Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

Welcome to the WikiProject Medicine talk page. If you have comments or believe something can be improved, feel free to post. Also feel free to introduce yourself if you plan on becoming an active editor!

We do not provide medical advice; please see a health professional.

• Unsure about something? Make sure to look at our style and source guidelines.
• Please don't shout, remain civil, be respectful to all, and assume good faith.
• Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
• Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~).
• Threads older than 7 days are automatically archived.
• Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Newsletter/Mailing_list

List of archives

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

Recent changes in WP:Medicine

Articles and their talkpages:

• In all Medicine articles (not talks)
• In articles with Top-, High-importance
• In articles with Mid-importance
• In articles with Low-importance
• In pages with NA, ???=unknown importance
• In the 1000 most popular articles (source)

Not mainspace:

• In all non-articles
• In all templates
• In Medicine navigation templates

Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
99	1,110	11,509	38,514	18,940	974	71,146

List overview · Lists updated: 2015-07-15 · This box:

Medical disclaimer

After discussion on multiple talk pages, it was revealed that multiple other language Wikipedias do have medical disclaimers. Initially, I was concerned about the decline in participation at WT:MED, where basic concerns are no longer being addressed:

1. Archived with no resolution
2. Most of these moved into mainspace with limited feedback, and now need to be dealt with
3. No one else helped with these, archived without further feedback
4. This problem was raised here and on an external website

Separately, I have been concerned with the effect of the education program on medical content-- considering declining participation in Wikipedia, I don't believe we can keep up with the bad content being added by students:

1. Problems with student editing, discussed at WP:ENB, moved to newly created WP:ENI: original thread
2. Continued discussion at User talk:SandyGeorgia
3. Continued discussion at User talk:MastCell
4. Separate but related discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales

Those discussions led to various proposals at:

1. User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer

Other language Wikipedia medical disclaimers

Wikipedia language	Number of articles	Template	Position in article
Chinese	732,000	zh:Template:Medical small	Top
Dutch	1,700,000	nl:Sjabloon:Disclaimer medisch lemma	Top
German	1,600,000	de:Wikipedia:Hinweis Gesundheitsthemen	Bottom
Indonesian	322,000	id:Templat:Penyangkalan-medis	Top
Norwegian	399,000	no:Mal:Helsenotis	Bottom
Portuguese	802,000	pt:Predefinição:Aviso médico	Section: Treatment
Turkish	220,000	tr:Şablon:TıpUyarı	Top

Proposed

This proposed version for use on en.wikipedia emerged from discussion at User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer and several other on-Wiki talk pages and external websites:

I am planning to install it on Tourette syndrome (where I am the only significant contributor) unless a significant consensus against emerges. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:28, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you proposing to blanket this template on all medical pages, or just a selection, and if so how are the articles to be selected? Lesion (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

And for those of is that have missed all those discussions elsewhere, could You explain the reasons to add it? --WS (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added the discussions I'm aware of above; there may be some I missed. I'm not "proposing to blanket this template" anywhere yet, but I do believe it's time to reconsider and discuss. There is too much evidence that people take Wikipedia medical content seriously, and aren't aware much of it is written by RandyFromBoise. As I am the "RandyFromBoise" author of a medical FA, I am more than happy to be one test case, and install the disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I would support adding it to the bottom of all medical articles by bot. Additionally would want it centered. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I want it at the top of drugs, conditions, but not BLPs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

We have WP:NDA. Much content exist on the web that is wrong. Maybe we need to convince manufactures of computers to add a warning when people turn their computers on or log onto the internet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:54, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

When you buy a power tool, it says "Warning, death may result". Not, warning if you're a dork and don't know how to use this tool, death may result. Anyway, thanks for the link to the NDA page (which I note is guideline, not policy)-- I will point that page here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:07, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I would support a trial if it combined a stronger statement inviting people to edit. I think anthony proposed somethinglike this a couple of years ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:NDA, it's weird that we consider {{recent death}} and {{current}} reason enough for a disclaimer, but not potentially life-altering content. I wouldn't mind working in some of your wording, but I'm still in favor of a more prominent disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the reason that those are acceptable is because they are temporary and provide information to experienced editors (namely, that they shouldn't be surprised by edit conflicts). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Disagree 100% with your take. Both of those templates most clearly contain wording to warn readers (rather than "experienced editors" as you say) that the information may not be correct, as it is changing rapidly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's what they say. But IMO what they say is not the most important reason why they are permitted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

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

I like Alanyst's version. Would be interested in trialing it to see if it increases the frequency of positive edits. I know last time we tried this people came around and removed them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I like the bottom-most one as it doesn't state not to rely on medical content, but to be cautious when it comes to guidance. Saying do not rely on its medical content is like completely undermining the hard work we do here, and saying its all rubbish not to be trusted. CFCF (talk) 08:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I shortened it and made it sound less negative. Not sure we should be using such a template. The rationale that because other language wikipedias use these templates should be qualified with the fact that their medical content is likely of lower quality then the medical content on the English Wikipedia. Lesion (talk) 09:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I only support a trial of this template at the top of the page if it clearly invites people to come and fix the content in question. Additionally IMO we should keep it to one line.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

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

I think we have a moral obligation to warn our readers that what they're reading is unreliable, and that the warning needs to be prominent at the top of the article. Whether that warning has a measurable effect on the quality of editing is completely irrelevant. But that said, I think WhatamIdoing's version is concise, to the point, and may help to educate potential editors. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I have not proposed any versions. I don't know who wrote the unsigned one above my earlier comments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Medical disclaimer: yes or no?

Should Wikipedia have a warning about our reliability at the top of each article or section that contains health-related information? (Let's address the nature of the warning in a separate discussion.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

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

The placement of a hyperlink to a general disclaimer at the bottom of the article, as is current practice, appears to me insufficient. This disclaimer is, practically, invisible - I wasn't even aware that it existed until I read this thread.

However, I think that any disclaimer should not demoralise those editors who have made good and often excellent contributions to medical content by suggesting that all such content is or should be treated as uniformly awful. I would therefore favour a more standard and moderate disclaimer, in a reasonable prominent position, to the effect that medical content "does not constitute medical advice and should not serve as the basis for any medical decision" which would link to the general disclaimer. Communicating honestly to any readership the limitations of WP content is not an act of oppression - it simply informs people and puts them in a better position to negotiate their own decisions. FiachraByrne (talk) 18:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support In the u.S. practically every health care provider has a disclaimer that basically says "If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911." It's not there to deprive callers of medical advice from their doctor, rather it's an acknowledgement that persons with emergent conditions may call their doctor instead of an A&E hospital or 911. We should at least be cognizant of the fact that before someone calls their doctor, they may consult Wikipedia to their peril. We need a similar "Hang up and call your doctor" message just like every healthcare professional puts on their call system. --DHeyward (talk) 03:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Lots of people are not really properly aware how exactly wikipedia works and how easily various inaccurate crap can slip in. Argument that there is even worse crap out there in internet is irrelevant, its our job to ensure that our readers are properly warned, also most of those even worse sites will not be among first google search results. "Badge of shame" complaint is just plain silly. If stating reality is "shameful" then too bad, gotta get used to it.--Staberinde (talk) 18:29, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I support the disclaimer because our medical content is unreliable, and a good number of our readers don't know that. It is the morally necessary thing to do. Not doing so is highly negligent. Would Lesion, James, JFW, CFCF or anyone else who opposes putting a disclaimer above all health information please explain to me the harm/s a disclaimer would do to outweigh the obvious good it would do in informing our readers? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

There are many less reliable sources on the internet than Wikipedia.[1] [2] [3] among hundreds of others. So yes if the warning drive people to other less reliable websites it will do harm. Some physicians provide advice that is less good than here [4]

Any evidence the disclaimer will do any good? What are people going to do instead? Read Cochrane reviews? Find systematic reviews in the Lancet / BMJ / JAMA regarding their condition? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Evidence that a clear warning about the reliability of our articles would be a fair, reasonable, inexpensive, morally necessary thing? No. I can't prove that. I'm speechless that anyone would even have to ask for proof of that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Anthony, you're being asked for evidence that it will work. If we slap a banner on the top of the page, will the typical reader exhibit the well-documented phenomenon of banner blindness or will the typical reader suddenly acquire and apply critical thinking skills? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Let's do a trial. But let's measure both the impact on the reader's grasp of our reliability and the impact on editor behaviour. Study design and sample size is everything. If our volunteer community can't throw up someone with demonstrated expertise in this kind of research, do you think we could hire someone? It's tedious and exacting work. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the vast majority of people who do not contribute to Wikipedia tend to have a low opinion of the information on Wikipedia, and those who regularly contribute certainly understand that it is advisable to take this information cum grano salis. What we are actually doing is then duplicating information already supplied by the disclaimer at the bottom of every article, and telling people what they already know. It may just be more clutter a the top of the article imo... Lesion (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

You don't know that. Do you? Vast majority, eh? Where's your source? What you just said there doesn't match my experience at all. There is a wide spectrum of understanding about the reliability of Wikipedia among the people I know - it seems to be related to how much time they spend online. We have to duplicate the information found in the current disclaimer because most people don't read it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Yep, a lot of the people coming to the web for health information are not web-savvy research-savvy people like most of us, but often people who aren't necessarily heavy information consumers, who may have just been diagnosed with some scary disease and are desperately looking for more information. The web is notorious bad for this: it would be good if WP could become an oasis of reliability, but right now it's not. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 11:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Here I trace out a roadmap to that oasis. I'd very much appreciate your feedback on that, if it interests you. It's off-topic for this thread, but I'd welcome your thoughts on my talk page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

@Anthony: I based that view on my conversations about Wikipedia with people offline and online (not wikipedia). Vast majority have generally low opinion of Wikipedia in my experience. You ask for a source yet you provide no source for your own opinions apart from your own experience. It could be argued that there is no real evidence that people use medical information on Wikipedia and end up harming themselves. Perhaps your link is evidence that people don't read the disclaimer, I don't know. Perhaps people do read it, but only once and then not again. This whole thread is opinion in fact, so kindly do not selectively ask for sources for my opinion =D Lesion (talk) 12:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah. You sum this up nicely. You propose we wait for someone to get hurt before we act. I think it is just self-evident that we have a duty to advise our readers of the unreliability of our content. I've seen comparisons above with crap medical sites and the impenetrable user-unfriendly scholarly literature. Are you, James, saying we should model our transparency on that of those crap sites? And no, due to its density, the scholarly literature is no substitute for Wikipedia. We own the encyclopedia space. And we have a duty to our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Unless we can show that it improves the quality of our articles I oppose its addition. Will clutter the page. Emedicine has issues and is better than many sites [5]. They put their warning at the bottom. Doc James (talk ·contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Precisely as I said, Anthony. We already have a general disclaimer, and there is plenty of rubbish health content online that doesn't have a disclaimer at all (e.g. people's personal web pages about obscure medical theories). That is the status quo. What would I like to see in a disclaimer that makes it worth the implied embarrassment of saying "what you are about to read may or may not suck"?

Firstly, I want the decision to be reversible. Therefore, a trial seems reasonable. Ideally we should have some way of determining whether the trial is achieving the desired effect. We could look at article feedback results with and without a disclaimer.

Secondly, we want people to understand that if an article does suck, its informative vacuum is not forever but it can be fixed provided people improve the content based on sources that everyone can trust.

I share Sandy's frustration with the accumulation of bad stuff in so many articles, but I think we need a little bit more faith, and we need to support people like James who are systematically attacking the highest-impact articles and working them up to impeccably high standard (as evidenced by GA/FA status). I am saddened that with work and other commitments I currently lack the uninterrupted editing time to make beautiful articles (although I still want to get aortic dissection to GA and get Barend Joseph Stokvis to FA - one day....) JFW | T@lk 13:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

"Support James?" What are you talking about?

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

Anthonyhcole. What I am talking about is this: James has been systematically working on high-impact articles, and that is an effort that deserves all the support it can get. Even if it's cheering from the sidelines and the occasional GA review.

I think it is very easy to support a disclaimer on the basis of the precautionary principle (more warnings = better), but I prefer to start from the premise that people currently know that our content is likely to suffer from variations in quality, and any warning must therefore confer a measurable benefit compared to the status quo. JFW | T@lk 15:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

What do you base that premise on, JFW (people currently know that our content is likely to suffer from variations in quality)? Have you never met anyone who is amazed to discover Wikipedia can be altered by anyone at any time? Never? Not one? Your position is morally bankrupt. And all of this mewling that "Oh, warnings don't work; it might make people stop looking stuff up on the internet; there are worse sites; etc., etc., ad nauseam simply disgusts me. I don't know if I have the stomach for this. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:19, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

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

That works both ways: it will warn the reader off both the good and the bad information. The reader does not actually know which is which. Because of cognitive biases, people who are told "This is unreliable" are prone to believing that the stuff they personally disagree with is the unreliable stuff and the stuff they agree with is the reliable stuff. So let's imagine an article that really is correct, but the reader doesn't agree with it: do you want the reader to say, "Huh, it says that when your blood pressure is 160/100 that you really should take your meds, but it says at the top that this is all unreliable anyway, so I'll just skip taking my blood pressure pills." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, we don't have to put it on articles that are reliable. Here I outline a proposal to create a class of reliable article. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

@JFW: the difficulty lies in getting that mini-essay message across in one concisely worded line-- see above discussion =D Lesion (talk) 13:39, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I cannot speak for James, but I don't think there is "obvious good" (unless one simply assumes that the disclaimer will have its intended effect) and the harm is clutter. I agree with doing this as a reversible trial, because the argument for doing it is unconvincing (i.e. not clearly "better" than what we have now). A similar argument could be used to support pop-up disclaimers with required acceptance, etc - I know that's a bit of a straw man, but it's along the same path without a clear barrier. -- Scray (talk) 13:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I honestly think this will be eye catching clutter, which will trigger a mental "Well duh" from 95% of readers. I don't believe it will stop someone using Wikipedia for personal medical information. Lesion (talk) 13:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• If this is to be a trial, we should agree on some method of quantifying the baseline status of article(s) compared to the status at the end of the trial period, and how to distinguish this from any change in the article that would have occurred anyway. Someone mentioned analyzing reader feedback. Lesion (talk) 13:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

  If this is intended to be a trial, we should get plenty of people to do the boring work of analyzing the data, so that it's not just one (possibly very busy) person stuck with the grunt work. Good design is important, but unprocessed data is worthless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

  If there's to be a trial, yes. Does anyone know of a volunteer who has genuine expertise in this kind of study design, and who might be interested in taking this on? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The intended effect we're discussing in this thread is informed readers. We can, in fact must, survey the readership before and after deployment to see if they're better informed about Wikipedia's reliability. If you want to discuss trialling WP:Invitation to edit, please do so in another thread. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason why we are discussing an "invitation to edit" is that I (and it appears others) only support a banner if it results in improved articles / more positive edits. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem with your proposal for me, if I'm reading you correctly, is that you'll remove the disclaimer if the "invitation to edit" aspect fails to show an impact. Have I got that right? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes I would not support full rollout if the "invitation to edit" aspect does not have a benefit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that logic, Doc J, is that we'd be initially (per these samples) inviting people to contribute only if they have access to high quality medical sources ... not everyone does ... it may not be a fair trial. For example, if we start by me putting a template on Tourette syndrome, and no edits result, does that say a) the article was fine, b) readers didn't have access to journal sources, or c) something else? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

We discussed various trial designs in the archive of WT:ITE. I'm sure a fair trial could be run on that aspect. You'd need a big sample size. The problem with this discussion is we're not being engaged on the merits or demerits of a prominent medical disclaimer. James and JFW are just saying a prominent stand-alone disclaimer is out of the question - and not justifying their position. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure we should put such a notification on any FA? Maybe should choose non GA/FA articles... Lesion (talk) 16:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

On the point of surveying readers: This is currently very difficult. And I'm superbusy for the next couple of weeks. But if you'll remind me about it, say, after Christmas, then I'd be happy to see whether something like WP:AFT5 could be used for gathering reader feedback on specific articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Sue, a bonus please. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:05, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Support, with the mild qualification that the exact optimum wording be worked out soon, and perhaps some indications regarding whether or not some articles of this type, which could perhaps result in serious negative consequences for people who might follow them blindly, should perhaps be included in "pending revisions" and, maybe, a new form of "expert pending revisions" of people perhaps vetted by the community to be considered trustworthy in such matters. Maybe an RfC or some other means to get broad input would be best. I myself, as a non-medical editor, might like "Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia anyone is allowed to edit. As such, it can happen that less than reliable information or biased information can and often is added to various articles. While we do everything in our power to ensure that such information is quickly appropriately edited, and welcome all editing based on high-quality sources, wikipedia should not be considered a substitute for professional advice." or something like that. John Carter (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Oppose, per the reasoning of LT910001 given below. --WS (talk) 04:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

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

On the "banner of shame" claim, I basically wrote all of Tourette syndrome and I would proudly wear a disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Article proposal

OK, I see some resistance to putting a template on an FA (personally, I disagree ... autism is not in good shape, and I was willing to be a guinea pig at TS, but whatevs).

How about if someone who knows how to figure such things out (I don't) determines which is our most important and most viewed GA and we trial that?

While we're here dickering over the small print, Wikipedia is busy promoting massive poorly sourced POV medical content (in an area upon which our readers surely based medical decisions) throughout the walled garden of {{Cannabis}} articles, which two sections down, you'll find more work than the two editors who are engaging can pretend to deal with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I do not see a consensus to add these templates and am become more and more hesitant that we should pursue this after reading the above discussion. I see a bunch of potential problems and have a lot of unanswered questions regarding it:

1. Does it make any difference? People may just have banner blindness and ignore them all together. Thus it may be wasted effort that could be better spent on improving content.
2. And if it does make people's change their behavior will this change be positive or negative? What do we view as positive and negative behavior changes in our readers and how do we measure these? If people stop using Wikipedia, which I think is unlikely, what will they use instead? Nothing, emedicine, the websites of manufacturers, uptodate? Is this a positive or negative change?
3. Have we done a comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia to other sites? Samir and I tried to do an analysis with medical students at the U of T. We had a protocol drawn up using medical students with access to Wikipedia versus uptodate versus nothing. We wanted to look at tests scores on a licensing type exam. The ethics review committee denied the application.
4. If people decide to use nothing and become less educated about their own condition is this a good or bad thing? There are people who argue it both ways. IMO you want people activity engaged with the literature around their condition.
5. While this increase or decrease the number of positive / negative edits being make? Could this banner increase poor quality edits to articles? How does one determine this? With respect to the education program we have groups that state that it is an over all benefit to Wikipedia's quality and groups who say it is an overall harm. Who and how do we decide if this works if we trial it?
6. How much time are we going to spend working on this? It will require broad reaching consensus for implementation. This is exceedingly hard to get and requires a lot of time. Think of VE and pending changes. And determining if it works and what we define as working will be equally hard.
7. We cannot even agree on the wording to start with. Some want harsher word. Some want wording to invite people to edit.
8. There are requests that "experts" should be involved with running the trial. We of course have no money to pay said experts. Convincing the WMF to fund something is difficult / a full time job. I would say that having the foundation work on WP:Turnitin is more important.
9. What is an "expert"? This is far from a single unified group. I have asked a good dozen lawyers questions regarding the copyright of X-rays and have gotten more than a dozen different answers. The same occurs in medicine. With respect to breast cancer screening we have people come to Wikipedia and curse us as we contain the conclusions of the Cochrane collaboration and we have people come and curse us as we contain the conclusions of the US services task force among others. The conclusions of these two groups are more or less opposite. And each camp things we at Wikipedia are killing people if we provide any space for the views of the other camp.

Anyway I am not convinced and going back to editing content. One of may favorite teachings from medical school is "don't just do something, stand there" used in the context of interventions of unknown benefit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

James:

2. Does it make any difference? We won't know until we try. Some not-completely-stupid people think it may and is therefore worth doing - some such people disagree.

3. Have we done a comparison with other sites? Why are you asking that? That other sites are more or less reliable would be good to know but you have failed to show what relevance that has to this question.

4. People may stop looking things up on the internet. Really?

5. "Will this increase or decrease the number of positive / negative edits being make? Could this banner increase poor quality edits to articles? How does one determine this?" Intelligent, non-biased before/after study. The few "studies" I've seen of the education program have featured none of these qualities.

6. You don't have to do a thing. In fact, given your and JFW's attitudes, I'd rather you both stay right out of it.

7. "We cannot even agree on the wording to start with." We're still discussing that. We (those who actually want a disclaimer) will agree on wording easily enough if those who don't will stop throwing spanners in.

8. "There are requests that "experts" should be involved with running the trial. We of course have no money to pay said experts." The WMF does. You're the one who insists we "prove" that warning our readers of our unreliability is a good thing. Please don't turn around and say, "Oh, but that can't be proven because we can't afford the expertise, it's too hard to convince the WMF, they should spend their money on other things."

9. What is an expert? In this instance it's simple, since we're doing a straightforward reader survey. There are polling companies in every civilised nation whose expertise is for sale.

Frankly, unless you can come up with something better than this to oppose a disclaimer, I'd rather you did go back to editing and JFW went back to whatever it is he does. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:07, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is increasing my opposition. We should all go back to improving content. At least we all agree that that is something which needs to be done and will likely have a positive effect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments from LT910001

Have made a separate section to stop this getting too messy. I do not support this proposal. Although I agree that we should strive to keep information accurate, reliable, and sourced, and I agree it's noble goal, I don't support this for the following reasons:

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

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

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

Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Version Cas Liber

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

User:Casliber has proposed version CL here (Please read his thoughtful reasoning):

Is this a version you can support? (We can discuss issues such as the nature of the trial and where to place the disclaimer elsewhere.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

sandy recommends removing the 'us'. I am okay with that. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Is this thread potentially a waste of effort? There is no clear consensus for any extra disclaimer to be inserted at the head of medical articles currently. Lesion (talk) 06:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Seppi333's 2¢

Too lazy to read through the whole thread, so I'll just give my thoughts/advice:

A medical disclaimer is a good idea, but some people personalize things, so don't address the reader directly when disclaiming and, more importantly, don't tell the reader what to do. A disclaimer of any kind, be it investments, medicine, or, more important than both of those, your skydiving parachute, should just be cautionary (if legally possible), not a request or command. An unnecessarily strong statement just runs the risk of alienating/offending the target audience.

no.

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

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

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

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

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

Agree that we should hesitate before claiming that medical articles are a special case. Lesion (talk) 06:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The guideline lists the exceptions and the entire run of our medical articles doesn't qualify as "occasional".12:58, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Aaah yes, this that became a guideline in July 2005 with the participation of about 15 people - before we were inlining references etc. @Lesion, medical articles are a special case due to the considerable issues with sources and claims that are much less prevalent in other articles. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Which means it has been accepted for ~8 years while being debated often enough to make the perennial proposals list. That isn't something a single wikiproject can overturn. Your assertion that they are a special case is meaningless without evidence.©Geni (talk) 16:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

This sort of "it's against the guideline" doesn't impress me. Yes, it's against the current guideline. So? If people want to do this, then they can make a WP:PROPOSAL to change the guideline. WP:Consensus can change even at guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree we would need a wider discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not 100% opposed to medical disclaimers, but I do have to remind people here that any decision made from a discussion here is largely a local consensus specifically confined to WikiProject Medicine. In order for such a proposal to become valid, it would require overall community consensus Wikipedia-wide, since Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles is an existing guideline. The current consensus is that we do not place disclaimers within articles, because we have pages such as Wikipedia:General disclaimer, Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer, Wikipedia:Content disclaimer et cetera which fulfil this purpose. Sure, there's no specific policy on the issue, but the existence of a content guideline is enough to justify seeking overall consensus first prior to making such a huge change from the status quo. I recommend starting something over at the WP:Village pump. --benlisquare_T•C•E 01:10, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Benlisquare, I think starting something at the Village Pump in the New Year would be better than doing it over the holidays, when many are busy. Also, the discussion here is to help tease out which version we would even be proposing. Going forward to a broader audience without better definition here would be, IMO, premature. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:29, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Geni, do you not find it interesting that you are the only editor who has removed the disclaimer, and you've removed it four times? [6] Are admins immune to edit-warring blocks? You seem to be the only editor troubled by the disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:21, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Four time over a period of two weeks while trying to debate the matter? Yeah I'd expect that to fall within the limits of what is allowed.©Geni (talk) 03:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Version L

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

The necessity of disclaimers

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

That’s the promise of Wikipedia in health care — a freely accessible and user-friendly platform through which to explore virtually any subject in medicine. But there’s another side to consider. During our pulmonology block last year, two of my classmates saw an error in the site’s entry for hyperventilation. They fixed the mistake and, as a joke, added “Kenny’s syndrome” as a name for a particular condition. To their surprise, the edit stayed for weeks, and they even found other websites citing my friend as an acid-base disorder. Hence, the opportunity for anyone to edit Wikipedia with minimal regulation has a terrifying capacity to influence the environment for clinicians-in-training. In the worst-case scenario, these inaccuracies could adversely impact the care that patients eventually receive.

— Nathaniel P. Morris, New operating system: Wikipedia’s role in medical education brings awesome promise — and a few risks, Boston Globe, 18 November 2013

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

Another 2¢

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

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

Suitability of our FAs

Some participants in these discussions have expressed the idea that our FAs don't need a disclaimer. (We used to have a nice chart of our FAs on the WP:MED mainpage, which seems to have disappeared along with a lot of other helpful content, but I digress ... )

So, looking at Wikipedia:FA#Health and medicine, I can say that at minimum the following have isssues:

• Asperger syndrome has not been updated since Eubulides (its main author) left, although I did update it for DSM5.
• Autism Ditto AS, Eubulides author, not only is it outdated, but DSM5 completely changed the scheme in autism spectrum disorders, so this article needs major work.
• Major depressive disorder has always been a sourcing problem, needs attention, and may be outdated per DSM5.
• Menstrual cycle isn't being watched, you only need glance at the References to see the aricle has likely fallen from FA status.
• Schizophrenia is outdated and has some sourcing issues.
• Water fluoridation is another Eubulides FA, and I doubt it has been maintained to standard since he left.

Those are just the ones I know about; I would guess that 50% of our medical FA content would not stand up to WP:WIAFA scrutiny. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Draft RFC started in user space

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

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

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:55, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Did you want comments/edits done in your userspace? There are some interesting background discussions at Wikipedia_talk:Medical_disclaimer, worth reviewing first.LeadSongDog come howl! 17:04, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

You can comment either here or at User talk:SandyGeorgia/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:05, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Medical cannabis

I've begun cleaning up primary sources, but the task there is larger than one editor can complete. Any help? I know there are reviews on some uses ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a good example of the problems I mention above ... there is no way I can get to everything in this article myself, it is citing primary sources galore, and because it looked well cited, people might take medical advice from it. Help!!! Or add a disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I can imagine this will be tricky (not having looked at it yet), and a good example of why elevating at least some of MEDRS to policy would be useful. WP:DISCLAIM would be cited against disclaimers. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 02:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

We allow {{current}} and {{recent death}}; would ya think medical misinfo is at least as important? Anyway, on Medical cannabis, I can strip the primary sources, but since I don't have full journal access, it's harder for me to re-add reviews. I Would Love Some Help in there-- it's massive. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh sure, personally I think the quality of medical content on WP is a big (maybe one of its biggest) problems; I'm just anticipating the arguments you'll run into in what is likely to be a controversial editing area ... Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 02:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

So, as SandyGeorgia has posted on my Talk page, further digging shows we have:

• Cannabis
• Medical cannabis
• Effects of cannabis
• Long-term effects of cannabis.

These, in their health information, constitute a gigantic festival of POV, built on poor medical sources and selective, spurious interpretations. Anybody getting their information from WP on this would think cannabis is not only harmless, but a wonder cure for many things from bipolar disorder to cancer. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 09:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes there are occasionally attempts to add this sort of content to other articles. And I try my best to keep it well sourced. Agree that there appears to be a number of editors very favorable to its use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

What are they smoking? Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Charming. I do not see a neutral point of view towards the article subject matter in some of the comments here, and that is unfortunate. At this point, 52% of Americans support medical cannabis, so to find editors who appear to also is hardly noteworthy. I question Alexbrn's ability to be neutral and, lacking NPOV, to use PUBMED appropriately. Sandy helped me to understand MEDRS and the use of PUBMED only last night. Yet with only one day of experience, I was able to find a wealth of information that conflicted with Alexbrn's take. I see from comments above what appears to be a lack of understanding or education about the topic, and a clear POV. This isn't going to help. I hope someone will review Alexbrn's edits to the cannabis articles, as well as research to see what was missed, or twisted. It took a good 45 minutes just to deal with this one (MS) section. I want help reviewing these edits, or please stop changing the articles and instead just tag them so as to not make things worse. petrarchan47tc 04:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you know what my clear POV is on this topic, because I certainly don't! If you can improve the article over what I've done that is great (and you seem to have found better sources for the MS stuff than I did, which is likewise great) - but that doesn't somehow validate prior poor sourcing or misrepresentation, of which there is a lot in this suite of articles. I'm not sure why you seem to bear some kind of grudge here; in the face of the serious and extensive problems these articles present it isn't helpful: editing resources need to be going into improving the content, not bickering. If you find something specifically wrong raise it in Talk or fix it, but please don't try and make this a venue for a continuation of an argument about Monsanto from several months ago. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 05:35, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

(Add:) Actually, though initially blithely accepting Petrarchan47's replacement content as better than mine, on closer inspection I'm not quite sure that the sourcing is the best:

• this has a principal author who is chairman of the German Association for Cannabinoid Medicines, and a co-author who serves on a working group of the International Association of Cannabinoid Medicine; follow-up correspondence has raised an eyebrow.
• this seems to be a rather polemical opinion piece by three gentlemen who are not best-credentialed (two Jesuits and a lawyer, it seems). And - is this not a pay-to-publish journal?
• this I can't say anything about since I cannot locate a full-text online and it seems it's in Spanish (which I don't speak). I am assuming Petrarchan47 has reviewed the full text.

So yes, further thoughts on this sourcing would be useful. It seems (in general, at least) Europe and US may have slightly diverging views. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 09:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Petra, are you saying that a scientific, evidence-based approach to editing medical articles is "POV"? If so, perhaps you would take that discussion to the talk page of WP:MEDRS. I've responded to similar personalization of this issue on my talk page; I hope we will see no more of this. We can discuss which are the highest quality, and most recent reviews, without resorting to personalization. There are problems in Muller-Vahl's work, and a built-in bias. We all want accurate medical information presented to our readers: like Alexbrn, if you detect a POV in my editing, I'd like to know what it is, other than the POV that says we follow MEDRS. Also, I do speak fluent Spanish, and I have subscribed to that Revista, and no, Petra did not fully represent that source, so I'm not sure whether s/he speaks Spanish or accessed the full text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

To the above list we can add:

• Cannabis in pregnancy
• Cannabidiol

Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:26, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

This is akin to the POV walled garden of articles found in the autism suite back in 2007; it took Eubulides about a year to clean it up. We've got duplicate, poorly sourced text all over the place, and it is of the worst kind-- that is, the kind that people might mistakenly use for (bad) medical advice, because it looks well sourced. We could use some attention on this entire suite of articles. Too much for one or two editors to deal with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• Re: cannabis in pregnancy, once all primary sources are removed, is there enough left to warrant a stand alone article rather than a short section of the main cannabis article? Lesion (talk) 15:31, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

No. I've come across some usable secondary material on this, but there won't be enough for a standalone article IMO. Looking at the cannabis "suite" as a whole, I'm beginning to think there is enough for two articles, "Cannabis" (history, botany, sociology, cultural, etc.) and "Cannabis and health" (or somesuch) about medical uses and consequences. But how to get from here to there? My first impulse is to remove some of the worst primary-based material across all the articles, and see what that leaves ... Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 15:37, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Bingo (Lesion). Dealing with the POV walled garden will be more expedient if the text is rationalized, duplication minimized. It's the same primary-sourced crap repeated across multiple articles. I will be busy for a few days, Alexbrn is hard at work on it, hope someone can help. There are secondary reviews available, but I don't have full journal access (only Cochrane). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I have now nuked the cannabis in pregnancy article, leaving two sentences. There were two reasonable sources, one of which was being misrepresented (now fixed). The remaining stub should probably be merged somewhere in the long run and expanded with material based on good sources (for those interested, I have preserved the removed article content on the article's Talk page). Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 11:10, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I added a merge proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

And this hot-off-the-press article looks like it might be very pertinent. Unfortunately, Springer journals are about the one thing I don't have access to :-( Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:16, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

That would be:

• Gordon AJ, Conley JW, Gordon JM (2013). "Medical consequences of marijuana use: a review of current literature". Curr Psychiatry Rep. 15 (12): 419. doi:10.1007/s11920-013-0419-7. PMID 24234874. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).

I will try to get hold of it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• Not sure if these contain POV, but there is also cannabis and memory. There is a whole navigation template dedicated to this topic. Lesion (talk) 18:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• Yea Wikipedia! Here we have an entire POV suite of medical information, and articles upon which people most assuredly make daily decisions that affect their health. We've got a big cleanup task ahead on these. We dodged a bullet on autism, Andrew Wakefield and MMR vaccine controversy, because we had lots of good editors in there. We will need same here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:30, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• What's the best way to coordinate this effort? A sub-page somewhere or ... ? Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 11:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• See a sample at User:Eubulides/sandbox/autism. The autism walled garden was a much huger mess than we see in the cannabis articles, so I set up that sandbox which Eubulides eventually took over and moved to his space so we could prioritize our work. With a POV walled garden, a systematic approach is helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

In response to Alexbrn, one thing that I think a lot of wikiprojects and subjects would greatly benefit from would be some sort of "prospectus" of topics which are demonstrably significant enough for inclusion here, and sources which could be used to gather preliminary material. Basically, I'm thinking of pages like those in Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles, and some others which I am still developing along those lines. At least one such list, from the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, I'm still a day or two of active review of the sources themselves to adding here, because of the markedly different content and outline structures of the two editions. But if someone wanted to review reference works on cannibis or any other medical topic to see what gets more and less attention, or none at all, in them, that would probably help in developing the comprehensive nature of the content here on those topics a lot. John Carter (talk) 20:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The garden grows

Summarized anew below
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Cannabis Medical cannabis Effects of cannabis Long-term effects of cannabis Cannabis dependence Cannabis in pregnancy Cannabidiol and {{Cannabis}}. All with medical content that relies on primary sources, all containing original research and synth. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC) Might want to add: Cannabis and memory Compassionate Investigational New Drug program Similar problems in evidence. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC) And Tetrahydrocannabinol Cannabis (drug) - would you believe! Cannabis smoking - more health effects Cannabinoid receptor Synthetic cannabis Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 21:27, 1 December 2013 (UTC) There is a Wikiproject:Cannabis, which I have notified about this discussion in case the project is active. Lesion (talk) 16:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC) They must be, because someone came out of the woodwork to revert my "sabotage". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC) This article as well seems to be pretty high up on the list of WP:Cannabis. MEDRS should really be applied here, I would start but I need to get to bed. Gateway drug theory CFCF (talk) 23:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC) Now there is also this Medical cannabis in the United States Cannabis in the United States I'll take a quick look, but considering what we've found Medical cannabis in the United States might need to be scrapped entirely. CFCF (talk) 10:32, 7 December 2013 (UTC) And the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program article has been de-tagged, though this is just a minor coat rack within the suite (sample: "in the 30 years he has been smoking marijuana, he says, he has not had a new tumor"). Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 06:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC) I don't understand why you placed MEDRS tags there. I don't see a MEDRS issue-- I see a more serious BLP issue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:29, 3 December 2013 (UTC) It's because I was uneasy with the heavy implication of medical effectiveness by accumulation of anecdote, without at least some properly-sourced medical context. This is an area I think where WP:FRINGE comes into play: articles shouldn't be devoting a lot of space to uncontextualized claims that (e.g.) cannabis has halted somebody's tumour progression. Searching around, I haven't (yet) found any high-quality medical material on this (there is http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J175v02n01_02 - but this seems a bit iffy ... but might be useful for helping with the BLP aspects). Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 06:46, 3 December 2013 (UTC) People are free to believe and say that cannabis halted their <whatever> in an article of this nature as long as that statement is properly attributed to them and they aren't making a general medical claim. I do not see any WP:MEDRS issue there. The BLP issue, though, is serious, and considering that WhatamIdoing was in there in 2010 when it was uncited (and 2011), I want to know WhatWereYouDoing? Folks, MEDRS is guideline; BLP is policy. I've deleted a lot of uncited text about living persons and started a post at WP:BLPN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC) I was thinking that if I got involved in that group of articles, I'd spend the next year dealing with nothing else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Progress is being made, albeit slowly. At least we've moved to the point of being able to discuss the relative merits of secondary reviews, instead of laypress and primary sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Language issue

I'm beginning to think I speak Chinese. Or don't read English. Some eyes at Talk:Medical cannabis might help move things forward. I'm frequently unable to understand why the massive walls of text in there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Where does work stand?

One HECK of a lot of progress has been made here in a few weeks on the POV primary-sourced walled garden at {{Cannabis}}, so maybe other editors would be less fearful to wade in now ... summary:

• Medical cannabis (cleaner now, needs some citations and expansion)
• Cannabis (cut medical cannabis to summary style, rest shold be reviewed
• Effects of cannabis (issues still)
• Long-term effects of cannabis (issues still)
• Cannabis dependence (cut the primary sources, cleaner now, ready for expansion, needs DSM5)
• Cannabidiol (haven't looked)
• Cannabis and memory (haven't looked, likely needs major work)
• Compassionate Investigational New Drug program (cleaned out BLP, not much there worth worrying about)
• Tetrahydrocannabinol (haven't looked)
• Cannabis (drug) (could be reviewed now that medical cannabis is cleaner)
  • Fifteen-year-old data readded when we have reviews from 2010 and 2011. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:38, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
• Cannabis smoking (haven't looked)
• Cannabinoid receptor (haven't looked)
  • Garbage removed - still needs some newer and/or non-primary medical sources though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 23:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I would argue that the scope of this article is wider than human cannabinoid receptors and hence fall more within the scope of WP:MCB than WP:MED. Boghog (talk) 07:09, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
• Synthetic cannabis (haven't looked)
• Gateway drug theory (haven't looked, likely needs major work)
  • Made a start, still needs more content revision + ref improvements though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 00:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks! I cleaned it out, found some reviews, it could be expanded now, but it's clean at least. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:38, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
• Medical cannabis in the United States (haven't looked, likely needs major work)
• Cannabis in the United States
• Cannabis in pregnancy (I think this is clean)

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all your hard work here, Sandy; it is appreciated. As I'll have some free time to edit in the next few days (no diving this weekend), would you be able to suggest one or two of the above articles as a priority that I could try to help on? --RexxS (talk) 21:31, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, RexxS! I've got to do some Christmas prep now, so I'd be most appreciative if you could continue the rebuilding and citing of Cannabis dependence (to really finish it, we need someone with a copy of DSM5; I found a treatment article that is freely available, but haven't yet incorporated all of it, and there's lots uncited where I removed old primary sources). Others that might need attention next are Effects of cannabis and Long-term effects of cannabis. I think most of the primary sources have been removed, but those articles haven't yet been rebuilt, in particular, ummmm ... none of the "negatives" have been included yet, because the NPOV work needed has been rough there. Gateway drug theory will probably be a chore-- I haven't even looked. Happy Holidays to all! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Gateway drug theory is clean but could be expanded-- free full-text reviews found. Revisiting, RexxS, the biggest mess still is at Long-term effects of cannabis-- the hard work there hasn't even been started. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I just looked at Cannabis and memory, another primary-sourced original research mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:20, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Recruiting

At ANI, mention of an Australian group that has been a no-show: [7]

And mentioned among other places, "...I have a biochemist friend who studies cannabinoids, and who has agreed to join us in working on these articles ... " and "I am also calling in some scientists/researchers in the field, and as your team also has a doctor, I don't see how this could be viewed as a problem, or as anything but a great benefit to our readers."

• And on MastCell's talk [8]
• And on Petrarchan47's talk [9]

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:10, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Cannabis and schizophrenia

In an attempt to demonstrate that I do, in fact, understand MEDRS, even after I have showed a lack of understanding over and over and over, I have put together an article regarding the potential link between cannabis use and schizophrenia. It is currently in my userspace here, and I would like it if highly-experienced editors *cough* SandyGeorgia *cough* could look at it before I send it to AFC and tell me how I can improve it. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 03:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Jinkinson, I have most certainly seen you demonstrating growing knowledge in how to use sources and secondary reviews, and at a quick glance, it looks like you did so in sandbox. But, I don't believe we need a stand-alone article in that realm, and if you create one, several you-know-whos are likely to come down on your head. Do you really want to create another content fork in a contentious area? We only need summarize the most recent reviews in the main articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

And now to FA Schizophrenia

With no MEDRs sources: [10] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Is Acupuncture a form of pseudoscience?

Looking at the earlier discussions above, the field of acupuncture is obviously a very controversial topic, not just within the scientific community, but here on Wikipedia as well.

The way forward, I believe, is to come to a consensus about whether it is indeed pseudoscience - if it is, then the article at acupuncture should say so. I personally believe that it is not pseudoscience, because

1) A plausible theory for its mechanism was proposed in 2009

2) Further studies have now proven that this theory is indeed true

3) Mainstream medical journals have reviewed and accepted this theory

4) Mainstream medical textbooks have accepted this theory

5) The latest review by the National Cancer Institute says that

There is strong evidence from clinical trials that acupuncture relieves nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy

— National Cancer Institute

Strangely, readers are not going to find any of this on Wikipedia, neither at the article acupuncture or elsewhere. In fact, acupuncture is still included in the List of topics characterized as pseudoscience based on a misrepresentation of a 1997 NIH consensus statement.

I have been accused countless times of promoting acupuncture, but I can disclose that I am not trained in acupuncture and have never tried it out myself, but I am a firm believer in accepting hard evidence and keeping an open mind.

If acupuncture is a form of pseudoscience as claimed by the list of topics characterized as pseudoscience, can someone please show me a reliable source that explicitly says so based on widely accpeted scientific consensus? That way, it would be easier for me to keep a neutral perspective. -A1candidate (talk) 13:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 13:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure how constructive that is supposed to be -A1candidate (talk) 13:33, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

As constructive as the question. What's the point of trying to form a local consensus on this question? If the view WP contains (as stated in, e.g. the article you mention, List of topics characterized as pseudoscience) is not reliably sourced then get it overturned there. If reliable sources characterize it as pseudoscience, WP follows, and trying to originate our own conclusion based on what the NCI - or anybody else - says is not a gainful activity. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 13:39, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Getting a consensus will result in much less edit-wars. This issue is related to multiple articles, not just the one you pointed out. -A1candidate (talk) 13:43, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Note to editors - If you're here because Alexbrn told you to consolidate responses to my inquiry, you're of course welcome to do so, but I hope you'll give me a fair response supported by hard evidence. -A1candidate (talk) 13:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It is definitely viewed as alternative medicine. Since placebo needling works as well as acupuncture needling (were you put the needle doesn't seem to make a deference) the mechanism behind acupuncture would be viewed as pseudoscience by some. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I notice that the National Cancer Institute website says that "The study found that patients in both the true and sham acupuncture groups developed less nausea and vomiting than those in the standard care group." [11] Which would seem to imply that, if acupuncture is a legitimate treatment, sham acupuncture is also. I would have thought sham acupuncture would be regarded as a perfect example of pseudo-science, even by acupuncturists. Perhaps not. --Rbreen (talk) 15:15, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Curiously, sham acupuncture is probably less pseudoscientific since unlike "real" acupuncture is lacks the back-story of Qi energy, and instead is marshaled as an element in pursuit of evidence-based medical study (a scientific pursuit). Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 15:33, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

These studies indicate that there is no documented benefit to acupuncture beyond that of the placebo effect. To claim that there is would be a pseudoscientific claim, certainly. jps (talk) 15:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Acupuncture is an alternative medicine practice. The explanations offered by believers in its efficacy for its functionality beyond the placebo effect are, at this time, pseudoscientific. These include some of the statements made by government regulators and NGO advisories. Experts in quackery such as Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, Stephen Barrett, and Simon Singh have written extensively on the matter and basically have come to the consensus decision that there are no non-pseudoscientific mechanisms that acupuncturists promote. jps (talk) 15:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course it is. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 15:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I am not endorsing Quackwatch, but I am mentioning that it has information about acupuncture.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that points 1 to 4 in the opening post of this discussion are just science admitting that when quacks stick sharp needles into human flesh, it hurts --Roxy the dog (resonate) 15:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I think we should endorse quackwatch, personally. It's a much more reliable source than many other sources I see being used at acupuncture currently including some apparently "peer reviewed" journal articles that are prime indicators of the problems that can happen when peer review fails. jps (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

QW is a fine source for altmed topics, and has been endorsed on numerous occasions by WP:RS/N. Sometimes, QW is the only RS on a fringe topic. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

How can a non-expert (seeking expertise without bias) be certain that Quackwatch is not at least partly influenced by mainstream professionals whose desire to protect their business turf closes their minds to alternative practices which might have some validity?

—Wavelength (talk) 17:27, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you can answer the question by considering the answer to this one: How can we be certain that when a scientist predicts the Sun will rise tomorrow, that scientist is not at least partly influenced by mainstream professionals who desire to protect their academic reputations and close their mind to the alternative proposal that the Earth is going to stop rotating this evening? jps (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Reply by A1candidate:

@Doc James - It depends on how you define "alternative medicine". For millions of people across East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia who cannot afford Western medical treatment, acupuncture/TCM is the only form of treatment available to them. Your second point is a compelling one, except that simply putting a needle anywhere in the skin is not a valid placebo, and there are different biological responses between a sham acupuncture and a verum (true) acupuncture.

@Rbreen - There is no question that sham acupuncture is a legitimate treatment option. The National Cancer Institute website states that both forms of acupuncture are superior to standard care. The issue at hand is whether true acupuncture is superior to sham acupuncture or not. Some recent reviews do suggest that this may be the case.

@jps - Could you show me the specific mechanism of an acupuncture-induced placebo effect?

@Roxy the dog - No, there is a demonstrable pain relief which can be felt after 30 minutes

-A1candidate (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I linked to placebo effect above. Feel free to read that article and the references it contains. jps (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Encyclopedic articles is based on an "Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience", and that work gives one of its longer articles to the topic of acupuncture. On that basis, I would have to say that there is sufficient basis from the standpoint of that part of the academic world which deals with matters of pseudoscience to say that they consider acupuncture to fall broadly in the range of pseudoscience. John Carter (talk) 18:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm feeling like part of the problem is that we aren't working with the same meaning.

"Pseudoscience" (and "alternative", for that matter) does not mean "something that doesn't work". It means "something that has a fake scientific explanation". So if I tell my nephew that light bulbs give off light because tiny men light tiny candles inside them, I'm telling a fairy tale. If I tell him that light bulbs give off light because there are phosphorescent bacteria on the surface of the bulb and flipping the light switch causes them to change state, then I'm engaging in pseudoscience. No matter what explanation I give him, the light bulb still works, right?

Acupuncture can be both "pseudoscience" and effective (for some purposes). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but acupuncture has the added wrinkle that there is no good evidence that is effective beyond a placebo either. Normally, this would be the end of the story. Quackery happens because the acupuncturists continue to claim that it is effective with pseudoscientific excuses. jps (talk) 22:25, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The World Health Organization has published Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

That's nice. Please indicate whether the document in question directly addresses the matter of whether or not acupuncture can be reasonably described as pseudoscience or not, and specifically where such a statement might be made. I also once again note that there have been several forms of pseudoscientific medicine which have been demonstrated to produce some positive results, even if the principles upon which they are based are pseudoscientific, so I believe it is reasonable to request such statements directly relating to the matter of whether the principles upon which acupuncture is based, whatever they might be, are considered scientific or pseudoscientific, which is really the only kind of sourcing which is directly relevant to this discussion. John Carter (talk) 23:57, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It appears to me, at this moment, that I am unable to find the information which you request.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

It would seem that there is an important distinction that doesn't seem to have been explicitly stated. Just sticking needles into people any old way is, most likely, not considered acupuncture by the vast majority of people. Certainly, I imagine that most practitioners would not hold this view, otherwise their "degrees" and training, and indeed any qualification that they possess (except perhaps basic nursing), is worthless. I also imagine that most patients do not hold this view either. Therefore, it seems important to keep in mind that acupuncture is in fact sticking needles in specific places in response to specific patient complaints (i.e. patients stomach hurts, so put a needle in this place because the qi is wrong (or something)), and must include the whole belief system that goes along with that. From this point of view, acupuncture is clearly pseudoscience (the explanation for it is mystic gibberish), especially since it doesnt appear to matter where you stick the needles. The debate on whether just sticking needles into people helps is a different matter. It does bring up an interesting hypothetical though: supposing acupuncture did work, but practitioners still used the current mythical belief system. Would it still count as pseudoscience? I would say probably. Benboy00 (talk) 16:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I would say "definitely". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Reply by A1candidate:

@jps - Unfortunately, the article on placebo effect makes no mention whatsoever of acupuncture. I would like to see hard evidence of an acupuncture-induced placebo effect instead of mere speculation, even if this may be plausible.

@John Carter - The source cited by Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Encyclopedic articles is a book called the Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience that is published in the year 2000, which is more than a decade ago. Could you show me a reliable, independent source that has been published more recently to back up such claims? I believe there is indeed a great deal of scientific studies performed in this field since 2000 (see below).

@WhatamIdoing - That is a very good point you've made. A core concept of acupuncture, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, is the principle of Qi. In acupuncture, this can by observed by deqi ("flow of Qi"), which has a specific biological effect on people receiving acupuncture as proven by many different studies published in numerous mainstream scientific journals, as you can see for yourself here, here, here, here, here, here, and many more. Granted, there is still a lot of research to do and not all of these studies are conclusive, but so far, I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

@Benboy00 - It does matter where you stick the needles. Most of these neuroimaging studies are very new, but they do exist and have been reviewed in medical literature.

If I may quote from a mainstream medical textbook:

The overwhelming body of evidence supports the acupuncture endorphin hypothesis as the primary mechanism of AA's (acupuncture analgesia) action

— Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems (2013)

-A1candidate (talk) 00:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:IDHT and WP:TE. Tiresome. jps (talk) 22:58, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm just looking for hard evidence. Is that too much to ask for? -A1candidate (talk) 15:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me, but that just comes across as a kind of willful ignorance. We are in the business of describing the contemporary understanding of topics here. Pretending that most thoughtful people who aren't caught up in the program don't look askance at the claims of acupuncturists as to how acupuncture works is an argument essentially not worth entertaining. The fact that acupuncture's claimed qi mechanisms are pseudoscientific claptrap is not debatable. The "hard evidence" that these claims are nonsense is no more available for this fact than it is for the fact that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Pseudoscience is defined by the features which an idea lacks. jps (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

@jps - The general populace may or may not look askance at acupunctural treatment, but when it comes to medical articles, WP:MEDRS clearly states that we should summarize scientific consensus only. You cannot ignore the existence of hard evidence just by brushing it off as "non-debatable" or "nonsensical" - that's not how Evidence-based medicine works. You do not have to prove the existence of Santa Claus. Nobody is asking you to do so. -A1candidate (talk) 15:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Concerns of LT910001

This boat may already have set sail, but I finally took a look at the Acupuncture article, where some very strange things are going on. I refer here to just two:

• "A report for CSICOP on pseudoscience in China written by Wallace Sampson and Barry Beyerstein said:... A few Chinese scientists we met ..." (?!!)
• "A 2012 meta-analysis found significant differences between true and sham acupuncture, which indicates that acupuncture is more than a placebo when treating chronic pain (even though the differences were modest). [99] Commenting on this meta-analysis, professor Edzard Ernst stated"

Amongst others, recorded here (Talk:Acupuncture#Commentary_from_individuals). A lot of weight (WP:UNDUE) is given to quotes from certain individuals (WP:MEDRS), which I find strange given the high-quality sources available on both sides of the aisle for this article. At any rate I feel I ought to flag this here, while we are discussing MEDRS in Acupuncture. --LT910001 (talk) 12:50, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see the problem is that a couple of editors at the acupuncture article (who call themselves skeptics) are straying from the path of objectiveness and science... We have a couple of reliable meta-reviews in the article concluding that acupuncture is effective for certain pain conditions. But some editors just refuse to accept that, because it doesn't fit their world view... and are now waging a sort of guerrilla war - which includes adding quotes like the ones above. Or this one: "Quackwatch stated that, the TCM theories are so nebulous that no amount of scientific study will enable TCM to offer rational care". The rationale I hear in these cases is always the same: to counter a perceived pro-acupuncture POV. Which is just not there. The acupuncture article is one of the best sourced articles I know. Just take a look at the reflist. --Mallexikon (talk) 08:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Skeptic editors are extremely vigilant in enforcing MEDRS, deleting individual randomized controlled trials wherever they see them. But then they add Ernst's comments from The Guardian. These comments fail MEDRS because they are "non-evidence-based expert opinion," which MEDRS places at the bottom of the hierarchy of sources. Plus, MEDRS clearly states that popular media shouldn't be used as a source. TimidGuy (talk) 12:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's simply not true that "expert opinions" (of whatever shade) fail MEDRS. WP:MEDASSESS asks us to assess them as lower-quality sources, but specifically does not exclude them from consideration. The order suggested must also be treated with some degree of understanding: in the field of diving medicine, for example, an opinion by Peter B. Bennett or Simon Mitchell is likely to be given far more credence in the mainstream view than an individual RCT. Our guidelines are extremely useful, and valid for the vast majority of cases, but we should not make the mistake of treating them as utterly infallible. --RexxS (talk) 15:41, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as I understood User:LT910001 they are concerned about WP:UNDUE, not about expert opinions failing MEDRS. --Mallexikon (talk) 06:23, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm concerned for several reasons.

• Firstly, I don't believe Quackwatch constitutes an expert medical opinion, of which there are numerous other national and international medical bodies which can provide equivalent and medically-based expert opinion. This includes the WHO and numerous national-level medical bodies. Additionally WP:UNDUE whole paragraphs are given to the perspective, however well-informed, of individuals - for example, one entire paragraphs are given to reporting the opinion of a Felix Mann. For a world-wide practice thousands of years old with numerous reviews and meta-analyses, and consensus statements to boot, this is not balanced.
• Secondly, I'm concerned, as documented, by the numerous use of individuals as sources. Not only do these give undue weight but I'm concerned that it significantly biases the article. Not only that, but there is implicit cultural sensitivities here. For example, the quote above "A report for CSICOP on pseudoscience in China written by Wallace Sampson and Barry Beyerstein said:... A few Chinese scientists we met ..." is equivalent in my mind at least equivalent to inserting in the Malaria article "However, a report by MalariaWatch, written by X and Y, said... A few African scientists we met...", and this occurs twice. I cannot stress how profoundly this quote fails WP:MEDRS, WP:UNDUE and WP:BIAS. And, while we are on the subject, if quotes of this ilk are included, why are no quotes of Chinese origin included? This appears to be a practice 3,000 years old and yet there is not a single quote from either a historical source or Chinese body to represent this?
• Thirdly, I do not see any other medical article where facts are reported, in the name of BALANCE, like this: "A 2013 metaanalysis found X. However, a professor in a university disagreed." To stress this, let's consider "A 2013 metaanalysis reported the efficacy of the combined oral birth control pill as Y. However, in an opinion piece, professor X from Y university disagreed." This is an example of WP:OR, which explicitly states " If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C". Shall we state the position of every professor with an opinion on this matter?

If we are to take MEDRS at all seriously, this article needs to have these replaced with secondary sources that are of higher reliability than the expert medical or non-medical opinion of individuals. WP:BALANCE does not trump WP:MEDRS. There is a whole list of reviews and metaanalyses detailing where acupuncture does and does not have an evidence base for efficacy that are documented within this article, and I strongly feel that these constitute a strong enough evidence without the addition of arbitrarily-selected expert opinions and quotes to justify this. I hope this clarifies my concerns. --LT910001 (talk) 12:52, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Who cares, aka, WP:MED has lost its way

From our acupuncture article:

A 2013 systematic review of English-language case reports found that serious adverse events associated with acupuncture are rare, but acupuncture is not without risk. Between 2000 and 2011, the incidence of English-language reported adverse events was 294 cases from 25 countries and regions. The most common adverse effect observed was infection, and the majority of infections were bacterial in nature, caused by skin contact at the needling site. Other adverse complications include bilateral hand edema, epithelioid granuloma, pseudolymphoma, argyria, pustules, pancytopenia, and scarring due to hot needle technique.

So, benefits attributed to acupuncture may be due to the placebo effect, and a small number of people using acupuncture may get skin infections. WOW !!! That's dangerous stuff. Let's get all of WP:MED to weigh in on this serious issue, lest someone in China get a positive placebo effect result and a skin infection to boot.

On the other hand, no one from WP:MED can be bothered to help out at the POV, poorly sourced mess in the suite of articles at {{cannabis}}, also discussed on this page, where secondary reviews indicate real potential for physical, mental, behavioral and social harm among a huge number of persons, considering the prevalence of cannabis use.

What's wrong in here? This is why we need a medical disclaimer on our medical content. We can't even get medical editors to help out or keep up with our really dangerous articles; the battleground du jour seems to be acupuncture.

Disclaimer: I have a bias. I respect MEDRS when editing, and I voted to delete German Acupuncture Trials because they are a coatrack and content could be included in acupuncture, but I don't really care if the benefits from acupuncture are real or due to the placebo effect. When my 12-yo-son lost a year of his academic life due to two-week-long status migraines, only the relief from acupuncture helped him regain some of his life when nothing else helped. I don't care if it was placebo or not; I saw the pain go out of his face and body when the needles went in from a good practitioner, and I saw nothing happen when that man was on vacation and a poor practitioner used different needle placement, and I saw good acupuncture help him when even when morphine didn't help.

So, I don't see the problems with our acupuncture content as much of a big deal, and wonder why can't we all go fix our really bad articles. If folks can't be bothered to help out at medical cannabis, long-term effects of cannabis, effects of cannabis, cannabis in pregnancy etc, which were massively POV and medically incorrect until just two of us started working on them two days ago, expect me to continue pushing for a medical disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Here as elsewhere, there just aren't enough editors who can handle tricky specialized stuff, and they don't have enough time that they are willing to spend volunteering. But I agree re the disclaimer. Johnbod (talk) 18:13, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

As an editor who edits predominantly on WP:FRINGE topics, acupuncture is exactly the kind of article where I spend most of my time fretting about details. However, Sandy is absolutely right: in comparison to this type of nicety, the problem in the "cannabis suite" is real & serious. The Cannabis (drug) article has over 1,000 watchers, over 6,000 distinct authors and ~7,500 daily page views. These article were crammed (and I mean crammed) with bogus health information, ranging from assertions that cannabis use was totally harmless to a statement that it was an established treatment for brain cancer (seriously). The voluminous Talk page archives show that a lot of effort and consensus-building went into getting them as they were. I think this raises some questions for us: how could comparatively mainstream articles like this have got into such an abysmal state with nobody even noticing? Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 18:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes many of the articles on Wikipedia dealing with sex and drugs are a disaster. And you are correct that I more or less ignore them (other than having removed many of the sex related articles from WP:MED).

I am happy to weight in if specific issues are encountered over disagreements regarding how to apply WP:MEDRS. Or how to interpret a reference.

We however have many articles on key health care topics that are more or less completely unloved. They are relatively easy to improve as so few people work on them. The ones I refer to of course are this list [12] and I am slowly bringing them to GA. I assume many people who are looking up "cannabis" have already made their mind up regarding the topic and any content we contain will have no effect on their decisions.

I would strongly support efforts to more clearly mark if an reference is a review or primary source. I know User:Zad68 has build a tool to help with this. If we had a bot to add it as a ref parameter in individual articles that people from this project are working to improve it may help with this effort. Zad how easy would it be to adapt your tool to do this? If it was added to this would also be helpful [13] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd be happy to give my Python code to anybody who wants to pursue hooking it up to a bot as things get moved to the new Toolserver host. Zad68 21:44, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Okay am wading in a bit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Re: rant, I think there are a few essays on this general theme (e.g. WP:Wikipedia is failing/WP:Wikipedia is succeeding). It generally depends on your outlook on life. You could, arguably quite legitimately, say "most of our content is not great". You could say "things are better than they were in 2005, maybe they will slowly keep getting better". I generally align with the second view, but I feel Wikipedia is plagued by WP:CREEP and bureaucracy that just puts most people immediately off due to the unpleasant atmosphere. We are our own worst enemy. We complain of not having enough volunteers, and yet on the other hand we essentially discourage new editorship. Lesion (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes agree completely. I am not sure what the balance is between pushing people to improve the content they add and pushing those away who seem to lack competence or reverting too aggressively.

I am confident that we can get all 80 of or top importance articles to either 80 GA or GA over the next 3 to 5 years. These articles receive about 5% of our total page views. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:41, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for wading in, Doc ... with your help, one article out of a suite of about 15 really bad articles is now better. I don't know if things are getting better or worse, but with student editing, I expect everything to be harder to keep up with, and my point was, why are we focused on the relatively benign area of acupuncture when we have much bigger problems in here with more serious potential for adverse affects on consumers using our content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

why are we focused on the relatively benign area of acupuncture

Because someone asked us for help with a question about it, just like you are asking for far more dramatic levels of help with the cannabis articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

And now the pushback begins. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

"No amount of scientific study will enable TCM to offer rational care"

This discussion was also started at Talk:Traditional_Chinese_medicine#Recent_edits. In the future, avoid this type of canvassing/splitting discussions. Keep them together. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:01, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

A few editors are trying to add the following statement to Traditional Chinese Medicine:

Quackwatch stated that, the TCM theories are so nebulous that no amount of scientific study will enable TCM to offer rational care"

This clearly falls under WP:SPECULATION. Could someone take a look at it? -A1candidate (talk) 10:21, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. It isn't WP:SPECULATION at all, particularly on a page so full of dubious claims about efficacy --Roxy the dog (resonate) 10:49, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you should list each of the dubious claims then? If there is a claim that isn't justified by reliable sources, it should be removed. I think that would be a much more logical approach, as opposed to making angry edit summaries like "Facts??? In an article about TCM?? Bit rich." which give off the impression that you're merely here to wage war in support of your own pre-existing opinions. --benlisquare_T•C•E 11:23, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

This isn't really a question for this noticeboard. It's not speculation that QW have expressed this view (which is what the text says). The questions here are about weight/neutrality - in other words, is QW's view worthy of inclusion? Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 12:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand we are out there with Cochrane reviews, does really Quackwatch place as high in credibility as Cochrane? To me it seems a fringe view that isn't either backed up by science properly. The theories may be faulty, but that's a damn hell of a statement when several ancient Chinese medicines have been shown to have effect. CFCF (talk) 15:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

When we can get excellent scholarly sources on a subject, then I don't see any reason to cite QuackWatch. If we were talking about some individual commercial product ("WhatamIdoing's All-Natural Cure-All") for which few sources existed, then it might be okay sometimes, just like citing a magazine article might be okay sometimes. But I would not use it at the article about TCM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Quackwatch is not what we would typically consider a good source of medical information, and agree we should preferentially use high-quality secondary sources where such exist. --LT910001 (talk) 05:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

To me, any phrase that reads "no amount of X will ever Y" is a crystal ball phrase. Such a statement is largely unsupportable, as it makes a definite future prediction, and nobody can make future predictions with such certainty. Remember, the line is not an assumption ("it is unlikely that...") but a definite statement. It would be akin to George W. Bush saying in 2002 that "nothing can ever disprove Iraq's posession of WMDs", or clergymen in the 19th Century stating that "no amount of foolish blasphemy will ever prove the theory of evolution, and disprove His almighty creation of all that is around us". We might not have enough randomised controlled trials and clinically useful studies done on TCM now, but that doesn't mean that in 10 or 20 years time there will never be; it makes zero sense to state that something will never happen in future, if the people of the present have no control over the future. It's logically absurd. I can only interpret those words by QuackWatch as an unbalanced POV statement, since it relies on literary hyperbole to bring its message across, instead of a logically valid statement. --benlisquare_T•C•E 00:55, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually the statement is about as precise as the nebulous nature of TCM, which is a hodgepodge of ideas, some of which are religious, traditional, prescientific, and/or outright pseudoscientific. Now if Barrett were speaking about a specific aspect like acupuncture, I would be able to follow your reasoning, but we're talking about TCM, which is an umbrella term, and that umbrella has lots of holes in it. That statement points out that with so many holes, it will never be able to keep anyone completely dry. Now if that statement were to be used about a specific segment of the umbrella which had no holes, or only a few, it would be wrong to use it, but that's not the case here, so it's actually very apt. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Since the content and placement (the content in the lead is significantly different) have been significantly altered from what they were at the beginning, to the seeming satisfaction of some members of both POV, can we close this discussion? -- Brangifer (talk) 04:01, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure. I just deleted the crystal balling part of QW's quote in the article [14]. --Mallexikon (talk) 08:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Extreme MEDRS violations

The specific results of discredited studies are repeatedly being inserted into the German Acupuncture Trials. There are a lot more MEDRS violations. The lead should summarise the body but the text in the body was deleted. The German Acupuncture Trials could be the worse written medrs-related article on Wikipedia. QuackGuru (talk) 19:59, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

There are a lot of problems there. I would like to talk with people there more. I think the difficulties can be resolved in a way which satisfies everyone. I am on that talk page now. This problem is not insurmountable and I am interested in establishing best practices for covering clinical trials on Wikipedia. Trials themselves can be worth covering but I am very concerned about MEDRS violations also. I want to work on this some more. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The huge mess was restored against Wikipedia policy. QuackGuru (talk) 06:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

You deleted large chunks of MEDRS material without consensus and while the discussion about it is ongoing. --Mallexikon (talk) 06:19, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Medical claims based on newspaper commentary

A few pseudoskeptics are edit-warring and trying to add medical claims to Acupuncture based on newspaper commentary in The Guardian, instead of a proper academic journal. They are arguing that WP:MEDRS does not apply here. Can someone please stop them? -A1candidate (talk) 09:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I have commented on that article's Talk page. Incidentally, it's not really good form to label your fellow editors pseudoskeptics. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 09:35, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Gut-brain axis

I came across this article, which was apparently created about a month ago. Seems to rely a bit too heavily on primary sources, and needs reorganization. Help would be appreciated. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 16:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Gut-Brain Axis is the article. It is a hot mess. Yobol (talk) 16:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Unsee! Unsee! Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 16:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks like an educational assignment. Looie496 (talk) 16:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I removed some copyvio, and would appreciate a check by someone who has access to journals to see if the rest of article may also be copyvio. Yobol (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Not even the article cited in the lede is a secondary source. First thing that came to mind for me was in relation to anatomy Rostrum (anatomy) (which I see now is a very poor article indeed). I'm not sure this article can persist in the form it is in now. CFCF (talk) 12:06, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Refering to neuro-axis CFCF (talk) 11:50, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Animal models of autism

I just created this, feel free to work on it. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 19:10, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Hypothyroidism prep for GA

TylerDurden8823 has been hard at work preparing hypothyroidism for a GA nomination (and taking away my coffee per levothyroxine absorption :) I've looked in and the sourcing is 100% sound, the prose looks competent, and WP:MEDMOS#Sections are followed. If some other folks would look in and opine whether it's GA-ready, I believe it would be a solid investment of your time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, feedback is welcome as is constructive criticism. Thanks =) TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:36, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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

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

Done. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 13:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Autism Speaks as a source

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

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

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

I looked at the blog and didn't find a list of editors or such like. Maybe you can find something. BTW, I added some convenience links to aid use of your content above. I hope you don't mind. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:56, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

When looking at blogs, it's also worth keeping in mind WP:SELFPUB. In the absence of secondary sources, it is acceptable to use self-published blogs as a source of information about the self-publisher as long as:

• the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim
• it does not involve claims about third parties
• it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source
• there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity
• the article is not based primarily on such sources.

So, used carefully and sparingly - as you would with any primary source - blogs can often fill in the gaps in biographies, but shouldn't have a whole article resting on them. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 02:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

If you want, you can look at the articles in which I have used it, including:

• Valerie Hu
  • In this instance, attribution covers any concern (we can assume but not be assured that a prominent organization like Autism Speaks has checked this info before publishing it on a blog).[15] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
• Joseph Buxbaum
  • This is not cited to their blog, it's cited to their website. Please complete citations when you add them,[16] which is something experienced editors should do, and saves everyone time when answering your queries here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
• Raymond F. Palmer
  • This is an example where your use of their blog is perfectly fine. Autism Speaks is in a position to authoritatively say who is doing research with grants awarded by Autism Speaks. But please indicate it's a blog in your citation.[17] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
• Jill James
  • This one was problematic. First, again, please complete your citations so others don't have to do it (and so checking your work will be easier). We don't expect new editors to know how to cite, but experienced editors should. In this case, you were using a blog source to say that James had "produced evidence" relating to a medical condition (MEDRS applies). The blog wording was that she had "found". I slightly reworded and attributed the statement.[18] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 11:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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

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

We have strict rules against using self-published sources, including almost all non-newspaper/non-news websites, as sources of information about living people who are not associated with the source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Under this reasoning, the NYTimes is a self-published source (and has been ever since it started using its own printshop). I don't see it. II | (t - c) 20:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Publishing and printing are completely separate issues. You're a publisher if you're the one who decides to make it available to the public. You're a printer if you make copies of things. It is possible to be a printer without being a publisher (e.g., the printshop formerly known as Kinko's) and common to be a publisher without being a printer (e.g., every publishing house that hires a Chinese printshop).

This is an important distinction, because under your definition, anyone paying a vanity publisher is "properly published" on par with having sold their book to Random House (the largest traditional book publisher), solely because the printshop isn't owned by the author.

(American newspapers in particular as an awkward case to explain, because their publisher is always a specific person. The sole publisher of The New York Times is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. (who is also the chairman of the board of directors). The owner of The New York Times is The New York Times Company. There are many dozens of editors, and over a thousand writers. But even there you can see the separation: the publisher is not the writer.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't really trying to use that definition, but I was trying to understand where you're making the distinction. OK, so under this reasoning any website which designates someone as the official "publisher" (separate from the writer) is not self-published? In addition, anything which is written with no specific writer identified, could be self-published (how do we know the publisher himself didn't write it?). Not trying to create a strawman, but this seems awkward indeed. II | (t - c) 05:42, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You might find the dictionary definition more useful than a series of questions: "The publishing of books and other media by the authors or creators of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers." Similarly, M-W says, "to publish (a book) using the author's own resources". If the author is ultimately in control, then you have a self-published piece. If an established, third-party publisher is in control of publication, then you don't. If you don't know, then you don't know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

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

BLPs

See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 40#For review

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

Possibility of a bot for taskforces

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

As I understand it, a bot could tag using three criteria:

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

A list of taskforces with proposed criteria is here:

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

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

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

I agree that there is no deadline for this.

I would like to have a stage of manual review: generate a list of candidates and have people remove anything that they think is inappropriate. This will reduce false positives.

I am not sure that we need to include all subcats. Category:Cancer organizations, for example, might not be something that HEMONC wants to track. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

If there are any interested taskforces, we could certainly do this piecemeal. Ah! I think I understand what you mean. Yes, we have already thought about this. I feel the easiest way for this to be done is for all articles to be added to the taskforce under the ??? rating. Articles with this rating can then be triaged and either removed or given a set rating. This facilitates manual review. It would be possible to abstract the process by having a separate list somewhere, but I feel that just adds another layer of complexity without actually achieving additional benefit. --LT910001 (talk) 06:00, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is the additional benefit: If you first make the list, then I can edit one list, one time, and remove anything that seems to me to be irrelevant. Under your tag-first system, if there are 500 businesses, organizations, or biographies that have been categorized under Category:Cancer, then they'll all be tagged for hemonc, and the only way to fix it will be for me to edit five hundred separate talk pages. Now perhaps someone would prefer to edit hundreds or thousands of talk pages to correct the bot, but I would not.

Also, there is no "???" rating. It's |hemonc=yes, and you can optionally add |hemonc-imp=, but adding "???" is the same as leaving it blank. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello, sorry, I mean the |imp=??? rating rather than the |hemonc=??? rating (which would be quite ambiguous). The discussion is here (Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Tagging_pages_for_a_new_Taskforce), and if/when the bot gets going, I'll ping you. --LT910001 (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

1,000,000+ images posted on Flickr by British Library

See [19]. Bound to have some gems for WP:Med. Not quite sure how to deal with that quantity of images though. --LT910001 (talk) 05:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Are they under an open license that we can use? If they are we can upload them all to commons. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

They appear to be in the public domain. --LT910001 (talk) 05:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

That's amazing, I'm going to take a look to see what I can get hold of from there. The good thing about flickr is that there is a bot script to upload a very large number of images. I won't even pretend to be able to look through the images properly, but will see if there is any way to quickly single out medical images. (Currently working on other medical image sources, will post here once I have amassed a small collection). CFCF (talk) 09:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately not so navigable, it isn't possible to search for specific books as far as I can see, sorry, but I will stick to my other sources. CFCF (talk) 10:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

We need a mass upload. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

They are available for re-use - and they may be interested in organizing them for Wikimedia Commons. Do they still have a Wikipedian-in-Residence? The images are as I understand it tagged with descriptions on github, but not on flickr. If so, then it would be more useful to get them from github. Hildabast (talk) 04:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

That makes it instantly more interesting, is there any way to upload quickly from github, or even to search for categories/certain words in the titles?CFCF (talk) 22:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Courtesy of David Gerard on the Wikimediauk-l mailing list, I was pointed to a blog describing one person's efforts to search through the BL images on Flickr using Ruby (programming language) and Elasticsearch.

• British Library Commons Images

Judging by the comments on the blog post, there is a chance of tagging images on Flickr in an automated manner. Perhaps we could ask nicely for tagging of particular keywords relevant to WPMED? --RexxS (talk) 17:09, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Medical claims in Scientology doctrine...

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

Seems like its worthy of an XFD, but I have a feeling that might be a contentious can of worms. Thoughts? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 06:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The very fact that the article itself describes these as "claims" is reassuring. MEDRS really is needed to say that a particular treatment is efficacious, whereas this article merely is reporting health beliefs of a particular group. The tone of the article is NPOV, I think there is no need to delete this article. Lesion (talk) 10:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with Lesion, but I do think there may be need for some cleanup. The article does at least at first glance seem to point out that these claims are not proven in any sense, and are simply ideas within Scientology.CFCF (talk) 11:43, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

"Polly Pseudo says that sleeping with your head on a pillow causes Alzheimer's" is not biomedical information. "Sleeping on a pillow causes Alzheimer's" would be. The claim that a person or group believes something needs RS (possibly BLP-complaint RS), not specialized MEDRS sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough - if only RS is required, then the sources and XFD are a non-issue. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 04:56, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Well its a fine line, every statement needs to be clear on that these aren't real medical views, just claims. I'll take a look. CFCF (talk) 07:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC) Looks sound enough as it is now CFCF (talk) 07:26, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Anatomy edit disputes

Posting here as I believe it will garner the most attention. I have been working on adding images from Commons:Category:CNX to Wikipedia as they are a very good source of medical illustrations, just the type we are currently lacking. I started in the far end of the book, also going for one of the articles I knew I would probably meet most resistance: Human penis. Any edits at all are very difficult to do, as there are forces intent on keeping the article from containing images of anatomy or physiology. I know these articles may be a cess-pit of incoherent argument, but if anyone were to quickly look over the recent edits, for example this revert [20] and see if there is any reason behind it, I would be glad. CFCF (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Can you explain why you decided to start with one of the most contentious areas? I'd have taken the opposite approach: use them in all sorts of articles, and then come back in a couple of years and say, "Look what normal anatomy articles are doing. Why don't we do the same here?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I didn't start there, but after preliminary work on various articles I started systematically at the back of the book. I don't think waiting will help as there is a group of editors who believe it is important to see all different forms of variation and from all angles instead of images that actually are informative. The same is relevant at Vulva, which has maybe 20 different images of variation which I have not removed despite lack of encyclopedic content, due to risk of the same type of resistance met at human penis. CFCF (talk) 21:01, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

CFCF was also reverted at the Erection article. CFCF, keep in mind, if you have not, that I don't object to any specific image you added to the Human penis article; I objected to you going against WP:Consensus with regard to the infobox image used at that article and WP:Edit warring at that article to maintain your image preferences. I also questioned the inclusion of the Additional images section, but I have no strong feelings on that either way (just like I have no strong feelings about the Human penis article). The images you have been adding to anatomy articles are informative and needed in some cases, as you well know and have received barnstars for. That stated, you need to be careful about adding too many images to an article. And I agree with your inclusion of the image you added to the Erection article, but the size should be reduced; see MOS:IMAGES#Consideration of image download size and MOS:IMAGES#Forced image size. Flyer22 (talk) 21:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers on MOS:IMAGES, I will follow the maximum size rule more closely. I'm going to give these articles(no other articles were as strongly disputed) this article a rest, even minute edits are questioned, and its taking to much time. Maybe its naive to think that an article like that would reach higher standard before other less contentious articles. CFCF (talk) 07:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Chronic allograft nephropathy

Hi, I'm it:user:Doc.mari from Italian Wikipedia. I see that English Wikipedia has an article about chronic allograft nephropathy, while "chronic allograft dysfunction" is a more appropriate term according to many authors (see for example [21], [22]). The histologic changes found in chronic allograft injury are very variable according to the specific factors involved, so we can't really talk about "nephropathy". The same opinion is expressed by Floege et al in Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology, fourth edition, chapter 103. I think we should move the article to "Chronic kidney allograft dysfunction", as I did on it.wiki and I'd like to add some informations, but my English is very poor so I need your help and your advice. Thank you. --Doc.mari (talk) 22:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello and welcome. When deciding how to name pages, we should follow the most commonly used term in the sources. This is not always the most accurate term. E.g. we have sinusitis and not "rhinosinusitis".

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

Or I am sure someone will happily move the page for you, but I would like to confirm it is indeed the most common term. Lesion (talk) 23:12, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Apologies. The policy is here: WP:MEDMOS#Article titles

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

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

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

See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 40#For review

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

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

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

It is also unclear to me whether Halladay is notable under Wikipedia:ACADEMIC or not; the sources provided in the submission thus far do not appear to prove her notability under Wikipedia:GNG. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 13:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

First, I think Jinkinson has been editing long enough that s/he should be cleaning up his/her own citations by now (citations that specify who the publisher is make it much easier for others to check work). Second, we don't string together primary sources (PMIDs) to make a claim about someone's research specialty. Third, as to whether his BLPs meet notability, I haven't gotten anyone to help go through his last round of BLPs (linked above in the Autism Speaks section), so ... Fourth, I did some minor cleanup in there but I'm not going through another Jinkinson AFC unless someone else is willing to look at these. Fifth, Arthur goes shopping, I enjoy shopping and it's gift-giving time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Please decline the submission, and I'm sorry for wasting your time and not listening when you told me to find more independent sources a month ago. I'm also sorry I couldn't respond sooner, but I have been busy in real life lately. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 19:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't have kids. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Wait, Axl, were you telling me to not have kids? Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 22:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

*sigh* "Relatively inexpensive ways for parents to possibly prevent autism". Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Yup, not having children is an inexpensively way for parents to definitively prevent autism.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Cochrane Wikipedian In Residence Applications

Hey folks,

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

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

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

The Wikipedian in Residence would ideally be:

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

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

Location

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

Reporting

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

Working hours

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

Remuneration

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

Applying to be WIR

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

Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, needs eyes. It has long needed an update for DSM5, no one did it (to my dismay, grumble), and now it is being hit by numerous editors who are not familiar with the featured article standards, are changing citation style, aren't familiar with WP:OWN#Featured articles, are dropping text based on old sources into the lead without developing the body, and are using sources not compliant with MEDRS. Yes, it needs an update-- if the update is not done correctly, the article will end up de-featured. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I have tried my hand at updating it. [23] Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 18:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm beginning to wonder if you intentionally drop in incomplete citations throughout Wikipedia. Off to clean up more of same from you at cannabis suite, in spite of having asked you to complete your own citations now dozens of times.

Shizophrenia still needs experienced eyes. Or perhaps I should just send it to WP:FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm really sorry for using cite pmid templates. I think I'm still used to using them because I have done so for months now, whereas you told me about the Vancouver citation about three days ago. Sorry I haven't broken the habit yet, nor have I realized that cite pmid templates are unacceptable no matter which article you're editing. However, I think "dozens of times" is a drastic exaggeration. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 21:39, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

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

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

Anyway, OK, Schizophrenia is one of our few Featured articles and I am tired of babysitting it; since no one can be bothered to update or help maintain it, I shall give it another week or so and submit it to WP:FAR. A medical FA needs to be tended, and no one seems to care about this one, and it's becoming a headache to me, so time to get it defeatured. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The {{pmid}} template generates citations using the {{Cite journal}} template. As it states on the pmid template documentation, it shouldn't be used in articles that use other citation styles. Since Schizophrenia overwhelmingly uses the {{Vcite}} template, generating Vancouver system citations, the pmid template simply isn't suitable for use in that article. It is possible to make allowances in a new article where the style hasn't yet settled down, but Schizophrenia is a featured article and consistency of citation style is a requirement. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 23:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Just got back and my copy of the DSM 5 arrived today. People love when new books come out even though this one is not universally accepted. The author of the DSM 4TR does not consider the DSM 5 an update. I have not seen the NIMH change their position on not using the DSM 5. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia You seem to have missed a few citations on Long-term effects of cannabis, some of which are still using the pmid or doi templates. I am currently in the process of fixing them. Jinkinson talk to me What did he do now? 03:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't miss any-- the ones I didn't fix don't belong in the article as they aren't secondary sources. I didn't think it worth my time to fix citations that will eventually be removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

This really ought to be a bot task, replacing cite pmid or cite doi with the supportable cite journal (etc) on articles which use them. Citation bot does some similar things (e.g. picks the majority choice between {{citation}} and {{cite xxx}}), but I'm not aware of any bot that does the equivalent for vcite vs cite. That said, those choices are made by human editors one article at a time. If they agree to change it (either to or from vcite), that could of course be done very easily. At one time extensively-referenced articles switched to vcite simply for speed (giving up linkages and metadata), but that reason has evaporated with the switch to Lua-based CS1. It may be time to encourage articles to make the switch back and reduce the number of variations at play.LeadSongDog come howl! 04:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I am happy to see the article switch back to cite. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:41, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could ask Boghog to run through articles that use cite journal and replace the cite PMIDs and cite DOIs, which are dreadful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:42, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if we agree. If an article is not using cite journal, then you really can't make wholesale conversions without at least leaving a note on the talk page to see if anyone objects—especially not if you're planning to do this at multiple articles. WT:CITE has discussed this pretty extensively because of WP:CITEVAR. We've had a number of editors in disputes over exactly this.

Now, if there's a mix of templates on the page, then you should be able to make it match, and that would probably take care of most of these. But you can't just say "WikiProject Medicine prefers this other style, so we're changing the citations style that was chosen by the editors who are actually working on the article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

As I said, "Perhaps we could ask Boghog to run through articles that use cite journal and replace the cite PMIDs and cite DOIs ..." No one mentioned changing citation style. I'm not aware, for example, of any medical FA that does not use cite journal and that does use cite pmids.

Furthermore, since the horrid cite pmid template was only invented in 2009, it's unlikely it was the chosen citation style on any established article. Just sayin', since no one should be adding them to any FA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The choice of which citation template to use (or whether to use one) is usually considered to be part of the article's "citation style" and therefore subject to CITEVAR, even when that template's existence is invisible to readers.

NB that I'm not saying that it should be, only that this actually is the conclusion of repeated discussions on this subject at WT:CITE. So if it's a {{cite journal}} kind of article, then you shouldn't use {{cite pmid}}—and vice versa. Wholesale removal from all articles is not acceptable, and if there are mixed styles, then you need to manually decide which is the "established" style for that article, rather than stripping all of them with a bot (or script) run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It is unclear who you are aiming these posts at: is there someone in this discussion who doesn't understand WP:CITEVAR? Are you unaware that bots aren't always fully automated? That when it is determined that an article uses cite journal, a bot can be manually triggered that will remove the cite pmids? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree this would be done via talk page discussion. I think User:Zad68 had designed something like this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:19, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

New draft namespace

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

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

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

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

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy

I don't have a lot of time on my hands right now, but we should probably have a close look at the very new article, List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), as well as the biographies linked from it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

This looks problematic to me. Do we have RS that proposes there is such as category as "scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy", and is there RS placing the listed scientists in this category? There's also a fringe issue: by producing a unchecked catalogue of scientists' fringe views we are (in my view) creating an article that advances/implies a certain position without the necessary context. I also have to wonder how I knew which editor had created this article before even looking at the edit history. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:12, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

(Add) Relatedly (and sorry I have not idea how DYK works) one of the current hooks for DYK on WP's front page today is "... that an animal model of autism was used by Mady Hornig to implicate thimerosal in autism?" - which has been raised as problematic e.g. at WP:FRINGE WP:FT/N. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 10:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

You mean WP:FTN. :-) The extent of my understanding is that if the hook is to be altered or removed, it requires admin intervention (requested here, but none is forthcoming yet). I think that the hook being based on a non-MEDRS-compliant medical statement should be sufficient reason. Sunrise (talk) 11:04, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The hook is no longer on the main page. It rotated off before anything could be done - see [24]. Sunrise (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Sunrise you're raising this important issue in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have been screaming (really) at DYK for years that they need to get some admin accountability for MEDRS and BLP issues they put on the mainpage, offering to check any DYK they will bring to my attention. DYK refuses-- and has for years-- to put any accountability into place, and admins pass hooks to the mainpage, knowing they are medical content or BLPs, without requesting checks. Nikkimaria is one of the few adults over there, and she alerted me on my talk page sometime yesterday of two DYKs on the mainpage, but by the time I saw them they had a) already been promoted, and b) already pushed on to the mainpage, and it was too late for me to do anything. The problems with DYK have been repeatedly and for years raised at DYK and at ANI-- they don't want to hear from me again, so feel free to go over there and take it on them, where it will fall on deaf ears. I've checked your contribs, and although you indicated somewhere you had raised this at DYK talk, it doesn't seem that you did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Jinkinson posted a note on this page that directly asked for advice on this particular hook before it went live.

DYK is supposed to be surprising or otherwise catch the readers' attention, not to tell the whole story. It sounds to me like this one met the goal. So long as the article told the whole story, then I don't especially mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@WAID: I am assuming that when he posted at 02:47 UTC saying "it's a DYK", it was already live; that message is in fact how I noticed it. (But even if it was before, it wouldn't have been enough time to get meaningful feedback on the hook.) The article actually did not "[tell] the whole story" until I edited it at 07:20.

@Sandy: yes, when I left that comment I meant to refer to Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors which I had found through a link from DYK. I did leave a message there later though. Sunrise (talk) 23:12, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

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

I'm having an Ombudsman (talk · contribs) flashback. JFW | T@lk 20:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

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

I thought that project Steve had rather demonstrated the problems with such lists. I'd suggest AFD.©Geni (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Is there a good university-level how-to-edit-Wikipedia course?

One that turns out students proficient in editing Wikipedia? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:37, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

We keep hearing that Wadewitz's courses are the model, but we have this mess, sitting there with no response. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Not that I have seen. Editing Wikipedia takes a long time to learn. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:05, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

you are going to need to robustly define "proficient in editing Wikipedia". There are certainly some courses that have resulted in reasonable edits.©Geni (talk) 01:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

We are discussing within the medical domain. We have had some tentatives positives. But they are few. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:26, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The best I ever saw was the attempts by jbmurray. Check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem also read [[25]]. Remember (talk) 15:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Years old, never replicated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes and not medical. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Student editing, Cerebral atherosclerosis

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

Efficacy of redback spider antivenom

Could someone familiar with the reliable sources guidelines take a look at this article, currently Today's Featured Article. I removed a paragraph based on a single unpublished study, cited to news reports on a conference abstract, and pointed to the WP Medicine reliable sources guidelines, but it has been reinstated with the comment "the page you link explicitly states "Finally, make readers aware of controversies that are stated in reliable sources." If we were stating this as a medical truth, we would need better info, but at the moment it is carefully and correctly explained as a controversy." Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 17:51, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Casliber nominated it; GrahamColm promoted it. I can't find the paragraph you said you deleted? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Presumably it's this edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, WAID ... I didn't look back far enough ... and ... that text is still in the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:45, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

My removal was reverted with a note to seek consensus before re-removing; refer Talk:Redback spider#Effectiveness of antivenom. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:23, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I tend to favor WP:NOT (News) and WP:RECENTISM in applying WP:MEDRS strictly. Now, Casliber edits with his real name, from Australia, and from a position that can be considered one of authority on Wikipedia, as an ex-arb. Why we have MEDRS? Let's say someone decides not to use the anti-venom as a result of our article, and dies. I'd not want to be in that position, but since the text was re-instated, if any editor doing that is willing to take on that responsibility, let me not stand in their way. PS: See the need for a disclaimer on medical articles, discussed above;[26] here we have another example of why. We should be clearly telling people NOT to rely on our articles for medical advice. This is as good of a demonstration of why as I've seen lately. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

And now that I've seen that it was not Cas who re-added it, I have removed it. Gross irresponsibility. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:52, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Sandy. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

If you had provided all the diffs earlier, I would have gotten it done sooner :) Thanks WAID for directing me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

So if it was User:Casliber who re-added it you would not stand in his way, but if it's me, then you re-revert and call it "gross irresponsibility"? Nice. --99of9 (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

No, it was always irresponsible; as I indicated above, I was surprised that Cas (as an editor who edits under his real name) was willing to take on that irresponsibility. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

But I made it grosser? By the way, my real name is also easy to find, does that make me more surprising and less gross? --99of9 (talk) 23:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, actually, the gross irresponsibility belonged to the FAC review, but now that Cas has pointed out that the news came near the very end of the FAC, not even. So, it was just a mistake that happened, as mistakes do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Not everybody agrees with this, but I think that editors are well-advised to give the benefit of the doubt to editors who have worked most on an article - particularly if they have steered it through the Featured Article process - if only because they are most likely to know the sources well. If I saw something that appeared wrong, but Cas Liber had added to an article he'd taken to FA, I'd suspect my own understanding first. It is quite within the bounds of human nature to give extra deference to those editors whose work we are most familiar with. My advice is never to take reverts personally - both sides are normally acting in what they think is the best interests of the encyclopedia. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:18, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Picture on Neck pain

The lead image for neck pain has been a photo of a guinea pig with torticollis for at least one year (first talk page objection raised in 2012: Talk:Neck pain#Main Picture). Comments? Alternative images? Many thanks, Lesion (talk) 01:32, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

This image was free File:Day 80 - A Pain in the Neck (2347498204).jpg. There were a few other potential candidates at Flickr, but as Flickr has done an interface revamp I haven't been able to access copyright info. I'm not unsure whether this image is allowed seeing as his face is visible, but it is in any case freely licensed. CFCF (talk) 10:45, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your search. I placed a suggested anatomic diagram of the cervical spine on talk:neck pain. With regards this image, sorry, but I don't like it ... this kind of image should be avoided on Wikipedia imo... they have a kind of artificial, advertising tone ... see also the lead image on sleep for what I am talking about. Lesion (talk) 14:11, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it may be hard to find a less specific image without the undertones of artificiality and advertising. An image of a neck with red color for pain is hardly better, as is the case at Lumbago. The author claims to genuinely have experienced neck pain even if the posture may be slightly forced. The image on Pain is clearly real but is in my view pretty much the same thing.

Looking elsewhere, there are a number of X-ray images on Wikipedia that may suffice, showing different diagnoses that would be relevant for neck pain.File:Cervical fracture dislocation C6-C7.jpeg, File:Retroabscess10.JPG, File:RetrolistheseC35grade1.PNG, File:Morbus_Bechterew.jpg CFCF (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, it is going to be difficult to portray pain in a picture. I don't have a problem with the lead image on pain. It is not artificial. Regarding the first image you suggested however, given this: [27], I do not think we should pander to this exhibitionist, for want of a more polite term. For that matter, was there any need for the subject to be topless in this photo?

Not sure these x-rays are suitable either...

What about a diagram of nerves ... this is indirectly relevant to pain... I was looking at our Cervical plexus article, not sure if you would be happy with any of those? Lesion (talk) 23:10, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that the Sleeping photo is a problem, and while the Neck pain photo is a little "artistic", I think it's good to provide a photo that anyone can understand (i.e., not X-rays and nerve diagrams). What some people call "artificial" or "advertising", others will call "professional".

I've seen people complain about professional-looking photos before, e.g., saying that we should show a casual snapshot of a blood glucose sitting on a wooden table rather than a photograph that was carefully arranged and has a neutral background. I haven't been convinced by these arguments in the past. I'm actually glad that Colin's amazing, very professional photo is in the lead of Clothes iron. We should encourage high-quality images. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I am not attacking professional images in general, just this particular flavor of image which I am finding it hard to describe. They are the kind of photos you get from commercial image repositories. E.g. these I found on getty images by typing in "pain" (not free images, for illustration only):

• [28] for neck pain?
• [29] for toothache?
• [30]] for low back pain?

They are artificial, devoid of emotion, and you see them all over the internet on sites which are selling something. They set the wrong tone for Wikipedia since the eye is so used to seeing them accompany some ad or other. I know this is not a particularly strong argument, but for this reason I think it is better to stay with an anatomic diagram of nerves for neck pain... Lesion (talk) 02:26, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Vital articles level 4

Looking at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/Biology and health sciences there seems to be a bias away from medical content and towards non-human biology. There are there 159 articles on birds and 110 on medical content. Furthermore the articles on anatomy are mixed between human and non-human articles. Any thoughts? Who makes these lists? CFCF (talk) 13:04, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is an overview of the selection process Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded. I don't really think its proportionate that there are 1050 articles on organisms, and around 220 on medicine or health. CFCF (talk) 13:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

CFCF I am not sure what to do in response to this. Here are my thoughts, but I can make no conclusion.

• The Vital Article listing project has been contentious, time consuming, and does not actually produce content.
• It is not obvious that in the past listing articles here has resulted in significant development of those articles, but I do feel that some day, articles listed here will be targeted for development in a useful way somehow.
• The Wikimedia Foundation has always pushed for development of these articles, and since it is rare to get their support for particular community projects, that has value.
• People at this WikiProject like medicine but most of the rest of the community has an aversion to touching medicine. This project gets a lot of respect and most people show that respect by staying hands-off, which is is both good and bad. I expect that this means that many people would be adverse to developing health articles even if they were listed there.
• Not only are the health articles on Wikipedia extremely popular as compared to health information elsewhere, but also, the health articles on Wikipedia are extremely popular as compared to other Wikipedia articles. I do not have data to back either one of those claims, but eventually that data will have to be compiled, and when it does, it will give a huge amount of insight into what medical articles should be on the list. For example, the Wikipedia article on Metformin is probably the most consulted publication on metformin, and it is among the top 0.1% of Wikipedia articles by popularity as measured by pageviews. This means something - I am not sure what. Wikipedia is being used heavily as an information source for particular treatments and medical procedures. Perhaps 300 of them are super popular (within the top 1%) among all Wikipedia articles, and perhaps only 15 of these are currently listed as vital. The vital article list is more of a setup for a category structure than development of the topics which people are actually demanding. I think the article on metformin is "vital", but right now, vital articles are being defined in some way that would not accept articles like this in the list. I am not sure how to describe what is happening there.
• Birds are awesome but for example, the upper limit of popularity for a bird (pigeon) is 40,000 when many mediocre health articles get that much traffic. Most organism articles are much less popular. Most "vital" articles are much less popular.
• For as long as vital articles are just a theoretic construct unrelated to reader demand, I think medical editors will have a bad time contributing there.
• For as long as there is no data about reader demand to specific categories of articles, there is no way to make a sound argument that lots of readers are demanding health content.
• There are great tools to track traffic in categories but right now there is no precedent for making statistically sound statements on these things.

I want the vital article project to be a success, and I think that WikiProject Medicine should watch it and have stake in it, but I cannot at this time recommend that it would be useful for anyone here to spend their time there. The return in utility is not yet good. I have hopes that in the future non-Wikipedians or new Wikipedians, perhaps from the Open Educational Resources movement, would develop this kind of content if they recognized Wikipedia as relevant to their interests. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I looked at it once and than went back to writing articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:49, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Just checking so that it wasn't something that had been overlooked. Noticed it as some of the articles I was working on newly got vital class 4 templates added to their talk-pages. You bring up good points, and I'll forget about it for now as I have a whole list of things to do.CFCF (talk) 19:20, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, myself and another editor are now expanding an article because it was tagged as level 4. Didn't really understand what it meant apart from someone thought it was a relatively important article. Lesion (talk) 16:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Tumescent liposuction

The page Tumescent liposuction was tagged as disputed in June of this year, but since it was not in this WikiProject, no one who might settle the dispute noticed. I have just added a WikiProject banner (I also added class and importance ratings, but someone more knowledgeable than I should probably review those). I'm also bringing it up here, in the hopes of speedier resolution. I gather from the talk page that the disputed issues relate to tone and lack of discussion of the procedure's risks. Cnilep (talk) 04:37, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Most of it is unreffed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:06, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Not anymore. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I retrieved this section from archives because ... it's baaaack! I've been reverted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow it reads so much like an advertisement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Relatedly: Blepharoplasty & Breast reduction#Liposuction-only technique. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 08:02, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

What are the definitions of "alternative medicine" by "major world health organization[s]"?

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

I don't specialize in science-related articles, but I would like to know what these definitions are, and if there is a need to tweak the definition in the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:56, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

If an editor has challenged the current wording of the definition of alt med, let them find the sources to support their own argument... no need to do their work for them imo. If you really want to however, would suggest World Health Organization perhaps? Hope this helps. Lesion (talk) 16:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

WHO lumps together Traditional medicine, Alternative medicine, and Complementary medicine, and contrasts "TCAM" with Modern medicine (some, not not all, of which is Evidence-based medicine).[31] WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Hypothyroidism help

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

It's on peer review. JFW | T@lk 20:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

{{Traditional Chinese medicine}}

FYI, a cleanup request for Template:Traditional Chinese medicine (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been filed at WT:CHINA -- 65.94.78.9 (talk) 22:55, 23 December 2013 (UTC)