese institutions as suspect. I am unaware of this issue arising outside the context of TCM. Jytdog (talk) 15:19, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I can be more succinct than JD. 1)No. 2)No (to my knowledge). 3)No. -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 15:38, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. While I agree that certain fringe journals are focused in particular countries, I don't think we should be determining reliability overall by country of origin. However, that can be a first red flag on certain topics for a deeper look. That's why I would oppose this language as I don't think it is needed. If a question on reliability comes up, there will be other qualities we look at for journals as well. There is also potential this language could be abused from a WP:BEANS approach (acupuncture does come to mind), so I think it's better that this is one thing left unsaid, but consensus in discussions on the idea that country or origin alone can't be used can always be linked if someone brings it up. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Strong oppose The focus should remain on the quality of the research and the reliability of the source. Either the research is good, or it is not. Either the source is reliable, or it is not. In what possible way does "country of origin" factor into anything, except to imply that some countries are doing poor quality research and publishing in unreliable sources, and must therefore be held to a lesser standard? TechBear | Talk | Contributions 20:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you that the focus should always be on the quality of the sources themselves. In MEDRS it states, "Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions". We aren't supposed to reject sources purely on those merits, just simply focus on the quality of the source itself, and yet MEDRS has to be explicit because I can only assume in the past editors have rejected high quality sources because of things like references, inclusion criteria, etc. Given that editors have rejected clearly high quality sources on the basis of nationality of author or country of publication (as seen from the diffs I provided) why haven't we reached a point where we need to explicitly tell editors they need to be focusing only on source quality and nothing else, like country? LesVegas (talk) 22:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Support I have read most of this RFC and debated commenting. Most of the responses do not answer the question. The question is specifically about High quality sources. High quality sources should never be excluded based on the country of origin or nationality of the authors. Low quality sources will be rejected based on the fact they are low quality and this change will not allow them in regardless. I have looked at the diffs and there is a problem in some instances, though how wide spread is hard to say. AlbinoFerret 15:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

A blog post by Edzard Ernst, a leading academic in this area, reads in large part:

"In this case, you might perhaps believe Chinese researchers. In [this systematic review http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/acm.2014.5346.abstract], all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture published in Chinese journals were identified by a team of Chinese scientists. A total of 840 RCTs were found, including 727 RCTs comparing acupuncture with conventional treatment, 51 RCTs with no treatment controls, and 62 RCTs with sham-acupuncture controls. Among theses 840 RCTs, 838 studies (99.8%) reported positive results from primary outcomes and two trials (0.2%) reported negative results. The percentages of RCTs concealment of the information on withdraws or sample size calculations were 43.7%, 5.9%, 4.9%, 9.9%, and 1.7% respectively.

The authors concluded that publication bias might be major issue in RCTs on acupuncture published in Chinese journals reported, which is related to high risk of bias. We suggest that all trials should be prospectively registered in international trial registry in future.

I applaud the authors’ courageous efforts to conduct this analysis, but I do not agree with their conclusion. The question why all Chinese acupuncture trials are positive has puzzled me since many years, and I have quizzed numerous Chinese colleagues why this might be so. The answer I received was uniformly that it would be very offensive for Chinese researchers to conceive a study that does not confirm the views held by their peers. In other words, acupuncture research in China is conducted to confirm the prior assumption that this treatment is effective. It seems obvious that this is an abuse of science which must cause confusion.

Whatever the reasons for the phenomenon, and we can only speculate about them, the fact has been independently confirmed several times and is now quite undeniable: acupuncture trials from China – and these constitute the majority of the evidence-base in this area – cannot be trusted."

This gives us a convenient way of identifying a large section of the literature as pseudoscience sensu stricto, and not to be regarded as RS. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:17, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Richard, I am glad you are giving this more analysis than others have. I have asked myself the same question- why have variations been noted? While publication bias is one possibility, there are others. For instance, placebo controls are rarely done and for ethical reasons control groups receive actual treatment of some sort. Another possibility is that in China they are performing acupuncture differently. The first time I ever had acupuncture was when I was in China, and after an accident, and I can tell you it was a very different treatment than any of the acupuncture I have had since returning to the US. It is also very different from Japanese acupuncture, or Korean, all of which I have experienced. The Chinese acupuncture I experienced used thicker needles and they adjusted them in such a way that elicited very strong stimulation. It was also done in a hospital, by medical doctors, so I knew in the back of my mind this was legitimate and this gave a different experience overall. The thing is, there are many variables. But worst case scenario, statistics have shown a 24 percent increase in positive findings of Chinese research versus Western research regarding acupuncture. That's still lower than the stats on industry-funded drug trials when compared to independently-funded sources, and yet we have explicit language in MEDRS that we shouldn't reject high quality sources because of funding. So why shouldn't we be consistent? LesVegas (talk) 18:26, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

• oppose it is an attempt to run around the essential purpose of MEDRES: that we only use the highest quality sources. where there is evidence that medical sources from a particular country do not measure up to the standards generally required we should NOT be using them. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
• Support: Adding country of origin to the policy/guideline is appropriate; nothing prevents anyone from applying a rigorous critique to the quality of a particular source. It is important not to mass-categorize entire groups of authors or publications simply by where they originate. It, for example, an academic journal from nation Foo publishes bad science, it can be assessed on its own merits or lack thereof, not the ethnicity of those producing it. Montanabw^(talk) 23:41, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Inclusion should not be arbitrated on account of the author's, nor the content's cultural origin. The opposition makes claims that the guideline amendment is unnecessary, as such is already generally accepted, however I do believe in a differentiation between the two. We need a reference-able guideline to control cultural prejudice, which serves no place on Wikipedia. There should be no question of interpretation, the guidelines should be definitive. ExParte ^{talk | contribs} 06:18, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose quote The framing of serious issues with Chinese research publications on acupuncture as "discrimination" is the worst kind of red-herring, bad-faith, manipulative argument imaginable, especially when Chinese scientists themselves point out the problems. This RfC is the pits. There is an awful lot of bad faith characterisation in this thread. Of course country, nationality etc. should not in itself be a criteria, but if the problem really did exist (which I'm not convinced of by the instances given), this wording would do nothing to solve it but simply distract from the central question of the quality of the source in a POINTY manner. Pincrete (talk) 19:04, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

There were several instances, one where Cochrane Reviews were being suppressed because of Chinese authorship as well as high quality journals such as Medicine where the same objections based on Chinese authorship were made. Since this RfC was on high quality sources only, can you please clarify: when we have obviously high quality sources, do you think country of origin should be an issue at all? LesVegas (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Re country of origin question. Obviously not in itself. I don't ordinarily edit in Med. areas, (summoned by bot), however it is simply an established fact that some sources are less reliable than others in all areas (US Govt. 'collateral damage' figures?). I don't see why 'country' would be identified any more than any other factor. If there is real evidence of rejecting sources solely, or principally, on grounds of ethnicity or provenance, this is not the way to solve it. I was not persuaded that there was such evidence. You (and others) are repeatedly saying these are high quality sources, AS A FACT, but is that not what is disputed? Pincrete (talk) 14:20, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I have never seen anyone dispute, for instance, that Cochrane Reviews or publications from Medicine, are not high quality publications unless they have Chinese authors in the studies they publish (which has been disputed). In fact, MEDRS says they unequivocally are high quality sources. One aspect that has been disputed is that if they have authors who are Chinese, then that makes them unreliable. My position is that country of origin shouldn't ever be used as an argument to exclude high quality sources. What we instead should be focusing on as editors is if the source passes MEDRS's established high-barometer for reliability and that's it, never rejecting sources because of things like country of origin. Do you agree? LesVegas (talk) 17:14, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I was invited by a bot to make a comment, I am not either competent or willing to discuss the reliability of specific research. The comment I made is that the examples given do not persuade me that research is being rejected solely or primarily on the grounds of ethnicity or nationality, and that further, if it were, this would not be an effective means of remedying the problem. The provenance of any source, and its reputation for checking, is always a factor in assessing its reliability, whether we are discussing Russia Today, Fox News, Daily Mail, or a Govt. statement. I am in-expert on the protocols of medical trials, but even I know that allowing for 'placebo effect' is a cornerstone of such trials, yet you dismiss this factor above as 'Chinese doctors have an ethical objection'. Fine, then such trials have not been conducted according to long-established medical standards. IF the proof of 'racism' or irrational 'national prejudice' were as clear-cut as you appear to believe it to be, you should be taking this matter to a much higher 'court' in WP than this RfC. I am not persuaded that you are correct. Pincrete (talk) 07:47, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose There's no noted problem with this occurring. The objections to Chinese sources for acupuncture and Indian sources for ayurveda is due to noted and repeated bias problems, not due to some imaginary racist motivation.—Kww(talk) 16:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, one of the noted problems was with you, when you deemed a series of Cochrane Reviews suspect because they had Chinese authors. I just wanted to correct the record here. I'll also note you continue to defend this behavior even today. Nobody is saying there's racist motivations on your or anyone's part for doing this, btw, just a wrongful assumption where you believe that because some studies have at one time shown possible (not proven) bias, all are therefore unreliable, even extending to what we consider the highest quality sources like Cochrane. LesVegas (talk) 20:17, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You confuse "LesVegas is concerned about an issue" with "there actually is an issue".—Kww(talk) 20:57, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. Where there is a proven bias, as in the case of Chinese studies of acupuncture, we should just ignore them. (Off topic, but I also believe we should treat industry-funded reviews with a high degree of skepticism, and should ignore them when good, independently funded reviews are available.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:05, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose It's unnecessary to add that kind of language. We accept a source if it's published in reputable journals regardless of their origin. This proposal will only work for POV pushers as an avenue to weasel their not so reliable sources into articles, claiming regional bias. Darwinian Ape ^talk 08:50, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Call for close

This thread should be closed as POV pushing and trolling. When Jytdog wrote "When the institutions that support science in China become independent and mature, their journals will become valuable sources. They are not there yet"[2], only to have LesVegas characterize it as " Chinese scientists aren't independent or mature"[3] -- something Jytdog never wrote or implied -- it became clearly evident that LesVegas is more interested in winning the argument than seeking the truth. Demonizing Jytdog as a racist is trolling, and we should close down this discussion rather than rewarding such behavior with further attention. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose closeI find it a little odd that nobody seems to want to answer why we have one standard for industry funded sources (written into MEDRS), and an entire other standard for Chinese sources where we can reject them on the basis of being Chinese and not on their own merits. Nobody has dared answer that question, and here, less than 24 hrs after the RfC was filed, an attempt has been made to close it before anyone answers this obvious and frankly embarrasing inconsistency. How paradoxical to then accuse me of not trying to seek the truth. And please don't accuse me of demonizing Jytdog as racist. He accused me of accusing him of racism, which is not the same thing at all. He said I was finding diffs that made him look racist and I told him essentially that was his problem, not mine. As for institutions, are they faceless, humanless entities or are they made up of human beings? So I suppose the institutions can be immature or not independent, but the scientists and publishers composing the institutions are mature and independent? Really? Especially when Jytdog and other editors are on record rejecting sources because they're Chinese, and not because of, say, lack of peer-review or lack of Medline indexing. If you read Jytdog's many diffs in full context he makes it clear it is impossible for anything Chinese to ever be considered reliable. I have not once seen him state, even here, otherwise. And at the same time he defends the practice of not rejecting sources because of industry-funding that has been documented to skew results, but opposes all Chinese research on acupuncture for those same reasons. I have asked multiple times for an answer, and he ignores it. Please, somebody, can somebody answer it? If we can come to a consensus on how to reconcile that glaring issue, and we can come to a consensus that high quality sources shouldn't be rejected on the basis of ethnicity of author, nor should they be rejected purely because of where they're published, I'm fine with that. When editors reject friggin Cochrane Reviews because authors are Chinese, we have a serious problem. LesVegas (talk) 22:11, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm reminded of MastCell's WP:CGTW#8: Anyone who edits policy pages to favor their position in a specific dispute has no business editing policy pages. Corollary: these are the only people who edit policy pages. Yobol (talk) 22:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support close This RfC is an obvious attempt to win a content dispute by declaring that editors objecting to certain sources are racist. Johnuniq (talk) 23:45, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose close - I do not think it is appropriate that everyone is focusing on the editor instead of answering the basic question this thread is asking - some of those opposed to the policy edit proposed asked some version of "why would country of origin matter?" Well, exactly, it shouldn't matter. And yet sources are rejected because "they're Chinese" and that is wrong. If there were reliable ways of gauging the quality of the research, each review can evaluated on its own merit, as it should be. The fact that the authors are Chinese shouldn't even come up, but it frequently does. So, we have a problem.Herbxue (talk) 14:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Note to closer: Herbxue also has argued for using sources stemming from Chinese institutions in acupuncture articles and claimed discrimination with regard to applying REDFLAG to them Jytdog (talk) 14:50, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually read that link again: I say "fine" to rejecting Chinese journals that do not have a reputation for quality, what I call "outrageous" is rejecting a review in a mainstream journal because the authors names are Chinese, and yes that actually occurred, and thus we have a true problem.Herbxue (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

You continue to conflate systematic problems with Chinese science on acupuncture with racism. This is not OK. Please provide me with any diff where you express an acknowledgement of the problem (there is not one in that diff btw - you acknowledge occasional problems, not institutional ones) I very much agree that the issue is not about individual Chinese scientists. Jytdog (talk) 15:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Focusing on individual editors is taking the focus away from the debate. I have acknowledged problems I saw with TCM research firsthand in China, but I do not generalize them, and I do not believe there is adequate evidence to claim there is a "systematic" problem with "Chinese research". For me the issue here is whether Chinese researchers are inherently unreliable, and I don't believe WP editors can say that they are without evidence showing individual journals or educational institutions to be unreliable. If a particular review appears to be of low quality, then that in itself is reason not to use it. But if it appears to have solid methodology, I don't think it should be rejected on the basis of being "Chinese". Herbxue (talk) 21:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

• Support close Despite what our resident acupuncturist says, we should not use unreliable sources, (which is what they are) wherever they come from. -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 14:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

• This might have been an interesting RfC and it asks some very real questions in terms of sources. I would have been interested in pursuing the ideas presented here from all sides however, once again, discussion is shut down with name calling and personal accusations so that mature discussion is thrown out.(Littleolive oil (talk) 14:35, 7 September 2015 (UTC))

Note to closer: Littleolive oil also has argued for using sources stemming from Chinese institutions in acupuncture articles and per this agrees with Herbxue who commented above Jytdog (talk) 14:50, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for including a link which belies what you mean to be an accusation and attack and links to my cmts which you paraphrase inaccurately.(Littleolive oil (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2015 (UTC))

• • I am becoming increasingly concerned with Jytdog's constant attacks and his inaccurate representations of editors and what they are saying and doing.(Littleolive oil (talk) 15:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC))

Naming you as an alt-med advocate is not a personal attack; it is a description that is easily supportable with diffs. And as I noted here, you are the one making blatant misreprentations here, as did LesVegas as noted in post opening this section. I don't know what you think this drama-mongering gains for you. Jytdog (talk) 16:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Just so you know, being an alt-med advocate and being an editor who wants to make sure alt-med is treated neutrally and fairly on Wikipedia are two completely different things. LesVegas (talk) 18:08, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog. No diif or diffs support overarching, sweeping generalizations regarding other people. Making false statements about people is a personal attack on those people and what they are and stand for. Wikipedia is not the real world, a place in which people are multifaceted and carry on their lives in complex ways. Do you realize that the use of exercise and the studies on its impact on health are relatively new. Is this alternative medicine and if so how many sensible people in the world today support this alternative medicine. If I use antibiotics but support exercise does this make me a supporter of alternative medicine. You are constantly making statements which attach motive and meaning to people and their actions. What do I get out of this. Nothing expect that I am tired of seeing false narratives created by editors which in the end are used and applied to sanction. It is possible to disagree with people and to even be aware that our own perspectives are based on our own point of view. Discussion which does not attack but attempts to understand and compromise can go along way towards creating good articles. You have once again made statements about me which are false with no proof whatsoever. You are creating a false narrative about another editor. You know nothing about what I support and do not support. This the third time. (Littleolive oil (talk) 17:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC))

Oppose close RFC's should run 30 days, this one is only 2 days old. Regardless if some are reading into the question something it doesnt say, it needs to run its course. AlbinoFerret 16:04, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Support close, this RfC is going nowhere and is sufficiently ill-framed that it stands minimal chance of producing anything useful. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:19, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose close: RfC was simple, and straightforward concept; IDHT problem of editors reading more into it than exists notwithstanding. Montanabw^(talk) 23:41, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Close. This proposition brings up a valid point. Country of origin should not be, in general, a criteria for inclusion of a medicinal article. It doesn't matter what the purpose of presentation was, this should be a part of the guidelines. What's the issue with additional guidelines for inclusion arbitration? ExParte ^{talk | contribs} 05:34, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

• Country of origin should not be a blanket basis for condemnation across all possible subjects, but it might be for specific countries in specific subjects. It would certainly be the case for the subject and country being discussed be on the evidence a reason for at least the greatest skepticism. The prosposed modification is too great. The cases will need to be discussed individually. DGG ( talk ) 20:11, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
• Support close … This RfC is an obvious attempt to win a content dispute by declaring that editors objecting to certain sources are racist. and , this RfC is going nowhere and is sufficiently ill-framed that it stands minimal chance of producing anything useful. This seems like a lot of airing of bad feeling on the part of those who want different standards to apply to Alt Meds. Pincrete (talk) 19:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

This problem is still occurring

I have seen comments suggesting editors here never rejected sources because their authors are Chinese, despite diffs, so allow me to provide one more. Just yesterday, an editor did just that, rejecting a high-quality source because it had Chinese authors, so clearly this is a serious and ongoing problem that must be dealt with. This editor rejected research in a high quality journal, Medicine, because the "authors are Chinese," and therefore assumed to be incapable of not being biased Like it or not, rejecting sources based on ethnic origin of authors is a real problem. Sources in low quality journals should be rejected based on their own lack of merits. Sources in high quality journals should be accepted on their own merits. But sources should never be excluded for embarrasing reasons like this and it is a shame that in 2015 we have to have to write explicit language into our guidelines to keep behavior like this from happening. LesVegas (talk) 20:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I think you're grossly oversimplifying a significant issue. It has been recognized for some time that research in certain countries tends to be uniformly positive about acupuncture, to the extent that it raises serious questions about publication bias. This line of thought is not—as you try to portray it—a form of racism among Wikipedia contributors. The relevance of national origin of research has been expounded both qualitatively and quantitatively in the reputable scholarly literature, going as far back as Vickers et al., 1998, who found that trials from China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were uniformly positive about acupuncture and urged caution in integrating these almost-certainly-biased results into systematic reviews or meta-analyses. More recently, a systematic review conducted by Chinese authors in 2014 found striking evidence of publication bias in studies on acupuncture reported in Chinese journals. I think it's worth having a serious discussion about this, but your post is pretty much the opposite of serious discussion. MastCell ^Talk 17:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

MastCell, I'm all for having a serious discussion on this and hope you are too. For the record, I never claimed racism was a factor here, and my rather long-winded complex posts, if you read them, should show that I haven't oversimplified anything. In fact, we have written into MEDRS not to deny sources based on how they're funded, and yet we have extensive documentation of publication bias regarding industry funded research. No such bias has ever been proven with Chinese research, merely speculated as one of many possibilities for difference in findings. Why would we treat Chinese research different than industry funded research? A subject which, by the way, has much more extensive documentation of bias! That said, when editors reject Cochrane Reviews because they have Chinese authors, or reject obviously high quality Western-published journals because they have Chinese authors, maybe they're just belligerent POV pushers rather than racists. But they put their POV above all else and that's a problem. LesVegas (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

But this has never happened, your diffs don't support it. CFCF 💌 📧 00:09, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Ummm, there is a diff at the top of this very thread where an editor objected to a journal article in Medicine because its authors were Chinese. Did you not see that? LesVegas (talk) 00:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The diff doesn't say that, it speaks of 'a well documented bias' and expands later. Mis-quoting people doesn't strengthen your case. In other areas of WP should we not be allowed to say that govt X, TV station Y or news outlet Z, has 'a well documented bias' and should therefore be treated with extreme caution ? Pincrete (talk) 07:56, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Pincrete, I am sorry I forgot to show the actual source, but, anyway, here is the source that was removed. As you can see, it is a high quality journal that just so happens to have Chinese authors who did the meta-analysis. The diff in question was trying to apply the "well-documented bias" to this meta-analysis and systematic review. There is another one where the same thing happened regarding several Cochrane Reviews used to update an old claim. They just so happened to have Chinese authors and that's a problem. LesVegas (talk) 22:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

When you actually read the conclusions in that paper they say very little, and above all they comment on the lack of qualitative studies in the field. It states "Finally, the included RCTs were all conducted in China, so more studies are needed" and "Reporting biases could not be detected by funnelplot due to lack of adequate RCTs."
From the entire paper a single positive sentence was taken and copied verbatim into Wikipedia (amounting to copyright violation). Maybe the article has a role in the sources, but it did not properly support the statement it was used to support and the comment you linked reflects that. CFCF 💌 📧 23:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

CFCF, I agree with most of what you said above. Yes, it was a copyright violation. And yes, the quote wasn't fully representative of the source. And by the way, I didn't add the quote or source, that was another editor. I had nothing to do with it beyond watch it get removed. But the reasons it was removed were wrong. Removing it or amending it for reasons you stated are perfectly fine. I have no problem with that. Editors shouldn't be supporting removal of sources because the authors are Chinese. I hate to belabor the point, but you said above that it never happened and my diffs don't support it, so I just have to clear my name here. LesVegas (talk) 02:27, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

The article states it is a problem that their study has included so many chinese studies, so I find nothing wrong with the comment you've linked. CFCF 💌 📧 07:23, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

CFCF Do you have access to the full article? Would you mind posting what they say re Chinese studies? It was not in the free text they provided. LesVegas (talk) 20:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

LesVegas, I am not competent to assess the virtues or weaknesses of specific medical research, my opinion on that would be valueless. However, specific pieces of research are not the subject of this RfC, rather a general principle. Pincrete (talk) 08:25, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Question for Kww

User:Kww is mentioned repeatedly above, and it doesn't look to me like anyone has pinged him about this or given him a fair chance to explain his off-the-cuff comment that most of the "authors are Chinese" on a particular source. (Does that refer to their race? Their citizenship? Where they were trained? Where they're currently working? A quick guess based upon last names? It could mean almost anything.) IMO it would be fair to let him have his say if he's interested. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

The diff shows an edit by Guy (JzG). The history of Talk:Acupuncture says Kww hasn't posted there since July. Johnuniq (talk) 04:53, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes I'd love for him to explain himself because I and other editors could never get an explanation back when I confronted him about it. But as I understand it, he doesn't edit much anymore since his desysopping, correct? LesVegas (talk) 15:00, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually I just looked at his edit history and I see he occasionally and casually edits here and there still, so maybe we can finally get an explaination on the specifics. LesVegas (talk) 15:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't respond much unless pinged. The diff you are providing is JzG's, but I'll defend it. The bias of Chinese medical journals and Chinese studies submitted to Western medical journals is well-documented. For such sources to discover beneficial effects to acupuncture isn't particularly surprising, nor is it likely to indicate that acupuncture has any particular effect beyond placebo. There are similar problems with sources related to ayurveda. While I understand the slippery slope of racism, it's also important for us to note that associated with some of the rituals that are misrepresented as medicine there are one or two countries that have a vested interest in portraying that ritual as if it were effective. As for Les Vegas's proposal above, I don't think anyone is attempting to remove sources due to a personal objection to the country of origin: it's due to well-documented and objectively provable objections to the country of origin.—Kww(talk) 16:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Kevin; I appreciate it. Thanks also to John for pointing out that I had the wrong diff. I apologize for the sloppy post; I meant this diff. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

As for the corrected quote, note that my primary objection was that even taken at face value, the sources didn't support the proposition Les Vegas was making: "not effective for a wide range of conditions" isn't contradicted (or even particularly weakened) by evidence of positive effect for a narrow range of conditions. I didn't get into a detailed analysis of the sources themselves. I will say, however, that it's a fair bet that Z Zheng, CCL Xue, J Shang, X Shen, J Xia, X Zhu, L He, and J Song being among the reported researchers in a small handful of reviews represents a reasonable foundation to suspect bias. If there was actually a meaningful claim being made, I'd scrutinize the sources more carefully.—Kww(talk) 16:29, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. Kww's answer goes right to the heart of the matter. If authors have Chinese names, we should suspect bias even if it's in a Cochrane Review, as if Cochrane is incapable of vetting the material themselves, but we, the lowly Wikipedia editor are. Frankly, I'm really not surprised. LesVegas (talk) 20:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Nor should you be. What's surprising is that you would think that we should close our eyes to an indication of bias noted in reliable sources. Note that I did not reject the sources outright, but was arguing primarily on the basis that your conclusions didn't follow from their statements even if we presumed they were completely accurate.—Kww(talk) 20:54, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I recall very well. Your primary argument was that the Cochrane Reviews didn't support replacing a 6 year old claim with an update. Your secondary argument was that they might be unreliable anyway because they have Chinese authors. That's what is being disputed here. Please note that the wording of the MEDRS amendment in this RfC says "do not reject high quality sources because of x,y,z...or country of origin." It does not say do not reject high quality sources if they are being used to support a claim that isn't supported by those sources, or is more accurately supported by another source. Policies elsewhere already cover those objections. LesVegas (talk) 21:41, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

If you had found material that actually supported an update, I would listen. Once again, "not effective for a wide range of conditions" and "is effective for condition x, y, and z" are not contradictory. They are barely related. The original source surveyed the impact on over thirty conditions and you found a source that weakened the position on, at most, two of those conditions. As for your propensity for misinterpreting sources and using them to support claims they don't support, I hope this debate makes that problem more obvious to a wider variety of editors. Your motivation for requesting this change has been noted by numerous editors: you are upset that people want to see corroboration in other sources when you can only offer Chinese sources supporting a claim about acupuncture. Given the noted bias problems, that's a quite reasonable demand. If something is actually true, Western sources will eventually catch up.—Kww(talk) 22:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You're back to omnisciently assuming my motivations again. Just for the record, my motives are simply to encourage editors to examine source quality and not reject them for paltry reasons like the last name of their authors. LesVegas (talk) 22:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Examination of source quality does require taking bias considerations into account. Your requested modification is basically a demand to ignore one potential source of bias. As for omniscience? No, pretty much any observer of your edits and discussions will come to a similar conclusion.—Kww(talk) 22:38, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

"Examination of source quality does require taking bias considerations into account" is just another way of saying high quality sources that we never question anywhere else for any other claims might not be high quality at all if we see it has Chinese authors, whom we ought to be suspicious of because they might be biased. Thank you for making your position clear, over and over again. LesVegas (talk) 23:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I support being suspicious of any biased source (including Coke-paid researchers on the effects of soda pop on obesity [on which I didn't comment, apparently], ayurvedists on the benefits of heavy metal poisoning, Christians on the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, among many other examples a quick search of my edit history will uncover).—Kww(talk) 23:58, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I'm glad to see you are consistent. I'm glad you brought up the Coke funding of obesity studies which is an example I have brought up here as well. MEDRS currently states that editors shouldn't reject high quality sources based on their source of funding. So that would mean Coke studies are perfectly ok to use, as are countless numbers of other industry funded research which has been shown to be far worse than Chinese studies on acupuncture. Why should we have one guideline where we don't reject industry funded studies, but we do reject sources because they originate in China or have Chinese authors? To me, I wouldn't even have raised this issue if I didn't see an inconsistency in our guideline where we allow carte blanche acceptance of industry funded, obviously tainted and conflicted research, but we reject Chinese sources because they might be tainted. I have never accused anyone here of being racist. I honestly believe editors here are good people, some just have blindspots and I know I do too. But frankly, if we continue to greenlight biased industry funded research but disallow Chinese sources, that is racist. If editors here want to consider Chinese sources suspect, while I deeply disagree with that, I can understand the point. But we had damn well amend MEDRS to treat industry funded sources the same way. We're not going to have two standards here. LesVegas (talk) 04:00, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

You shouldn't attempt to fix the inconsistency in the wrong direction: two wrongs don't make a right and all that.—Kww(talk) 04:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

The question of industry funding was discussed at length very recently on this very page. There, WP:DNFT was invoked and I think it now applies here too. Time to close. Alexbrn (talk) 04:24, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

You can ignore a problem or inconsistency, you can IDHT, but editors shouldn't be insulted for pointing out problems. And previously, that was invoked by an editor who much of the Wikipedia community has complained about for GMO advocacy and personal attacks and I have no reason to doubt that his invoking DNFT wasn't a great illustration of both his advocacy and insults. I can certainly see why a GMO advocate doesn't want to limit industry funded sources in any way. This same editor also believed Chinese sources should be limited rather inconsistently. But I expected much better from you, Alexbrn, than to ignore and insult and hope this embarrassing inconsistency just goes away. And as much as I deeply disagree with Kww on this issue, I at least have to respect and admire his consistency here. And we should be consistent, one way or another. While I think the best way with our policies is to allow high quality sources regardless of industry funding or country of origin (because it's too hard to say that because some have been bad, all are bad), we cannot have one set of guidelines for some sources and another set of guidelines for others. I know it's uncomfortable for some editors to admit this partisan application, but If we bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not inconsistent, that won't magically make it consistent. LesVegas (talk)

You've illustrated the problem quite nicely: there's no particular correlation between the conflict of interest inherent in the Coca-Cola funded obesity research and the general agreement of all responsible researchers that GMO as currently practiced presents no health or public safety issues. While I abhor the inconsistency, I can understand why people would see a slippery-slope problem on the funding issues. After all, most good research is funded by people connnected with science, and science pretty much rules out the anti-vax, anti-GMO, pro-ayurveda, and pro-acupuncture camps, giving those people an incentive to object to nearly all research as being biased in one way or the other.—Kww(talk) 00:05, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, I don't claim to be an expert on the latest in all things biotech, but I know Monsanto funds much biotech safety research and even when" purely independent research" is touted in the press it's often funded by The American Society for Nutrition whose own website says is funded by Monsanto. They fund the science all over the place. And this idea that industry-funded research was only a problem with Coke today and big tobacco in yesteryears is not accurate at all. What I do know is there is well documented issues with pharmaceutical industry funded research in the way of psychiatric medications and in failing to warn about cancer risk with certain drugs, as well as in showing a huge statistical increase in "positive findings" for various pharmaceuticals just to name a few. They were all connected with "science" yet clearly have shown worse issues than the Chinese because they're not explainable by a slew of confounding factors from an entirely different culture and a medicinal art many researchers have openly admitted is very difficult to study anyway. I see no argument for why we should treat Chinese studies differently than those paid for by Monsanto, Merck or the Marlboro Man. LesVegas (talk) 19:29, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

It's a balancing act: whether an individual drug does or does not create a cancer risk is something with gradations of bias that can range from damning (a study by the manufacturer that contradicts all other studies would need to be treated with great suspicion, for example) to minor (a study by a research group funded by multiple sources, including the manufacturer, which falls in line with similar studies by groups not involving the manufacturer). In the case of Chinese studies of acupuncture, we're dealing with a group that tends not to publish negative results, refuses to use standard placebo-based methodologies, and comes to conclusions that researchers using more rigorous research techniques cannot reproduce. There's no reason to suspect that the results are accurate, and every reason to suspect that the results are due to flawed research and reporting. There's nobody arguing to exclude all Chinese research, just to avoid relying on a known trouble spot: Chinese studies of treatments based on Chinese folk remedies and superstitions. Is there anyone objecting to Chinese studies of pharmaceutical treatment of tuberculosis or anything like that? I think not.—Kww(talk) 23:01, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, negative results in China weren't seen in 1998, they are now. But sure, in more recent times it's noted with different results seen in US studies. Some of that could be publication bias, some of that could be due to other factors. Fact is, we don't know. But industry funded pharmaceutical results are also seen to have much better results than independent research shows and those are comparing results within the same country. We have one variable to deal with there, not countless, so it makes publication bias much more likely a factor than is the case with the Chinese. I'm talking hard facts and statistics here, not your opinions of Chinese culture or your opinions of alternative medicine, but documented facts alone. And by the documented facts alone, even in the worst case-scenario with the lowest quality published research in China, Chinese studies on acupuncture have actually less possibility of publication bias than industry funded pharmaceutical studies do from the standpoint of variables. Any reasonable person examining facts alone and not swayed by opinions or POV must agree with this. And yet we specifically allow industry funded pharmaceutical studies on Wikipedia, and some of these same editors want to reject Chinese studies on acupuncture. LesVegas (talk) 16:59, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Do we all understand the outcome here?

So we have a bit of a procedural issue with RFCs, which is that one editor lists almost all the expired RFCs at WP:ANRFC, so that some busy WP:NAC can carefully add a colored box and a closing statement to each of them. I think this is an ongoing WP:NOTBURO problem, a waste of time for most RFCs, and sometimes even an insult to the participants' good sense and ability to understand their own conversations, but let me ask just to be sure:

Does anybody here need any outside help in figuring out whether or not this discussion shows support for the proposed addition of the words "country of origin" to that sentence in this guideline at this time?

If nobody actually needs any help with understanding the outcome, then perhaps we can prevent him from wasting someone's time with telling us what we all already know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Questions about RFC closure - Country of origin

We do reject sources because they are from a specific country because there are sources that are poor sources and there are bias sources. According to the close the country of origin is a legit consideration where RS have identified it as an issue. There have been hard data (as contrasted to stereotypes) that have identified a systematic problem that is normally identified with an affiliated country of origin. Therefore, this edit seems to contradict the close. QuackGuru (talk) 17:00, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The close that I wrote said no such thing. Besides, the suggestion that the edit that the close clearly and directly indicates is appropriate nonetheless contradicts the close by some extreme, odd interpretation is utterly nonsensical. Get the point. Discussion closed. --Elvey^(t•c) 03:34, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Elvey, perhaps you would come back and clarify a few things for us. For example, you wrote "We cannot override WP:V or WP:RS." In what way would rejecting some sources, on some subjects, from countries with a strong reputation for the low quality their sources, constitute "overriding" WP:V or WP:RS? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Reread Albino's comment. To what end do you seek clarification? --Elvey^(t•c) 03:34, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

I am flummoxed as to why that single comment is singled out as of more weight than those of multiple other editors. This seems to me a very questionable closure. CFCF 💌 📧 12:02, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

I think that would likely be because Albino's comment stated that multiple editors were ignoring the fact that we are talking about high quality sources and some editors opposed low quality sources, which wasn't the purpose of the RfC. LesVegas (talk) 12:53, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

This is not true. The statement in the guideline is about high-quality types (emphasis in the original) of sources, not about high-quality sources. A meta-analysis is a high-quality type of source, but it can be a low-quality source (e.g., if it's outdated, poorly done, or irrelevant). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there are meta-analyses that are poor quality because of age, journal integrity, etc, but they are not poor quality simply on the basis of where they are published or the country of origin of its authors. That was the purpose of the RfC, and no, just as we cannot exclude sources because they receive industry funding, we also cannot exclude them because of country of publication. Not one single editor addressed why we don't reject industry funded sources on the basis of known bias, but we should ban sources based on speculative and unconfirmed publication bias due to country of origin. Not one editor. Note that Elvey mentioned as much in his close as well. There were multiple factors here really. LesVegas (talk) 19:23, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

It still completely fails to address the actual need for the addition. No discussion has been shown about not including high quality sources based on country of origin, this is a red herring and a useless bloating addition. CFCF 💌 📧 10:02, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

This discussion centres around attempts by SPA editors to crowbar low quality sources supporting various degrees of efficacy not shown in high quality sources of ALT-Med articles, particularly Acupuncture. Other attempts have been made, to WP:MEDRS for example. Characterising mainstream editors as racially prejudiced by SPA's has been happening for a while now, and is a particularly nasty tactic. -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 10:20, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

While I am surprised my comment was mentioned. I am not surprised with the close. My comment did point the problem with some of the responses. They were off topic. A problem that looks like its repeating down here. The RFC question specifically was about High quality sources. Low quality sources will be rejected regardless of what country they are from because they will not even pass WP:RS. AlbinoFerret 13:54, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Are there examples of editors rejecting high quality sources because of racial prejudice? -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 14:30, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

A couple were mentioned during the RFC. I did point out I was unsure if it was widespread, but even if it isnt very widespread its a bad thing that should be stopped. It hurts the project in rejecting even a few high quality sources and makes the project look bad focusing in the ethnic angle. I think those editors who are concerned this will allow low quality sources in shouldt worry, low quality will always be excluded. Just point out the problems with the source that make it low quality and dont point out where they came from. Doing that give those pushing them a reason to argue. AlbinoFerret 14:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this might work: "While country of origin per se is not a suitable reason to reject a source, it is appropriate to consider in cases where reliable sources have identified systematic problems in the medical literature associated with specific regions or countries."

QuackGuru (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

While that may be what you want in the section, it does not say what the closer said. Here is the section:

"This addition should NOT be read as a PC ban on any mention of country of origin (or founding source, etc.) when necessary to refer to studies with hard data (as contrasted to stereotypes) that have identified a systematic problem that is normally identified with an affiliated country of origin, as mentioned by Richard Keatinge. Likewise, this addition should NOT be read as a changing the longstanding policy that sources from publications known to routinely publish and fail to retract material proven unreliable may be excluded."

What it appears Elvey is saying , and Elvey can correct me if I am wrong, is this close is not a ban on discussing problems with sources in a discussion of a source that talks about them. It doesnt appear to be a loophole to insert arguments about a source, based on a country, just because other crappy sources have come from there. What might be better to say is "It is better to look at the quality of a source, if the source is of low quality it should be excluded." AlbinoFerret 20:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

CORRECT on both counts. (The comma in the last sentence should be a semicolon or period.) --Elvey^(t•c) 02:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Your proposal "It is better to look at the quality of a source, if the source is of low quality it should be excluded." is not about country of origin. QuackGuru (talk) 21:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

See the specific part of the close. See "when necessary to refer to studies with hard data (as contrasted to stereotypes) that have identified a systematic problem that is normally identified with an affiliated country of origin, as mentioned by Richard Keatinge." QuackGuru (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Thats because the RFC has already said that country of origin is not a valid exclusion. I assumed that country of origin is added to the list of other things that should not be considered. The whole purpose of that section appears to be to tell people to look for high quality sources, then some things that should not be considered. I propose adding a sentence at the bottom to direct editors to, instead of looking at the country or funding, to look at the quality. AlbinoFerret 21:07, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it says not to stop discussions about a topic that discusses low quality sources, not a loophole to allow discussions that we have already said should not take place like excluding a source based on ethnic origin. AlbinoFerret 21:09, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

You said "Thats because the RFC has already said that country of origin is not a valid exclusion." That what was written and that was what was added.

"While country of origin per se is not a suitable reason to reject a source, it is appropriate to consider in cases where reliable sources have identified systematic problems in the medical literature associated with specific regions or countries."[4] QuackGuru (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

My close is clear. It's not appropriate to --Elvey^(t•c) 02:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

You are adding a loophole that I dont believe the closer added. Lets wait for them to chime in as I have pinged the closer in a few posts ago. AlbinoFerret 21:14, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Albino Ferret is right, in fact, it would violate the spirit of every single RfC done across wikipedia if we always added a reference tag and then just put whatever summary those opposed wanted. Adding in a summary of whatever you want to be read as a caveat is gaming an RfC outcome. Besides, the RfC wasn't about "should we say 'country of origin' and then have these caveats?" it was about the wording, "country of origin" specifically. And, to that, the answer was "yes," it needs to be added in. But since the consensus reading did mention other specifics and since some editors are persistent in wanting something else, I figured a link where readers could see the full consensus read/closing comments would be the best compromise. LesVegas (talk) 21:25, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The outcome of the RfC is not constrained to be binary. It's intended to gauge consensus, and the closer found consensus to include 'country of origin', but with the caveat that it might be a legitimate consideration where "hard data" demonstrate a concern about biased literature. MastCell ^Talk 22:52, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The point is that the addition is completely useless, and not supported by the RfC. QuackGuru – while I agree with the intent of your clarifications the fact is we are just introducing bloat. If any policy is to be taken seriously it needs to be succinct, and can't include hypothetical clauses that have never been proven to be needed. CFCF 💌 📧 22:48, 26 October 2015 (UTC) 

When the RfC is a question asking "should we add 'country of origin' to this list?", and the consensus reading says "Yes" removing it entirely is going against consensus. LesVegas (talk) 23:09, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

We're trying to get some clarification of some of the major issues with the close and a possible new clause, it isn't something we will do on a whim–we need to have a agree on what (if anything) to include. We should wait until clarification of what Elvey meant in the close summary. Currently the meaning of the text is very murky, and as such it may be challenged for not adequately summarizing the consensus. CFCF 💌 📧 23:15, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

(Late reply) Elvey, I'm trying to figure out what the relevance of your statement about "overriding WP:V and WP:RS" is. Imagine that you are trying to decide whether a source is reliable. Do you believe that considering the country of origin, e.g., to avoid citing the notoriously bad Soviet science, would somehow a constitute "overriding" WP:V? Could you point to any sentence in WP:V that would be violated or "overridden" by doing that?

Also, I have read Albino's comment, and you seem to have overlooked a critical difference between what the guideline says and what Albino wrote. The sentence in the guideline talks about high-quality types of sources (e.g., a meta-analysis is a high-quality type of source; a case study is a low-quality type of source). Albino talks about high-quality sources—a quality that takes far more into consideration than the type of the source. "High-quality types" and "high-quality sources" are not the same thing. It's possible to have a low-quality meta-analysis, and just like it's possible to have a top-quality case study. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't dispute that it's possible to have a low-quality meta-analysis. What's clear is there was consensus that "country of origin", per se, is not a valid method to identify a low-quality meta-analysis. --Elvey^(t•c) 02:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

What does "overriding WP:V and WP:RS" is? It seems to mean that MEDRS is wrong and that MEDRS overrides WP:V and WP:RS to exclude sources that meet WP:V and WP:RS. Therefore, country of origin such as from China are good even if they are poor quality and bias. QuackGuru (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

You didn't respond to my comment about your extreme, odd interpretation of what I said. I feel grossly misrepresented, and an apology would certainly have been welcome. "We cannot override WP:V or WP:RS" means just that. Surely none of you dispute that "We cannot override WP:V or WP:RS." There was consensus that "country of origin", per se, is not a valid reason to reject a source. I claim neither WP:V nor WP:RS contain any sentence consistent with allowing "country of origin", per se, as a valid reason to reject a source.

Again: You need to drop the stick. Insisting my close not clear by misrepresenting what I said with an extreme, odd interpretation is not going to fly, and you've just done that for the second time in this section, this time by claiming I've said MEDRS is wrong. STOP. It's disruptive and uncivil. I said no such thing. Not liking the close is not a valid reason to reopen it. I don't see any clarification request that hasn't been adequately addressed by AlbinoFerret or myself. Re-closing. --Elvey^(t•c) 02:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

No, you haven't answered my question. There are two basic ways to approach this. Either your comment about overriding WP:V and WP:RS is:

• pointless blather, with just as much relevance as you saying "Don't kick puppies" or "Be nice to your neighbors" in the middle of this (in which case, you should just remove it), or
• you actually meant to communicate something relevant, that editors need to know and understand (in which case, you need to explain what you meant, because everybody's confused).

The obvious assumption is that you meant what you said. What you said seems to be that (when relevant/appropriate/etc.) editors should not take notice of published academic research that says (for example) Soviet psychiatric research is a bunch of garbage (and garbage because it came out of a country that had difficulties with the concept of apolitical science), because you believe that doing so would be based on "country of origin" and that discarding sources on the grounds of country of origin somehow override WP:V and WP:RS.

Is that what you meant? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what Elvey meant, but I know some editors here have already exhausted this editor (a volunteer, as we all are) with complaints, so I'm willing to take a stab at it from my reading of Elvey's close. Documented issues with poor science conducted by a particular piece of research are a valid reason to exclude that individual piece of research because it doesn't meet the barometer of a high-quality source, per WP:V and WP:RS anyway. Excluding such research, however, because it is Russian or Soviet and they had scientific issues and therefore it all must be garbage science, is not an appropriate reason for rejecting it. In other words, what are the reasons that individual piece of research is invalid? And if it is documented invalid, it isn't high quality anyway. Funding sources have a well documented history of much worse; Elvey mentioned in their close that country of origin wasn't worse than funding, per consensus (since nobody seemed to tackle that question I raised.) LesVegas (talk) 19:38, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

This was the previous proposal: "While country of origin per se is not a suitable reason to reject a source, it is appropriate to consider in cases where reliable sources have identified systematic problems in the medical literature associated with specific regions or countries."

It is known that there is publication bias from Chinese journals. We cannot claim "country of origin" is not a problem given the evidence. QuackGuru (talk) 20:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

That's a 2005 source, and it does illustrate publication bias in some fields. For those fields it notes, it may apply to Chinese sources published prior to 2005. LesVegas (talk) 23:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

LesVegas, your reply does not address my question at all. So far as I can tell, there is nothing in WP:V or WP:RS that requires us to accept sources that have characteristics which editors deem suspicious. However, it leads me to a question for you: Imagine that (it's 1985 and...) you are looking at a source produced by the well-documented mess that was Soviet psychiatry on the question of people with schizophrenia who claim to be political prisoners. Do you think that specific source could be excluded:

(a) because it was produced by the Soviet psychiatric system, which is an extraordinarily well-documented disaster (and therefore the odds are very high that it, too, is bad) or

(b) only if that individual source were called out, by name, in another reliable source, as an example of bad research?

Another way to put this: If a source was produced by a Soviet psychiatric institution, is it "tarred with the same brush" as the rest of the field, or "innocent until proven individually guilty" of politically manipulated science? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, you're right in that WP:V and WP:RS don't require us to use sources from countries with issues, but they also don't require us to exclude them on that basis. These policies simply tell us what a high quality source is and what it is not. The way I read the close is based on the content of the RfC expressed over and over again, which is we have our rubrics for determining what a reliable source is. That's the WP:V and RS part. So we use WP:V and WP:RS to determine if it is a high quality source. These rubrics do not allow us to exclude sources that meet WP:RS standards because of their country of origin, much as they don't allow us to reject sources because of industry funding issues. And the way I see it, the issues with the Soviet disaster likely produced journals that wouldn't meet MEDRS standards anyway, certainly being called out by reliable sources. If this occurred today, you would undoubtedly find a slew of journals being slammed by academia for problems. Having occurred so long ago, I'm sure there's some, but the point is moot because those journals are so old they wouldn't be reliable sources anyway per WP:MEDDATE. LesVegas (talk) 19:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I think your going to have to clarify your thought process here - I can't tell how your different statements are related. And neither RS nor MEDRS are about finding high quality sources, they're about finding acceptable quality sources for Wikipedia, with MEDRS focusing on medicine. CFCF 💌 📧 19:23, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

MEDRS is WP:RS but specific to medical claims. We don't use low quality sources. What other statements do you not understand? LesVegas (talk) 19:38, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Elvey the clarification that I asked you about is from an earlier discussion, that some want to add a loophole to the "country of origin" by stating it still can be considered with language like this as a note "it is appropriate to consider in cases where reliable sources have identified systematic problems in the medical literature associated with specific regions or countries" saying that the last paragraph of your close says that. Is this what you wrote in that last paragraph of the close? AlbinoFerret 04:46, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Editors are waiting for clarification. Editors do not agree with this change. See "The outcome of the RfC is not constrained to be binary. It's intended to gauge consensus, and the closer found consensus to include 'country of origin', but with the caveat that it might be a legitimate consideration where "hard data" demonstrate a concern about biased literature."[5] QuackGuru (talk) 19:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:MEDASSESS and hierarchies of evidence

In a recent WikiProject Medicine discussion, I noted that WP:MEDASSESS largely follows an evidence-based medicine approach, but that there are many valid critiques of the EBM movement (examples given in that discussion). I note Pearce et al. (2015) says:

"the notion of ‘hierarchies’ of evidence within evidence-based medicine is no longer prevalent in the literature, being replaced by more nuanced typologies of evidence demonstrating how different research methods are appropriate for answering different types of research question [72, 73]."

72. OCEBM Levels of Evidence Working Group. The Oxford Levels of Evidence 2. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine; 2011. 73. Howick J, Chalmers I, Glasziou P, Greenhalgh T, Heneghan C, Liberati A, et al. Explanation of the 2011 Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (OCEBM) Levels of Evidence (Background Document). Oxford: Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine; 2011.

Perhaps we are a bit behind the times now in following a "pyramid" hierarchy and should work on some alternative text.

Here has the set of papers, all open access, that includes Pearce et al., a series edited by Trish Greenhalgh. Bondegezou (talk) 16:32, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, we need to address this. I've been thinking about it for a long time—not because there's something "wrong" with the evidence hierarchies, but because they're only useful for some kinds of information. You will never see a systematic review of randomized controlled studies on what the current name of body part is. It'd be silly. And yet we have editors who believe that this is the be-all and end-all of all sources, and that it's better to cite a systematic review that mentions something like that in passing than to cite a more authoritative source, e.g., a reputable anatomy textbook.

But I think it's going to take a lot of re-writing, and I've got limited time for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll try to find time, but the issue in the case you've linked is not that EBM is weak, but that it does not apply to all fields. CFCF 💌 📧 07:07, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Writing for Wikipedia on scientific topics is not "doing" peer reviewed science, more especially it is not authoring reviews. It is, or should be, non-credible mostly-pseudonymous editors reporting on where the existing consensus of scientists lies. This is the underlying reason that we cannot use our own individual assessment of primary sources, even the experts among us. The result is that we cannot simply adopt a ranking hierarchy intended for use by experts: we must have published sources behind our application of wp:WEIGHT, as inconvenient as that may be when we all know the primary source is right.LeadSongDog come howl! 13:06, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

One of the (multiple) problems that we create with mindless application of a "no primary sources!" rule is that we exclude interesting information as a result. Primary sources need to be given due weight, which doesn't always mean excluding them. For very rare diseases, due weight might even mean emphasizing them—because the options are sometimes scholarly primaries or non-scholarly secondaries, and the "scholarly" part can matter more than the "secondary" part. We need to stop painting ourselves into a corner by declaring a subject notable because independent secondary sources exist, and then refusing to permit any sources at all to be used: all the academic sources get rejected on the grounds that they're primary or too old, and all the secondary and recent sources get rejected on the grounds that they aren't peer-reviewed.

Also, encyclopedia articles aren't just summaries of current mainstream scientific consensus. They should also include (largely scholarly, largely mainstream) views from multiple disciplines, such as:

• history (why does the word cancer come from crabs?),
• law (where is this drug legal?),
• business (how much money did they make selling this?),
• economics (what would happen to the global economy if depression disappeared?),
• sociology (why does this affect wealthy countries more than poor ones?),
• religion (can this surgery be done bloodlessly?),
• culture (why do people bring you dinner if your child has cancer, but not if he has autism?),
• practical life (can a heart attack make you too weak to lift a pot of coffee?),

and other subjects. None of that is science, and all of it belongs in a medicine-related encyclopedia articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

MEDRS has exceptions for all those (including primary sources for rare diseases)–so I don't see the issue here.
As I understand it the problem is that misinformed editors are mass-tagging for example 6 year old studies as unreliable. While that is a major issue, it isn't an issue with the current rules.
As for notability I don't understand, would you care to clarify? CFCF 💌 📧 22:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

On notability: Notability, in the form of the WP:GNG, basically requires the existence of two or more secondary sources. MEDRS, however, "requires" (in the minds of our most zealous defenders of the wiki) the exclusive use of scholarly secondary sources for WP:Verification. This means that it is possible to have an article about, e.g., an experimental drug, that is WP:Notable (because multiple non-scholarly secondary sources exist) but which produces endless disputes about the lack of "MEDRS-compliant" sources (because zero scholarly secondary sources exist). We are handling this poorly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

MEDDATE

Here's an approximate idea of what I'm thinking about MEDDATE issues.

The ideal maximum age for a source depends upon the subject

Subject	Example	Maximum recommended age
Major topics in a major, actively researched area	first-line treatments for hypertension	Review articles published within approximately the last five years
Minor topics in a major area	treatment of hypertension in a person with kidney cancer	Approximately five years or the three most recent review articles, whichever is longer
Major topics in a minor area	treatment of cystic fibrosis	Approximately five years or at least three reviews, whichever is longer
Minor topics in a minor area	treatment of hypertension in a person with cystic fibrosis	The several most recent review articles, and any primary sources published since the penultimate review article
Very rare diseases	most genetic disorders	The several most recent peer-reviewed articles, regardless of absolute age

Does this seem approximately like what you all would expect to find if you were looking for sources? (On the fourth line, it may help to know that hypertension does not seem to be a common complication of cystic fibrosis.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea of a table of different variants like this, but it's going to need some work. There are a couple of issues here:

 1. Ideal source are obviously always new up to date systematic reviews regardless of topic area

 2. Do we use number of reviews to determin which are major/minor topics and how do we know ehn a topic falls under any of these groups?

 3. How do we determine if reviews/articles have been published? You have WebOfScience and Scopus for this but very few editors have access. Pubmed doesn't really cut it.

 4. The wording "regardless of absolute age" is problematic because all you need to do is go back to a 1970s East German source and you can promote a wealth of alt-med diseases. I'd be more comfortable is we used something akin to Orphanet [6] to determine what rare diseases are - many old purported diseases are just that, and aren't considered real today.

 5. "any primary sources" is far to inclusive

 6. Best possible sources don't depend on subject but rather how much research has been performed - this means that even some very rare diseases have quite significant bodies of research.

CFCF 💌 📧 20:31, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree that it needs work; that's why I posted it.  ;-)

1: Ideal sources are not always systematic reviews. The ideal sources for treatment efficacy are systematic reviews – assuming any exist – but systematic reviews are not the ideal source for 90% of article content.

2 and 3: I think that the number of reviews available might be one reasonable metric for major/minor (and all the things in between). We can base this on PubMed and treat it as a rebuttable presumption: if I find nothing in PubMed, but you've got access to Scopus and find more, then you can share your information with me. By the way, here are some quick numbers:

• "Hypertension" is mentioned in 12,730 (tagged) reviews on PubMed in the last five years, and is present in the title of 3,162.
• "Breast cancer" is mentioned in 6,447 and in the title of 3,741.
• "Pneumonia" is mentioned in 2,808 and in the title of 695.
• "Cystic fibrosis" (a heavily researched rare disease) is mentioned in 1,543 and in the title of 692.
• "Preeclampsia" is mentioned in 779 (plus more under the hyphenated spelling "pre-eclampsia") and in the title of 279.
• "Down syndrome" is mentioned in 469 and in the title of 160.
• "Kidney cancer" is mentioned in 225 (plus 174 non-duplicates for "renal cancer") and in the title of just 64 (plus 51 for "renal cancer").
• "Wilson disease" is mentioned in 62 and in the title of 17 (plus more for "Wilson's disease").
• "Oculodental digital dysplasia" (incredibly rare disease) is mentioned in zero.

(These are all quoted-phrase searches on PubMed, merely for illustration rather than ideal searches for these subjects.)

As a quick rule of thumb, then maybe this would work: If there are more than 100 hits among reviews published on the subject in the last year, then you should probably be using the "major" criteria for the bulk of your sources. If there are less than 100, then that might not be possible (because "hits" ≠ "reviews actually about the subject"). Or we could build it based on in-title searches: Use good reviews if you've got more than a couple dozen, but when you've only got 20 (or fewer) to choose from, the fact is that the available sources might not cover all of the material that ought to be in the article. For example, there is exactly one review that has both "cystic fibrosis" and "hypertension" in the title during the last five years, and if you need to source a sentence about non-pulmonary hypertension (perhaps to mention the need to control hypertension in advance of getting a lung transplant), then there are zero recent reviews available on that exact subject.

However, I think that most experienced editors are going to have an easy time deciding where a subject falls on the scale. If I have no trouble discovering sources, then it's a major topic. If my searches come up empty, then it's not. You should be using the best of what you've got, unless and until someone demonstrates that better ones; conversely, when better ones don't exist, then you should not be hassled by people who care about the date on the paper more than they care about the content of the article.

4. Bad sources are bad sources. Age is not the sole, or even main, determinant of whether a source is bad.

5. Bad sources are bad sources. Primary vs secondary status is not the sole, or even main, determinant of whether a source is bad.

6. Best possible sources do depend on the subject, because the subject determines how much research has been published. I believe that you meant to say that the best possible sources don't depend upon disease prevalence.  ;-) Also, it's necessary to write these rules to work for non-disease subjects, such as drugs and surgical techniques. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

While I appreciate the thinking behind this proposal, I suspect that it will make things worse rather than better. As we all know, there is already a tendency – usually but not always editors who aren't familiar with how to read and use the published literature – to treat MEDRS as a series of yes/no checkboxes that must be met, rather than as a set of rules of thumb which a skilled editor might consider in evaluating a given source-assertion-context triple. (See also the related problem of editors who think that "reliability" is a magical inherent trait possessed by a source, without regard for how or where that source is being used. And editors who had WT:MED watchlisted earlier this year will be familiar with the individual who thought evaluate this article meant make a complete list of its citations older than 5 years and declare them not MEDRS-compliant, regardless of context.)

Creating a more-specific-looking set of criteria increases the tendency for slavish adherence to the letter of the rule rather than to the purpose of the rule. Saying that "most experienced editors are going to have an easy time deciding where a subject falls on the scale" misses the likely source of the problem— most experienced and competent editors already grasp the need for flexibility in applying MEDRS' guidelines. Where a question about a source arises under these new criteria, the discussion will be diverted from the central question of whether or not the source-assertion-context triple at hand is appropriate, and into bickering over whether a particular topic and area are major/major, major/minor, minor/major, or minor/minor. Once that binary categorization is achieved, there will be blind counting of number of reviews or blind adherence to the five-year criterion—which is the same problem we already encounter. And since the new criteria look more specific and 'scientific', then we're probably going to have more trouble dislodging individuals from their mistaken belief that these rules of thumb are etched in stone. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 11:49, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

Part of the problem is structural: We want to tell people to do X if they're looking for new sources/creating new material, but X plus Y if they're evaluating whether an existing statement is okay. As in: If you're writing a new article, then use the best sources you can possibly lay your hands on. But if you're trying to figure out whether Source X verifies Statement 1, then "the best sources" aren't required. You need one that is good enough, but it only has to be barely good enough.

What do you think about killing any mention of five years at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm certainly open to the idea. The five-year rule of thumb (and its chronic misinterpretation as an iron-clad commandment) may be causing more problems than it solves, these days.

We generally prefer more recent sources, all other things being equal. But all other things are never exactly equal, and what qualifies as "more recent" varies a lot depending on the field, the content, and the context. I think we (Wikipedia editors) sometimes fall down when we over-prioritise recent publication dates over other measures of source quality and reliability. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:26, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually, we don't necessarily prefer more recent sources, because of WP:RECENTISM. We do tend to prefer the most recent reviews, of course, because they can consider the impact of more recent primary sources. The "five-year rule of thumb" came into being when it was suggested that in many fields a review cycle (the time between consecutive major reviews) took roughly that amount of time. It's obvious that there is considerable variance in the time before a particular major review becomes superseded by an equally important successor, and unless editors take the time to find the most recent high-quality review, the rule of thumb becomes counter-productive. We really need to be saying something like "In many topics a review conducted more than five to ten years ago will have been superseded by more up-to-date ones, and editors should try to find those", rather than suggesting we reject a perfectly good source solely on the grounds of its age. --RexxS (talk) 15:21, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The best evidence

This is about this attempted clarification. I usually begin with the assumption that User:CFCF is right, so I went to see what I could learn about the subject.

Here's the list of circulatory-related Cochrane reviews—all 591 of them. There are two about diagnosis, two labeled as "overview", and 587 are interventions (treatment or prevention). Both overviews are about treatments; an "overview" is essentially a systematic review that leans heavily on previous Cochrane reviews. That's 99.66% about treatments.

Here's the list of pregnancy-related Cochrane reviews. There are 553. One is an overview of interventions. One is about prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. For that subject, 99.64% of systematic reviews are about treatments.

I picked cardiology because I don't know much about subject, and pregnancy because it was the least disease-like condition in the list. I got very similar results from both. I haven't checked any others, but I suspect that they will be very similar. And basically my results are: with a truly minuscule number of exceptions, systematic reviews are about treatments.

Therefore I think that it's fair to say, as a first approximation, that if you want good evidence about treatments, then you should look for meta analyses and systematic reviews, but if you want anything else, you probably need to look for something else. "The best evidence" is never a source that doesn't exist.

Here's the problem that we need to solve: We have editors quoting WP:MEDRS#Best evidence as a requirement for everything in an article. A couple of weeks ago, one of them quoted this sentence to complain about a ==Further reading== list! I know we have a tendency to shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well, people are going to quote things out of context", but the fact is that well-written guidelines should make that as difficult as possible. That's how I've written WP:External links over the years, for example, and abuse of that guideline is quite minimal now. I think that narrowing the scope of that sentence, to explicitly acknowledge what we were thinking about back in the day, will help editors to use the advice correctly, and to stop using it inappropriately.

Also, I know that I gave silly examples in the edit summary, but there are serious ones: For example, PubMed has exactly zero systematic reviews and meta-analyses about the reliability of Pregnancy tests in humans during the last 10 years. Zero. There are US$1.68 Billion in sales each year,[7], representing more than 100 million tests, and there are zero meta-analyses or systematic reviews on the subject. Why don't such papers exist? Because they'd be pointless. It's not an area of research. Real experts use reference works, not review articles, to source information about that subject. But if we don't find ways to make it hard to quote that line inappropriately, then we'll continue to have editors misunderstanding the limited scope of that sentence and therefore we'll continue to have creating disputes over whether the best sources in existence are "MEDRS-compliant".

I am, as always, open to other solutions. But I think we need to be clearer that meta-analyses and systematic reviews are only appropriate for some parts of an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Just as one point of clarification, Cochrane reviews focus on treatments because it's part of their mission statement: "to help you make informed choices about treatment," "[for] using high-quality information to make health decisions," etc. Other review series might have only a minority of treatment-related articles, e.g. many of the medically relevant Annual Reviews journals. Sunrise (talk) 05:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing - I've previously not seen the need to specify in this sense, because I've feared that anyone who is confused enough to go looking for meta-analysis for the boundaries of the scapula should be kept away from WP, but then again we have few tools to make sure they do.
The point I've been trying to make is that systematic reviews and meta-analysis are just as important to epidemiology and certain diagnostic procedures, and that treatments are not unique in this fashion. I guess you can argue that getting those right could be considered a part of getting the treatment right, but I don't thing we should be to restrictive in saying only treatments are like this.
Maybe a compromise could be akin to changing:

The best evidence is mainly from meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs)

     to

For most topics the best evidence comes from meta-analyses or systematic reviews. For treatment and diagnosis the best sources are meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), while for epidemiology the best sources may be (...). For topics such as anatomy or physiology such sources will likely not be relevant and up-to-date textbooks or literature reviews will be better.

I think we could do well to source such a paragraph - I'm going to add it to my to-do list. CFCF 💌 📧 16:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Something along those lines would be great. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

For each

Here's the list of topics we might cover on a disease article, with a list of what I think the go-to sources are (for some hypothetical median disease):

• Classification: Narrative reviews and textbooks
• Signs and symptoms: Narrative reviews and textbooks
• Causes: Narrative reviews and textbooks for most things ("AIDS is caused by HIV infection"), plus meta-analyses and systematic reviews for risk factors that aren't widely known or accepted.
• Mechanism: Narrative reviews and textbooks
• Diagnosis: Position statements, narrative reviews and textbooks for most diagnostic information (e.g., "To diagnose HIV infection, use an HIV test"), plus meta-analyses and systematic reviews if you are discussing whether a diagnostic method works (e.g., "Is a screening mammogram worth it?").
• Prevention or Screening: Narrative reviews and textbooks for most things ("Measles can be prevented by getting the vaccine"), plus meta-analyses and systematic reviews in the unlikely case that you are discussing something disputed ("Alcohol consumption causes one-sixth of breast cancer cases in the UK").
• Treatment: Y Meta-analyses and systematic reviews for efficacy/what ought to be done. Position statements, narrative reviews and textbooks for what's actually done.
• Outcomes or Prognosis: Narrative reviews and textbooks
• Epidemiology: Narrative reviews, textbooks, reference works (e.g., a WHO report on disease prevalence), meta-analyses and systematic reviews.
• History: Non-medical sources (e.g., books on the history of medicine).
• Society and culture: Non-medical sources (e.g., plain old books, especially if it's written by a sociologist).
• Research directions: Narrative reviews, statements from interested groups, even op-eds (with INTEXT attribution).
• Special populations, such as Geriatrics or Pregnancy or Pediatrics: All of the above, depending on what you're saying about the population.
• Other animals: All of the above, depending on what you're saying about animals.

I don't know if your list would be the same, but it looks like I'd make a meta-analysis or a systematic review my first choice for only one section, and I'd choose one as supplemental material for about a third of the sections—or, to put it another way, not "for most topics". In particular, my approach appears to be to prefer a meta-analysis or a systematic review only when I'm citing its conclusions, rather than its background section. The background section of a systematic review or a meta-analysis is not automatically better than the background section of any other paper.

Anyway, I tried this out as an exercise, and learned something about my thinking. Perhaps it would be an interesting exercise for other people, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Like it, will respond. Please remind me if I haven't said anything in a week. ;) CFCF 💌 📧 10:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

For "Classification" sections we normally accept ICD-10 by default, though further sources are often needed to clarify. Textbooks are satisfactory because classification moves slowly. If the article differs markedly from ICD-10, we should probably require multiple secondary sources per wp:REDFLAG. Reliance on DSM-V without other classification references may be more controversial, but at least it is regarded as one notable source.
For the "Epidemiology" sections of disease articles, papers such as PMID 26063472 by the Global Burden of Disease Study collaboration are practically indispensable.
For the "History" sections, specialized journals such as J Hist Med Allied Sci, Bull Hist Med or Ann Med Hist are often useful.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Publication bias

There is publication bias from Chinese journals. QuackGuru (talk) 22:56, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

While you guys are arguing about this, there are gazillions of bad sources still littering medical articles. When I ask for help here I am routinely ignored. Abductive (reasoning) 05:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Post at WT:MED, not WT:MEDRS–this is the wrong forum to ask for help. Also as far as I can recall you've gotten support each and every time you posted there. CFCF 💌 📧 10:07, 27 October 2015 (UTC) 

Clarifying "biomedical"

Opinions are needed on these matters: In July, Minor4th and GregJackP (who is currently retired) argued that WP:MEDRS does not apply to domestic violence (or rather domestic violence against men), based on their definition of "biomedical." WP:Med editors argued that WP:MEDRS does apply to domestic violence, and Jytdog and I argued that WP:MEDRS does not only concern biomedical content. I stated, either way, domestic violence concerns biomedical content since it involves physical and mental harm. I was also clear that various high-quality medical sources list or cite domestic violence as a medical topic. You can see all of that in this section and when scrolling down to other sections. Guy Macon also showed up to give his view of what biomedical means and that WP:MEDRS didn't apply in the case of domestic violence. BoboMeowCat soon showed up to support the view that WP:MEDRS applies to domestic violence (whether against women or men). Although GregJackP came around to acknowledging that WP:MEDRS applies to some aspects of domestic violence, Minor4th still seems to believe it doesn't apply at all, as is clear in the current Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Domestic Violence article discussion. A WP:Permalink for it is here. The latest editor to state that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply to domestic violence is Ryk72, as seen here; I replied to Ryk72 here, stating, in part, "Domestic violence is not simply a cultural topic, nor simply a legal topic. It is a medical, legal and cultural topic. If the content is legally or culturally-based, then WP:MEDRS is not likely to apply. If the content is health-based, then WP:MEDRS does apply."

In August, as seen here and here, WhatamIdoing emphasized "biomedical" over "medical." I then linked "biomedical", stating, "If we are going to stress 'biomedical,' then we should link to it, since, as seen at Talk:Domestic violence against men, editors commonly do not understand what biomedical entails." Jytdog later linked the Wikipedia:Biomedical information essay, as seen here. The main dispute for whether "biomedical" applies to domestic violence is the epidemiology material. I've stated that epidemiology material should be WP:MEDRS-compliant; this view is also currently supported by the "What is biomedical information?" and "The best type of source" sections at the Wikipedia:Biomedical information essay. Domestic violence is very much a part of medical literature, as FloNight can also attest to, and we have Template:Reliable sources for medical articles at the top of the Domestic violence article talk page. So, yes, some commentary from editors of the WP:MEDRS guideline/talk page would be helpful to clear up these matters. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's an incorrect statement of my view. MEDRS applies to medical information - not to sociology issues. Simple as that. I mean, think about the actual purpose of having a more restricted MEDRS guideline for reliable sources - it's so we get the science of medical issues right. We might need MEDRS for describing the medical aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder, but we don't need MEDRS to describe underreporting or crime statistics or public perception, etc. Minor4th 12:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Minor4th, looking at the discussions at Talk:Domestic violence against men, you make it seem like you believe that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply to domestic violence at all. As for your comment here in this section, statistics in this case fall under epidemiology, which is not simply a sociology issue. It's not much different than statistics for suicide, which require WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing. So we disagree about WP:MEDRS not applying to statistics. And like I just stated at the WP:Reliable sources noticeboard, "[E]ither way, with the exception of GregJackP (mentioned [above]), the only editors so far to claim that domestic violence doesn't require WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing have been men's rights editors and those involved with the Gamergate controversy article; I doubt that's a coincidence. It's common for such editors to want us to forgo high-quality medical sources for obvious POV-pushing reasons." I see no valid reason not to use a high-quality or good-quality textbook or review article for domestic violence rates, which are WP:MEDRS-compliant, as opposed to a primary source or a single study that is not representative of what the medical literature generally reports on the matter. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 12:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I am completely uninvolved in the article topic in question, and i'm aware of the content and spirit of WP:MEDRS. I believe that MEDRS applies via the term "biomedical" to such things as etiology and epidemiology of disease in the human organism. This would include such things as psychiatry, including such things as perhaps statements about what psychiatric conditions might lead to or result from domestic violence, but would not apply to claims about sociological dynamics around domestic violence. Those would be sourced by regular WP:RS. That is my reckoning, as an editor not involved in the article's topic and very familiar with the meaning and purpose of MEDRS in Wikipedia. SageRad (talk) 13:04, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

SageRad, like I noted above, statistics are not simply "sociological." Nor are they simply "sociological dynamics." Why would WP:MEDRS-compliant sources be needed for rates of suicide/suicide attempts, but not for rates of domestic violence, especially since both cause harm to the human body and are reported on by medical sources? What type of sources do you think are fine for reporting on these matters? If you think news sources are fine, why do you feel that way, given that, as noted at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Popular press, news sources are often wrong on medical and other scientific topics? And when Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Breaking news also notes how news sources can be wrong? Why shouldn't we be going with a WP:MEDRS-compliant source for these matters, especially if the rates concern harm or death to the human body? Also see the Wikipedia:Biomedical information essay for what biomedical can apply to. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I've stated my reckoning, as a person uninvolved in the particular conflict, but familiar with WP:MEDRS. At some point, things do become a judgment call, but in my essential reckoning, the underlying purpose of WP:MEDRS is to hold information about human health to a higher standard, as it may be used by readers in doing their own diagnosis and treatment, and Wikipedia must be as reliable as possible in regard to reported information. In my reckoning, sociological observations on either suicide or domestic violence should be as well sourced as possible, but do not fall under the WP:MEDRS guidelines, except aspects specifically about physical and psychiatric dynamics involved. Basic statistics on rates in society, as well as correlations and causal explanations about them, do not seem to me to fall under the requirements of WP:MEDRS. That said, i would always prefer to see secondary sources used to support claims, to be as reliable and safe as possible, because accuracy does matter. SageRad (talk) 14:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Flyer22 This will have to be my last response to you on this issue because I'm afraid you're arguing in circles. 1. I stated my view above, so dont try to characterize it differently; 2. I am not a "men's rights editor" and I've never had anything at all to do with gamergate - and I am female, by the way; 3. I am not POV pushing, and you have made several sweeping assumptions of bad faith about me - please stop; 4. I never said MEDRS can never apply to any statistics - I said we don't need MEDRS for crime statistics, public perception and underreporting; 5. We also don't need MEDRS for content about research directions or any sociological or cultural content.

You seem to be suggesting that if an article has any health implications at all, then every bit of content must be MEDRS compliant, and that is clearly not the case. Minor4th 13:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Minor4th, I already replied to you with quotes indicating that you thought WP:MEDRS didn't apply to domestic violence at all. I also noted in that reply that I'll leave your claim that you are not a men's rights editor at that. And nowhere did I state or imply that I believe that "if an article has any health implications at all, then every bit of content must be MEDRS compliant." If I believed that, I would not have noted/linked to Wikipedia:Biomedical information. I am well-aware of what WP:MEDRS states, and its exceptions, including its WP:MEDDATE exceptions. Also see what I stated above to SageRad. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no wish to get deeply involved in this topic area, but looking over the Talk page at domestic violence there are some very curious concepts in play:

• The concept of a "MEDRS article" – MEDRS applies to in-scope content anywhere and is not a binary "on" or "off" constraint for an entire article.
• Relatedly, the idea that MEDRS does not and cannot apply at all to this article – surely some aspects of this topic (around injury e.g.) are indisputably biomedical in nature.
• The idea that primary sources, because they are not prohibited, are just fine and dandy to use will-nilly. For all topics we should be dealing in accepted knowledge and for anything contentious, sources need to be solid - which in practice means quality secondary sources.

If these things can't be agreed on, then we do have a problem. Alexbrn (talk) 14:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Alexbrn, I never meant to imply that the Domestic violence article is solely a medical topic. I certainly never stated that. As noted above, I've stated, "It is a medical, legal and cultural topic." If you or others haven't already seen, this and this are the texts that set off this latest "Does WP:MEDRS apply?" debate. Well, more so the latter edit. With regard to the first, I simply started a WP:RfC about that source, since it contrasts the widely supported medical literature that domestic violence disproportionately affects women; the latter content is also at odds with that widely supported medical literature, but I noted to the editor who started the aforementioned WP:Reliable source noticeboard discussion that "WP:MEDRS is not preventing the content in question from being added to the Domestic violence article. I've been clear that I took issue with how you added the content and where." WP:Due weight and what is WP:Lead material were my main concerns for that latter content. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:06, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If indeed widely supported medical literature shows that that domestic violence disproportionately affects women (I have never examined the evidence for/against that claim but it sounds reasonable) then our standard rules for referencing science articles should be perfectly adequate with no need to pretend that a non-biomedical topic is a biomedical topic. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:14, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

As noted below, I've already replied to you on your narrow definition of biomedical. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] I just looked at your links.[8][9] If it is your hope to exclude those references by invoking WP:MEDRS, you are doomed to failure, and I advise giving up now. An argument based upon WP:WEIGHT may be successful (I haven't studied this enough to predict whether it will succeed). --Guy Macon (talk) 15:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Guy Macon, going by the aforementioned WP:RfC, the medical sources listed in it, and what medical editors have stated on these matters, I'm nowhere close to "doomed to failure." on these issues. But your assertion that domestic violence, a topic that concerns physical and mental harm, and which has a buttload of biomedical content in the Wikipedia article about it, doesn't concern WP:MEDRS certainly fails. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:31, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

---

"Biomedical" does not need defining. It is well-defined already in standard dictionaries.

Biomedicine is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Biomedicine[10] as "the study of molecular bioscience relating to disease" with related fields defined as "anatomy, genetics, molecular bioscience, pathology, pharmacology, and clinical medicine". Bioscience is also well-defined already in standard dictionaries.

WP:MEDRS specifically applies to "biomedical information in all types of articles". Domestic violence (against anyone) is not biomedical information. It is sociology, not biology.

Note that if a specific claim touches on biomedical information (a drug that is purported to increase or decrease domestic violence, for example, or a study that links testosterone levels with increased or decreased domestic violence), then WP:MEDRS does apply to that specific claim. Otherwise, all references in any article about the human behavior called "domestic violence" are subject to the normal rules we use in other science articles, not the special ruled we use in medical articles.

I would also note that the normal rules we use in other science articles are perfectly fine, and if followed result in accurate, properly referenced articles.

I don't believe that this has anything at all to do with men's rights other than as a WP:COATRACK for one side or the other. It should be a science topic about one particular human behavior. The related political issues should be in a separate article about domestic violence laws, possibly split by country if there is enough material. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:08, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Note: I replied to Guy Macon, as seen with this link, in full at Talk:Domestic violence against men, and don't at all agree with the narrow, dictionary-definition way he is defining "biomedical." He should also look at the WP:Biomedical information essay. As you can see, Alexbrn, in contrast to what you've stated above, Guy Macon is under the assumption that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply to domestic violence at all, which is quite an odd assumption, given the content covered in the Domestic violence article. And the Domestic violence article very much has to do with men's rights editors, which is exactly why its talk page is tagged with Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

We are all aware that you do not agree with my definition of biomedicine, which came from the Oxford Dictionary of Biomedicine. You don't have to keep repeating the fact that you don't agree with it. Everybody understand that you disagree, and why.

An article being under men's rights movement article probation does not imply that the topic of the article is part of the men's rights topic. That particular probation is also applied when editors try to WP:COATRACK men's rights into articles where it does not belong. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

In the same way that I don't have to keep repeating that I disagree with your definition, you don't need to keep repeating that definition. Your definition of "biomedical" is odd because you've taken a dictionary definition (when, by the way, dictionary definitions are commonly not enough for many Wikipedia topics because of their narrow and/or outdated viewpoints) and applied it as to be strict with regard to what biomedical means. "Biomedical" certainly concerns harm done to the body, including the causes and effects of that harm. And even though domestic violence concerns physical and mental harm issues, which are biomedical, you assert that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply to domestic violence unless it's for something like "a drug that is purported to increase or decrease domestic violence, for example, or a study that links testosterone levels with increased or decreased domestic violence," which, to me, is a silly view to have. And as for "An article being under men's rights movement article probation does not imply that the topic of the article is part of the men's rights topic.", I never stated that it did. I pointed out that men's rights editors are concerned with the Domestic violence article and have POV-pushed at it in ways that have required sanctions. They would love to reject WP:MEDRS-compliant sources at that article for POV-pushing reasons, and they have done so. You know that, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

The fact that, in your opinion, we need to redefine a Wikipedia policy to make it easier for you to fight POV-pushing is not a sufficient reason to change the policy.

As for your attempt to redefine the word "biomedical", it hinders communication if we don't use the standard English definitions for the words we use. Yes, you can decide to use non-standard fleemishes and the reader can still gloork the meaning from the context, but there ix a limit; If too many ot the vleeps are changed, it becomes harder and qixer to fllf what the wethcz is blorping, and evenually izs is bkb longer possible to ghilred frok at wifx. Dnighth? Ngfipht yk ur! Uvq the hhvd or hnnngh. Blorgk? Blorgk! Blorgkity-blorgk!!!! --Guy Macon (talk) 18:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Guy Macon, you are incorrect...on all accounts. Feel free to debate other medical editors in this discussion who disagree with you. Also, WP:MEDRS is a guideline, not a policy, and I treat policies and guidelines with common sense; certain others clearly do not. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Guy Macon, it does not need defining. This seems to be a uncessary discussion aimed at allowing questionable content into Domestic violence against men CFCF 💌 📧 15:55, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

CFCF, Guy Macon's "biomedical" views are at odds with yours and mine; whereas you and I recognize that domestic violence requires WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing in a number of ways, he is asserting that domestic violence generally does not require such sourcing. His opinion is that domestic violence is generally a social topic; the vast majority of content and sourcing in the Domestic violence article indicate otherwise. And as for the questionable content, certain editors want it added to both the Domestic violence article and the Domestic violence against men article. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, as someone against "allowing questionable content into Domestic violence against men," that was surely far from my intention for this discussion. My intention is what I initially stated above in this section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I realize my comment may have been premature, and the large swath of text produced only in the past few hours lead me to glance over it quickly. What should be clear from the guideline, and expressed continuously across this page is that biomedical is anything health related, and while sociological studies may be relevant to that article they do not trump the need of complying with MEDRS when giving statements about epidemiology and health effects. Biomedical here is intended to include biology (when related to human health), medicine as well as health in general. This may have been more clear in previous iterations of this guideline, and I have now added the text biomedical and health to the lead for anyone who is unwilling to take the leap and look at how we define biomedical in the linked article. CFCF 💌 📧 16:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Agree that MEDRS does not cover social issues, but it may if any medical information is presented in the article. Say about a drug for treatment or biological medical reasons for the cause of the social issue. But for the most part WP:RS controls. AlbinoFerret 16:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• While I agree that the definition of biomedicine is well defined, I don't see how that could lead to the conclusion that domestic violence is not a medical topic that needs MEDRS quality research to inform the content. In my area of expertise, OB/GYN, domestic violence is a common area of medical research, and guidelines exist about clinical decision making for physician, nurse midwives, and registered nurses. ACOG recommendation that every women should be screen for domestic violence in general, and more specifically intimate partner violence. A recent Cochrane Review does not show evidence for screening of all women in every healthcare setting. So, we need to have careful review of the medical research in order to write good content about domestic violence. This article is a recent review of Intimate Partner Violence and Pregnancy: A Systematic Review of Interventions.

• Of course, broader areas of research exist beyond pregnancy. Intimate partner violence is a public health issue and widely researched. [11]. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with FloNight. In general, domestic violence is considered a health issue and is covered in most textbooks in OB/GYN and Emergency Medicine. Physicians and other healthcare providers receive training in recognizing domestic violence, and many states have laws requiring healthcare providers to report suspicions of domestic violence. It is very difficult to see how this is not a health-related issue. If the quibble is over the term "biomedical" vs. "health-related", well, that's a silly quibble.

As always, though, my bigger question is why this? Where is the resistance to applying WP:MEDRS coming from? After all, WP:MEDRS is basically an extension of WP:RS which promotes higher-quality sources and more scrupulous use of them. I haven't looked at this dispute, but often when people are trying to get out of applying WP:MEDRS, it's because they want to cite a particular study that supports their viewpoint, without acknowledging the overall weight of evidence on a topic. A strict box-checker would say that any paper published in a reputable journal is a "reliable source". WP:MEDRS goes a bit further, recognizing how easy it is to cherry-pick the "reliable", peer-reviewed health-science literature, and insists that such papers be presented in context. I think we should spend less time arguing semantics, and more time understanding why some editors find that requirement burdensome. MastCell ^Talk 17:03, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Like a lot of topics, there are medical issues, and non medical issues. I agree that some high quality medical sources exist. But some medical sources go into areas that are not specifically medical, but social. There are important questions that medical personnel should ask because it has direct connection to the health of the person they are talking to. If the article strays into the health consequences of being a victim, its deffinatly a medical issue. If its talking about how often it happens and locations it happens not so much. But to say its a pure medical issue is wrong imho. When higher quality sources are available, there is good reason to use them, but should not be a requirement. AlbinoFerret 17:07, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I'm going to have to disagree with you there, because how often and where it happens as well as other risk-factors fall under the field of epidemiology, which is very much a medical field. As such that type of information also needs medical sources. Other things such as economic effects may not need MEDRS-compliance in the same manner. CFCF 💌 📧 17:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If your talking about a health issue, yes. If your talking about someone getting hit, not so much. The health issue is secondary. Thats not to say its not important. But statistics are not medical all the time. An example is car crashes, is someone hurt? yes, if the stictic is someone in a crash needs medical attention, MEDRS. If its talking about how often someone hits a tree and walks away, not so much.AlbinoFerret 17:31, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

No, that would clearly fall under epidemiology, as a lack of health effect is just as much health information as severe effects are. CFCF 💌 📧 17:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Thats a stretch, and if you really believe that better head over to articles about car crashes and make sure they are applying MEDRS. AlbinoFerret 17:44, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

No, it really isn't. And sure if they're citing primary epidemiology sources or making any judgements concerning that it should be changed, but to be frank I don't have the time. CFCF 💌 📧 17:57, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Obviously the general answer to everything is "it depends". That is simultaneously true and useless. Reliability of sources is always in context, as many people have noted already. Nobody is saying that domestic violence has no medical implications. But it is not only a matter of medicine. There are also sociological, psychological aspects etc. Let's make it concrete, instead of talking in vague generalities which don't lead anywhere. See the discussion here, which prompted this discussion. Kingsindian ♝♚ 17:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Psychological aspects also falls under MEDRS, at least when relating to the individual or to health policy. CFCF 💌 📧 17:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

This doesn't really answer my question, though: why is it so important that WP:MEDRS not apply here? At bottom, we're simply talking about a set of guidelines designed to ensure that high-quality sources are used and presented in context, rather than cherry-picked. It seems a bit duplicitous to cite a paper from the psychology literature but then insist that the MEDRS guidelines (which codify best practices for citing such literature) should not apply. MastCell ^Talk 17:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I think that pretty much hits the nail on its head: the point of not applying MEDRS here is specifically to allow cherry-picking of sources. CFCF 💌 📧 17:27, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@MastCell: I am assuming the comment was directed at me. The point of not using WP:MEDRS here is that WP:RS is enough here. Bringing in WP:MEDRS only confuses matters for no benefit whatsoever. The Archer source is a meta-analysis of various other sources. It is cited all over the place, and is a very respectable source in the field - which is not medicine as such, but psychology. Finally, the interesting question is whether the source is reliable or not. See the comments by Rhoark just below mine which makes the same point. Kingsindian ♝♚ 17:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

It seems we are diving into a very convoluted issue here, but if it is a large scale meta-analysis, why is there a dispute over whether it is acceptable under the terms of MEDRS? CFCF 💌 📧 17:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

MastCell, your comment touches on what I stated above about men's rights editors; the domestic violence articles, and similarly related sex/gender medical articles (such as reproductive coercion), have been burdened by these editors wanting to forgo higher-quality sources so that they can push a particular POV (in the case of the domestic violence material, it's usually the POV that men are affected by domestic violence as much as women are or more so, or that there are just as many women who commit domestic violence as there men who do so). A lot of editors are drained because of this, and many have walked away from these articles because of this. We have Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation, but that isn't always enough, especially considering that these editors commonly pop back up with new registered accounts and/or coordinate off-Wiki to gang up on Wikipedia editors.

And, Kingsindian, see above; whereas I and other WP:Med editors recognize that domestic violence requires WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing in a number of ways, Guy Macon is asserting that domestic violence generally does not require such sourcing. His opinion is that domestic violence is generally a social topic; the vast majority of content and sourcing in the Domestic violence article indicate otherwise. There is also clearly disagreement about whether or not WP:MEDRS applies to epidemiology/rates of domestic violence in general. Furthermore, as CFCF noted to you above, psychology is also a part of the medical field. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

It beyond domestic violence having medical implications. Domestic violence is a serious public health issue and has been seen that way for decades. Part of defining it as a public health issue is promoting doing medical research on the topic. Medical sociologist are involved with medical research, and reflect the role behavioral science in the topic. There is not a bright line between the disciplines.

Agree that other disciplines doing research about people need to be held to the highest standards, and not included unless it meets standards for MEDRS. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 17:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

"Plain RS" prefers scholarly sources. It seems to me that there should be very little difference between the best of what MEDRS recommends and the best of what plain RS recommends. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a case where there is a difference, though. "Plain RS" would probably say that a meta-analysis from 2000 is a reliable source, and leave it there. MEDRS goes a bit further: why are people pushing a paper from 2000 when there are innumerable equally high-quality sources that have been published since? (WP:MEDDATE applies; The CDC alone has produced a wealth of up-to-date work on the subject). Also, the meta-analysis in question seems to have been highly controversial at the time it was published, and doesn't appear to represent a mainstream view on the topic—essential context which MEDRS demands, but where "plain RS" is pretty much silent. MastCell ^Talk 22:42, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

No one is pushing the paper, and it doesn't take MEDRS to prefer higher quality sources to lower. In these case, a better or newer source has not been presented. (Flyer22 has presented a list of sources they prefer, but I do not see that they address the matter of the gender ratio in committing IPV. The fact that women are more severely affected is related, but different.) Rhoark (talk) 01:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I did indeed list sources that comment on the gender ratio, and they state things like "[...] Although there are cases in which men are the victims of domestic violence, nevertheless 'the available research suggests that domestic violence is overwhelmingly directed by men against women [...] In addition, violence used by men against female partners tends to be much more severe than that used by women against men. Mullender and Morley state that 'Domestic violence against women is the most common form of family violence worldwide.'", and so on. They very much contrast with the Scientific American source and with the Archer source. Gender symmetry is highly controversial and highly doubted. Listing the sources I did, which state that women are disproportionately affected by domestic violence/intimate partner violence and that the act of domestic violence/intimate partner violence is more commonly committed by men against women, is not about what I prefer, but rather about good-quality or higher-quality sources and WP:Due weight being preferred. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:28, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@MastCell: Zerothly, I should state that I have no involvement, and little interest in the topic, and only know about this because WP:RSN is on my watchlist. Firstly, what is the relevance of WP:MEDRS here in using an old study? The dispute is not about using a new or older study, but using the study at all. Nobody is preventing anyone from updating the study with newer ones. Secondly, on what basis did you reach the conclusion that the meta-analysis is controversial, and does not appear to represent a mainstream view? It is very highly cited, and like all highly cited papers, many people may disagree with it - though the few I have checked, all cite it with little or not criticism. And why do we need WP:MEDRS for such a banal observation? Obviously sources differ, everyone knows that. Thirdly, as I already mentioned on the WP:RSN page, there is the issue of weight, which can only be discussed seriously on the talk page, not the WP:RSN page. Is there any argument that the source is not reliable for the statement made? Kingsindian ♝♚ 00:58, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

MastCell, the CDC's data sources all look like primary sources to me (at a very brief glance). I've linked the two relevant reviews that I found on PubMed below (both from 2008). This may be one of those cases in which plenty of primary sources are available, but few researchers bother writing review articles on the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Kingsindian and WhatamIdoing, gender symmetry is highly controversial and highly doubted. MastCell is correct that the meta-analysis is controversial, and does not represent the mainstream view. See the sources I pointed to a little above when replying to Rhoark. If Archer's study were not controversial, the Domestic violence against men article (Gender symmetry article) would not be so much about the gender symmetry debate. Bertaut would not have stated, "You're fighting a losing battle here Prefixcaz. As someone who has conducted a great deal of research into gender symmetry in several western countries (USA, UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany), to say it's accepted as fact in the western world is simply inaccurate. Perhaps it's accepted as fact in Scandanavia, but certainly not elsewhere. That's why, when I was writing the gender symmetry section of this article, I was very careful to a) make sure to acknowledge the controversial nature of the topic, b) include sources providing empirical data for both sides of the argument, and c) make sure to point out that even researchers who argue for gender symmetry (such as Straus and Archer for example) acknowledge that violence against women is a more serious and immediate problem. If you don't believe me, or if you are unwilling to accept the argument that gender symmetry is controversial, go ahead and email Murray A. Straus. Just Google him, and you'll get his email address. He's very happy to talk to people researching the subject. As regards your CDC source, you're correct in saying it reveals men experienced more IPV in 2010 than women. But it also says women experience considerably more IPV over their lifetimes, something which would need to be acknowledged if the data from the survey is to be included (and Jytdog is correct about not including it in the lede)."

Kaldari would not have stated, "The paper is a reliable source, but 'is biased toward young dating samples in the United States' (quote from abstract), thus it should not be used to make sweeping claims about domestic violence in general, especially when such claims are contradicted by most other reliable sources." FloNight would not have stated, "I've looked into this body of research during the past year, and know that the claim to be equal is not valid from better research and other places where statistics are collected." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:28, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@Flyer22 Reborn: I will not get into a discussion on the details, which do not interest me in the slightest. Firstly, I am well aware of SPAs which try to insert such stuff: I primarily work in WP:ARBPIA, where I see a dozen like these every week. Secondly, most of your comment is talking about something totally different: weight, not reliability. A source can be reliable, but not worth including because of weight concerns. See WP:ONUS, which is a basic policy, and has nothing to do with WP:MEDRS. Thirdly, as I stated on the WP:RSN page itself, the material should be discussed first in the text of the body before being inserted into the lead, again a weight issue, not WP:RS issue. Fourthly, there has been no argument over the reliability of the source itself, among all that verbiage. Fifthly, anyone is free to give updated studies demonstrating otherwise. Statements such as FloNight's leave me unimpressed. They may or may not be correct, but I do not go by the feelings of wikipedia editors: if they have updated studies, they should provide them. Lastly, you have more than 100k edits, but god! that RfC is very poor. May I kindly ask you to read Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Request_comment_on_articles.2C_policies.2C_or_other_non-user_issues, point 3. In what universe is that RfC statement brief and neutral? Kingsindian ♝♚ 09:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Kingsindian, nowhere have I stated that the Archer source cannot be added to the article. I made clear that my objection was how it was added to the article; I cited WP:Due weight and WP:Lead. You asked MastCell, "Secondly, on what basis did you reach the conclusion that the meta-analysis is controversial, and does not appear to represent a mainstream view?" You also stated, "It is very highly cited, and like all highly cited papers, many people may disagree with it - though the few I have checked, all cite it with little or not criticism." I answered. It's not mainstream in the least. And Archer's gender symmetry claims are highly contested. As for the WP:RfC, I've already given my opinion on it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:15, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@Flyer22 Reborn: I fail to understand all this verbiage then. What on Earth does WP:MEDRS have to do with weight? If you accept that the study can be used in the article why are we here? Kingsindian ♝♚ 09:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

You and I have different definitions of verbiage. Furthermore, I am not the only one here making such "verbiage" posts. Either way, we are here per what I stated at the beginning of this section; my "06:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)" post above. That post clearly shows that I did not make this discussion about the Archer source. The editor who took the matter to the WP:Reliable sources noticeboard wanted clarification on WP:MEDRS since I rejected some of that editor's edits on a WP:MEDRS basis. The WP:Reliable sources noticeboard discussion became about the WP:MEDRS/biomedical debate; because of that debate (which involved people noting there that what is WP:MEDRS-compliant or biomedical should be discussed elsewhere), and since this debate has occurred before at the Domestic violence talk page and at Talk:Domestic violence against men, it was time to bring the matter here to the WP:MEDRS talk page to clarify these issues once and for all. As is indicated by this discussion, there are editors who think that WP:MEDRS should not apply to the Domestic violence article, especially as far as epidemiology/rates of domestic violence go, and others think otherwise. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:44, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

As for "What on Earth does WP:MEDRS have to do with weight?", I don't usually connect the two. But WP:Due weight states, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." When it comes to health topics, WP:MEDRS is commonly the standard of sourcing we should be looking to (the exceptions are noted at Wikipedia:Biomedical information). How the medical literature generally treats a health topic factors into WP:Due weight. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 10:01, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

RS/N

This whole section appears to be forum shopping, there was already a section on the RSN Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Domestic_Violence_article AlbinoFerret 17:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The issue is very simple, and sweeping general statements only confuse the issue. We can cut through all of this by asking Flyer22 Reborn whether they think Archer is a reliable source for the statement quoted or not. Speaking for myself, I decided that it is reliable without recourse to WP:MEDRS. I simply applied WP:RS in a commonsense manner, others may use their own thought process. Nobody at all denies that Archer is a meta-analysis of the highest quality, which is cited all over the place. Why so much verbiage for no reason at all? Kingsindian ♝♚ 17:55, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Right, so the source at issue is the (MEDLINE-indexed, PUBMED-included) PMID 10989615 ? Alexbrn (talk) 18:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Well then the clarification that MEDRS applies is due Kingsindian. That source is pretty old, and I'd be very surprised if there aren't newer sources available. CFCF 💌 📧 18:04, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

AlbinoFerret, this is not WP:Forum shopping violation. The content at the aforementioned noticeboard was never supposed to be specifically about WP:MEDRS or the "biomedical" debate. Like stated there, that discussion got off track. Once it became about the WP:MEDRS/biomedical debate, it was time for the discussion to go elsewhere; others also noted that there. The WP:MEDRS talk page is obviously the ideal place for discussions about what WP:MEDRS applies to/what is biomedical content. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:10, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

A link to the already ongoing discussion would have been better than having two going on the same topic. You also did not notify the ongoing discussion of your going here. AlbinoFerret 18:18, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Per what I stated above in this subsection you've started, your forum shopping complaint is not valid. And I most assuredly did alert members of that discussion to this discussion. I also WP:Pinged a few above. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Didnt see that, struck. I did not start this section. AlbinoFerret 18:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

You made the forum-shopping comment. CFCF made your comment into a subsection. To comment more on the forum-shopping aspect: I felt that the WP:MEDRS/biomedical debate required a discussion here; I've already been clear about why above. It did not need to be debated any further at the WP:Reliable sources noticeboard, in a discussion that was already bogged down by different matters. I also know from experience that WP:Too long; didn't read is real and that WP:Med editors were unlikely to join in on that turbulent discussion, which is supposed to be about the reliability of the source, not a WP:MEDRS/biomedical debate. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Re-iterating my comments at RSN, MEDRS is a multi-pronged policy. It makes some good recommendations about weighting primary or non peer-reviewed sources that are potentially applicable to any topic. It also makes much stronger prohibitions against certain source uses when a biomedical claim is involved - standards which would be onerous for general use. Domestic violence almost entirely fails to qualify as biomedical by the dictionary definition, but I don't think that's the most appropriate operative definition. Neither is pointing to injury as a potential health outcome sufficient, or else most spheres of human endeavor would become ensnared. The guiding light should be the spirit of the policy - avoiding dangerous outcomes if individuals use Wikipedia to inform their personal medical decisions. What the article says about domestic violence in connection with depression, alcohol, or HIV could conceivably be used in such a way, so these should be subject to MEDRS considerations. It is not reasonable to expect anyone will refer to the article when deciding on their own gender or their preferred gender for romantic partners, so the genders of perpetrators should not be regarded as biomedical. Rhoark (talk) 18:13, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

This guideline has always included health information under biomedical, and has more expressly stated so before. The reason it no longer has done so is because it was thought to be implied. The guideline takes the most general application of biomedical possible, which includes anything health related. Whether a reader takes the information into account upon making decisions is entirely irrelevant to whether it is covered my MEDRS. CFCF 💌 📧 18:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@CFCF: The fact that some consensus existed at some point in time does not bear weight in the face of the obvious present lack of consensus right here. It's not appropriate to try to rush and lock in your preferred resolution. I ask that you self-revert and wait for the conversation to evolve. Rhoark (talk) 18:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

That isn't a proper reading of the situation. It is pretty clear that such a change is supported, and that this situation has arisen only because some editors who are not familiar with the way MEDRS is applied have misunderstood aspects of it. CFCF 💌 📧 18:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Re-examining your edits, their implications are not as strong as I first interpreted them. I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions. Rhoark (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@CFCF: I jumped the gun before, but now you are editing precisely in the area of dispute.[12][13] Please self-revert. Rhoark (talk) 00:45, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

No one is claiming that MEDRS does not apply to human health and medical information. No one ever claimed that. No one ever claimed that "domestic violence" does not have human health and medical implications in some respects. It should also be logical and obvious that information that might involve some kind of human injury does not necessarily invoke the MEDRS guideline for every bit of content - for example I'm sure we have an article on Murder, which I have not looked at but would be willing to bet is not exclusively MEDRS sourced just because it has human health implications. Likewise, not every statistical study is epidemiological of human disease or health condition -- statistics about the prevalence of male/female domestic violence is not epidemiological of a biological condition and does not need to be sourced to MEDRS. Medical experts are not the ones conducting all of those studies and analyses. Minor4th 21:04, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Also consider gun control, abortion, and athletics. The spirit of MEDRS as pertaining to influencing decisions may not be perfect, but as a definition of biomedical it doesn't have such obvious deficiencies as either the dictionary definition, all health-related information, or the manual of style elements on the page. Rhoark (talk) 22:44, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

No one ever claimed that? Guy Macon's comments above indicate otherwise. And your comments at Talk:Domestic violence against men certainly read that way to me and to others; but, yes, I know that you've stated I misinterpreted you. As for the topic of murder, I don't view the murder comparison as a strong argument since murder is not as entrenched with the medical literature as domestic violence is; FloNight's comments above are a reflection of the difference. Murder is much more of a legal topic. There is clearly a sharp distinction when comparing the Domestic violence and Suicide articles, and the literature for them, to the Murder article and the literature for it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Not to mention the WP:MEDMOS setup of the Domestic violence and Suicide articles, as compared to the setup of the Murder article. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:49, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

You are stuffing words in my mouth, claiming that I said things that I never said. Please stop it.

No one (including me) ever claimed that domestic violence does not have human health and medical implications in some respects.

Many things do. In fact bicycles have human health and medical implications. So do wars. And dogs. And shotguns. Yet somehow we don't feel the need to apply MEDRS to our articles about bicycles, wars, dogs, or shotguns. Nor should we apply it to domestic violence. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:49, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

It's easy enough to see what you stated above; you stated, for example, "Domestic violence (against anyone) is not biomedical information. It is sociology, not biology." You also stated, "Note that if a specific claim touches on biomedical information (a drug that is purported to increase or decrease domestic violence, for example, or a study that links testosterone levels with increased or decreased domestic violence), then WP:MEDRS does apply to that specific claim." Those are odd views, considering the abundance of material in the Domestic violence article that is medical/biomedical. And your comparisons are weak. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:59, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

And let's not forget that you just stated "Nor should we apply [WP:MEDRS] to domestic violence." You have repeatedly expressed the viewpoint that WP:MEDRS shouldn't or doesn't apply to domestic violence even though it clearly should and does for a lot of its content. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

When you paraphrase me, your paraphrases do not resemble what I wrote. When you directly quote me, you surround the quotes with comments that make me believe that your are reading my words differently than the way a normal person would. Could you please just say what you want to say instead of continually botching the job of describing what I said? People can read my words in context and do not need your "help" interpreting them. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Regardless of what Flyer wrote the fact remains that you did write these things, and that the quotes show that you suggested it was not an MEDRS topic, which is clearly wrong. CFCF 💌 📧 15:31, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

There are a bunch of editors who agree that MEDRS does not apply where you say is does. Put up or shut up. Post an RfC. If your interpretation is correct, the community will agree with you. If you want to continue discussing Guy Macon instead of the issue at hand, I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

From what I see, I've paraphrased you quite well, Guy Macon. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

You are hardly in a position to judge your own competence. See Dunning–Kruger effect, or simply refer to the book of Proverbs, which says "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes". Just stop talking about me and stick to the issue at hand, OK? Your behavior is becoming disruptive. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

If I am hardly in a position to judge my own competence (which is a statement I disagree with), you are hardly in a position to judge yours. If you want me to stop talking about you, then stop talking about me and/or replying to me. You've mainly replied to me; I, however, have not mainly replied to you. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And as for WP:Disruptive behavior, feel free to report me at WP:ANI; something tells me that your report will fail. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:25, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Newer sources?

User:CFCF, I looked for newer sources. PMID 18624096 and PMID 18936281 were the only reviews that seem (from their titles) to cover the same basic territory. They're both from 2008. Have you found anything else? It is possible that the Archer source is getting used so widely because there really isn't anything better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:33, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Like I noted above, Archer is on one side of the gender symmetry debate; he specifically studies gender symmetry (or rather goes looking for it). The idea of gender symmetry is hotly contested. Archer's view and his gender symmetry studies conflict with the mainstream view and studies on domestic violence. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I am not going to get into details here, but the first source above is a decent one, and by no means contradicts the statement for which Archer is used. It states among other things (from the abstract): "(a) women's violence usually occurs in the context of violence against them by their male partners; (b) in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents". In all studies of this type, there are all sorts of caveats which should be entered before it can be included in a Wikipedia article. Someone with more interest in the topic than me should work on the phrasing. A bare statement like the one proposed in the lead is obviously not acceptable to me. I will reiterate my belief that the whole discussion about WP:MEDRS is a waste of time. Others are free to waste their time if they wish though. I am done here. Kingsindian ♝♚ 10:02, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, we disagree about the discussion of WP:MEDRS then; I've already been clear (followup statement here) that this discussion was never meant to be about Archer, but rather about the ongoing dispute between editors insisting that WP:MEDRS doesn't apply to topics such as domestic violence. Wanting clarification/a WP:Consensus formed so that this WP:MEDRS/biomedical dispute stops, since it will otherwise continue, is not a waste of time. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 10:11, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Post an RfC and see if the community agrees with you. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:59, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Agrees with me on what? On the WP:MEDRS/biomedical dispute? WP:MEDRS, like WP:Reliable sources, is a guideline. The community is already clear on it. It's just that certain people don't want to follow it, for reasons already noted in this discussion. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:16, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you aware that your preferred sources[14][15] that you have quoted from are from the early '90s and not apparently peer reviewed? Under the MEDRS rubric these sources should be avoided, and absolutely not used to question a source like Archer. The absolute gall of throwing around accusations of POV pushing in the meantime is incredible. And I'll once again raise the issue that if those who think MEDRS is misapplied here are the ones unwilling to heed guidelines, why does a pro-MEDRS editor feel the need to edit the guideline to match their position? Rhoark (talk) 15:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Dobash & Dobash have apparently published a lot, so that may not be the one you meant, but it should also be noted that Archer discusses their work in his review. His conclusion was that they suffered sample selection biases by using data sources that only captured domestic violence that resulted in severe injuries. Gender asymmetry in injuries is not really disputed by sources or editors. Rhoark (talk) 15:17, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you aware that what you call my preferred sources include systematic reviews and academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from respected publishers accurately reflecting the current knowledge of domestic violence, including the gender ratios? That, my lovely Rhoark, makes these sources WP:MEDRS-compliant. To state that I have simply been quoting from the early 90s or that this consensus is simply consensus from the early 90s is incorrect. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I know exactly what they are, because I told you. One is a non-peer reviewed systematic review published by a police department. The other is a non-peer reviewed book from a general press whose claim has been found to suffer from sample selection bias. These are what you want to use to contest a widely-cited meta-analysis in a psychological journal. Rhoark (talk) 01:46, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

You need to reexamine all of the sources I listed in that WP:RfC, and take note that WP:MEDRS states at the top of the guideline, "Ideal sources for such content include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies." Those are indeed the type of sources I support on this topic, not sources advocating the minority gender symmetry viewpoint. Unless you can provide reliable sources (ones that are not pushing the gender symmetry viewpoint) proving that any of the sources I listed "suffer from sample selection bias," it's best that you do not state that, especially since it's already been pointed out that Archer is on one side of the gender symmetry debate, and that his meta-analysis suffers from selection bias. You wanting us to defer to Archer, who specifically studies (goes looking for) gender symmetry, when the idea of gender symmetry is hotly contested, is a problem. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:59, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I examined the two you chose to highlight as countering Archer, and they are wanting. If there's something better in your list, why waste my time? You figure out what it is. If you have anything stronger than your personal opinion that criticizes Archer, that would be a place to start. Rhoark (talk) 02:28, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

What two sources are you referring to? And that Archer is not a neutral source (falls under WP:BIASED SOURCES) and that his meta-analysis suffers from selection bias is not simply an opinion. You know very well that his research is disputed, and not just by feminists. And yet you think we should be presenting that source in the way that Charlotte135 did, or close to how Charlotte135 did, as though it is the mainstream view or is an ideal source for this information? Disagree. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:47, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

To summarize what otherwise is off-topic to this discussion page, the article in question Archer should be replaced with newer sources, especially so as they do not seem to make the same conclusions. MEDRS makes it very clear than when there are newer sources they are to be used instead. Please do not bring any more content dispute issues here, we've already established that MEDRS applies to that article. CFCF 💌 📧 15:34, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@CFCF: Assessments of Archer are not off topic because they are part of evaluating how MEDRS does or doesn't apply to domestic violence. That is a nuanced question on which consensus has not emerged - so I ask you again, please reverse your changes to the guideline page. Rhoark (talk) 16:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, newer sources are not automatically preferred, even assuming WP:MEDRS applies. See WP:MEDDATE, in particular points 2 and 3. Like all guidelines, WP:MEDRS is to be interpreted with common sense and nuance. There is no automatic method to select sources. Kingsindian ♝♚ 16:40, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Agree 100% with Rhoark and Kingsindian. I would also add that CFCF's claim (in bold, as if that strengthens the argument somehow) that "we've already established that MEDRS applies to that article." gets our policy completely wrong. MEDRS applies to "medical content in any article" (bold is in the original policy) and specifically says that "sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources." In a nutshell, MEDRS applies to content, not articles. Of course some articles are 100% medical content and others are 0% medical content, but MEDRS applies to content, not articles.--Guy Macon (talk) 23:13, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Can we all at least now agree that MEDRS applies to human health and medical content? I think there is some misunderstanding about what is meant by MEDRS applies to that article (Domestic violence). Yes, MEDRS will be invoked for some of the content-- namely, that which is related to medical information, but it does not mean that every bit of content in the article must be sourced to MEDRS guidelines. This is not a binary situation in which MEDRS either applies to the entire article's content OR MEDRS does not apply to any of the article's content. It applies to some content and not to other content. Minor4th 17:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

No. We cannot agree that "MEDRS applies to human health and medical content". "Human health" is far too broad, especially the way Flyer22 keeps attempting to use it. There is very little on Wikipedia that cannot in some way be related to human health. We already have clear guidance as to where MEDRS applies:

"Wikipedia's articles are not medical advice, but are a widely used source of health information. For this reason it is vital that any biomedical and health information is based on reliable, third-party, published secondary sources and that it accurately reflects current knowledge."

"Ideal sources for such content include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content – as such sources often include unreliable or preliminary information, for example early in vitro results which don't hold in later clinical trials."

"This guideline supports the general sourcing policy with specific attention to what is appropriate for medical content in any article, including those on alternative medicine. Sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources." -- WP:MEDRS

MEDRS applies to medical content in any article, with the specific purpose of insuring that when someone looks something up on Wikipedia that they intend to use when making personal medical/health decisions, that specific information is sourced to the higher MEDRS standard. Nobody is going to go to Wikipedia, look up whether men beat on women more than woman beat on men, and use that to make a health decision. That content needs to be sourced to the (already high) standards we use for any other scientific but not specifically medical claims.

Again, multiple editors disagree with Flyer22's interpretation on where MEDRS applies. Flyer22 (or someone who agrees with him) should post an RfC to clarify what the consensus of the Wikipedia community is. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Guy Macon's last comment, almost to a word. WP:MEDRS exists so that people who look up medicine on Wikipedia don't accidentally harm themselves. The guidelines are sensible, and can be extended to many areas, but for example, WP:HISTRS is only an essay, not a guideline. I oppose any attempts to impose a guideline in areas where they are not applicable. Common sense in applying WP:RS, WP:DUE, WP:ONUS etc. is enough. Kingsindian ♝♚ 23:22, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

It is very clear that Flyer22reborn's subjective interpretation as to where MEDRS applies, as Guy Macon points out above, is quite different to most other experienced and neutral editors, both at this discussion and other places. After a great deal of discussion and debate, we are right back where we started, with no real guide moving forward? If Flyer22 is so confident, perhaps they may take Guy Macon's advice and post an RfC to clarify what the consensus of the Wikipedia community is? Otherwise without any consensus Flyer22's subjective opinion on the issue is completely irrelevant as so many others clearly disagree so strongly with them.Charlotte135 (talk) 23:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with these interpretations as well. Minor4th 23:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

The multiple editors who disagree with my interpretation of the WP:MEDRS guideline are not WP:Med or WP:MEDRS editors; most of them have a particular POV that they want to push on the domestic violence articles, as is clear from their editing and statements. Note that most of the WP:Med and WP:MEDRS editors have agreed with me (both at Talk:Domestic violence against men and here at this talk page); so Charlotte135's claim that "It is very clear that Flyer22reborn's subjective interpretation as to where MEDRS applies, as Guy Macon points out above, is quite different to most other experienced and neutral editors" is false. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Evidence please. Other than disagreeing with your interpretation of MEDRS, I challenge you to point out a single place where I have expressed any opinion on domestic violence. Please do not resort to violating WP:AGF and WP:NPA just because you are losing an argument. Post an RfC, watch as it goes down in flames (or not; I could be wrong) and we are done. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:08, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Read WP:Winning; Wikipedia is not about losing or winning. Not that I see that I am losing this argument anyway. And that you are not a neutral party has already been made very clear. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And as for CFCF's changes, he was simply restoring the guideline back to the WP:STATUSQUO. Above, at the beginning of #Clarifying "biomedical", I linked to how the guideline was before some recent changes were made to it by one editor; there was no consensus for that change. And it has furthered non-WP:Med editors' misunderstanding of "biomedical." Perhaps I should list WP:Reliable sources defining what biomedical means, and I don't mean dictionary sources and my interpretation of them (I'm clearly not Guy Macon). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:13, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are becoming a bit obsessed with me. Please, just stop making personal comments and stick to logical arguments. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:08, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Guy Macon, you mainly reply to me in this discussion, and I'm a bit obsessed with you? Do reflect on your behavior. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Flyer22reborn. You really do need to stop deflecting and also please stop the obvious sarcasm and personal attacks toward every editor which disagrees with you, in an effort to discredit their valid opinions and input. Your sarcasm in your last post is caustic, by saying... "I don't mean dictionary sources and my interpretation of them (I'm clearly not Guy Macon)." I'm sure Guy Macon would not appreciate this type of comment from you, Unfortunately, for some reason, it has become very obvious and very tedious to read your personalized attacks, interwoven among the mountains of text you have posted on this topic. I for one have no POV on this or any other topic for that matter. I also don't think the other 3 editors directly above have a POV either, or the many others who have disagreed with your subjective opinion. I mean do you have another POV relating to feminism and domestic violence and domestic violence being a "gender issue" as you have stated? Just a rhetorical reflection back to you, no need to answer, but hope you (and others) instead might ponder that for a moment? I am also struggling to find even one single editor that agrees with you entirely. Doc James doesn't agree with you, for one, (as another editor pointed out to you) and Doc James is a Medical Editor and actual Doctor it looks like. Flyer22 will you please take Guy Macon's sound advice and post an RfC to clarify what the consensus of the Wikipedia community is? Otherwise without any consensus your subjective opinion on the issue is completely irrelevant to editing as I correctly said? Without a neutral RfC we are right back to square one. There is clearly no current consensus.Charlotte135 (talk) 00:42, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Replied to you below. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't care whether anyone here is a WP:MEDder. This guideline belongs to the whole community. Also, I sometimes disagree with your expansive application of MEDRS, and there are few people on Wikipedia who have a stronger claim to be a regular contributor to and supporter of this guideline than I do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, when you emphasized "biomedical" in the guideline a little after the dispute at Talk:Domestic violence against men, and created the biomedical essay before that, which I pointed out needed fixing with regard to how it applies, it was clear to me that we are not entirely in agreement. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:Biomedical information is definitely a work in progress. I'm very interested in seeing what we work out for different situations. So far, we've been a bit too focused on "Treatments for diseases" in it, and we need to expand to improve its description of subjects like toxicology and medical ethics. Everyone is welcome to contribute to it. The worst that can happen is that I'll revert you.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Let's reboot for a minute. What is the goal here? If the goal is to provide accurate and up-to-date information on the incidence and gender breakdown of domestic violence, then we have pretty good recent sources available (for instance, reports from the CDC and Bureau of Justice Statistics). I fail to understand how a 2000 meta-analysis is superior to these sources—again, assuming the goal is to provide accurate and up-to-date information. (As an aside, it would probably be helpful if all of the people who've imported this dispute from whatever "men's-rights" article could quiet down a bit—I think you've all expressed yourselves more than adequately, and presumably the goal is to get actual outside input rather than find another venue in which to argue with each other). MastCell ^Talk 00:26, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
• @Mastcell, this is not about a particular source or a particular article or issue. It is about what MEDRS means, and I think we all agree on that - other than Flyer22 Minor4th 00:48, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Replied to you below (my "01:22, 30 October 2015" post). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:00, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• • I think we've got two questions going:
    1. Should this guideline restrict what can be sourced (and therefore what can be said) about "health"? The reason we've been moving to be clearer that the target is "biomedical information" is because some people's idea of Health is so expansive that statements like "Sugar is the main ingredient in sugar candy" or "Refrigeration slows the rate at which food rots" or "Racial discrimination increases poverty" are "health statements". This guideline isn't meant to cover that kind of content. It's hard enough to get a sensible definition of WP:Biomedical information; a definition of Health is much, much harder, especially with groups like WHO declaring that there has never been a single healthy human on the planet.
    2. How should the story of gender in domestic violence be told? For example, should it be pointed out that when two people engage in a fistfight, that both of them are fighting? Or should you only count the one who threw the first punch, or the one who caused more injuries, or what? If you say "Overall, a lot more men hit women than the other way around", then PMID 18624096 disagrees with you (and appears to agree with Archer in PMID 10989615). But if you say "The chance that a person has ever slapped an intimate partner has nothing to do with whether the person is male or female", then you're omitting important context, e.g., that men (on average) cause more injuries, that men are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence (which isn't "slapped", and which Archer doesn't cover), and that in the more extreme cases, it's mostly male perpetrators against female victims. This seems to be the crux of the gender symmetry question: women are clearly more "affected by" domestic violence, but that doesn't actually mean that they are less likely to be guilty of mildly slapping their boyfriends or throwing a drink in his face. I'm not sure why all of this information couldn't be included (note that sources like PMID 10989618 have complained about clarifying this distinction as a political risk), but that's basically a content dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: - I think you have stated the controversy exactly right, on both counts. You have also correctly summarized the discussion about gender symmetry - and yes, all of that information should be able to be included in the article and presented in context. But for some time, Flyer22 has been a guardian over the articles and has strongly, passionately and with unending energy and verbosity refused to allow any edits that discuss domestic violence directed at men by women. Minor4th 02:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Minor4th, the first discussion where you made your POV known and the discussions following that show what the problems are. Your "02:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)" assertion about me is false. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Flyer22reborn, if you choose not to take this sound and reasoned advice then please, please don't then still go around telling people your subjective thoughts on or policy interpretation and demand they listen to it, when so clearly, your internal thoughts and beliefs on the matter are not backed by consensus, and are simply your own thoughts. Bite the bullet and see what the community think Flyer22reborn, or consider keeping your subjective thoughts and reflections to your self, only. Please.Charlotte135 (talk) 01:05, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Charlotte135, your POV is clear. It was made very clear at Talk:Domestic violence. There is no deflection from me, and everything you state about me has been a mischaracterization of me or an outright falsehood. So it shouldn't be surprising that I'd rather not engage in discussion with you; you inflame everything with your unhealthy focus on me. I have also been clear that I do not identify as a feminist. When it comes to the Sexism and domestic violence articles, the only editors who cry "You're a feminist" to me and to others are men's rights editors looking to push a specific POV; your claim that you are not a men's rights editor is highly dubious. And as for Doc James disagreeing me, where did he disagree with me in that discussion? He did not. He simply acknowledged that the article is not entirely a med article; I also acknowledged that. I have never stated that domestic violence is purely a medical topic; in fact, I've been clear about that above on this talk page. And your claim of many editors disagreeing with me is still false. We obviously have different definitions of "many." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Many = lots of other editors!Charlotte135 (talk) 02:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Why is it also that every other editor which disagrees with your own internal thoughts and beliefs, are from mens rights or are pushing a POV? And I did not accuse you of being a feminist by the way. I said, given you have explicitly stated that your personal subjective belief is that domestic violence is a gendered issue or "gender issue" that your strong unwavering opinion indicates a possible POV in your editing behavior? You see, trying to make domestic violence a "gender issue" here at Wikipedia contravenes neutrality IMO. Your personal subjective POV that domestic violence is a "women's issue" only, or "gender issue" may be shrouding your ability to edit these types of related articles on Wikipedia, in a neutral and balanced way? Editors should not hold such strong personal convictions as you obviously do that domestic violence is a women’s issue when much empirical evidence I have read indicates that it affects men, women and children. If I, or any other editor, believed it to be a "children’s issue" or "men’s issue" only, that may be a problem also and may affect their ability to edit in a neutral, objective fashion.Charlotte135 (talk) 02:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I do not see "lots of other editors!" disagreeing with me; I see the same few editors from Talk:Domestic violence against men, one editor whose editing of the Gamergate controversy article (which is also the concern of men's rights editors) has been heavily scrutinized, and one editor from the WP:Reliable sources noticeboard who states that he is uninvolved. And again "everything you state about me has been a mischaracterization of me or an outright falsehood. So it shouldn't be surprising that I'd rather not engage in discussion with you." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:47, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I think any editor could see lots, but anyway. Given your explicit, subjective, personal belief that domestic violence is a women's issue only, or in other words a "gender issue" I am concerned your personal opinion may be preventing you from editing in a neutral manner. Have you any comment on that specifically?Charlotte135 (talk) 02:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Your "02:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)" and "02:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)" commentary are full of falsehoods, which is exactly what I mean by you inflaming things or trying to inflame things. One such falsehood is the notion that I only see domestic violence as a women's issue, when I have instead been very clear that domestic violence disproportionately affects women and in more severe ways than it affects men. I was clear to you about that on my talk page, where you incorrectly asserted that domestic violence is not a gender issue; you are incorrect on that because high-quality and/or otherwise good-quality sources state otherwise. In fact, that is the mainstream view. I was very clear that I never stated that domestic violence doesn't affect men. I've been clear at the Domestic violence talk page that it affects men, women and children. But you have continued with your absurd POV-pushing that men and women are equally, or close to equally, affected by domestic violence. And you continue to try to paint me as some hardcore feminist who has no sense of reason. All of this, and the fact that your definition of "lots" is attributed to a few editors who share your POV, is why I would rather not discuss anything with you. I've dealt with your type times over, including at the Sexism article/talk page. You do not know how to follow WP:Due weight, and this edit is a prime example of that. You are so concerned with trying to present domestic violence as not being gendered that you do not see reason. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

My concern and I won't state it again is that your belief that domestic violence is a "gender/women's" issue. I just want to present both sides Flyer22. Balanced. Neutral. What's wrong with that? I just don't see domestic violence as a "gender issue" as you do and am not looking at this through a political lens. I agree with WhatamIdoing, when they asked "I'm not sure why all of this information couldn't be included" That's all I am saying. I don't see why you are so desperate to not include other reliable sources, that albeit may conflict with your own strong and personal political stance, on the matter of domestic violence being a gender/women's issue only. Some secondary sources (eg lit reviews) indicate higher male rates on certain variables. Other secondary sources, (eg lit reviews) state women are higher on a particular variable. Your insistence that domestic violence is gendered and a gender / women's issue is my concern. Enough said though.Charlotte135 (talk) 04:13, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Your concern/beliefs about what I think are incorrect; I just told you so in my "03:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)" comment above. And now you've gone and stated that I have a political stance on this, when I am not even a political person. My discussing anything with you helps nothing; so stop replying to me. Stop incorrectly characterizing me in ways that make me obligated to reply to you. I do not want to talk with you. You are the only person on this entire talk page that I would rather not discuss anything with, because of your gross mischaracterization of me. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Minor4th, your "other than Flyer22" claim is contradicted by my "10:11, 29 October 2015 (UTC)" comment above in this section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is your position that statistics and studies about the prevalence and rates of domestic violence are "epidemiological" and must be sourced by MEDRS guidelines. As far as I can tell, no one else interprets MEDRS so expansively - and I think you misunderstand what "epidemiological" means for purposes of this discussion. Minor4th 01:57, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Others do indeed support WP:MEDRS applying to epidemiological information. That is clear in the first discussion where you made your POV known, discussions following that at that talk page, and this recent discussion. For example, BoboMeowCat stated, "Data regarding sub-populations at greatest risk for domestic violence is a significant public health issue. To suggest such content be exempted from WP:MEDRS does not seem reasonable." If you think "epidemiological" doesn't include "prevalence and rates of domestic violence," our understanding of epidemiological is clearly different; but I already knew that. That stated, I have never stated that rates of domestic violence are purely medical. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Post an RfC and see how much support you have. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:34, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

MastCell, in addition to the CDC source you noted, which, as expected, primarily focuses on women, there are sources like this 2012 Understanding and addressing violence against women World Health Organization (WHO) source that I listed at the Domestic violence article talk page. It states, "The overwhelming global burden of IPV is borne by women. Although women can be violent in relationships with men, often in self-defence, and violence sometimes occurs in same-sex partnerships, the most common perpetrators of violence against women are male intimate partners or ex-partners (1). By contrast, men are far more likely to experience violent acts by strangers or acquaintances than by someone close to them (2). How common is intimate partner violence? A growing number of population-based surveys have measured the prevalence of IPV, most notably the WHO multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence against women, which collected data on IPV from more than 24000 women in 10 countries, 1 representing diverse cultural, geographical and urban/rural settings (3) The study confirmed that IPV is widespread in all countries studied (Figure 1). In addition, a comparative analysis of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from nine countries found that the percentage of ever-partnered women who reported ever experiencing any physical or sexual violence by their current or most recent husband or cohabiting partner ranged from 18% in Cambodia to 48% in Zambia for physical violence, and 4% to 17% for sexual violence (4). In a 10-country analysis of DHS data, physical or sexual IPV ever reported by currently married women ranged from 17% in the Dominican Republic to 75% in Bangladesh (5). Similar ranges have been reported from other multi-country studies (6)."

You are looking for sources like the CDC and WHO and/or other secondary sources commenting on the gender gap concerning domestic violence, correct? Especially ones that comment on the global aspect? I look for global commentary more so in this case, since it is more applicable than rates relating solely to the United States or another country. But if you look at the domestic violence articles on Wikipedia concerning different countries, including Domestic violence in Iran, Islam and domestic violence, Domestic violence in Pakistan, Domestic violence in India, Human rights in Somalia, Domestic violence in Chile, Domestic violence in Guyana, and Domestic violence in Ecuador, you will see that these articles mostly focus on women. Not because of any political bias, but because sources like the WHO, etc. are clear that domestic violence disproportionately affects women and in more severe ways than it affects men. I can also list sources commenting on the gender symmetry debate, if you want. But you can find such sources in the Domestic violence against men article, and by searching the matter here, here and here for what I mean about it being debated and who the main proponents of gender symmetry are. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:00, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruptive editing at MEDRS

Per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruptive editing at MEDRS I am considering WP:BOLDLY restoring a stable version from before the edit war, as I did here. I would like some advice as to what version would be best to restore to, and if any noncontroversial changes since that version should be rolled back in.

Although those who have been involved in the underlying content dispute that led to the edit warring on this page are free to comment, I am free to ignore them and I advise others here to do the same. I am mostly interested in the opinion of those long-term editors who have been watching over this page for a while and who are not involved in any recent disputes on the pages where there is a question about where MEDRS applies. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

RfC: What claims are governed by WP:MEDRS?

When should reliable sourcing for a claim be governed by WP:MEDRS (as opposed to WP:SCIRS or simply WP:IRS)? (Proposed definitions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, so more than one may apply.)

1. Any claim at all related to human health
2. Any claim at all related to human health or psychology
3. Claims that are biomedical as according to the Merriam-Webster definition of biomedical: pertaining to "medicine based on the application of the principles of the natural sciences and especially biology and biochemistry"
4. Claims fitting categories delineated by the essay Wikipedia:Biomedical information#What is biomedical information?
5. Information that could reasonably be expected to influence an article reader's decisions about their personal healthcare
6. Any biological phenomenon that has been studied using methods of epidemiology
7. Anything that has been studied using methods of epidemiology (including non-biological phenomena such as crime or memes)
8. Claims about causes, risk factors, incidence, prognosis, or treatment of any physical or mental illness
9. Claims about causes, risk factors, incidence, prognosis, or treatment of anything that causes physical or mental harm
10. Any claims on pages that have been written to conform with MOS:MED

Please note that WP:MEDRS has itself been recently edited by participants in this dispute. Rhoark (talk) 03:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: This WP:RfC seems like it was formatted to confuse participants. It should have focused solely on whether "biomedical" and WP:MEDRS apply to epidemiology material, including the prevalence aspect. To outsiders, see the #Clarifying "biomedical" discussion above. To quote BoboMeowCat again, "Data regarding sub-populations at greatest risk for domestic violence is a significant public health issue. To suggest such content be exempted from WP:MEDRS does not seem reasonable." I agree with that. I also alerted WP:Med editors to this WP:RfC. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:40, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And I reiterate that I have never stated that rates of domestic violence are purely medical. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The RFC is deliberately scoped to the total applicability of the guideline, not only to its application in your disputes. Rhoark (talk) 03:52, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The WP:RfC is poorly formatted, with all of its questions (including common sense questions such as "Claims about causes, risk factors, incidence, prognosis, or treatment of any physical or mental illness"), as if most participants are actually going to answer all of that. Since what spurred on this WP:RfC is the biomedical/WP:MEDRS application with regard to epidemiology dispute, which is clearly not solely my dispute, that is what the WP:RfC should have focused on. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

If you want to call another RfC about domestic violence, you're free to do that, but we're here because your badly leading RfC still didn't produce the results you wanted and you went policy shopping. Now the matter is one with project-wide implications. Rhoark (talk) 11:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The aforementioned WP:RfC I started at the Domestic violence talk page is determining that the Scientific American source is a poor source for what it is used for and that it shouldn't be there, which is exactly what I argued, so how you figure that my supposedly "badly leading RfC still didn't produce the results [I] wanted" is beyond me. And I certainly didn't engage in a WP:Forum shopping violation. Your WP:RfC won't accomplish anything but more bickering; it's obviously already doing that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment The purpose and discussion that lead to this RfC is an attempt to omit epidemiology from MEDRS. Please see relevant comments about Bicycles by the RfC drafter at: Wikipedia_talk:Biomedical_information#Bicycles which is an attempted red herring argument that suggests how all information pertaining to Bicycles must be covered by MEDRS. This was struck down pretty quickly by Sunrise, but may prove to be enlightening.

The misunderstanding at the root of this is that MEDRS never covers entire articles, and we could avoid confusing MEDRS to apply to all information about Bicycles if only editors chose to read the guideline.

For these reasons I find it very unlikely that this RfC will provide us with any actionable result, and running it through will only result in a massive waste of time. I suggest a procedural close and a discussion over what we actually want to accomplish if we are to run an RfC at all. CFCF 💌 📧 08:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The purpose of the RfC is to determine the scope of MEDRS, no more, no less. I have impartially represented all the interpretations that have been presented in the discussion - including the one you linked, which is not mine. Given the diverse range of interpretations, it would not be neutrally presented or the most productive to get comment on only one or two of them. Rhoark (talk) 11:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment - while I appreciate the good faith effort to expand the discussion for community input, I too agree that the particular RfC is malformed and will not yield usuable conclusions. I would support a procedural close/withdrawal and further discussion narrowing the issue we're trying to address. My initial thought is that a proper RfC would explore the limits of MEDRS' application to "human health" issues that are not medical issues or are not purely medical issues. In the context of the underlying content issues, the MEDRS argument is being used to exclude a great deal of relevant information -- this is because there are not many recent review level scholarly articles that discuss the relative prevalence of domestic violence against men and women. There are plenty of OLD review articles about domestic violence of women because that was a hot research topic 15-20 years ago when public awareness of the issue was just blossoming. Most of the more recent scholarly studies have focused more on domestic violence against men -- probably because this issue is more recently making its way into public awareness. But certain editors will not allow this information to be presented coherently in the articles, and IMO they are incorrectly using portions of the MEDRS guideline as a rationale. Minor4th 11:29, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

"Most of the more recent scholarly studies have focused more on domestic violence against men." That is incorrect, unless you simply mean that more research is being given to male victims of domestic violence than was given to them in the past. Domestic violence research still mostly focuses on women. Editors are free to see here, here and here that gender symmetry is hotly contested. Various scholars do not believe in gender symmetry and/or state that it is flawed because of flaws with the conflict tactics scale. This is why WP:Due weight comes into this matter. No editor has stated that domestic violence against men material cannot be included in the Domestic violence article; editors, including me, are cautious of pushing gender symmetry as some well-established fact when it isn't. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Possible reformulation: Several editors have expressed dissatisfaction with the formulation of this RfC. The most persuasive has been User:AlbinoFerret's concern on my talk page that the number of options reduces the chances of closing with consensus. Less persuasive are editors on both sides of a dispute about domestic violence wishing the RfC to focus more on the matter of domestic violence. Please comment on whether the RfC should be withdrawn and reissued as a binary question, and how that question could be worded neutrally. After at least 24 hours from this post, I will make a decision whether to withdraw the current RfC. Rhoark (talk) 15:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I did not state or imply that this WP:RfC should focus on domestic violence; above, I was clear about what it should focus on. And I have experience with successful WP:RfCs, despite the few editors who have criticized the format of the one I started at the Domestic violence talk page. That one is also a successful WP:RfC. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:25, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• When should reliable sourcing for a claim be governed by WP:MEDRS (as opposed to WP:SCIRS or simply WP:IRS)? The answer is 'always'. The constraints specifically emphasised by MEDRS (strong emphasis on secondary sourcing and recent reviews/position statements) are exactly what IRS should have in any field where there is a large amount of contemporary research, published and reviewed by high quality scholarly organisations. These sort of principles are just as pertinent in fields such as physics, where they are taken for granted. The only reason why we need MEDRS to spell out those principles is that there is too much money involved in pushing poor quality medical products and procedures and too many SPAs trying to gain recognition for their own pet area in the largest encyclopedia ever created. Without the bulwark provided by insisting on only the highest possible quality of sources, our encyclopedia would be swamped by snake-oil salespersons and big pharma. The first thing that any SPA wants is to stop MEDRS from applying to their edits. We should not be trying to make life easier for them. --RexxS (talk) 20:21, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Does MEDRS apply to Epidemiology?

As the above question was unclear with a myriad of possible answers, some of which were ill-defined and difficult to understand I have chosen to continue this RfC with a more clear-cut question.

In an edit in July a well-meaning editor sought to clarify the bounds of MEDRS through this edit [16]. This was also followed by adding a link in the guideline lede to the essay (WP:Biomedical information). That essay expressely includes and excludes a number of points:

Included:

• Attributes of a disease or condition
• Attributes of a treatment or drug
• Medical decisions
• Health effects
• Population data
• Biomedical research

Excluded:

• Commercial or business information
• Economics
• Beliefs
• History
• Society and culture
• Legal issues
• Notable cases
• Popular culture
• Etymology and definitions
• Training
• Regulatory status
• Medical ethics

One discussion which recently arose here was whether the new definition of ’’’biomedical content’’’ (as opposed to the older medical term, which has since been restored) applies to statistics relating to a major health topic. One of the fields was in favor of dis-including epidemiology under the biomedical definition.

This vote is intended to answer and clarify the recently posed question of whether ’’’epidemiology’’’ should be covered by MEDRS or not.

To makes things easy for any editor choosing to comment here I have chosen and included the following quote from the Wikipedia article (and a workable definition for this RfC) of Epidemiology:

Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare.

Once consensus around this question has been achieved the next step may be to discuss how this can be formulated and integrated into MEDRS. Also note that this RfC does not consider whether information is actionable, which is unrelated to the theme of the current guideline.

• Support Epidemiology is a major health topic, and also one where it is very easy to cherry-pick sources. Strict adherence to high quality sources is advisable, which is made easier by application of MEDRS. CFCF 💌 📧 15:46, 30 October 2015 (UTC) 
• In the interest of having a serious discussion, I would prefer that we wait until the current dispute is resolved and until the "men's-rights" types have returned to their backwater. It's generally not very productive to discuss changes to a guideline in the midst of an active content dispute, and the current atmosphere here isn't conducive to a serious discussion of how best to cover medical and health-related material. For the record, yes, epidemiological material should fall under these sourcing guidelines, but I would prefer we table this discussion and revisit it once the active content dispute is resolved. MastCell ^Talk 15:57, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Support: I understand where MastCell is coming from, since it's not productive to have this WP:RfC skewed. I will go ahead and state, though, that of course WP:MEDRS applies to epidemiology. This also covered in the "Included" aspect of the WP:Biomedical information essay, under the listing Population data. That stated, this doesn't mean that we need to be overly strict with regard to WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing for epidemiological material. Some epidemiological material requires a higher level of sourcing than other epidemiological material. And WP:MEDDATE is clear that we can make exceptions in areas "where little progress is being made or where few reviews are published." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Procedurally inappropriate. "epidemiology" is a field, not a claim. Many claims in the field of epidemiology should be held to MEDRS standards, but not all - for example, claims about the epidemiology of memes should probably not be. This attempted redefinition of the RfC is both procedurally inappropriate and outside the locus of dispute. Rhoark (talk) 16:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, claims can be epidemiological in nature, just as the contested ones were. Your concept of "epidemiology of memes" isn't a real phenomena, not falling under any standard definition of epidemiology. It only has 17 hits on google [17], and seems to have been made up for the purpose of this discussion.

Anyway, this is the exact locus of dispute, and in accordance with how the previous question was seen as incapable of producing actionable results I chose to continue the RfC with a more distinct question. I concede that it may seem unnecessary, and could be rescinded, but not for being beside the point. CFCF 💌 📧 16:30, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Your Google-fu is weak https://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=meme+epidemiology Rhoark (talk) 17:08, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

That still gets you only 54 hits [18], with the main one being a product by SRI International and even they state it uses "principles and quantitative frameworks from the field of epidemiology", never that it is epidemiology. CFCF 💌 📧 17:17, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The two concepts are combined with many possible phrasings, producing 117,000 hits when not enclosed in quotation. It is a subject of both general and academic interest, using the methods of epidemiology. We can call an RfC on what the meaning of "is" is, but it would be better to simply recognize that within epidemiology there are claims that are medical and claims that are not medical. A more comprehensive rubric is required. Elucidating its properties is the purpose of this RfC. Rhoark (talk) 17:24, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

That is completely wrong, and I would challenge you to find a single real epidemiological claim that isn't medicine-related. All your search says is that there are 117,000 pages with the two terms somewhere on the page – they don't necessarily need to be at all related. Frankly, you have completely misunderstood what epidemiology is, and it was even expressely clarified that we would use the linked definition, so there is no way that anything like this could be included. CFCF 💌 📧 17:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment As long as the topic is about health and disease its appropriate for MEDRS to cover it. The problem is stretching MEDRS to cover things it never should. In the discussion that preceded this RFC it was pointed out that even car crashes where someone hit a tree and walked away should be covered by MEDRS because its epidemiology.[19] This is stretching the application to near the point of breaking, if not past it. Using this logic few statistics that have to do with any human activity would be excluded. This would in turn put a burden on editors where none is needed. AlbinoFerret 17:30, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Asking editors to use high-quality sources and avoid cherry-picking individual studies isn't really imposing a "burden". At least it shouldn't be. More to the point: violence, motor vehicle accidents, and other causes of premature injury and death are public-health issues. They're tracked by the CDC in the US, and by the WHO and other major public-health bodies globally. This isn't a case of Wikipedia's "medical editors" over-reaching; these issues are already considered public-health issues, and thus under the broad umbrella of medicine, by the relevant expert bodies. It's now a matter of bringing Wikipedians along to understand that. MastCell ^Talk 17:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, and I stand by my previous statement. Car crashes are known to in general result in some form of injury, as such any statistic of when the occupant is able to walk away unmaimed is a medical statistic. Anything else would be to infer that stating ( 1 – proportion of a population with disease) is not a medical statistic because "they aren't sick". Such a statement is analogous to saying how asymptomatic pyuria results in no health effects and is common among women, and is nonetheless a medical statement. CFCF 💌 📧 18:07, 30 October 2015 (UTC) 

Thank you both for proving my point that almost any human activity can be stretched to be covered by MEDRS. But the point of the burden is one that is interesting to me, to say that the higher standard, that sometimes MEDRS sources requires an outlay of cash to access the sources isnt a burden is quite amazing in how wrong it is. Let alone the time of editors involved in searching for those sources which are free. When it is much easier to find statistics on reliable secondary sources that are available and WP:RS compliant. AlbinoFerret 18:25, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there are health effects of pretty much every human activity, and to say anything conclusive about these on Wikipedia you will have to apply MEDRS. Also, MEDRS gives a number of perfectly good alternative ways to access journal articles, and you are more than welcome to drop a message at WT:MED or WP:RX (I have used both those venues multiple times when my access hasn't been sufficient, and my name is on the contact list at WP:RX). We have time and time again concluded that lacking access to sources is not a reason to lower our standards – we aren't going to provide shoddy information because it's easier to access than the best information is. Wikipedia's goal isn't the "sum of all knowledge that is free to access", even if some people might want it that way. CFCF 💌 📧 18:33, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

There is a difference between shoddy sources and reliable sources covered by WP:RS. Regardless of the cost, the time and aggravation is also a burden when the alternative is good enough for claims that are not directly health related. Applying MEDRS to areas outside of medical areas is WP:CREEP. AlbinoFerret 18:49, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

That has never been the purpose of this guideline, and certainly not the purpose of applying it to epidemiology. When it comes to medicine WP:RS does allow a whole lot of shoddy sources, and MEDRS rectifies just that. It isn't perfect, but it gets rid of much of the cherry-picking problem we otherwise see. Rarely has the issue been that editors have trouble finding a decent source, and the time-expenditure of accessing a source is negligible compared to what reading and understanding it takes. CFCF 💌 📧 18:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

To add to that, editors from the Medicine WikiProject are generally very helpful in finding high-quality sources. A number of them (us) have access to paywalled journals through our university affiliations, and can often provide free copies for limited educational use. If cost, time, or aggravation are standing in the way of your ability to find good health-related sources, other editors can help. MastCell ^Talk 18:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem isnt health related, its adding things because they can be considered health related by applying the 2nd or 3rd degree of separation. Like car crashes, gun ownership, and domestic violence as Guy Macon points out below. AlbinoFerret 19:36, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Forgetting the purpose. The purpose of MEDRS is to deal with the fact that "Wikipedia's articles ... are a widely used source of health information". Nobody is going to go to Wikipedia and use one of our articles to decide whether to get into a car crash, whether to beat up their spouse, etc. Some here are missing the purpose of this page. The purpose is to make sure that when someone looks something up on Wikipedia that can be used to make a medical decision (thinks like "will Vitamin C prevent colds?" "Will aspirin prevent strokes?" "Should I consider lap-band surgery?") The information they get is sourced to the higher MEDRS standard. So no, MEDRS does not apply to the epidemiology of car crashes, domestic violence, or gun ownership. It does, however, apply to the epidemiology of influenza, smoking, and anything else that directly relates to making a personal medical decision. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:13, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

No, that was never the purpose of MEDRS. As I mentioned in the original question here, actionability does not count into it. It's about how easy it is to cherry-pick awful sources.

MEDRS is purposed to make sure that health information "accurately reflects current knowledge". Noone is going to decide to get colorectal cancer, but diagnosis and risk-factors need to be reliably sourced anyway.CFCF 💌 📧 19:30, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment - Another poorly formed RfC- Yes, of course MEDRS applies to epidemiology of disease and biological conditions. The problem is there are at least two editors who are arguing that "epidemiology" covers patterns, causes and effects of non-medical, sociological issues - like statistics relating to the commission of domestic violence. MEDRS applies to medical information and does not apply to non-medical information. It's really that simple. Minor4th 19:26, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Both the WHO [20] and US-CDC [21] consider domestic violence a major public health and epidemiological issue. We actually have an article on Epidemiology of domestic violence. CFCF 💌 📧 19:34, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

But "domestic violence" is not a health condition or disease condition. "Public health" issue is not the same as "medical issue." And epidemiology has meanings beyond medical applications. Epidemiology of domestic violence is a social, legal and cultural issue, but it is not a medical issue. Minor4th 19:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

It most assuredly is a medical issue as it has severe health implications, and public health is a field of medicine. Domestic violence is a social, legal, cultural, and medical issue. CFCF 💌 📧 19:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Bicycles have severe health implications. Half of Wikipedia has severe health implications. This has been explained to you before. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:11, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And if there were large numbers of studies (and reviews of those) on the health implications of bicycles, then there is surely no reason why MEDRS should not apply to them. Are you really suggesting we should allow primary studies and case reports to determine our content even when there are good quality reviews and systematic analysis available? --RexxS (talk) 20:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)