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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by WhatamIdoing (talk | contribs) at 15:40, 8 December 2016 (→‎New article needs attention: NONENG is policy). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Featured article candidates

HMB FAC round 2

Cross-posted at WT:WikiProject Pharmacology and WT:WikiProject Molecular and Cell Biology

The beta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyric acid article has been renominated for FA status at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Beta-Hydroxy beta-methylbutyric acid/archive2. It still needs at least 1 more reviewer. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢)

Nov. 9 update: The article now has enough medical reviewers; the pharmacology content still needs reviewers though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢)

Acne vulgaris FAC

See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Acne vulgaris/archive1. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢)

Caries

Toothdecay

Seeking to confirm my layman's guess about the meaning of "spinal caries", which we mention in at least two articles, and find out what causes it, I came upon Talk:Caries, which justifies making caries into a redirect to Dental caries based on the usage of caries for an osteolytic bone lesion being antiquated. It seems we don't have any article dealing with osteolytic lesions of bone to which I can redirect the now inappropriate links going from "spinal caries" and the like to the "caries" redirect. But I note we're also using that term in one or other of those forms in at least two articles. Is there indeed some link target I've failed to find? Otherwise, I think we do need an article on caries/osteolytic bone lesions in general, similar to the scope of the pre-redirect caries article and reflecting currently used terminology. Since that was a wholly or entirely unreferenced article and I very obviously don't have the necessary educational background, I can't do this myself. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:13, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So you are proposing making a "Caries (disambig)"? That includes dental caries and osteolytic bone lesions? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:59, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we can't make a dab page until we have more than one article - and even then, a hatnote is preferred if there are only two articles. The first thing to do would be to create osteolytic bone lesions, which I see has just been redirected to Osteolysis. The previous version of Caries is still in its page history as Special:Permalink/560445640, so perhaps there's something there to salvage? There's only one reference though. I'll make a temporary fix by putting a hatnote on Dental caries, and perhaps the articles that should be linked directly to Osteolysis could be updated, if that's appropriate? --RexxS (talk) 22:16, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, the redirect works well; I didn't have the medical knowledge to confidently create it myself. I've added it to 3 biographies mentioning spinal caries, 2 of which were misleadingly linking to caries, but must now go to bed, as I'm starting to typo altogether too much. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:39, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Googling for instances I'd missed, I see references to tuberculous spondylitis—which we cover at Pott disease—as being a better name for it; maybe that's just the most common cause, where TB is still rampant. Some See alsoing needed? Yngvadottir (talk) 13:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The most thorough way to find incoming links is to check Special:WhatLinksHere/Caries. Most will be related to Dental caries, of course, but looking at all 105 links is sure to find all of the existing instances. A lot of them can be skipped if they are not in article space. I'll do the last 55 if somebody wants to check the first 50? --RexxS (talk) 18:15, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've done that in the past, but in this instance I'm concerned with what's meant rather than what's linked (at least one biography had no link at all). I think I've tracked down all the instances of "spinal caries" now, and enough of the instances of osteolytic lesions of bone where a link could usefully be added (some already linked osteolytic). This is a new concern based on the same issue, that as a person with no medical training I can't be expected to know what it is, let alone what it's called these days. I've now found a source saying it's now recognised as having actually been tuberculous spondylitis, and searching for that led me to a different article, so I'm wondering how they should be linked for the reader. If I were confident I am interpreting correctly, I'd put a link in the text at Pott disease to osteolysis and a See also at osteolysis to Pott disease. I'm puzzled by the total failure of the osteolysis article to mention tuberculosis, which is very much still present in many parts of the world. But I don't know what I'm doing, hence I ask here instead. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:27, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I found one link that wasn't Dental caries. It wasn't referring to Osteolysis, either. In Ibrahim Iskandar I, we were informing the world that East India Companies were interested in cowries and caries. That should have been "caires" (coconut fibre), a rather more profitable trading commodity than tooth decay. --RexxS (talk) 19:34, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
LOL well found and well parsed. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:51, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Why so many citations ???

Why so many citations for one part of one clause of one sentence?

Isn't that too many citations???

Sagecandor (talk) 19:17, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some are okay, maybe one or two or three per claim. But this is too much. It was all added back in March 2016. Sagecandor (talk) 19:20, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:41, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you ! Sagecandor (talk) 20:24, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You might be interested to see the essay WP:Citation overkill if you haven't already Sagecandor. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:24, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting articles about endogenous molecules used as drugs

Epinephrine

So we recently split testosterone, and there is a discussion at WT:PHARM about leads generally, where the issue of similar articles, like like dopamine, insulin, norepinephrine, cortisol epinephrine, and oxytocin was raised. Shall we split all these two and any others? I think we should do. Jytdog (talk) 21:46, 22 November 2016 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 23:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]

  • Dopamine, norepinephrine, insulin, and cortisol already contain separate pages for the medication. If the leads of the other articles can't be revised to adequately reflect the biological aspects of these compounds in addition to the current information related to medical uses, then I think splitting them will be necessary. Some of them probably don't really need to be split based upon their size though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:05, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not now We had a sloppy process, a sloppy discussion, and there are some unanswered questions. In the case of testosterone, the discussion happened at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology#Proposal_to_split_testosterone_into_scientific_and_medical_articles, and Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. That is not okay. Discussions need to happen in one place. The split is tedious and makes it impossible to collect all the comments. When the testosterone split happened it influenced about 2000 links. The links in circulation are Testosterone (disambiguation), Testosterone (medication), and Testosterone (for the natural steroid). That's fine, but we need to establish a coherent rationale for determining the primary topic and that rationale needs to be backed with some data and consensus. We do not have that yet. I propose that before additional action is taken, someone draft a process for how this is supposed to work for the general case and why. It would be wise to use testosterone as a model and to go back to critics and get their buy in. This talk just happened in the past few weeks. This change applied to many articles will affect billions of pageview experiences in a given year, so this is a big deal that merits advance planning and discussion. I am ready to confirm that this is a worthy topic to consider and that I think if someone had a plan for the general case then that plan would attract thoughtful and constructive discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:08, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The central discussion was at Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. This "discussion" was not a discussion, but rather a link to the discussion. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, was not a discussion about if the split should take place, but a complaint about how the split was done that has subsequently been resolved. Boghog (talk) 05:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct that the discussion is not as I described but it is still a discussion that is related in some way, and part of the consequence of the proposal. There ought to be a cleaner more certain way to do this in the future. The process which is done should not trigger complaints anywhere. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:41, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is highly unlikely that any process around here will be completely free of complaints ;-) Most of the complaints were about redirects. They were being cleaned up, but just not fast enough for some editors. Another compliant is why we needed to do this experiment in the first place when it was obvious from the very beginning what the primary topic was. So one reasonable conclusion from this experience is that we should not do further tests (because of all the unnecessary redirects that are generated), but rather decide what the primary topic is based on consensus. Finally many of these problems would go away if the there wasn't such a rigid adherence to WP:PHARMOS. For example, why is it impossible to first state that a substance is a natural hormone/neurotransmitter that is also used as a drug? To state it is a drug that is also a hormone puts the cart before the horse. Also why not put function before medical uses? This order will make it a lot easier for readers to understand why the hormone is used as a drug. Boghog (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agree with this - in particular, the primacy of biology/physiology as a context for pharmacology, rather than the other way around. I was surprised by the precipitous split without consensus, but hope that was a learning experience. — soupvector (talk) 16:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I agree that the natural hormone should usually be mentioned before the drug, but I'm not sure about putting function before medical uses. I'd rather use editorial judgment to decide what the average (e.g., person without a university degree in medicine or even science) reader will actually understand. "<Hormone> is a fleedle sprotz genamecowit that is used to treat <common disease>" is not the best we can do for these readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Primary male sex hormone ≠ fleedle sports genamecowit. I agree that editorial judgment and common sense should always apply. Boghog (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In this example, and assuming that "primary sex hormone in males" is the alternative. One could equally write that "testosterone is the primary androgen receptor agonist in vertebrates", which is a more precise description of the function and has the additional benefit of not making the hormone seem like something that only males should have – but it wouldn't be either intelligible or relevant to normal people. My !vote is for writing what normal people care about and can understand. Function in simple words (e.g., "Primary male sex hormone") = good. Function in words that most people don't understand = bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, testosterone has important physiological roles in females as well as males. Nevertheless due to the higher concentration of testosterone in males, testosterone has a more profound effect on males. The reverse is true for estrogen in females. Further complicating matters is that testosterone is a biosynthetic precursor of estrogen. Finally both testosterone and estrogen have effects above and beyond those mediated by nuclear androgen and estrogen receptors. It is impossible to condense all these nuances in the lead paragraph. It is more practical to concentrate on the most important physiological roles in the lead paragraph and discuss the "second order perturbations" in the body of the article. Boghog (talk) 17:16, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand some of the reasons for splitting (different audiences), but am also against splitting such articles. Once in the circulation, epinephrine is the the same whether it arrived by intravenous injection or released from the adrenal medulla, and its actions on the body are the same. Medical uses and pharmacological modes of action are easily separated using subheadings, and the question of an appropriate lede should be able to be managed in a balanced way. There may be cases for splitting articles, and testosterone might be one because of the range of societal factors which influence its use and mis-use, but shouldn't create a precedent for other articles. Klbrain (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Klbrain have a look at epinephrine and its current structure. that is a mess. how do we structure that better with the two sets of content together? To be really concrete - think about where the Adverse effects section should go. It is just awkward where it is now. What do you think? Jytdog (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the specific question of the structure of epinephrine (response to Jytdog): it is currently undergoing significant changes as material moves in and out; much of this material has not been integrated, and you're right that a structural rethink is needed. I'd reduce the lede by about a half, as most of the material there is minor and better included in the body. I'd also move the physiology above the clinical uses, because the clinical uses make more sense to a lay reader once you can see that this hormone usually does. Several of the major heading should be more more minor headings - so, nothing that a strong editorial hand couldn't do. This doesn't need a split as the normal functions and mechanisms greatly aid the understanding of the medical uses. Klbrain (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I think I'd create a section for the "drug" content, and put the usual (non-duplicative) drug information in that. ==Adverse effects== would become the ===Adverse effects=== subsection under that. Generally, I think I'd provide basic information about what the molecule does naturally before introducing anything about the drug.
    Perhaps there are better solutions, but that's at least one approach that seems reasonably functional. It'd also be very convenient in the event that an article needed to be split for reasons of size: Swipe the whole section on its use as a drug and paste it into the new article; replace that with a proper {{Main}} summary about the drug. The drug needs to be described in the "physiological" article anyway; the only real question is whether it's described in full detail or whether it's described in a couple of paragraphs and preceded by a link to a page that contains the rest of the information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I would also support creating a single drug section with adverse affects as a subsection with basic information about the neurotransmitter/hormone before that. That would be a big improvement for an article like epinephrine. The problem is that this approach conflicts with WP:PHARMMOS. Furthermore if the article is already very long, splitting is probably preferable. Boghog (talk) 07:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – There are significant conflicts between WP:PHARMMOS and WP:MCBMOS that make it difficult to write a coherent article that covers both the endogenous hormone and its use as a drug. It is much cleaner to split the two. Generally the endogenous hormone should be the primary topic as it is more fundamental concept. Boghog (talk) 05:09, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - As in complete agreement with proposer and Boghog. As a general reader it's very confusing to have the article as it is, mixing up its existence as a medication in the same sentence as the hormone. And as argued by others - it necessitates the use of two infoboxes. --Iztwoz (talk) 01:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • support per Iztwoz--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:34, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unsure These splits are a lot of work. The redirects need to than be pointed to the correct article and there are thousands. Someone needs to go through them. Whatever we decide it needs to be done gradually. The disambig tool helped a lot with the testosterone split. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Some statistics:
    Links to Epinephrine: 3316 of which 819 are from navboxes ({{Adrenergics}} – 619, {{Hormones}} – 121, and {{Neurotransmitters}} – 79).
    Links to Oxytocin: 978 of which 182 are from navboxes ({{Hormones}} – 121, {{Uterotonic}} – 18, and {{Oxytocin and vasopressin receptor modulators}} – 43).
    Boghog (talk) 08:48, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    As an alternative to the Dab solver is solve_disambiguation.py. The later is a human assisted bot script that runs from the command line and while not as fancy as the Dab solver, probably can get the job done faster. Boghog (talk) 09:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I have a pet opinion that medical details are too often given too much WEIGHT on WP relative to basic facts on natural function. Splitting the two frames helps create coherent narratives from both the basic and applied perspectives. I'm coming here from oxytocin, a chemical whose dominant role in neurobiology and social neurobiology is the topic of many, many books' worth of research [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]—but you'd almost never guess this from the lede, which gives details about administration and side effects which are only relevant to its use as a medication. I greatly admire the work of this WikiProject in tirelessly improving medical coverage, but I think it's important not to crowd out the basics.
That said, I agree with Doc James that this is a big job, and sadly I won't have time to help in the near future. Many thanks to those who can volunteer to do this if there's consensus. FourViolas (talk) 01:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There are lots of relevant points here, but it strikes me that the most cogent factor is that the audiences for medical and biological information about these substances are probably more or less orthogonal: a reader who is interested in a substance as a drug probably does not want to have to navigate through masses of information about its role in biology. It makes sense to separate out the information that such a reader will be interested in. (I might be the editor who started this trend, by splitting dopamine and norepinephrine. At the time my main motivation was frustration at being unable to create a satisfactory infobox that covered both roles, but I now think this was just one manifestation of a wider issue.) Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move of "Carl Jung"

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Carl Jung#Requested move 14 November 2016, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks,  Paine  u/c 01:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:54, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Recent edit to Fibromyalgia

Hi I am part of the Wikipedia:Cochrane online classes October 2016 and new to Wikipedia. I have made some edits on the Fibromyalgia page in the medication section with an updated Cochrane review from 2016. Please let me know your thoughts! Wikilens (talk) 04:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your efforts, but I reverted due to significant issues, e.g.: (a) the cited source does not say that the prevalence of FM is 11%; it says that it's 2.1-2.9% in the European population - see Background section of that ref; and (b) the line you added beginning with "Psychiatry..." is neither a sentence nor intelligible. I suggest that you start again, a bit more carefully, and not put so much in one edit - break up edits in different sections, for example, so that each can be evaluated on its merits. — soupvector (talk) 04:35, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
more eyes needed on the article[7] in regards to User:Petergstrom--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:31, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Articles tagged with this this wikiproject's banner

All articles tagged with this wikiproject seem to be "owned" by it, in the sense that references are expected to be WP:MEDRS-compliant. Problem is, this is only enforced in some cases (example: Talk:Canine_cancer_detection#Does WikiProject Medicine own this article? and Talk:Female_hysteria#It_turns_out_that_one_of_the_central_premises_of_this_article_is_probably_false) and ignored in others (example: articles in Category:Health care)

It is not clear to me, and possibly others, when one is expected to be MEDRS-compliant Ottawahitech (talk) 20:09, 25 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]

You should follow the recommendations (to the best of your ability, using your best judgment, etc.) in MEDRS when you are writing about WP:Biomedical information. You should not follow those recommendations when you are writing about other things (e.g., who said what, where something is, when something happened, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good to have stricter reference requirements more widely applied but as we all know we are all volunteers. As such application is somewhat uneven. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:08, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To be a little clearer about the implied question: Having {{WPMED}} on the talk page is meaningless for this question. The project supports all sorts of articles, including hundreds or thousands of biographies. You shouldn't follow MEDRS for Leonardo da Vinci or Oxford University Medical School; you should follow WP:RS (and probably also take a look at the essay WP:HISTRS) for those. But you should follow MEDRS whenever you're writing about biomedical information, even if this project doesn't support that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have just added information to Thalidomide that I am sure is not MEDRS. Let's see if it gets reverted like most of my edits are. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
Don't hold your breath waiting for a revert. Nobody is insisting on MEDRS sourcing for the fact that the Canadian government doesn't compensate every thalidomide victim. Your source – a TV news programme – isn't exactly copper-bottom, but I doubt if anyone will challenge it in this case. Your edit was fine (apart from linking to a dab page and using a bare url as a reference, but those are easily fixed). --RexxS (talk) 01:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@RexxS: It may be clear to you that my edit was not medical in nature, but it is a fine line sometimes, don’t you agree? BTW do you want to be pinged? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:35, 29 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
User:Ottawahitech it is pretty clear - MEDRS applies to WP:Biomedical information. MEDRS itself also defines its scope. Jytdog (talk) 16:30, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think its very, very good for newer editors to ask these questions, to ask for clarification of what the fine points are. Doing so creates a faster learning curve and a better sense of how a community sees its own guides. Understanding of the finer points of MEDRS is critical, seems to me, in an encyclopedia that may be seen by readers as offering medical information.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:51, 29 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]
Ottawahitech is not a new editor. take a minute to understand what you are talking about before you comment, please. Jytdog (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Jytdog, please avoid personalized ad hominen attack phrases such as the above. Focus on the content, please. Montanabw(talk) 05:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Montanabw, you missed a spot. Jytdog (talk) 06:45, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jytdog. I said newer not new and let me explain what I meant by that. My comment was general and referred to a tendency many of us have to tell someone to go and read rather than discussing the finer points of a policy or guideline. I respect highly both Rexx and WhatamIdoing to be mature in their sense of how to apply policy and my cmt was meant to reflect that. I didn't check Ottawahitech's edit count; it wasn't important to me, but I do understand the confusion my last cmt may have created.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:53, 29 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]

(edit conflict) To be fair, Ottawahitech's normal editing area is finance, and our requirements for sourcing in MEDRS do have a much stricter regimen, which can surprise even otherwise-experienced editors. From that point of view, they are new to our topic area and their initial query was understandable, if a little naive. I'd much rather someone who was unsure about MEDRS posted here for help first, than breach its guidance and end up being reverted. Wouldn't everyone agree? --RexxS (talk) 20:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree. I've seen way too many protracted arguments on MEDRS to feel that deeper understanding via collaboration with other editors with experience in an area is not a good thing.(Littleolive oil (talk) 20:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]

I would agree completely. This area is filed with landmines for the uninitiated. One need not be a newbie overall to be "new" to MEDRS and its written —and unwritten— rules. I am frequently concerned with the level of unkind, personalized attacks emitted by some members of this project over simple matters of debate. I've had substantial (and often rather unpleasant) dealings with users in this area and am particularly concerned with the inappropriate rapidity with which some project members threaten others. It feels like there is a level of burnout here. On one hand, I respect the work folks do to combat fraudulent claims that could cost lives (i.e. debunking Laetrile and such). I also think it's right to expose true quackery and to point out with precision the nature and type of research or proofs available on a given topic. BUT there is, at times, an adamant refusal to assume good faith or to acknowledge that there are issues in the public eye that require analysis as opposed to outright dismissal. I have often argued for things like this and have been pretty frustrated by such suggestions for discussing issues being conflated with "false equivalency". I am also concerned when asking a simple question, as with Ottawahitech here, gets a person's head bit off. Maybe we need a MEDRS teahouse or something, where users unfamiliar with this area can ask questions and have their mistakes explained without losing large chunks of flesh. It would also be nice if folks here could learn to tell the difference between good faith users who are working toward the same goals of WP:V, RS, NPOV, and so on versus the trolls who are arguing for a flat earth or the purveyors of snake oil who are trying to promote their own talk show or something. Montanabw(talk) 05:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, MontanaBW that some of us are genuinely burning out because every way we look in the coverage of medicine on Wikipedia, there really is a Big Pharma shill, or a snake-oil salesman, or a True Believer™ who wants to get rid of all the sources they find inconvenient and substitute ones that affirm their business/sales pitch/crusade, no matter how poor the sources are. When you've spent all of your time swinging a hammer, every target looks like a nail. And I know I'm as guilty of that as anybody. The only therapy that works for me is to take a week or two off editing Wikipedia completely, and I guess I'm due for another wikibreak quite soon. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Montanabw yes "teach the controversy" is WP:GEVAL. We don't do that here. I am sure the folks at Discovery Institute would love to have your help. And nobody bit off Ottawahitech's head. Jytdog (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A contributory factor may be that WP:Lunatic charlatans implicitly gives MEDRS defenders "permission" to deal harshly with editors percieved as violators. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've harped on this before but will say it again. Health related articles whose content falls under MEDRS should be written, vetted by health professionals, and locked. The imagination boggles at the harm an article could do when not controlled and under the "anyone can edit" umbrella. Editors who are both neutral and have not lost perspective on their mission to protect the MEDRS articles and content are hard to find; as our load of articles in this area grows so does the work load, and we don't seem to bring on many new editors willing to wade into these areas. In that vein, I have seen editors who really want to do the right thing but are hounded off the site. We need to be working with and training people. An editor who agrees to be trained, to spend the time, is less likely to be an editor with a fast fix agenda. Training could be a simple as following a round another editor for a determined amount of time. We have brilliant scholars who with the of best intentions do not understand the culture; we can't afford to lose them. We should be supporting them, helping them. And I agree, if civility only applies to those we agree with or like we are and will be in trouble and our site will have a toxic, vitriolic tone. I know that in many cases its the civility, the sarcasm, and the nastiness that drives prospective, good editors away or that leads them to retaliate with behaviours that don't support the site mission.
Its wise and mature to know when to take a break seems to me, and we all get to that point.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC))[reply]

RfC regarding addition of text

Pertaining to chronic fatigue syndrome Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:03, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That RfC is a train wreck. More eyes needed. --RexxS (talk) 23:46, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No edit to that article will ever be entirely without controversy. JFW | T@lk 16:31, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Body mass index

The body mass index article gives too much weight to arguments like published here without mentioning the prevailing scientific opinion about the origins of the "obesity paradox". It was suspected for a long time that unhealthy lifestyles can also lead to low BMI e.g. smoking, but you can also have people who don't eat well due to all sorts of health reasons like depression, drugs abuse, etc. On needs to do very sophisticated statistical analysis to correct for all the relevant effects before you can reliably extract what the expected health effects to some individual would be if that person were to lose or gain weight. In this recent article the results of a rigorous analysis based on the data from the Nurses' Health Study has been published, the results are not at all surprising to me at least:

"Conclusion Although people with a higher BMI can have lower risk of premature mortality if they also have at least one low risk lifestyle factor, the lowest risk of premature mortality is in people in the 18.5-22.4 BMI range with high score on the alternate healthy eating index, high level of physical activity, moderate alcohol drinking, and who do not smoke. It is important to consider diet and lifestyle factors in the evaluation of the association between BMI and mortality."

"Discussion After adjustment for the effect of high levels of physical activity, healthy diet (AHEI scores), moderate alcohol drinking, and never smoking, men and women with a BMI in the range 18.5-22.4 have a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and total mortality. In contrast, men and women with a BMI <22.4 and unhealthy lifestyles had a significantly higher risk of mortality than overweight individuals. Our findings suggest that the U shaped relation between BMI and mortality detected in previous epidemiological studies could result from an over-representation of people in our industrialized societies who are, or most likely became, lean because of the chronic accumulation of metabolic, inflammatory, and pathological conditions caused by long term exposure to smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, and unhealthy diets. Interestingly, our data indicate that even in overweight and obese individuals, the exposure to one or more low risk lifestyle behaviors significantly reduced their risk of mortality.".

Count Iblis (talk) 04:43, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did this article really just conclude that smoking, sitting on the couch, and eating junk food causes weight loss? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think it concluded that becoming seriously ill – as a result of a lifetime of smoking, sitting on the couch, and eating junk food – could cause someone to become emaciated. --RexxS (talk) 18:58, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you replace a healthy diet by an unhealthy diet and keep the caloric value the same, you're not necessarily going to gain much weight. There are many people who have a normal weight who don't bother taking the time to cook, they just buy ready to eat meals from the supermarket and put that in the microwave. Such ready to eat meals are not always high in calories (I would lose weight rapidly and become underweight if I tried to live off such meals), but they often do contain a lot of salt and they often lack enough vegetables.
But this is not the central point of the article, they simply report on the results of a proper statistical analysis, the results of which are in conflict with previous results and the most likely explanation for that is a hidden subgroup of people with a normal weight who live a very unhealthy lifestyle. Count Iblis (talk) 18:59, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Which describes my formerly-chain-smoking, once-anoreixc mother to a "T". (grin) Montanabw(talk) 06:25, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Medicine on NPR

In San Francisco today 28 November around 8:23am NPR aired a 5-minute conversation with James Heilman, Doc James, about medical content on Wikipedia.

I do not know how to link to their programs, but they seem to archive them at http://www.kqed.org/radio/. I see no way to listen to what they played around 8:20 this morning, and am not sure if this was part of any more broad show.

I thought I would share. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:14, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

there was a blog post on Nov 8; you can listen to the piece that aired today here. Jytdog (talk) 17:22, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Tweeted. Bondegezou (talk) 17:58, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent!--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:57, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
60 hours a week is too much. Wikipedia:Wikipediholic. NickCT (talk) 18:22, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good articles

Hypoglossal nerve

Several articles have been nominated for Good article status.

If anyone's interested, then please be bold. It's not usually difficult: look at the specific criteria, and see whether it meets those. (You can ignore all other considerations.) If you'd like to give it a try but you're not feeling too bold, then I'd be happy to help you get started. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

the Behavioural genetics article is awful. a ton of words to say nothing. Jytdog (talk) 21:33, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't looked at it, but general subjects are difficult to do well. That's why so few WP:VITAL articles are GAs or FAs (and most of those are about people or specific things rather than general concepts), despite editors working on them for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:31, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is Loretta Marron in the scope of WikiProject Medicine?

I hope you don't mind if I ask a basic question here - I can't find a policy for what articles would fall in the scope of this Wikiproject. An editor who is not a member of the project has just added a {{WikiProject Medicine}} tag to the article Loretta Marron, and I am not sure whether it is appropriate. This is a biographical article about Marron who is not a doctor, but she is a campaigner for evidence-based health care. Can somebody pleawse advise whether this article is appropriate for this WikiProject?--Gronk Oz (talk) 00:36, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The FAQ is at WP:MED?. I suspect that several editors here would be happy to support that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The signpost to the Assessment department is somewhat hidden under our flashy new project page, but the page is still there and the section on scope can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment #Is WPMED the correct WikiProject to support this article?
A biography falls into the "use judgement" category:
  • "Physicians or other healthcare workers: {{WikiProject Biography|s&a-work-group=yes}}. Add WPMED only if the person is notable for substantial contributions to medicine, set | importance=Low, and add society=yes |society-imp=Mid ".
Does that help? --RexxS (talk) 03:20, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
checkY That's exactly what I needed, thanks @WhatamIdoing and RexxS:. I replaced WPMED with WP Biography, because while she has done a good job supporting medicine, I doubt that a case could be made that she "is notable for substantial contributions to medicine". Having the criteria is a huge help for those of us not familiar with the intricacies of WPMED.--Gronk Oz (talk) 06:24, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Use of primary sources in medical articles - Neuroangiogenesis

Hi, I work as the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Edinburgh and my colleague, Dr Chris Harlow (ChrisH2015) has been running Wikipedia assignments for 4th year Honours undergraduates in the Reproductive Biology course this year & last year, whereby the students research a reproductive medicine term not represented on Wikipedia and then co-create the new article. Last year, they helped research & create the Wikipedia article on Neuroangiogenesis. Recently, while the latest iteration of the assignment was going on with approx 40 students creating 8 new articles on reproductive medicine, Chris worked to improve the Neuroangiogenesis article by citing some research findings published in reliable journals. These were flagged as WP:Primary and the edits reverted. Chris has been arguing, not unconvincingly, that the research these articles indicate should be allowed on Wikipedia as the quality of review articles can often be inferior in comparison. As a layman when it comes to writing medical articles, I realise that WP:Primary is an important issue for medical articles but I wondered if Chris had a legitimate point. Would you be able to clarify the stance on the use of such articles as sources for medical pages? Or be able to point me in the direction where such discussions should be taken? Chris would obviously be able to articulate his concern better than I so could discuss on his Talk page or here on the WikiProject Medicine Talk page perhaps? Let me know what you think anyway. Best regards, Stinglehammer (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks User:Stinglehammer. Why not use secondary sources is the question? Yes some secondary sources can be of poor quality but many are of high quality and we should be using the high quality ones. If the content has never been mentioned in a high quality secondary source it does raise a bit of a red flag that it could be a one off. One major aspect of the scientific method is repeatability. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that secondary sources are not automatically better than primary ones. On the other hand, an astoundingly high percentage of primary biomedical research cannot be reproduced. Furthermore, results in animals often do not translate into humans. This is especially true with Alzheimer's disease where therapeutic approaches that appear to work in animals models have spectacularly failed in human clinical trials. It is much safer to cite high quality review articles that weigh the available evidence. Preclinical research result are not prohibited in Wikipedia, but per WP:MEDANIMAL, it is essential that it is not implied that the results of testing in animals will also apply to humans. Boghog (talk) 21:50, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For what its worth there is an essay WP:Why MEDRS? that explains some of this (I started it but others have worked on it). Briefly, every WP content policy (WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:V) says we should use secondary sources, and that is because our mission, per WP:NOT, is "to summarize accepted knowledge". Secondary sources are where we can most securely find "accepted knowledge" and get a good sense of what is widely held, what is a minority opinion, and what is plain FRINGE. MEDRS just makes that more explicit, and as Boghog and Doc James eloquently explained there are lots of reasons why this is extra important in health/medicine. Why MEDRS? explains this in too much detail. Jytdog (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Stinglehammer and ChrisH2015. Since I reverted the content and literature in question, let me comment. First, the existing literature for the Neuroangiogenesis article is mostly WP:PRIMARY, with no systematic review on the topic among the 8 references that would satisfy WP:MEDRS. The first proposed article to include PMID 21771586 in transgenic mice is more about VEGF than angiogenesis, so is preliminary/primary to the topic. The second article PMID 22850316 is an hypothesis opinion not suitable for summarizing facts about neuroangiogenesis. The existing article is highly speculative, similar to what might be included as "potential mechanisms" or "future research" in a research article, not adhering very well, in my opinion, to the goals of Wikipedia per WP:NOTJOURNAL, 6-7. There is a WP article on Alzheimer's disease research where the Ambrose review may be better suited, but it also is plainly stated as an hypothesis which is not a good WP source. --Zefr (talk) 23:15, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Zefr: To imply something only becomes a fact when it is proven in humans is nonsensical. WP:MEDRS makes no such argument. Given the enormous amount preclinical research that has been performed in neurodegenerative diseases that is back up by secondary sources, per WP:MEDANIMAL, this is fair game for inclusion into Wikipedia, as long as it is made clear that these results may not translate into humans. While PMID 22850316, 25061056 contain opinions, they are also full of facts about the current state of knowledge concerning neuroangiogenesis as it relates to Alzheimer's disease. Boghog (talk) 07:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this is a review article[8] The journal it is published in has an impact factor of 4.2[9] Hum I have therefore restored some of the content[10] User:Stinglehammer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remember to VOTE before Dec 4th

We have 11 candidates. Both myself HERE and User:Tryptofish HERE have put together our opinions on the candidates. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:43, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Also, please don't forget to vote in the m:2016 Community Wishlist Survey. I have it on excellent authority that this dev team would be very pleased if you find the best proposals and advertise their existence to anyone who would benefit. There are no "canvassing" rules at Meta, and the devs explicitly say on the voting pages that a reasonable amount of "canvassing" is desirable and helpful. There are too many proposals for 99% of editors to read, so please do spread the word about the proposals that you think will be most helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[11] is an important fix that is needed to prevent a bot edit after a poor quality edit from hiding that poor quality edit.
Would make it easier for me catch up after going on holidays :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Student editing

Two weeks ago, I deleted an incorrect image from the article "Right axis deviation". My edits were subsequently reverted by an anonymous IP editor and User:Dr sunflowers. I asked for further opinions here. (Thank you, Ozzie10aaaa.) Dr sunflowers did not respond.

I asked for deletion at Wikimedia Commons, but the admin there (INeverCry) deleted the talk page rather than the file. I have pointed this out.

I would appreciate if someone fixes the problem on the page "Right axis deviation".

This matter is an indictment of student editing and their so-called supervision. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did a mass of formatting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As the only comments on the talk page indicate that the diagram is in error, I've removed it from the article and re-nominated it for deletion. You may wish to comment there as well as on the offending admin's talk page. --RexxS (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Doc James & RexxS. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:11, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wondering if I should apply to be an admin on Commons again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:06, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sure: you'll find that spending time there will be a big help in improving our article on Masochism. --RexxS (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
:-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

actual edit by a student

Biomarkers

In the modern time, large amounts of biomarkers could be used in various neurological practices to provide better decision for patient prognosis or in prediction of treatment affects[1]. Although future validation of these biomarkers is needed before utilizing them into standard clinical diagnose algorithms, the importance of personalized medicine will be considered significantly to achieve more effective, cheaper and better-tailored treatment for different neurological diseases in the future[1]. In Parkinson’s disease, there is no validated diagnostic biomarker for PD yet. However, like Alzheimer’s disease, perspective biomarkers are such as dopamine metabolism, oxidative stress, α-synuclein, auto antibodies against α synuclein and inflammatory markers[1]. The reliable results are obtained from studies of α synuclein, the major component of lewy bodies, and it can be found in saliva, serum, plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)[1]. In addition, inflammatory markers such as higher level of interleukin 6 (IL-6) and soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor-1 are associated with PD or early onset of disease[1]. More than 25 genetic factors have been reported to affect the risk factor for PD and the major risk factor is shown to be homozygous and heterozygous mutations of the glucocerebrosidase gene. For PD, one biomarker and a single measure are not efficient to provide useful information. The combination of different biomarkers with clinical relevant patient’s characteristics can be considered to offer better and integrated information on disease[1].

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Polivka, Jiri; Polivka, Jiri; Krakorova, Kristyna; Peterka, Marek; Topolcan, Ondrej (2016-01-01). "Current status of biomarker research in neurology". EPMA Journal. 7: 14. doi:10.1186/s13167-016-0063-5. ISSN 1878-5085. PMC 4931703. PMID 27379174.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

That was a small part of a much larger edit.

The ref is ok as is its formatting, but the content is just oy. (I don't understand why people get dates of references wrong all the time; this one is just off by 6 months but i have been seeing decades-sized errors)

The Education Program's metrics seem to be all about quantity (e.g. here: "In four years, more than 10,000 students, many of whom were women, have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, adding 12 million words, the equivalent of 45,000 printed pages, to more than 10,000 Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.")

I wonder if a productive conversation could be had with them about quality metrics, and re-thinking what they are doing somewhat to more closely manage student editing. Jytdog (talk) 07:05, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We can ask. User:Ian (Wiki Ed), any thoughts on quality metrics? I helped out with WP:ASSIGN to try to help combat this situation (low-quality inputs). I became a Regional Ambassador, back when that existed. I have a hunch we still need to elevate some principles to a community guideline or policy to regulate the situation. Wikipedia assignments force students to become compensated editors (they are compensated to receive a grade). Why not create a policy that states no one is allowed to compel another person to edit live Wikipedia articles? Just as anyone is free to edit Wikipedia, shouldn't everyone be free to not to edit or create live Wikipedia entries? Instituting this philosophy (which in my mind already exists implicitly on the website) would leave students in sandboxes. I don't see a problem with assignments that teach students about Wikipedia and use sandboxes to do so. We could also state that student edits should only go live 1) when a professor is confident the work is of a professional quality (not easy for undergrads, I would say) 2) the student is doing so voluntarily, with all the expectations of a volunteer editor and without grade compensation, and 3) the professor and student are committed to work towards consensus on the content. Regarding the quality of student edits, I know User:Mike Christie has studied it in the past. Any ideas on this, Mike? Hello, by the way. The way I see it is this: on one side, we have millions of dollars being thrown by the Stanton Foundation to employ people to promote this idea (student assignments). On the other hand, you have "wp:the community", which is disorganized, dealing with low-quality inputs. In the past, I spent a lot of my wiki-time trying to remedy the flaws I saw, by trying to engage professors directly. User:SlimVirgin, you are experienced in devising policies or guidelines if I remember correctly. What do you think about my aforementioned policy proposal (in italics)? On a whole, the whole idea of compelling students to edit or create live Wikipedia articles seems, is at its core, an anti-Wikipedian thing to do; I'd like for us to find a solution. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Biosthmors, long time no see. I'm not too concerned about a class compelling a student to edit; a student doesn't have to take the class, after all, if they don't want to. This seems no different to me than a student who avoids a class involving dissection because of personal preference. And have we ever heard of a student complaining on this basis?
I haven't been involved with the WEF, or looked at quality of student edits, in a couple of years: I'll be interested in what Ian says, but I would think examples of bad edits are just as anecdotal as examples of good edits. Certainly if it can be shown that student edits have a net detrimental effect that would be a concern. For quantity metrics I think it's the same issue -- a large number of edits is a bad thing if they're bad edits, and a good thing if they're good edits. So yes, we need metrics on overall quality. I suspect we also need metrics on a per-class basis -- that is, are some professors likely to produce classes with high-quality edits, and others likely to generate poor edits? We've certainly had at least a class or two that were disastrous, but I don't know how common that is among the hundreds of classes that have been run. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Broadly speaking as I understand it it the education program strongly discourages teachers from grading students on their actual edits. fwiw i attempted a while ago to mention student editing in the COI guideline and that got shot down with fire. See here. To be frank most of the opposes there were a) from people with axes to grind about COI generally and b) who didn't grasp the situation that students are put into (or feel that they are in; sometimes even when instructors make it clear that the grade doesn't depend on edits "sticking", students still take it that way). but this kind of derailment is very common in community discussions of COI guideline changes.
Going back to how students feel and the very obvious COI between their relationship to their school and their role as WP editors, see this note from the student who added the above. The COI is so clear there.
But I intentionally didn't frame this as changing the behavior of students or instructors or trying to address anything by a community policy or guideline change. I don't think that is productive.
From a management perspective, we can try to change the metrics for the Education program and by changing them, change the behavior and rhetoric of WMF WEF employees who work in the progam and generate its marketing materials. As I said above I feel that their goal is to get more and more instructors working with them. I feel like every fall and spring a firehose turns on and I spend way too much of my time trying to deal with edits like the one above. I feel exploited - structurally I am forced into the role of a TA. ("forced" is strong language and I can unpack that if anybody doesn't understand it). I don't want to be a TA. I am not here to educate students about how to research and how to write.
So I am saying - how do we incentivize the WMF WEF to spend its resources managing the output of students in the program, so the community doesn't have to? I think that could be productive. Jytdog (talk) 18:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]
Just to clarify: the WMF has nothing at all to do with the education program. The Wiki Education Foundation was launched by the WMF but no longer has any organizational connection to it at all, as far as I know; it's an independent non-profit. (I used to be a board member.) To your point about that student edit, yes, that is a problem. If a professor's grading scheme requires the student's material to stay in the article, that's unfair to both the student and to the WP community. A rev link should be enough. I'd be interested in the WEF's comments on this point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying; redacted above. My points are a) that an organization is paying people and incentivizes them to act and talk in a certain way, which I believe promotes quantity not quality of the results and b) we (including students) would all be better off if those incentives addressed quality. Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Dan Riskin

need opinions on whether to move this article to main or not?..thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This ref[12] does not support the text it is behind.
And neither does this one[13]
This ref does not even mention him[14]
Like much paid editing, the text is written first and than refs are thrown on to make it look supported.
With respect to paid editing the work is usually so poorly done that it is easier to delete it all and start over. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:43, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[15]done--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have a number of accounts adding copyright infringement to Wikipedia:

Not sure if they are students in a class or socks. They are using sources from [16] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They appear to have moved to IP addresses:
May need a range block until we can get a handle on this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
more...all reverted
Jytdog (talk) 01:59, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that this is properly characterized as "spam". Citing the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association for basic information feels like citing the American Cancer Society for basic information: we can use fancier sources, but the information is probably accurate and it's not spam. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WP:REFSPAM. In many of the instances the ref did not support the content. This is blatant ref spamming. Am not talking about motivation only behavior. Jytdog (talk) 18:37, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And for completeness, there was evidence of copyright violation by copying from the website almost verbatim. See User talk:Laurtrops#Copy and pasting and User talk:Abrust1692 for very clear examples that James spotted. --RexxS (talk) 21:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are multiple issues here; one is copyright violation/ infringement which James, Jytdog and Rexx rightly noted and dealt with. Another is whether the source is reliable for the content it supports; Jytdog indicates it isn't because the article content is not referenced in the source . The third issues is whether the source is potentially reliable, and verifiable and per WhatamIdoing I believe it is as long as content added is directly supported by the source. This is the professional association for, "professionals in audiology, speech–language pathology, and speech and hearing science, and to advocate for people with communication disabilities." as noted in our own article, and can be used as a source for basic information. Whether it is being used as spam is different than whether it is a spam site itself and improper use does not mean the source itself is not usable. I was reluctant to enter this discussion but at the same time wanted to clarify and add an opinion rather than set a precedent for rejecting this kind of site for basic kinds of information.(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Agree with User:Littleolive oil and User:WhatamIdoing, I am not against this source being used. The source however must be (1) paraphrased (2) support the content in question (3) the content added must be neutral / non promotional. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:41, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's certainly nothing wrong with the ASHA site and it will be a reliable source for a lot of information. My concern was how it was being used in these cases. It's worth considering as well that in our striving for the best possible quality sources we sometimes don't provide the interested reader with as broad a variety of sources as we might. Sites like ASHA can often be more accessible to the lay reader than a scholarly journal, largely because they will have made an effort to reduce jargon. --RexxS (talk) 10:51, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good and important point. "Sites like ASHA can often be more accessible to the lay reader than a scholarly journal, largely because they will have made an effort to reduce jargon." which assumes sources whether more scholarly or less are always reliable per content. (Littleolive oil (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Acne vulgaris FAC Request 2

Hello everyone, this important page still needs experienced FAC reviewers to help give the article its final push to FA. For convenience, here is the link to the review page [17]. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 05:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Including all phases of clinical trials

Discussion here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:49, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Assessment?

I tried to find the Article assessment dept here to post this message, but was unsuccessful. Just wanted to let them know I changed the assessment of Pharma Medica. Ottawahitech (talk) 11:14, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment. Thank you for your help in the ongoing task. --RexxS (talk) 13:18, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@:RexxS Thanks for replying. I checked out the assessment page for this wikiproject which you mentioned above, but it does not seem to be active. For example the last posting on the talkpage which has not been replied to was posted almost a year ago. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:16, 3 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
Yes that is the place and yes it is mostly inactive. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:24, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wheat

We have several threads open at Talk:Wheat:

In summary, an editor, RAMRashan, wants to remove the term "toxic" referred to wheat gluten for people with celiac disease [18] (which is used worldwide in this context for years -see [19] [20][21] [22]), because he does not like it and against Wikipedia policies (such as WP:NPOV , WP:MEDRS, etc.).

Perhaps we are facing a WP:SPA or a WP:COI. Here are the top articles from RAMRashan's edit count:

Please, more opinions. Thanks.

Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 20:13, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The POV pusher here is Ballena; sample dif where they actually added content to an article that flatly described gluten as "toxic". We might as well describe water as "toxic" every time we mention it as thousands of people have gotten brain damage or died from exposure to it. When you make blatantly bad edits like that you can expect them to be reverted. Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
When I and others at the gluten at wheat pages suggested bringing up your behavior here yet again BallenaBlanca, it wasn't so you could cast blatant WP:ASPERSIONS about editors. I was giving you the benefit the doubt of this all being part of language barrier issue or just being overzealous for whatever reason in this topic as a claimed gastroenterologist, but your edits combined with attacking editors is very much looking like the hallmarks of WP:ADVOCACY. Ironically, compared to RAMRashan where this is no evidence of COI and actually a good spread of topics for a newer agriculture editor (SPA claim is silly there), BallenaBlanca has stated their main research is on celiac disease and associated autoimmune disorders. This may be evidence that they are too close to the topic at hand in terms of COI themselves, but that's probably better brought up at WP:COIN.
The main issue here is that BallenaBlanca is having a lot of trouble with due weight and really overblowing the idea that gluten is "toxic" and that there has been a sudden paradigm change in the literature that gluten is now considered a major problem outside of celiac disease. We already extensively discussed their behavior already at this project. I'm not sure what else we can do here for this mix of behavior and content issues with BallenaBlanca, but it does look like they're overall edits need a second look. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:51, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Even after heavy editing today, the section on wheat health effects remains over-weighted and over-referenced to the gluten story, likely misleading the typical encyclopedia user to believe that the main health issue about wheat is its small gluten content and the impact this has on only 1% of the general population. I find this uneven emphasis to be ridiculous, but Doc James prevails on editing with a heavy hand. --Zefr (talk) 00:10, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Zefr you are cutting out important well referenced details. Three relatively small paragraphs is not excessive. There is more to gluten than celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis is also notable.
I have replaced "toxic" with "harmful for people with coeliac disease" as 1) it is stating a fact 2) is easier to understand IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:16, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for your neutrality, Doc James.
Jytdog maybe you have not read this [23] [24] Health Hazard Assessment for Gluten Exposure in Individuals with Celiac Disease: Determination of Tolerable Daily Intake Levels and Levels of Concern for Gluten (Office of Food Safety Center of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Food and Drug Administration) “ …other toxic grains (i.e., rye, barley) associated with CD…” “A range of work conducted over many years has established that each of these subfractions (of gliadin) can be enterotoxic in sensitive individuals” etc.; and other messages and information in wheat talk page.
There are dozens of references that speak about the toxicity of gluten in celiac disease, that I was previously linked. Probably, this is one of the most outstanding: PMID 22313950 Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification. "The high frequency and wide range of adverse reactions to gluten raise the question as to why this dietary protein is toxic for so many individuals in the world. "
If it is already a mistake to compare gluten toxicity in CD with an allergy or an intolerance, I have no words to define your comparison with water and drowning...
Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 00:41, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You are abusing your editing privileges to make WP a platform for making people "aware" of gluten. Your gluten editing violates two policies - WP:SOAPBOX and WP:UNDUE. I get it that it is your life's work but when you come here you have to take off your gluten-glasses and look at things globally. You have to. Jytdog (talk) 00:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Jytdog, remember not confuse WP:ADVOCACY with WP:STEWARDSHIP. I am in the second case. I seek to be neutral and correct the deficiencies of Wikipedia pages. I have no objection to trim information, if necessary, in dialogue and reaching consensus, etc. That's what I always do. I edit and contribute in a wide range of pages to help in the Wikipedia community work, I wish I could be more useful but it takes a long time because of the language.
IMO, you are pushing your POV, you do not want that CD or NCGS are mentioned, especially their relationship with certain cases of neuropsychiatric disorders and you pressure me to shut up. Here is one of the examples of your stressful pushing against genuinely mentioning CD or NCGS [25].
IMO, you are abusing your editing privileges to push against me, you handle Wikipedia policies very well and you always find some one to use against me.
I'm really sorry, because I really liked the times you and I worked together. And honestly, I wish we could continue to work together, as for example we did here [26] [27]. Can we, please?
Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 02:36, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am very clear about what advocacy is, and you are not. You constantly push this gluten stuff too far. You do great editing in other areas. Done here. Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your conclusions about advocacy and me are as successful as comparing toxicity of gluten in CD with water. What a pity... Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 03:38, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ballena, what exactly are you trying to communicate when you use the word toxic to describe a protein that most people can eat with no apparent harm?
I looked at your suggested searches. After limiting it to reviews during the most recent five years, I found that they produced very few sources (nine, if you want to run the search more efficiently) – and that many of those few sources seemed to use the word rather loosely, instead of being precise about the distinctions between toxins, antigens, allergens, etc. Those nine contrast with the 542 reviews (about 98%) during that period that mention gluten and/or gliadin and don't use that word. That comparison makes me feel about 98% against the idea of using that word to describe the protein. But presumably you've got a point that you think should be made, and it's presumably something beyond "be scared, because this is just as toxic as snake venom and pesticides and dioxins and mercury". If you can tell us what your goal is, then we can probably come up with a way to present that information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:05, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Toxicity is only in the context of celiac disease, I have never said otherwise. We can also use cytotoxic or enterotoxic or immunogenic.
You can see Gluten immunochemistry in which I have not done any edit [28] and the use of the terms here "antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity", here "toxic protein" and here "toxicity of gliadins" and several refs, present since the first version, edited by Pdeitiker at 06:44, 19 June 2008 [29].
Anyway, we have removed the term from wheat (all the possible terms) and the result is good, I agree with it [30]. I will not insist, I explain this to you because you asked. As I said [31], oats could be the best example why it would be convenient to explain what toxicity means for people with CD, and avoid they be surprised by the term. World Gastroenterology Organisation Global Guidelines on Celiac Disease American College of Gastroenterology - Clinical Guidelines: Diagnosis and Management of Celiac Disease.
You searched the term "toxin". No, no toxin, but "toxic". And we have 88, 20 of them from last 5 years. And note that the first mentions go back to 1972. And if we expand the search with cytotoxic or enterotoxic, we find 106, 28 of them from last 5 years.
Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 01:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So the main problem with writing "toxic" isn't that less than 5% of sources use it. It's that normal readers will misunderstand it. Because if you go to your neighbor, or the grocery store clerk, and you ask them to name a couple of toxins, they're going to think about "chemicals" and "poisons" rather than "common food that some people happen to react badly to". And if you tell them that this is "toxic", then they're going to think that Wikipedia says that it's just like scary chemicals and poisons. In other words, if we write toxic, we'll be mis-educating nearly all of our readers.
I think that immunogenic would be a good choice. It feels like it has less room for such misunderstandings. Will that work for you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@BallenaBlanca:How much salt, sugar, and fat did you eat today? Count Iblis (talk) 22:06, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing, what you say makes sense. I agree. The issue of toxicity is a matter of adapting the language for the lay readers, you're right. One observation: the percentage of sources that mention it is not relevant, it depends on the concret topic on which they focus, not always talk about pathophysiology. The fact is that it has been used for more than 40 years among specialists.

In summary, we have removed the term toxic, and two paragraphs about gluten-related disorders "is not too much in an article this size and is far from undue weight" [32], especially taking into account the format of other similar Wikipedia pages [33] and the criteria that have been followed by the editors in them [34].

Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 23:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image at female ejaculation article

There is a discussion at Talk:Female ejaculation#Image restored about whether or not to use a real-life image depicting female ejaculation. I have concerns because the existence of female ejaculation is heavily debated among scholars and people have been known to photoshop photographs to look like female ejaculation, especially in the pornography media. Some pornography actresses have faked female ejaculation onscreen. As this 2013 Cosmopolitan source states, "Porn has encouraged men to believe that when they've truly rocked a woman's body, it starts doing an impression of the Bellagio Fountain in the second-to-last scene of Ocean's Eleven." In that same source, sex therapist Ian Kerner states, "Involuntary squirting is the Loch Ness Monster of sex. In other words, an unverifiable legend." The literature commonly attributes the type of "gushing" seen in the debated photograph to the bladder (meaning urine or mostly urine, or closer to urine to than to female ejaculate). Even Kerner, in the Cosmopolitan source, categorizes gushing as "closer to pee than it is to female ejaculate." And a pornography actress in the source states that "the extreme version of squirting — is often smoke and mirrors." She believes "squirting" is real, but thinks that it's rare and difficult to achieve. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Weighted in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To tag or not to tag, that is the question...

Are articles about medical journals within the scope of this project? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:22, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would say yes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:21, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's not covered at WP:MED?, but if editors here are willing to support a topic, then there's no reason why not. I should add that WP:WikiProject Academic Journals is active and an obvious first choice to find interested maintainers, but there's no reason why an article about a medical journal shouldn't belong to both. --RexxS (talk) 22:02, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, if it is covered there than I do not think we need to include it here. But no strong feeling either way. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, there is no direct link to WP:MED?, or even a mention of it, anywhere on the project main page. It is unusual to have the Scope guide of a project "hidden" as a subsection of its Assessment sub-page, as it isn't actually related. Other WikiProjects I visit tend to be far more upfront and explicit about their scope. Other professional/scientific projects tend to specifically include journals within their scope. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a link on the main page now. It was lost in the revamp where we removed hundreds of outdated or unnecessary links. This does seem to me an essential link, so I reinstated it, but we need to keep it terse for it to be useful. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧
If you do much of this work, then it may be helpful to know that such information, when it exists, is most commonly at a page named "WikiProject ____/Assessment". This is common enough that if you can't find it, it's worth searching for that page name to see whether it exists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question on Talk:Pain re: removing a sentence that appears to be primary research

I posted a comment on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pain regarding removing a sentence from the wiki article, results from a single study (primary research). If you have a chance, I would like some feedback and advice on this. Thanks. JenOttawa (talk) 14:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


National Foundation for Cancer Research

Can someone take a look at this article? Is the copypaste even relevant to the article? Natureium (talk) 17:40, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an encyclopedic entry, reads like part of a home page, had copyright material only recently removed, and violates WP:NOTHOSTING, among others. As there's no content and various recent violations, I submitted a WP:PROD request. --Zefr (talk) 22:18, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like it has been well trimmed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not well enough. I've taken a larger set of shears to the undergrowth. In my opinion, it wouldn't survive AfD unless someone can find a couple of independent secondary sources to meet WP:GNG or WP:ORG. --RexxS (talk) 04:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of an elderly woman

Wondering what peoples thoughts on this as a lead image? Talk:Urinary_incontinence#Image Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:54, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Per the image description, this picture doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article other than that the woman is old and is in the demographic for likely incontinence. I think we should find a different image, because right now it looks like a random clickbait stock photo and is of no informational value. Natureium (talk) 02:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[35]seems better--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Casein#Autism_content

eyes would be useful, thanks. Jytdog (talk) 03:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also a possible link to type 1 diabetes is a hot topic. Count Iblis (talk) 04:28, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Is anybody familiar with the journal Biochimie? It's the only secondary source offered in support of the content. --RexxS (talk) 04:40, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Biochimie appears to be a legit MEDLINE indexed peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor of 3. Boghog (talk) 04:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the Diagnosis section in Draft:Cerebral Folate Deficiency related to Folate Receptor Autoantibodies in Autism may be an indicator of why this subject is important to its author. I've commented on the talk page there. --RexxS (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Argh. That draft was moved to main space. I looked at the sourcing carefully. Several articles by E.V. Quadros and J.M. Sequeira were cited (most of them not MEDRS). The papers disclose that the two of them are inventors of methods to diagnose various things by detecting folate receptor autoantibodies. This appears to be PROMO or advocacy. Oy. I have redirected to Folate deficiency and put one sentence in a new Research section. Jytdog (talk) 22:44, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did you figure out who was selling the testing kits that the article was advertising? I almost ordered one using a fake credit card. --RexxS (talk) 00:11, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
:) no it doesn't seem to be commercial yet - i did look tho. Jytdog (talk) 15:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested edit - Sarcopenia

Hi, I posted a comment on the sarcopenia talk page regarding changing the diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia in the article. I would appreciate some feedback if anyone has a chance Danagg12 (talk) 14:45, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've commented. --RexxS (talk) 15:14, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia editathon at Imperial College London

I am not sure who organized this. The event was hosted at Imperial College London. They tweeted updates, which show that apparently they had t-shirts and hoodies made especially for this event. Battleofalma, you tweeted about this event. Do you know who managed this or how it came to happen? Great event! Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:54, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've previously been involved in editathons at Imperial, but I was unaware of this one and nobody contacted me about it. The press release contains a bunch of completely different names, suggesting this is an entirely separate effort. JFW | T@lk 10:58, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The release said it was done in conjunction with WP:MED. Hm. this tweeted image shows a guy talking with WMF-branded slides and this tweet says "learning from the experts @wikimediauk". Jytdog (talk) 13:57, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Introduced a big bolus of copyvio content in one of the four articles, Duke Activity Status Index. fixed it. Jytdog (talk) 14:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wishlist pitches

2016 Community Wishlist Survey - Proposals related to "Recent Changes"

Hello WP Medicine members! I noticed that you make extensive use of RecentChangesLinked to produce change patrols under "Recent changes". Here's a couple Wishlist Survey proposals related to making these pages more productive:

  1. "Hide trusted users" checkbox option on watchlists and related/recent changes (RC) pages
  2. RecentChangesLinked should search associated pages

Please consider and vote on these by December 12. Thank you for your time! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 23:11, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings WikiProject Medicine Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 18:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We now have top 5000 which comes out once a week which fills much of the gap.
And there is this new tool[36] so likely not that hard to get it up and running again.
Getting it up and running is less essential for us than other projects. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Other calls

Please see above

For myself, I wish for "Support Wikipedia Education Program courses on Programs & Events Dashboard". I want Wikipedia in more medical schools and development of this tool would make this easier in many ways.

If anyone else wants attention, please share. The rules say, "A reasonable amount of canvassing is acceptable. You've got an opportunity to sell your idea to as many people as you can reach. Feel free to reach out to other people in your project, WikiProject or user group." Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Stevietheman and Blue Rasberry thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't read the lists myself, but Wikivoyage seems interested in these two:

The first is interesting to WPMED, since it would let us fix problems with Wikidata descriptions (seen in some search results) and other things easily. I haven't read up on KML files, so I'm not sure if this would be useful to us (e.g., to make maps of disease prevalence). If anyone's aware of other lists, please feel free to share links with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

using used commercial cat litter as farm/garden fertilizer

i am exploring the safety & efficacy of using used cat litter as fertilizer. it is certainly full of nitrogen? & toxoplasmosis & ? thousands of pounds are purchased & discarded every day. how can this resource be safely reused. Can & should the new litter be modified? Most litter seems to have a clay base. Lets make some money & improve the environment by getting this stuff out of the garbage truck & landfill. Please advise - if u can? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markl sparkol (talk • contribs) 00:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a place for questions like that. You can try the WP:Reference desk though. Jytdog (talk) 01:00, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New article needs attention

Please see Structured Triage System, the sources are all in Spanish so proficiency in the language would be useful. The topic seems clearly notable but the devil's in the detail, in some areas the referencing seems a bit thin. It could also do with more wikilinks. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

per [37] page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline... 10 of 12 refs need to be replaced w/ the English equivalent(or have article available in both languages, did not find evidence of the English equivalent)...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:03, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's no such rule. MEDRS only uses the word English to say that pop-science magazines often have the virtue of writing in "plain English". Non-English sources are permitted under the policy WP:NONENGLISH.
Since this program is currently used only in Spanish-speaking countries, I think that it's unlikely that we'll find very many sources about it in English (or any language other than Spanish). We have a handful of Spanish speakers here at WPMED, but if we need more help, then we can ask at the usual places for finding translators (WikiProject Spain, Wikipedia:Translators available, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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