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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

Updating wikipedia knowledge ecosystem image

Following up on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 118#Updating wikipedia knowledge ecosystem image

I've finally got around to updating the File:Wikipedia_publishing_interactions_2016.svg image. I've made two different versions of essentially the same info. I think I've fit the majority of the major WP:MED collaborations and projects in. Any ideas and feedback welcomed! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:10, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

very clear and informative[1]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Awesome, great work!!! It's very useful! Just a quick question: why in the first schema are some arrows duplicated? (eg, "Wikimedia chapters" has two arrows). Also, I did not understand at first the "Translators" -> "Other language Wikipedias" arrow, I thought the arrow was missing (because there are multiple overlapping arrows here). Maybe making such arrow with a different thickness would also help in following visually the path? --Signimu (talk) 08:32, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

@Signimu: Opps, that duplicated arrow was a copy-paste error (fixed now)! Thank you. Good idea with having the arrow from translators without borders a slightly different width for clarity. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:51, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, a question for everyone: are there any medical schools that should be mentioned by name (have been doing it the longest / most extensively)? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:51, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

UCSF School of Medicine is one of our longest collaborators. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:29, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Wikipedia:Touro have future planned activities and have been active for years. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I'll add tonight. I was originally hoping to add Scholia, but Wikicite overall feels to have stalled (with SourceMD offline) so I thin kit's best to wait before pointing people towards something with an unfinished dataset. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 05:00, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah these are really nice. Minor suggestions for the first pic, both arguable, take'em or leave'em:

• You could remove "in English" from bottom-centre, and change top-middle to "English Wikipedia", given that some of the partners and affiliates are specific to the English Wikipedia.
• You could decapitalise the second words of "Wikimedia Affiliates" and "Outside Partners", as they're general descriptive terms, not formal titles.

Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 06:40, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry E&E, looks like I caused you to introduce a typo: Wikimedia affiliates at top left. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 21:55, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Ha, thanks for noticing! fixed now. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:59, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Paying for high quality dermatology images

We are looking at a partnership with Cochrane, were Cochrane will provide a stipend for high quality skin disease related images under an open license. The images will need to come with stuff like a biopsy with histopathology to verify that they are what is claimed.

Well we within the Wikimedia movement do not pay for content, I am just verifying that we are okay with accepting content that others may have paid for? Images will go on Commons. No guarantee that we will use them in Wikipedia of course.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:56, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Notified the wider community.[2] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• It's not obvious what you mean by "we within the Wikimedia movement do not pay for content" - but there's vast quantities of stuff used on Wikipedia that someone got paid to make (for instance, everything with the PD-US-gov tag, which many of us have contributed to paying for). If the owner makes it CC-BY, how/why they became the owner shouldn't matter. Someone paying for something and licensing it CC-BY isn't different than them creating it and licensing it CC-BY, as far as re-use goes. WilyD 16:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• This seems like any sort of archival donation. There have been hundreds of media archive collections brought into Wikimedia Commons through partnerships. Cochrane and Wikipedia have already been collaborating since about 2013. This seems like a routine media exchange from an established partner for the purpose of doing routine wiki curation. I guess what is unusual about this is that either Cochrane or Wikipedia might suggest sorts of images which are needed, and Cochrane would financially sponsor the creation of those images. Normally in Wikipedia we take whatever is free and available, but if Wikipedia can actually identify what the public needs and what does not already exist as free media, then I can see how that information would be useful to Cochrane also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:56, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• There are people at Featured Pictures and Commons that sell rights to their images by withdrawing either higher resolution, RAW files or the ability to escape CC-BY-SA. I don't see a problem with it, as long as the decision to use those images is made by volunteers on the basis that they are the best available illustrate the subject matter. (FPC is one way those decisions get made.) (For the record, my objections against paid editing in general are editorial independence and alignment of incentives. Neither of these is valid.) MER-C 17:01, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• So long as someone is willing to properly license high-quality educationally useful images, I don't think we care about much else. GMG^talk 17:02, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Concerns about money and open source content are twofold: that involving monetary concerns in content creation will affect the choice of content or the creative process itself; and that it will hinder open-sourcing of content, as high quality providers will now see a market for paid content. As long as the needs are dictated by the community rather than the donor, the first shouldn't be an issue (and its good that it was brought to the wider community's attention, as should any future arrangement of this sort). The second is harder to predict, but I think in the current climate is unlikely. All in all, I support the initiative. François Robere (talk) 20:03, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• looking at it as a donation, why not?...seems like a good idea...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• As long as it is under a license acceptable for Commons, the fact that the content was paid for or not is irrelevant IMHO. --Signimu (talk) 14:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with all of the above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Could we ask them to particularly, or even exclusively, focus on pictures involving darker skin? There is a serious shortage of such images, and it's not just us. Derm textbooks have a serious shortage of these images. We need a large volume of images on "medium brown" and "very dark" skin much more than we need any extra "pale white skin" images (although I'd like to have dozens of images, in every skin tone, for every skin condition). The formal confirmation will also be much more valuable for images of darker skin. We'll also want them to publicly confirm that informed consent was obtained (because otherwise someone will complain later, and we'll lose time dealing with the dispute). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

+1 to WhatamIdoing, but I would not say exclusively, high-res images are always valuable, but we are indeed lacking dark skin ones. --Signimu (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes that is the plan. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:20, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

This came up in IRL discussion a couple of weeks ago, but it would be helpful if there was a way to catalog skin tone in structured data on Commons, so that we could just run some kind of insert computer magic and tell exactly how representative our image usage on human-related topics is. Like...if you had a structured data element that gave you the "dropper" tool from image editing programs, and you could select the portion of the image containing "skin". We could then use the hex for the color selected to do all kinds of fancy analysis I'm sure. GMG^talk 18:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

User:Keegan (WMF), what do you recommend for helpful magic on Commons? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I am currently working on a collaboration to get diagrams of medical conditions with people who are East Indian uploaded to commons. We have a number here.

There are also a number of videos that may be uploaded. Have not got to them yet in part as we have a few people here who take a very negative person on video. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:49, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Provided that the media is released under an appropriately open license, it doesn't matter if someone was paid to release it under that license. We care only what the license is, not how it came to be that way. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:40, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

User:Seraphimblade that does not appear to be everyone's position here which is why we are having this discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

It is Commons' position, and since that's presumably where they would be going, that's what matters. They explicitly chose to opt out of the requirements for disclosure of paid editing, and they're happy to have commercially produced images donated as long as they end up under a free license. They do not object to content that was paid for. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:34, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Just making sure we have had a discussion here as there have previously been complaints by some regarding insufficient opportunities for people to weight in on projects Wiki Project Med Foundations is working on with outside organizations. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:33, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Spinal disc desiccation

Do we have an article or section on spinal disc desiccation? Redirecting that term and disc desiccation to the relevant place would be a good idea if so. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 19:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Looks[3][4] like it's a cause of degenerative disc disease. Little pob (talk) 17:52, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

With no alternatives proposed after a week; I have created the redirects. Little pob (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Postbiotic

I found this article - Postbiotic - while looking at the list of articles needing assessment. I am a bit concerned about the article's use of primary sources. Some review papers are cited, e.g. [5], [6], [7], but in other places, primary sources like these [8] [9] are used to support claims like "postbiotics play a role in general health and well-being and for improving host immune function like that of probiotics". Hoping an experienced editor can take a look at this. Thanks, SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 14:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

left note[10] w/ editor who created article--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:34, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

MEDPRICE

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Product pricing. For current discussion see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Current wording. QuackGuru (talk) 14:07, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

commented(product pricing[11])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:15, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The discussion on that page is ongoing but I have discovered specific issues with the widely used source: International Medical Products Price Guide. This is cited as a reference for wholesale prices in the developing world. The problem is we are misusing it, as what our articles claim is just plain incorrect. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#International Medical Products Price Guide. There are similar problems with our use of (retail) prices in the US from Drugs.com. Never mind your views on whether Wikipedia should offer price information, what our articles are currently doing is wrong on so many levels and for so many years that it is rather embarrassing to WP:MED. Please discuss on the guideline talk page. -- Colin°^Talk 18:31, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I've been rather shocked at all this. --Ronz (talk) 18:43, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

This characterization is incorrect. The source in question gives the Defined Daily Dose and prices for LMIC.[12] For sodium valproate the price is about US$0.40 as of 2015 per day. We also have these values published in a book co published by the World Health Organization and MSH.[13]

We have NADAC prices from the US government for many medications. And we have pharmaceutical textbooks that list the appropriate consumer price.[14]

Sure we can do better in the area of health economics. Just because we do not do a perfect job and are not able to also update immediately does not mean we should do nothing in this area. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

We're only going to do better if we follow policy: content and behavioral.

The characterization that editors may be seeing perfection, or want nothing is incorrect and misleading. --Ronz (talk) 19:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

And what is incorrect about "Defined Daily Dose and prices for LMIC"? It is based on a World Health Organization published source.

This is the price from the IDA Foundation that is being reported. And they are a wholesaler that sells to LMIC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:22, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Working so hard to make a case looks like desperation and WP:BATTLE. It's pretty clear at this point that there's no simple, general solution. --Ronz (talk) 21:35, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Meh. Nothing wrong with working hard to write encyclopedic medical content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree with Ronz, I also think this is not simple. I read both sides arguments, and I think there are merits for both. I think everyone agrees that a perspective on prices (eg, how price evolved over time, variation across countries, etc) is often/always admissible given reliable sources. But I think the point of contention is whether or not drug prices, without any perspective, should be admissible per se, by considering them as facts. Regardless of the debate about whether industries try to prevent this info out, it's difficult for me to say for sure whether this has encyclopedic value. But there are indeed cases where this is accepted, for example age is considered factual and does not require any perspective to be admissible on biographies, or the chemical composition of compounds. Should price be considered a fact in a similar sense? At this point, I cannot decide. But I think it can merit a new RfC to foster discussion on this. --Signimu (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Signimu, the problem with an RFC right now, is that don't actually have something factual, concrete to ask people's opinion about. Earlier people were asked "Do you want prices" and Wikipedia said no and WP:MED ignored that. Now, I'm demonstrating that "Do you want prices" isn't even a sensible question to ask. James hasn't quite got there yet. -- Colin°^Talk 16:10, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

IMO, Doc James makes a better case--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

We could use these sorts of sources.[15] But they are not as uptodate. Prices there come from the "Red Book: Pharmacy’s Fundamental Reference" which we could use directly and are up to date. But it requires paying for access.

We can use this source from MSF for discussing the prices of HIV meds.[16]

By the way LMIC represent 85% of the global population.[17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

James, "The price of what?". This is your problem with all your sources. They give the price of something with a bar code. They have separate entries for each of those things, but you have randomly picked just one. A particular mg size of tablets in a particular size of bottle made by a particular company. There is no way to relate any individual one of those "what"s to a drug article. The drugs are used differently depending on condition, circumstance, weight, age group, renal function, etc, etc. I think you have forgotten that a drug is just a chemical that we can measure in milligrams. But nobody sells milligrams of drugs from pharmacies, they sell specific tablets or syrups. And there is no one dose. James is misusing Defined Daily Dose in a way that the WHO explicitly disallow. There is a reason why none of our sources do what James did: it is just nonsense. The reason why we have WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOR is to stop this kind of nonsense. -- Colin°^Talk 16:06, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Lets look at the definition of defined daily dose "The DDD is the assumed average maintenance dose per day for a drug used for its main indication in adults."[18]

The DDD is listed here as 1.5 G for sodium valproate. Is that a reasonable dose for adults? Well lets look at a monograph, yup falls in the range of used in adults.[19]

Source gives the price for 500 mg tablets and a price per tablet of 0.1339 as of 2015. The IDA Foundation ships to more than 130 LMIC at this price.[20]

Is there a better representation of the cost of this medication you wish to see Colin? Or is your opinion that it is impossible to represent pricing information for medications? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:38, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Per "There is a reason why none of our sources do what James did" that is easy to prove false. Here is a source that gives estimates of prices for medications.[21] The price of a month of valproic acid is roughly US$50 to 100 per month in the United States as of 2019. With a dose of 1.5 gm per day (180 * 250 mg tabs per month) this arrives at the same price. 72 USD per month.[22] This also gives prices in this range for the US.[23] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:42, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Doc James, you link several sources. The first I can't read all of but seems to have some code with the number of $ signs perhaps indicating cost like TripAdvisor restaurants. The Drugs.com link does not give the price information like you did. It gives individual prices for individual products just like I said: it gives one lot of prices for the 250mg capsule x 100 and another lot for the 250mg/5ml syrup, with six prices for six different bottle sizes. The last link is a lay medical website that doesn't meet MEDRS. It has articles like "Don’t Like Vegetables? It May Be Your Genes" and "Skipping Breakfast Before Your Workout Could Help You Burn Fat", and wrongly claims Depokete is valproic acid (it is divalproex sodium) But hold on a second. The DDD of valproic acid is 1.5g per day. And Healthline claim "following prices are the average cost of a one-month supply for each drug". But they quote prices for "ninety 250-mg tablets of Depekene", "ninety 500-mg tablets of Depakote" and "sixty 500-mg tablets of Depakote ER". These are all different doses. -- Colin°^Talk 17:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Colin — You really seem clueless here. You're accusing Doc James of arbitrarily choosing his statistics — when he is advocating the use of the WHO-supported defined daily dose. To me this looks like a tempest in a tea-pot, brewed by someone who is in far too deep water. Carl Fredrik ^talk 18:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

CFCF please look at the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles and search for "Introduction to Drug Utilization Research 2.6 Drug costs". You will find that the WHO themselves explicitly warn not to use the DDD for this kind of drug pricing. For example, WHO says "For example, the cost per DDD can usually be used to compare the costs of two formulations of the same drug. However, it is usually inappropriate to use this metric to compare the costs of different drugs or drug groups as the relationship between DDD and PDD may vary". So, giving a cost per DDD of Carbamazepine in one article and a cost per DDD of Lamotrigine in the lead of its article, is just the sort of thing we shouldn't do. We can use it to say that the 150mg pack of one drug works out more expensive to meet the DDD than a 500mg pack. Or we can use it for drug usage research, which is what it is for. The problem, CFCF, is that you and James seem keen to do an argument-to-authority by saying "my source is WHO" or "this is a WHO metric" but you don't actually stop to work out what the source said or what the WHO metric is for. Carbamazepine is used for epilepsy, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Which of those many indications do you think the DDD is for? Do you think the same dose is used for them all? -- Colin°^Talk 18:19, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Lets bring in the entire quote "Total drug costs; cost per prescription; cost per treatment day, month or year; cost per defined daily dose (DDD); cost per prescribed daily dose (PDD); cost as a proportion of gross national product; cost as a proportion of total health costs; cost as a proportion of average income; net cost per health outcome (cost-effectiveness ratio); net cost per quality adjusted life-year (cost-utility-ratio) Data on drug costs will always be important in managing policy related to drug supply, pricing and use. Numerous cost metrics can be used and some of these are shown in the box above. For example, the cost per DDD can usually be used to compare the costs of two formulations of the same drug. However, it is usually inappropriate to use this metric to compare the costs of different drugs or drug groups as the relationship between DDD and PDD may vary."

We are not using the DDD to "compare the costs of different drugs" but we are simple providing the "cost per defined daily dose (DDD)" which is recognized by WHO as on cost estimate. Should we include other cost estimates? Yes certainly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

You mentioned carbamazepine dosing for different indications. Let looks at this for adults:[24]

Epilepsy 400 to 1600 mg per day Trigeminal neuralgia 200 mg to 1200 mg Mania 400 mg to 1600 mg per day Bipolar 400 mg to 1600 mg per day. The DDD is for the most common indication and in adults. The typical doses for all listed indication are very similar. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:32, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

And look the DDD is 1 gram. Seem perfectly reasonable.[25] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:52, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

James you are conducting original research. If you'd read carefully, you'd know that DDD is the based on a maintenance dose in adults, not the initial/maximum doses you quote above. It is this sort of carelessness with figures that has got us into this mess. Please read Problems using the defined daily dose (DDD) as statistical basis for drug pricing and reimbursement" See the bit about "drug pricing" in the title. They explain "The defined daily dose is an artificially and arbitrarily created statistical measurement used for research purposes in comparing the utilization of drugs.", "in most cases, the DDD differs greatly from the typical PDD of the drug in question. In some cases, this gap may be exacerbated by the fact that a drug may be prescribed in two vastly different dosages and the DDD represents the average of those outliers." they also say "For most drugs there is no single dose but rather multiple variations prescribed depending on the severity of the patient’s condition or the level of tolerance. Moreover, prescribing practice and medical customs differ from country to country. As a result, an international compromise must be made that often has little to no relevance to actual prescribing practice from one country to another." The WHO says "Basing reimbursement, therapeutic reference pricing and other decisions on ATC/DDD classifications is a misuse of the system. Defined Daily Doses are not designed necessarily to reflect therapeutically equivalent doses." What you are trying to do in the lead is give a therapeutic reference price. Don't. -- Colin°^Talk 19:38, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

This is not "therapeutic reference price". This is what that term means "Therapeutic reference pricing (TRP) places medicines to treat the same medical condition into groups or 'clusters' with a single common reimbursed price."[26]

We already know that the pharmaceutical industry do not want easily and publicly avaliable pricing of medications. That one of their industry groups that you quote International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations also holds that position is not surprising.

That you are pushing the industry position to try to WP:CENSOR Wikipedia is concerning. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:57, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, James, you just win the Wiki-Godwins-Law prize for using WP:CENSOR in an argument for including something in an article. You asked earlier for civility: you are just acusing me of being an industry shill. You forget James, I'm having a discussion and have not edited the price any one of those articles. I don't have an agenda, unlike you, who have declared yours openly. Ok, I accept I got TRP wrong. However, the text about misusing DDD comes from WHO, not any pharama body. You can read how it is calculated here and how it should be used here. Please read it carefully. We are talking about price here. It wasn't intended for that purpose. It is a very complex technical measurement and its subtlies will not be apparent to our readers who read about two different drugs at two different prices per "dose" and not realise they can't be compared. You are trying to use this research tool metric in a general-reader encylopaedia, and as I keep saying, there is a reason why nobody else does this. -- Colin°^Talk 20:57, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

From the 1st link given by Colin[27]: "Drug utilization data presented in DDDs only give a rough estimate of consumption and not an exact picture of actual use. DDDs provide a fixed unit of measurement independent of price, currencies, package size and strength enabling the researcher to assess trends in drug consumption and to perform comparisons between population groups." After reading both links, I think ATC/DDD have encyclopedic value IMO, being standard approximate measures of consumption, just like we consider incidence and prevalence as encyclopedic infos. And we'd need articles to clearly describe what these measures are, since they can be misunderstood by the general public, as they are more targeted towards researchers (didn't check, maybe they already exist). But indeed, the WHO clearly defines DDD as a measure independent of price, so if that's the goal, it seems like we would need another measure for that. Signimu (talk) 23:53, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

What about the median price ratio mpr and international reference price? See page 12 of [28] Signimu (talk) 08:43, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree User:Signimu and what we are using is an accepted international reference price :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:00, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Article vs Sources

Above CFCF claims I'm accusing James of arbitrarily choosing his statistics. And further that James uses the WHO-supported defined daily dose. Let's see if that equates with reality:

• Carbamazepine. "between 0.01 and US$0.07 per dose". The source has a low of $0.00121 per tablet and a high of $0.0683 per tablet. The tablet is 200mg and the DDD is 1000mg. The article seems to be using the 200mg tablet as a "dose". However, if you search for Carbamazepine in 2014 you get three database entries: one 100mg/5ml syrup, one 200mg tablet and one 200mg sustained release tablet.
• Lamotrigine. "about 3.57 USD per month". The source has a median price of $0.1178 per 100mg tablet. This works out at $3.58 per month for one 100mg tablet a day. But the DDD is 300mg. If you search for Lamotrigine 2015 you get three database entries: one 25mg tablet, one 50mg tablet and one 100mg tablet.
• Lorazepam. "typical dose by mouth is between US$0.02 and US$0.16". The source has a low of $0.0242 per 1mg tablet and high of $0.16. This matches the article. But the DDD is 2.5mg. If you search for Lorazepam 2014 you get two entries: one 1mg table and one 2mg tablet.
• Ethosuximide. "about US$27.77 per month" The source has a sole price of 0.1845 per 250mg tablet. The DD is 1250mg, which is 5 tablets. This is $28.05 per month using the DDD which is close to the article figure. There is only one record for Ethosuximide and only one supplier, ASRAMES, which only supplies the Democratic Republic of Congo. The claim this is "The wholesale cost in the developing world" is here based on one supplier to one African country, and we have the nerve to quote it to four significant figures.

So there is no consistency in which definition of "dose" James has used -- sometimes the tablet and sometimes the DDD. And he has each time arbitrarily chosen one of many possible tablet sizes. For example, Lamotrigine is given as a price for a month but based on only 1 tablet a day, at a dose three times less than the DDD. So yes, James is arbitrarily choosing his statistics and doesn't seem to have any consistent day-to-day concept of a "dose". Which isn't surprising since there isn't a one "dose" for any medicine. Just lookup the BNF for a drug and you will find a couple of pages of dosage advise. James has tried to simplify a complex concept into just one number. It doesn't work. -- Colin°^Talk 18:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes for carbamazapine I used the cost of the least expensive table, I agree switching to price per day of DDD would be good and have done so.

If we were consistently use price per day of DDD (for long term medications) would you satisfied?

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:52, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Ah for Ethosuximide I used 30 days for a month rather than 31 days. Okay...

This this data was added gradually over many years. Happy to discuss moving to consistency as much as possible. But I am not sure that is what you are looking for... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Firstly I'm looking for you to accept that most of the existing prices are based on the price for one arbitrarily chosen pill size. You had multiple options and seemed to pick one at random. You claim you picked the least expensive tablet. So you could have written that instead of "dose", which is wrong. This is a basic mistake and it would be good for you to admit you made a mistake in the lead section of several hundred articles. No, DDD is not a valid metric for this and WHO says that. I asked you to find sources that say things like "The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.07 to US$0.24 per day as of 2015" in their introductions, or indeed, anywhere. You still haven't found any. Find me a source that consistently uses the cost per DDD in its methodology for presenting drug prices for all the hundreds of drugs that source lists -- and only one price per drug please, just like we do. Find me a source that gives the price of "a drug" rather than a specific size of pill, bottle size and brand. They don't exist and we should follow the sources.

You are still claiming that IMPPG is a reference for the min and max prices for drugs in the developing world. It isn't, as I explained at length on the other page. And you are still juxtaposing wholesale prices in the developing world with retail prices in the US (but without saying the US price is retail). And Ethosuximide still falsely claims the price in the developing world is "about US$27.77 per month". James, I am asking for basic maths and basic source->article honesty. Your source gives the price in the DRC and that is all. That is not "the price in the developing world". And Ethosuximide is far from the only article that stretches "one or two suppliers" or "the contract price in one or two nations" to become "the price in the developing world". -- Colin°^Talk 19:16, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

No not arbitrarily chosen...

This source lists price of HIV regimens per person per year.[29] And goes on to say "Prices are rounded up to the third decimal for unit price and to the nearest whole number for price per person per year (PPPY). The annual cost of treatment PPPY has been calculated according to the WHO dosing schedules, multiplying the unit price (one tablet, capsule or millilitre) by the number of units required for the daily dose, and by 365." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:06, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

James, this still isn't what I asked for. The article does not say they use WHO Defined Daily Dose. They have doses for adults and children separately. Of the retroviral drugs I have looked at, they all have trivial dosage regimes. Mostly 1 tablet a day for any adult. This isn't something where you start off on 5mg and we see if that isn't enough to prevent you dying. It is pretty much a fixed dose and cross your fingers and hope not to die. The article you link has a handful of drug sizes x a small number of suppliers giving up to a dozen prices per drug. The linked article doesn't claim this handful of suppliers represents the most and least expensive suppliers in the entire developing world, as you have done hundreds of times in our articles. There is a reason why our reliable sources give pricing in such a complex matrix of tables and footnotes and *exceptions. It is more complicated than you want it to be. -- Colin°^Talk 20:57, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Step by step

Doc James I think the approach where I list everything that is wrong with what is in our article text and then you adjust/argue just one point alone isn't working. So let's take this one step at a time

1. The source is not a reference for all prices in the developing world. Therefore a statement that "The wholesale cost in the developing world is between US$0.02 and US$0.16" cannot be derived from it. This is because what you wrote claims a minimum and maximum price "in the developing world". We sometimes have a single price, a few prices or a handful of prices. So do you want to give a price range or just a single price? If a price range, we're going to have to describe the source of values better. Something like "The International Medical Products Price Guide gives prices in the developing world for a 1mg tablet that range from XX to YY". If you want just a single price, then how would you calculate it? Btw, if you are thinking that this is getting a bit wordy, let's consider that we really should be writing article body text first, so let's worry about that for now. -- Colin°^Talk 08:55, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Lets look at the text in question "The wholesale cost in the developing world of a typical dose by mouth is between US$0.02 and US$0.16 as of 2014."

So yes it provides a range. But a range does not necessarily mean an absolute maximum and an absolute minimum. Frequently ranges in health care are 1) one standard deviation ie the confidence intervals 2) the highest and lowest value in a set. What we have here is the second one. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:55, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I think Colin has a valid point about attribution here, James. If I understand the argument, then the suggestion would be that we should be writing a section of the article that contains reliable sourced pricing information, which is attributed to the source, rather than asserted as a simple fact.

I can see that something like "The <ABC price guide, published by the WXY,> gave prices for <this drug> in <whatever year> for <a particular region> of <this many dollars/cents (or range)> per <tablet/dose/etc.> ref:whatever" would be an obviously neutral formulation. By utilising the formulations imposed by the source, we avoid any hint of analysis on our part. In the article text, there is less need to be concise, and we could include more than one source, allowing the reader to form their own conclusions. Unless, of course, we also have reliable sources specifically commenting on particular pricing for particular drugs (perhaps as we might find for insulin?), when we could expand the section with a summary of that commentary. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 15:22, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

If we parse the text "The wholesale cost in the developing world of a typical dose by mouth is US$0.02 and US$0.16 as of 2014."

• 1 mg is a typical oral dose. This is common knowledge but sure we could state 1 mg.
• "wholesale cost in the developing world" does not mean absolutely every single possible country simple that these represent some of the wholesale prices in the developing world, which they do

Per adding "ABC price guide, published by the WXY". Imagine if we were required to start every sentence on Wikipedia by stating the journal that published it. The year of publication. The authors who published it. The institution the authors come from. All the caveats for the data in question including the patient population that the data comes from such as their country or origin, ethnicity, sex breakdown, age breakdown etc.

We do not do this but rather we attempt to provide a reasonable summary and people can look at our sources for more details. Pricing data is actually no more complicated than any other statement we make on Wikipedia.

I would be satisfied with the rest of the suggestion "The prices in <whatever year> for <a particular region> of <this many dollars/cents (or range)> per <tablet/dose/DDD etc.> ref:whatever" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

For example we summarize "Male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection among heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa." based on this Cochrane review[30]

We do not say "A 2009 Cochrane review by Siegfried et al of three RCTs of 2,274, 4,996, and 2,784 men from the general population in South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya carried out between 2002 and 2006 at 12 months and 21 or 24 months resulted in an incidence risk ration of...."

The second of course is also entirely correct. And one could argue that each bit is critically important, our goal is to provide a reasonable summary and give our readers the ability to dive deeper.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:14, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

At present, we've got a content dispute about whether it's accurate to state without qualification a fact about pricing. We both know that in some Wikipedia articles, we have to start almost every sentence by attributing the statement made because of controversy surrounding the subject. In some sections, we actually do start almost every sentence "According to <this review> ...". Of course that's not the same as "stating the journal that published it. The year of publication. The authors who published it. The institution the authors come from" and so on. My suggestion to attribute was because that might represent a compromise that moved the discussion forward. I do agree, though, that if the "ABC price guide" was well known, there wouldn't be any need to qualify it with the publisher. --RexxS (talk) 18:02, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Well-known, or a standard, just like WHO ICD, we don't repeat in infoboxes that "this disease is classified as xxx by the WHO in ICD11", we just properly wikilink and ref it. I could see something similar with drug prices, if there is a standard measure. Signimu (talk) 19:15, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

James, et al, let's not get side-tracked. (The claim that "1mg a typical dose is common knowledge" is, well, bollocks). If you keep raising other wording issues then we won't resolve the one in this step alone. James, I agree the range is a set: and the set you claim it is is the set of prices in the developing world. You and I both know that if you look at the source most of the drugs, for one size of pill, have a very very limited set of data. Many times there are no supplier prices at all, which are the gold standard prices in the guide because it is a real price on offer -- so it only has buyer prices, which it places big warnings around because those prices aren't available to anyone else, and may reflect peculiar negotiations, bribery and corruption, who knows.

Wrt attribution, consider the polls being conducted prior to the UK election in three weeks. We don't say "43 percent of the UK population intend to vote Conservative", because the polls don't actually ask the whole UK population. Instead we say "The YouGov poll published on 26 November put the Conservatives on 43%..." So people know it is a poll (typically of a few thousand people) by a certain organisation on a certain date. We do not have facts about prices in the whole developing world, so we can't make that claim to our readers.

James, if you took the blood pressure of the next three patients that walked into your hospital, or counted the number of pages in 5 random books in your bookshelf, you can't claim "the blood pressure in humans is between X and Y" or "novels in English literature are between 100 and 450 pages long". The source itself makes no claim to be comprehensive. Its purpose is to list a handful of indicative prices to help purchases make good deals. They have no need to list 100 prices if 10 will do, and no need to seek out outliers. Even your claim of "developing nations" isn't actually mentioned in the guide at all. It just so happens that the buyers and suppliers seem to be located there.

If you want to give a range, you need to define the set. And in this case it is the set of prices for one mg size of pill in the International Medical Products Price Guide. If however, you just wish to give a single indicative price, then we might be able to come up with a wording that avoids having to mention the guide. If we are happy to accept this guide provides indicative prices for the developing world, then perhaps we can use that sort of language. -- Colin°^Talk 19:35, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

"We do not have facts about prices in the whole developing world, so we can't make that claim to our readers." That would be true if we were generating the content ourselves. But we're not. We're summarising what has been published in reliable sources. If a reliable source states that the price of a given drug is between $X and $Y in the developing world, we can most certainly report that as the price range for that drug in the developing world. We rely on the sources for our claims, not our own analysis. --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

"If a reliable source states that the price of a given drug is between $X and $Y in the developing world, we can". RexxS, that's exactly the problem. No reliable source states that the price of a given drug is between $X and $Y in the developing world. We not only have a source->article disconnect, but a big WP:WEIGHT problem, but that can wait for later discussion point. Please have a look at the source we are discussing, it is very much raw data. To use my polling analogy, it is a bit like seeing the raw results from the YouGov poll with "John1234: Green, Susan0458: Conservative, Edmond0405: Labour...." and trying to make a point about who is going to win the election ourselves. Ok, I exaggerate a little with the polling, but there's a lot of WP:OR and hand waving going on. The Ethosuximide claim is a bit like looking at the data for the Cambridge South constituency, finding they only polled Greg3055 who is keen on the Brexit party, and declaring that Cambridge South is pro-Brexit. We often only have one or a few datapoints. -- Colin°^Talk 16:16, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

The WHO supports the use of this source as a international reference price.[31] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:50, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

agree w/ Doc James, and the WHO support speaks for itself--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:12, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

James / Ozzie10aaaa "supports the use of this source" doesn't really solve the problem. It is a good source, for certain things. But you have to use it correctly and you have not been doing that. If you care to read the "Measuring Medicine Prices, Availability, Affordability and Price Components" book, page 41:

"Median prices listed in MSH’s International Drug Price Indicator Guide have been selected as the most useful standard since they are updated frequently, are always available and are relatively stable. These prices are recent procurement prices offered by both not-for-profit and for-profit suppliers to developing countries for multi-source products. When no supplier prices are available, buyer prices are used, but a single supplier price is still preferable to multiple buyer prices".

Nowhere have you found a source that says the price of a given drug is between $X and $Y in the developing world. So, can we draw a line under that and all agree that using the MSH to claim min/max prices for the developing world is not supported or recommended by sources. Anyone with statistics knowledge will tell you that min/max prices are of limited value as they always tend to give outlier values rather than representative values. So the prices manual recommend you pick the median of the supplier prices, whereas you have been sampling min/max from both sets of prices, which, while not exactly apples and oranges, are certainly oranges and satsumas.

Can we then follow their advice for a single reference MSH price: the median of the suppliers or the median of the buyers if no suppliers. If we agree on that, we can come to the next step. -- Colin°^Talk 14:38, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes we all agree that these are not min/max prices. No one has every claimed that they are as far as I have seen. Just like when one states confidence intervals one is not stating min and max of possible values. We hae already been over this. Not all ranges are min max. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:29, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

James, your statements are very unclear. It seems we don't agree on min/max. Every drug article you have edited with a range from/to is a claim of a min/max in the developing world. If you won't accept this, then we'll need to go get a third opinion from someone with authority in this area. I could do a post on the VP if you want. There is a reason nobody is presenting price information like you do. It would be simpler if you would just agree to stop using "from X to Y" style of presenting the prices, and agree with the text in bold as the method to pick. -- Colin°^Talk 18:30, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

2. The source only gives price values for a particular dose strength, pack size and formulation per database entry. James only links to one entry, which appears to be chosen quite arbitrarily. Again look at this manual. Assuming we use their algorithm for price it comes back, as always, to "the price of what?" So far in our articles, we have not always said, or have said "dose" without defining that. Mostly the existing articles use "dose" to mean "one pill" of a completely arbitrary and unspecified strength. So the existing practice isn't telling our readers what the price is for. The manual lists several attributes a price is for:

• Generic INN name (the drug)
• Dosage form -- cap/tab, millilitre, gram, dose (e.g. inhaler puff), modified release tablet, pessary/suppository.
• Strength -- usually milligrams per dosage form, but sometimes e.g. per 5ml where the dose is per 1 ml.
• Pack size e.g. 100 tablets or 600ml bottle.
• Brand or low-price generic (I'm guessing we'd concentrate on the generic if available).

The people using these reference prices and price catalogues are doing so because they want to buy a bulk order of bottles of 100 x 2mg tablets of generic lorazipam. They will do a separate price for 1mg tablets. And another for vials for injection, etc. So how do we pick which database entry or entries to cite and how do we express the "price of what" to our readers. All our sources use language like "price for 100 tablets of 100mg wonderpam" or "28 tablets 100mg wonderpam". Example: BNF has over two dozen prices of lorazepam. Drugs.com has three injections doses and three tablet doses, each with different prices depending on how much you order. If you think pack size doesn't matter much, the 1mg tablet costs $9.83 each for one, but $0.65 each for 30, $0.34 each for 1000. Remember, I'm thinking of article body here, so we have room to explain and list more than one if required. -- Colin°^Talk 14:53, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I have already stated that these are not chosen arbitrarily. The lowest price formulation to make the DDD was generally chosen.

Sure I am happy to go through and clarify the exact dose or make it clear that the price is per DDD when this has not been done.

It is tough for me to see the BNF website itself as I am outside the UK and thus generally use a specific print version. Looking at BNF 76 I see two prices for oral lorazepam. One for 1 mg tabs, one for 2.5 mg tabs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:33, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

James, you didn't say "lowest price formulation to make the DDD" before, you mentioned you chose the cheapest tablet for carbamazepine but you didn't even consider DDD until recently. The cheapest to make the DDD isn't necessarily a reasonable choice. Take Diazepam for example. You quote the price of 10mg, and the DDD is 10mg, but the source has no suppliers for 10mg, only two buyers. Compare instead the source for 5mg has 8 suppliers and 5 buyers. It is clear that 5mg is more popular and indeed the practice for most uses is to take as divided doses; divided doses are common. So really, if one wants to pick just one size, you need to pick the one that is commonly chosen for whatever condition the DDD is for. James, when you pick a dosage by some hidden choice that is not actually an official one, that is "arbitrary". It is also original research.

We need to include the same information our sources do. No you can't use DDD. You need to do what our sources do, James. They don't pick just one pill size and ignore the others. They don't conduct OR and present the prices in DDD. They don't pick the cheapest supplier price and the dearest buyer price. You can read the Drugs.com one. How many prices on that page James? There is a reason nobody is presenting price information over-simplified like you do. -- Colin°^Talk 18:30, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Knowledge equity

Part of the core of this issue is one of knowledge equity. It is by far easier to write about content that is of "importance" to people in the United States and Europe. The fact that the list price of onasemnogene abeparvovec is more than $US2.1 million is easy to support using the popular press.[32][33] This medication is of course not avaliable in LMIC. I am not seeing anyone (without a connection to industry) seriously arguing that we should remove pricing information from this article.

Writing articles about medications that are approved in LMIC but not approved in the US or EU is much more difficult but in my opinion is equally important. Using sources from the World Health Organization is perfectly appropriate to discuss issues in LMIC. And no it is not surprising that the Western popular press frequently does not cover issues of importance in LMIC. Does not mean we shouldn't either, of course not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:44, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

• I think adding the price of essential medicines is responsible because it's an important information for readers and with regard to the developing countries, I think adding the range of prices is helpful and we can use the formal resources in that countries. For example the website for Jordanian food and drug administration provides details about the prices of medicines. Regards---Avicenno (talk) 20:09, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

• I can't easily read the site you link, but it follows the examples I see elsewhere. Prices are quoted for things with barcodes:

• Ampidar Forte Caps 500mg / 500 capsules / 500mg / Manufacturer (or Supplier?)-name / 28.33
• Ampidar Forte Caps 500mg / 16 capsules / 500mg / Manufacturer (or Supplier?)-name / 1.4
• Ampidar Forte Caps 500mg / 20 / 500mg / Manufacturer (or Supplier?)-name / 1.75
• Ampidar Forte G.F.Susp / 100ml/ 250mg/5ml / Manufacturer (or Supplier?)-name / 11.37

None of our sources then takes this raw data and says "The price in developing countries for ampicillin is between US$0.13 and 1.20 for a vial of the intravenous solution". None of them forget to mention the vial is 1g of the drug. All of them list many options. -- Colin°^Talk 18:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree we shouldn't make a ratio over the ddd unless we've got sources who did the same, otherwise we are making a new ratio that although it may be very pertinent, we don't know what it measures exactly and hiw robust it is. I think we should stick wit what we have: ERP for a reference price for a specific formulation (the choice of which to show depending on the article's context: if eg injection is more pertinent then show pricing for that, otherwise may be sensible to choose the formulation where more data is available), atc/ddd for average dosage consumption and to reference the atc code of a family of drugs, and mpr for comparisons. All of these are well defined and widely used for their respective purposes, with clear methodologies so we don't have to infer anything ourselves. Btw for ranges, the hai provides 25% aed 75% interquartile prices for some medications in some countries. Signimu (talk) 22:35, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

There is also the affordability measure used by who/hai, which is defined as the numbers of wage days someone needs to pay to get one month of a medication, so it'svvery accessible to the lay public as this is the purpose, but i need to check if and where the database is. Signimu (talk) 23:10, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Correction: the cost per DDD is a real metric and is used by some European policy makers, although this is a misuse as stated by the who themselves. But comparing drugs of similar atc class (level 4 or even 3) is ok and named internal reference pricing, but this generally can't be used to compare prices internationally, only nationally. Finally, cost is most often expressed either as standard unit (tablet, pill, etc any one dose) or per gram, and there's a great review about their differences [34]. Both can be used internationally as does the review. Signimu (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: It seems to me that prices of medications are a important fact about medications. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:49, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Flyer22 Reborn, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 84#Price of medications. There was an RFC, started by James, to get approval for his practice of routinely adding prices to medicine articles. The community said no. Further, nobody has found a source we can use to present the prices in the way James wants to. And the source he is pushing, would only permit the sort of very detailed per-barcoded-item pricing that every other side (Drugs.com, BNF, JFDA, etc) does. Which, fails WP:NOT. The price of lots of things seems important to some, but it isn't necessarily Wikipedia's job. There are just too many "prices of medications" per drug, and no reasonable way for us to summarise that if our sources do not. The world has moved on from when Wikipedia was a go-to resource for medical information. It very much isn't any more, and Wikipedia should concentrate on what it delivers best, and leave others to maintain huge databases on the prices of drugs. -- Colin°^Talk 13:26, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Colin, knowing how popular Wikipedia is in the search engines and that so many use Wikipedia as a medical resource, I don't agree that "the world has moved on from when Wikipedia was a go-to resource for medical information." What resource do you think is now the go-to resource? No need to ping me, by the way, since this page is on my watchlist. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

How should we summarize this source

http://mshpriceguide.org/en/single-drug-information/?DMFId=1390&searchYear=2015

Please add your versions below. Once we have suggestions by people we can begin to discuss the merits of each. If you are happy with the version suggested by someone else feel free to add your name. This section is not for adding reasons why you think versions suggested by someone else are "wrong" that can come later or go above.

Doc James

"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.40 per day as of 2015." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

James, you haven't chose a good example to aid discussion. Nor have you started from the right direction. You've picked one database record from several options. Your record has one supplier price. So it doesn't answer many of the questions we have. If your drug article is valproate and you want to make use of the MSH guide, can you do that without breaking WP:NOR, WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOT? This one article attempts to cover three drugs. In the US, the "valproic acid" and "valproate semisodium" forms are more common, whereas in Europe and elsewhere, "sodium valproate" is more common. See this for details -- the various forms are not directly interchangeable. Anyway, MSH have six entries:

• Sodium Valproate 200mg 100 enteric-coated tablets 5 suppliers. = $0.52 per day
• Sodium Valproate 250mg/5ml in a 120ml bottle No suppliers. 1 buyer. = $1.20 per day
• Sodium Valproate 500mg 100 enteric-coated tablets 1 supplier. = $0.40 per day (price in article)
• Valproic Acid 200mg/5ml in a 300ml bottle No suppliers. 1 buyer. = $1.10 per day
• Valproic Acid 200mg 100 enteric-coated tablets No suppliers. 1 buyer. = $1.30 per day
• Valproic Acid 150mg 100 tablets 1 supplier. = $0.82 per day
• There is no data for valproate semisodium in MSH.

It is quite a mess if you attempt to give a price for "valproate" because there is no such thing for sale. I see you quote a wholesale price in the US as $1.30 per day, which you are juxtaposing with the developing world price of $0.40 per day. But the developing world price is based on a bottle of 100 500mg enteric coated tablets of sodium valproate, whereas your US price is based on (unknown pack size) 250mg tablet (unknown if enteric coated) of valproic acid. The US source also give the price of 250mg/5ml solution. Maybe we should list the wholesale price per kilogramme of the pharmaceutical intermediate in 200kg drums at Alibaba :-).

• NADAC (filter results for "valproic acid"):

• VALPROIC ACID 250 MG/5 ML SOLN = $0.59 per day
• VALPROIC ACID 250 MG CAPSULE = $1.30 per day (price in article)

It is interesting that the NADAC gives price per day that is much much cheaper for the syrup vs pill. It is also odd that it only lists one pill size for valproic acid, and no prices for sodium valproate or valproate semisodium. This suggests some problems with usability of their database. The syrup should be more expensive than the pill. And the price for the pill seems high. I suspect they are giving the price of a brand name rather than a generic for the pill. They also don't say what kind of capsule it is -- see below because the price for different kinds varies greatly.

James says he can't access the BNF in Canada, only a printed edition which omits detailed prices. So I've reproduced the BNF information below. FYI you can also find prices in the NHS Drug Tariff December 2019 which lists prices in pence corresponding to the "Drug Tariff" price below. There are two prices listed below: an NHS Indicative Price and a Drug Tariff price. Pricing is complex. My understanding is that if a doctor prescribes a named brand drug, the pharmacist should generally supply that brand and should be compensated for the dearer price vs generic. If the doctor prescribes a generic drug name, the pharmacist generally will supply whatever they can get cheaply. How much the pharmacist is then compensated by the government depends on the prescription, the tarff code below, whether the medicine is currently on a list of price consessions or known shortages. There is also a problem with the assumption that off-patent generic drugs are cheaper: if there is no competition among suppliers, the generic price can rise. See Drug Tariff and PSNC Dispensing Supply. That's just for England & Wales. Scotland has its own drug tariff.

• BNF Sodium Valproate

Modified-release tablet

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim Chrono 200 tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	30	tablet	£3.50	-	-
		100	tablet	£11.65	£11.65	C
Epilim Chrono 300 tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 300 mg	30	tablet	£5.24	-	-
		100	tablet	£17.47	£17.47	C
Epival CR 300mg tablets (Healthcare Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 300 mg	100	tablet	£17.47	£17.47	C
Epilim Chrono 500 tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	30	tablet	£8.73	-	-
		100	tablet	£29.10	£29.10	C
Epival CR 500mg tablets (Healthcare Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	100	tablet	£29.10	£29.10	C

Gastro-resistant tablet

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim 200 gastro-resistant tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	30	tablet	£2.31	-	-
		100	tablet	£7.70	£9.12	M
Sodium valproate 200mg gastro-resistant tablets (A A H Pharmaceuticals Ltd)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	100	tablet	£9.24	£9.12	M
Sodium valproate 200mg gastro-resistant tablets (Alliance Healthcare (Distribution) Ltd)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	100	tablet	£9.12	£9.12	M
Sodium valproate 200mg gastro-resistant tablets (Mawdsley-Brooks & Company Ltd)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	100	tablet	-	£9.12	M
Sodium valproate 200mg gastro-resistant tablets (Wockhardt UK Ltd)	Sodium valproate 200 mg	100	tablet	£7.20	£9.12	M
Epilim 500 gastro-resistant tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	30	tablet	£5.78	-	-
		100	tablet	£19.25	£22.35	M
Sodium valproate 500mg gastro-resistant tablets (A A H Pharmaceuticals Ltd)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	100	tablet	£23.10	£22.35	M
Sodium valproate 500mg gastro-resistant tablets (Alliance Healthcare (Distribution) Ltd)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	100	tablet	£22.35	£22.35	M
Sodium valproate 500mg gastro-resistant tablets (Wockhardt UK Ltd)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	100	tablet	£18.82	£22.35	M

Tablet

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim 100mg crushable tablets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 100 mg	30	tablet	£1.68	-	-
		30	tablet	£5.60	£5.60	C

Powder and solvent for solution for injection

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim Intravenous 400mg powder and solvent for solution for injection vials (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 400 mg	1	Vial	£13.32	£13.32	C
Sodium valproate 400mg powder and solvent for solution for injection vials (Kent Pharmaceuticals Ltd)	Sodium valproate 400 mg	4	Vial	£49.00	-	-

Solution for injection

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Episenta 300mg/3ml solution for injection ampoules (Desitin Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 100 mg per 1 ml	5	Ampoule	£35.00	£35.00	C
Sodium valproate 400mg/4ml solution for injection ampoules (Wockhardt UK Ltd)	Sodium valproate 100 mg per 1 ml	5	Ampoule	£57.90	£57.90	C

Modified-release capsule

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Episenta 150mg modified-release capsules (Desitin Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 150 mg	100	Capsule	£7.00	£7.00	C
Episenta 300mg modified-release capsules (Desitin Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 300 mg	100	Capsule	£13.00	£13.00	C

Oral solution

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim 200mg/5ml liquid (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	£7.78	£9.37	M
Epilim 200mg/5ml syrup (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	£9.33	£9.33	C
Sodium valproate 200mg/5ml oral solution sugar free (A A H Pharmaceuticals Ltd)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	£9.38	£9.37	M
Sodium valproate 200mg/5ml oral solution sugar free (Alliance Healthcare (Distribution) Ltd)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	£9.37	£9.37	M
Sodium valproate 200mg/5ml oral solution sugar free (Mawdsley-Brooks & Company Ltd)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	-	£9.37	M
Sodium valproate 200mg/5ml oral solution sugar free (Wockhardt UK Ltd)	Sodium valproate 40 mg per 1 ml	300	ml	£7.37	£9.37	M
Depakin 200mg/ml oral solution (Imported (Italy))	Sodium valproate 200 mg per 1 ml	40	ml	-	-	-

Modified-release granules

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Epilim Chronosphere MR 50mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 50 mg	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Epilim Chronosphere MR 100mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 100 mg	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Epilim Chronosphere MR 250mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 250 mg	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Epilim Chronosphere MR 500mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Episenta 500mg modified-release granules sachets (Desitin Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 500 mg	100	Sachet	£21.00	£21.00	C
Epilim Chronosphere MR 750mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 750 mg	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Epilim Chronosphere MR 1000mg granules sachets (Sanofi)	Sodium valproate 1 gram	30	Sachet	£30.00	£30.00	C
Episenta 1000mg modified-release granules sachets (Desitin Pharma Ltd)	Sodium valproate 1 gram	100	Sachet	£41.00	£41.00	C

• BNF Valproic Acid

Gastro-resistant capsule

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Depakote 125mg sprinkle gastro-resistant capsules (Imported (United States))	Valproic acid (as Valproate semisodium) 125 mg	100	Capsule	-	-	-
Convulex 150mg gastro-resistant capsules (Pfizer Ltd)	Valproic acid 150 mg	100	Capsule	£3.68	£3.68	C
Convulex 300mg gastro-resistant capsules (Pfizer Ltd)	Valproic acid 300 mg	100	Capsule	£7.35	£7.35	C
Convulex 500mg gastro-resistant capsules (Pfizer Ltd)	Valproic acid 500 mg	100	Capsule	£12.25	£12.25	C

Gastro-resistant tablet

Name	Ingredient	Size	Unit	NHS indicative price	Drug tariff price	Drug Tariff Part VIIIA
Belvo 250mg gastro-resistant tablets (Consilient Health Ltd)	Valproic acid (as Valproate semisodium) 250 mg	30	Tablet	£5.69	-	-
Depakote 250mg gastro-resistant tablets (Sanofi)	Valproic acid (as Valproate semisodium) 250 mg	30	Tablet	£5.69	-	-
		100	Tablet	£17.08	£17.08	C
Belvo 500mg gastro-resistant tablets (Consilient Health Ltd)	Valproic acid (as Valproate semisodium) 500 mg	30	Tablet	£11.37	-	-
Depakote 500mg gastro-resistant tablets (Sanofi)	Valproic acid (as Valproate semisodium) 500 mg	30	Tablet	£11.37	-	-
		90	Tablet	£34.11	£34.11	C

Above are just the range of prices for England & Wales for one very commonly prescribed medicine. Most European countries will have a similar range of prices and options. The developing nations might have fewer options, but likely more than appears in the MSH guide. I have no idea why the US price list James used only has two prices: one syrup and one tablet, and with a very dodgy-looking price for the tablet. It seems clear that US source isn't adequate for our purpose.

It is interesting to see that the Drug Tariff price is proportionate wrt the dose per tablet for one given formulation: in most of the above tables, the Drug Tariff price, if multiplied to give 1500mg DDD, is equal for that table. The NHS Indicative Price is also generally proportionate wrt the number of tablets (30 tablets is 30% of the 100 tablet price), but does vary from one manufacturer to another for the same pill (see Gastro-resistant tablet and Oral solution). The Modified-release granules from Sanofi cost the same per sachet regardless of dose, and Desitin Pharma is considerably cheaper than Sanofi. This is likely a result of the UK's regulated socialist healthcare drug price policy, as the results from MHS and US show variation per pill size or quantity purchased. For example, diazepam wholesale price is about 2 cents for the 2mg, 5mg and 10mg pills, making the "cost per day" exquisitely sensitive on the totally unknown factor of how many divided doses are taken per day.

Not only is there no such thing as "a" price for "valproate", but Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 84#Price of medications RFC does not allow us to include the price of valproate unless "sources note the significance of the pricing" (such as for example, the extortionate US price is a result of low competition, or the high UK price meant NICE did not recommend its use). I know you wished the RFC went a different way, but it didn't. -- Colin°^Talk 20:20, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

RFC does not allow us to include the price of valproate unless "sources not the significance of the pricing", that's not true, the RFC's result was no consensus, which means that the prices may very well be included, or not, depending on local or future consensus (a possibility that is explicitly noted at the end of the closing message). It seems to me there are two issues here: whether prices, without a perspective, are admissible, and whether there is a price measure that is stable accepted enough to be of encyclopedic value. Although several editors voiced a positive opinion for the former issue, I would suggest to stick to studying the latter for now, as anyway without a good measure we can agree on, we can't add prices, and at worst even if we don't get any consensus, the info we gather can be used to extend articles on the topic. Signimu (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Signimu, James asked the community to support his inclusion of pricing information in drug articles and the community did not give it. He does not have consensus to add drug information to articles. He failed to get permission to deviate from WP:NOT, which is policy. Specifically:

An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention. Prices and product availability can vary widely from place to place and over time. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices and availability of a single product from different vendors or retailers.

So the closing remarks on the RFC just echo WP:NOT. We need a source providing commentary on e.g., the high price of valproate in the US, in order for that to be significant enough to pass [[WP:NOT]. It isn't good enough, as James has claimed, that people are interested in drug pricing in general. It isn't sufficient for pricing to be listed at Drugs.com or BNF or any other catalogue because that is raw data like bus timetables, TV guides and restaurant menus. James feels strongly about this, has an open agenda about fighting Big Pharma secrecy, declared above that anyone disagreeing with him is a Pharma shill wanting to censor Wikipedia, and has past form for edit warring against community consensus. So I have no doubt that anyone removing prices will simply be edit-warred into submission. I can't read the paper you linked above but do note the comment "a major conclusion of this analysis is that international drug price comparisons are extremely sensitive to choices made about certain key methodological issues". We see this above, where James has picked a weirdly expensive form of valproate for the US price, which is a different dose strength to the developing world price, and juxtaposes them in the lead. He also has generally juxtaposed the developing world wholesale price with a US retail price, without declaring the US price is retail, which, you know, might make folk suspect we've got a POV-pushing agenda here. His "methodological" practice has been shown to be quite arbitrary, inconsistent, and not recognised by any authority, or used by any of our sources. If this was someone providing price information for homeopathic remedies, WP:MED would have flattened them like a pancake by now. There is no such thing as "the price of valproate". -- Colin°^Talk 13:28, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes there are prices for valproate. And lots of sources to support this... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:56, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Once again, there's a huge amount of OR here, while there's clearly no one price that we can use in general. I'm afraid we'll be heading for ArbCom. --Ronz (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

James you are being wilfully obtuse wrt price/prices. You make a claim that "The [singular] wholesale cost in the developing world is about $0.40 per day [original-research] as of 2015 [out-of-date source]" and cherry-pick one database record from a source, which happens to have only one supplier. You then conduct OR to present this as a daily price of $0.40 per day. You ignore that the same source would give prices of $0.52, $0.82, $1.10, $1.20, $1.30 per day, using your method, on other database records. And you are not acknowledging the statistical nonsense you performed elsewhere with your min/max pricing. For the US price, you cherry-pick one database record from a source to get $1.30 per day, for not only a different dose pill but a completely different chemical form (valproic acid, vs sodium valproate). You ignore that the same source would also give a price of $0.59 per day if you chose a different record. Hmm, one might almost think you had an agenda, picking prices that way. I agree, I think we need to take this to a different court to get people competent in policy to examine. The practice of inserting incorrect and misleading prices in to leads and body text, without meeting WP:NOT requirements, seems to be done solely by Doc James. -- Colin°^Talk 18:03, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Colin stop pinging me as I have previously requested. "About" is not a singular price. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:04, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

James As long as you won't drop this issue, you'll get pinged whenever I mention your name. As an admin, you hold a position of power and responsibility. That means you must be accountable to the community and are required to respond when challenged on your editing. If you wish a quieter life, you can resign as admin, and accept a topic ban on drug pricing. "About: adjective, "in the vicinity of", "approximately", "nearly", "close to". Are you really claiming $0.40 is approximately $1.30? There is no statistical method where the range of prices for different pill sizes or syrups from different suppliers can be combined to produce an "about" value that conveniently picks the cheapest price in the developing world, yet conveniently also picks the dearest price in the US.

At Ethosuximide you claim '"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$27.77 per month. In the United States the wholesale cost as of 2016 is about US$41.55 per month for a typical dose."' You say "typical dose" even though WHO says "DDD is sometimes a dose that is rarely or never prescribed because it is an average of two or more commonly used doses" and "The DDD is a unit of measurement and does not necessarily correspond to the recommended or Prescribed Daily Dose (PDD). Therapeutic doses for individual patients and patient groups will often differ from the DDD as they will be based on individual characteristics such as age, weight, ethnic differences, type and severity of disease, and pharmacokinetic considerations." It isn't a "typical dose" at all, and quite dangerous at misleading to suggest to our readers that it might be. Your "developing world" price is only for one supplier who only sells to government or NGOs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So you've claimed your figure is "about", expressed to four significant figures of precision, as though there was a range of prices nearby, when in fact, you have absolutely no idea what the price of ethosuximide in other developing nations is. And the US price from this source. You'll have to help me here, because I fear I have made a mistake with the calculator. I filter the results for "ethosuximide". I get two prices.

• $0.27656 per ML of "ETHOSUXIMIDE 250 MG/5 ML SOLN". Using your "Defined Daily Dose: 1.25 G" OR-calculation, that means I need to multiply the ML price by 5 to get 250MG and by 5 to get 1.25G. Which is $6.914 per day or $207.42 for 30 days.
• $0.99956 per "ETHOSUXIMIDE 250 MG CAPSULE". Using the above we multiply by 5 to get 1.25G which is $4.9978 or $149.93 for 30 days.

Perhaps I have made a mistake? Or do you think $41.55 is approximately $207.42 or about $149.93? -- Colin°^Talk 22:37, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

List of mobile phone prices

I think a list of prices for mobile phones might be workable if enough sources were found. Some of these phones are very expensive. QuackGuru (talk) 14:12, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Are people taking these as a medical treatment? --RexxS (talk) 17:07, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

People are accessing medical content using their mobile phone. QuackGuru (talk) 03:53, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

It's true that WP:Other stuff exists all over the English Wikipedia, e.g., the inclusion of the manufacturer suggested retail price in places such as iPhone#History and availability. However, the price of mobile phones is not relevant to this particular group of editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

See "Mobile phones have shown some promise in modifying health behaviour, such as smoking cessation and alcohol intake, to such an extent that their use is being increasingly considered in healthcare interventions.7,8"[35]

The mobile phone is used in healthcare interventions. Not sure which article this content would be appropriate. QuackGuru (talk) 23:53, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't believe there is a single person in the whole world who bought a mobile phone in order to make healthcare interventions. They will already have one and can use the relevant apps, or they won't. The price of the phone is completely irrelevant to our medical and health content. --RexxS (talk) 03:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Long-acting reversible contraception

Hi anyone...I reverted one edit on this but saw there is also a previous edit that looks unusual using phrases like "If you". I wasn't sure how to tidy it... Whispyhistory (talk) 09:47, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

User:Whispyhistory thanks. Lots of all caps content. Poorly referenced. Gah Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:30, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Thx...felt a little bold reverting that massive edit. Also feel guilty leaving gaps of missing citations. Might tackle it in future. Whispyhistory (talk) 14:34, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

You should never worry about reverting unverifiable conspiracy theory stuff about how IUDs get "sneaked" into women. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

MDPI back into PubMed?

I just came across this study on PubMed: PMID 28758964, which I found a little weird after reading the abstract, and in fact I then saw it was from MDPI, a predatory publisher listed in WP:CRAPWATCH. I thought MDPI was delisted from PubMed? Since when were they relisted? Should we consider MDPI OK now that it is relisted? --Signimu (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

PubMed is essentially just a search engine, MDPI has always been there (and worse). Alexbrn (talk) 15:19, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Pubmed is not selective. You're thinking of MEDLINE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:21, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

yes MEDLINE is different[36]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:36, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

It seems there are MDPI journals even in MEDLINE: [37]. I tried to find a setting to filter those kind of predatory journals on pubmed but it seems either it's too selective (filtering also Nature papers) or not enough (showing MDPI journals accepted by MEDLINE). So I think I'll just continue to open my eyes and watch out by myself --Signimu (talk) 15:38, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

MDPI is also a cut above Omics. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:49, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Although originally on Beall's list, MDPI was removed by Beall after a successful appeal. Not a particularly good publisher, but apparently not directly predatory either. --Randykitty (talk) 15:55, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, best avoided. Alexbrn (talk) 15:59, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

OK, thank you all for the precisions --Signimu (talk) 16:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

MDPI has higher standards than shady publishers like Elsevier. Nemo 16:18, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. You may disagree with Elsevier's commercial policies, but their journals are generally rigorously edited by competent people with high professional standards (with the huge number of journals they publish, the occasional problem is to be expected - and Elsevier has a track record of addressing any problems as soon as they become apparent). Same goes for SpringerNature, Wiley, Sage, and Taylor & Francis/Routledge. MDPI is in a very different (lower) class. --Randykitty (talk) 16:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Predatory cleanup, help needed!

Please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Help cleaning up 'remainder' of predatory journals cited on Wikipedia and help cleanup citations to predatory sources on Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:14, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Access to all medical articles in an Alphabetical/Advancement order

Hi my name is Sami My team and I are currently building a medical social website that aims to give free and reliable medical knowledge to students, patients, physicians and any curious mind. Wikipedia has been one of the first inspiration for this project since the beginning and that's why we are asking for help in this talk toady

We need an access to all the reliable Medical sciences's related articles on wikipedia, from a bacteria subspecie to the latest drug made on the market, our goal is to have access to every single Bit of medical information on the web (wikipedia included) to give it back to an enlightened and curious audience. We know regrouping all the data is hard but for now we have access to WHO and Mayoclinic, combined with wikipedia that could be a solid start for our project.

We also need a way to differentiate the articles written for professionals and those written to educate the general population. Is there a way we can find out how advanced a article is on wikipedia?

Finally we need to sort the information by alphabetical order to make the research experience simpler

Thank you for your support and if my message is unclear or you would like to know more about the project feel free to let me know

User:Theaderal it is complicated. We have some stats for medical articles here.[38] How did you get permission to us Mayo? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Sami. When you asked this question a month ago, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 128 #Access to reliable medical information, I gave you pointers to Category:Health and Index of health articles. Did you have problems following those links? --RexxS (talk) 15:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

And if you can't traverse the category by yourself, in https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/ one can also find several medicine-focused openZIM dumps such as https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/wikipedia_en_medicine_nopic_2019-10.zim , from which you can extract both titles and content all nicely packaged. Kiwix can be used to get a preview of the content without need of command-line manipulation. Nemo 16:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi RexxS sorry for to bother for that again i lost the links and couldn't find the last talk in the archives thank's again for helping! Do you know Anything about a rating system of wikipedia articles? Also are you interested by the idea or are you just a very helpfull person ?

Hi (talk The Aderal Project Doesn't aims to monopolize or steal data from other website, Rather than absorbing all the net's scientific data we redirect data from reliable website such as mayo that will be quoted and sourced. We also have Medline and plan to add Wikipedia and Frontier Content. We also rely mostly on members to publish, share and edit content. See it as A Medical encyclopaedic research engine mixed with Social network. If you have more information about copyright infringement or anything that could make this project sabotage itself feel free to let us know thank you this project can only be brought to it's final form by the vision and help of potential members so thanks again User:Theaderal 18:41 26 November UTC+2 ~26~11~2019~ .

With respect to copyright, you are free to use Wikipedia content as long as you attribute and indicate that it is under an open license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

This article needs review, particularly the assertion in the lede that there are doctors calling for an unvaccinated control group in the United States. That seems like quite a fringe view to me. BD2412 T 12:58, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this is saying that doctors are calling for an unvaccinated control group (though there are anti-vaccine people who espouse this nonsensical trope). I have updated the source to a better source and trimmed some of the weasel wording. I think it's better now. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 19:19, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Permission to Move to Mainspace (with your assistance)

At the beginning of this term I asked for all of your permission to once again be part of the WikiEd initiative and have my students edit pages (as groups) devoted to notable figures from the History of Psychology (which is the course I am teaching). The students went through all the training modules, created their pages in sandboxes with each team member focused on one aspect of "What makes for a good Wikipedia article?" (e.g., Neutrality of tone, etc). They then peer-reviewed the work of six other groups, while their work was also reviewed by six groups. The feedback was used to revise their articles which now reside within their "Captain's" sandboxes.

As per the agreed upon rules we have not transferred these articles yet to mainspace. Rather, we agreed to wait until some of you looked at the articles to confirm they are "good to go". Thus, below is a list of the handles for the Captain's sandboxes. If any of you have the time could you take a look and do your editor thing ... leaving any comments on their Captains' talk page and, most importantly, letting them know if you believe the article is ready for mainspace. I've instructed them to wait for such a statement before transferring it.

From my perspective it felt like everything went well, and I am very hopeful you will find these articles a great addition to Wikipedia. Obviously if you find them lacking I will ask my students to respond directly to all comments. I very much appreciate your time and, once again, your willingness to allow me another go at this.

Here are the relevant sandboxes along with the historical figure they represent ...

History of Psychology Article Edits

Sandox Handle		Historical Figure
Ozolf		William M. Biddle
Mmilto1		Edna Heidbreder
Skinners Boxer		William John crozier
Icey_cy98		Jennifer Eberhardt
Graduate Scholar		Hermine Hug-Hellmuth
Roommyy		Charles Lasegue
Fruitfulmind		Robert Zajonc
Shamwow786		Simon Gandevia
yikes99		Adrian Furnham
Arimas99		Charles E. Osgood
DetheaDu		Naomi Weisstein
Saiedray		Nalini Ambady
WanyingFeng		Virgilio Enriquez
AncientAnkles		Muzafer Sherif
BellaGB		Miriam Polster
AChanster		Max Friedrich Meyer
RawanHedefa		Joyce Brothers
Alisanforever		Charles Henry Thompson
Perrywoof		Helen Thompson Woolley
Mandoo Dumpling		Eleanor Gibson
Halloween2019		Kurt Koffka
sike-ology		Joseph Delboeuf

SteveJoordens (talk) 14:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi SteveJoordens, thanks for doing this. Would you be willing to provide links to the sandboxes to make the process easier? I was going to do this myself, but I ran into some problems - e.g. User:Mmilto1 and User:Icey_cy98 aren't registered. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 17:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Here are the students enrolled in Joordens' course. And here are the articles:

• Hermine Hug-Hellmuth
• Joseph Delboeuf
• Miriam Polster
• Muzafer Sherif
• Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt
• Helen Woolley
• Naomi Weisstein
• William John Crozier
• William W. Biddle
• Edna Frances Heidbreder
• Virgilio Enriquez
• Robert Zajonc
• Joyce Diane Brothers
• Adrian Furnham
• Kurt Koffka
• Max Friedrich Meyer
• Ernest-Charles Lasègue
• Robert Zajonc
• Simon Gandevia
• Nalini Ambady
• Charles Egerton Osgood
• Charles Henry Thompson
• Eleanor Jack Gibson

Note: I just laid my eyes on these articles for the first time but I plan on putting in some work to fix formatting/layout issues. I'll also drop a line to Women in Red, as several of these would interest them. Any help fixing content issues would be appreciated. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:14, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Elysia. A discussion on these articles and some challenges in integrating them has started at wt:Women in Red#Incoming_batch_of_biographies_from_Wiki_Education.

Thank you all for your help with this!! I have one question from my students ... well two really, but one that's more challenging. We were instructed to build our articles in sandboxes rather than to edit them on mainspace. Now, when you guys tell me students its OK to move to mainspace, they're not sure how. There are good instructions for this in contexts where there is not an existing stub, but in many of the cases there IS an existing stub. Obviously I told me students that if there is a stub, any information there should be included in their article so nothing is lost. But what then is the process? Do they delete the stub and then act as if it were a new article? Thank you for any information!

SteveJoordens (talk) 15:10, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Hello, SteveJoordens, and Thank you for asking this question now, rather than later! You have just saved us some work.

The answer is "it's complicated". So first of all, if there is no existing article, the correct answer is to just WP:MOVE the page. This is the easy situation.

Now, if a page already exists, I can think of three possible situations that you might want to consider. They are:

1. There's an old article, I (one person) wrote a new article (not even one sentence in my new article was written by another human; typo-fixing, formatting, and ref-adding doesn't count), and now I want to put my article where the old one was, to completely replace it.
   • The easiest approach is to have the sole author of the content do this. Open my article (in an editing window) and copy the contents. Open the old article (in the same kind of editing window). Select everything and blank it. Paste in the new contents. Any normal edit summary (like "Expand article" or "Copyedit") is appropriate. Click the big blue button. You're done. (Well, then you'll want to check to see if the page lost its categories, and re-add them if necessary.)
     • Pro tip: If you copy and paste using the visual editor, then the categories will be preserved in the old article. If you copy and paste in (any) wikitext editor, then don't blank quite everything in the old article. Leave all the categories and similar codes at the bottom of the page where they are.
2. There's an old article, we (multiple people) wrote a new article, and now we want to put my article where the old one was, to completely replace it.
   • Easiest do-it-yourself approach: This is almost the same as the single-author copying, but there's an important step about what the Help:Edit summary needs to say. The process starts the same: someone (anyone) opens our article in an editing window and copies the contents. Then open the old article (in the same kind of editing window) and paste in the contents. Now you need to get the important edit summary in place. The edit summary should say something like "This text originally contributed by User:Example, User:Example, and User:Example in November 2019". You need to have a full list of the names of anyone who has made a copyrightable contribution to the text. You can also (optionally) add the template {{Copied}} to the talk page to provide more information. There is more information at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.
   • Another option: If the old article hasn't been edited recently (i.e., since the students started their work), then you can request a WP:HISTMERGE. This solves all the attribution- and copyright-related problems neatly and permanently, but it requires an admin to do it for you.
3. There's an old article, and now we want to replace only part of the old article with our new content (or ad our new content without changing any of the old content).
   • This is a normal WP:MERGE process. It's very similar to the above, except that you're not doing wholesale replacement of the old content. Copy and paste the parts that you care about, and leave the other bits alone.

I know this sounds complicated, but if you take it stepwise, you'll get there. Remember, if you get this wrong, it's not the end of the world. Just ask for help when you need it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, the procedure has been discussed at WT:Women in Red and I suggest that we keep the discussion in one place. I think Elysia (Wiki Ed) made it clear there that option 3, the WP:MERGE process, is her expectation. People pointed out that it's very dispiriting to the original writers of an article if someone comes in and wholesale replaces everything they've created. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:21, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Assuming the original articles were relatively well-developed and written by a single person who is still active, then I can understand that perspective. When they're not – well, Wikipedia:MERCILESS editing is something any experienced editor should expect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

SteveJoordens, we encourage students to follow the process outlined in our training for moving work out of the sandbox. The training outlines two possibilities: creating a new article and editing an existing article. It is important that students follow the instructions, especially using the edit summary to link to their sandbox. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Dysthymia

Based on recent editing, there appears to be some thought that dysthymia should instead use the term persistent depressive disorder. I don't know if there is consensus in the medical community (in general or here at Wikipedia) that term "dysthymia" is outdated, but if so I suggest WP:RM. Deli nk (talk) 17:11, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

The last consensus on a similar case was that this should be discussed on a case-by-case basis on the article's talk page directly As a hint, it's possible to use pubmed to track the number of citations per year: for dysthymia[39], for persistent depressive disorder[40]. Seems like dysthymia is still largely more popular there by 2 orders of magnitude, so a move would seem to me to be way too premature. --Signimu (talk) 00:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned medical articles

Hi guys, I thought this PetScan query of orphaned articles tagged as medical stubs might be of interest to some of you. There are about 960 of them at the time of this post, by default organized from smallest to longest (total size in bytes, not readable prose length).

If you have some spare time, please take a look and see if anything can or should be a) de-orphaned by linking to something, b) merged into something else, or c) nominated for deletion. In the case of b) or c) I'm happy to take care of the actual work, I just don't know enough to sort out what's notable or not when it comes to medical topics. No need to ping me if you reply here, I have this page watchlisted. Cheers, and hopefully happy hunting. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

PMC thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:47, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Requested move

An editor has requested that {{subst:linked|Microbial symbiosis and immunity}} be moved to {{subst:#if:|{{subst:linked|{{{2}}}}}|another page}}{{subst:#switch: project |user | USER = . Since you had some involvement with 'Microbial symbiosis and immunity', you |#default = , which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You}} are invited to participate in [[{{subst:#if:|{{subst:#if:|#{{{section}}}|}}|{{subst:#if:|Talk:Microbial symbiosis and immunity#{{{section}}}|{{subst:TALKPAGENAME:Microbial symbiosis and immunity}}}}}}|the move discussion]]. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:03, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:43, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Piracetam

• Piracetam (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Got an IP doggedly adding and re-adding primary research. Could use eyes. Alexbrn (talk) 06:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Might be worth leaving a short human-written message on the IP's talk page. Sometimes they ignore templates but respond to that. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:07, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, tried to ping them from Talk:Piracetam but - technical question - can IPs be pinged? Alexbrn (talk) 07:10, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't think they can be, actually. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:27, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

O well, they seem oblivious anyway, and the unreliable content continues to pile up ... Alexbrn (talk) 08:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Actually, like any other editor, they get a notification when a message is posted on their talk page. If they fail to respond and continue to reinsert primary research, a short block will likely attract their attention. --RexxS (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, it's continuing. As an aside, this is an example of Wikipedia at its most frustrating: the amount of multiple editors' time this incident has wasted is depressing to consider. Alexbrn (talk) 05:54, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

IP blocked for a week and content restored to last good version. --RexxS (talk) 16:22, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Right so, now it appears we have a new account recruited to give us the Truth™ about piracetam. Currently our article is referring to "A questionable 2001 Cochrane review which was highly limited ..."[41]. Is there an admin in the house who could maybe semi this article? Alexbrn (talk) 13:50, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

 Done--semi'ed 1 week. DMacks (talk) 13:52, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

And the meat/sockpuppet indefed. There really should be no need to waste further valuable editor time on these disruptions. RBI. --RexxS (talk) 16:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you.

Piracetam#Efficacy has a surprising number of sources that aren't even from the current decade, which will technically end in a couple of weeks. This is well beyond the 5-year standard for areas of active research (which this particular drug may or may not be, although I'm pretty sure that we can do better than papers from 2001 and 2005). Is anyone interested in updating it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

There's not a lot of recent MEDRS (that I could find, anyway). I added PMID 28786085 which is from 2017 ... Alexbrn (talk) 16:51, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Long medical lists

Are there any very long lists with wikilinked entries within this WikiProject's purview (i.e., lists with thousands of wikilinked entries)?

I wrote an algorithm to detect mistargeted links in a list with 11500 bluelinks and it worked really well to identify links that needed to be retargeted (i.e., links to pages that were unrelated to the nominal topic of the list page) as well as a number of pages (~200) that needed to be converted to DABs, which WT:WikiProject Disambiguation is helping to fix. I literally only need to rewrite 2 lines of code to detect similar links in a different list. There are currently no other tools that are designed for this purpose. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:28, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Sounds useful. Long lists I know of include lists associated with List of ICD-9 codes and ICD-10 chapters. List of medical abbreviations also has some long sublists, as well as Lists of diseases and List of physicians. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 11:13, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

We also have List of skin conditions User:Seppi333 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:57, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Paramilitary deletion discussion

Paramilitary activity usually results in victims requiring help from a range of medical experts (depending on the acute injuries and required aftercare) and/or mental health professionals; so the following deletion discussion may be of interest to some folk here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Queerly Bohemian/Userboxes/FreedomFighters.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:40, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

seems to be stretching the scope of this project(commented)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:52, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Predatory source at Composition of electronic cigarette aerosol

One of the images is sourced to doi:10.23937/2378-3516/1410035 a predatory journal. I don't know how to tackle this to bring the article in line with WP:MEDRS. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:37, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

ICD11

Continuing the discussion from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_128#ICD11

The issue is foundation layer of ICD and it's derivation (called linearization) for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics. WHO and user community is in my view trying to even figure out (for future) what what code should be best used in real life. People are used to the linearization codes. But v11 is revolutionary in many ways. I would argue that that should be a new WD property called ICD11-foundation-identifier. In a way, this property is semantically superior to the derivation product (current ID, that is the linearization). Related link https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P7329 EncycloABC (talk) 18:29, 2 December 2019 (UTC)