Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information

Revert

WAID, I reverted your edit because it would be a major change. An RS has to be appropriate, not just something that an editor has added in good faith. "Appropriate" for biomedical information means MEDRS-compliant. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:50, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Limits of BURDEN

This page has misrepresented WP:V for several months. We need it to be accurate and to not contradict the actual policies. The actual policy says "The burden to demonstrate verifiability... is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." and goes on to clarify that for the purpose of 'your right to summarily blank other people's contributions', reliable is defined as "any source that he or she [the other editor, not you] believes, in good faith, to be sufficient", which includes sources that editors ultimately, by consensus, agree are not actually reliable for the claim made.

So let me explain the main options, and we'll see whether we can come up with a better way to say this.

What's in the essay	Your options
Medical claim that you believe to be accurate, neutral, and appropriate for this encyclopedia article, but not sourced at all: "Smoking tobacco increases your risk of dying from lung cancer."	You are permitted to blank unsourced content (that's "zero sources whatsoever", not "zero sources that I approve of") under WP:BURDEN, but you probably shouldn't, at least as a first step. Add a {{fact}} tag, or add a good source yourself.
Medical claim that you believe to be accurate, neutral, and appropriate for this encyclopedia article, but sourced weakly: "Smoking tobacco increases your risk of dying from lung cancer.[newspaper article]"	If you want a MEDRS source, then you have to provide it. You are not permitted to say "this is unreliably-sourced content, so I just get to blank it". BURDEN doesn't permit this, full stop. You only get to invoke BURDEN on unsourced material (and material that is so poorly sourced that no reasonable editor would expect the source to be accepted, because we didn't want to leave a door open for trolling).
Medical claim that you believe does not meet the goal of accurate, neutral, and appropriate information for this encyclopedia article, no matter what the source is: "Smoking tobacco cures lung cancer.[ideal MEDRS source]"	Blank it, but say that you're doing it because of WP:UNDUE. It complies with WP:V and BURDEN.

So – yes, you can blank bad content, but you can't blank it because of BURDEN. BURDEN doesn't permit that. Bad content can and should be removed for other reasons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

The phrase you're quoting from BURDEN is in a footnote, and it's consistent with this page. It says:

Once an editor has provided any source that he or she believes, in good faith, to be sufficient, then any editor who later removes the material has an obligation to articulate specific problems that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia (e.g., undue emphasis on a minor point, unencyclopedic content, etc.). All editors are then expected to help achieve consensus, and any problems with the text or sourcing should be fixed before the material is added back.

For biomedical information, a "specific problem that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia" would be that the source isn't MEDRS compliant. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:23, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, obviously so. We should definitely not be trying to swerve around core policy here: MEDRS attracts attacks enough as it is, and we don't want to encourage more by twisting it in odd directions. Alexbrn (talk) 19:56, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I also agree that it would be best not to make that change. I guess I can see the point that BURDEN itself does not explicitly require MEDRS-level sourcing, so in one way of misunderstanding the intention here, one could say that it is not BURDEN that justifies what this page says. But I do understand BURDEN to require sourcing that is adequate to the content that it supports, so just as we require BLP-level sourcing for BLPs, we can require MEDRS-level sourcing here, and consider the "burden" unmet when the sourcing fails MEDRS. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:59, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Sarah, I don't think that "the [first] source [supplied by the original editor] isn't MEDRS compliant" is a "specific problem that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia". This isn't some children's game like Mother, May I?. If you already know that perfectly reliable sources exist for this information, then you must not blank it on grounds of poor sourcing. "Gee, I happen to know that what you added is absolutely factually accurate, neutral, encyclopedic, and appropriate to this particular article, but – ha ha! You "only" cited a highly reputable news source or a lay-oriented book instead of a peer-reviewed review article from a journal that I approve of, so I get to blank it!" would actually be a stupid outcome (and that's what's been written on this page for months). The policy doesn't support that and shouldn't support that, and this page should match the policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

The reason that I disagree with this edit you made is because, in the edit summary, you stated that WP:BURDEN doesn't require reliability, and you added the following: "The WP:BURDEN on the original editor is only to provide only one (1) 'source that he or she [i.e., not you] believes, in good faith, to be sufficient', not to provide an ideal one." But WP:BURDEN does require reliability; it specifically states, "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. Attribute all quotations and any material whose verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:20, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

As for a lay-oriented book, I agree that we shouldn't be removing that unless it's actually inaccurate, unreliable and/or outdated. WP:MEDRS does support lay-oriented books. As for news sources, WP:MEDRS does not completely reject news sources, but it does caution against them. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

In terms of fulfilling BURDEN, a reliable source isn't "what the consensus determines is actually reliable". It's "what the original editor [sincerely] believes to be reliable". This means that it's possible to fulfill the BURDEN by providing an unreliable source (and for me to blank your content later on any of several grounds, but not on grounds of BURDEN).

BURDEN simply does not authorize someone to blank good, verifiABLE content just because editor #1 [sincerely] believes that a given source is a reliable, and editor #2 thinks that it's not. (And, of course, you and I both have seen people blank content many times by claiming that books and news sources "aren't MEDRS".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

WAID, the problem with your edit is that it didn't reflect WP:BURDEN. As Flyer says, BURDEN requires that anyone adding or restoring information provide "a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution". Not any source that they believe is okay, but a reliable one, and for biomedical information that's MEDRS. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

And then the policy goes on to say that once you've supplied a source that you personally believe is reliable, then your BURDEN is fulfilled and now everyone is equally responsible for providing a True™ reliable source. That's the meaning of the bit that begins "All editors are then expected to help": "All editors" means "not just the original one". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:28, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

WAID, it doesn't say that. You're reading something into it that isn't there. The footnote you're relying on says: "Once an editor has provided any source that he or she believes, in good faith, to be sufficient, then any editor who later removes the material has an obligation to articulate specific problems ... etc." And the material should stay out until that problem is fixed.

So if I see you add "1.1 million died in Auschwitz" sourced to the National Enquirer, I'll either remove it entirely or remove the source and tag it. It sounds about right, but I can't trust it, and the burden is on you to supply an RS. In any event, we're not writing for each other, but for the reader. It's not a question of whether any of us thinks it might be correct, but whether a reader can be satisfied that it's reliably sourced. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:47, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you actually not see the words "All editors are then expected to help" in that policy? Or are you just trying to tell me (i.e., a person heavily involved in creating that footnote) that you don't think I know what I intended it to say? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you intended it to say. I know only what it does say. And in any event, it's just a footnote. BURDEN has always required an RS and still does. It would be pointless otherwise. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:14, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it will make more sense if we deal in practical terms. Sarah, imagine that (in your excellent judgment) a particular article ought to contain the sentence "Smoking tobacco increases your risk of dying from lung cancer".

Now imagine that someone adds exactly that sentence, and – making a reasonable effort, but not necessarily being familiar with our complex guidelines – that editor adds a citation to a reputable news article. The news article fully supports that sentence.

Is Wikipedia best served by having you blank that sentence and its "unreliable source"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

You've chosen too simple an example. Choose one instead that might be right, but you're not sure, and it will take a while to track down a source. But it's an important medical issue, so you can't just leave it standing in the meantime. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:49, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

How about if someone adds "vaccinations have been shown to produce autism" with a dubious website as reference—a website which they sincerely and enthusiastically believe to be true? Perhaps the ref could be described as a reputable news article that is parroting stuff the journalist received via email. Bad stuff needs to be reverted, not kept until someone finds the perfect reference. Johnuniq (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

No, I've chosen exactly the right example for isolating the sourcing issue.

Something that "might be right" could be left standing temporarily; BURDEN recommends {{fact}} tags, and I recommend talk-page discussions. (For example, in such a case, I might leave a note at WT:MED.) Something that's known to be wrong should be removed on grounds other than sourcing (UNDUE, in Johnuniq's example).

But my question stands: If you are absolutely confident that the sole problem with the edit is that someone cited "RS" rather than "MEDRS", then what should you do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

That question doesn't make sense, because what counts as an RS varies depending on the topic. An RS for biomedical info is a MEDRS. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to add that, with your smoking example, I would quickly add a MEDRS, because it would take seconds to find one. That's why you should choose a more complicated example, where it would take longer. For anything more time-consuming, I would remove the text or at least remove the source and tag it, unless I happened to be in the mood to track down the issue myself. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

So if I added that uncontestable fact, and I "only" cited a newspaper article or a non-professional-healthcare book to support it, then you would not blank it out of hand for having a bad source, right? Would you approve of someone else blanking it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The mission of Wikipedia, as defined in WP:NOTEVERYTHING, is to provide the pubic with articles that summarize accepted knowledge. Content that ~might~ summarize MEDRS sources is not something I am comfortable presenting to the public as "accepted knowledge", and in my view Wikipedia is better served by sourcing it, moving it to Talk per WP:PRESERVE or tagging it and then removing it (or moving to talk) if it is not sourced in a reasonable amount of time. We need to aim for the mission as much as possible. Especially for content about health which is extra charged on several levels. Jytdog (talk) 04:29, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

My example isn't dealing with something that "might" be verifiable in MEDRS sources. My example is something that you and I both absolutely know to be the mainstream medical opinion, but it's "only" sourced to a lay source. What do you do with that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

At this point, I think the consensus here is becoming pretty clear, but I'll add that what we have here is something roughly (albeit not 100%) like BLP. If someone edited a BLP page, adding some content for which there are plenty of reliable sources, but also something that falls afoul of BLP, it would be the wrong response to tag it, requesting a better source, or to leave it, while adding another reliable source. The correct response would be to delete it, and BURDEN and the rest of Verifiability really have little to do with that. The BLP policy sets important standards about content, based largely on the goal of not doing harm. In a somewhat similar manner, there is a consensus that content that might lead readers to make medical decisions should also not do harm – and in this case, that means that sources for such content must satisfy MEDRS. And again, the solution to non-MEDRS compliant content is to remove it, rather than to leave it while hoping that better sourcing will emerge. I understand that the concern here is about content that really could be MEDRS-compliant, but just needs a better source. I'm pretty sure that most editors who know that it's good content and who can easily find a MEDRS source would just replace the source – but I don't think that we want to enshrine the idea that if someone does not bother to do that, and simply reverts, that makes them a disruptive editor. I know there is language at WP:V about encouraging a cooperative approach to BURDEN, and that language came out of concerns about editors who revert excessively, but that is also about content in general, not content that falls into special cases such as BLP or MEDRS. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:12, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Your analogy fails because BLP says nothing of the sort. BLP reserves the immediate-blanking treatment solely for "contentious" content (i.e., a small minority of BLP-related content). I believe that I can state without fear of contradiction that none of us in this discussion consider the connection between smoking tobacco and dying of lung cancer to be the least bit controversial or contentious.

So: I add a sentence saying that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, and I cite a news article. This is strictly non-contentious content; the equivalent for a BLP statement could live in an article completely unsourced. Would you personally blank that content? Do you think that any editor (assuming that said editor hadn't lived under a rock for the last half-century, and therefore was also aware that smoking tobacco is a health risk) actually should?

(I get what you're saying about not wanting to label an editor as being disruptive. Not everyone knows what I know, and I don't know what everyone else knows. But if we think that this is actually a bad idea, then I also don't want to say that this is a lovely idea that ought to be done at every opportunity, either.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:19, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

About BLP, please note that I had said "something that falls afoul of BLP", so I was indeed referring specifically to contentious content, because that is the kind of content that has the potential to do harm. The short answer to your question to me is that, no, I personally would not have blanked a statement that is so obviously factual as that. The longer answer is that I agree with what Jytdog says just below. What I'm talking about here is medical-related content where there is similarly the potential to do harm, if the content tells the reader something that is not supported by MEDRS sources.

And I am also talking about the reverted edit that started this discussion thread. The existing language that was reverted back to actually says to SOFIXIT in the kind of example you gave here: If WP:MEDRS can be found to support the information, and it is relevant and encyclopedic, then ideally provide a better source yourself. Also, the existing language says that improperly sourced content may be removed, not must be removed. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:15, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

• I am kind of uncomfortable with the line of argument you are making here WAID.

Most fundamentally, RS fleshes out what V means by "reliable source" with regard to everything that isn't Biomedical Information and MEDRS defines what V means by "reliable source" for Biomedical Information. They are parallel guidelines in different domains and refer to each other as such (RS refers to MEDRS and MEDRS refers to RS). This has broad and deep consensus. But in your OP you structure this as though MEDRS is somehow "under" RS. Yikes!

Additionally, if we consider the universe of content that is Biomedical Information, "blue sky" things like your two examples (the one widely accepted and the other widely not) are going to be unhelpful 99% of the time. Most times it is going to something like an editor adding "nausea" to a list of "very common" (>10% of people have them) side effects of a drug, let's say where there is also a list of common (between 1% and 10% of people have them) side effects, without adding a source. This is the kind of thing we see all the time and it doesn't fall into either of those buckets and to be honest most times I just revert per unsourced.

But to answer your question i have sometimes let slide content like "smoking increases the risk of lung cancer" cited to a high quality ref like the NYT. Usually if I am in a hurry trying to get to something that is more pressing. If not I find a MEDRS source. if someone removed it and it was important I would probably stop and FIXIT. If someone removed it and it was mundane I wouldn't care. if two people actually started spending time warring over it I would call them both idiots under my breath and if it was important would just FIXIT. It is just not an interesting or helpful question really. Jytdog (talk) 04:03, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

• Here are a couple of examples from my watchlist crawl today. diff; diff. I just reverted both of those. The first cited to a university press release about publication of a clinical study and the 2nd is a recent, very small clinical trial (at least cited to the actual paper). Jytdog (talk) 06:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

So when I look back over this, I see very wide agreement on this point: When you encounter a situation in which "a source has been supplied for apparently accurate, relevant, encyclopedic information", and "you want it to have a better or more appropriate source", then the best practice (chosen from among the multiple "legal" options) is to "provide a better source yourself".

Not one person thought that removing that information was the best option. So why doesn't this page just say what we all agree the best practice is? What potentially bad results are we afraid of, if we first say what the best practice is, instead of first threatening removal? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

I think the actual takeaway from the (now long-ago) discussion was that we don't need to change this. I guess the potential bad result depends on just how much that information really is "accurate, relevant, encyclopedic". There can be borderline cases, and we don't want to get into needless arguments with someone who added something that is on the borderline, and then wants to argue that someone who reverted them is being disruptive. I'll turn your question around and ask: what is the problem that you are trying to solve? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

In the long-term, I'd like to reduce the still all-too-common behavior of blanking a good addition because the source is does not conform to some hypothetical ideal. I want this page to be one less source of reinforcement for lazy patrollers and mindless rule enforcers.

In the short term, I want this page to stop misrepresenting what WP:V says on this point. There is nothing in WP:V about "information not sourced to a WP:MEDRS may be removed". WP:V actually says that the editor need only provide "any source that he or she believes, in good faith, to be sufficient" – not whatever "a MEDRS" is, but "any source" that the initial editor believes is sufficient. IMO there is a material gap between "you have to use a MEDRS" and "you have to use any source that you personally think is sufficient" (even if your first "any source" is followed by someone saying, "Here, please read MEDRS. Do you still think that your first source is truly 'sufficient'?"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I guess the reference to BURDEN is not really needed here, and we could add something conditional about removal:

Biomedical information not sourced to a WP:MEDRS may be removed in accord with WP:BURDEN which states "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source", especially if it seems likely that WP:MEDRS do not support it. If WP:MEDRS can be found to support the information, and it is relevant and encyclopedic, then ideally provide a better source yourself. If you cannot find an appropriate source but the material seems accurate, consider adding a {{Medical citation needed}} tag.

I don't think we should go much farther than that. It should be permissible to revert improperly sourced material, and the existing language already does say "ideally" about fixing it yourself. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Above, SlimVirgin (SarahSV) and I addressed WhatamIdoing's argument that "WP:V actually says that the editor need only provide 'any source that he or she believes, in good faith, to be sufficient.' " SarahSV noted that WhatamIdoing was referring to the footnote, and then challenged the rest of WhatamIdoing's argument. If it's poor material that is supported by poor sources, no, I don't think that it can or should ideally be removed only if the editor contesting it takes the time to tweak or otherwise improve the material themselves and then re-add it. The WP:ONUS is on the editor wanting to include the contested material. Yes, I support WP:Preserve and have cited it enough times, such as in this case, but material can be preserved on the talk page, and I'm not for stating or implying that we should be letting poor material stand in an article until we fix it ourselves. WP:BURDEN states, "If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it." The "encouraged to" wording was added following objections (on that policy talk page) to the notion that we should fix it ourselves. As for patrollers, such as myself, yes, we routinely revert large additions of unsourced material. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:43, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

I was just offering that as a possible resolution, but I personally don't feel strongly about it, and I certainly wouldn't want to implement it if there is consensus against it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:03, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I know that it was just a suggestion. Also, to be clearer on why I feel the way that I do regarding removing material... Some material may not need to be included. It might be irrelevant or WP:Fringe. WP:Preserve is about including appropriate material that should be included. It's not about whether the content is verifiable (although verifiability is an aspect of inclusion). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:10, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Poor material can be removed without invoking BURDEN.

This is one of the long-term frustrations. We have (usually) newbies adding complete garbage – remember the guy who copied whole sections of virusmyth.com into an article? – and we say "You forgot to add a MEDRS! Go back to the start!" like it's a game of Mother, May I?. Garbage should be removed because it is garbage, without reference to either MEDRS or BURDEN.

The decision tree should look like this:

1. Is this appropriate, encyclopedic information?
   • If no, then kill it now.
   • If yes, then proceed to question 2.
2. Is this appropriate, encyclopedic information already supported by a reliable source?
   • If yes, then see if you can collaborate to improve it.
   • If no, then proceed to question 3.
3. Is this appropriate, encyclopedic information actually verifiable?
   • If no, then kill it now. (Cite MEDRS if you feel like explaining.)
   • If yes, then:
     • Can you add a source? (Best practice for appropriate, encyclopedic material) If you can't, then consider tagging it, so someone else might add a source.
   • If you're uncertain whether this appropriate, encyclopedic material is actually verifiable, then
     • Consider tagging it.
     • Consider removing it under BURDEN.

What we're writing here is a lot closer to "Hey, they didn't get it perfect on the first try, so UNDO!" than what BURDEN says. I'd like to have something closer to the actual policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

• just responding to the OP here. I am absolutely opposed to this. Without reservation. It is already hard to enough to keep spam and fringe-pushing content out of WP. This would drain the time of experienced editors in endless trench warfare.

This has been tested at ANI - see for example here which had this CWOT village pump discussion behind it and a bunch of other stuff here. And that is just one example of many times this sort of behavioral thing has been dealt with by the community, where people demand to retain badly sourced content about biomedical stuff. There is broad and deep consensus that biomedical information must be sourced per MEDRS. Which is a happy thing. Many good things flow from wise policy. We cut off POV pushing, refspamming, company or product advertising, etc at the knees by discussing sourcing. That is what we do here. Focus on sourcing and generating high quality content from them, based on the P&G. Jytdog (talk) 23:52, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

1. I thought we were supposed to be here to 'build an encyclopedia', not to 'do sourcing'. I don't this it's good for people cry MEDRS over advertising. That's what the NOT and NPOV policies are for, and advertising is still advertising, even if you put a systematic review behind it. Do you feel like lodging an objection related to sourcing is the only effective tool in the toolbox? I feel like some people only know how to use a hammer named MEDRS, so they try to address every problem as if it were a nail that's sticking out. I'd like to see people learn to use multiple tools.
2. I would rather remove this section than have it misrepresent what WP:V says on this point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:50, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

• Yes we build an encyclopedia by starting with reliable sources and generating content per the P&G. That is how the community has decided we work to generate articles summarizing accepting knowledge, as opposed to being some website full of indiscriminate ... content, that may or may not be accepted knowledge. As i said -- and very clearly -- many good things flow from wise policies and guidelines. I understand you have concerns about how MEDRS is cited in discussions, but with that effort to distort what I wrote, I have nothing more to say here. Please never misrepresent what I write again. Jytdog (talk) 15:11, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
• And that's a silly false dichotomy. Doing sourcing (properly) is how we build an encyclopedia (instead of, say, a blog or a forum or a work of fiction).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:59, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

• It looks to me like we have reached the point where further discussion is not going to actually change anything, and therefore is probably not worth pursuing. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Veterinary

"Veterinary medicine: Generally, editors do not enforce a requirement for especially high-quality sources for non-human medicine. However, all the principles can be voluntarily applied to veterinary medicine."

I don't think this is true. It certainly is not true of me, and WP:MEDRS isn't carving out a magical exemption for veterinary medicine. And what this says shouldn't be true, for many of the same reasons that apply to human medicine (in short: serious health consequences, even death, can result from acting on bad "medical advice"). Further, it really doesn't make any sense to say something like "all the principles can be voluntarily applied to veterinary medicine". All that amounts to is "If you try to apply MEDRS, this page indicate other are free to revert-war you to death until you give up and fuck off."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:57, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, editors are far more willing to accept older sources and primary sources for veterinary content (including pets and farm animals). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Disease / pandemic origins

Moved from WP:ANI § Related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information

There have been massive running discussions across multiple parts of Wikipedia where people argue whether or not the origins of COVID-19 are biomedical information and therefore fall under WP:MEDRS. Would it be useful to clarify that here in one way or the other - ie. adding the original origins of a disease or pandemic to either the "what is" or "what is not" sections? Obviously any full discussion leading to actually changing the page would require a ton of notifications to all the existing discussions, I'm just curious whether regulars here feel that it would be valuable to pursue - even if the other discussions eventually reach a conclusion on COVID-19, this could easily come up again in other forms, and I think the size and length of discussions, plus the degree of disagreements between experienced editors, shows that it's worth having a clear answer here if possible. To be clear, I'm not (yet) asking which section it should be added to, which is going to require a lot more discussion, just whether it's worth considering adding it at all. --Aquillion (talk) 16:19, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm wary of editing this page (which remember is not a WP:PAG) just in response to the current stramash. Sometimes the origin of a disease is (now) a largely historical matter - see Mary Mallon. This is, however, the second time during the pandemic that the WP:WLish argument has been made that because something happened at some point before today, it is "history" ... so eventually something may be needed to stop that silliness, though I'm not sure what. Maybe we could say that something can be considered history if it has unambiguously historical treatment in RS - appearing in textbooks of medical history, for example? Alexbrn (talk) 16:33, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Aquillion, I have been quite involved in a few of the discussions on the origins of Covid-19 and on how it may (or may not) constitute biomedical information.

There have been a number of discussions going back many years as to what constitutes biomedical information, and this post from 2015 seems to make it quite clear that a "cause" of a disease should be considered biomedical information, and that's why you'll see a lot of good MEDRS sources describing the origins of HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and SARS.

Where it gets tricky with SARS-COV-2, is that unlike with SARS-COV-1, where the Chinese government cooperated with the international community and apologized for its early slowness, the current Chinese government is being anything but cooperative with the international community, and is tightly controlling any information that comes out of local academia (as described in this AP article). Without a transparent scientific investigation or forensic evidence of some sort, it is impossible for the origins of Covid-19 to be traced, and while scientists may come up with hypotheses weighing the plausibility of different scenarios, they really aren't proof of anything. In the first few months of 2019, the plausibility of a Zoonotic jump from animals to humans at a wet market seemed quite high, but no intermediate host was found, and the Chinese CDC ruled it out (source). Now, other scenarios are being considered, and their plausibility has been given more weight, due in part to a few inconsistencies with a paper (Zhou et al) that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which was known to be creating chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses as part of its research funded by a USAID program called PREDICT) sent to Nature introducing a virus called RaTG13 (without any mention of a cleavage site), and another a paper (Jiang et al) they also put out introducing a cleavage site of another virus called RmYN02, and some supposedly crazy people are supposing a link between them. So in the dearth of evidence that there is for any scenario, I am not sure how much WP:MEDRS and WP:Biomedical information can apply.

ScrupulousScribe (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

As it turned out, there was good MEDRS[1] on the question of the virus' origin. In my understanding the move to de-classify that question as biomedical is because some editors just didn't like what the MEDRS said. Alexbrn (talk) 03:08, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I have been involved in some of these discussions, so I don't think it would be helpful to repeat any of that here.

What I do want to say, in the vein of remembering that Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard, is that whatever is written should probably make it possible to avoid MEDRS (especially WP:MEDDATE) for uncontroversial claims of prehistoric evolution. Also, I don't think we have had this level of dispute in the past. If you look back, e.g., at Ebola, there were plenty of stories going around, but few editors were bound and determined that Wikipedia state that it was possible that the virus might have been previously present in a particular lab. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

• @Aquillion: Probably belated reply but I think it was enough time to simply discuss WP:MEDRS/WP:BMI misapplication, abuse and bigotry. I think community who directly or indirectly met biomedical information challenges must opt to making concrete proposals on respective talk pages instead of wasting time on useless discussions which get us nowhere. There is tons of disseminated talks throughout Wikipedia and yet there is no changes. I propose to close this discussion as fruitless.--AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:44, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I propose we expand the section Wikipedia:Biomedical_information#What_is_biomedical_information? to include this: Outbreak investigation. The paragraph could mention that the following are considered biomedical:

• Diagnosis related to outbreaks
• Geographical spread of outbreaks
• Hypothesis of what appears to be causing an outbreak

An implication of this expansion is that some articles need to up their reliable sources to MEDRS level: for example, edits about the geographical spread of a disease should resort to secondary reviews in epidemiological journals, not just a popular press source (e.g. NY Times). In other cases, an edit that proposes to include information on an hypothesis of what appears to be causing an outbreak, should elevate its rigor to MEDRS, specifically epidemiological MEDRS. In the case of COVID-19, what I found odd is that Chinese epidemologists publish so little on the forensic evidence side related to the origin of the virus. Why is that? International epidemiologists also are silent because have no jurisdiction to perform the necessary field work in Hubei. In my opinion, this void of MEDRS either lets the Wikipedia information be too general (despite almost 1.5 years since the start of the pandemic), or encourage editors (myself included) to propose edits based on non-MEDRS RS. Forich (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Forich: Sorry, but I'm going to oppose proposals of any provisions that might try to project origin of any disease onto a human health somehow. There is no direct implications of any pandemic/disease origin on human health whatsoever. Stop trying to push WP:MEDRS/WP:BMI beyond its legitimate boundaries. Where the viruses/bacteria come from won't influence the ways humans are treated much. WP:MEDRS is well enough in protecting from spreading primary research and speculations. There is no more need to allow to abuse its application further. I'm going to close this discussion if nobody minds.--AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:29, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, User:Alexander_Davronov. Your judgment is in line with User:Normchou here, User:The Four Deuces here, User:Feynstein here, and User:Aquillion here. Editors who notably are generally opposing this view are User:Thucydides411 here, and User: Alexbrn here.Forich (talk) 12:08, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for heads up. Don't get me wrong: I oppose any attempts to make up a general rule that can easily be abused. In fact, WP:MEDRS was abused virtually since the day it was adopted (as my investigation revealed in Wikipedia talk:MEDRS#Intermediate note) so this makes a point.
On the rest: well, there is plenty of policies that govern the way epidemics' origins are handled, namely WP:NOTNEWS, WP:SECONDARY, WP:OR, WP:CONSENSUS etc.. All of them should be carefully applied on case-by-case basis with full respect to WP:RSCONTEXT. No need to pile on guideline or use leap logic to invent instruments preventing others from being bold.
If you are going to make proposals to WP:BMI I encourage you to take it to WP:VPPOL for more general consensus. Cheers. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 17:48, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

I am not a doctor or anything, but I am pretty strongly opposed to expanding the scope of a guideline supplement based entirely around winning a specific political argument -- even if it is a political argument that's been getting thrown back and forth for about six months over talk pages, user talk pages, MfDs of userspace essays(!) and just about every noticeboard under the sun. My understanding is that MEDRS exists due to the outsized risk of harm (i.e. actual, physical hazards to people's health) that arise from Wikipedia being used as a reference for treatment of disease.

For example, it would cause someone actual harm if they came away from Wikipedia article thinking that eating bat shit cured strep throat, since eating bat shit is bad for you, and it could end up taking the place of other medical treatments. This doesn't seem to be the case with the origin of a disease: the precautions someone takes to survive, treat, or avoid contracting a disease do not seem affected in any way by where it came from. Certainly, the prevalence and distribution of a disease is relevant -- again, it would pose an actual hazard to someone's health if they thought Belgians were immune to chlamydia, or that you could only get anthrax if you lived in Argentina. However, it does not really matter what the ultimate origin of the infectious agent was. It could very well be the case that antibiotic-resistant Streptococcus was created by medicine, that some random outbreak of anthrax was created in a lab, or that chlamydia was brought to our planet in ancient times by little green men in an attempt to prevent the Ancient Egyptians from launching a space program. None of these things affect what you, the reader, should do about these diseases. While disagreeing about politics has often been bad for people's health, it is not a biomedical issue. jp×g 05:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@JPxG, maybe this sounds idealistic, but I think the reason we wrote MEDRS is because we wanted to help people write high-quality articles. The way to do that is to start with the best sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

If that were the only issue at hand, and there really were no tradeoffs, it would have just been a project-wide revision of WP:RS. It wasn't, because MEDRS introduces a number of cumbersome inconveniences to the process of writing articles that are only justified under extreme circumstances. jp×g 02:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

No comment about origin, but I would note that the three bullet points you mention (diagnosis of a disease or condition, geographical distribution of a disease or condition, and causes of a disease or condition) are already unambiguously included in the general case. There isn't any difference just because they happen in the context of an outbreak. The idea that biomedical information must relate to treatment, as suggested in one of the the previous responses, is a misconception - rather, it refers to any information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health, as illustrated by the list of examples given on the page. That said, discussing geographical distribution (prevalence) doesn't mean we need to use reviews, as that sort of information can also be cited to the various health agencies that keep track of such things. Sunrise (talk) 05:46, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Sunrise: ... it refers to any information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health ... And that's why it so disastrous to expand the guideline even more: the bounds are so loose so it virtually explodes into an endless number of disputes every time someone comes up with WP:MEDRS. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 19:20, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Conclusions

The question of the origin of an epidemic is currently not explicitely included in WP:BMI. Some editors have reasonably interpreted WP:BMI as either excluding origin because it does not serve as medical advice that can potentially harm readers, or excluding it because it can be seen to belong to the history of the disease (and history is explicitely excluded from BMI). However other editors have reasonably interpreted that the question of origin is included in WP:BMI per being part of "Population data and epidemiology" or indirectly because of the "relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health" part of the definition, which is a broad categorization that indeed could cover origin. Some editors vote on having the question of origin binding on WP:MEDRS because that would provide tools for editors to automatically have very reliable sources, which can come handy at controversial topics where pro-fringe editing happens. This would be an err on the side of having the strongest sources. In my opinion, this is a second-best solution after the best, which is: not err and follow what WP:BMI explicitely says.

The three paths of action that I see come from this discussion are:

1. Agree on disease origin requiring MEDRS-level sourcing + modifying WP:BMI to avoid ambiguity in that regard (fixing the history loophole, and explicitely adding the word origin, so that it is not left as part of epidemiology or "causes" (e.g. causes could mean only the causative agent and exclude all the other details)).
2. Agree on disease origin requiring very good sources but not necessarily MEDRS-level. Details about how the virus enters the cells to cause the disease, or how a virus mutates from ancestor to direct progenitor are BMI and thus require MEDRS. Details about who were the index cases, when did the initial outbreak started, what animal species were found to be the zoonotic source of the spillover, and where was the place of the first infections detected, would require high level RS, not necesarily MEDRS-level. Citing summaries of the origin that encompass both the BMI and non-BMI aspects just listed, would require MEDRS-level, because a reliable scientist is capable of commenting on both aspects, but a reliable journalist is not.
3. Disagree on disease origin requiring any sources other than run-of-the-mill RS + modifying WP:BMI so that it explicitely excludes disease origins other than direct references to the identity of the causative agent (e.g. "COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2" would be BMI but "SARS-CoV-2 comes from bats" would not). Forich (talk) 05:07, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

That isn't the conclusion. As Sunrise notes, "diagnosis of a disease or condition, geographical distribution of a disease or condition, and causes of a disease or condition" are explicitly covered. As has been noted there are both biomedical and non-biomedical aspects to the question of a disease origin, so lumping the whole concept together is reductive and unhelpful. Whatever, we should not be rewriting PAGs in response to a one-off running controversy. Wrt the "lab leak" origin specifically, other applicable PAGs are WP:FRINGE and WP:EXCEPTIONAL. In general, my experience is always that the way to solve knotty content problems on Wikipedia is to increase source quality. Alexbrn (talk) 06:28, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Totally agree with Alexbrn. We don't need to change MEDRS unnecessarily. And there clearly isn't consensus to do so. We already have many other policies in place to ensure proper sourcing. MEDRS is not meant for this. I think this monster discussion should be closed at this point. I don't see new viewpoints emerging at this stage. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 11:30, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Historical content

Adoring nanny I don't understand this[2] reversion. How is this inconsistent with MEDRS? The goal here is to stop some of the "well, it was published last year so it's historical and MEDRS doesn't apply" wikilawyering that has happened over the last few months. Alexbrn (talk) 10:32, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The opening paragraph of WP:MEDRS starts off as follows. I've omitted the ref:

Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge.

I get why we have the above policy as walking into a doctor's office here (USA) generally costs at least a hundred dollars. Therefore, I frequently refer to Wikipedia to decide if I need to see a doctor about this or that. But the origin of Covid, which is where this all came from, has no relevance one way or the other to such decisions.

I would add that I have been a source of what is referred to above as "Wikilawyering". To me it doesn't look that way. One might just as easily look at it the other way around.

Furthermore, It does not make sense to me that recent history would be biomedical information while less-recent history would not. The implication is that the passage of time somehow causes biomedical information to become non-biomedical. That doesn't make sense. Adoring nanny (talk) 10:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Okay, that's fine but that doesn't seem to have any relevance to the edit. The point here is to clarify what "historical" means for medical sources with greater clarity than currently, so that it's clear when WP:MEDRS does not apply. Material that appears in a book such as this for example, is historical. But a paper that was published a few years ago (e.g. PMID:26828006) is still subject to MEDRS because it is relays biological information which is not "historical" just because it's from 2016. Confusion over this has been a bit of a time sink in recent months. How would you propose to clarify the distinction between historical content and content that just happens to be in the past? Alexbrn (talk) 10:59, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the policy as it stands. As the policy says, its purpose is to make sure Wikipedia doesn't give medical misinformation that causes people to make bad decisions. It does that quite effectively. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:52, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Huh? This is not about the policy: Wikipedia doesn't give medical advice of any kind. This page is a supplement specifically about "biomedical information". One particular purpose of this supplement is to say what is, and what is not "biomedical information". Truly historical information is not biomedical information - so for example you do not need a WP:MEDRS source to explain what doctors did in Renaissance Venice. But we have had problems - one which springs to mind is an editor trying to claim that COVID-19 was widespread in California in 2019, and since this was about "the past", MEDRS did not apply and we could use any source. They did not prevail, of course, but the arguments wasted time. The task at hand is to clarify this guidance to make clear what is, and is not, "historical". Alexbrn (talk) 12:05, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't a party to that particular controversy. My take on it is that the assertion "COVID-19 was widespread in California in 2019" is insane, but WP:MEDRS is the wrong way to shoot it down. For example, if one goes to the first paragraph of COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, the sources are the NYT and the New Yorker, which are obviously not WP:MEDRS. Similarly, the first paragraph of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy currently cites eight sources, seven of which are definitely not WP:MEDRS. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:52, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The task is not to "shoot down" such "insane" ideas about 2019, but to head off the tiresome argument that this supplement actually permits them with its "history" exemption. Hopefully my new attempt to clarify this is prosaic enough to be unobjectionable. Alexbrn (talk) 13:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree with your new approach, either, for the same reasons as above, but thanks for trying something different. I'm also not much into revert wars, so I'll leave it for now. Adoring nanny (talk) 00:29, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

I think that the main difference between history and medical information is that history is exclusively about the who–what–when–where stuff: Alice Expert said something on this date; Bob Business did something on that date.

But it is a bit more complicated, isn't it? Because "This disease was [properly] diagnosed in this patient" isn't exclusively history or exclusively biomedical. In non-COVID contexts, I think that editors have generally taken these two approaches:

• If it's about an individual ("Chris Celebrity is a cancer survivor"), then it's not biomedical content.
• If it's about something that is completely in the past, then it's not biomedical content. This permits, e.g., primary sources for posthumous diagnoses, for seminal research, and for pre-modern medical practices.

Using these approaches, then the ideal sources might be:

• "Chris Celebrity was diagnosed with COVID-19": any reliable source
• "As of <last month>, COVID-19 cases were declining in Lake Wobegon": MEDRS now, but could be any reliable source at some future point (i.e., when the pandemic begins to feel like it belongs entirely to the past, which may be decades from now).

Does that feel like what you'd expect to see in an article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

RFC: Disease / pandemic origins.

Should this page be updated to unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information? --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Survey

• Support. This falls under the same logic as "population data and epidemiology" (and is debatably already covered by it, but the long-running dispute over it for the past six months shows that we need to update the page to make it unambiguous either way, especially given that experienced editors on both sides have cited this page to support their position.) Claims about a disease's origins touch on medical aspects of what the disease is, how it should be approached, and how to confront or prevent similar outbreaks in the future, all of which fall squarely under both biomedical information and the core purpose of MEDRS. The existing exceptions will of course apply (the existence of beliefs about origins, even unsupported ones, can be covered as beliefs in contexts where those beliefs are due and relevant, and likewise the history of such beliefs can be covered as history in those contexts) but such claims must be treated with appropriate caution and should never be presented as factual in wikivoice without MEDRS sourcing. While this page is only an explanatory supplement and of course cannot decisively settle all recent arguments forever, the frequency with which it is cited by people on both sides shows that clarity here would be valuable. And while some people have raised concerns that this particular debate is only temporary, the reality is that it is likely to occur again whenever a similar issue arises; it is better for us to settle it decisively now so that by next time it can (hopefully) be firmly-established so we don't have to waste time repeatedly re-litigating it. --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. I didn't think this was necessary, but it apparently is. Any update should make clear that active pandemic/epidemics of diseases are covered, but historical pandemics (i.e. those that are completely over and have been for some indeterminate length of time) and ones where origins are clearly known and agreed upon by the large majority of science and medicine, are not covered. Any information about how to prevent future epidemics/pandemics is obviously covered as well. People are arguing that MEDRS is only intended to apply to information that can cause "direct harm" to patients - information about a disease's origin or the origin of a pandemic/epidemic that is ongoing can greatly impact peoples' response to the disease, as well as their willingness to partake in preventative actions and treatments - so obviously we should be extremely careful when discussing origins of diseases. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 20:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Apparently this is the controversy. I have found on wiki and elsewhere, that arguments tend to follow a universal pattern in matters like this. Disagreement begins in broad strokes, but funnels towards the most fundamental point, wherever a slight advantage can be eked out on either side. This, for the lab leak theory, is that point. If the fundamental processes of epidemiology and public health investigation (contact tracing, phylogenetics, causal inference, evolutionary genetics, etc.) are not biomedical information, then I truly wonder what is left in the field of "infectious disease epidemiology." This is what they do. They answer questions like this. Of viral origins, of pandemic origins. We should let those experts do their jobs. It could end up being a lab leak. The evidence says it is more likely to be a zoonotic spillover. But neither case will be solved to the satisfaction of anyone until some actual factual data is gathered. So maybe we should hold off on using wikipedia to wage this culture war, and stop falling prey to the opinion- and politics-driven currents that build faux controversy into manufactured consensus. If there is a conspiracy here, it is that political actors are using sensationalized headlines to pretend there is new evidence where there is not. Let's not let that invade wiki any more than it already has. TL;DR -- Yes, pandemic origins is BMI.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:18, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Certain types of claims about the origin of COVID need to subject to MEDRS, such as claims about virus mutation, due to their technical complexity. Other types of claims simply require regular sourcing standards. This seems to be intended to exclude everything other than WIV and wHO statements on the issue, which would be a travesty. Which views are presented becomes more political under this system, not less political. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  力, it's absolutely not designed to do that - peer reviewed primary studies are also acceptable (keeping in mind that they are not preferred), as are the plethora of review articles out there on this sort of topic. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:37, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  Except nobody else can do a primary study if they don't have access to the site. And the various silly complaints about "peer review" for the recent letter published in Science leaves me skeptical that review articles will be assessed fairly under this standard. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:42, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  We are discussing Wikipedia:Biomedical information. Since biomedicine is "medicine based on the application of the principles of the natural sciences and especially biology and biochemistry,"[3] (Merriam-Webster) aka the medicine practiced by modern medical doctors, that excludes scientists outside medical science. MEDRS is about medical information not non-medical information. TFD (talk) 21:54, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  This is not about one particular instance - this is about the general case. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  "Except nobody else can do a primary study if they don't have access to the site" That is absolutely not true, here are several of a bazillion examples of people doing primary studies into this question without access to the WIV. There are plenty of ways to gather evidence on these two theories that do not include accessing the WIV. Would it be ideal if China opened itself up to this sort of thing? To have qualified independent unbiased investigators look into both the WIV's records, personnel blood samples etc., and then also rural caves in Yunan and elsewhere sampling animals for viruses? Yes, absolutely! But that is not the only way to skin this cat.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  Certainly there can be studies about whether genomic evidence suggests there was or was not a lab leak. However: 1) I'm not suggesting that genomic studies are not governed by MEDRS (the implications of risks of "variants" is enough for MEDRS, even under the narrow definition), 2) Many lab leak theories suggest that a person associated with the WIV contracted the virus from a sample they collected, I'm not sure how genomic evidence could possible disprove that. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 23:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  I can give you one way. Some of the early on genetic evidence suggests, from a parsimony perspective (using median end-joining), that the Wuhan strain of the virus may not have been the founder strain. If the earliest infections occurred far enough away, and are genetically distinct enough, then Wuhan may have just been a jumping off point, not the actual origin. This isn't high enough quality or settled enough to merit inclusion imo, not under MEDRS. But I'm just saying, such studies absolutely are in the realm of possibility and would put serious cracks in the idea of the lab leak. Peter Forster at Cambridge did such an analysis early on and that is what it suggested. That the Wuhan strain may not be the origin strain. We already know that the genetic diversity of cases found at the Wuhan market are not explainable by the market alone. There had to be a fair amount of pre-market spread in order to explain the diversity we've seen at that point in the sequence data. In line with this, several well-regarded virologists (ones I know personally!) have stated in the past that locking onto the wet market (and even the city of Wuhan!) as the location of patient zero is premature. There were also several dozen cases in other cities in the province (and nearby provinces) that occurred in December of 2019 that had no documented travel to the city of Wuhan. Most of the cases in those cities did have Wuhan travel, but a minority did not. Overall, this is all based on sequences and epidemiological inference, and there would need to be a lot more sequences to make any of this data robust enough to draw true conclusions. And that's why I'm not out here putting this in any articles or saying it counts as MEDRS-supported. It isn't. What I want to communicate here is that it is absolutely not supported by the available data that the city of Wuhan is absolutely the origin. That's not an expert-driven consensus, even though the popular press have basically just run with that as an assumption. It is not a settled assumption in the virology community. At this point, I would say the wet market is almost definitely not the origin point, not among virologists.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:01, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  This is where MEDRS fails us. In 16 months, don't you think some of the many motivated actors would have found some evidence of an outbreak site outside of Wuhan before the initial Wuhan outbreak? It is on-its-face clear that the first serious outbreak occurred in Wuhan. We don't need MEDRS to prove that; the lack of massive deaths before December 2019 is proof enough. And that proof is sufficiently documented through our regular RS policy, MEDRS is not necessary. (I do agree that scientific inquiry suggests that the first human infection in Wuhan was likely not at the Huanan wet market, though there is no definitive proof of that.)User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:08, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  don't you think some of the many motivated actors would have found some evidence of an outbreak site outside of Wuhan before the initial Wuhan outbreak? BTW, not saying there were large scale outbreaks elsewhere. Just that there was likely initial spread before the cases we know about in Wuhan, and they may not have been in Wuhan, based on the very limited data we have. I (and other virologists) agree that, if it wasn't Wuhan, it was probably some outlying area in rural Hubei province, where there are many many documented cases of human-wildlife contact that could transmit the virus (such as traditional chinese medicinal uses of bat guano, for instance). I'm not saying it came from some wild out there place millions of miles away, just that the data we have does not show that Wuhan is 100% where it came from. It's just where a lot of early cases were. As they say, all roads lead to Rome. SO if it did cross over in rural Hubei, it would have shown up as a sentinel event in Wuhan. Because that's the largest city in the area, and a mostly-asymptomatic disease like this may not show up in any noticeable way until it gets into a concentrated city center. I am sorry that that data does not support the conclusions you wish to draw from it. As to why more data hasn't been uncovered about that...No I am not surprised. Not when China locked everybody out of the country. Not when they locked their own coronavirus experts away and didn't allow them to talk to the press until recently. Not when they are in "control the narrative" and "spread propaganda" mode. They said the US army planted the virus, for chrissake. I have no expectation of this being discovered or worked out for a while, not when it took 2 decades to truly nail down Ebola as coming from bats, and it took 3 years to get an inkling for SARS1, and 14 years to truly confirm it. But, if you are aware of any scientists who have been allowed in to do that kind of work, or are aware of anyone getting access to China's sequences that haven't been shared on Genbank or elsewhere, please let me know. I would love to meet them.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• 力, why should we only accept writings by medical doctors on the origins of the virus and ignore biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, etc., who may have greater knowledge on virus mutation and spread? And why should we weight until they have written peer reviewed papers and weight to see how they are treated in review studies, before reporting what they say? TFD (talk) 21:38, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think we should privilege the opinions of people with a medical degree here, and I'm not sure why you think I think that. I don't see that in MEDRS. We do need to wait until sources are written before we can cite them. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:42, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  MEDRS absolutely would include the writings of the scientists you've listed. BMI includes things written about biomedical info by anyone qualified to write about it who has then published it in a peer-reviewed journal. That probably includes more written by non-physicians than it does physicians, as a vague estimation.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The clear purpose of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (MEDRS) is stated in the first sentence: "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." So in the current pandemic, we wanted to ensure that only the best medical advice was provided in how to avoid getting COVID19, what and how vaccines should be used and what treatements should be used. That's because there was a danger that readers could make decisions that harmed them, such as not taking precautions against the disease, using quack medicines or not getting vaccinated. How and why the virus originated and how public authorities managed or mismanaged the pandemic are not medical information and in fact are a matter of cross-disciplinary studies. Historians writing about the Black Death for example are capable of understanding the relevant medical information about how people can prevent getting the disease, what it does to them and how to treat it. A professor of medicine on the other hand might not be an expert on the social, political and economic background of the 14th century. If we ignore books written by experts and published in the academic press who happen not to be practicing medical doctors we will severely restrict coverage of these topics, which is a violation of weight. TFD (talk) 21:28, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  If books are available about something it's by that point covered by the "historical information" exception - so that's not really a good argument to make. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:38, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  I assume you are referring to Wikipedia:Biomedical information#History. It's not in fact included as an exception (perhaps it should be) and the section cautions, "Subject matter is not considered "history" merely because it is in the past." TFD (talk) 21:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  If that is your only opposition to this, it may be better to support with the caveat (like I did and the person who opened this did) that obviously historical information about an origin (i.e. settled science) is not covered by this. Unfortunately, RfC's have limitations and it's not possible to include every exception in the RfC text. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The origin of the pandemic is a historical question, not medical advice, and is something that no reasonable person would construe as medical advice. There is no nexus between the origin of the pandemic (whether it was a lab escape or zoonotic transfer) and medical advice (such as vaccination, masking, social distancing). It is an exact analogue of item 2 under WP:MEDDEF as an example of something that is not biomedical information, The pills were invented by Dr Archibald Foster and released onto the market in 2015. This is not biomedical information, and it only requires ordinary RS. A hypothetical statement like COVID-19 originated in a lab escape would not be biomedical information, and one presented as attributed POV certainly would not Anonymous Sources told Foo Newspaper that COVID-19 originated in a lab escape. The intention of MEDRS is prevent harm from including dubious medical information that might encourage readers to disregard competent medical advice, or that might encourage them to take up alternative medicine. That is not what this is. Geogene (talk) 21:49, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

That's a false analogy. Determining whether or not Dr. Foster invented pills and released them onto the market in 2015 requires no biomedical expertise. Determining the origin of a virus does require biomedical expertise. NightHeron (talk) 10:05, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support In my opinion WP:BMI under "Attributes of a disease or condition - how it is caught or transmitted", would cover a disease origin or at least its initial transmission point. The origins of a disease can be used to create future guidance (ex. does distancing/masks need to be done when interacting with some species?) and it would be harmful to allow incorrect information to spread. Jumpytoo Talk 21:56, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
  • With due respect, how does the geographical location of a pandemic's origin have anything at all to do with distancing and mask guidance? The RFC question seems to be more about the where and tthwho and not so much about the how. Firejuggler86 (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose TFD really hit the primary point. The reason why we have an exceptionally tight MEDRS standard is specifically because editors were worried that bad medical information would lead readers to harm. This really shouldn't make a huge impact on any article since WEIGHT is still going to favor peer reviewed studies over material published even in strong RSs like NYT, WSJ, NPR etc. The fringe crap is still going to be kept out when put against strong RSs and academic sources. Fringe anti-vax sources are not going to pass even the standard RS bar. Springee (talk) 21:59, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

I can't be so sure about that, as WSJ has published news resources such as this one. If we were to write the article based on WSJ and other RS, we would have the impression that there is substantial disagreement about GBD, while in fact condemnation of GBD was near unanimous. If we tie it to the fact that WSJ has been a soapbox for authors and proponents of GBD, the impression is even stronger, even as the opposite was true. We at least should definitely not source to WP:RSOPINION, as these examples show; and I still would be wary of news coverage, which might be biased, and while reliable on the face (because every detail is truthfully reported), creating false impressions about the situation of the scientific community from the general tone of coverage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Szmenderowiecki (talk • contribs) 00:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• • • I fail to see how that example is relevent: it is not within the category being discussed, and is a topic that clearly does fall under the scope of biomedical information. And will continue to regardless of the outcome of this RFC, and would therefore not be acceptable (as it already isnt). Firejuggler86 (talk) 21:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I mean, look, we're talking about epidemiology, zoonosis, genetics and mutation, phylogenetics, etc. These are all biomedical issues. You literally cannot talk about a pandemic and its origins without discussing these things. And it needs to be understood that MEDRS is not in place out of concern for readers' health, because Wikipedia is not intended for medical advice. MEDRS exists because biomedical topics are incredibly difficult and complex, and it is well documented that popular press, even normally reliable sources like the Washington Post or NY Times, frequently get things wrong. It also exists because we cannot teach people to think like medical experts, but we can show people how experts evaluate evidence. Hyperion35 (talk) 22:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Just within Epidemiology, we have Molecular epidemiology, Genetic epidemiology, Social epidemiology, Environmental epidemiology and Computational epidemiology. Like in all the applied sciences, there is significant interplay between different disciplines, and in this case, some which aren’t biomedical at all. There is also interplay between science and politics, which is now a major factor in tracing COVID-19 origins [4]. A more nuanced approach is required to account for this political interference and leave open possibilities that may be the subject of Censorship in China. I’m off now to make some additions to Politicization of science. CutePeach (talk) 09:30, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with the above comments that the origins of the COVID-19 virus can in no way be construed to be medical advice, which is why the higher MEDRS standards exist. I also agree with the sentiments that at this point the origins of the virus, if it were in some way connected to a lab leak, would most likely only be discoverable by traditional investigative news sources. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:29, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose I think we need to go back to the rationale behind MEDRS - that some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health. Even bad information on things like prognosis can cause significant distress. Bad information on the origins of a pandemic could influence public health - most likely through trust/distrust in our institutions and whatnot - but this is at best tangential and no more exceptional than other forms of conspiracy theories, or other forms of government incompetence in relation to public health. Whether, as a matter of fact, a disease originated in a lab, was engineered, or occurred naturally, is unlikely to directly cause readers to make bad choices regarding their health. MEDRS is the wrong requirement for the origins of a disease. We should require the WP:BESTSOURCES, the same as for any WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, which will often be MEDRS sources, but there is no need to require MEDRS, because this isn't what MEDRS is for. ProcSock (talk) 00:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. The origins of a human disease seems like clear biomedical information to me. I also prefer a broad rather than narrow interpretation of WP:MEDRS, to help keep misinformation out of the encyclopedia. Whenever we have situations where academic journals are saying one thing, and the popular press is saying another, in my opinion the popular press version of events is likely to be some sort of misinformation, and WP:MEDRS is a very important defense against that. I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think, not what the Republican political machine and their billionaire financiers think. Finally, I agree with Shibbolethink above that epidemiology and public health investigation (contact tracing, phylogenetics, causal inference, evolutionary genetics, etc.) is clearly biomedical information. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think

. Shi Zhengli, the virologist, thinks it was not a leak from her lab. She published it in a review, which is MEDRS. Sorry, but that information is not hierarchically better than top RS, in my opinion. Forich (talk) 04:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Forich, interesting example. Maybe we should discount her papers due to COI. Or maybe we shouldn't because peer review compensates for it. Anyway, I don't really think this invalidates my argument above. For biomedical issues, I prefer an academic consensus to a popular press consensus. If one of the academic voices has COI, there are many other academic voices that will balance it out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: peer review should compensate for it, but peer review isn't perfect, and apparently didn't in this case. <-- but that statement is WP:OR. We delegate such decision-making to the peer-reviewers, assuming, I suppose, that even if they aren't perfect, we aren't going to do better than them. But practically speaking, as you say, we can just try to avoid the COI paper. SSSheridan (talk) 22:21, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support. The discussion made at WP:RSN (thanks for the OP's effort to place it on a wider discussion) made it clear that origins must be placed in either non-biomedical information or biomedical information for clarity. There are a few reasons for which I would like to support it. First, we should be lowering the plank for finding resources only if we are sure that RS will report the information in a scientifically literate way, and ordinary RS have a history of choosing wrong words to convey what was a true message but which becomes false exactly because of the wording (the best illustration of which is here, and that's not only about strictly biomed info). Investigative journalism is good in finding information that might lead to some conclusion, but is lousy at interpreting it, because journalists mostly lack that specialist knowledge. As for MEDRS, they will still publish the info somewhere (and still abundant enough to satisfy the needs of writing our articles), but what is needed is expert commentary to whether this information is credible, and this requires specialist knowledge. Secondly, any credible theory of the origins of the disease will require that scientists evaluate the probability of alternatives (i.e. if lab leak, why not natural origin?), and to discard the latter, knowledge of epidemiology and genetics is a must, and we can't trust this to ordinary RS; that is, corroborating evidence to one theory may still be not enough to outweigh the evidence for another, and I don't think we want WP to give undue weight to evidence (which is, in addition, circumstantial in the discussion that triggered the RfC), and we do want to diminish the temptation of prospective editors of making original research based on journalists' reports and investigations, or choosing such RS as to support their point, which might not reflect consensus.

EDIT: From WP:MEDPOP: The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care. I believe this should end the debate. In the worst case, use specialised non-academic health/medicine matters publications (Science-Based Medicine, Mayo Clinic etc.), so long as people with requisite medical/scientific knowledge write there. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That quote, The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care. is clearly referring to medical advice, because it mentions "costs," "risks versus benefits," and "health care". More textual evidence that MEDRS specifically applies to medical advice. Geogene (talk) 17:11, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

"The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles." is clearly referring to scientific and medical information. I don't know how you're missing this. In either case, WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:MEDPOP are also clear that academic, peer reviewed literature is preferred, especially for topics of a scientific nature. The origin of a virus is a scientific topic, obviously. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:10, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per the opening paragraph of WP:MEDRS: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be . . . This clearly says that the reason for WP:MEDRS is to make sure that people won't get bad health information from Wikipedia. But the origin of our lovely pandemic is not going to affect anyone's decision about what to do if they get the virus. Furthermore, in the current case, it is the WP:MEDRS sources that are giving out misinformation by claiming it is highly unlikely that this pandemic was caused by a lab leak, while ignoring the behavioral evidence (behavior of the CCP, that is) that shows the opposite. Adoring nanny (talk) 01:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. This page is an explanatory supplement to WP:MEDRS. We need to evaluate this in line with the phrasing currently present at WP:MEDRS. As I stated over at WP:RSN, it's not clear to me that origins of a particular virus actually fall under WP:MEDRS; this would lead to an odd situation where the origin of biological species that do not cause human disease (i.e. tobacco mosaic virus) would have different reliable sourcing requirements regarding its origins as a virus species than would E. Coli regarding its origins as a species of bacteria. The motivation for WP:MEDRS is described within the guideline, which says that Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. In this framework, it doesn't seem to me that origin is itself biomedical information; it certainly intersects with biology, but origin itself doesn't appear to be related to human health per se. The study of the origin of E. Coli as a unique species, for example, doesn't describe any information pertaining to human health, whereas the symptoms of and treatments for infections of E. Coli clearly do. The same logic should apply more generally; biomedical information is information that pertains to human health, not the information that pertains to the origin of a causative agent of disease per se. It's certainly better to use peer-reviewed journals and academic scholarship on the topic than secondary-source analyses published in reliable newspapers (and certainly more than primary-source pieces published in reliable newspapers), and weight should be given in a manner consistent with WP:SCHOLARSHIP. But, I don't think that applying WP:MEDRS here is warranted, as the origin of a disease-causing agent itself doesn't appear to fall within the relevant reliable source guideline's scope. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Mikehawk10, I disagree with this - the origin of a virus or species is not equivalent to the origin of a disease/pandemic as this RfC is asking. I think the RfC question was carefully crafted to be short but clearly state that it's only applicable to the origin of diseases/pandemics in humans - but maybe it's better to clarify it further, as that seems to be your only opposition. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    • @Berchanhimez: Are you asking me to expand upon whether we should apply a different analysis to the origin of a disease than to the origin of the causative agent of a disease? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

      Mikehawk10, yes, because that is the entire question here - your response is about the origin of causative agents, yet the question here is about the origin of disease/pandemic in humans. Not to mention that it's totally fine for you to say you agree with the origin of a pandemic being BMI but not the origin of a disease - that's a valid point - but your argument doesn't have anything to do with the discussion here as it's not about the origin of a disease-causing agent itself at all. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

      The notion that my rationale doesn't have anything to do with the discussion here seems a bit odd; the origins of the disease are linked to the origin of the causitive agent, just as the origins of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus are linked to its ability to infect Tobacco plants (and the same goes for human diseases and their causitive agents). In any case, it's clear that WP:MEDRS proceeds from the fact that, as stated above Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. Adding a MEDRS restriction on whether Tuberculosis first infected individuals in Africa or in China or in Tuvalu ultimately doesn't seem to be in line with the guidelines's defined scope, as it really isn't linked to health information that people might seek. I agree that it's wise to use peer-reviewed scholarship to describe disease origins; we should always use the highest quality sources available to describe a fact. However, I don't believe that secondary/tertiary medical sources are the only sources competent to describe disease origins or pandemic origins, especially for historical pandemics like the Black death. The RfC proposal is overly broad and, in my reading, doesn't faithfully follow from the rationale for the guidelines set down in WP:MEDRS. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose this is "playing politics under the guise of NOT playing politics". Wikiactivists are scrambling to hide away shifting mainstream consensus so they can keep their "conspiracy theory" label alive and well. 2601:602:9200:1310:4065:8EBB:AD8:41E6 (talk) 02:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC) — 2601:602:9200:1310:4065:8EBB:AD8:41E6 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Is there a concrete, policy-based reason that you've made this comment? It's a bit odd to position a !vote solely on the basis of the (perceived) motives of other editors. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:56, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose because the origin of a virus (i.e. if it had an intermediate host and which host, for example) is not a medical, but a biological question. Remember that the only reason for introducing WP:MEDRS is this: "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information...". The origin of a virus (like the exact population of bats) will not affects anyone's medical decisions. People vaccinate regardless to this. Remember that WP:MEDRS prohibits using original peer reviewed scientific publications. Not using such publications for pages on biology will adversely affect the quality of such pages. Let's simply follow WP:Verifiability. My very best wishes (talk) 03:23, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The information is biomedical - we shouldn't exclude one part of it. And anyway - is there any indication that NYT/WSJ is better at communicating biology than medicine? I pretty much doubt it. Also, see WP:BIOHARD and WP:NOTRI - it explains pretty well why we shouldn't risk using sources other than MEDRS for medical (or biological) claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Szmenderowiecki (talk • contribs)

I do agree that WP:BMI should be fixed, but in a different place. It tells: "Biomedical information is information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health." What? That would cover all biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, all technology that affects human health (such as car or building construction), etc. Fortunately, the guideline explains below that no, that is not what authors actually mean. My very best wishes (talk) 15:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's more complicated than lumping everything wrt a pandemic's "origins" under WP:BMI. Some aspects are; some aren't. Alexbrn (talk) 04:01, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support This should have been done years back when we were dealing with the pseudoscience conspiracy nonsense regarding the Zika virus, which had similar stupid claims made about its origins. Pandemics and global disease oubreaks very clearly fall under this and general MEDRS requirements, including regarding origins of diseases under major outbreaks that are so often conspiritized. Anyone claiming otherwise without actual evidence that is properly sourced is pushing pseudoscience and WP:FRINGE nonsense. Silverseren^C 04:34, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - that seems a false definition, although no specific is stated. Defining Biomedical as such simply is not matching the technical field or definitions used by the scientific community, and seems clearly outside the topic area and stated goals this article has long had. Keep it to what the scientific field says. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC) (edit conflict, reposted below)

  Some origin-related stuff is within the realm of the Biomedical sciences, some isn't. Alexbrn (talk) 05:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  I can see your position that as proposed is too far, it’s more complicated than everything is in or out, mine is more that this is asking for redefining a technical area without any specific proposal or technical RS support. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - that seems a false definition, although nothing specific is stated. Defining Biomedical as such simply seems not matching to the technical field or definitions used by the scientific community, by not providing a medical textbook source. This also seems clearly outside the topic area and stated goals this article has long had. Keep it to what the scientific field says. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Initially I supported the idea of changing WP:BMI so that at least it covers origin unambiguously; I've changed my mind. Here is why: secondary reviews are important in treatment of diseases because primary sources are studies and RCTs with very narrow conditions (internal validity, is the technical term) that NEED extra assesment on their external validity. Meta analysis and systematic reviews fulfill that role. Primary sources on the origin of an epidemic, on the other hand, do not consist of RCT's plagued with external validity concerns. They do not require as much confirmation from independent researchers. This means that experts cited by top RS (e.g. New York Times, Reuters) commenting on primary sources about the origin of an epidemic should be good enough for Wikipedia. If experts disagree, we present both sides with attribution.

What is currently happening is that we have two low-level secondary sources (the 2020 review by the italians, poorly written really, and the 2021 review by Hakim, an obscure Singaporean Indonesian researcher) holding back an entire Hoover-Dam-like of sources giving credence to the lab leak hypothesis. Ah, we also have the WHO official statement which allegedly arrived at the "extremely unlikely" likelihood statement with unexplained criteria, under enormous political pressure from the Chinese counterpart of the Mission.

Imagine for a second what if the the next pandemic originates in the Subsaharan Africa with the local government obfsucating forensic research, and the WHO joint mission taking at face value the word of the African politicians and making it the MEDRS-level truth. Is that our ideal standard? Let's not be naive. Forich (talk) 05:12, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

A good example of why we need the WP:PAGs, otherwise we'd have editors deciding to reject sources because although an article might be published in as reputable journal as Virology, the author is from Singapore so he's "obscure" and it's "low-level"! Alexbrn (talk) 05:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I love how you go from "an entire Hoover-Dam-like of sources" referring to literally a bunch of sources presenting exactly zero evidence for the claim, but trying to use 3 people getting sick out of 300 as an argument and then you just casually dismiss the entire WHO report stating very strongly it being "extremely unlikely". I think the WHO knows more about the criteria and methodology behind the subject than a bunch of news sources trying to make controversy because they don't have actual evidence to write about. Silverseren^C 05:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I am amused that you chose sub-Saharan Africa as a hypothetical. HIV and Ebola both originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet somehow we have excellent MEDRS sources regarding their origin. Do MEDRS sources take more time? Yes. Do they take more time in some countries for political or logistical reasons? Of course. But we are not on a deadline here. And I see no reason to use substandard sources based on the excuse that it is just too difficult and time consuming for proper research to be done. Hyperion35 (talk) 13:25, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

And of course there were plenty of conspiracy theories in the earlier days of the HIV crisis about its origin. If Wikipedia has existed then no doubt there'd have been editors pushing the Fort Detrick origin story! (see Operation INFEKTION) They'd be sagely citing their newspaper sources and quoted scientists[5]. Alexbrn (talk) 13:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This isn't a medical issue, and it doesn't affect treatment of the disease which is why we have MEDRS. Furthermore, evaluating the likelihood of a Chinese coverup, or lack thereof, is not a topic primarily for medical experts. This involves social science, statecraft, political science, historians (as time goes by), and so on. It also involves infectious disease experts, but in an interdisciplinary form. MEDRS should be kept for pure medical information: prognosis, symptoms, treatment, causes, and so on. For medical information that can affect readers' health, we need to be very careful. But as careful as we should be, we should not let MEDRS creep into political issues, which is what this US vs. China innuendo is. There may be good reasons to reject the leak hypothesis from Wikipedia, it certainly was considered highly WP:FRINGE in the past. Whether to reject this entirely or mention it in some form should be weighted with NPOV and FRINGE in mind, not MEDRS. MEDRS should be kept for what is purely medical.--Eostrix  (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 05:52, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Just as a note, an RfC that closed in early April found no consensus on whether the lab leak hypothesis was a "minority, but scientific viewpoint" or if it was a "conspiracy theory". — Mikehawk10 (talk) 05:56, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Given that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now "no longer convinced the Covid-19 pandemic originated naturally", the position of this being fringe is becoming less tenable. It's also nearly impossible to disprove the lab leak hypothesis (how do you disprove a hypothetical coverup?), so this is unlikely to be resolved definitely any time soon.--Eostrix  (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 06:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

A lab origin can be disproved by finding an intermediate animal host reservoir infected with a near identical SARS-CoV-2 virus (>99% genome relation), which caused the zoonotic event, as required by the natural origin hypothesis, as was done in the case of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV in less than a year. --Guest2625 (talk) 07:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That would disprove it was "engineered" in the lab, which is not the hypothesis here as far as I understand it. It would not disprove the hypothesis that some members of the animal host reservoir were held in the lab and that the disease "leaked". It is unlikely to be debunked soon.--Eostrix  (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 07:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

According to CBS News' Senior White House Correspondent, Dr. Fauci tells me that his opinion about the origins of COVID-19 have not changed: He believes that it is “highly likely” that it first occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human. Since no one is 100% sure, he’s open to a thorough investigation. Dr. Fauci said that does not mean he believes the virus first emerged in a lab, as some have suggested. [6] XOR'easter (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose As many above have quoted "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information...". This is the reason why there is the MEDRS sourcing requirements. The origin of pandemics and diseases is not a medical question; it's a multidisciplinary question. In a complex situation, it becomes an investigative process that requires scientists, biosafety experts, and in this case intelligence agencies when a country does not cooperate. The origin of the 1971 Aral smallpox incident, 1977 Russian flu, 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom, Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, and SARS laboratory accidents 2003–2004 are examples of such complex virus/bacteria origin events, which required a multidisciplinary field of investigators and researchers to solve the problem. What is most important is to use the best sources available, and the general reliable sourcing content guidelines tell us how to do that already. --Guest2625 (talk) 06:13, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Per TFD. WP:MEDRS clearly states the justification for a stricter policy, namely that people might seek medical advice on Wikipedia. Normal RS criteria should be applied to the origins of diseases. I don't find the arguments that this is too important or complicated to use the normal RS policy. There are plenty other no less complex and important areas of human knowledge where wrong information can cause harm (think of voting based on fake news), if the RS policy is good enough for them it's good enough here too. If it's not good enough, it should be discussed at WP:RS. Alaexis_¿question? 06:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as explained by others above. WP:BMI should be updated to clarify that not all aspects of origins requires WP:MEDRS so that other reliable sources on the investigations can be used Weburbia (talk) 07:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• This should be done for this pandemic specifically, since so much pseudoscience is being published everywhere - including in ordinarily reputable newspapers. Scientific journal articles, by contrast, have been consistent and phenomenal on the origins of SARS-CoV-2. -Darouet (talk) 07:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

We should override policy for this one pandemic? Why exactly? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 18:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading medical advice from being introduced in the project. It's not a means to its own end, or a "privilege" granted to medical articles and medical publications. It adresses a specific problem, i.e. that readers use Wikipedia as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis and prescription. This is made clear by reading the current version of § What is biomedical information?, which targets things that are related to these areas and exclude things like funding information. We should not expand the scope of MEDRS to subjects that do not raise the same issues. Reliable sources are reliable, and they can and should be used to source statements that are not likely to influence the choices and the decisions of patients. JBchrch talk 10:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. Just wanted to add that scholarly sources are of course better than news sources in pretty much every context. Opposition to this RfC is certainly not equivalent to approving the use of garbage sources in order to push conspiracy theories or fringe ideas. However, there are some cases where use of "mere" RSes in addition to scholarly sources is warranted in order to keep Wikipedia neutral and current, as is (in my understanding) currently the case with respect the origins of SARS-CoV-2. JBchrch talk 14:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Per many of those above who point out that WP:MEDRS is to keep anything that can be construed as medical advice sourced to the highest standards. Medical advice for how to treat or remain safe from a pandemic is the same whether that pandemic leaked from a lab, sprang to humans in a wet market, crossed species due to an animal bite, mutated on its own in the human population, or made the leap from livestock to farmers. There is no reason to hold investigations into the origin, which very well may be discovered by investigative journalism or a whistleblower, to the same standard as how a disease spreads or is treated, nor is that what WP:MEDRS is there to address. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Reiterating what many have said before, WP:MEDRS is about medical advice, the origin of this virus is a historical matter, no reasonable person would use this information to inform medical opinion. High Tinker (talk) 12:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Over on the SARS-COV-2 page, we have an excellent demonstration of why MEDRS is essential. This diff from editor Darouet explains how other editors wanted to insert text from a Washington Post article about biosafety levels at the Wuhan lab. The Post is normally a reliable source, right? Except that Darouet did some actual due diligence, they checked the actual interview that the Post article summarizes, and found that the snippet quoted in the Post article dramatically misrepresents what the scientist actually said about biosafety levels and rules at the lab in the full interview, which turns out to be much more complex.

  And as I pointed out in my response, even the more complete text of the interview still leaves us with problems, because as you see, different editors have different interpretations of what the scientist meant in the interview, because even good MEDPOP interviews are still going to be vague and non-specific if they're intended for public reading. It forces us into issues of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, and even as someone who actually interprets between clinical and regulatory language professionally, I can't really be certain that my interpretation of the interview is correct. And if I can't be certain, I damned well can't imagine how Randy in Boise is going to be either.

  This is why we must use MEDRS in these situations, these are the very real pitfalls of relying on standard journalism or even MEDPOP sources. Hyperion35 (talk) 14:00, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Would the usage of the Washington Post in that situation have given anyone poor information they could have taken as medical advice that put them at risk? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

In the big picture, yes, because perception of the problem affects how we devote resources to addressing it. In a democracy, those resources are decided by the people, and when they all write to their legislators to demand better lab safety, and experts are then forced to focus on lab safety when the next zoonotic outbreak occurs, and it will occur, then we will be even less prepared than we were for this one. But leaving that aside, as XOREaster points out below, this is a very narrow view of MEDRS. If someone places unsources info on a BLP, we don't argue over whether it might actually be good for someone's career if we falsely claimed that they had committed a crime, we apply BLP policy and remove it. Hyperion35 (talk) 16:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• If you don't like how the core RS policy works, you should get community-wide consensus to re-write it. Geogene (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Leaving aside the fact that this is a discussion about how we should apply our RS policies (MEDRS is an RS policy), you appear to have fundamentally misunderstood my comment, as I was not suggesting rewriting our RS policies and I cannot fathom how you could interpret it that way. I am at a loss of words for how to describe this in a more simple fashion: MEDRS exists, here is an example of how it prevents incorrect information from entering our articles (as it did in that example). Hyperion35 (talk) 16:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

You're complaining about how core RS policy (of which MEDRS is a limited, special case) is supposedly inadequate. Instead of misapplying MEDRS all over Wikipedia, perhaps you should rewrite the core policy instead. I'm not sure how I can make this any simpler so that you can understand it. Perhaps more simple, declarative sentences. Your argument isn't convincing because it seems to have been resolved without applying MEDRS. That shows that standard RS policy works. That makes your argument self-refuting. Geogene (talk) 16:12, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That is not what Hyperion35 is doing. They are arguing that MEDRS provides a good framework for dealing with the poor coverage of biomedical science in the popular press. You're arguing that instead of using the MEDRS standard, we should use popular media sources that - for coverage of biomedical topics - have near-junk status. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:41, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@Geogene:That is not what I am saying at all. I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT RS OR MEDRS STANDARDS. Lemme give you a tip: when someone says "you misunderstood what I said", your response should not be to immediately tell me what I said. I am giving you a chance to strike your bad faith, personal attack, trollish comment. Hyperion35 (talk) 17:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I won't, because I'm not wrong. Learn to lose your arguments more gracefully. Geogene (talk) 17:35, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose TFD spelled it out correctly, the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice, not as a blanket policy that covers everything that a disease touches. Let me offer a hypothetical. Lets say that there is a local disease outbreak and the government in charge of that locale issued a statement to the effect of 'We know this disease was caused by a tainted drinking source, which we have cleaned up.' If we did as the supporters propose, we would, what, exactly? Be forbidden from citing the government's statement because it was not issued from a MEDRS? Bonewah (talk) 14:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I think Aquillion, bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez and others lay out the case pretty well. If it takes biomedical research to answer, it's a biomedical question. Really, the argument that MEDRS is only here to prevent bad medical advice is rather specious. Yes, that's the stated rationale at the beginning of the page, which makes sense because it's the obvious reason to have a stringent guideline, but that's not where the story ends. The fundamental issue is that misinformation about health and medicine is dangerous, and it's our responsibility to take precautions. The intro of WP:BLP doesn't list any specific kinds of harm that violating it would lead to; should we then conclude that the risks are all just hypothetical? The intro of WP:NORG says nothing at all about the harms that including articles on non-notable companies can lead to; should we conclude there is no motivation for WP:NORG at all? On top of all that, conspiratorial thinking about the origin of a disease can indeed affect health choices people make. Just look at the past couple decades of the antivax movement to see the psychology at work. Recently, there has been research suggesting that COVID conspiracy theories can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy. The risk is real, not hypothetical, and the matter of disease origin becomes one for MEDRS even under the strictest reading. XOR'easter (talk) 15:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@XOR'easter: Just a note, the nature article appears to be talking about conspiracy and conspiratorial leanings in general (not just the specific ones around COVID) effecting vaccination hesitancy. "Vaccine hesitance/resistance has also been associated with conspiratorial, religious, and paranoid beliefs, while mistrust of authoritative members of society, such as government officials, scientists, and health care professionals, has been linked to negative attitudes towards vaccinations, as has endorsement of authoritarian political views, societal disaffection, and intolerance of migrants. Taken together, the existing literature indicates that there are likely to be several psychological dispositions that traverse personality, cognitive styles, emotion, beliefs, trust, and socio-political attitudes that distinguish those who are hesitant or resistant to a COVID-19 vaccine from those who are accepting.” If someone is already conspiratorial, religious, paranoid, or mistrustful of authority there isn’t much Wikipedia can do about that. I would also ask you to strike and characterize the paper more accurately, "research suggesting that COVID conspiracy theories can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy” is simply not an accurate summary of the findings presented. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I respectfully decline. I believe that my phrasing about "suggesting" and "can feed into" is an adequately qualified summary, particularly in the light of other work in the area. Nor am I inclined to shrug and say that there's not much Wikipedia can do; we ought at least to be responsible enough not to contribute to a feedback loop. XOR'easter (talk) 16:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The problem isn’t the qualification its the description of findings that simply don’t exist. "research suggesting that belief in conspiracy theories can feed into COVID vaccine refusal or hesitancy” would be accurate, but they don’t actually address the effects of specific conspiracy theories at all just the effect of being conspiracy minded on vaccine refusal or hesitancy. I’d also point out that the logical conclusion of your framing would be to remove all religious information as well as all information which calls into question government authority from Wikipedia under MEDRS as it demonstrably can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy, now are you cherry picking or are you actually presenting an argument based on the findings of that paper? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I've presented two papers, the latter specifically about how exposure to online misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines affects intent to vaccinate to protect oneself or others. There's also older work indicating that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is inversely related to the (a) perceived threat of the pandemic, (b) taking of preventive actions, including wearing a face mask, (c) perceived safety of vaccination, and (d) intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19. XOR'easter (talk) 17:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The statement under discussion here is only about the one paper. I do appreciate you providing additional sources which are more relevant to the discussion at hand but you are still making a demonstrably false claim about the conclusions of the first paper which I just cant abide by on the BI talk page. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Surely the discussion here is about whether to update the MEDRS guideline, no? I'm still not seeing what's "demonstrably false" about my remark about the first paper (which, to be clear, was not a carefully-polished turn of phrase). The fundamental issue is that, even under the limited "not meant to provide medical advice" justification for MEDRS, which as mentioned below neglects the concerns of WP:MEDPOP, questions of disease origin do intermingle with those of medical advice. As a Royal Society report on vaccine deployment from last October summarizes, Those with higher levels of endorsing COVID-19 conspiracy theories [are] reported to be less likely to adhere to government guidelines, be tested, or vaccinated. And yes, while it's quite possible that people will go ahead and misinform themselves whatever we do, we should still hold ourselves to a critical standard. XOR'easter (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Why I didn't just link to both of those Nature articles in the first place, I'm actually not sure. I've too many open browser tabs for vaccine-hesitancy research, some of which are preprints or articles in journals I don't fully trust (though sifting through their bibliographies can be worthwhile). Editing before coffee, I suppose. XOR'easter (talk) 18:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I've been seeing versions of the "history is not biomedical information" claim going around for months, and I've never been able to understand the relevance of the assertion. I mean, we're not talking about the death of Pericles or the Plague of Justinian here, but an ongoing event — a pandemic coupled with what the World Health Organization has called an infodemic. When the "history" isn't even historical, and there is an ongoing public-health hazard from misinformation, the "history is not biomedical information" line goes by the wayside. The past, one might say, isn't even past. XOR'easter (talk) 22:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@XOR'easter: I agree with you that some claims about history get pretty wikilawyery. However -- with deference to your greater experience around here -- I think you're overreading what WP:MEDRS is for. It is definitely for protecting readers seeking medical advice. Your concerns about the other dangers of incorrect advice seem to me to be stepping more into concerns which, though valid, are not codified into policy. My instinct would normally be overwhelmingly to agree with you -- don't let people hear these conspiracy theories which will lower vaccination rates! This isn't just academic debate, lives literally depend on these vaccinations! However, I have an opposing concern. Consider the possibility that the pandemic of the century was made in a lab. In that unfortunate scenario, I foresee a huge crisis of trust in science, a lifetime's supply of ammunition for future conspiracy theorists, a seed of doubt in millions of minds about whether the establishment can be trusted. And Wikipedia would be best-served if it is not seen to have been "part of the coverup."

When I expressed that fear before, I was told to avoid trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. I think that's fair, mainly because it's pretty hard to objectively just these kinds of things. Which is more significant, your fear of misinformation, or my fear of future distrust? Well, that depends on...lots of things. The advantage of just dropping all that and sticking to the policies is that, as I've learned, they're actually quite wise!

If we just fairly represent the current state of things, which is that "lab leak is plausible" is a significant-minority opinion (WP:MEDSCI, WP:FRINGE/ALT), with WP:DUE weight, then we're not going to be giving readers a lot of dangerous misinformation. We're not going to be saying "could be bats, could be mad scientists!" - the reliable sources currently lean heavily toward zoonosis, and Wikipedia should reflect that. However -- this is what I'm really fighting for -- lab leak should not be represented as just a baseless conspiracy theory, because (officially) that's not an accurate representation (see discussions elsewhere), and (unofficially) we owe a better explanation to those who are troubled by something they read and are coming here because they don't know what to think anymore. We owe them more than "only crazy people think this."

So that's my WP:RGW take on why we should treat lab leak as a significant-minority opinion. I respect your WP:RGW on the danger of vaccine refusal. I think the eventual outcome is just that we stick to the wisdom of existing policy, no? (And if I missed the part where WP:MEDRS is about more than the dangers of medical advice, I apologize; and if it doesn't include some dangers that you think it should, now is probably a good time to raise that as its own discussion.) SSSheridan (talk) 23:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@SSSheridan: What might seem like an innocent academic debate (some might say it's also a political proxy war) over the origins of a virus also, like other information, has real-life consequences, including the fuelling of online bullying, racism and bigotry, and of course a very real political and diplomatic divide between two global superpowers. In addition, and this is purely my 2 cents, the political controversy has likely completely sidelined actual more pressing issues, including on bio-medical matters. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:19, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: I hope that my first two paragraphs in the above comment made clear that I respect the real-life consequences, and don't see it as a purely academic debate. I'll admit that I'm surprised to find myself arguing for greater representation of a dissenting view, a hypothesis which I deeply hope to be untrue. And I'm honestly disgusted (if not surprised) to read the article you linked.

But my motivation, again, is concern for real-world consequences. The grant proposals tell me that the research that was done at WIV could have created a virus like this one. (And I've asked peers to double-check my interpretation, to make sure I'm not being crazy.) Obviously, the evidence is lacking; the point is, I think it's plausible, and that's disturbing. My motivation now is essentially damage control: if lab-leak turns out to be the correct explanation, I don't want Wikipedia to have misled its readers.

Furthermore -- and in the present -- I don't want readers to feel jerked around after reading one thing in the NYT and something different here. That sort of uncertainty, I think, provides fertile ground for conspiracy thinking -- and the ugliness that follows.

But, again: both your concerns and mine are of the WP:RGW variety. Who knows how to weigh them against each other? Only time will tell. In the meantime, let's just hammer out some new wording according to the policies? I want zoonosis to get the great majority of the weight (WP:DUE); I just want lab leak to be treated briefly but fairly (i.e. no longer as a crazy conspiracy theory). I believe that that is the correct implementation of the policies, and hopefully the best balance for our respective real-world worries as well. SSSheridan (talk) 02:12, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, thats simply not what MEDRS is for. Expanding our concept of MEDRS is a drastic step and not one which should be undertaken without an overwhelming and pressing reason which nobody seems to be arguing is the case here. MEDRS is meant to prevent immediate harm from incorrect/malicious medical advice (for instance if our article on bleach said that injecting it into the body cured COVID) not speculative harm that could perhaps be caused by presenting due historical and policy analysis. While I respect immensely the work that many here have done in keeping COVID conspiracies off of wikipedia the idea that as a result of COVID we should expand MEDRS to anything that even broadly touches on human biology, health, or medicine just doesn’t hold water. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:24, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support: Do we want to use high-quality scientific sources, or do we want to use articles from the popular media, written by non-experts who (very likely) do not understand virology, biosafety, ecology, etc.? The origins of the pandemic is an extremely important subject, and I see no excuse for using low-quality sources, such as popular media. Right now, we have a very strange situation, in which popular media is wildly out of sync with scientific publications. We can all speculate about why this might be the case, but I'll just suggest that political bias may play a role, given the dramatic way in which the US-China relationship has deteriorated over the past few years, and the dramatic growth in anti-China sentiment in the West. This political situation will influence coverage of China in general, and of the lab-leak theory in particular. So I go back to my original question, posed a bit more polemically: do you want to use high-quality scientific sources, or do you want to listen to the people who told us that Iraq had WMD and was working with Al Qaeda? -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

To think that "high-quality scientific sources" aren't influenced by political considerations, especially when so much of the funding for scientific research comes from the government, is dangerously naive. The CCP even restricted scientific research into the origins of the coronavirus.[7] And as far as your point about the WMD narrative perpetuated by mainstream news sources, have you heard about the replication crisis in peer-reviewed scientific studies? Rreagan007 (talk) 17:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

MEDRS generally prohibits "research", and recommends instead secondary sourcing precisely because research is not necessary correct/reliable. The goal is to reflect accepted knowledge. Alexbrn (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

And you don't think those secondary sources rely on scientific research to come to their "accepted knowledge"? Rreagan007 (talk) 17:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, but a retrospective review of a field (particularly a systematic review) has no novel idea to pursue, but sifts out bad research, assesses quality and arrives at an overall measure of the state of knowledge in a field, as then peer-reviewed by relevant scientists. There are degrees of quality in knowledge (see WP:MEDASSESS). Wikipedias's purpose is merely to reflect that best quality accepted knowledge, then its job is done. Your argument seems to be a kind of relativistic "we can't know anything for sure, so anything can be admissible" - which is not useful for the purposes of building an WP:ENC. Alexbrn (talk) 06:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Health is not the only reason why MEDRS is restrictive on sourcing. Please see WP:MEDPOP: The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care.. Please read the entire thing, this is a real problem that has been discussed and reached consensus in Wikiproject Medicine long ago: on these specific topics, normally reliable sources simply aren't reliable.

  Second, the definition of WP:BMI goes far beyond the limits of medical advice and safety. We already define biomedical information to include: Biomedical research Information about clinical trials or other types of biomedical research that address the above entries or allow conclusions to be made about them. We are clearly discussing biomedical research, unless editors are really asking us to believe that biosafety levels at a biological research lab are not a matter of biological research? I am really trying to AGF, but at some point this gets so absurd that I'm really not sure how to respond. This doesn't require expanding MEDRS or BMI, we're just calling a spade a spade and saying that yes, research into zoonosis and viruses and the origins of a pandemic is really biomedical information, which is biomedical information and thus clearly falls under MEDRS. Hyperion35 (talk) 16:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I concur fully with this. XOR'easter (talk) 16:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • What do we understand by the "origin of the virus"? If we are talking about evolitionary relations of a virus with othe viruses or established hosts (actually, they are not well established for COVID-19), then sure, we need scientific RS, although I think using peer reviewed original publications for describing such biological questions is fine (no need in MEDRS, just use WP:Verifiability). However, if we mean questions like what exactly Drs. X,Y,Z were doing in the lab (maybe drinking or getting sick of a virus), this is not a science, but rather something for a different type of investigation. My very best wishes (talk) 17:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Identifying what virus these hypothetical Drs. X, Y, and Z were sick with would be a scientific question, requiring a scientific investigation to resolve. XOR'easter (talk) 17:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Comment Probably requires more nuance and explanation, rather than a blanket mandate. Clarification around information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health would be a better course of action. I might perceive the prevalence and persistence of COVID conspiracies relating to the WIV affecting vaccine uptake (and Wikipedia being used to promote such misinformation) as 'relating to human health', others will perceive differently (whether about COVID or another disease), and both perspectives might be considered reasonable. Where does that impasse leave us? Some of the issue is just with interpretation of best sourcing guidance. Most (but not all) of the time, if we have a MEDRS source available making a certain claim, that claim should be given priority over a mainstream press (WP:MEDPOP) source. This is primarily where I think the "we should favor MEDRS sources" preference derives from, particularly for the purposes of determining mainstream scientific perspective (and consequently, how we write about various possibilities regarding WP:GEVAL and WP:FRINGELEVEL). It's easier to keep our articles from becoming a mess of 'he-said/she-said' with opposing MEDPOP sources (often with one or both sides misrepresenting the science itself), but that's more of a "COVID-19 articles are contentious" decision than "BMI/MEDRS must be applied this way across WP". If we make any tweak, I'd suggest it be more around how we phrase these higher standards of scientific evidence defined in MEDRS, when applied beyond strictly BMI, as contentious topics may warrant. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support usage of highest quality sources as a principle, but moot question/needless Wikilawyering [no change to MEDRS truly required, except to avoid the wikilaywering about it] - The origin of a human disease is a complex topic. While some might claim ambiguity about what exactly is a biomedical topic, WP:RS strongly suggests that academic peer-reviewed literature, when available, is the best source for all claims and not just biomedical ones. Per WP:SOURCETYPES, "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources." (WP:NEWSORG goes in the same direction) The popular non-scientific press is also often unsuitable as a serious source for scientific topics, and WP:MEDPOP describes how non-scientific sources often promote false balance on controversial scientific topics. This is the case of multiple otherwise reliable newspapers in this case, which are making inaccurate statements about "mainstream science" and the like (for example, the WaPo timeline claims that this is an "influential paper". It's not - it's promoting a baseless claim (actual laboratory genetic manipulation), as attested by multiple other sources, for example this direct reply or plenty of excellent papers cited here (and this, which is the actual "influential paper" [cited more than 1000 times by other scientists], in Nature Medicine).

This naturally leads to the use of WP:MEDRS, and I don't see why this is controversial at all: MEDRS sources are talking about this - a lot (see WP:NOLABLEAK and also User:RandomCanadian/The origins of COVID-19: literature review for a work in progress annotated bibliography on that) - and using newspapers when we have access to high quality sources kinda defeats the point of it all, does it not? We can use newspapers for their usual expertise, which is recent events and global news (and, to some extent, they are sufficient to conclude that some mention of fringe theories is warranted, in the appropriate place). Not for FALSEBALANCE purposes on highly complex topics (virology, epidemiology, the origins of a disease) which require years of study and which are already covered in high quality sources. As a reminder, it took 14 years before definitive, direct evidence was found for the natural origin of SARS - There's absolutely WP:NORUSH here, especially not to use poor sources for poor balance of fringe theories. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:20, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Perhaps a simple summary is that, in most cases, the policy we refer to can be WP:SCHOLARSHIP instead of WP:MEDRS, and we'll get the same result. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, curiously, there seems to be an idea from some editors that by "downgrading" to plain old RS, the door will be open to use any-old-source for SCI/MED content. Methinks they haven't read the guideline properly. Alexbrn (talk) 18:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, this part of WP:SCHOLARSHIP is pretty definitive: "Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive and should be avoided. Secondary sources, such as meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred when available, so as to provide proper context." If, for whatever reason, the consensus is that pandemic origins are not BMI, the field is certainly still complex and abstruse enough to necessitate meta-analyses and reviews in a hierarchy over primary or non-scholarly sources. People absolutely get extremely long and drawn-out PhDs on this stuff.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:51, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Addendum One thing which I didn't note in my previous comment is how Wikipedia is supposed to not be breaking news, and not be a place for the promotion of fringe theories. What we are supposed to do is summarise the existing, top level reliable sources, and follow them, not lead in a new direction. Wikipedia is academically conservative, and that is entirely consistent with our policies on verifiability and no original research. To quote from the same essay, if we'd been around in Galileo's time, the view that the Earth goes round the sun would have been similarly dismissed. Again, we're supposed to follow, not lead. The only thing I see in support of the lab leak (which, like it or not, is the reason behind this discussion) is special pleading to accept poor sources, poorly hidden original research, and political controversy. Not making it blindingly clear that we're not a soapbox is only going to hurt us in the long-term when dealing with fanatic fringe advocates (many of them canvassed here from Twitter threads and the like). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Sure, go into one side of the debate, but not the other side. Only a conspiracist could think that people who are hiding key information have something to hide! Adoring nanny (talk) 17:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  @RandomCanadian: I agree with your entire comment about being academically conservative, but that should be about erring on the side of omission; it doesn't mean we have to be slow to change statements which are no longer true. It was true that "lab leak" was pretty much only considered plausible by conspiracy theorists; the moment that Science publishes a letter saying "lab leak is plausible," then that former statement is invalidated, and sentences which imply as much should be edited. You're entirely correct that the Science letter does very little to shift the overall scientific position on "where did the virus come from?"; but the question "who has stated that lab leak is plausible enough to investigate?" is a different question. President Biden instructing the US intelligence agencies to look into the question is a prime example of a notable, non-scientific development. This is analogous to how regulatory status is not biomedical information, despite being very closely connected to such. SSSheridan (talk) 23:08, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  @SSSheridan: Entirely agree that it is a different question. Which is why we do report on it, see Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19#World_Health_Organization and Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19#Biden_administration. We just don't give it the same weight as scientific sources for purposes of saying what the scientific consensus is, because, you'll agree, politicians are not reliable sources for complex statements about complex scientific issues. Of course this is coupled with issues about article scope and summary style - not all information about one topic can go into one article, lest it be too long (too much information is just as good as too little). Hence why we make broad summaries in broader articles, and direct readers to more detailed ones where they can get more details. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:20, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  @RandomCanadian: Agreed. I've written up some specific suggestions at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_COVID-19#Notability_and_acceptance of how much of what to include. I suggest keeping the current balance of word count in the SARS-CoV-2 article, and a section in the Investigations article. You may appreciate the bullet point "In accordance with WP:DUE, this section should be brief." ;) I'd appreciate your input on those suggestions, since you're obviously coming at this with different knowledge and background than me. SSSheridan (talk) 02:54, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - As shown by the way China handling the origin of the current pandemic, and its attitude against countries like Australia when these countries call for independent investigation of their origin, origin of diseases and pandemic can be a political question. And given that organization and authorities, including research organizations, journal publishers, and academic institute in authoritarian countries similar to China are expected to follow the government's stance on matters being associated with national interest, journal and essay published from within these countries could turn out to be less neutral than external non-scientific sources. Also note that, not all disease/pandemic are like coronavirus and can trigger research interest from around the world, and thus many times for some less significant diseases the only available scientific source could be those that are supported by local government authority and thus lack neutrality, making them less reliable than general media source. C933103 (talk) 17:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  The above is complete speculation. One could just as easily counter with the obvious political nature of comments from the US government and from US politicians. Additionally, one could ask (rethorically, because the answer is obvious): is Nature Medicine (and other reputable peer-reviewed journals) a mouthpiece of the Chinese government? Your argument falls flat on its face. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  First, US government making comments with political nature does not affect my comment in any way which didn't touch anything about the US. If you say essay published in the US could cover from same fault then that's all the more reason to have other sources. Second, my point is there are millions of disease and outbreaks around the world, not all of them can gather sufficient interest to be covered by high quality peer reviewed international journals completed with independent investigation of origin of such disease. With the lack of such sources the only source this project would accept would be official source spelling their party line. C933103 (talk) 18:21, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support - per XOR'easter, and it somewhat helps to prevent Wikipedia articles being a WP:GEVAL reflection of the confused US media (WP:NOTNEWS is also relevant). This is a controversial issue where people read into sources what they want and propose suboptimal or otherwise acceptable sources but that only keep repeating dubious claims including those of non-experts. Fortunately, MEDRS calls for the highest quality sources on the topic. As for the description of some narratives as conspiracy theories and misinformation, WP:PARITY applies as usual... And interestingly MEDRS sources do not currently deviate from the most plausible scenario and scientific consensus, that like previous epidemics, including of Coronavirus (SARS1, MERS), it's from nature, but that it may take a long time to fully discover the intermediate host(s) after bats. —PaleoNeonate – 19:37, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  The world have far more media than US media. People reading into source for what they want can be corrected by checking whether the source say what people say. As WP:PARITY applies as usual I don't see the list of extending this to cover them. Pandemic isn't the only form of disease outbreak that such proposed change would cover.C933103 (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - There are a small number of editors who are hogging control of all covid lab leak related articles and shouting down anyone who disagrees, chanting MEDRS like it is some sort of magic incantation. It is plainly obvious at this point that the lab leak is a plausible origin. Nomatter how good the source -- MIT Technology review, Slate, Washington post, bulletin of atomic scientists, the journal Science, statements by the US intelligence community, statements by president Joe Biden -- this group of editors shouts it down. This is an embarassment to wikipedia. 24.18.126.43 (talk) 20:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC) — 24.18.126.43 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

  I'm not in the mood for entertaining misinformation (virulent promotion of a fringe theory IS misinformation), and I'll also ignore the blatant WP:ASPERSIONS. Would you mind telling me which of the above sources is: A) a secondary source (not an opinion statement, not a "letter to the editor") in B) a reputable peer-reviewed journal by C) a person with relevant expertise? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:00, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support In what world are disease and pandemics not medical in nature? We don't need MEDRS to report that there is a wild-ass conspiracy theory, but we should need MEDRS to report on what the medical literature has determined is the actual or best consensus as to the origin of diseases. Unless and until reliable medical literature has determined something as likely or true, we should not be speculating in Wikipedia's voice on medical matters like the origin of diseases, we should only go as far as WP:FRINGE allows to note the existence of unsupported fringe claims where such claims are notable enough and where we clearly indicate the unsupported nature of them. --Jayron32 20:37, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• oppose per Bonewah ..TFD spelled it out correctly, the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice, not as a blanket policy that covers everything that a disease touches.--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC).
• Opppose why would we update a policy to override Wikipedia:Biomedical_information#What_is_not_biomedical_information?...History is not biomedical information. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 22:20, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Because some have been arguing for the inclusion of WP:FALSEBALANCE about fringe theories based on poor journalistic sources and on rules lawyering about what does and does not require academic peer-reviewed sources? As said, the origin of a disease is a complex topic, and the promotion of conspiracy theories can have a direct effect on other more concrete health matters. We ought to be more strict, if only to more accurately serve our purpose, which is that of an encyclopedia (which follows the existing consensus), not of a platform for "righting great wrongs" and pushing the narrative in "nes directions". If this has the added benefit of making the promotion of fringe theories more difficult, that's a feature, not a bug, no matter how many SPAs from Twitter come complaining about censorship. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:35, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  If there's already a guideline within WP:RS that would reject these sorts of theories from being included on equal footing (WP:SOURCETYPES comes to mind), then why is that a reason to keep WP:MEDRS? It seems that the ordinary WP:RS standards (when read in line with WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, and WP:ARBPS) would do a good enough job at ensuring that proper sources are used. The arbitration case, in particular, notes that [w]hat constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such. If the origins of a disease/pandemic constitute a "scientific theory," then it really doesn't look like there is a need to further restrict it. If there's aspects to an origin that aren't encompasesed fully within the realms of scientific theory, but history (such as when a disease originated in classical Athens or how times the plague recurred), then it's clearly a history question. Would we really exclude history textbooks on those sorts of questions of origin? In any case, wouldn't there be a simple refutation to using news pieces to advance scientific theories that exist without requiring the use of WP:MEDRS? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  It being mentioned directly here will avoid wikilawyering that it's not covered under MEDRS (even though SOURCETYPES/SCHOLARSHIP ultimately bring about the same result). Less wikilawyering = less time wasted. I agree that historical questions are not the same thing. That could be resolved by common sense, or a simple rewording which makes the precision that clearly historical matters should be treated as such (or, since people will always find ways to try to misrepresent something to their advantage [as evident even here, with some claiming this is history already!], a more strict temporal cut-off, say, 10-20 years [at least] or something). FWIW there are papers about the dreaded plague being published in peer-reviewed medical journal ([8][9], including also one which would meet the full MEDRS criteria: [10]) - mostly because that thing hasn't completely disappeared? Anyway, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:27, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  RandomCanadian, Its useful that mention false balance and wikilawyering in the same breath, as you are seeking to tighten sourcing to exclude history (WL and FB), contrary to WHY MEDRS. Your WP:BLUDGEON on this subject is as bad as i have seen. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 12:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Opppose history is not biomedical information. This goes against the spirit of WP:MEDRS per Wikipedia:Why MEDRS? -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 00:25, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  How is this "history" when we have A) a still ongoing pandemic and B) still ongoing calls for further investigation (from the WHO report, from other scientists) and C) still ongoing spread of dis-/misinformation about the topic? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:35, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  The origin of COVID is certainly not "history"; but the claim that a zoonotic origin is history also appears to certainly be untrue. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see such a claim. If anything, the zoonotic origin is being treated in articles with a full-on MEDRS-requirement, with multiple review articles to back it up. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:07, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation")[2] is the scientific study of the past.. The origin of the virus will need to be scientifically studied. It does not have current implications for human health and therefore does not require WP:MEDRS. We already have other policies that ensure we use WP:RS. Not applying MEDRS doesn't not mean we start including conspiracy theories into the articles and accepting any source (as some people in this discussion seem to believe). We have many other policies to prevent that. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 11:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I've been seeing variations of the claim that The origin of the virus [...] does not have current implications for human health for months now. It only grows less convincing each time. Actual scientific research [11][12][13] indicates that misinformation can have serious public-health consequences. The World Health Organization agrees [14]. How, exactly, are we serving the public if we shrug and say, "the past is the past"? XOR'easter (talk) 19:09, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support The key line of MEDRS is " For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." (and not "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice." which is a leadup to that). Rationalizing this is about the COVID lab leak issue, I have seen enough "bad science" propagated by well-intentioned mainstream RSes on biomedical information that MEDRS should not be just about preventing bad advice but making sure any details related to human medicine is using the highest quality sources. To that end, clearly the origins (whether natural or synethetic) of a human-affecting virus absolutely fall into MEDRS. --Masem (t) 03:42, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose as this is a unique problem of Covid-19. The purpose of this RFC and, from what I can see, all the support votes, is to address the geo-politics of the unknown origin of Covid-19. None of the supporters have given examples of any other disease origin that is causing problems on wikipedia. Because there aren't any. This suggests therefore that the problem with covid-19 origins is the problem with covid-19 origins, and not a problem with disease origins at all. Previously, I wrote at ANI about this. I'll repeat it. In 1978 there was an outbreak of smallpox in the UK. In that case, the accepted version of events, after a public enquiry, was that the virus did leak out of the lab, through air ducts, and infected someone in the same building, who then died horribly. An alternative version, suggested by some, including Mark Pallen in the book The Last Days of Smallpox, is that this person visited the laboratory, possibly against the rules, and got infected while there. Scientifically, this and the lab leak hypothesis of covid are very similar. I don't see anyone edit warring about this on our smallpox articles. I note that Pallen's book is "independently published", an attribute I think would cause many people here fighting covid wars to snort their tea out of their noses. The book got glowing reviews in some infection-disease journals. In the smallpox case I think reasonable people come to different conclusions, can agree to disagree, and accept we may never know. Nobody, after all that time, is going to re-open the enquiry.

As Alexbrn notes above, the covid origin story is not just biomedical. It is mostly a political story and a current-affairs (news) story, partly a detective story and only in a small way something concerning science. Most of the story is not science. Was the lab working on this virus? Are people telling the truth. Is the Chinese government covering up things and reluctant to admit the truth. Or is this all nonsense story cooked up by US politicians. None of that is science, let alone biomedical science. -- Colin°^Talk 08:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, and to add to that, it is really a bad idea to try and solve a running content dispute by altering the WP:PAGs. It would be a much better idea to review how/if the pandemic warrants such changes well after the heat has gone out of the topic (and I suspect the "lab leak" will by then only be the most minor of considerations in such a review; it may be a hot topic now in, mostly American, politics - but is really a nothingburger in the grand scheme of knowledge around COVID-19). Alexbrn (talk) 09:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Every case in law comes out of controversy (and SCOTUS actually makes the law based on controversies), so I don't believe that Wikipedia's hivemind can't cope with it. We may delay the enforcement of RfC's decision, but then we have users who will be tempted to use current news articles on origins, so if we don't settle this dispute here, we will encounter it every time some people will interpret a story in the newspaper as corroborating the lab leak theory. It would be wonderful if we had hindsight now, but we aren't given the luxury. So let's resolve it now, and probably overturn the precedent in the next debate.

As for Colin's remarks that this mostly politics - I'd say the debate is happening on two planes: scientific and political, which run (mostly) parallel to each other. Scientists mostly work with the evidence they have and call for more (but don't engage in geopolitics in peer-reviewed articles because it just won't pass the publication stage without being criticised heavily, so it won't get cited on WP) - politicians want to seem more credible, try to appeal to voters and exert pressure on enemies in the areas they lobby others for. Using only MEDRS, in my opinion, eliminates that geopolitics factor you are afraid about, because it is anyway not recommended to cite letters/comments/quick responses in peer-reviewed journals, while scientists don't normally speculate on evidence they don't have if they want to be cited for further research and not for "10 worst papers of 202x".

As for smallpox epidemic: the thing is, you compare an outbreak during which 1 (one) person died and another person got ill (which did trigger a panic, but only because the disease was on the verge of eradication and WHO was afraid of uncontrolled spread) and a pandemic which took 3.5 million lives (officially) so far and triggered an economical and several political crises. That's a "slightly" different scale. Do we quarrel about the Spanish flu or the Black Death? No, because it's been a long time ago and the science is settled in the first case, while in the second one, it's a domain of historians and not really scientists. Is there much interest of the scientific community in the 1978 outbreak? No. If scientists stop caring about it, so do we. If there is a scientific debate or a large mass of articles published on the topic - then we discuss. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:15, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

If editors try to force non-MEDRS for biomedical claims, they are in breach not just of the WP:PAGs but of the general sanctions for COVID-19 and can expect a block or ban. For non-biomedical aspects of the origin (i.e. whether politician X made statement Y, or whether a lab has a good or bad safetyu record) newspapers, yes, may be an acceptable source. My concern is that we don't bugger up a perfectly functional area of Wikipedia policy, which has helped deliver some of the Project's most respected and successful content, to try and settle a troublesome local content dispute. MEDRS comes under frequent attack from advocates, marketeers, quacks and charlatans who are upset about how it curtails their problematic aims, and they accuse it of "over-reaching". It would be unwise to do something that would give actual legs to those arguments. Alexbrn (talk) 11:36, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see... you're saying if we allow PAG changes in the heat of the moment here and now, we are opening ourselves up to such changes in the future, when it may not be in the benefit of the wiki. That is a fair argument, and the PAG already is quite good at this. Maybe we just need to call a RfC without a change to the policy, but a consensus on how it should be applied? Can we do that? Do RfCs really only apply to changes to the text as an editor said below? Because that's not my read of WP:RFC: a process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines or article content.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it helpful to make legal analogies (precedent, case law, etc). Our guidelines and policies are supposed to be generally applicable. If you want to update guidelines specifically on how to handle "disease and pandemic origins", then folk should start off with a bunch of different "disease and pandemic origins" and have a good think about them all. Instead, everyone is getting worked up about one case that is about as peculiar as it is possible to get. Nobody has given any evidence this is a general problem, so why should we have a general solution? What next? An RFC on how to write about the size of presidential inauguration crowds? -- Colin°^Talk 14:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• Oppose – I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said. The origins of COVID simply do not constitute medical advice. The total dismissiveness of the lab leak theory by some of the editors here is really surprising to me. MEDRS-related objections come across more as a way to reinforce editors' preconceived beliefs than a genuine concern about policy. I have no doubt that Wikipedia will eventually portray the lab leak theory fairly, but that it is still labeled an "unfounded conspiracy theory" is really damaging Wikipedia's credibility in my eyes. —Will^(B) 13:19, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think anybody here is dismissing the lab leak. It's just being treated fairly and accurately as a very FRINGE theory which is somewhere on the fence, being all of "possible, but extremely unlikely" (since it can't be disproven), "with no evidence to substantiate it" (per many scientists who have studied the topic), "a conspiracy theory and misinformation" (because of the people who promote it and who also claim there is a massive conspiracy to hide this, whether it be from governments or from scientists afraid to ruffle feathers [the classical conspiracy: the "establishment" is too afraid and so on so forth...]) AND "sufficiently notable that there are some places we need to mention it" (because of the large amount of coverage it is attracting in MEDPOP sources). We're basically faced with a Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat situation - I have personally encountered at least 8 of the 10 typical behaviours described there. When pressed for sources, we have A) an overwhelming academic literature, which basically says that the lab leak is unlikely (either by saying this directly, or, in more cases, since regular scientists don't deal with fringe ideas, simply by saying that zoonotic origin is "very likely") and inconsistent with existing prior examples (SARS, MERS, every other novel disease...) and B) reports in newsources which either put the lab leak in the context of politics or are entirely incompatible with the scientific sources (sometimes misquoting them, for example). Now we can harmonise these sources, and use the media for what it's reliable for (reporting on recent events and politics, ...) and the scientists for what they are reliable for (making assessments of complex topics based on their long experience with the subject). But not for the kind of blatant soapboxing from an armada of SPAs that this topic has created. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  To be clear, I do think it's more likely to be zoonotic. So do a large majority of experts and scientists. Certainly I think that the media tide is turning towards "lab leak!" a little too quickly. However, when many of these reputable scientists are agreeing that "lab leak is perhaps unlikely, but not extremely unlikely"—that's just not what I would call fringe, even if the peer-reviewed academic literature hasn't caught up yet. —Will^(B) 14:28, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  @Will-B: That's perfectly fine, but see Wikipedia's role as a reference work - we're supposed to follow the consensus of sources, not lead it. When (if) academic sources change their stance on this, we can update our articles. Until then, we need to stick with the existing high quality sources. After all, we are not news, and there's certainly WP:NORUSH here. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:06, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  Agree that we should generally stick to predefined reliable sources regardless of whether we think it's "true". I guess we just disagree what constitutes "reliable" in this case. And I honestly do think there's a bit of a rush, since Wikipedia's stance is currently one of near-certainty—that this is a baseless conspiracy theory—whereas the rapidly shifting expert consensus is that there is a considerable amount of uncertainty (even if zoonotic origin is more likely). Erring on the side of uncertainty is the safer choice, in my view. Why wait for the academic literature when scientists are already going on record to say that the consensus is hazier than it initially seemed? (At the very least, I think it would make sense to redirect Lab leak to Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 instead of COVID-19 misinformation, but that's another discussion.) —Will^(B) 20:32, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support Seems to be a more cautious approach especially in the current situation. It may potentially be sensible to clarify that it applies to "on-going" pandemics, because of the need for sensitivity. I think it is resonable to treat past pandemics in a different way. Dhawk790 (talk) 14:01, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I'd have no objection in principle to qualified wording that makes clear that "history" needs to be treated carefully when an outbreak is ongoing, i.e., when the past isn't even past. XOR'easter (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose MEDRS exists only to ensure quality medical advice. The origin of COVID-19, or any disease, has frankly nothing to do with that goal. Toa Nidhiki05 14:23, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • But ... it kind of does, though. One could argue that bad information about the origin of an ongoing pandemic might only be indirectly relevant to medical advice now, but "nothing to do with" it at all is not an empirically sustainable position. XOR'easter (talk) 18:34, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    • @XOR'easter: How is this paper relevant to the issue at hand? Did you accidentally post the wrong link? jp×g 19:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As Toa noted directly above, there's a specific point that MEDRS exist for, which is the danger of giving bad or dangerous medical advice. That's not relevant here. Frankly this change seems to be primarily directed at preventing any updating to articles or acknowledging that in the last week or so ideas related to lab leaks are being treated much more seriously in the media and in general reliable sources than they were previously. Changing specific policies to deliberately raise the bar to discussion of that is counterproductive. Articles should reflect what reliable sources say, and we shouldn't be constructing new policies or guidelines simply to avoid including what the sources actually say. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:23, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As many have stated before (and it appears we're at a substantial majority at this point), I worry that the argument/discussion is being intentionally redirected and complicated to fit a particular narrative via technicalities. As a healthcare professional myself, it is entirely evident that a minority are trying to push MEDRS requirements on areas where it is not required or where medical journals typically do not venture (being outside of their scope). Medical advice or say, discussions of furin cleavage site abnormalities WOULD be best left to those in the field (in my estimate)- otherwise the scope of investigations or exploring history, etc. does fall much more in the realm of geopolitics, diplomacy, communications, etc.....which would not require expertise from the scientific/medical community exclusively. I am glad to see the tide shift in this matter, I think we're finally beginning to make some progress here. Thank you to all for your contributions. CatDamon (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As other editors have stated, WP:MEDRS deals with medical advice - and the origin of a virus is not medical advice. Whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in a wet market or at the Wuhan Institute of Virology will probably not affect people's decisions regarding the virus. In addition, as CatDamon stated above, the origin of the virus is not just a medical topic - it also touches on subjects like history, diplomacy, and even politics. At this point, hardly any reliable sources are treating this as a baseless conspiracy theory. (Unless the WSJ, NBC, BBC, NPR, NYT, etc. are all conspiracist sources.) WP:MEDRS also states: "For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." At this point, the origin of the virus is not certain, but current knowledge (from newspapers as well as journals such as Science) increasingly lends credence to the lab leak theory. Lab leak and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis should redirect to Investigations into the origin of COVID-19. Crossover1370 (talk | contribs) 01:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Others have made this point above, but the origin of a disease is not medical advice. It's that simple. -- Calidum 04:43, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose + partial Support. Differentiate definitive biomedical statements ("the virus originated from...") from non-biomedical, yet otherwise notable, information. An example of a non-biomedical, yet clearly notable, event relating to the pandemic origin: Biden assigning the question to the US intelligence community. This being "notable but not biomedical" is in line with "regulatory status", "history", etc. Now, a trickier question is: how about a Letter in Science titled Investigate the origins of COVID-19? According to WP:MEDSCI, this would be a significant-minority opinion (publication in Science surely elevates it above "tiny minority opinion", no?). So here's what WP:MEDSCI says: "Although significant-minority views are welcome in Wikipedia, such views must be presented in the context of their acceptance by experts in the field....make readers aware of controversies that are stated in reliable sources." In other words: cover it as a debate/controversy, not as biomedical information. SSSheridan (talk) 21:19, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a very fair take. The evidence that exists should be presented as it is now following the biomedical rules and any new EFFORTS, CALLS, or QUESTIONS should be discussed in a controversy section. Dhawk790 (talk) 11:00, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Any rule that narrows the range of reliable sources that we can use should be applied only as needed. I've had to explain MEDRS to several non-Wikipedians lately and they look at you like you just stepped off a UFO - we easily forget how much of a barrier to newbies it is to have to learn how MEDRS works. For medical treatments there is a long-understood need for MEDRS. For disease origins, I'm with TFD in not seeing a need. "Biomedical stuff is hard" is not reason enough -lots of things in science are hard. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:03, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose People mis understand WP:Medrs. We define WP:BIOMED here. The origin of the pandemic is history, not biomedical information. Its common sense. --Almaty^✉✎ 16:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. (Summoned by bot) The question seems to be targeted against content about COVID-19 without targeting COVID-19 specifically, but the proposed change would also apply to diseases and pandemics that are historical. While in some specific hypothetical scenarios material about the origins could be biomedical information, that does not apply to all scenarios. WP:BMI is a supplement to the MEDRS guideline. The purpose of the latter is to prevent adding content that could be construed as providing medical advice. This proposal is too broad. Politrukki (talk) 18:06, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The issue of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis has been an item of political contention for quite some time. More or less the exact same argument has transpired in many places over the course of several months: here, at MfDs, at AfDs, at numerous talk pages, on the reliable sources noticeboard, the fringe theories noticeboard, and in about a half-dozen AN/I threads (if not more). And the argument is about who is right, or specifically, which politics guys are right: indeed, in this very discussion, a large number of comments explicitly mention Democrats or Republicans in their rationale. This guideline is supposed to be about biomedical information, that is to say, information that relates to medical conditions and treatments. Changes to it should be made on the basis of making the encyclopedia a better resource for those topics. This seems to have been largely forgotten here. The raison d'être of WP:MEDRS (to which this is a supplement) is to make a tradeoff between our ability to write an encyclopedia (as we prize for every other article) and the imminent risk of injury or death that results from people finding incomplete or misleading information about medical conditions, diseases, treatments, medications, et cetera. The precise city block in which some random person was infected by a virus almost two years ago is neither of those things. It is impossible for me to imagine a scenario in which somebody dies (or is injured) because they thought the virus came from a food market and it came from a laboratory, or vice versa. In fact, it is impossible for me to imagine a scenario in which somebody comes to harm from thinking that the virus was deliberately engineered by Kanye West, or stolen from Mount Olympus by the Rotary Club. Can you? To me, it seems like it is entirely a social/historical issue. WP:MEDRS is not a political cudgel, nor should it be made into one. Policies and guidelines are like structural beams and safety railings that support and protect the encyclopedia; disassembling them to knock around our political enemies falls somewhere between shortsighted and foolhardy. I've said basically the same thing in all of them, which I will say again here: there's no need to go this far in the name of pwning each other, and doing so seriously jeopardizes Wikipedia's ability to maintain a NPOV. jp×g 00:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  I fail to see this supposedly omnipresent "which politics guys are right". Most of the comments seem to be arguing about "using scientific sources" vs. "quoting politicians and the popular press", no matter which side of the spectrum politicians are on. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:27, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  To me, a comment like "I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think, not what the Republican political machine and their billionaire financiers think" seems like it could, potentially, be made on political grounds. Perhaps I'm mistaken, and "the Republican political machine" doesn't refer to a political issue? jp×g 19:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  If anything, you will see that scrupulous editors are still giving short shrift to political statements about science, no matter the fact that the current US president is from the other party. See this for yet another take on the issue, maybe shorter and more easily comprehensible than the ones given here. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. I believe that a lot of editors unintentionally either miss or don't pay that much attention to the fact that there two aspects of law. Most of the editors opposing the application of WP:MEDRS restrictions to the origins of pathogens seem to concentrate very much on the letter of law ("origins of the virus are not medical advice", because a supplement to policy says that biomed info is only about giving health advice), however, there also exits the spirit of law. As WP:MEDPOP and WP:SOURCETYPES show, the general intent of those who were creating guidelines (much wiser people than me), was not to cite news reports from the general press when discussing scientific matters - instead, people stuck to the literal meaning of the words of something that even isn't proper policy, but only an explanatory supplement to the policy, which, as the disclaimer template says, has not been thoroughly vetted by the community (so it would be somewhere on the essay level). To apply legal terms, an act of Congress overrides an executive order of the President if they conflict each other. Also, if there exists an interpretation of an executive order that leads to a conclusion that goes counter to the spirit of law of acts of Congress and there exists an equally possible and plausible interpretation of an executive order which follows it, the latter should be adopted. If the latter doesn't, then simply there's a conflict, which again, should be resolved in favour of a more authoritative document (in our case, a policy or a guideline, in US's case, an act of Congress). Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  I am unaware of any policy or guideline which, in letter or spirit, implies that WP:RS doesn't apply to "scientific matters". jp×g 19:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  WP:RS/MC refers to a fragment of policy whose main article is WP:MEDRS, which means that while being part of general policy, it has rules that apply to specific situations that happen to have their separate policy page. Again, drawing from law concepts, special law (WP:MEDRS) prevails over general law (WP:RS), a common legal maxim in India for good reason. This is when it comes to biomedical information. So while technically it does apply in both, in practice it is superseded by MEDRS.

  As for scientific matters in general, there is as yet uncontested WP:SCIRS, which, while being an essay and not a guideline, is on equal footing with the contested WP:BMI regulation, and at least it very much copies or repeats the extant WP:MEDRS guideline in the intro to the essay.

  Compare: Wikipedia's science articles are not intended to provide formal instruction, but they are nonetheless an important and widely used resource.[1] Scientific information should be based on reliable published sources and should accurately reflect the current state of knowledge. Ideal sources for these articles include comprehensive reviews in independent, reliable published sources, such as reputable scientific journals, statements and reports from reputable expert bodies, widely recognized standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or standard handbooks and reference guides, and high-quality non-specialist publications. Although news reports are inappropriate as reliable sources for the technical aspects of scientific results or theories, they may be useful when discussing non-technical context or impact of science topics, particularly controversial ones. (SCIRS)

  Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. [...] Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. [...] Note that health-related content in the general news media should not normally be used to source biomedical content in Wikipedia articles. (News sources may be useful for non-biomedical content, such as information about "society and culture" – see WP:MEDPOP.) (MEDRS)

  Even if it is not a medical topic, it is very much a scientific one or at the very least related to science and of scientific interest. Therefore, the spirit of specific regulations is that we are strongly discouraged against citing popular press for topics requiring scientific knowledge, which I thought was obvious for a site like Wikipedia.

  PS. Also, see the WP:MEDFAQ, section "Why can't I use articles from the popular press?", that further explains authors' intent (even if you argue MEDRS does not apply).Szmenderowiecki (talk) 20:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  Applying the same level of rigour to all scientific fields would be consistent. But then you need to open an RfC at WP:SCIRS to make it an official policy/guideline. Note that a lot of editors who supported the RfC argued the opposite position that medicine is special and should be treated specially. Alaexis_¿question? 15:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

  These are both good points, so I'll address each specifically.

  I am aware that WP:SCIRS is not ideal, but I only referred to that fragment, which did not cause significant controversy as read from discussions. More technical points, were strongly contested (or editors felt their explanation was not good enough) and that was the reason it failed promotion to a guideline, but the general spirit of the regulation (as I hope I have recounted more or less correctly) was largely sustained, which I believe is enough for the purposes of my argument. Unfortunately, that paragraph alone cannot constitute a guideline by itself, so we are with what we are.

  As for my colleagues' arguments who argue that medicine should be treated in priority, I speculate it has to do with four things: first, that MEDRS is a guideline while SCIRS is an essay (and obviously we refer more to guidelines and policies than essays); second, that indeed more is at jeopardy if we promote BS medical "advice" than misconstrue the meaning of some physical/chemical equation (that said, it doesn't mean that faulty science is not harmful); third, that there is way more BS medical "advice" than there is BS, say, chemistry advice (for the simple reason that there is not enough demand for the latter), fourth, that the discussion is about medicine, so people tend to stick to the medical aspect only. It is not to say that I don't agree with their arguments - I find a lot of them sensible enough and I placed my support !vote for a reason - it's that we miss the further perspective - even if we don't deal with medicine, we deal with science. So it might even be that we wouldn't need to write a disease's origins straight into this supplement but still conclude we need stricter selection of resources and heightened scrutiny. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:15, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose As far as i'm concerned, epidemiology is not a biomedical science which can be treated like any other: it is based on cooperation with authorities to provide data, without which a serious and concise epidemiological investigation can't be done. We need more oppenness to obtain truth, we need to report what reliable sources are saying and inform readers about what's happening and what happened without filters--Francesco espo (talk) 22:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC) — Francesco espo (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Comment It seems we've finally reached something resembling a consensus, I know it's not purely a numbers game but the significant majority of the responses and arguments seem to be in opposition to "unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information" (with the case being made that with that designation, MEDRS should be strongly preferred or required for citations). Can we make a firm, official decision for this? I'm growing increasingly concerned that this will backslide into another WP:SEALION situation- and I'm still seeing the "MEDRS required" argument being used to bludgeon users on other Talk pages. It would be good to get some closure on this particular issue so we can constructively move forward. @JPxG: that was a beautiful argument, and I'm always amazed with what Kanye West and the Rotary Club are capable of. Thank you all. CatDamon (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

  I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the RfC (simply because this doesn't formally require MEDRS doesn't mean we can just source it to John Doe with no scientific expertise writing in Random Newspaper - other policies still apply), and if I need to link to this post about the dubious SEALION claims ever again... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Note to all claiming that "origins are not biomedical information and have no relevance to this", I beg to differ, strongly: "COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is associated with beliefs on the origin of the novel coronavirus in the UK and Turkey"; also here with a summary from the author. Of course, a single study, to be taken with a grain of salt, but claiming that simply because this doesn't pose an immediate threat to life, unlike some other biomedical information, is not reason to exclude it from very similar standards, at least for the time being. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:33, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
  • The study doesn't claim causality, and for good reason; there are ample third variable problem concerns with a study of that methodology owing to the lack of robust controls. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:40, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

    I agree with Mikehawk10 here.

    While the study's results have been replicated here, but here (p.8) the results show that people believing in man-made origin in general were more twice as willing to vaccinate themselves (but not if they believed the virus was released in order to force people to take vaccines). From a cursory analysis, it would mean that the correlation doesn't even hold for all countries, let alone a causal link. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 08:27, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as redundant. The origin of Covid-19 has nothing to do with human health or anything from WP:BMI. It's highly controversial topic that is mostly of the political origin rather than a medical one. We don't need more WP:PAGs that repeat what other policies like WP:SECONDARY say. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Discussion

Talking as a biotechnology professional, I’d like to point out that epidemiology in specific and public health in the general does not draw only from biological sciences the way medicine does [15], so I'm not sure this page is the right venue for this RFC. It is clear from the votes above that the application of WP:MEDRS to COVID-19 origins in specific and disease outbreaks in the general require further clarification. I would suggest a part II and III, as follows.

II: Which aspects of COVID-19 etiology should fall under WP:MEDRS?

• Species of the reservoir and/or intermediary host of the etiological agent
• Evolutionary history of the virus
• Identity and provenance of virus’s most recent ancestor/s
• Place, time, and mechanism of the transmission of the first human infection/s
• Insert other etiological aspect
• All of the above

III: As per WP:MEDASSES and WP:BESTSOURCES, how should sources be assessed to put the claim in WP:WIKIVOICE of a scientific consensus on COVID-19 origins for any given spillover hypothesis?

• Only papers with supporting forensic or phylogenetic evidence are enough to make such a claim, as with most disease outbreaks.
• Any papers with expert opinions weighing the probabilities of different origin hypotheses are enough to make such a claim, and Source bias isn’t a thing.
• Any papers from the Vatican or the WHO, regardless of whether supporting evidence is provided or not, because they are exalted by the hand of God and unsullied by the petty politicking of men.

Please suggest any obvious and not-so-obvious amendments to the above text so that we can have a nice WP:RFCNEUTRAL statement. CutePeach (talk) 15:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• For a proper RfC request please suggest a specific change/improvement on WP:BMI page. This should be something general and do not mention COVID-19. My very best wishes (talk) 16:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, I'd suggest adding behavioral evidence to your list. If someone hides evidence, is that fact evidence? Adoring nanny (talk) 17:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Related what do we think of the recent edit [16] by User:Alexbrn that narrows the definition of "historical"? See the discussion on "Historical content" above. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:15, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I just reverted that, because the definition of historical seems to be contested in the current RfC, and that editor seems to have particularly strong views about it. Geogene (talk) 04:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  Very few people are trying to argue that this is "historical" information. The primary argument against is that historical or not, MEDRS doesn't apply because of other reasons. Key word being historical or not - as such it can be non-historical information. There is no problem with Alexbrn's edit because it codifies what some people here seem to struggle to comprehend - something that is in the past is not necessarily historical information - especially if recent or still under active investigation. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:41, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, this had nothing do to with the current "lab leak" fuss, but was prompted by other problems we've had in the past (IIRC, somebody arguing that a newspaper source for COVID being rampant in California in 2019 was okay because it was "historical"). And recently an editor has thought an 1879 cocaine experiment was not historical. This was merely an exercise to nip that kind of misunderstanding in the bud, but of course the lab leak insanity means certain editors see it through that lens and suspect some dark conspiracy. Hey ho! I suggest when the circus has moved on this will need revisiting by the medical editors left sweeping up. Alexbrn (talk)

  Alexbrn, you have mentioned this California thing twice. If you are thinking of our discussion from, I think, late last year, I will clarify that neither the editor who originally added the information (to the best of my recall as I no longer remember the specific article) nor myself said anything about "rampant" or even proven. Rather the content involved a study released around December of last year that found evidence that Red Cross blood samples collected in the Dec 2019-Jan 2020 time period contained antibodies identified as SARS-CoV-2 reactive. This peer reviewed study was widely covered in RS press (NPR, WSJ etc). Here it is on the Red Cross website[[17]]. My concern at the time was similar to what others have discussed here, it felt like a few editors were using MEDRS to block any mention of what they felt was "fringe". Since it had been decided that COVID couldn't have been in the US at the time any study that showed evidence to the contrary could not be in Wikipedia. The actual study is here[[18]]. The findings of this study would have to be treated carefully and could not be presented in a way that would suggest they were conclusive. However, that doesn't mean they should be kept or only allowed in as an example of FRINGE research. However, if you were thinking of something else my apologies for the confusion. Springee (talk) 17:02, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• @Springee: I'd suggest this is a good example where assessment as BMI/MEDRS would differ from the more general WP:PAG of WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:RS. It's not really about WP:FRINGE, it's about WP:MEDPRI. For a biomedical claim, wikipedia would be unlikely to repeat the claims of the single primary study. Or, at a minimum, would be highly aware of contextualizing that lack of replication. This is a significantly different threshold from mere notability of significant news coverage of a non-BMI study. In other words, if it's not BMI we can mention it cautiously, if it is BMI we should not include it in the article at all. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:14, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• historicity depends on the nature of the information. For information about medical conditions in the past ewquires historical as well as biomedical knowledge, and much of it invovles matters about which there is no consensus, though many contradictory views. As the contradictory views can appear in even the best sources, the profession that is qualified to deal with them is not medicine but history,, where it is a routine matter to deal with incompatible sources and opinions.. There is a relevant specialty, medical history, but not all matter that arise here will have been dealt with by modern medical history sources.. Equal nonsense can result from reliance on olde rmedical sources, of current medical sources written by those unskiled in history, or historians unprepared to deal properly with the medicine. DGG ( talk ) 15:52, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  You see this with a lot of aspects of "big picture" public health. Healthcare policy or public health administration are their own specialties, distinct from their non-healthcare cousins. Even where a specific issue might not be clinical in nature, you still need someone who specializes in the healthcare version of that given specialty. Hyperion35 (talk) 16:47, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Going back to user CutePeach approach of listing examples of information that is clearly not biomedical, this is a good starting point:

These next five examples are indisputable non-BMI:

From staunch-opposition editors:

1. the lab has a poor record for biosecurity
2. A claim that a researcher accidently dropped a flask
3. whether politician X made statement Y

From WP:BMI#What_is_not_biomedical_information?

1. Which company invented a medicine
2. How much money this disease cost society last year

From my own ideas:

1. Which organization or laboratory is investigating the virus' origin
2. What laws regulate related biosafety protocols of labs Forich (talk) 05:38, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

What is MEDRS for?

I'm seeing disagreement on this question. There are many comments above along the lines of the reason for WP:MEDRS is to make sure that people won't get bad health information from Wikipedia. However, there are some that say the opposite:

• And it needs to be understood that MEDRS is not in place out of concern for readers' health, because Wikipedia is not intended for medical advice. MEDRS exists because biomedical topics are incredibly difficult and complex, and it is well documented that popular press, even normally reliable sources like the Washington Post or NY Times, frequently get things wrong. --Hyperion35
• If it takes biomedical research to answer, it's a biomedical question. Really, the argument that MEDRS is only here to prevent bad medical advice is rather specious. Yes, that's the stated rationale at the beginning of the page, which makes sense because it's the obvious reason to have a stringent guideline, but that's not where the story ends. The fundamental issue is that misinformation about health and medicine is dangerous, and it's our responsibility to take precautions. --XOR'easter
• The origins of a human disease seems like clear biomedical information to me. I also prefer a broad rather than narrow interpretation of WP:MEDRS, to help keep misinformation out of the encyclopedia. Novem Linguae

A couple more "it's about medical advice" comments:

• I think we need to go back to the rationale behind MEDRS - that some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health. --ProcSock
• The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading medical advice from being introduced in the project. It's not a means to its own end, or a "privilege" granted to medical articles and medical publications. It adresses a specific problem, i.e. that readers use Wikipedia as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis and prescription. --JBchrch

So, which is it? Both make compelling claims, but I'm none the wiser on what MEDRS is for, so I figured it would be helpful to stage that discussion here. Otherwise, Support and Oppose are operating off of different premises.

As it stands, the lede of WP:MEDRS does seem to support the "medical advice" version: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. (Emphasis mine.) If there are broader reasons (previously agreed upon), then the wording in the lede should be updated to reflect that; if there should be broader reasons but that has not yet been agreed upon, then that may merit its own discussion over there. (I've put a link at Wikipedia_talk:MEDRS to this discussion; although this is a question about MEDRS, the immediate application is to the ongoing survey on this page.) SSSheridan (talk) 01:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I also have a bit of a subtler question on this point. I have argued above that there's an ontological difference between a minority viewpoint vs. the existence of a minority viewpoint. I don't know if there's a Wikipedia term or policy for this. As an example, the September 11 article mentions the conspiracy theories, not in the "Attacks" section, but in the "Cultural influence" section -- because they are indeed culturally significant. I have argued that "where did the virus come from?" may be biomedical, but "who's talking about lab leak?" is not. Whether or not the latter is notable is another question; the point is just that it falls outside the MEDRS bubble. Or so I've argued. Is there a policy (in MEDRS or otherwise) that the "no medical advice" doctrine also extends to suppressing mention of dissenting views/conspiracy theories in health-related articles? That is, is there a policy that the Vaccine article should try harder to avoid mention of dissenting views than, say, the Climate change article? Some of the arguments against mention of lab leak have given me that impression, and I don't know if there's policy on it.

tl;dr: are there broader "MEDRS-like protections" on health-related articles? Or is the non-biomedical information within a biomedical article subject only to the standard notability/due-weight/etc. guidelines? SSSheridan (talk) 01:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is arguing against the inclusion of "calls for investigation" in articles. The only issue is WP:UNDUE and WP:WEIGHT, i.e. how much to describe them without spending too much details on it. This is of course a difficult thing when the calls for investigation seem to be ostensibly mainly focusing on what is demmed by scientific sources to be very unlikely, but is widely reported in the popular press nonetheless. As I've said, there are actual real-life impacts stemming from virus origin misinformation; and there are comments from others showing that belief in misinformation and conspiracy theories ("the scientific establishment wants to hide this from you" or the like, which is a frequent line of lab leak proponents on Twitter [hypothetical continued pseudo-reasoning: "why would you trust scientists for X if they're trying to hide Y from you"...]; at least from my limited experience in that domain) of all kinds has been shown to diminish confidence in experts in places where it actually matters in a biomedical perspective. This is a hard spot, but I think that maybe keeping the two branches on separate approaches (accurately dealing with the lab leak hypothesis proper as a FRINGE viewpoint in the scientific realm; while describing the political aspect and the calls for investigation a bit more broadly [while not losing the apparent disconnect between the political/popular and the scientific discourses]), as coherent with levels of coverage they receive in the specific sources which have relevant expertise in the respective areas, seems the appropriate solution. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@SSSheridan: It's a common misconception that the scope of MEDRS is articles. It's not, it's certain kinds of content in any article (the situation is analogous to WP:BLP). To quote: "Biomedical information requires MEDRS sourcing that complies with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not." Alexbrn (talk) 06:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

My reading of WP:MEDRS is that it defines its own purpose when it says that Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. It seems to be giving a rationale that the policy is put in place because Wikipedia isn't meant to provide medical advice, that people use it for medical advice/health information anyway, and that we have an extra responsibility to be accurate on topics of health because, whether we like it or not, people use Wikipedia for health advice. I think the scope of the particular policy doesn't go beyond that; WP:SOURCETYPES describes the most reliable sorts of sources in other contexts. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not give medical advice, so the prevention of implying faulty advice is one important aspect of MEDRS. But so are many others, which is why the scope is WP:Biomedical information. To quote: "Biomedical information requires MEDRS sourcing that complies with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not." That is guideline text. We need to ensure Wikipedia carries accurate and well-sourced content on a wide variety of "health" topics (for which dodgy sourcing can exist), including: anatomy and physiology, cell biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics and molecular biology, immunology, and bioinformatics. The WP:SCIRS essay suggests a similar approach to all scientific content, and may be of interest ... Alexbrn (talk) 04:58, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Stopping with the aspect of "faulty advice" feels like trying to do Constitutional law using only the Preamble. XOR'easter (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for opening this debate. I just have one question for the colleagues who support the idea that MEDRS has a broader purpose than preventing bad medical advice. Do you support the extension of MEDRS standards to all science-related articles? Because to be frank, that's the only version of this argument that makes sense to me. If you think that ordinary WP:RSes are unable to cover scientific research accurately and that only MEDRS sources are accurate with respect to scientific matters, then surely you think this is applicable to all science, not only medicine? This is not a "gotcha" question. I am genuinely trying to understand why proponents of the Broader Purpose MEDRS school of thought would consider WP:RS to be insufficient only in the field on medical research. JBchrch talk 14:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Is anybody proposing that MEDRS be extended to all science topics (that is an incredibly broad field)? In practice WP:SCIRS is often invoked but this is probably a question extended to "all" other scientists from chemists to physicists to astronomers to geologists to computer scientists to (etc etc etc). It's a common misunderstanding that MEDRS is some kind of completely distinct sourcing standard from RS. All serious topics and especially exceptional claims require appropriate high-quality sourcing, and MEDRS is a codification of that in one field. Alexbrn (talk) 14:41, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I genuinely don't see how "the extension of MEDRS standards to all science-related articles" might follow from the premise that MEDRS applies even when medical advice isn't explicitly being spelled out. As Alexbrn says above, MEDRS is a codification of what it means to be RS in the field of MED. XOR'easter (talk) 15:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• It tells: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge.... This is all great, except I would replace one word: biomedical -> medical. Accordingly, this page should be titled not "Wikipedia:Biomedical information", but Wikipedia:Medical information. If the intention was covering health information, then it should cover only medical subjects. Sure, all biology is important for medicine (just as technology, chemistry, psychology, etc.), but they should not be covered by WP:MEDRS. My very best wishes (talk) 21:24, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Once again, I am concerned that there is a concerted effort by a few users to intentionally "not get" the arguments being made here (and fairly overwhelming so) in favor of separating the topics that do, in fact, require MEDRS (i.e. technical topics like viral genome, etc.) and those that do not (such as tracking communication, observing actions and statements by state actors, etc.). Saying that the lab leak hypothesis is FRINGE at this point is, in itself, a FRINGE position to hold. Both natural origin and lab leak remain viable hypotheses, and its shameful that we haven't acknowledged the consensus yet- and put the best available information out there. I've also been meaning to comment on WP:NOLABLEAK, as I've seen that being used as a crutch far too many times. To say that the fringe medical journals (with the exception of the outdated "Immunity" article from May 2020) listed are credible (while also claiming that the WSJ, WaPo, FT, Robert Redfield, etc. are not) is preposterous. Look at their impact factor, including something like "The Postgraduate Medical Journal" (IF 1.11) as a high quality, credible source to lean on is just....not how this medical journal world works. It's cherry-picking and you can find whatever you want in the world of low-prestige journals. I really am trying to take these arguments seriously but a few users seem to keep stalling and stonewalling, and its frustrating. Can we please wrap this up? I think we've reached sufficient consensus to take the lab leak hypothesis out of misinformation. Thank you all. CatDamon (talk) 22:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC) — CatDamon (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. NightHeron (talk) 22:45, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

  Hi CatDamon, I think you may be misunderstanding the lab leak theory landscape. This smells like a "no true scotsman" situation, because there are many multiple scenarios proposed by "lableakers." Including: Intentional leaks, accidental leaks by mad scientists who were "playing god" and also accidental leaks by people who were sampling viruses in the wild, acting as a vector like you might imagine a veterinarian or wet market salesman. I personally would characterize all of these but the last one as "misinformation," because they are all over based on unproven assumptions and conspiracy theories. Even the last one is based on the idea that the lab is covering it up. None of these theories are based on any proof. No new evidence of anything higher quality than "infowars" has appeared since last May. Seriously I would love to see such evidence if it exists. That's why we call it "misinformation." Because it's being amplified by groups using it for politics. Are there legitimate scientists calling for more investigations? Yes, and that's why we cover those in the correct articles. Where else would you have us cover it? And do you have WP:RS in the appropriate level of verifiability to back it up? And if you think I'm straw manning about the misinformation lab theories, check out this post I made on Reddit last year, and all the people who came out of the woodwork to tell me I didn't understand basic viral biochemistry even though I have a PhD in the topic.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:29, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment, with a deep sigh MEDRS is a reliable source guideline, specifying how certain sources should be prioritized and used. That is all that it is. The actual MEDRS page says that it is to be used for biomedical topics, and those topics are expanded and explained on the BIOMED page. So MEDRS is about sources, BIOMED is about when MEDRS source rules are required. Quoting one sentence from the MEDRS page about health advice is utterly ridiculous, irrelevant, and bordering on bad faith, especially when used as a means of bypassing and ignoring what BIOMED says. The bludeoning here is when people keep quoting one sentence from MEDRS, again and again, instead of actually reading and understanding BIOMED and what it says about when we should be using MEDRS. This is not difficult, it is not complicated, and I am getting sick and tired of this pointless wikilawyering bullshit. Hyperion35 (talk) 22:48, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
  • It's hard to remember the last time I saw so much focus on a single part of a single sentence. And I think I'm pretty accustomed to the usual level of rules-lawyering (I mean, I hang out at AfD). When the question is, "Should we change the phrasing of this thing?" and the responses are "we must adhere to the exact phrasing of this other thing", it seems like something important has been missed. There are plenty of medical topics that are so technical and obscure it is implausible that anyone would try to get amateur advice out of them, but MEDRS still applies to them. XOR'easter (talk) 23:42, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
    • When the question is, "Should we change the phrasing of this thing?" and the responses are "we must adhere to the exact phrasing of this other thing" Well, the "thing" is an essay that interprets that "other thing" (a policy) so I'm not sure why this would confuse you. Geogene (talk) 00:08, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
      • WP:MEDRS is not a WP:POLICY, and this is not an WP:ESSAY; rather they're a WP:GUIDELINE and WP:SUPPLEMENTAL respectively. Alexbrn (talk) 04:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
        • Oh. Okay. I'll be sure to remember that, since it is of undeniable relevance to the point at hand. Geogene (talk) 04:36, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
          • It is, since you were handing out a sarcastic edit summary about editors being confused about the details. Getting the details right is quite important when considering the text of the WP:PAGs. Alexbrn (talk) 04:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
            • Did you notice that PAGs stands collectively for Policies and Guidelines? It's not always important distinction, as you know. You're just continuing an argument that you know serves no purpose. Geogene (talk) 04:47, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
      • Perhaps I can clarify my comment. It seems to me that getting hung up on the exact phrasing of a guideline is a poor place to start an argument from when the question at hand is whether phrasing in that guideline or a supplement thereto should be modified. (All the more so when the phrasing on which the argument depends is reasonably taken to be a rhetorical preamble, or leadup to the important part as Masem said above.) When the foundation of an argument is exactly the kind of material that is currently up for debate, the whole exercise seems shaky. Not invalid, necessarily, but questionable. Usually, even when I disagree with the final result of a discussion, I can still say that the process was good — the evidence considered was all pertinent, etc. I'm less comfortable saying that now. XOR'easter (talk) 16:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
        • What is the difference between "getting hung up on the exact phrasing" and "interpreting"? I'm not aware of any way to interpret a document that doesn't involve reading what it says. jp×g 19:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

References

MEDRS says itself, here, that its purpose is not to cover everything associated with something medical. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2021 (UTC)