Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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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

Collaboration of the month for October?

Gastrointestinal cancer, one of 14 high-importance articles listed as stubs in the project. And it looks horrible! Any interest? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:43, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• Looking at the articles that have been previous collaborative of the month, I think it would be a very positive thing to start this again ... Lesion (talk) 23:05, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
• I tried to keep up with it for a while. The problem with a collaboration is that it only works if you have more than one person actually show up and do something. The response is frequently, "you be bold, but I'm busy with my own stuff". If I were making suggestions, I'd add that it's helpful to have several high-quality but still free/online sources identified in advance, and at least two people who are committed to doing most of the work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Good point. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:41, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, good point. Is anyone aware of groups that have effective collaborations? (WP:Hurricanes with its substantial amount of good articles may). One way of arranging it could be to have one or two editors who are willing to do a substantive edit, and then having another group of editors expand sections. I have a feeling that some editors (like me) would be up to editing a section or two but may not have the time, specific knowledge or bravery of other editors to make larger changes. LT90001 (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Committed help

• Biosthmors
• Lesion

Minor edits / section editing

• LT90001 (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Good sources

• American College of Gastroenterology Guidelines for Colorectal Cancer Screening 2008
• Helicobacter pylori: gastric cancer and beyond (2010)
• Global epidemiology of oral and oropharyngeal cancer (2009)
• Oral cancer: Clinical features (2010)
  • note: as the article currently defines gastrointestinal cancer, oral cancer is not included in this topic ... agree that the mouth is part of the GI tract. Let's see what the sources say Lesion (talk) 10:44, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I think oral cancer would be more likely classed as head and neck cancer than GI ... Lesion (talk) 11:13, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
• <ref name="Yamada 2009" >{{cite book|last=Yamada T, Alpers DH, et al.|title=Textbook of gastroenterology|year=2009|publisher=Blackwell Pub.|location=Chichester, West Sussex|isbn=978-1-4051-6911-0|edition=5th|pages=}}</ref> -- I've got this as a .pdf and happy to share by dropbox if anyone wants a copy. Lesion (talk) 10:44, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
• Various Cochrane reviews from the topics "Upper Gastrointestinal and Pancreatic Diseases" and "Colorectal Cancer" [1]

Please feel free to deprecate or propose alternate sources in the list above.

Model article

• If there's an article or two on Wiki that has a style this could emulate, it might be worthwhile to put it here LT90001 (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)'
• ?

I am sorry to sound discouraging, but I don't think that the article should be expanded in this way. "Gastrointestinal cancer" is a collection of disparate diseases—different pathological processes, different treatments, different prognoses. The article should be no more than a simple list or a disambiguation page. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:45, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe ... Efforts might indeed be better directed at the individual pages for the subtypes of GI cancers? This page may be high importance, but I wonder how many people will visit it compared to say, how many visit gastric cancer ... Lesion (talk) 20:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey, I think think that's a great idea. If we're going to do collaborations of the month, I don't think we should expand too quickly or we'll run out of steam; this small article (whilst with not too many views) seems like a good place to start. It seems like the next month's has also been nominated too (malaria, in the above discussion). I think it might be a good idea for the collaboration discussions to be kept on the main talk page to encourage interest, discussion and also to ensure that the collaborations don't die out from lack of interest or attention (which they might when isolated). LT90001 (talk) 11:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking summary style article might be good. Basically a subheading of each type with a short paragraph giving key epidemiology stats, prognosis, causes and treatment. As long as the sections were kept short this basically would look like a list. Lesion (talk) 20:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree, summary style with not too much detail is good. LT90001 (talk) 11:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

For example, head and neck cancer is a much more substantial article than a simple list. Lesion (talk) 20:57, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I like what Lesion has been doing there.

I like the idea of descriptions that are longer than a disambiguation page would be, but still pretty brief. If you want something more list-like overall, it could probably get tagged as a {{set index}} ("all the things that are called GI cancer"). But if you just want to mention the rarer ones, and leave fuller explanations for the main ones, then then list at the end of Leukemia#Classification might be a reasonable model for the rarer ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:42, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Done before the month started?

From the great work of Lesion/Axl, I would say we're way past presenting something embarrassing, which was my main concern, so maybe we should pick something else? I think getting things from embarrassing to acceptable is a better result overall than focusing on the good to make it fantastic. Does anyone else want to find an embarrassing article that might not be too hard to cleanup? Awesome. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Digestive disease? --WS (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

GI cancer still needs a bit of attention IMO. Personally I wouldn't expand any section longer than the esophageal cancer section is currently... Lesion (talk) 11:43, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Not done yet! I'll update the liver cancer & colorectal cancer sections with sources soon. I see what you all mean about expanding this a little. We can use the sourced updates from the stubs to update their parent articles as we go along... many of them are quite deficient. LT90001 (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to keep working on GI cancer (thankfully it's no longer a pile of crap) but digestive disease looks like a good crap target, thanks WS. I say we make that the October collaboration of the month. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:24, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd have no trouble with making GI cancer be September and October, and then DD be November, but whatever's chosen, someone needs to update the page at WP:MCOTW and ideally spam a few requests for help to people's user talk pages. If people don't know about it, then nobody can help. We want something more like a barn raising than like one person doing all the work and a couple of us cheering him along from the sidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I'll consider that consensus. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Not done yet!

Alright. If Gastrointestinal cancer is still this month's collaboration, let's get some more focus so we can try and elevate this to at least a B class article, ideally GA, seeing as we have 4+ interested editors. LT90001 (talk) 06:14, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks the the committment. =) But I have to say I've dropped out on this one, because it's no longer an embarassing article, so I don't feel the need to stop the bleeding, so to speak. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:23, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

No worries! I've refactored the COTM page and added the little template above to denote this month's collaboration. LT90001 (talk) 08:15, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month (November)

New thread so that we don't have an extremely long one thru next month. Consensus seems to be Digestive Diseases in the style of a barn raising (heh) LT90001 (talk) 06:14, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Recent changes/Medicine

There once was a bot maintained by Rich Farmborough that fed recent changes to medical articles (articles with this project's template on their talk page) into page like a watchlist. Since Rich was blocked from bot work, it has fallen into disrepair. Is there an alternative page that displays recent changes to medical articles? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:22, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If you are looking for articles to edit, the closest equivalent I can find is here, the Medicine reclassification log. That said, it is my personal feeling that there is adequate oversight of medicine articles. LT90001 (talk) 02:28, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

"Adequate oversight"? I'm not sure I understand you.

For about 18 months - until about a year ago - I would begin my day by opening that Recent changes/Medicine log and slowly work through the changes since my last session - checking for vandalism, checking sources, welcoming new editors, etc. I found this to be very rewarding work and, I think, quite useful; but got busy and dropped it. I'd like to start again. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:40, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I've had a look for some more options and the only other two I have found since are for someone to directly provide you with their watchlist (as you can copy/past watchlists), or to use the Article Alerts system. Sorry for any misinterpretation; the work of the WikiGnome to which I believe you allude is valuable and often under-appreciated. LT90001 (talk) 06:26, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Peter James at WP:VPT pointed out Transcluded changes - template:WikiProject Medicine. Does anyone mind if I put this on the WP:MED front page? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Go for it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:25, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Related to this seems to be what should be an important function, in my mind, so thanks for actively working on this global issue at mw:Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Ranking_articles_by_Pageviews_for_Wikiprojects_and_Task_Forces_in_Languages_other_than_English James—to make the vision a reality. So why can't we just have a WikiProject Medicine watchlist? Or any other WikiProject watchlist? Why can't we have a featured articles watchlist? Or a good articles watchlist? Or whatever kind of watchlist we want? Sorry that's more something for the WP:Village pumps but still. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Diarrhea in Developing Regions

Hello Wikipedia, My name is Jordan, I am an undergraduate at Rice University, and I am here to propose the writing of a new Wikipedia article on Diarrhea in Developing Regions. Diarrheal diseases are among the most prolific in the world, accounting for a significant fraction of all infections, as well as a massive number of child mortalities. Given that children with diarrhea are significantly more likely to die, most within the first two years of life, Diarrheal diseases are a serious threat to the livelihood of children globally. Clearly, diarrheal disease is a significant issue in developing regions, and I hope to use this Wikipedia entry to outline the impacts of diarrheal disease, elucidate the primary causes of the issue (usually linking back to poverty and limited access to vital resources and human capabilities) and finally discuss both potential solutions and those that have already been implemented in these at-risk regions. I will draw my information from a variety of academic sources, mainly from journal articles, but also from information and data made available by some of the major organizations interested in this topic such as the CDC, and WHO. Though a page already exists on the topic of Diarrhea, it approaches the topic from a highly scientific/medical perspective which is incompatible with my approach and proposed writing on this topic, which will take a point of view more oriented around the concepts of poverty, justice and human capabilities. Another related page, Diseases of poverty, already exists, however this article approaches a number of different diseases with depth; if I were to add to this page, my content would dramatically outweigh the content on any other disease. Instead of extending on these pages, I propose the development of a new page on the topic of Diarrhea in Developing Regions, which will focus on the topics I outlined above. In order to supplement the existing articles, I plan to add small sections to these pages with a brief summary of the information that will be present on the proposed page, and add links between these three pages. Any comments, questions, or suggestions that I can use to improve my work are greatly appreciated! -- Best, Jpoles1 (talk) 20:48, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

That looks like a very worthy idea to me. Some random thoughts:

• Presumably you'd have some emphasis on watsan and on other technical aspects of development?
• It's quite hard to get an article started nowadays - if you're less experienced creating articles, it could be a good idea to start a draft in your userspace and then take it "live" when it's improved a bit.
• Sources are vitally important - they should underlie everything you write (but don't just copy & paste).
• If you need any help with the obscure wiki-technical stuff, just ask.

Good luck! bobrayner (talk) 21:06, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

This sounds great. The main article at Diarrhea should have a section called ==Society and culture==, which could give a paragraph or two summarizing your subtopic, and a link to the proposed article at Diarrhea in developing regions. That will improve the main article and also dramatically increase the likelihood of people finding and reading your new one.

Look over WP:MEDRS for information on sources. We generally like secondary sources, such as review article and higher level textbooks, rather than original experimental results. Secondary sources have the advantage of summarizing a lot of work, which helps us get the overall feel instead of accidentally "cherry picking" an experiment that seems interesting but might not be representative. You might want to look over sources like PMID 22796685, PMID 22480268, PMID 22436130, PMID 22419779, and PMID 21975154 as examples of possible sources. If you need help finding or evaluating sources, then just post a new note here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:23, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The ICDDR B probably has some useful resources. bobrayner (talk) 16:30, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

What you are interested in writing about is infectious diarrhea otherwise known as gastroenteritis. Our article on this topic already covers it fairly well. Diarrhea from eating too much fruit is not a significant public health concern, neither is that from taking laxatives. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:56, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi All, I really appreciate all of the help being provided to support this small project. Though I recognize that articles on the subjects of both Diarrhea and Gastroenteritis exist, I hope to approach this topic from a non-medical perspective (I know, I'm probably not in the most ideal wikigroup for such an endeavor, but I think it's a productive discussion all the same), but rather from a human capabilities point of view, which focuses more on the impacts on human development and quality of life. A more detailed proposal for my work, including many of my sources, can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e8yzk7dj1MxIRIfa6aqykydIlhybukAgITgp4QDW9DY/ Thanks Again, Jpoles1 (talk) 01:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, that article sounds like a great idea. Keeping in mind what has been said above about sources and citations and duplicating content, as a registered user you can simply be bold and create the article yourself. There are certainly a lot less notable and relevant articles that already exist. Welcome to Wikipedia and I hope you enjoy your stay :D. LT90001 (talk) 06:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

All articles combine both medical and non-medical content. The article on gastroenteritis has a section on "society and culture". What you are proposing is a co tract. A duplication of content we already have. The sections you mention in the doc are all medical in nature.

We have a section on epidemiology in the gastroenteritis article. We could start a subpage on Epidemiology of gastroenteritis were country by country details can be added if proper refs are found. We could also great a subsection on Management of gastroenteritis and Prevention of gastroenteritis were greater details could be placed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

No, he's not. A WP:COATRACK is when you say that the article is about diarrhea in developing nations, but you instead write a page that is almost entirely about something barely related, like your complaints about the World Health Organization or the importance of vaginal childbirth, and says almost nothing about the alleged subject of the article. You might be thinking about a WP:CFORK (content fork), which involves duplicating information—but specifically, duplicating information to push one point of view, not to split up things because of their WP:SIZE.

Jpoles1 is proposing a perfectly fine {{Main}} article about a subtopic that can be properly given a WP:SUMMARY in the existing articles about gastroenteritis or diarrhea. Diarrhea in developing countries is just as good a subject as AIDS in Africa. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks WAID yes "WP:CFORK" was the term I was looking for. If one puts an in-depth discussion of the management of AIDS in the article on "AIDS in Africa" than we will have a partial WP:CFORK.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:33, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Scope, completeness, and accuracy of medicine and drug information in Wikipedia.

What's the latest reliable findings on this, please? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Havn't seen anything new recently. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I also feel that what I want to see does not yet exist. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Wikipedia and medicine for what has been identified. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

A scoping review was just published and summarized all the information about the quality of information within Wikipedia http://www.jmir.org/2013/10/e210/.

Should we commission an independent study to determine the reliability, safety, clarity and comprehensiveness of Wikipedia's medical and pharmacology information?

Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I remember the WMF doing something like this for Wikipedia as a whole lately, not sure if and when results are out. IMO quality of some articles are as good as any professional published literature; however, the quality of many articles is poor. Readability is also hit and miss. We are definitely less readable than most government sites / charities but IMO most people want more detail than the government sites and charities allow.

In summary we have a massive amount of work to bring Wikipedia up to a consistent high standard. We need to figure out how to get more independent and intelligent people involved. I hope that the outreach to medical schools will accomplish this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:44, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, do you think we need a thorough, rigorous independent analysis of the coverage, quality, safety and clarity of en.Wikipedia's medical content? If so, do you think that need would justify whatever WMF resources and volunteer effort it takes? (Personally I think we have an operational imperative and a moral duty to do whatever it takes to get this data.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:03, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I wanted to do a trial of medical students giving one group Wikipedia, another group UpToDate, and a third nothing. Than have them write a medical exam and see which group did best. It would answer the question "which source is better for answering the questions one the licensing exams". We proposed it at the U of T Samir and I and were unable to get ethics approval.

I would say that most of it is not very good. But not horrible either. Some of it is excellent. Do we need a study to prove this? I think we would do better by spending our energies fixing the errors Wikipedia is full of. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

To chime in on this answer, I agree that it would be better to continue editing as it is. Such a study would have to be hit-and-miss given how much articles differ in quality, and because Wikipedia is not static it may only be relevant for a short period of time. On the other hand I empathise with your desire to improve and validate the quality of medical articles. As an aside, as well as the small risk of inaccuracies which I believe to be small, I feel the biggest problem with the medical data on Wikipedia is what is the omissions from articles; that is, relevant medical content about changes in aetiology, epidemiology and pathology and/or diagnostic tests used that have not yet been added to articles. LT90001 (talk) 13:09, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

James and LT90001:

• Re: "I think we would do better by spending our energies fixing the errors Wikipedia is full of." "it would be better to continue editing as it is." I'm not proposing anyone stops editing, or that we change our editing norms. The most I would hope for from this project would be prior criticism of the study design, and to at least read the abstract of the results.
• Re: "Such a study would have to be hit-and-miss given how much articles differ in quality". I'm presuming a design that would adequately take that variation into account.
• Re: "Wikipedia is not static it may only be relevant for a short period of time." This is true of all dynamic topics (such as epidemiology).
• Re: "the small risk of inaccuracies which I believe to be small." Your belief is valuable but until we actually know with some confidence how often people consult our medical content (a stat Blue Rasberry is seeking support for elsewhere on this page) and how much unsafe information it contains - from a well-designed scientific study - all we, the WMF, our partners, our critics and the people we serve (our readers) have to go on is our opinions. I'm personally a supporter of evidence over expert opinion, even my own. It is comforting to believe our content is safe but the possible consequences if that is a false belief are concerning, and all the necessary data and WMF funds are readily available.

All I'm looking for here is an acknowledgment that this kind of information is important. Forget about contributing any of your own time or energy to the exercise. I can't move on this with any vigor or expectation of success without significant genuine moral support from this project. The ball's in your court. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

With your convincing points and some reflection I do agree this is an important topic. Some suggestions for research are here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research. I don't think that WMF should fund this research (at least not until we're improved in quality) but a good starting point would be to have a page and further discussions where we can discuss some ways to assess the quality and utility of our articles. This has been happening in a few threads and surely will continue. LT90001 (talk) 12:45, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I would still like to do the study I described. IMO that is one of the best and simplest ways to compare Wikipedia to UpToDate or another source. Do we have people interested in doing this study? How would it be done? We have had groups do comparisons of specific topic areas like nephrology and psyc but not of medical content generally. If someone was keen to do this I would be happy to provide feedback. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that most people need more substantial support than "feedback": most people need ready access to students who will take the test. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Amen Clinic and Daniel Amen

More eyes needed. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 03:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like the kind of borderline-notable stuff that would benefit from a merge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Media mention

Have you seen this? Should we respond? Should I Be Getting Health Information From Wikipedia? NCurse _work 07:35, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I would say so, but I haven't read the article. I've just been plotting to start a centralized place to do so from. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Dr Azzam's project has been described before in the lay press—I think that Doc James highlighted it. The article already gives the message that we want to send. There is no need to respond. _{Although I want to copy-edit the article.} Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes both myself and User:Ocaasi are very much involved in this. While not 100% correct it is not bad. I encourage people who are interested in commenting to do so. I would encourage everyone to watch list this page Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF and help out. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:33, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

To be more specific, I'll point to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/UCSF Elective 2013, which looks like it will be the Wikipedia:Course page. I plan to jot down my ideas for assignments there (or on the talk page there) this weekend, before I share them with User:Amin Azzam. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:21, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Health information on Wikipedia

• Health information on Wikipedia

NCurse, of course we should respond in some way. Biosthmors, yes, Wikipedians should have a central place to coordinate other Wikipedians who want guidance in doing PR on behalf of the movement. Lots of people already do this anyway so it seems worth regulating if people can be asked to voluntarily agree. Axl, these media mentions are becoming more numerous and I think that a proper response is a Wikipedia article documenting them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:02, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

A lot of people ask me if health information on Wikipedia matters and I do not know what to tell them. I need help. In my mind, if Wikipedia articles are getting significant amounts of traffic then these articles are important. If they are not getting much traffic then they are less important, and if they get a lot of traffic, then they are more important. How do other people here feel about that rationale? Some content is more important than other content, but generally, traffic is a reasonable measure of importance, right?

I have trouble explaining to people that Wikipedia articles get significant amounts of traffic because the data behind this belief is not robust. I made a page on meta - meta:Wiki Project Med/traffic - which I am about to send to the Wikimedia analytics mailing list and maybe some other places and to Wikimedia Foundation people. In this page I say that I want data and WMF backing to support my making the following statement - "Health information on Wikipedia gets significant amounts of traffic." If I am empowered with evidence to make that assertion, then I would feel a lot more able to say, "Because significant numbers of people are using this health information, anyone who has a stake in providing health information ought to consider the Wikipedia articles which themselves are significant sources for this information." Thoughts from anyone? I might like comments on the meta page. To what extent does this sound like a reasonable request?

Also... I have been asked by a certain journal to write something about Wikipedia and medical information. I would like to be able to say something about traffic to health content on Wikipedia, if anything could be said that the Wikimedia Foundation could back me on. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:02, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Traffic numbers seem like a reasonable request to me, but traffic doesn't tell the whole story. For instance, how many of those visits are bots mining WP info? Perhaps Google PageRank could be useful. It is one purported measure of a page's importance and it is undeniable that one reason WP articles get so much traffic is the articles' high rank in a typical Google search. --Mark viking (talk) 22:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Often the sidebar of a google search includes the first para of a wikipedia article, where appropriate. are those counted as hits, or is google caching that information? anyone know? -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 22:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I support this 100%. Without rigorous data, we're flying blind. I've asked Sarah, who is part of the community liaison team, for input. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

No they are not counted as hits. It also appears that google has gone with the NIH for health info rather than Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:50, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

We can make comments such as WP medical content gets about 200 million hits. I say that it is one of the most used medical resources in the world and likely the most used resource. Doubt the WMF would be in an any stronger position to comment on this than we are. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

There is also this story on Daily Dot website that urges doctors to edit Wikipedia. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Start codon

Anyone know if that was an improvement off the top of their head. I seem to remember AUG though without context. I'd have to look it up. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:15, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it looks right. AUG is the default start codon—as indicated in the article. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

There are two kinds of start codons, one for mRNA and one for DNA. AUG is correct for mRNA, but the article should probably have something about DNA as well. ATG is listed as a possible start codon/initiation site in DNA codon table. --Mark viking (talk) 21:06, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

RFA notification

Some people here might be interested in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Zad68. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Who's that? ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, you have not have posted that. It falls foul of WP:CANVAS. (It's not as though Zad68 needs extra support to pass.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:12, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

If a single, neutrally worded sentence, posted for a large and diverse audience of people who are likely more familiar with an RFA candidate than any other group on Wikipedia (the best and the worst), somehow falls afoul of CANVAS, then that alleged rule needs to be written down somewhere. If you go look at CANVAS, I think you'll find that this note meets all of the criteria: limited, neutral, non-partisan, and open. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm with Biosthmors, I have no idea who this is. Lesion (talk) 22:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

This is certainly not a non-partisan audience, especially when you characterise him as "one of ours". Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Describing an editor as "one of ours", when inviting others to participate in a discussion about that editor, is really not helpful. It's natural for humans to think in terms of groups (and group loyalty) but we should treat editors as individuals, on their own merits. Sorry. This isn't intended as a slur against Zad68, who I'm sure is a fine upstanding editor. bobrayner (talk) 22:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I re-factored the title to be more neutral. Lesion (talk) 22:40, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

To counteract your concerns, bobrayner and Axl, I'd say I'm giving Zad a good little grilling. Also ping to Doc James as it was an edit of yours that is prompting this discussion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

You mean this edit [2]? We have secondary sources dealing with the question of safety. No need to use a primary case controlled study. This design does not prove that the risks are "identical". There are simply to many confounders in the study [3]. Just because other primary sources are within an article is not justification to add more. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:37, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes that edit. To be honest, I think it was arbitrary and bitey, so that's why I reverted it and tagged the article with {{medref}}. If we have a new person improving Wikipedia content we shouldn't revert them because it's not perfect. In fact, we should WP:PRESERVE when we can. And the edit summary there is factually incorrect per WP:MEDREV because MEDRS allows the use of primary sources.

Let's consider another scenario. What if we had a nice paragraph with content from secondary sources but then we had an edit that incorporated good content from a primary source but could be converted to a secondary one, by simply changing the reference? In that case then we have perfect example of why we might use {{npsn}}. It would be horrible to revert that contribution. I feel like we should have some essay about this, or maybe a section somewhere. I'm afraid "secondary"/"MEDRS" mis-application chases away potential new editors. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:54, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, your "grilling" certainly does not counteract my concerns. Indeed it exemplifies one of the problems of RfA—pointless questions that waste the candidate's time. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:16, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Should we, as WikiProject Medicine editors, use factually inaccurate edit summaries, generally speaking? When should we revert and when should we not? Perhaps it is a better discussion for here, but I think you'll forgive me since it's my first foray into the venue over there. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:56, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

We should not be determining our policy around primary versus secondary sources at someone RfA nomination. If you want to alter the MEDRS policy please bring the discussion there.

For example just reverted [4] with the summary that we need a proper secondary source. Primary sources and especially newspaper are often over promotional.

This review states "in our view the QEEG variables are artifact-prone and biologically unspecific" [5]. We must be careful not to promote excess treatment or diagnosis. FDA approval does not mean it has a general role in the diagnosis of ADHD or that all kids with ADHD need one. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:14, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits. In my opinion, there's nothing I've said that suggests I want to change MEDRS. Most of the time we don't want primary sources, I agree, but to revert and say "secondary sources required" would (at least some of the time) be factually inaccurate per WP:MEDREV. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah okay yes. Will I agree there is room for the occasional usage of primary sources I do not consider this source to be it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:23, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, by "this" do you mean Cassidy 2008, or were you talking about the ADHD one? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:07, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I mean Cassidy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:11, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

• Biosthmors I think I see two points you'd like addressed, one about the edit summaries, and one about how to respond to edits based on primary sources when the article already has so many primary sources in it, what's the difference--why revert it if it will avoid a "bite"?

  Regarding edit summaries, things like "secondary sources are required" or "all we do is summarize secondary sources" aren't technically correct, as WP:MEDRS does allow for the use of primary sources in certain situations. In the future, where needed I will change my edit summaries to something like "secondary sources should be used if available" or "please use secondary sources".

  Regarding primary sources added in a situation like the addition of Cassidy 2008 to Spinal manipulation, I see your point: if the article section is already poor and has orphaned primary sources in it, what's the harm in letting another one get added to avoid having a new editor feel bitten? Personally, I see this situation as the right time to introduce a new editor to the importance of secondary sources. In this particular case, after the Bold edit and Doc's Revert, there was a really great Discussion here between yourself, Doc James and the editor, and the editor was very welcoming of the pointer to WP:MEDRS, the explanation of the importance of secondary sources, and the help and advice they were receiving--all with the edit removed from the article (before it was restored). I think that's exactly the way it should work. The existence of poorly-used primary sources isn't justification for allowing the addition of more. Our article content shouldn't be allowed to get worse because we're welcoming or teaching new editors, and the discussion pointed to above shows that we don't have to. Doing so would be putting editors ahead of our content and readers, and I don't agree with that ordering of priorities. Zad68 15:17, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I saw the addition of Cassidy 2008 as an improvement to the paragraph, which is why I reverted. As mentioned at the RfA it had other problems, but let's try to imagine it from a newcomer's perspective. If we have a scenario in which we have old primary literature cited already, and someone comes along and adds newer primary literature, they are only responding the the paragraph's structure. Wouldn't reverting their new primary source addition without altering the old primary source paragraph be arbitrary and only based on the fact that it was a new edit? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:04, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

medical marijuana, NPOV/CITE policy, at MedMen

So this article looks entirely promotional to me, written entirely by one person. It has been tagged as WP:MED by someone else. One of my issues is that all of the links to media establishing WP:N are actually hosted on the website of the article topic. This, to me, would seem to run afoul of WP:CITE where it says that external links, when they are duplicates of other media, should be in compliance with NPOV.

I removed these links individually, as well as some sources I believe to be non-RS, and made sure to tag them as such so that they could be reverted individually. I have started a discussion on the talk page.

I would appreciate other eyes here. If i'm in error, please let me know. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 22:01, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I haven't taken a look yet, but thanks indeed for the flag. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I think your removal of sources was probably wrong. The source was listed like this:

<ref name="NPR">{{cite web|url=http://themedmen.com/uploaded/press/npr_itsyourheatlh_altmed_061013.mp3|title=NPR Interview|accessdate=September 24, 2013|publisher=NPR}}</ref>

The link is at the org's website, but the source is a story by NPR, which is an independent and reliable news agency. We might remove the link (under WP:LINKVIO), but the source should have been kept (and perhaps repointed to the URL at npr.com). This is a scanned copy of a page out of a newspaper. Unless they've gone to a lot of work in Photoshop to insert a passing mention to their company, there's no possible neutrality issue here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/LakePharma

Hello medical experts....the above article will soon be deleted. Is there anything worth improving here, or should we let it go? —Anne Delong (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I say let it go. entirely promotional. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 22:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. — DroEsperanto (talk) 13:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, it's gone. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:43, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Gynecomastia

I have removed a whole gallery of pre and post op images as seen here [6] twice now as I consider one to be enough. Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

To me, multiple images reinforce the idea that intervention is normal and should be done, IMO, serving as a subtle advertisement for the intervention itself, so I am fine with this. For anyone who has seen Fight Club, I surely wouldn't want the character Bob without his "bitch tits". Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:09, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree there is no need for an entire gallery of images as there was. LT90001 (talk) 12:58, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Is it really necessary that we have a redirect called bitch tits to gynecomastia? I would prefer to deal with this like how cleft lip and palate deals with hare lip. Yes there it is a redirect, but in the article at least it is implied that it is a historic term, and probably more offensive now than anything else. However on gynecomastia, "bitch tits" is not even listed as a synonym. Need a source to support this questionable redirect imo ... Lesion (talk) 13:09, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Why is it questionable? What else could it logically refer to? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:12, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

It was used 70 times in the last month, for whatever it's worth. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:14, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I failed to find a reliable source treating these terms as synonyms after a quick google search. "Bitch" and "tits" could be called sexist, and I personally think it would be pretty offensive for people with the condition. The page stats might indicate that we should keep it, but as it currently stands, we just have a redirect, with no discussion about the term. If it is a colloquialism, let's state this. If it is derogatory colloquialism as with hare lip, then let's say that too. Lesion (talk) 13:22, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I've looked for a source myself in the past to do the same and couldn't find one so I've just left it as there's no other logical place to point the redirect. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:24, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

• This source might be suitable [7]. I'm paywalled out, but I can see from the snippet preview on google scholar that it talks about this: " In common street parlance, men do not typically say that they have breasts, but refer instead to “moobs” (male boobs) or “bitch tits.” Both terms are compounded from English words that have multiple meanings. ..." Lesion (talk) 13:27, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

We could make a sentence of it in a society and culture section perhaps. Or we could put it in the lead. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:30, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I have no preference. Consider:

This condition may be commonly referred to as "bitch tits" or "moobs" ("male boobs").<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wassersug|first=Richard J.|coauthors=Oliffe, John L.|title=The Social Context for Psychological Distress from Iatrogenic Gynecomastia with Suggestions for Its Management|journal=Journal of Sexual Medicine|date=1 April 2009|volume=6|issue=4|pages=989–1000|doi=10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.01053.x}}</ref>. Lesion (talk) 13:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for digging that out! Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a reason why we need to grace the article with this, as they are not commonly used and somewhat offensive. I do not think that the use of these slang approaches the use of other common synonyms (such as hare lip), so I am happy if a redirect exists but these are not mentioned in the article. LT90001 (talk) 23:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't like them either, but isn't it more encyclopedic to mention them? I don't think it is good to have redirects with no explanation on the target page as to why that term points there. Per the stats posted above, some people do apparently use these terms to search for the topic. Lesion (talk) 00:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

And doesn't stating that they are not commonly used create dissonance with the source, which says "may be commonly referred to as"? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:12, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and added the qualifier of "derogatory" as that's what the source says. The word I had previously inserted, slang, was too blasé. I apologize. This change helps put the words in the appropriate context, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:22, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Doc James—one pair of photos is enough. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Scarless wound healing

I came across the Scarless wound healing article not too long ago today. Thoughts on it? Flyer22 (talk) 22:00, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

PubMed has some hits ... merge to wound healing imo ... Lesion (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Marked for merge. LT90001 (talk) 00:14, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree merge. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:57, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done

Our goals, helping others

I think one of our goals should be to be helpful to each other. This might sound silly, but I notice that at Wikipedia:Peer review/Cancer and nausea/archive1 there are no "regulars" who have commented. I think we should make an explicit goal on our front page to help each other when we submit articles for peer review. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a general recommendation or request rather than a "goal". Regarding peer reviews, editors are welcome to post a request for such a review on this talk page. I don't think that this was explicitly done here. (There was a mention of the article on 3rd September.) I am happy to undertake peer reviews and FAC reviews if people ask me. I no longer undertake GA reviews due to technical issues with the GAN pages. By the way, I would regard Casliber as a "regular". Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:01, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

MEDRS and pay-to-play journals, Science sting

Here is something that participants in this project should be aware of. Executive summary: Science created a spoof medical paper with glaringly obvious flaws and submitted it to about 300 open-access journals that claimed to be peer-reviewed. 255 of them responded, and many of them rejected the paper, but 157 accepted it -- which basically means that no genuine peer review could have occurred. See http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.summary for more info, if you have online access to Science. The message for us is to emphasize that the mere fact that a paper appears in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed does not guarantee validity. Looie496 (talk) 15:35, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

But where is the comparator in this study? Did they also submit it to closed access journals? Bad peer review is not the only issue in publishing. What about ghost writing were the "author" is found after the paper is written? People not submitting their article to trial databases before beginning and still finding journals willing to publish the resulting papers? Even when it is submitted "primary outcomes" are changed between start and finish and the journals do not care? The issue around reprints, were companies order a hundred thousand dollars worth to smooth the publication process? I agree that peer review is no guarantee of accuracy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing Looie496. Good to know. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:13, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

The message for us is to emphasize that the mere fact that a paper appears in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed does not guarantee validity. - This is not exactly news, and the Science study is also flawed in singling out open access journals. Even papers that pass peer review with flying colours may well be wrong: after all, theoretically perfect studies with a statistical significance threshold of 0.99 will find false results 1% of the time. What does it mean for us is complicated: mostly it means what we always do, that is we should prefer, as sources, reviews summing up the state of the art instead of individual studies, especially for controversial claims. --cyclopia^speak! 15:41, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with all of that. My thought was really that this gives us additional ammunition for the occasional disputes with people who don't understand why MEDRS needs to be used rather than plain vanilla RS. Looie496 (talk) 16:53, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Both WP:RS and WP:MEDRS emphasis the use of secondary sources. Agree that this science article also justifies our current position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:11, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Are mnemonics encyclopedic?

Are mnemnoics encylopedic? There seem to be quite a lot under Wikimed. I believe some are (eg. SOAP), due to their development alongside organisational efforts at reducing medical error. However, a lot seem to be shorthand memory aids for students or doctors. Is this encyclopedic? Here are some examples I have somewhat arbitrarily grouped them into ones I think are just memory aids, and ones that I would say are encyclopedic by virtue of being the target of publicity campaigns, or representing an underlying effort at organisational reform, ie have some notability or relationship to the practice of medicine, or society etc.

• OPQRST
• SAMPLE history
• DCAP-BTLS
• ASHICE
• FAST (stroke)
• Hs and Ts
• Socrates (pain assessment) ?

Encyclopedic mnemonics:

• ABC (medicine)
• RICE (medicine)
• SOAP note / SBAR ?

Any others that anyone else has found? Opinions? LT90001 (talk) 02:24, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I am okay with them on their own pages. We are not a standard encyclopedia as we are not limited by paper limits. IMO they are a little undue for mention within the main articles on these diseases. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes I use SOCRATES in the signs and symptoms section of articles for conditions which involve pain (e.g. Atypical_facial_pain#Signs_and_Symptoms). I will stop doing this if the consensus is it is not encyclopedic. Re articles which are about mnemonics, I would say that some are worthy of their own page and others are not. FAST would be notable imo, others which are used mainly by doctors, maybe they are not encyclopedic. Case by case basis I think... Lesion (talk) 08:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should have a list of medical mnemnoics and separate pages for the ones that are notable. Anything that's not notable should just be a redirect. Ideally, this would be a featured list. If medical students can use and benefit from Wikipedia while studying we can hope to get more of them editing. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:25, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I would imagine much potentially useful information that should be in that list has already been deleted off of Wikipedia due to short-sighted overzealousness, though. It happens on this website. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

My med student friend from Duke on facebook said she liked this idea of a list. She thinks it would be useful for medical students. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

There is indeed a list in categories (here) of mnemonics. I think that on a case-by-case basis the redirect idea is a good one as many of the mnemonics are simply 'how to' lists rather than things that should be in an encyclopedia. Perhaps some of this content could be transferred Wikiversity? (What's your opinion on this, Lesion?) LT90001 (talk) 12:47, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Mnemonics belong, according to the existence of List_of_mnemonics#Medicine and I will argue vociferously for their inclusion. No verifiable medical mnemonic should ever have been deleted off of the site, in my opinion. They should have all be merged there, which should have already been split off. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that very few are notable/qualify for a separate, stand-alone article. Specifically, the goal for notability is 'attention from the world at large', not being mentioned in study guides as a method of remembering something that is notable (like how to assess pain). However, I have no objection to a list that collects them all. That would be a great use for a list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that's a good position to consider. LT90001 (talk) 00:28, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

[You can find many at http://www.medicalmnemonics.com.

—Wavelength (talk) 12:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)]

Note: Hs and Ts is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hs and Ts. --Mark viking (talk) 19:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Cheese#Heart disease

The way rather lengthy quotations are presented on this protected page may, imo, be somewhat confusing to lay readers. Anyone rapidly skimming the text could I think be forgiven for taking away the message that evidence exists that cheese does indeed increase the risk of heart disease. (The source [8] also actually concludes "There is a lack of research examining the effect of full-fat dairy foods on CVD outcomes...") 86.162.136.32 (talk) 07:05, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Those long quotes are bad. And I don't see why we even need a subsection. It seems like we could summarize things with a sentence. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Biosthmors. :) One sentence or three, I feel we can communicate more clearly, whether on a medicine- or food-related page. 86.162.136.32 (talk) 21:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Motor disorder

I am finally starting on the DSM-5 changes to the entire suite of TS articles. I do not have a source for a good basic definition of motor disorder; could anyone fix the first line in that article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

How's that? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:37, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Merge eponymous/non-eponymous medical signs + symptoms templates?

See eg: Template:Digestive system and abdomen symptoms and signs and Template:Eponymous medical signs for digestive system and general abdominal signs

Arguments supporting merge between system signs + symptoms + eponymous signs + symptoms templates:

• Distinction between eponymous signs and symptoms and other signs and symptoms is quite historically arbitrary.
• Separation between eponymous/non-eponymous impacts on readability and navigability and leads to template clutter (for example see the navigation tree provided on Template:Cardiovascular system symptoms and signs)
• I don't think many people would look through both signs and symptoms and eponymous signs and symptoms to find something.
• No objections from creator (see here, in 2008)

I think it would be best to merge these templates and retain eponymimity in a categorisation system rather than through these templates. Opinions?

Are we sure that "template" is complete, except for the eponymous ones? They look more like general categories ("nausea"), whereas the eponymous seem very specific/rare. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

There's no guarantee of that, but either way it'd be better to have it on one nav. page. My main issue is that by far the majority of users will be using these pages to find signs + symptoms, so isolating them by whether or not they are recognised by an eponymous name is not helpful. Only a small amount of users will specifically come on to Wikipedia in order to find out about the eponymous ones alone. LT90001 (talk) 22:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

DOIs of Cochrane reviews

Why does the auto-fill by DOI function in the Journal citation window hardly ever manage to fill out the fields? Does anyone else find this? Lesion (talk) 11:27, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Some search results in the Cochrane library are protocols, and are not yet listed in PubMed ... is this the issue? Lesion (talk) 11:29, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The template filler (on the in-window edit box) pretty much never works for me with DOIs or PMIDs. I hear that it works better for other people, so perhaps it's a browser issue. I use Firefox on a Mac, with Vector for my skin, but the "old" (uglier) toolbar in this account. What do you use? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Not sure this is a browser or wikipedia preferences issue (for me anyway). I've never encountered a DOI that didn't autofill ... unless it was a cochrane review or similar cochrane group publication. Lesion (talk) 21:21, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Students

Students are starting to post at WT:ANAT, FYI. I've asked a theoretical about the situation at WP:ENB. It's currently unknown what kind of supervision and guidance they are getting, but it's nice they're posting at a WikiProject at least. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:03, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Great! That project has been in hibernation for a long time, and many anatomy articles are in sore need of some attention. LT90001 (talk) 22:25, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

How to describe bipolar disorder

We are having a discussion on how to describe bipolar in the lead of the article here [9]. Wondering if others would like to comment? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:44, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Representing Social, Economic, and Public Health Aspects of Diseases

I'm a professor who teaches using Wikipedia regularly on courses relating to poverty, economic development and justice. Many of my students are interested in contributing to Wikipedia on the social and policy aspects of public health issues. (User JPoles is one my students.) It appears that most of the health and disease topics represented on Wikipedia focus on diseases and treatments at an individual or even at a pathological level. Although epidemiological aspects are often included, such information generally does not reflect the broader literatures that look at economic and social interactions and policies relating to health and well-being. Public health and social aspects are generally badly represented in Wikipedia so far as I can tell ~ even the page on Public Health is only a C class article. I do not see a clear organization for raising the social and public health aspects of specific diseases beyond an epidemiological tag on. An extensive public health and economic development literature shows that poverty and lack of access to clean water, general health care, etc. contribute to the likelihood of getting sick in the case of many such illness, often through the related adverse impact on immune systems. There are important feedbacks from such public health issues into various other non medical social issues. Public health is an important area in its own right so adding this material to articles that emphasize prevention and treatment at the individual level doesn't seem to me to be the best plan. I would suggest that the whole area of public health and related social and policy topics should become a priority for further development; perhaps another project group is a better place for this discussion, but wanted to raise it here first and would welcome everyone's thoughts on this topic. DStrassmann (talk) 01:33, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome and this is the place to bring this up. Many of our articles have sections on society and cultural aspects of disease. For example for low back pain we discuss the economics and the effects on employement Low_back_pain#Society_and_culture and the article on HIV/AIDS discusses some public health issues under HIV/AIDS#Prevention and economic ones under HIV/AIDS#Society_and_culture. Each of these sections have sub articles that than go into greater detail. Much of Wikipedia need improvement however and more could be written. We request that all contributors familiarize themselves with our referencing guideline as see here WP:MEDRS and our manual of style WP:MEDMOS. Happy to discussion further. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:54, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point. In fact a lot of public health is covered under "Epidemiology of..." and "History of..." articles. For example, Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, Prevalence of female genital mutilation by country, Female genital mutilation (GA) which is an article about a medical topic written in a non-medical style, and History of malaria (GA). For articles significant to global health, I think it's quite reasonable to have separate articles like this. LT90001 (talk) 02:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

DStrassmann, thank you for discussing here. For the one student whose proposal I read, and based upon MEDMOS and the discussion here, I think the logical assignment would be to start a political, social, and economic aspects of cholera article that would be summarized per WP:SS at cholera itself. That article might be a Wikipedia:Merge target for other small articles that deal with cholera, though I haven't seen a short one yet that makes me say yes, definitely merge it into a future political, social, and economic aspects of cholera article. Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:54, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Join us; it's likely to get more attention if you're talking to a big group.

I think it's important to get this information summarized in the main articles. That way, people interested in it will see a prominent link to the article that details the social and cultural aspects, and also so that people who aren't interested enough to click through to the other article will have the basics right in front of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Category:Health contains Category:Health economics and Category:Determinants of health and Category:Health disparities and Category:Health policy.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:00, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your helpful responses. I will pass on your thoughts to my classes. If any of you would be willing to advise specific students directly, please let me know. Here is a brief list of some of the general areas they will be working on (in addition to those referenced above relating to Diarrhea and Cholera): Right to Heath, Breastfeeding Promotion, Healthcare in Malawi,Healthcare Reform in China, Family Planning in Sub Saharan Africa, Media Portrayal of HIV/Aids, Maternal Health,Sex-selective abortion, Human Subject research (focusing on Africa). DStrassmann (talk) 16:55, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Could I be so bold as to ask them all to publish the full text of all their proposed projects on this talk page? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Can I say, I think that is a little unreasonable. LT90001 (talk) 10:36, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's not really necessary. I believe the students in this class are asked to post a note on the talk page of the article they plan to work on explaining briefly the goals for their contributions to that article; so long as they respond to questions about their plans that should suffice. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

File:Manhattan plot Gene C9Orf72.png

File:Manhattan plot Gene C9Orf72.png has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.129.3 (talk) 02:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It seems to be part of Stefan2/Stefan4's attempt to purge the wikis of free medical images. I am not sure how to prevent this deletion. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Graft versus tumor

Dear medical experts: Once again there is an article at the Afc that could use some expert attention. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:55, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

We have Graft_versus_tumor#Graft-versus-tumor_effect. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:32, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that, Jmh649. The current "Graft versus tumor" is a redirect to Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation which has a small section on this topic. If this article is accepted, it would replace that redirect. Do the references (and perhaps some from the current section) show enough notability to allow this topic to have its own article? Or should the submitter be encouraged instead to move relevant content to the Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation article? (I am asking because I really have no idea.) —Anne Delong (talk) 02:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Pageviews

We seem to have lost our google juices as our readership is down by half these last three months Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Popular_pages. I noticed that there is a new health box on google which features the NLM. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:14, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

If google is displaying alternate sources of health information over concerns of factual inaccuracies on wikipedia health articles, then I find this rather amusing: https://www.google.com/search?q=nicotine (see "Drug class: Nicotinic receptor antagonist" in the drug box) in comparison with the lead in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine&oldid=575975639 - "It is a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist."

I'll let the wrong (opposite) drug class speak for itself.Seppi333 (talk) 05:44, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

*facepalm* I suppose that most spellcheckers wouldn't recognise the word "agonist". Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:52, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like data is still coming in... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I experimented by typing in several different medical conditions into google. Not sure if this is unique to google.co.uk ... but Wikipedia's place at the first google hit has dropped to four or fifth for medical conditions. NHS choices and patient.co.uk results are now usually appearing first. I understand that google does not actually rank the search results in order of most visited, but rather they adjust the order of search results for reasons of their own. Apparently wikipedia has been demoted. I think the main reason for this is that Wikipedia articles are thought of as being too hard to understand compared with sites that are offering a simple and brief summary that is directed specifically at patients. Since patients are not supposed to be our specific target audience, I suppose we do not really have the right to complain about this. Other websites are just more user-friendly for patients perhaps? Or maybe the order of search results has not really changed and it is my imagination. Didn't wikipedia usually come up first for pretty much any medical topic?

Would be interesting to get some kind of statement from them about this, but I tried for about 10 minutes to find a way to contact google and failed. Lesion (talk) 13:54, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Patients are not our specific audience, but we should still have a simple summary at the top of our articles—one that is accessible to average teenaged students, not just the honors class or pre-med university students. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I was speculating on what people might think about medical content on wikipedia compared to other sites. Per Looie's comment below, this is probably not the reason for reduced pageviews. Lesion (talk) 20:44, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

• I haven't particularly been following this, but apparently the story is that the drop is actually spurious. What has happened is that due to technical changes a lot of page views now come via the secure server (https protocol), and those are not tracked by the page view stats. There was a good bit of discussion of this on Jimbo's talk page a couple of months ago. I'm not guaranteeing that I have this straight; as I said, I wasn't paying close attention. Looie496 (talk) 16:40, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:32, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

The data does not look as bad as it did initially. Just down maybe 25% [10]. We truly need to push to simplify the leads of our articles. I do not mind the body of the text staying more complicated but as SMS goes live we should strive to have our content useful in that format (it will be the first few sentences). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:26, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

@Lesion:, I have also noticed a marked change in Google Search lately. Wikipedia articles, not only medical ones, used to show up at the top of the first page of results, but not anymore. Some Wikipedia articles no longer find their way to the first page of search results at all. Maybe this is an explanation? XOttawahitech (talk) 23:30, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup goal?

I think this calls attention to the importance of the issue that was just fixed with gastrointestinal cancer. The fewer embarrassments we have floating around the website the more likely we are to be the default choice of google (if that has influenced our page-view stats). We currently have over 19,000 issues identified in our ~28,000 articles. We should make it an explicit goal to reduce this count every month. How about we make a time in the future at which we hope to have these issues down by? How about by 1 Jan 2015 we shoot to have only 8,000 issues identified, for example? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:34, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I do not find the cleanup tags the most useful. Any article that is not a GA/FA needs work and that means more than 99% of them. A number of GAs/FAs are in need of a good updating. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with everything you said. But sometimes the cleanup tags make good points, and I encourage them to be applied wisely. These "good tags", I might call them, are an inventory that contain valuable information.

If we can legitimately get the total number of them down to 8,000, then we will made good progress, because they are essentially serving as Wikipedia-allowed "negative advertisements". Also, if we can get them down to 8,000, then the ones that remain will likely increase in their usefulness. Maybe 70% of tags are deserved right now, to throw out a number, for discussion's sake. But if we can reduce the number of total tags to a number of 8,000, then we might also make the 8,000 that remain 85% deserved. And in that process, we might generate 1000 new tags that are 95% deserved. All that would be tremendously helpful for our project and our public image, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:05, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello, that is certainly a noble aspiration. I've been looking at the listings a lot over the past few months in order to try and winnow down the things which need winnowing. In my opinion if there was a way to view by date that would be useful, but as it is there are only a few categories (merge, split, copyright flaws) that are small enough to deal with. Moreover, having looked at the list, you end up with about 50% of the tagged pages being ones that are either in dispute, or 'difficult' pages that require significant editing to remove the tag (eg to complete a merge with reasonable quality, or integrated an orphan). Lastly, you could end up wasting your time fixing up articles with an aggregate view of 1 per month, which is probably a bot, by fixing orphans and what not, but could help tens to hundreds of thousands of viewers by providing good-quality articles on the top 1500 list. I think that what you're proposing is a very reasonable and noble aspiration but that having been looking over myself and working through merges and orphans I think about 95% of the time spent on such an endeavor is completely wasted. LT90001 (talk) 10:34, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand one possible way we could do this is what you have previously proposed, which is to have a specific "clean-up" drive once a quarter (once a month might be a little unachievable), and select a specific criteria, eg merges, orphans or what not, and work through that. I'd be in full support of such an undertaking, which with our many hands should be light work. LT90001 (talk) 10:34, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Moving two nav pages to history

These two pages should be marked as historical:

• Pages needing attention
• Medicine articles needing expert attention

Their function is duplicated in the 'cleanup listing', which is also more comprehensive and up-to-date. Also this would help clean up the nav bar.

• Also, we already have an 'Editor outreach' so both functions of the expert attention page (field queries; list marked pages) are already duplicated.

Opinions? If so, I'm not quite sure how to go about marking a page in a Wikiproject as historical, so would value some help. LT90001 (talk) 08:19, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I haven't had time to look in depth, but I hate those "historical" templates. I'd prefer one just remove any incoming links that one can and then redirect traffic to a better place. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of redirecting the pages. I'm also becoming more sympathetic to killing the "expert attention" template altogether. The requests are almost never clear enough to be useful, and nobody seems to respond to them anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I've reordered the 'cleanup' page to provide a link to the expert attention category (which is a category so can't be redirected), redirected the pages needing attention to the cleanup page (page hasn't been edited recently and is duplicated), removed the link to 'top importance' cleanup (as this was last edited in 2010 and presumably the bot is dead) and for good measure alphabetised the list to make it easier to read. I hope this is satisfactory and improves the overall usefullness and ease-of-use of the interface. LT90001 (talk) 10:21, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcoming new members

As our project page has been getting more hits lately, I figure now is as good of a time as any to say this. There was a recent person who signed up on our list as a member. I noticed they hadn't ever received a talk page message. They should receive a personalized one, in my opinion. We should make that a priority. And we should codify that on our front page. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

{{subst:MedWelcome}} points people to useful pages like MEDRS and MEDMOS. Since I usually welcome people because of their article edits, I usually add a sentence about that as well. What we need, though, isn't another "rule", but someone to actually do it. We had two or three people doing that for a while, but perhaps they're busy with other things now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes I feel like we come on too strong and this is as bad as biting ... I'll use this template now, it's easier than writing out one or two sentences like I would normally. Btw I tweaked the wording of this template earlier today, no major changes just made it a bit more measured. Still not happy with it, but see what others think. I know this template is based heavily on the TW one, but these welcome messages come across a bit intense I think.

• Consider also taking out the second "welcome" and the exclamation marks.
• Consider removing "an essay from PLoS"
• Consider removing "general advice" and "general style guide" (MEDRS and MEDMOS both conspicuously link to said pages at the top.
• Again consider removing wikilinks in text "Welcome" and "your contributions". Too many hyperlinks, won't know what to click. Keep as few as possible imo.
• What about integrating the sentence about WPMED into the first line? Like "Welcome user:WhatamIdoing, from WikiProject Medicine (sign up here or say hello here)." Below I post the welcome template as it is currently, and below that a slightly tighter version to have a look at. Lesion (talk) 23:18, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

==Welcome to Wikipedia from WikiProject Medicine!==

Welcome to Wikipedia and WikiProject Medicine

Welcome to Wikipedia from WikiProject Medicine (also known as WPMED).

We're a group of editors who want to improve the quality of medical articles here on Wikipedia. I noticed that you are interested in editing medical articles; it's great to have a new editor on board. In your wiki-voyages, a few things that may be relevant to editing Wikipedia articles are:

• Thanks for coming aboard! We always appreciate a new editor. Feel free to leave us a message at any time on our talk page. If you are interested in joining the project yourself, there is a participant list where you can sign up. Please leave a message on the group's talk page if you have any problems, suggestions, would like review of an article, need suggestions for articles to edit, or would like some help!
• Sourcing of medical and health-related content on Wikipedia is guided by our medical sourcing guidelines, commonly referred to as MEDRS. These guidelines typically require recent secondary sources to support information. Primary sources (case studies, case reports, research studies) are rarely used, especially if the primary sources are produced by the organisation or individual who is promoting a claim.
• The Wikipedia community includes a wide variety of editors with different interests, skills, and knowledge. We all manage to get along through a lot of discussion that happens behind the scenes and through the editing policy. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss them on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.

Feel free to drop a note on my talk page if you have any questions. I wish you all the best, and thank you for your help!

==Welcome==

Hello, example user, and welcome to Wikipedia from WikiProject Medicine. Thank you for your contributions. If you are interested in improving medicine-related articles, you may want to sign up to the WikiProject here or say hello here. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Quick introduction to Wikipedia
• How to write a great article
• Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
• Identifying reliable sources for medicine-related articles
• Manual of Style for medicine-related articles

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, try Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask on the project talk page, or type your question on your talk page and then type {{helpme}} before the question.

Yes more people taking on this welcoming rolls would be great. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Uncited alterations to WP:Med articles

Hi everyone, I've recently encountered an editor, user:Nikpapag, on the methylphenidate article that has been adding unsourced content to that article in spite of clearly stating that this is an issue. Moreover, after checking his edit history, I noticed that he doesn't seem to add any sources when making deletions or additions to articles (you can more or less eyeball this just by noting the consistently small number of characters changed between revisions), and some of those changes, like "bupropion is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor only," are just completely wrong - (see pharmacodynamics) http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2001/20358s19lbl.pdf

Based upon his history with edit warring and lack of response to other editors - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Nikpapag&oldid=553041732 - (note that he constantly blanks his talk page), I think it would be prudent to watch the edits this user makes on articles requiring wp:medrs, as he's been ignoring that policy. That said, I'm out of WP:3RR reverts, so I can't do anything more to fix the uncited additions I expect he'll re-add on the methylphenidate page.Seppi333 (talk) 22:01, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit: I've notified him twice about this thread, although I don't expect a response.Seppi333 (talk) 22:03, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

The nature of the editing aside, I think the statement about ignoring talk pages has to be qualified by saying there are often detailed edit summaries. Watchlisted this article and left another note about MEDRS on the user's talkpage. Lesion (talk) 22:48, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Good point. In any event, the lead in bupropion is still factually inaccurate from the edit I mentioned if anyone with a WP:RV to spare wants to fix it.Seppi333 (talk) 22:56, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Anyone with a source spare would have been better, since the content that is being changed was previously uncited as far as I can see... but  Done and started a new section on the talk page anyway... Lesion (talk) 23:06, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you I linked an fda.gov medication info pdf with the pharmacodynamics and relevant info above, but I'll just re-link it and state what it says here for convenience. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2001/20358s19lbl.pdf

On the first page: "Pharmacodynamics: Bupropion is a relatively weak inhibitor of the neuronal uptake of norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine, and does not inhibit monoamine oxidase."Seppi333 (talk) 23:14, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Could that source be used in the article? Lesion (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It could, but it's from 2001, so to better satisfy wp:meddate, here's the newest revision of prescribing information from 2013 (more technical format, but it has more info for re-sourcing): http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/018644s045,020358s052lbl.pdf

It's worth noting that it doesn't say it's a serotonin reuptake inhibitor in that revision.

Pharmacodynamics: The neurochemical mechanism of the antidepressant effect of bupropion is not known. Bupropion is a relatively weak inhibitor of the neuronal uptake of norepinephrine and dopamine, and does not inhibit monoamine oxidase or the re-uptake of serotonin.
— US FDA

Seppi333 (talk) 01:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Just reverted another edit on Methylphenidate which was referenced with 2 unreliable sources and a textbook which did not support the content. Talk:Methylphenidate#Nikpapag_edit. Lesion (talk) 10:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit of Human Nutrition Planned

I plan on providing an extensive edit of Human Nutrition, mostly comprised of adding content rather than deleting content. This contribution will be part of a class assignment. My contribution will present information on the health consequences for malnutrition not yet mentioned in the page including dysentery, susceptibility to infectious disease, obesity, and long-term non-infectious disease complications. This contribution will be set within the context of the social aspect of understanding malnutrition amongst human populations This will entail providing not only operational definitions of malnutrition and under-nutrition, but also providing the context that produces poor nutrition, including environmental factors and social determinants. My article will also discuss nutrition programs in the United States and programming aimed at rectifying disparities in access to nutritious meals and other social determinants that cause inequalities. This contribution aims to rigorously analyze all the different perspectives of malnutrition and inaccessibility of foods by including sections pertaining to: nutrition education, obesity, poverty and food insecurity, minority populations, rural populations, special needs populations, and the lifetime benefits of these provisions. I will draw from academic sources including academic journals accessible through my Rice University access, as well as government and NGO reports. I hope my contribution will improve the article by providing a different context for information about human nutrition and malnutrition. Also, I will be including primarily secondary and tertiary sources, as opposed to the primary sources over-represented in the article, helping it gain better status in the WP:Medicine. Please provide any feedback you would like or ask any questions about my more specific approach to editing and restructuring the article either here, on my userpage, or on the talk page of Human Nutrition. I am interested in helping this article reach better class status, as well as help differentiate it from the Nutrition article. Lbockhorn (talk) 04:36, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome, Lauren. This sounds great. I'm interested in how US programs compare to other places, so if you have an opportunity to add a bit of non-US information, I think that would improve the article. Even a general statement about the unavailability of nutrition programs in some parts of the world might help provide a global context. Good luck, WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Toxoplasmosis and Crazy cat lady syndrome

I think these two titles say enough. Should the latter should be part of the former? Request comments here, on the Toxoplasmosis talk page LT90001 (talk) 10:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

yes belongs in the society and culture section Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The term is "coined by news organizations to describe scientific findings that link Toxoplasmosis to several mental disorders and behavioral problems". There is already a subsection of Toxoplasmosis#Signs and symptoms called "crazy cat lady syndrome". Whilst I agree with you that merge to Toxoplasmosis is appropriate, I think all mention of "crazy cat lady syndrome" should be in the society and culture section. Not to say the content about the possible links with mental disorders should go into society and culture. There is no "pathophysiology" section, in the article, and perhaps one is needed? Some of the sources are Media sources, and others are medical publications, some of which are primary sources. It's not a simple merge I fear... Lesion (talk) 11:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I must say I quite agree. LT90001 (talk) 12:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hyperthermia-Disambiguation

Hyperthermia is the morbid elevation of body temperature. Hyperthermia is also the artificial elevation of body temperature for medical purposes, among others for boosting the immune system and as a complementary anticancer treatment modality . In this context, hyperthermia is subdivided to: Whole body hyperthermia, loco-regional hyperthermia, intra-operative hyperthermia. Loco-regional hyperthermia is further subdivided to superficial and deep hyperthermia. Whole body hyperthermia is subdivided to mild, moderate and extreme hyperthermia. Modern WBH (whole body hyperthermia) is generally based in heating the body externally, while at the same time preventing the heat from escaping to the environment. Heating is generally achieved by water-filtered infra-red light; other, more conventional means are also applicable. The biological result is equivalent to monitored, artificial fever. The technology needed is rather simple, but the medical aspects are rather complicated. Loco-regional hyperthermia on the other hand is technologically more involved, but medically very simple. The only technologically tricky point is to measure the temperature within the target tissue. Modern loco-regional hyperthermia is achieved by emission of a radio-frequency of 13.56 Mhz between two electrodes. The elevation of temperature within malignant tumors is achieved by condensation of the electromagnetic field, due to altered electrochemical properties of tumorous tissues. For this reason, this particular technology is referred to by use of the term oncothermia, instead of hypethermia . Aias-Theodoros Papastavrou, MD, PhD — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.130.113.2 (talk) 18:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

References

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"Society and Culture" Cholera Section, Effective Cholera Vaccines

I would like to add a “society and culture” section to the existing Cholera article for a class. This section will include information about the role governments play on the prevention and spread of cholera, and other socio-economic factors that influence its spread. I think it is important to make these connections because if cholera spreads, there are serious economic and social political repercussions for the country. Governments also play an important role in preventing/ helping cholera spread, an important connection that is not always made. As the current Wikipedia article on “Cholera” notes, the disease is pretty much under control in developed nations. However, it is still a huge issue in developing countries. This is a highly relevant topic, since cholera prevention in developed countries shows it can be stopped, but recent outbreaks in poorer countries show that it is still occurring, when it does not need to be. The amounts of cholera outbreaks have actually risen in some countries-like Haiti- over the past few years. This makes exploring its spread a highly relevant topic. Does anyone have thoughts about creating a “society and culture” section? In this section, I will summarize a lot of existing Wikipedia articles related to cholera, like “Cholera Outbreaks and Epidemics,” “Cholera Vaccine,” “Zimbabwean Cholera Outbreak,” and “2010-13 Haiti Cholera Outbreak.” What other topics do you think should be covered in a “society and culture” section on Wikipedia? Are there specific vaccines or treatments that have been particularly effective at preventing Cholera? Are there some vaccines that are still being used, but are actually not very effective?

Kimmyfromtexas (talk) 21:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

(copied from talk:Participants) LT90001 (talk) 22:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Requesting a second opinion on my content citations

Hi everyone. I'm requesting a second opinion of my content citations from Amphetamine#Performance-enhancing in a thread on the RS noticeboard. Since it requiresWP:MEDRS, I figured it'd be a good idea to mention the request thread here to get some input from wp:med.

For context, concerns about material in a section like this on a similar page were raised a few months ago.

Regards, Seppi333 (talk) 22:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Also, in the event anyone is interested, there's a WP:peer review open for comments on the article, located here. Any feedback for improvements there would be appreciated. Seppi333 (talk) 02:38, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hospital gown

It would be very helpful if someone with some (any) hospital experience could go over to Hospital gown and remove garbage. At the moment, it's long on sexual side effects and the only style of hospital gown in existence is the style favored for comedy shows. I don't want to speak for the whole world, but I'm pretty sure that my local hospital doesn't require patients to lie in bed with no underwear and open gowns, and I'm even pretty sure that they've discovered this invention called "pants". But I don't know just how much of it is junk, so I'd rather let someone else have a go at it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Edits for Female Infertility

I'm looking to add information for the society and culture section of Female infertility. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, contact me on my talk page. AllyBremer (talk) 02:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)