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

External links

Summary of points in favor of and against MedMerits as an EL (through 16 Sept 2011)

Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC) This subsection presents the essential elements of the discussion through 16 Sept 2011 (numbered for ease of reference). The next subsection is intended for subsequent comments. The complete discussion follows thereafter if anyone wants details. Please comment—preferably below, under “Discussion after 16 Sept 2011.” (There is nothing to my knowledge in WP policies and practices that precludes acceptance of MedMerits. If you know of any, please provide specific references or quotes. General statements about limiting the number of ELs do not in themselves have bearing on a specific case. Each valid instance should be judged on its merits and in comparison with competing ELs and prevalent practices.)

Points in favor of adding MedMerits as an EL

1. The articles on the MedMerits website are authoritative and validated.
2. MedMerits brings restricted clinical articles into the public arena.
3. MedMerits is a free web resource, providing comprehensive coverage of a large variety of neurologic disorders.
4. MedMerits offers information not available in WP nor in eMedicine or GeneReviews, two similar resources which are featured in infoboxes in many WP neurologic articles.
5. “The site seems to be accessible and stable, has more detail than we would want if our articles achieved FA status, yet the content is encyclopedic.
6. “I'm glad this commercial site is willing to provide the content to the world….”
7. “The KD [Ketogenic diet] article is certainly comprehensive. Possibly too comprehensive in places…”
8. “The epilepsy article I saw was writen by a well known expert.”
9. “Ok so they buy the text in, but it isn't available on the original site (MedLink) for free.”
10. “[I] would find it useful when writing….”
11. “The eMedicine links are varied in quality…. This new site is certainly better than most of those links [other ELs currently in infoboxes in neurologic articles].”
12. “MedMerits is the only free encyclopedic secondary source for neurologic disorders.”
13. “MedMerits uniquely provides both physicians and the lay public with free access to clinical information on neurologic disorders written for physicians.

Points against adding MedMerits as an EL

1. “[It is a] website that is not maintained by a large representative or professional organisation.”
2. “[It] Buys its content elsewhere.”
3. “I would prefer to see those interested in improving the quality of information available to the public come improve Wikipedia's content rather than using use to drive traffic to their own site.”
4. “IMO all external links not to major organizational statements should occur within DMOZ.”
5. “…anyone related to the organisation is strongly advised not to add links per WP:COI and WP:ADV.”
6. “I am cautious about adding further external links across the board without full analysis of the site.”
7. “We are looking for people to improve Wikipedia not one to turn us into a collection of external links.”
8. New and has not stood the test of time.

---

Discussion after 16 Sept 2011

Please provide reasons why external links to MedMerits should or should not be accepted or comment on the previously stated points. Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don’t think there is a conflict-of-interest issue here. I have proposed that MedMerits be accepted as an EL and disclosed that I have a connection to the company. I hope that’s acceptable, especially as there is no reason why any other editor would know about it. MedMerits is a new company, and it just launched its public content at the end of July 2011. I just brought the news and made a proposal for discussion. The community will decide. But I do believe that EL’s to it would serve editors and the public well. Please express yourself and help spread the word to anyone who has written or edited clinical articles, so they are aware of this discussion and can give their input. Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Nobody wants to turn WP into a collection of external links. However, well chosen ELs are of great help to editors, professionals, and the general public. The question before us is whether MedMerits is desirable as an EL or not. Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Whether ELs drive traffic to a commercial site should not be a consideration. The accessibility, legitimacy, and desirability of the information on the site should be decisive. Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• I've been reading up on this issue, looked at MedMerits website,
  • • I do agree with the statement "Whether EL's drive traffic to a commercial site should not be a consideration", in all frankness i would question the "commercial" character of Medmerits - from a point of view of a general public user, that doesn't imply anything about the mode of operation (cq business model) that might be driving the site: for a user this site provides free information, that is information I don't have to pay for.
    • I do agree with the statement that "there is no conflict-of-interest issue here"
    • As the MedMerits material is copyrighted, I cannot be included in wikipedia, The only way to make it available is through referencing and external linking.
    • The information provided is authorative, and of high scientific content.
  • Considering the above arguments I feel that I support the fact that MedMerits qualifies as a valid EL, and certainly as a source of referencing.
  • It might be a suggestion that MedMerits, after disussions with the Wikipedia-community drafts a statement which clarifies how Medmerits and Wikipedia agree on the use of MedMerits material : on how to quote, reference, and linking to individual articles on the the Medmerits site. upon mutual agreeement that statement could be published on the Medmerits site under "About", and any editor could check how he should use the material. --DerekvG (talk) 11:56, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The whole issue is utterly boring. You are bloating the talkpage with a discussion that very few people are interested in. I would like Presto54 to stop wasting our time; you are by far the most persistent of the "external links warriors" who turn up here from time to time.

We are here to write useful content, not direct people to other resources. Encyclopedia articles are meant to be self-contained. If you need to go elsewhere to get a comprehensive view, then obviously the article itself is flawed and needs improving. Why should we direct to MedMerits and not to recent peer-reviewed reviews in mainstream journals, which are by far more authoritative in the end of the day. JFW | T@lk 12:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, why should we direct to MedMerits, {{eMedicine}}, {{DiseasesDB}}, etc? What's the difference? — John Harvey, Wizened Web Wizard Wannabe, ^{Talk to me!} 15:49, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Now that you've mentioned it, these are established and widely respected reference tools (more than just "additional information"). eMedicine and DiseasesDB (and indeed OMIM, GeneReviews etc) have never been controversial because nobody doubts their additional value. With regards to external links, I am a longterm skeptic of endless external linkage; long external link sections rarely add anything to a good article. JFW | T@lk 20:16, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Presto54 has solicited my opinion by leaving a message on my talk page. I think that the quality of the articles on the site merits its consideration, once the site has been up for a few years and has become a routine reference for lay people as well as physicians. If the free content has been online only since July this year, it is clearly far too early to have such a discussion. Neurotip (talk) 16:35, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• There is indeed conflict of interest. The site is new and has not stood the test of time. Thus I oppose its addition. Come back in a few years.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Generally speaking, if you are connected to a website, then promoting links to it is considered a conflict of interest on Wikipedia. A good external link, by definition, provides more information than the article ought to, not just more than it currently does. (See WP:ELNO#EL1 for the official rule.) OMIM and GeneReviews always do this; eMedicine sometimes does. I suspect that MedMerits falls into this second category.
  Presto, I think you might want to read WP:ELBURDEN and think about its implications. Anyone who wants to add a link needs to be winning friends and influencing people, not irritating them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
• I would agree the there is a COI here, though I am somewhat conflicted on the issue of linking to articles there. Perhaps using it a source to build our articles would be the better option. Ronk01 talk 13:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Presto54 also solicited my opinion, and I want to know why we are having such an in-depth discussion about EL regarding a small medical website owned by a private company focused only on neurology and neurological disorders. Also, I have not heard this discussed in professional circles as a trusted source of information for research or by clinicians that I have worked with so I agree with Doc James. It needs to grow or just survive in its niche, but not be used for our purposes. I oppose its addition as well. WiiAlbanyGirl (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Since Presto54 asked for my opinion, it is not clear that the material on this site is a "unique resource beyond what the article would contain." If the provenance/quality of the information is verifiable it might be useful as a source. I am not clear how valuable it is to link directly to what is essentially another encyclopedia entry on the same topic. I think that using an intermediary directory would make more sense. Zodon (talk) 22:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Original proposal to add new external link (short version)

Presto54 (talk) 22:46, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Here are the principal assertions I made in my longer message in the next subsection. The longer version of my query provides supporting statements and links.

1. The information provided on the MedMerits website is verbatim the same as that offered on a restricted website, which is accredited by the ACCME, the principal national CME accreditation organization in the US.
2. MedMerits is pioneering a business model that brings restricted medical information written for physicians into the public arena.
3. MedMerits uniquely offers open access to comprehensive information on hundreds of neurologic disorders on a single website.
4. In each general area it covers, MedMerits offers information not available in Wikipedia or in two sources of the same genre as MedMerits that are prominently featured in Wikipedia (eMedicine and GeneReviews).

---

Original proposal to add new external link (with supporting statements/links)

I am posting this request on the suggestion of Doc James. I am a board certified neurologist and an unpaid advisor to MedMerits, without any actual, contingent, or promised ownership stake in the company.

Objective

To determine if there is a consensus whether Wikipedia users would be better served by inclusion of external links to MedMerits where appropriate or whether they would be better served by excluding such links. (Reasons to keep out external links to Medmerits might include the following: it is not a reliable source; it doesn't add substantially to what is already available in Wikipedia; it is redundant and inferior to existing external links; or it is not sufficiently differentiated from other external sources, so that if it were included, too many other sources would have to be included as well, thereby diminishing users' ability to spot the most authoritative sources.)

Introduction

MedMerits was founded in 2010, initially as a closed site available only to qualified physicians. It currently has about 2,500 physician users in Canada and the US. MedMerits launched freely accessible public pages providing the public with free access to about 500 articles on a large variety of neurologic disorders. MedMerits licenses its content from MedLink, which is an ACCME accredited provider of CME. MedLink offers CME credits to its subscribers for accessing its website for educational research.

Having access to authoritative information developed pricipally for neurologists, MedMerits offers comprehensive information on neurologic disorders in hundreds of clinical articles, in a depth that is not matched elsewhere on a freely accessible website, including Wikipedia and two websites that are prominently featured in Wikipedia, eMedicine and GeneReviews, two resources of the same genre as MedMerits.

Judge for yourself

I invite you to judge for yourself. Take Multiple sclerosis, for example, as it is one of the strongest neurologic entries in Wikipedia and its sister article, Multiple sclerosis signs and symptoms, and compare them to Multiple sclerosis in MedMerits. The Wikipedia articles merely cover the highlights of MS symptoms, whereas the clinical manifestations alone of the MedMerits article has a word count of nearly 7,000; in addition, MedMerits offers a full-length article on fatigue in MS, another full-length article on the neurobehavioral aspects of MS, and yet another full-length article on the management of MS symptoms. The Wikipedia article has no differential diagnosis section, whereas the MedMerits article has an extensive and annotated list. The Wikipedia article barely mentions MS and pregnancy, whereas the MedMerits article has an entire page on this subject. The Wikipedia article does not mention considerations for MS patients who have to undergo general anesthesia or electrode implantation to control abnormal movements, whereas the MedMerits article offers a paragraph.

MedMerits also covers MS-related conditions not covered or barely mentioned in Wikipedia. For example, there are a few sentences on the clinically isolated syndrome in the Wikipedia MS article, which links to what is hardly more extensive than a stub under that heading. By contrast, MedMerits has a full-length article on that subject. The Wikipedia MS article mentions Balo concentric sclerosis in passing, but MedMerits has a full-length article on it. Again, Wikipedia has a separate entry on this subject that is hardly more extensive than a stub. The Wikipedia MS article does not mention tumefactive MS at all, whereas, again, MedMerits has a full-length article. (Wikipedia does have an entry for tumefactive MS but it’s a stub and labeled as such.) To get a broader overview of the coverage of MS in MedMerits, please visit the MedMerits Multiple Sclerosis Center.

This pattern is repeated in all areas covered by MedMerits. I don't mean to be critical of Wikipedia by these comparisons. On the contrary, Wikipedia is usually the starting point for my own research for subjects not in my field of expertise. However, we have to concede that Wikipedia has greater limits than specialized works, leaving the more inquisitive and intellectually capable readers yearning for more. I see MedMerits as the kind of resource I would like to see when I research any subject. In fact, two similar resources are shown prominently in Wikipedia (above).

The availability of links to eMedicine and GeneReviews in Wikipedia should not preclude MedMerits as a suitable target for further research, as MedMerits is similarly complementary to them and, more often than not, exceeds their coverage in the general areas it covers. If you compare MedMerits with eMedicine, you will find that MedMerits articles have far greater depth and much broader coverage (of neurologic disorders) than eMedicine. GeneReviews partially overlaps the content area covered by MedMerits. However, MedMerits covers many other neurologic disorders as well, appropriately not included in GeneReviews.

In addition to its premium clinical articles, the MedMerits website offers an array of neurologic information resources (eg, Community forums, external links, context-specific news, expert analysis of key journal articles) adding further value for Wikipedia users.

Conclusion

There is no freely accessible resource on the web that offers as much as MedMerits to the general public and physicians in the area of neurologic disorders. It is therefore an unusual and highly suitable target for research on such disorders. Wikipedia already includes external links to eMedicine and GeneReviews, which are of the same genre as MedMerits and not redundant with it. MedMerits licenses its information from MedLink Neurology, an authoritative, ACCME accredited, fee-based resource with a distinguished slate of authors and editorial board. (Click on About MedLink Neurology in the menu). MedLink Neurology is cited in 16 independent Wikipedia articles. Neurologists worldwide pay subscription fees of 400 USD for accessing MedLink Neurology. A large subset of the same information is now available to the public for free at MedMerits. Rather than looking at MedMerits as weak for licensing its information, it should be viewed as pioneering a way to bring premium medical information into the public arena. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration. Presto54 (talk) 01:48, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

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Original community discussion (through 16 Sept 2011)

Note that I moved the following three comments from the top of this section to this location to improve the layout of the section. They were the initial comments in this section. Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I see lot of external links and removed them. What do people think about this one? http://www.medmerits.com/index.php/center/parkinsonism_center Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

An "information", "news" and "community" website that is not maintained by a large representative or professional organisation. Buys its content elsewhere. Ticks my boxes as being unsuitable. JFW | T@lk 12:39, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Although I'm not sure not sure if MedMerits would be of interest to Wikipedia readers, I can tell you that it is used by just about every neurology resident in the US.

. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.232.245 (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:TLDR. JFW | T@lk 11:08, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

The foregoing comment was made on the original "long" version of the proposal (below) Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I added a short version ahead of the long version. Presto54 (talk) 22:51, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with JFW that this post could be shorter. However, I've (quickly) read through the MedMerits article on the ketogenic diet and browsed their coverage of epilepsy and tuberous sclerosis, to pick a few examples I'm familiar with. The KD article is certainly comprehensive. Possibly too comprehensive in places (the relative importance of some details isn't necessarily reflected by their coverage). It drops the clanger about Jesus recommending that people with epilepsy should fast (ask me if you are interested) but otherwise looked good up to about 2008. Although MedMerits is aimed at making professional information available to non-professionals, the articles aren't rewritten, so they aren't particularly lay-friendly and in places come across as lecturing the physician on how to do his or her job. The epilepsy article I saw was writen by a well known expert. Ok so they buy the text in, but it isn't available on the original site (MedLink) for free. I'm tempted to add it as an EL myself and would find it useful when writing (though I don't know if I'd use it as a source). What a shame the list of references at the end of the article had no hyperlinks.

However, this discussion raises the issue of our rather automatic inclusion of external links in disease/disorder infoboxes. I've always felt these tend to bypass the WP:EL policy scrutiny because they are not in the appropriate section at the end. Perhaps we should start a discussion on those. Anyone interested in looking into that issue with me? Colin°^Talk 12:21, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

What's your vision for this project? Presto54 (talk) 02:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

You mean the two link we provide in the disease box? One to pubmed and the other to emedicine? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for continuing to think about this. It was eMedicine and GeneReviews that I mentioned, but yes, in the info box near the top of the page. Presto54 (talk) 01:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support with some reluctance. Though I find off-putting the verbose presentation here, my reading of the external links policy provides only support for this. The site seems to be accessible and stable, has more detail than we would want if our articles achieved FA status, yet the content is encyclopedic. I'm glad this commercial site is willing to provide the content to the world, and I hope it's a long-term situation. We've already been burned by Dorlands/Merck Manual, so there are some raw nerves when it comes to commercial-but-free ELs. -- Scray (talk) 23:21, 5 September 2011 (UTC) I moved the foregoing comment and the reply (next comment) to this position in order to consolidate comments.

Thanks for your support but cut me some slack on the verbosity. I'm new to this game and didn't understand my audience. Presto54 (talk) 02:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

We link to at least six sites (ICD-9, ICD-10, OMIM, DiseaseDB, MedlinePlus, eMedicine (often multiple times), MeSH. The MedlinePlus link is probably the least likely to survive WP:EL scrutiny as the information there is certainly inferior to what an FA should contain. The eMedicine links are varied in quality and we over use them uncritically. That site carries adverts. OMIM, where relevant, appears to be a valid EL. I'm not sure the ICD and MeSH links meet WP:EL even if some researchers might find them useful (useful isn't a valid EL quality). This new site is certainly better than most of those links. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments and support. The ELs you mention (and others) link to different kinds of resources. eMedicine and GeneReviews are secondary sources that provide overviews suitable for physicians but comprehensible by many laymen. MedMerits falls into this category. eMedicine tends to be rather superficial and, as far as I know, has no professional review process. GeneReviews is great but limited in scope to genetic disorders. OMIM is great for genetic disease nomenclature, technical genetic information, and brief summaries of key research reports tracing the evolution of knowledge of the target disorder, including clinical features. It's scope is limited to genetic diseases, but it covers them all. MedMerits is the only free encyclopedic secondary source for neurologic disorders. MedlinePlus is an authoritative compendium of medical disorders and related topics for laymen. ICD, Diseases DB, Open Directory (dmoz), PubMed, MeSH are very useful directories. PubMed, of course, also has abstracts of primary publications. Advertising by itself should not automatically disqualify an information resource. That's the only way a free commercial site can survive. We benefit a great deal from commercial medical publishers and many are scrupulous in putting out valid information without biased statements or biased omissions. Presto54 (talk) 16:00, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Direct hyperlinks to cited publications and abstracts are coming. MedMerits uniquely provides both physicians and the lay public with free access to clinical information on neurologic disorders written for physicians. There are plenty of sources for information written expressly for the the lay public but they are insufficient for people desiring comprehensive information. Re-writing technical articles is problematic (eg, cost, scarcity of expertise combined with writing ability, keeping up with updates). MedMerits is a secondary source. It offers informative overviews, but I agree with you that writers should check and cite the primary sources provided in MedMerits and perform additional literature searches and literature reviews before writing their own articles. That's precisely the rationale to include MedMerits as an external link rather than an in line citation. Presto54 (talk) 22:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer to see those interested in improving the quality of information available to the public come improve Wikipedia's content rather than using use to drive traffic to their own site. IMO all external links not to major organizational statements should occur within DMOZ.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

If I were to become quite diligent contributor to Wikipedia, it would hardly make a dent. Of course, all those little dents do add up. But even concerted effort by hundreds of part-time volunteers would take years to render MedMerits superfluous, and I have my doubts that they would ever get to that point and then keep what they actually completed up to date. The practical question for now is whether Wikipedia users are better off with a high-quality external link that is central to their immediate need or would they be better off without such a link? MedMerits is de facto a publisher of mainstream medical information. So what, if it happens to gain by getting referrals from Wikipedia? It's giving plenty back to the public in return. And one more user will be happy to have been satisfied by coming to Wikipedia instead of running into what might seem like a dead end if their question is unanswered. DMOZ is great for people searching through that pathway, but if MedMerits is the ideal target for a user reading a particular article or it's among the top 3 or 5, why exclude it? Presto54 (talk) 01:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

DMOZ is hopeless. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to look up medical links via that. You're better off with Google. While we have an WP:EL policy that allows a restricted set of links, we need to judge any medical site according to policy, not according to our own individual preferences. This site meets WP:EL as far as I can see. However anyone related to the organisation is strongly advised not to add links per WP:COI and WP:ADV and as James says, adding content is far more beneficial to WP than adding links. Most of us hardly make a dent too. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Are they mutually exclusive? Does the ideal of promoting contributions to Wikipedia preclude placement of ELs to valid sites that extend Wikipedia's reach? Presto54 (talk) 04:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a great paper on the topic of external links in general. [1] I am cautious about adding further external links across the board without full analysis of the site. Here is a list of topics MedMerits includes [2]. We are looking for people to improve Wikipedia not one to turn us into a collection of external links. We have had a couple of editors attempt to add these. [3] This proposal might be good as a WP:RfC to get broader input. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful to separate the immediate issue of whether MedMerits should be accepted as a legitimate target for ELs in appropriate Wikipedia articles on neurologic topics from the broader issues you raise, which have wide ranging policy implications and therefore not likely to be resolved anytime soon. As this forum appears to be the ideal place to have this discussion, I hope that other interested parties will express their opinions over the weekend. Short of that, I hope that you will consider the arguments I made and the opinions that others have voiced and reverse your position on MedMerits. Presto54 (talk) 07:02, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Please make additional comments above in section, "Discussion after 16 Sept 2011" Presto54 (talk) 04:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Motion to close

I don't see this going anywhere. While some users have been sympathetic to the specific hypothetical situations, it appears that the consensus is that this content is not anything that would be absent from an FA-class wikipedia article, which is WP:ELNO's first criterion. SDY (talk) 15:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree strongly with the summary. There is content on that site that meets WP:EL and contains material that would be absent from any FA-class WP article. Nothing hypothetical about it. I haven't seen any policy-based arguments against having ELs to this site in principle. Just personal opinion. Some of the pages on the site may fall below WP:EL but that's probably true of many. Indeed, this discussion has raised this issue of the current set of external links we almost automatically add to info boxes without much consideration. Many of them fall far below EL. We should be aiming to do better than MedlinePlus for a start. The conclusion should be that editors can add links to this site, as with any reputable site, but only when the value of the link for a given article has been assessed -- never automatically. Much of the hostility towards adding the links seems to be related to the COI of the editor adding them. We already have guidelines/policy that effectively prevents folk adding links to sites they are involved with. Colin°^Talk 16:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

There are some broader WP:WAX issues that really could be addressed, but I guess I'm not seeing what this "material that would be absent from any FA-class WP" article would be. Medical advice, I guess? Honestly, I think we should be very reserved about intentionally linking medical advice. SDY (talk) 16:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this whole discussion is problematic. Presto54 seems to be wanting sanction to widely add external links to a website he is involved with. Both Doc James and JFW's arguments are essentially that we're not in the business of adding external links. These two polarised opinions will not meet. What will not come out of this discussion is a change to policy banning external links from medical articles, nor approval from the project to add links to all/many of our articles that have corresponding pages on the MedMerits site.

Generally, the material I've seen on that site is very good. The level of comprehensiveness varies and ranges from below, to matching, to greatly exceeding the level we'd have at FA. In that regard, I don't see it any different to eMedicine. Arguments that eMedicine have been around a while and this one hasn't are really not relevant. eMedicine has a significant problem in that if I use the search box then I'm requested to register (for free) which is disallowed per WP:ELREG but fortunately the actual linked-to articles don't suffer from this (at present). MedlinePlus articles are always inferior to FA and are often at the patient-information-leaflet level. A saving point for MedlinePlus IMO is that their topic pages (linked to from their encyclopaedia pages) offer a good range of external links. That resource is much better than DMOZ, which I'm surprised is still going because it is awful.

External links should always be added with per-article per-link considerations. The disease-disorder info box encourages over linking and could do with trimming. But that's an argument for another day. Colin°^Talk 19:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the MS article on MedMerits in more detail it is fairly comprehensive. My question is how many pages is the proposer wishing to at MedMerits too? Adding this EL just to have them disappear is a concern but not one mentioned in policy.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia & pathology

Is there a way to gauge the number of pathology-related articles in Wikipedia?

I am doing a little project on Wikis and trying to get an estimate... such that I can compare it to the tiny wiki sites devoted exclusively to pathology.

The Pathology Taskforce template appears to link to 128 articles:

• 6 top importance
• 15 high importance
• 38 mid importance
• 12 low importance
• 57 ??? importance

The number of links to the Pathology Taskforce is approximately 300.[4]

The totals (128? 300?) seem quite low, when one considers the estimate in Heilman et al.[5]; it pegs the number of medical articles in Wikipedia at around 20,000. Which brings me to the question... does any one know how they got the 20,000 number in that article?

"CatScan"[6] looked like it might give me the answer... but I seem too dense to use it or don't have enough patience.

As an aside, in my research, I came across this:

Wood, A.; Struthers, K. (2010). "Pathology education, Wikipedia and the Net generation". Med Teach. 32 (7): 618. doi:10.3109/0142159X.2010.497719. PMID 20653388. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)

It compared Wikipedia entries with information in Robbins (Kumar V, Abbas AK, Cotran RS, Fausto N. "Robbins and Cotran pathologic basis of disease". Saunders/Elsevier (2010) ISBN 1416031219.), a standard text used in medical school and by pathology residents, and has this to say about Wikipedia:

"We have identified Wikipedia as an informative and accurate source for Pathology education and believe that Wikipedia is potentially an important learning tool for of the ‘Net Generation’."

Nephron  T|C 03:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is all the info for you in an easy to digest format [7] The only task force which has been active is "dermatology" with User:My Core Competency is Competency leading it. Would be great to see other task forces become this active. Would also be interesting to see Wikipedia:Books for each medical specialty which would put together all articles in a specialty into a textbook format.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link Doc James. I don't think the assessment stats are an accurate picture of how much pathology is presented in Wikipedia.

Is it possible to search Wikipedia for frequency of keywords? I would like to search for the presence of "micrograph", "histomorphology", "microscopic appearance", "pathology" within articles.

I have done micrographs of approximately 300-400 cases (~1100-1200 images - count, gallery of images) and most of the cases have a picture or two in the relevant Wikipedia article. Looking at pages I've recently added images for (Endosalpingiosis (no), Strumal carcinoid (no), Struma ovarii (no), Atypical ductal hyperplasia (no) and Salpingitis (no), Glassy cell carcinoma (yes)) -- only Glassy cell carcinoma is contained within the Pathology WikiProject assessment.

More generally, I am not really sure where to draw the line for the WikiProject. Pathology seems a bit unique to me in that almost all (non-psychiatric) disease has a component of pathology. In other words, there isn't a neat separation between "medicine" and "pathology" like one could make for, say dermatology and medicine or cardiology and medicine. Nephron  T|C 16:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Generally speaking, a WikiProject (or a taskforce within it) defines its own scope in a way that includes articles that its members are interested in maintaining. You seem to be a key editor in the area and there really is little reason why you shouldn't mark articles as part of the Pathology WikiProject, as you seem likely to want to work on them. Searching wikipedia can be done using a Google search – for example: 'site:en.wikipedia.org micrograph' returns about 2,840 results, but that includes all namespaces. Using our internal search on article space only gives 949 results, but that includes articles like Scanning electron microscope and Andrew Paul Leonard. If you want to discuss how to get better targeted results, I'd recommend dropping a note at User talk:MZMcBride who is very savvy about what the toolserver can do and can be extraordinarily helpful if you ask nicely :) --RexxS (talk) 18:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Left a message for MZMCBride.

It would be interesting if one could run SQL queries on the database underlying Wikipedia. Any hoo, I added a few more articles to the WikiProject Pathology. Thinking very ambitiously, Wikipedia ought to have an image of every pathology that can be diagnosed from an image. Nephron  T|C 17:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes that is what I am trying to say. The only taskforce which accurately reflects a sub specialty is dermatology due to the hard work of a single editor.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:45, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the numbers at WP:MEDA#Statistics are only as accurate as some individual human chooses to make them. My Core Compentency did a lot of manual work to get the derm articles tagged. To do the same for the path articles, you just need to paste |pathology=yes into the {{WPMED}} banner on the article's talk page. As a starting point, you might look at the stuff tagged for |hemonc=yes, because there's probably a lot of overlap. As for which articles to tag: start with the obvious ones, and proceed from there. On borderline cases, you might consider whether the current version of the article actually contains path information, rather than merely whether it's possible.

Also, compared to a plain text search, you might be happier with a list of articles that link to relevant subjects, which you can get from Special:WhatLinksHere/Micrograph (for example). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I think a good deal of the things could done automagically. We have standard set of section headings, e.g. Signs and symptoms, Diagnosis, Pathophysiology, Treatment, See also, References. If it doesn't exist already, it would be nice if we had a tool that scanned the articles for these headings and generated stats on compliance. I am sure such a tool could be created. Nephron  T|C 17:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Disease Wikiproject/taskforce

That is a great idea. The first thing we need to do however is generate a list of disease articles. Right now Wikiproject medicine covers more than just diseases. Thus I am not sure without tagging all articles as disease how we would run a bot. There are I guess a couple of ways we could do this. One would be to create a disease Wikiproject or taskforce. The other would be to create a category. Would be interested in doing this if others think it reasonable.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

If we can get a list, then we can filter it manually. The steps would look something like:

• Make list (automated)
• Remove unwanted stuff from list (by hand)
• Tag all items remaining in the list for the task force.

User:MZMcBride did some work for me a while back on making lists filtered by WPMED banner info (to identify items that are redirects, but aren't tagged that way by us). You can see the list at User:WhatamIdoing/Med redirects. It has a snip of code at the top that could probably be adapted to identifying pages that are tagged by WPMED and include <some word>, but are not tagged for the Path task force. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The vast majority of WPMED articles are about diseases. I think this is completely the wrong move. We already group articles by the relevant branch of medicine (e.g. cardiology, dermatology) and I believe that is quite sufficient. JFW | T@lk 10:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

For a list of medical conditions, use this: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox_disease. --Arcadian (talk) 17:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think it makes sense to have some metadata that allows automatic searching. If you look at something like MEDLINE -- they have people define keywords for the the articles. As the medicine content in Wikipedia has gotten so big... it makes sense to have something like this to help categorize and subdivide content and into groups. Categories capture this to some degree... but I feel I can't get an overview of the structure. Based on comments MZMcBride made, I suspect one cannot automagically construct a (limited) hierarchy of the categories automatically. I think this would be interest to get the technical people to think about. Stated in other words, if you go to liposarcoma... and click on Category:Sarcoma it ought to be evident it is a cancer, i.e. sarcoma is in Category:Cancer (Category:Oncology). It is possible to figure this out-- if you click a couple of times at the bottom... Category:Connective/soft_tissue_tumors_and_sarcomas ... Categories: Types of neoplasia.

If the Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox_disease list is complete... a bot could be created to automatically mark all the articles... but I'm not sure if that in itself would be of additional value.

I think expanded infoboxes would be interesting to consider... that summarize and group diseases. With time... I think the articles are getting so long you start losing the context. Nephron  T|C 05:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Template:Infobox disease appears in about 5500 articles, which is about a fifth of our current articles. Is the path task force really interested in supporting every single article about diseases? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Ideally, everything that has pathology in it ought to see support. Also, if it is diagnosed by a pathologist... it ought to have an image. A significant number of entities are named after their histomorphologic appearance... these especially should have an image. At the moment, I don't think there are enough editors... but I'm optimistic that will change and I don't think it takes very many. Nephron  T|C 01:53, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Your previous post has placed this talk page in the oncology category. I don't know if that was the intention? Hidden in () behind sarcoma is in Category:Cancer DS Belgium (talk) 19:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed that by supplying the missing ':' - maintenance edits of this kind are usually acceptable, although the general rule is not to refactor other editors' comments. (Hope you're ok with that, Nephron.) --RexxS (talk) 20:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

National Programme for IT (UK) cancelled

Daily Mail (a major UK tabloid) had as front story today that £12billion NHS IT scheme scrapped today. As The Guardian pointed out, this old news from 9th September (UK docs will be familiar with accuracy & impartiality of Daily Mail on health issues), but it is true that remaining software systems (not clear to me quite which bits) are being cancelled, with established systems on the hardware infrastructure to remain... and oh yes, no significant saving on that £12billion spent. I've updated lead on NHS Connecting for Health but this will need a major section within the article.

With previous government's spin on this, and the bland marketing claims of the involved contractors seemingly being divorced from any practical reality, does anyone have any meaningful understanding of this "biggest civilian IT programme of its kind in the world" ? David Ruben ^Talk 18:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

All I know is we have seen some poor health IT choices here in Canada. Seems to be a global issue.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:42, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Andrew Wakefield

There's clearly been some off-wiki event that is causing IPs and others to try to cleans the Wakefield article of strongly negative adjectives. Please watchlist. Any admins reading this: I think semi-protection might be in order. Colin°^Talk 20:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems Michele Bachmann made a statement implying the HPV vaccine had caused "mental retardation". It's become a political talking point in the Republican race. LeadSongDog come howl! 00:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Caffeine FAR

I have nominated Caffeine for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Doc James (talk · contribs ·email) 07:52, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

BMJ article: Speed of updating online evidence based point of care summaries

Dear all,

Just read this article: http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5856.full

If anyone has time (not me anyways; and has access to ACP JournalClub and other source), it could be very interesting to copy their methodology and compare Wikipedia for speed of updating againt Dynamed, UpToDate, eMedicine etc. as mentioned in this article, e.g. in a Rapid Response/Letter to the Editor

cheers, --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:42, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

New revelations regarding XMRV, showing that tests are unreliable, and a partial retraction of Lombardi et al. (Science 2009)

A large amount of relevant history (regarding XMRV) is summarized in this extensive commentary (published 23 Sept 2011), including:

1. a peer-reviewed article in Science, by nine laboratories including the main proponents of the XMRV-CFS link, stating prominently that "These results indicate that current assays do not reproducibly detect XMRV/MLV in blood samples and that blood donor screening is not warranted"
2. a partial retraction by Silverman and Das Gupta (of the Cleveland Clinic) in which they report that "some of the CFS peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) DNA preparations are contaminated with XMRV plasmid DNA" (referring to the Lombardi paper from Oct 2009 Science). Specifically, they state that "The following figures and table were based on the contaminated data: Figure 1, single-round PCR detection of XMRV sequences in CFS PBMC DNA samples; table S1, XMRV sequences previously attributed to CFS patients; and figure S2, the phylogenetic analysis of those sequences. Therefore, we are retracting those figures and table."

This information has relevance for a number of the articles of interest to WPMED, including XMRV, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Whittemore Peterson Institute. I am posting here because I might overlook some, and more eyes will be helpful. There are still some strong feelings on both sides of this issue, but the scientific consensus seems clear - XMRV, and MLV-like viruses, have not been shown to be linked convincingly to CFS, prostate cancer, or any other disease; in addition, contamination with XMRV and related sequences has occurred in the course of investigating these putative links. -- Scray (talk) 19:44, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Reinforcing once again why we should generally avoid using primary research.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:07, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Finally, this nonsense is going to be wrapped up. JFW | T@lk 10:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Health disasters by year categories proposed

I propose to make categories for health disasters by year eg Category 2011 health disasters; an alternative would be Category:Health disasters in 2011. This is the only category of disaster which does not have a “by year” category. An alternative name could be “Health accidents and incidents” but “Health disasters” seems to be accepted as the overall category. To be subcategorised by century eg 21st-century health disasters. Initially to be for 2000 to 2012; there seem to be enough incidents or disasters to populate every year!

The category should include Epidemics, Pandemics, Flu outbreaks, Faulty or contaminated equipment, food or medicines etc. Also animal outbreaks like swine fly, foot and mouth outbreaks and pet food contamination. Also perhaps incidents of toxic metal/chemical poisoning and radiation poisoning. Possibly the categories Category:2000s medical outbreaks and Category:2010s medical outbreaks could be renamed to Category:2000s health disasters etc to be a subcategory by decade? PS: I will put this on several Wikiproject pages, so could you add comments to my talk page please. Hugo999 (talk) 01:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

How does one define a health disaster?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Not sure, but we do have Category:Health disasters. NW (Talk) 02:13, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

_{If it's been mentioned in the Daily Mail? Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:03, 25 September 2011 (UTC)}

Notification of RfC

Henry Wallis's The Death of Chatterton, 1856.

Talk:Suicide#Image RfC

1. Should Henry Wallis's painting The Death of Chatterton be used to illustrate the article Suicide?
2. Should the article Suicide contain an image depicting suicide?

--Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Scarborough General Hospital

There is discussion at the above AfD as to which NHS hospitals should or should not be considered notable, and how the bar should be assessed for passing WP:GNG, that could do with wider input.

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Health Service seems slightly moribund, but I have posted there saying that it might be useful for that project to set out a note of what sort of things a basic entry-level article on an NHS hospital should aim to contain; and perhaps co-ordinate a drive to turn List of hospitals in England blue, at least for as many hospitals as are considered do pass notability, in case anyone would be prepared to put a shoulder to the wheel on this. Royal Surrey County Hospital seems to me a reasonable example of the sort of facts a basic stub article should aim to contain. Jheald (talk) 09:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

You might also stop by WP:WikiProject Hospitals.

Basically, I've never seen an article about a hospital get deleted at AFD. Perhaps we should, but we don't. As a result, the notability advice (which I wrote) at WikiProject Hospitals focuses on the advantages of bold merges instead of deletions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Viewing all medical article with a specific tag

I am trying to figure out how to view the medical articles with the Template:Refimprove . Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:19, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

See http://toolserver.org/~svick/CleanupListing/CleanupListingByCat.php?project=Medicine (warning: large page). It's linked on WP:MED under #How you can help#Other ideas.

NB that a significant minority of the tagged articles don't actually deserve them any longer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Dermatillomania

I am working on a major overhaul of the Dermatillomania article. Anyone that wants to help out with this can work on it here -User:Remember/Dermatillomania. Also, if anyone has access to PubMed articles, I would greatly appreciate any articles you could send me regarding this condition (since I can't access them for free). Remember (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Best to work on it at the main page rather than your user page... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:22, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Please let me know what articles you want/need Kallimachus (talk) 03:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Probable spam

We have a new editor, Heybuddysup (talk · contribs), adding links to the articles Pudendal nerve and Spigelian hernia that I believe are disguised spam. After I removed the links, the editor reverted them back in. Since it is against my policy to multi-revert for any reason except blatant vandalism, I am bringing the problem here for others to look at. Looie496 (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted the addition of the links per WP:ELNO, particularly #11, as both sites are Wordpress blogs which, to no surprise, were both registered on the same day through a private domain registration service. Looks to be spam, pure and simple. - SudoGhost 02:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

If the problems continue, then the domains can be handled per WP:BLACKLIST. You can also get help at the WP:External links/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

External Editor

Can anyone recommend a good external editor that works well for you. Going through these pages with large numbers of references with extensive metadata is tedious. Kallimachus (talk) 04:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "external editor"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, was talking about a wikipedia editor that did particularly well with extensive references that are in a lot of our medical pages. It's somewhat painful to try and edit pages with extensive in-line references. Wanted to make sure I was making it as painless as possible. Kallimachus (talk) 05:50, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Like Notepad on Windows OS = a text editor. Notepad is obviously poor for editing Wikipedia pages because it's so basic. @Kallimachus: You don't tell us what operating system you are using, so it's hard to make recommendations, and everybody will have their favourites. I've used Programmer's File Editor for Windows NT for many years, but it's obsolete now as it doesn't handle unicode. Have you looked at WP:wikEd that works inside a browser and is OS-independent? --RexxS (talk) 12:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Windows 7 Kallimachus (talk) 05:50, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Just tried wikEd, love it! thx Kallimachus (talk) 05:59, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Notepad 2 is a bit better, and can handle all sorts of programming code (though not Wiki code). For Mac OS X, try TextWrangler. vi also works well on a Mac, too. ;-) WTF? (talk) 13:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Anything for linux (Ubuntu)? DS Belgium (talk) 21:07, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

At least Kate, Eclipse, Emacs, Vim and gedit can be configured to do nice things with mediawiki syntax, so if you are familiar with one of these editors give it a try. Richiez (talk) 21:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know Ubuntu uses gedit, since Ubuntu uses GNOME (although the recent Unity change might have changed that), but gedit is a pretty simple editor that has tabs and allows plugins, as it would already be on the Ubuntu system, I'd recommend giving it a try. - SudoGhost 21:52, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Cochrane reviews and CoI

This is sort of odd. Normally Cochrane reviews are things we want to see in articles... not sure if this is bitey or what the issue is. SDY (talk) 15:14, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is odd and there are quite a few more such deletions. There is a discussion under way whether a Cochrane volunteer has a conflict of interest. More eyes welcome: User talk:Karenblackhall. pgr94 (talk) 16:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting. This was indeed horrible. These are exactly the collaborations that we need. I am speaking at the Cochrane North American center this coming week regarding editing Wikipedia. Will send them an invite. [8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Cause of Alzheimer's Disease

In re: discussion of simple statement on Alzheimer's causation at Talk:Alzheimer's disease#Causation. Update: There's a 2011 date on the page http://www.med.nyu.edu/adc/forpatients/ad.html#causes and I'm sure NYU Medicine is a reliable source. The page has this:

The cause of Alzheimer's disease is not yet known, but scientists are hoping to find the answers by studying the characteristic brain changes that occur in a patient with Alzheimer's disease. In rare cases when the disease emerges before the age of sixty-five, these brain changes are caused by a genetic abnormality. Scientists are also looking to genetics as well as environmental factors for possible clues to the cause and cure of Alzheimer's disease.

I plan to update the Alzheimer's disease page to say that the cause is unknown except for 1% to 5% of cases where genetic differences have been identified. Please respond at Talk:Alzheimer's disease#Causation if you see problems with this. (Cross-posted at WikiProject Neurology) -- Jo3sampl (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes I think it is fair to say the cause is unknown except for a few cases. The pathophysiology is fairly well understood though but not the cause. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:26, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Agree Kallimachus (talk) 21:53, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

List of plants used as medicine

We can use a lot more eyes to watch over List of plants used as medicine, especially as far as sourcing of medical claims is concerned. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 14:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

List of important publications in medicine up for deletion

List of important publications in medicine has been nominated for deletion, with the implicit argument that such a list is original research; the discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of important publications in medicine.  --Lambiam 21:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Methamphetamine-induced delusional parasitosis

There's a bit of a dispute brewing in regards to the wording in Faces of Meth. One user removed what he saw as a disputed etiology[9] and another user (myself) restored it based on the preponderance of sources supporting it.[10] A small discussion about the problem can be found here. I would greatly appreciate it if someone knowledgeable about methamphetamine-induced delusional parasitosis could review the two diffs listed above and the discussion, and then boldly solve the problem. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 00:54, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Find a good ref. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I've listed six on the article talk page. This dispute is about the concept of "meth bugs", which is covered by the sources. The other editor claims it is propaganda, yet there is nothing indicating it is such, other than their personal opinion. The sources support the idea of "meth bugs" (delusional parasitosis). The article says that the facial scarring from picking scabs depicted in the Faces of Meth images is "caused by the delusion that there are "bugs" under the skin". This is supported by the source cited: "For doctors like Tom Barrett of the Howard Brown Health Center, who treats a dozen meth patients a week, the pictures reveal meth’s punishing effects: Facial scarring, for instance, as users scratch at the bugs they think are under their skin."[11] This is also supported by five sources on the talk page, three peer-reviewed journal articles and two textbooks. The user is questioning whether meth users in general experience delusional parasitosis, but that kind of questioning and dispute is outside the scope of the article. Viriditas (talk) 14:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

My propaganda remark was about the difficulty of finding sources, the meth bug thing has been taken up by the media, quoted in so many news articles, blogs, on anti-drug sites etc. that any google search returns loads of results saying the same thing, making it hard to find other sources that specifically deal with skin picking and methamphetamine. DS Belgium (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm questioning that most meth users who pick their skin do it because of delusional parasitosis. Drug induced repetitive behavour, itchting, increased OCD behaviour, impulse control disorders are all causes that do not involve the user believing there are bugs under their skin. DS Belgium (talk) 18:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

But are you the one who's questioning that, or is it also to be found in a reliable source? It may be true that "Drug induced repetitive behavour, itchting, increased OCD behaviour, impulse control disorders are all causes", but without a reliable source that says so, we have no right to bring forward that argument ourselves. To do so would elevate our analysis to the level of a reliable source, and unfortunately none of us are reliable sources. Without a source that makes your argument, we have to go with what is said in the sources that Viriditas quotes. --RexxS (talk) 20:00, 2 October 2011 (UTC)