Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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Merged Archive WikiProject Preclinical medicine: 1 Merged Archive WikiProject Clinical medicine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 WikiProject Medicine Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171

Medpedia.com

My dermatologist colleague is trying to get me involved in medpedia. I read their FAQ contrasting medpedia with wikipedia (see [1]), and wanted to know what the rest of you thought of it? kilbad (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed my long-pending application to sign up and find out what they are about just been activated. Basically it seeks only those with a PhD or lectureship to be editors, other doctors (or those with expertise) can only suggest changes - ie have addressed need for expertise and attribution (must register under real name). They have tweaked the mediawiki software, so for example page creation has a tool box to enter standardised section headers for disease or drug articles.

However major issues to be sorted out, and they perhaps should have used more of what wikipedia has done and this project (ie instructions miss out large swayths on using the wiki markup - all there for just a copying over some help pages) and issues we have addressed at WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS might have been sensible to include. Also not made any mention on templates etc, as a starter see my initial comments at http://wiki.medpedia.com/Help_talk:How_to_edit

I know they are trying to get technophobic non-wiki savvy doctors to participate, but the degree of established conventions is too unspecified currently David Ruben ^Talk 02:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I misconstrue your second sentence (I infer from it that medical doctors cannot edit that site), but my reading of their guidance suggests that medical doctors can edit medpedia; the info on this says "Physicians and researchers with Ph.D.s" can be editors. Their wording is somewhat confusing, but other pages aren't so ambiguous. --Scray (talk) 02:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No that was my original undertsanding, but on re-reading I agree wording confusing and perhaps indeed any confirmed doctor can edit ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

One reason I like Wikipedia is no one is required to provide a CV or even claim to hold an advanced degree. KWIM? --Una Smith (talk) 02:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

This is very much like www.wikidoc.org It is basically a copy and paste from wikipedia. However you do not have the ability to link to virtually anything. Here we write for the general public. If you are writing for professionally you will be competing against www.uptodate.com and I do not think anyone will even come close to matching them.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Or Epocrates, eMedicine etc. Truth is there's loads of professional sites out there, with very little differing between them. Wikipedia is different. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 10:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

What I've looked at is very disappointing (I know it is just launched). Our Epilepsy article may shame my inactivity but it's a whole lot better than the patronising guff on on their article. The article has so many dreadful mistakes and the prose stinks. Looks like any old "Ima Nutjob MD" can sign up, and they don't allow non-expert copyeditors (which any decent publisher would employ). Trying to write lay and expert versions sounds like a very bad idea. The lay readers will probably prefer Wikipedia, medical charities or government sites and the experts readers should trust professional publications (I hope!). First rule of writing is to determine your audience. Colin°^Talk 23:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The most important rule in my book, but alas, often the hardest to adhere to. Graham Colm ^Talk 00:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

medpedia vs citizendium

I don't understand why people would want to join medpedia when they could join citizendium and get the same thing. Can anyone explain what the differences between the two are? Is it more like knoll? 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Copying content

How should we deal with their content? I think that for some of our stub articles, we can take a big leap forward by copying their content; after all, it's GFDL. Take at look at what I did in just a few minutes with Pleurisy. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

How much of it is referenced properly though? I am all for taking whatever they have that is good. Much of it is just copy and pasted from wiki. Anyway we can determine what they have that is new? www.wikidoc.org is under the same copyright.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Not all content is GFDL. What they adapt from wiki is, but what they produce themselves is marked "Content on this page is the sole copyright of the author."--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

See Attribution (copyright), it applies to GFDL. Colin°^Talk 23:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject redundancy

(I'm sure this issue has been brought up before, but I can't really find it).

Many articles "belong" to the biology project, the microbiology project and the medicine project at the same time. Are there some guidelines regarding this? Does it make sense that every pathogenic bacterium should be handled by three different projects? As for the classes and importances, they often conflict with each other, of course. I've seen articles that were B in the medicine project and Start in the biology project.

I'm a beginner with the projects and I really want to help, but this mess is a little discouraging. Isn't it? --Pixie (talk) 15:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there has been a formal discussion of this before, but we do have some guidelines on the assessment page. These are just recommendations by a few WPMED contributors and are open for discussion. (I'll probably start a discussion on these criteria on the assessment talk page.) Tagging articles is often subjective. Each project has its own guidelines, which should follow the scope of the project. So if Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology really wanted to tag all articles even remotely biology-related, they could do that. Here, we can only discuss what WPMED wants to tag.

Generally, regarding infectious diseases, the pathogens should not belong to WPMED, but the diseases they cause should. So Tuberculosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever would be part of the project, but not Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Rickettsia rickettsii would not. The pathogens should most likely be tagged with Wikipedia:WikiProject Microbiology, Wikipedia:WikiProject Prokaryotes and protists, Wikipedia:WikiProject Viruses, Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi, etc. You have to refer to each of these projects for their specific guidelines. Another important consideration is if the article is related to human disease. If a pathogen only infects animals, it should not be tagged with WPMED (consider Wikipedia:WikiProject Veterinary medicine instead).

I disagree. Anything taught in medical school is important for wp:med. Pathogens are taught in medical school. If doctors don't edit pathogen articles, they lose their clinical relevance. We write for the people. Doctors need to know about HPV and about pathogens and about vaccines that protect against pathogens. Stop this nonsense talk of removing wp:med from pathogen articles. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

edit: only on human pathogens, obviously... and with HIV, there are a lot of pathogens that are suddenly medically relevant. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

scott, it's tk here. I didn't realized you wrote this. I disagree with you. Study some infectious disease medicine or talk with an infectious disease physician - doctors need to know about the pathogen that causes TB. We don't need to edit sections on the genes, but we need to edit sections on virulence factors etc. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:43, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Exceptions to note would be infections that are treated medically to prevent progression to disease (such as HIV). Additionally, pathogens that cause various illnesses that do not have their own names should probably be tagged with WPMED (such as Staphylococcus aureus). The reasoning for this is that these articles include a significant amount of medical information about pathogen detection and treatment in humans.

As for the assessment classes and importances, the conflicts exist because each project has its own assessment criteria. The importance is how important is the topic to the project - so that would be expected to differ across projects. Usually, the class should be the same for all of the projects, according to the standard grading scheme. --Scott Alter 17:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Doubtful

I am doubtful of the "...affecting around 1 in 250 people..." at Ichthyosis_vulgaris#cite_ref-1. Ichthyosis vulgaris is the most common type of ichthyosis, but the above quote seems way off to me. Can someone review this fact for me? kilbad (talk) 02:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the source, ichthyosis.com, states "more than one million Americans are affected by ichthyosis". The very next paragraph states "This certainly qualifies ichthyosis as a rare disease. A rare ... disease affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States." This website is not a reliable source. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually the Canadian Family Physician does indeed indicate an incidence of 1:250. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The European Journal of Human Genetics indicates an incidence between 1:250 and 1:5300, depending on the series. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

many people go undiagnosed with derm conditions. how many americans can afford to see a dermatologist when 66 million do not have insurance? If the disease is hard for the County ER physician to make, then how can incidences be correct? don't worry about it and put a range. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

What should a basic editor like me be doing?

• I periodically get messages about concerns over editing and content of various dermatology articles. Most recently, as you are all probably aware, there has been a lot of tension over the Mohs surgery and Basal cell carcinoma articles. My question is, as a basic editor (non-admin), when I am notified about these concerns, aside from stressing the use of secondary sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability, what else, if anything, should I be doing? I am just looking for some feedback so as to neither overstep my boundries, nor do to little. kilbad (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution has some useful information. In general, at each point in the "appeals process", people will want to see that the prior potential remedies have been exhausted (and will want to see diffs to prove it). --Arcadian (talk) 04:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

most importantly, keep writing and participating with feedback. If you get too frustrated, move on to a different topic. Writing spurs revision. As long as you partake actively on talk pages, there rarely are issues. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Cushing's syndrome

Anyone have an image of Cushing's syndrome?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Commons has a handful; I will make a category and add it to the article. --Una Smith (talk) 17:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Medicalization

I notice a pattern of medicalization of wikipedia pages. The pages of any topic relating to medicine quickly is taken over by specialized terminology. Pages become inaccessible, and there is sparse and spotty inclusion of perspectives of anthropology, history, economics, sociology, religion, business, ecology, or other fields.

The pages of many general-interest topics commonly have the following problems:

• The introductory paragraph is often entirely inaccessible.
• The first picture will be a molecular diagrams or diagram of a microorganism, both of which communicate little information to a reader who is not well-versed in science.
• The introductory paragraph focuses exclusively on biological, chemical, and/or medical properties, even when the page itself has discussion of history, economics, ecology, or other material.

Let me give two really simple examples of medicalized topics:

• Heroin. Heroin is undisputably a topic of general interest. It is one of the most important substances relevant to Drug control law and has widespread economic implications. The current page dives in with ultra-specialized material that only someone well-versed in organic chemistry could understand. The first picture is a molecular diagram in spite of other, more accessible pictures, already being in the article. In addition, the medical sections of that page are well-developed whereas the non-medical ones are in need of editing, more sources and in-line citation, and other work.

• Aspirin. Again, general interest topic. The page dives right in to highly specialized terminology and the first visual is a molecular diagram. While I think much of the material here and on History of aspirin is excellent, the introductory section barely touches on the history. There's also little discussion on marketing or business aspects, in spite of a wealth of scholarly research on the topic: [2].

• AIDS. Clearly general interest topic. Furthermore, the majority of people reading the page will probably be better equipped to understand the Epidemiology, History, and Society and Culture sections...and yet these sections occur at the end and are less extensive than the highly technical Pathophysiology section and much of the Symptoms section. The introduction on this page, however, is more accessible.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I just want to start a dialogue. I would love to see some sort of policy page arise on medicalization. Ultimately I would like to see all pages on basic topics of general interest be made much more accessible. Example:

• The page on Diclofenac, for instance, could be more medical in orientation and less accessible to a general audience than the page on aspirin. But the introduction should also be made accessible to more people than it is because people interested in birds, especially vultures, or birds in India might visit the page on diclofenac for those reasons. In spite of the very well-written ecology section, the ecological problems receive no mention in the introduction of that page.

I'm not going to go through these articles one-by-one because the problem is too widespread for one person to tackle. We need to create policies to refer to. We need to come to a consensus about how this problem is to be handled. Let's start! I propose the following policies:

Proposed policies

• On medical topics of general interest, use common terminology instead of medical terminology. An example would be to use painkiller instead of analgesic on the page for aspirin. Painkiller redirects to analgesic anyway so nothing is lost.

• Make the introductory paragraphs (i.e. before any section headings) the most accessible parts of a page.

• Make the introductory paragraphs reflect a balance of all material on the page, medical and otherwise.

• When general interest pages become highly inaccessible or imbalanced towards specialized medical coverage, split off the least accessible and most specialized of the material into sub-pages.

• When a general interest topic contains primarily medical material, and yet sources exist to create a more balanced page, put effort into incorporating different perspectives before expanding the medical material. Recruit editors from other areas of wikipedia if unable to do this oneself.

• On all pages, if a more "accessible" or "general audience" picture is available and communicates useful information to a general audience, put that picture first on the page. Include molecular diagrams and pictures from microbiology later in the page, in sections where they are more directly relevant and will be more useful to readers of those sections.

(gets off soapbox) Thoughts?

Cazort (talk) 03:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible for related discussion. Graham87 05:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Cazort, I think you are trying to highlight some completely unrelated issues. Some are relevant to medicine, some are of much broader relevance. I find certain mathematics articles completely inaccessible. Their intro provides no context, pictures have insufficient explanation etc etc. If this is your main concern, you should be going to the MTIA page as Graham indicated.

The best medical articles (see this list) are in fact highly accessible. You are therefore invited to improve the not-so high quality articles to the level that would make them accessible.

The opening image is often only for decorative use, rather than actually illustrating anything. The exception would be if a disease has definite external appearances (e.g. psoriasis). No actual problem there. If you think that puts off the readers, perhaps you are underestimating them.

Finally, you indicate that certain topics are covered almost exclusively from a medical angle. Well, if you pardon me saying, if heroin didn't make people ill it wouldn't have such a medical slant. You don't like the term "analgesic", but the term "painkiller" is incorrect, as pain is not something that is killed. Rather than using incorrect lay terminology, don't you agree we should be using more precise professional terms but clarify their meaning? JFW | T@lk 11:16, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The killdeer is not a deer, nor does it kill deer, but that's what it's called. The preoccupation with the idea of "correctness" is precisely what is making these articles so inaccessible.

But, yeah, I did check a bunch of articles in the featured article list and they are much more accessible and don't seem to suffer from any of the issues I described. So maybe this discussion isn't going anywhere? Still, I saw enough of a trend.

About the mathematics articles--yes, that's a very serious issue and I've been fussing about that for years now. I know firsthand how pig-headed mathematicians can be about accessibility, being one myself.  :-) The reason I came here was that I see a sweeping trend in articles related to medicine, including many like the ones mentioned above that are linked from many other articles. Cazort (talk) 16:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The majority of the time semi-technical terminology such as analgesic is usually wiki inlinked, clickable, so a user can click on it to find out what it means. Furthermore often such paragraphs using those medical terminology explain themselves. For example an article on morphine might say something like,,,, Morphine is an analgesic medication used in the management/treatment of severe pain. I think the majority of the medical and pharmacology articles are understandable by the public as well as the medical profession. As there are countless thousands of people editing medical or pharmacological articles it would be impossible for a wiki project to have much impact on the wording you suggest even if we agreed with you. Those would be my views.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Cazort, I also think that the right place for this is WP:MTAA, but you might also be interested in knowing that there is a style guideline for medicine articles at WP:MEDMOS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I will check these pages out! Cazort (talk) 21:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Request for help from WP:MEASURE

I've been doing some article assessment at WikiProject Measurement recently and I came across the article Apothecaries' system (not one of mine) which seems pretty good. For the time being, I've rated it as A-class on our project quality scale, but I would welcome further comments so I have opened a peer review here. If there are editors with any knowledge or interest in the subject, I'd be grateful if they could read through the article and tell us if there is anything important which should be in there but which isn't at the moment. Cheers! Physchim62 (talk) 11:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC) (BTW, isn't it time to take the Christmas decorations down??!!

I have added to the project; and I am going to post it in the notice board so people interested my pop in. --Garrondo (talk) 14:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

RFC

Could I draw everyone's attention to an RFC on Talk:Medicine#Legal controls. JFW | T@lk 11:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Time for a FAC

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Meningitis - comments invited. JFW | T@lk 13:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Great job! I will weigh in tomorrow. NCurse _work 18:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Category pages, citations, and reference sections

There is a category page for which I want to provide a brief 2-3 sentence intro. I have sources I can cite, but wanted to know how that works with category pages? Is it appropriate to include inline citations and a reference section on a category page? kilbad (talk) 15:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

If references are needed, they belong in an article. The article can then be linked on the category page, perhaps via {{main}}. --Una Smith (talk) 16:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think, as a technical matter, that you can put anything on a cat page that you can put in an article. But nobody cites sources on these pages, and I probably wouldn't bother. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Usually benign tumor vs cancer

Wikipedia articles about tumors that are "usually benign" or "often benign" are categorized inconsistently. Some are treated as cancers (suspected malignant until proven benign); others are treated as benign (until proven malignant). So, some are in categories such as Category:Gynecology whereas others are in Category:Gynecological cancer, and some are in both categories. My feeling is that all tumor articles should be in oncology categories, not listed directly in parent general categories such as Category:Gynecology, to maximize the chances that the reader will grasp the intrinsic uncertainty. Thoughts? --Una Smith (talk) 18:38, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree it is a spectrum from benign to malignant. Cut of are arbitrary. Therefore they should all be grouped together. One often hears I have a benign tumor I DO NOT have cancer. There is a great deal of public confusion around this.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It would probably be best if the "cancer" categories were renamed to "tumor" categories. --Arcadian (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Arcadian, in that case where would you put leukemias and lymphomas? --Una Smith (talk) 23:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think cancer is best rather than tumor even though they are often used interchangeably. A lot of people who have cancer do not know it as no one comes out and says it. We need to tell it like it is. And than follow this with a none serious / benign or serious / malignant cancer distinction.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

So you think a lay-language approach is the best choice here, even though traditionally cancer meant carcinoma (and thus, for example, excluded all leukemias and lymphomas)? How would you handle "pre-malignant" conditions in this approach (e.g., myelodysplastic syndromes, to stick with the hematological theme)?

I don't want to sound like I dislike the suggestion; I'm still thinking it over. I think the alternative is to use neoplasm instead. Would we really sacrifice significant accuracy by choosing the lay-language option? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Angiostrongyliasis

Hello. By chance, I just discovered that editors have been expanding Angiostrongylus cantonensis with material intended for Angiostrongyliasis. From what I can tell by looking at the page history, they probably didn't know Angiostrongyliasis already existed. So, it looks like most of the medical information should be merged into Angiostrongyliasis. I have added merge tags and performed some minor cleanup, but I would appreciate some eyes on this or some suggestions. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 09:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Applying for grant

There is a grant I am thinking about applying for to get a couple grand for use somehow related to WP:DERM. I wanted to know if people had any ideas how I could use this money to improve dermatology content on wikipedia? I need a good reason for them to give it to me. kilbad (talk) 21:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Getting more images would be wonderful.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Just some thoughts, but needs to be considered carefully if the "effort" to be acceptable for inclusion:

• for the time & effort of perhaps taking high quality pictures of conditions in a dermatology clinic (of course usual need for patients to provide consent & release notices to then use the images, and specifically consenting, just in case any doubt by subjects, for open Wikipedia rather than just esoteric medical publication).
• Perhaps asking some specialists to provide copyright-free material of a secondary source nature (this needs to be undertaken with a lot of care to ensure publication in a suitable WP:RS manner so that we can make use of it per WP:MEDRS - i.e. needs count as Secondary source rather than some consultants blog page which would only be personal original research). Only means that readily comes to mind is perhaps part co-funding a "Current practice" column in a reputable Dermatology journal to cover topics perhaps not now routinely mentioned (for not having exciting new research to publish) and for which standard textbooks out-of-date or just don't cover well. Kick-back for the journal is potential several fold: works as a section of interest to medical students and junior doctors in the field who could do with some straight talking articles about topics they might be otherwise embarrassed to go asking their consultant about (e.g. pityriasis alba, angular stomatitis). If journal section was a regular feature and title suitably chosen, (e.g. "Refresher reviews" or even "Refresher reviews for even Wikipedia"), then use of "work" parameter in {{cite journal}} might get used for this, and with hopefully reasonable online hit-rate, the journal might consider/offer advertisers a suitable exclusive slot to such a popular (i.e. general public) section. Alternatively the "Refresher reviews" section might be freeview access for a journal otherwise normally accessible only by subscription, and so act as a friendly window with which to entice additional subscribers (you get the gist of possible business models to suggest to journals). Likewise any dermatologist hoping to get into media work/journalism and/or raise their public profile might see such regular contributions with some kudos. You don't specify precisely how much money the grant might be for, but for a few hours work per topic, I think you could build up a useful body of "core" dermatology topics (if the journal suitably sets up things, then it would form a serialised work for perhaps publishing for either the public or junior doctors - tag lines might be along lines of "Dermatology Refresher Review -- core of dermatology for the non-specialist, what patients want to know and what Wikipedia cites from", or “Dermatology Refresher Review – what your patients should have learnt from Wikipedia & the internet”, or whatever).
• With vetted pages perhaps coming in, alternative might be to ask (i.e. pay) specialists to help fill in missing gaps in articles, check sources and overall breadth and balance of articles before this project confirms a vetted version of a page. I think problems of past commercial ventures seeking to write articles for companies (rejected by Jimbo himself) means we probably could not have direct editing of articles by those paid for it, but nevertheless perhaps getting a dermatologist to offer a talk-page critique of articles and help point the way to missing material and sources that the normal editor could then make use of (eg somewhat akin to seeking reviews for FAC, but which don't themselves re-write the article) - but this more than any other suggestion needs input from other Admins here at WP:MED as to what would be permissable/workable.
• Might be worth approaching the foundation office to see if they can advise or help with such tie-in external work ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• Do you think there is any potential with this grant: [3]? kilbad (talk) 01:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Hmmm difficult to know, but carpe diem apllies and "nothing ventured, nothing gained" :-) Grants 2 & 3 clearly ones to consider and it would be very innovative of them to so fund. Suggest contact and see if possibly interested (as currently worded seem to be looking to support budding dermatologists rather than promotion of dermatology to the public, so seems be to an individual rather than a group body of work - but would be interesting to see their thoughts about having Wikipedia assistance as part of focus of a IT grant award). If your looking for this yourself, then probably useful to at least try, and if not successful then at least a useful experience in the hard-graft of seeking funding (however I'm a community GP, so must declare I know nothing really about current hospital research or accademic practices)... others need chip in at this point ;-) David Ruben ^Talk 02:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Given all the recent controversy over article evaluation, it might be interesting to get some data from dermatology residents judging the quality of the derm articles on a Likert scale, and then see if those evaluations correlated more closely with Wiki's page evaluations or with metrics (multiple regression upon number of talk page edits, age of article in days, mean word count between inline citations, etc.). You could also add in eMedicine and Medpedia for comparison. -Arcadian (talk) 04:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. You could definitely create a Wikipedia-based project which would fit the grantor's goals and specifications. It might be useful background to demonstrate the Google juice possessed by Wikipedia - that is, any patient or health-care professional searching for a term is likely to find Wikipedia among the top few hits, making it a valuable educational resource. If you feel really brave, you could focus on a few "controversial" dermatologic topics, like erythema migrans or sunscreen (see *shudder* sunscreen controversy as well) - to see how well expert medical opinion is actually represented on this site. Good luck, and let me know if I can provide any useful assistance. MastCell ^Talk 04:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I suggest explicitly reminding people that they do not have any greater ownership of the pages they are working on just because they have a grant or are being paid for their work. This has already been a problem for students editing WP for credit in courses. I am sure the OP understands this, being an active participant in this wikiproject, but I am just suggesting that this is a risk once money is changing hands. This might also be an issue if certain promises are made in the grant proposal - all of the work might get reverted. That being said, if all editors adhere to the WP spirit then this is a great idea. --Scray (talk) 11:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

We have several "external partners" (for want of a better term) at WP:CHEM and, for a couple of them, the commercial value of their services is probably much larger than two grand (nobody's offered us cash yet, but then we haven't asked for it either!). Our experience is that our "partners" already had a pretty accurate idea of Wikipedia before we even got involved with them: if anything, their idea was 'worse' than the reality but it's a topic that will come up very early on in the discussion. On the Wikipedia side, it is important to be open about what you're doing, but there's no need to shout it from the rooftops: there are enough active editors at WP:MED to spot if something's wrong in WP-terms (eg, accusations of favorable coverage in return for help). The Foundation might be able to help as well, it has experience of giving small sums of its own money for Wikimedia-related projects (usually pretty transversal, to avoid the obvious problems of rivalry between different WM projects). Physchim62 (talk) 13:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm more inclined to the suggestions of Arcadian and MastCell. One of David's suggestions relies on a large change to wikipedia which hasn't happened yet. I'd also be vary wary of accepting money that in any way may imply ownership or endorsement of an article (not that I think anyone has suggested that). The old "sponsorship" disclaimer that editorial control still rests with wikipedians wouldn't wash. Already we have people changing their wikipedia names to avoid "outing" and avoid obvious COI. How are we to know who is paying who? I would not be the least surprised to find that corporations are paying anon wikipedians to massage articles to their own advantage. That topic in itself would be worth researching if you got checkuser priveleges. We've seen it already in the case of political parties. Certainly apply for the grants and good luck.Kevin McCready (talk) 14:14, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments. You have given me some great research ideas, and I am thinking about starting a subpage of WP:DERM for research related projects. On that talk page perhaps we could discuss different study ideas and modes for collecting data. I am a php programmer and mysql dba, and have some specific ideas I would like to toss around. Does that sound ok? kilbad (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Nadya Suleman aka "Octo-mom"

Twice now a tag which would add this article to this WikiProject has been removed. I am just here to verify that you guys don't want it in the project. My reasoning in adding the tag is that there are important issues of medical ethics involved in this story, and it has been reported that the doctor who helped this woman have a total of 14 children with fertility treatments is under investigation. I'm not really familiar with your projects scope, so maybe medical ethics is not a subject you really cover, but it seemed from the attitude of those removing the tag that they just don't like the subject very much (who does?) regardless of the obvious medical aspects of her story. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• There is an article Suleman octuplets as well. Physchim62 (talk) 18:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• It's entirely possible those two articles are going to be merged, but that discussion is just getting underway. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I do not have any problems with this being part of the WP:MED project.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• It seems the editor who removed it the second time is saying that it is not within the projects scope, because, per your assessment guidelines, articles about "a person who happens to have a medical condition" should not be included. That seems reasonable enough to me, but this has more to do with the ethics of certain methods in reproductive medicine than the fact that she was pregnant. The Medical Board of California is investigating this matter, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine is apparently assisting them in the investigation. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Her physician(s) and any resulting legal cases would probably be within our scope. However, the biography of an individual patient -- especially one that may be deleted as a violation of WP:ONEEVENT -- is not something that WPMED members are going to write about.

Keep in mind that project banners mean "Individual members of this project are willing to improve this article"; WP:Categories are what you use to say "This article is about subject X." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

There is probably going to be something appearing in the medical literature about the delivery and neonatal care for the children. That said, at the moment I don't think there's an awful lot this WikiProject could do in terms of sourcing. JFW | T@lk 19:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I have some problems with those articles as they stand from a WP:BLP standpoint, so I'm not going to take a stance on whether to rule this in or out since I'm trying to keep some distance. There's a task force that might be a good place to get information on this. We don't have a medical ethics task force, and I'd certainly be interested in starting one, though I'm part of the pointy end of the spear on that and not a real expert. SDY (talk) 19:14, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Not that this bio actually talks about medical ethics: It contains exactly one (short) paragraph that might be construed as relating to medical ethics, but which is more specifically about the possibility of two professional investigations involving the patient's IVF doc. The word "ethics" does not appear once on the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Granted. I suspect this is because medical journals move a lot slower than newspaper and TV reporters, and the investigation into the doctor has just started, but it seems inevitable that there will be significant talk in the medical press about this given that there are even suggestions now that legislation be passed to limit this sort of thing. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

We'll get involved when it happens, I guess. Anything we say now would likely be WP:OR. SDY (talk) 20:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

When/if such things happen, presumably they will be covered at In vitro fertilization#Ethics, which people here do support. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I left a note at the reproductive task force page just in case they have some interest. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Continuity of category names

"Condition" vs "disease" revisited

• I have been working to categorize dermatology related articles based on the scheme at WP:DERM:CAT. As the categorization has progressed from the initial discussion here, and through subsequent CfD's, the scheme has developed such that the term "condition" has been used over "disease" (for reasons previously discussed at length; see here for example).
• My question today is whether there is anything to be said for continuity of category names? What I mean by that is this... I have been considering posting CfD's for the only remaining derm categories using the term "disease" (which are Category:Chronic blistering skin diseases, Category:Infectious skin diseases, and Category:Papulosquamous hyperkeratotic skin diseases) proposing renaming to the term "conditions". Of course, in the case of these particular categories, the term "disease" is not inappropritate, and the proposed CfD renaming would be strictly to give some more continuity to the derm categories.
• Would this be ok to do? What are your thoughts? kilbad (talk) 21:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

This may not be a helpful response, but: I don't think that consistency in this case is very important, but I have no objections to using the slightly less-specific names. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup on aisle aldosterone

There seems to be considerable overlap of content and some confusion among the following articles:

• Primary aldosteronism
• Hyperaldosteronism
• Apparent mineralocorticoid excess syndrome
• Pseudohyperaldosteronism
• Liddle's syndrome
• Glucocorticoid remediable aldosteronism

Some of these conditions are genetic, some are medical conditions, some are dietary. The confusion lies primarily in the cross references. Would anyone here like to have a go at these? --Una Smith (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Copyright of CT/MRI images

Who "owns" the copyright on a CT/MRI image? The technician? doctor? patient? kilbad (talk) 22:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Depends on country, and been discussed at length previously as to who owns the image vs copyright vs consent for publication issues etc - see:

• Commons:Commons:Patient images and its discussion page (has links to past discussions).
• Archive from WT:MED Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 8#Copyright of radiographies_revisited June 2008
• MEDMOS discussion Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)/Archive 3#Images - lengthy discussion June/July'08
• Una Smith did a data dump of papers on patient consenting for publication on my WikiCommons talk page Commons:User talk:Davidruben

In essence consent re confidentiality issue always easiest by patient themselves uploading image, as for copyright tricky...

Happy back reading :-) David Ruben ^Talk 23:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:WPMED Navigation

I re designed the template, please inform me if you have any suggestions or comments regarding that Maen. K. A. (talk) 23:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no current thoughts on the graphic design aspects, but here are my thoughts on the organization:

• Why is stub sorting not handled like the other "Open tasks"? Should "Open tasks" be renamed something like "How to help"?
• Why is our single contest hidden behind a [Show] box? (It seems like a waste of space.)
• Should "Task forces" be renamed "Specialties"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Too many different colors (alternating bars, horizontal lines, etc - too busy), contrast too low. Should use sidebar meta-template rather than hand coding. The older color scheme worked better with the talk page banner color (in general this is dark and foreboding, the other color scheme was more pleasant). Think the colors should be changed back.

Most of the collapsible sections probably aren't worth the extra complexity for the user. It means more clicks, for what is supposed to be a shortcut. Since this template is only used on project pages (as compared to articles) it isn't clear that it is getting so bit that it needs to use hidden sections yet. (If so, only hide the largest sections, e.g. taskforces and/or tasks.)

In short - previous version was better. Zodon (talk) 08:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

After trying this out for a few days... I think I'm happier with the old version. Pretty much the only think I use the template for is to find task forces pages.

I wonder whether it would be possible to revert to the old one but to also implement a parameter that could optionally close sections on certain pages. For example, WP:CARDIO probably doesn't need to advertise all the other task forces, and that could significantly reduce the size of the template. (Or perhaps the old one just needs less white space around the cells.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

New Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine Design

Please check out my proposed design, and please add your comments whether you support applying it or not here or on my talk page Maen. K. A. (talk) 23:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose It is too wide (have to scroll back and forth to see it). Won't work as well on narrow screens (small laptops, large fonts for accessability). How does it rate on accessability tests - suspect won't work well with screen readers. Reduces contrast (less accessible).

Familiar navigation tools (table of contents, ability to jump to section you want) missing. Doesn't follow usual look/layout of other wikiprojects (makes it harder to use). Zodon (talk) 07:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. Too wide. Requires left-right scrolling and awkward to read. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Support but only because my screen is big enough so I don't have to scroll, and it looks nice. If I had to scroll, I'd hate it too. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 12:39, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose, sorry. The style is pseudo two column, and unbalanced, which means it has a lot of blank space. Also, I work with a lot of projects and I find project pages much easier to navigate if their style (and skin?) is the Wikipedia standard, not custom. Imagine if every Wikipedia article could have its own style. Gaak. Let's leave style development for user pages. --Una Smith (talk) 06:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I like the format in many ways but if it is not easy to use for everyone than we should stike we what we have.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment Thank you all for your comments concerning the design, it might gave me some clues about how Wikiproject Medicine should look like, but i have one more question, Do you support redesigning the project page?? or should i stop thinking about that??. Thank you all for your time Maen. K. A. (talk) 22:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a word

I looking for the right word (or short phrase). Consider Hep B or HIV or something like that. Individual people -- some of whom have a given virus and some of whom don't -- have different serostatus.

What's the equivalent term for individual cells? If you're looking at some hepatocytes, and some are infected by HBV and others are not, then the cells have a different what? Infection status? Something else? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't recall a better term than "infection status", unless reference is made to the specific test being used. Perhaps your talking about things in the abstract; in reality, one cannot really be certain whether a cell is infected or not - only whether or not one or more tests for infection is positive (above some threshold for positivity). Thus, one could say that a cell does or does not stain positively for HBsAg, or (using in situ PCR) is (or is not) PCR-positive for HBV (using primers X and Y), does (or does not) hybridize with probe Z for HBV DNA, etc. The term "serostatus" reflects this - someone who is "seronegative" for HBV might actually be infected, but their serology is negative. --Scray (talk) 03:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we do know the status of the cells, because we're talking about two unrelated cell lines, and the specific virus can't even invade one of the cell lines -- a fact that is perfectly, even tediously, obvious to anyone that knows anything at all about the hosts that the virus can infect, but I need a way to say it for people that aren't experts, and I wanted to make it grammatically parallel with the rest of the sentence. I may take a different approach though, based on your comments. Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I thought Scray answered precisely the question WhatamIdoing was asking, but from WhatamIdoing's reply it appears the question is something different. WhatamIdoing, what article does this concern? --Una Smith (talk) 05:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Osteochondritis dissecans' FAC could use your reviews!

Due to the article's position as a fringe medical topic, few editors have actually done a thorough review of the article. SandyGeorgia suggested a MoS review, and I didn't know of a better place to ask! So, if you have some time to spare and wouldn't mind helping me, then please head on over to the article and give it a read! :-) Food_Puma 14:57, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Huzzah! 'Tis now a featured article. :) Food_Puma 19:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Will others please watchlist this article and try to comb through it and bring it over the hump? I do not feel it received thorough review at FAC, and each time I visit, I find issues. The prose needs work, there are linking and overlinking issues, undefined terms, redundancy, and I continue to find MoS issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for perspective

Periodically I see italicized footnotes like the following taken from Lipodermatosclerosis:

Note: This article contains material adapted from the public domain source "Lipodermatosclerosis: Questions and Answers", by the U.S federal government's Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center

What is the deal with these footnotes. Are they required? May they be removed? If so, when? etc... kilbad (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you have to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, and they should be incorporated into the regular reference list (until the article has been sufficiently developed/sourced that the original contribution is no longer apparent). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Medical cannabis

This article is in sad shape and needs some guidance for improvement. Because of the problems, I don't think an official peer review will help all that much, but if anyone can drop by, read the article, and use the talk page to offer up a roadmap with a few milestones other editors can shoot for that would be tremendously helpful. Unfortunately, the article has become a POV magnet for advocates and detractors, and what we really need are referees pointing towards the middle way. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 08:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

In other words, just another typical article in Wikipedia on a controversial topic. </sarcasm> Xasodfuih (talk) 14:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, is there truly any more appropriate response? Good point. One thing, though: I spent about 30 minutes briefly reviewing the medical literature today, and there does appear to be a lot of good sources on the topic, so it's not like we don't have access to timely information. I'm going to make an effort to start moving more of these references into the article. Viriditas (talk) 01:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge/move proposal for Causes of schizophrenia#Development of specific delusions

I think that section is not specific to schizophrenia. Please comment at Talk:Delusion#Merge proposal. Xasodfuih (talk) 12:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Mind map at "Lung cancer"

A mind map has arrived at "Lung cancer". I would appreciate comments here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

From my point of view mind maps are great for textbooks, and fit perfectly in wikibooks; but they do not in wikipedia; and can be considered most times OR unless they have been published as such... and anyway they are not very encyclopedic. (Mind maps were first proposed as a learning tool). I know nothing about cancer, but I think that it applies also here. --Garrondo (talk) 08:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Garrondo. I am copying you comment across to "Talk:Lung_cancer#Mind_map". Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The same editor has added mindmaps to a number of articles. Ultimately they constitute original research and are not very helpful for the general reader. JFW | T@lk 21:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This editor has asked if they should be used a few months back. And at that time the general consensus was no. It looks like he went ahead anyway.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:04, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Articles recently added to Category:Energy therapies

Based on its description, that cat is supposed to be reserved only for alternative medicine articles. Recently however, Special:Contributions/יוסי_ישראלי added a number of article to it. I've removed some articles that were clearly accepted therapies in conventional medicine, but some of the articles have hard-to-judge references (mostly because of poor formatting). Could someone else have a look at that cat? Xasodfuih (talk) 16:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC) Stuff I'm unsure about include: Laser interstitial thermal therapy and Transurethral microwave thermotherapy (I've removed these two since it seems unlikely they are CAM topics, but I could be wrong), and Low level laser therapy (left it in for now). Xasodfuih (talk) 16:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Break out the party decorations!

Two Featured article promotions in one day, ( Meningitis and Osteochondritis dissecans ) - well done guys 'n gals ! LeeVJ (talk) 19:46, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not thrilled with the state of Osteochondritis dissecans or the reviews it got at FAC. It has redundant prose, and each time I visit I'm finding more and more issues. I do wish others would comb through this article and try to bring it over the hump. Here is the cleanup that was needed after it gained Support at FAC, representative of the types of issues still present, and there are still some inline queries to be resolved. I also suggest keeping this one watchlisted, as an uncited statement with incorrect wikilinks was added a few days ago. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Sandy, I'm sorry for the below par review but it's not in my area of expertise. In my defence, I did spend two hours fixing the references which were a mess as you quickly spotted. I still think it will make a worthy FA but it was promoted a few days too soon in my very humble opinion. Graham Colm ^Talk 22:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no need to apologize, Graham :) Even Tony1 approved the prose, and the article is broadly within standard. I just expect better from Medicine articles, and I know we can still improve the clarity and prose. (Thanks for the ref cleanup; little by little, it's getting there.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The article has come a long way from where it began, and reviewing it was made difficult by the circumstances (purported class project of a high school student sensitive to criticism). I was feeling good about my part in it, until now. I am sorry I did not perform up to your expectations, SandyGeorgia. What exactly were your expectations? --Una Smith (talk) 22:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec x X) You can add "supported by editors (admins?) of a similar age with a 'team spirit' of badgering critics of their wiki friends". I think the article got as good as it was going to get under the circumstances. Don't forget that this a rare disease that most editors don't feel worth investing their time to critically review just to be badgered by a band of teenagers; see User_talk:Una_Smith#I_am_sorry., User_talk:FoodPuma#FAC, User_talk:Jakob.scholbach#An_Apology, User_talk:JimmyButler#Edit_wars_for_the_lose and comments at the actual FAC. We should really thank User:Jakob.scholbach (a mathematician) for most of the improvements during FAC. I for one am happy this ended on a positive note. Xasodfuih (talk) 22:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think Sandy's got a bloody gall, coming on here and saying "well, I promoted it but it's not what I'd have liked". There are no obvious errors in spelling or grammar and the article is probably factually correct: that's a damn sight more than can be said for some recent featured articles. Physchim62 (talk) 22:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is why Sandy promoted the article; it met all criteria and there was consensus to promote. No one ever said that the article was perfect. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, it's a damn sight better that some recent FAs, and shouldn't be moaned about. Bravo everyone who worked on it. And on Meningitis for that matter! Physchim62 (talk) 23:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) FYI: Raul promoted this one, not Sandy. Xasodfuih (talk) 23:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected, apologies to all concerned, but Sandy still shouldn't be moaning about FA quality or she'll do me out of a WikiJob :P Physchim62 (talk) 23:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think one of the reasons that Sandy is harping on it so much is the possibility of this. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Physchim62, thank you for dropping by the Doctors' lounge with your optimism and sunny disposition. Who promoted the article is of no consequence; I, too, would have promoted it because it is within standards and there was consensus to promote, and my concerns that WikiProjects don't adequately vet articles at FAC extend beyond the Medicine Project to all WikiProjects. Nonetheless, the article can and should be improved. The following work would be helpful before it is requested to appear on the main page:

• Maralia and I have done most of the basic MoS cleanup, but there are five unresolved inline queries (needing the attention of editors knowledgeable about the condition). These have not been addressed over several days; it doesn't appear that this article is well watched by the original editors or nominators.
• There are two long posts of issues on the talk page that address problems with the lead (there are unclear definitions and linking problems): Talk:Osteochondritis dissecans#Definition and Talk:Osteochondritis dissecans#Lead.
• The article was part of a school project and there are already indications it is not well watched and may deteriorate; I hope other editors will watchlist it. For example, an uncited, incorrectly linked sentence was added to the wrong section shortly after it passed FAC, [4] [5] and a merge tag has been unresolved for several days at Talk:Osteochondritis dissecans#Merge proposal: Crescent sign.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:55, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Consolidate?

Should herpetic whitlow and whitlow be merged? kilbad (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I would think so yes, but I've been wrong here many times before... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 20:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I would support a merge and redirect, but will defer that change to someone else. kilbad (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

April Fool

Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/Did You Know is gathering candidates for DYK on April 1. Anyone interested? Browsing the first page of Category:Disease stubs, below are a few that caught my eye. --Una Smith (talk) 05:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• Bird fancier's lung 1 sentence
• Blowout fracture 1.2kb
• Body fat redistribution syndrome 2.3kb
• Butterflies in the stomach 1.7kb
• Cancer previvor 1.5kb

request. Cardio. Coronary artery template

want template for coronary a. Like ramus, obtuse, etc should be included. More detail than current template needed. -iphone —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.247.1.2 (talk) 15:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• this is not in depth enough for all of the coronary arteries. They aren't even all mentioned in the coronary article. 128.125.28.196 (talk) 23:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

conus artery

marginal artery

ramus artery

septal artery

diagonal artery

RPDA

128.125.28.196 (talk) 23:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

MCOTW

This article is about five inches removed from WP:GA. It has numerous important and interesting angles, from clinical diagnosis to the psychosocial impact of screening. JFW | T@lk 16:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Duroziez's_sign links to itself?

I think instead of putting all of these signs only in aortic regurg article, we should also have each sign as an independent article with a nice little intra-wiki template linking them all together at the bottom. TY! 128.125.28.196 (talk) 23:39, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

template already exists - just need some work on individual artiles and pictures. 128.125.28.196 (talk) 23:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

request: bar chart for gm + - coverage of Cephalosporin

there is verbal listing of gm + and - coverage of each generation, but remember that bar graph you learned in medical school showing how much gm + and - coverage there is for each generation? That would be great for the article. You can find it in most pharm textbooks. 163.40.12.37 (talk) 14:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

(setting myself up to be ridiculed) But is it notable - i.e. does it matter ? Other than being a means of distinguishing some bacteria from others on a microscope slide, does the fact that both gram negative and positive bacteria have pathogenic members (e.g. cocci -ve Neisseria meningitidis and +ve Staphylococcus, and bacilli -ve Hemophilus influenzae and +ve Corynebacterium diphtheriae) actually make any difference in clinical practice? One starts antibiotics empirically, and when a microbiology report comes through it will have the organism and a list of sensitivities which are then used if the initial antibiotic did not clear things (e.g. even staph aureus on some occasions still proves sensitive to amoxicillin, notwithstanding that one usually assumes it will be resistant and need flucloxacillin). Indeed I am left underwhelmed when, on phoning up for a missing lab report after several days wait, I get a long account of how exciting that positive/negative bacterium was because they could not identify the species (which is really of limited interest to a patient) and when I then prompt about antibiotic sensitivities get informed that detail was quickly established as list xyz at the very outset (something which would have been very much of interest to the patient a few days prior). Maybe my microbiology lecturer was as boring as I thought, or did I really miss something useful ? General UK oral cephalosporin usage seems, IMHO, limited to cefalexin, cefaclor and perhaps cefuroxime as just personal preference/habit of the individual doctor (and sensitivities generally reported to just penicillin, ampicillin, flucloxacillin, cefalexin, metronidazole, tetracycline & ciprofloxcin as specific items - i.e. wider cephalosporin sensitivities are not tested for unless lab finds real difficulties in identifying a commonly used antibiotic that will work). David Ruben ^Talk 20:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

with resistances becoming a major world-wide issue, any figures that will assist doctors in training understand the limitations and pharmacology of Abx, then... yes, I would argue it matters. 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you aware that Wikipedia is not written for doctors in training? Articles are supposed to focus on information that is interesting to the general reader, who is neither a healthcare professional nor a patient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:38, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Almost anyone who was interested in knowing why cephalosporins work would be interested in knowing when they don't. --Arcadian (talk) 07:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

But is the gram status itself that important in knowing when they don't work? BNF starts section on them with "The cephalosporins are broad-spectrum antibiotics which are used for the treatment of septicaemia, pneumonia, meningitis, biliary-tract infections, peritonitis, and urinary-tract infections", and most important point it decides to cover first is that pharmacology similar to penicillins and they penetrate the cerebrospinal fluid poorly unless the meninges are inflamed. Notes cefuroxime greater beta-lactamase coverage (ie Haemophilus influenzae and Neisseria gonorrhoeae). Whilst for Cefotaxime, ceftazidime and ceftriaxone mention made of gram status only to extent less active against Staph aureus, and the discussion of the oral agents focus is on H. influenzae activity.

On treating a likely Staph infection, I'm not sure I would ever select a cephalosporin without microbiological sensitivity: my pick list flucloxacillin, to in case of allergy erthyromycin and if allergy/intollerance to that then use of fusidic acid. So whilst I would entirely expect mention of which bacteria the group well/poorly covers, that should be by bacterial name; but I'm not sure discussion in terms of gram stain status is that useful given that (IMHO) practising doctors don't think in such terms ? If a patient has diarrhoea and proves to have salmonella, I don't think 'gram negative' and which cephalosporin to use, for none are and instead ciprofloxacin is drug of choice if patient not improving on watchful waiting. By contrast urine infection with Ecoli (yes I have had to just look it up to check if also gram negative) are well treated with cephalosporins and greatest coverage probably with cefalexin in my area (vs trimethoprim or amoxicillin perhaps more traditionally used) - so gram status not part of my thinking as to whether cephalosporins used or not. Yes maybe I'm just being naive and "merely a GP", but I worry more about when with a urine infection to give 3 vs 7 day course of antibiotics or when not to empirically re-treat for symptoms and instead carryout a gynae examination or suggest GUM referral, and for persistant coughs sputum sample more used to see if bacterial at all & rule out TB allowing management of viral URTI or persisting bronchial hypersensitivity than whether my senquence of amoxicillin and 2nd line clarithromycin needs an alternative agent (and I don't recall last few H.Inf having consistant alternative antibiotic sensitivities). Time for me to shut up, and leave matter for others to decide :-) David Ruben ^Talk 12:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The Gram stain is fascinating, because it's a historic test based on staining properties, but it has real clinical implications. Gram-negative bacteremias tend to be more immediately dangerous than Gram-positive bacteremias, because of endotoxin and LPS. The Gram stain is often among the first microbiologic results to become available, long before speciation and sensitivities, so antibiotic choices are often based upon Gram-stain results out of necessity. Antibiotics are commonly conceptualized according to their coverage of Gram-positives vs. Gram-negatives, probably for this reason (at least in my training). I think it's reasonable to discuss the spectrum of various generations of cephalosporins in this context - whether in a sentence or two, or in a large chart, is an editorial decision. Regarding staph, I dunno what the situation is like in the UK, but here MRSA is everywhere. I can't remember the last staph isolate I saw that was methicillin-susceptible, but then I tend to see people who've had extensive interactions with the health-care system. MastCell ^Talk 06:21, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks like a good deal of the information is already present at Cephalosporin#Classification. The request appears to be that it be presented in a graphical form instead of text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure - sorry for the tangent. I guess the bottom line from my perspective is that if someone wants to create a chart, more power to them. Having the information in text form is an acceptable alternative to me. MastCell ^Talk 06:38, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks MastCell for enlightening me on this not being just a historical curiosity (never had high billing in my training or at least failed make impression above overload of facts in rest of pharmacology, and microbiology were more interested in ensuring we knew the gram stain process than any actual usefulness). With results generally taking 7 days in UK community setting (2 if urgent), the idea of getting such preliminary findings seems a utopia to me :-) David Ruben ^Talk 23:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I think upskilling the public on broad activities of antibiotics is an absolutely fantastic idea. Stop everyone splashing around augmentin forte like lollies. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

...not that I use antibiotics much in psychiatry XD Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe people get upset when someone proposes a graphical representation expanding on prose. It doesn't matter if the prose is already there (though incomplete). It matters that graphical representations of activity of cephalosporins are extremely important in training physicians and then training patients who are taking the drug. Pts often ask, why this drug vs this drug, doc? People should be PRO adding information, not CON. -same poster as initial. 128.125.77.26 (talk) 19:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Again: we do not care whether "graphical representations of activity of cephalosporins are extremely important in training physicians" or patients. It's irrelevant. Wikipedia is not a textbook for med students. It is not a source of advice for patients.

We care whether the article presents useful information that will interest the general reader, who is defined (in part) as being a person that is neither a healthcare professional nor a patient. Now: if you want to make a case that this image would clarify information for the general reader, would interest the general reader, or would organize information for the general reader, then I'm all ears (although I won't be creating the image myself anyway). But if your only arguments are that it will help med students save money on textbooks, or that it will help patients make the Right™ decision in the real world, then we're not really interested. Wikipedia cannot be all things to all people, and it is NOT most of what you've been advocating for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

anyone who can read english or any language is a patient of medicine. anyone who can read wikipedia is a patient. yes, the general reader likes pictures, charts, and graphs - especially ones that are not complicated. I think medicine should be written so the general public can understand it - aka the "general reader." It's a specific little dance you play when really in the end, it doesn't make a difference! 128.125.77.26 (talk) 01:47, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

even if you were born in the jungle and away from all health care as we know it in the modern world, that person technically is a patient of the person who birthed him (even if that person was the person in labor). Therefore, all humans are patients. 128.125.77.26 (talk) 01:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

C'mon, let's not get carried away. "Patient" is a situation, not absolute condition. One refers to a person as "patient" only if their treatment is a/the subject of the writing. Back to the topic, I'm confident that visuals provide a framework for organizing concepts. --Scray (talk) 04:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Nasal irrigation

It would be great if one or two knowledgeable people (preferably from the US) could put this article on their watchlist. There is some insanity going on at Talk:Nasal irrigation#Pulsatile irrigation. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:53, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Metformin

There's some brisk discussion on Talk:Metformin whether we need to discuss recent in vitro studies. Please comment. JFW | T@lk 21:27, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I will promote this announcement on my Twitter community (>1300 doctors and medical students). I hope it helps. NCurse _work 08:50, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Deletion sorting

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Medicine seems to be empty most days, and I suspect that there are articles of interest to our members that are involved in the deletion process. Is there a WP:WikiElf out there that would like to trawl through WP:AFD#Current_discussions every day or two to locate medicine-related articles (very broadly defined) for us?

I'll run through a few days' worth to find anything (except bios) that might be appropriate, but I don't realisitically think that I'll keep up with it in the longer term. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:38, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Delano Meriwether

I've recently created an article on Delano Meriwether an MD who was involved in the 1976 US swine flu immunization program. I have very little background in medical issues so I was wondering if someone from this project might be able to run their eyes over the medical section of the article...The Hack 04:31, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Had a general go at copyediting the stilted language (every sentance its own paragraph). David Ruben ^Talk 23:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Multiple personality controversy to Dissociative identity disorder

Join in the fun at Talk:Dissociative_identity_disorder#Merger_proposal Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:06, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

request color change on template

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Lumbosacral_plexus

I can't see the white lines between the yellow blocks - the white lines are important to tell what nerve is a branch of what. this is important for msk, ortho, neuro and many other branches of medicine if you are going to give me the run around. I would change the color myself but I fail miserably every time I try to modify a template. If you are able to edit templates successfuly, please consider changing the color of the yellow or adding black divider lines to the template for me so I can differentiate nerve branches. TY 128.125.77.26 (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the only yellow block that I see is the banner title. I don't see any white lines at all, but I have a white background. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the lightYellow background of the groupings does not have enough contrast against the typical white background, making this less accessible. (And that is without checking how it appears in monochrome or for color blind users.) Zodon (talk) 21:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Any color change should also be done to the other nerve templates, e.g. {{Autonomic}}, {{Nervous system}}, {{Brachial plexus}}, {{Cervical plexus}}, {{Cranial nerves}}, {{Limbic system}}, {{Medulla and pons of rhombencephalon}}, {{Trigeminal nerve}}, {{Spinal nerves}}, {{Meninges}}, {{Spinal cord}}, {{Nervous tissue}}, etc. Zodon (talk) 22:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

(I've copied my response from Template talk:Lumbosacral plexus) ::I don't object to changing the shading, but I think the gold used in that link looks more orange than yellow, and thus doesn't evoke the standard association (yellow = nervous system) that has existed for a century. Perhaps something halfway between? There's a good list of named colors at Web_colors#X11_color_names. There are a lot of tradeoffs to consider. I've seen people complain about shades of yellow that were too bright. I'd also like to preserve the traditional association between tan/brown and muscles, so I wouldn't want to nudge the yellow too far in that direction. Perhaps we could create a series of color templates (like "Template:ColorNervousSystem1", "Template:ColorCardiovascularSystem1", etc.), so we could embed those colors into the navboxes and infoboxes, and then continue to make subtle adjustments without having to update all the templates? --Arcadian (talk) 23:56, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Another template that needs to be changed is {{Infobox Nerve}}. The yellow in this should be the same as the nerve navboxes, but it is currently different (#FFEE77 vs. yellow). Per convention, the nerve templates should remain some shade of yellow - with the subgroups a different (preferably lighter) shade. --Scott Alter 00:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd support standardizing upon #FFEE77. (It was updated in this edit.) --Arcadian (talk) 00:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

That's fine for the title, but the problem is with the subgroup color. #FFEEBB looks slightly better than lightyellow (which is in use now), but it is on the orange side. Also, I just created a table of anatomy templates at Wikipedia:WikiProject Anatomy#Templates. The table contains the colors used in the navboxes, and I formatted the table's borders like the navboxes - so you can see how the colors contrast in the templates. --Scott Alter 01:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You're clearly on top on the integration issues involved. If you make a specific proposal on the change you would recommend, there's a good chance that we can push this forward. --Arcadian (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

While conceptually I agree with the neatness of defining the colors for a set of templates in one place, I am not sure about the performance hit involved. (There would be a large number of color template invocations per template, templates used on lots of articles, ...) While it would make making adjustments easier, the templates are still used a lot more than they are adjusted.

Nice to have the color schemes laid out as Scottalter did. Would be nice to add a brief explanation/key to traditional color associations for particular systems (where association comes from, etc.). The template documentation should also link back to the table.

If main nerve color remains yellow, then something like FFFFBB seems to strike a reasonable balance between trying to differentiate from Yellow and from white. But moving to off-yellow fine too. Zodon (talk) 05:55, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like we're all pretty much on the same page, but at risk into drifting into inertia. Does anybody object if I add Scottalter's color table (minus the template labels) to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)? (Sort of like this.) Of course, these colors may change in the future, and those changes would be subject to consensus, but having them in one location would make future discussions about color more productive. --Arcadian (talk) 18:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Outdent

I thought changing the Manual of Style required a more formal process(??)

Agree that having a listing of the template colors, rationale, etc. in one place would be helpful. Might be well to hold off on copying the colors to the MOS for a little bit while we expand the table and work out what colors to use. (Copying it would make more places that have to be updated/etc.) But a link from the Manual of Style, or indication on the talk page that effort being made to document the colors might help.

Right at the moment I am going through the anatomy templates and converting the documentation (most of which are boilerplate copies of the same text) to use a template {{Anatomy navbox doc}}, so that we can include a link to the color reference, wherever it winds up. I am also in the middle of expanding the list of the other anatomy templates (and the colors they use). Zodon (talk) 20:05, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

While this is probably more of a project for an anatomy wp, a passionate surgeon may want to take this up ... Many of the anatomy infoboxes could be improved. Most have blood flow that supplies the organ and innervation, but I requested previously (and Scott added to the template) that Spinal Cord lvl be added to the template. This is important clinically and "the general reader" who wants to learn about that nerve would arguably be interested in the spinal nerve that it arises from. So, in addition to the nerve that supplies "x" anatomy structure, the spinal nerve could also be added. -same as original poster. 24.43.8.159 (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Orignal research galore and edit war at hard and soft drugs

This articles has multiple severe problems despite the consensus to keep it as it is at the last AfD. I had removed:

• pro-hallucinogenic advocacy web site used as source for most of the article—unacceptable per WP:MEDRS
• Unsourced and seemingly original research definitions of hard/soft
• WP:SYNT examples based on matching published findings with the unsourced definitions

Only alcohol and nicotine were attributed to (non-peer-reviewed) expert opinion as "hard drugs", but even then it's not clear what definitions the sources use (if any). With little useful content left I redirected the article to Drug policy of the Netherlands, which purportedly (because this claim is unsourced too) is the only country to use this classification, and this was the only argument used as "keep" in the AfD. Needless to say, all my changes have been reverted by POV pushers who claim I've gutted the article. Xasodfuih (talk) 21:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the main promoter of WP:OR/WP:SYNT in this article is User:Ajax151 who has been POV pushing at Passive smoking to dilute the mainstream consensus with WP:FRINGE papers disputing the harm of passive smoking. He's the one using Erowid as source of medical info like toxicity and addictiveness of drugs in this article. Xasodfuih (talk) 04:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Erowid as source of medical info

I take it it's not kosher per WP:MEDRS, but then Jimbo is the ultimate content decider here (according to higher-ups than me), so who knows, maybe we should ask him... Xasodfuih (talk) 22:22, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

LA Weekly says: "It is an independent Web site run by a couple of neo-hippie data geeks without Ph.D.s, institutional backup or government funding. Two longtime partners who go by the names Earth and Fire (she’s the Fire), they’ve built the most comprehensive encyclopedia of psychoactive substances online." Not that different from getting medical advice from the playboy bunny if you ask me. Xasodfuih (talk) 22:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether a source is reliable depends a lot on how you use it, but I admit that it wouldn't be very high on my list for most purposes that editors might suggest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo has little to do with this. It is the consensus of regular contributors that Erowid is a hopeless source. Experimenting with psychoactive substances sounds like a highly individual experience, and unless you study the reactions in a scientific, reproducible way it is not likely to lead to reliable information. JFW | T@lk 00:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Alcohol articles

Can I raise some very serious concerns with the various alcohol articles. It appears that an editor David J. Hanson who is a professor of sociology and a major promotor of the health benefits of alcohol and incidently is funded by Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and who has a habit of using sockpuppets has had some fun editing the various articles on alcohol and health. I thought that I was reading an article on Kava Kava or valerian. I was left with the impression that if I didn't become an alcoholic I would be at high risk of kidney stones or if I didn't drink alcohol with every meal I would be at risk of picking up a life threatening bacterial plague and a range of other terrible diseases and alcohol consumption was not only an essential wonder cure all but a medical wonderdrug recommended by doctors for chronic daily consumption. There was a severe lack of information on the harm. The article long-term effects of alcohol was the worst offender. I have deleted out a lot of bias, research that has been debunked recently and other stuff and I have added a good section on the neuropsychiatric/psychological effects of long term alcohol abuse but so much more relevant info that is lacking and it still is quite NPOV violating. The remaining data on the page seems accurate at least according to current research but it is just biased and severely lacking. I scanned the alcohol cancer page and noticed a few glaring inaccuracies but haven't read it all and dread doing so. All of the alcohol and health articles need an urgent review by doctors who are familar with the toxicities of alcohol on health. As far as medicine goes alcohol is the cause of so many medical, psychiatric and social problems and is such a drain on society, the individual and health services, it really should be of top priority I feel for this project. NOTE the article isn't as bad as it was after I deleted a lot of stuff. My main complaint is what it is lacking at the moment and I am burnt out from wiki editing, I can't do it on my own. Just reading the newspaper every month there is a study coming out it seems linking even moderate alcohol consumption with an increased risk of certain disease like cancer or whatever. Just yesterday one came out on prostrate cancer. This is why we need doctors familar with the topic to get involved. I am pretty knowledgable about the dependence and long term effects on mental health of alcohol but only have a moderate knowledge on the wide range of health consequences.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way the articles survived by the looks of things for 2 years without any major challenge except people complaining on the talk page. This is quite serious that such important articles sat on wiki for 2 years promoting alcohol for its health benefits, without putting it into context or neutrality.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say, but this is hardly surprising to me. The article on anabolic steroids even got promoted to FA with a load of misrepresented and cherry-picked sources. Xasodfuih (talk) 01:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Alcohol consumption is the ninth leading cause of death world wide and the third in the USA. see List of preventable causes of death. Like many article it sounds like it will be a battle to bring it to NPOV. May take a look at some point. The lead of long-term effects is appropriately negative about the health effects. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The serious NPOV issues in the long term effects article have been dealt with for the most part. The main problem is what is lacking. Effects on liver is not even mentioned nor pancreas and probably a lot of other medical consequences which is why I think it needs reviewed. I don't think that there will be any problems as far as battling over adding content to the article as the consensus seems to be that what needed to be done was a rewrite which I did and fill in what is still missing which is not yet done. It was only a one man editing job by a professor employed by an alcohol lobby board, who can easily be reverted if he returns with biased edits until he gives up. Nobody agreed with his edits by the looks of the archived talk page.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 11:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Emedicine dictionary template isn't working

{{EMedicineDictionary}} just returns dead links. Is this a temporary situation, or is there a way of fixing the links? Graham87 03:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Their dictionary has been down for at least a few months. I've been deleting the individual links when I run across them, but the template probably ought to be deleted. --Arcadian (talk) 04:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't delete individual links - just fix the template !

eMedicine site generally seems to have been rearranged (I've previously addressed {{eMedicine}} changes). Still has a dictionary (although not having previously used the previous version I can't say if produces same results), so for asthma use http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/srchcont_dict.asp?src=asthma

Main overall eMedicineHealth search help is set up as http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/srchcont_em.asp?src=Asthma but to directly hit a fixed page use http://www.emedicinehealth.com/asthma/article_em.htm

 Done I've changed the template to the first option, given still specifies for dictionary. It uses same convention as previous of using "+" to link keywords: eg see usage in Fallopian tube#External links which gives a useful hit list :-) David Ruben ^Talk 12:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

But doesn't that violate Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided, #9? --Arcadian (talk) 18:09, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Of minor initial point - the template is not doing anything that it previously did/did-not do - I've only adjusted for the new eMedicine site layout changes, you created that template in 2006 :-) More importantly re that #9 point, it is not a general search engine request linking to various finds on the internet, but rather a list of definitions within the one resource (MedicineNet Dictionary, which is incorporated into eMedicineHealth now) (somewhat like PubChem links on {{Drugbox}} giving pages with multiple further links but all from same website). I'm guessing most of the time only 1 or 2 terms are returned. In Fallopian tube example, I see a couple different "hits" are for same text, another (still in same resource) adds a picture and interestingly "extrauterine" definition comes up as a distinction bewteen normal intrauterine pregnancies and ectopics that may occur in the tubes - I think that's a nice alternative (lateral thinking) system of considering the fallopian tubes by pregnancy location. David Ruben ^Talk 22:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

It is doing something it previously did not do: the eMedicine dictionary link used to go directly to a specific page with the definition of the term in question. --Arcadian (talk) 23:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

There also was a {{EMedicineConsumer}} (created by Arcadian) with link similarly broken that tried to access eMedicineHealth's own articles. I've fixed that link call. However as no "Consumer" term used by the website itself (as far as I can see) and only currently used by the one article of Dementia, I've been bold and moved it to {{EMedicineHealth}}. David Ruben ^Talk 13:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Efficacy of dietary oils in depression

See Talk:Major_depressive_disorder#Regarding_the_efficacy_of_dietary_oils_in_depression. Xasodfuih (talk) 05:59, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:24, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

We were indeed already subscribed to the alerts. I've added a link to the {{WPMED Navigation}} template so it can be accessed more easily. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 15:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:PHARM:CAT: Editors are moving forward...

In response to several comments, the re/categorization of pharmacology articles is going to begin. Ongoing refinement of the proposed categorization scheme will continue at WT:PHARM:CAT and via CfD's; however, I wanted to let you know about this categorization effort so that you (1) are aware and (2) might consider participating. kilbad (talk) 18:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I brought this idea up a while ago and may have even discussed it with Scott. I'm happy to see this going forward. -tk 24.43.8.159 (talk) 00:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit - nope, can't seem to find discussing this anywhere but my cursory search showed these ideas have been floating around for a while among many. It's awesome that Scott is taking the initiative. He truly should be awarded for his hard work on numerous wikiprojects. -tk 24.43.8.159 (talk) 00:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

problematic edits

Hi -- it's come to my attention that a new editor, Telepatty900 (talk · contribs), has been making edits to the articles about a number of fields of medicine, adding and removing information in ways that seem dubious to me. Being a neuroscience Ph.D. rather than an M.D., I'm reluctant to take any sort of decisive action except at Neurology, but I thought perhaps the project should be aware of this. Look at the contribs to see what is going on. Looie496 (talk) 18:20, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I've placed a level one warning for content removal on their talk page. These edits are massively disruptive, even if in good faith. Let's see where he/she goes from here. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 18:39, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Update -- editor has been blocked for 72 hr, and most if not all edits reverted. Looie496 (talk) 21:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)