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This matter is an indictment of student editing and their so-called supervision. [[User:Axl|<b style="color:#808000">Axl</b>]] <span style="color:#3CB371">¤</span> [[User talk:Axl|<small style="color:#808000">[Talk]</small>]] 13:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
This matter is an indictment of student editing and their so-called supervision. [[User:Axl|<b style="color:#808000">Axl</b>]] <span style="color:#3CB371">¤</span> [[User talk:Axl|<small style="color:#808000">[Talk]</small>]] 13:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
==[[Draft:Dan Riskin]]==
need opinions on whether to move this article main or not?..thank you--[[User:Ozzie10aaaa|Ozzie10aaaa]] ([[User talk:Ozzie10aaaa|talk]]) 18:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Revision as of 18:08, 1 December 2016

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List of archives


FAC round 2

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

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

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

Caries

Toothdecay

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

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


  • article[2] needs more editor help/edits, for references, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:20, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why so many citations ???

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

Isn't that too many citations???

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

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

US Federal Trade Commission announces requirement for disclaimers on homeopathic "medicines"

See https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/996984/p114505_otc_homeopathic_drug_enforcement_policy_statement.pdf I wonder if this will have an effect on articles here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:10, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

should have been done long ago([3] ...should be included as ref in such articles)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:43, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's an open question whether that's going to have the effect that most editors here would like.[4] WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested edit on Influenza vaccine page

Hello, I posted a comment to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Influenza_vaccine. I want to make sure that I am interpreting the results of the systematic review properly as I propose a change to the current version of the wiki article. If you have a chance, please let me know your opinion. Thanks very much. JenOttawa (talk) 13:17, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:18, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I tried my hand at a revision to add in new the reference. If you have a chance, let me know what you think. Thanks JenOttawa (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[5]very good--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:17, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lead in drug articles

A request for comment has been made at the above link. Your input is welcome. Boghog (talk) 09:36, 20 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]



more opinions(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Chloramphenicol and gray baby syndrome

An IP has expressed concern that our article about Neonatal conjunctivitis mentions the use of chloramphenicol for treatment, given the risk of gray baby syndrome when this antibiotic is given to infants. I'm guessing this would only be a risk for systemic administration of chloramphenicol, whereas conjuntivitis would be treated topically. But I didn't want to revert the IP without confirmation from someone with more medical knowledge than me. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 08:01, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Based on this review/commentary plus what we know about absorption and idiosyncratic drug reactions, the best we can say is that it's a potential risk. — soupvector (talk) 12:12, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ratio of fatty acids in different foods

Can I request a second (third, fourth) opinion on Ratio of fatty acids in different foods. To me, not only is this an obvious indiscriminate collection of information, and a huge violation of WP:MEDRS, but it's packed with weaselly-worded dubious health claims. (The lead manages the impressive feat of only consisting of two sentences, each of which completely contradicts the other.) However, it's survived in this form for a few years now, so possibly other editors don't see an issue with it. ‑ Iridescent 12:24, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the lead sentence to agree with a recent review; the page is dubious - tilting toward WP:SYNTH. — soupvector (talk) 15:36, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is a whole slew of fatty acid articles that needs fixing up. Has been on my to-do list for ages. and yes that is the worst one. Jytdog (talk) 10:54, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In fairness, fatty acids are always going to be a problem area; it's very hard to convey "scientists agree that they are significant, but disagree on what the significance actually is" within Wikipedia's model without descending into 'teach the controversy' woo. TBH, my issue with this particular article is at least as much with the sprawling table, as with the questionable "good vs bad fat" speculation presented as fact. ‑ Iridescent 04:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edit on Sarcopenia article

Hi I'm new to editing on wikipedia and wanted to get some feedback on a recent edit on this Sarcopenia article under the classification section. Thanks Danagg12 (talk) 14:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

if your referring to [6] then [7] is ok, as its a practice guideline...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:33, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category help - Category:Monoclonal antibodies versus Category:Therapeutic antibodies

My sense is that most of the pages currently categorized under Category:Monoclonal antibodies really ought to be categorized under Category:Therapeutic antibodies. Populating Category:Monoclonal antibodies with recombinant antibodies used as drugs gives the sense that Monoclonal antibodies are chiefly relevant as drugs (which they're not). NickCT (talk) 15:24, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The solution is not obvious to me (as a clinician and immunologist). The two categories do not overlap completely - there are members of each that are not members of the other. — soupvector (talk) 15:30, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Soupvector: - Seems to me that Category:Monoclonal antibodies should definitely not be a subcategory of Category:Therapeutic antibodies. I think that sort of implies that all monoclonal antibodies are therapeutic antibodies.
I could be wrong here. I'm not super familiar with categorization rules. NickCT (talk) 20:04, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the categories are not exclusive. If something is a therapeutic antibody and also a monoclonal antibody, then both would apply. I don't see a compelling reason to avoid the overlap. — soupvector (talk) 20:47, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are certainly monoclonal antibodies that are never used in therapeutic applications (e.g., the monoclonal antibodies used in home pregnancy tests). Polyclonal antivenins are going to be therapeutic but not monoclonal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Soupvector: - I may need to polish up on my understanding of the categorization rules. I would have thought if an article were categorized as a "Monoclonal Antibody" and "Monoclonal Antibody" is a subcat of "Therapeutic Antibody", then by implication the article would have something to do with therapeutic antibodies. I may have that wrong. Let me brush up on policy. NickCT (talk) 11:05, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh - sorry - I was responding to the content of the question, not the structure of the categories. These two sets intersect, but neither is a subset of the other. I think WAID is saying the same thing. I'm not sure how the categories should be structured to account for the reality that they are both subsets of antibodies, with substantial overlap. — soupvector (talk) 12:20, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Soupvector: - re "neither is a subset of the other" - Yes. I think that's the point I was trying to make. Category:Monoclonal antibodies should definitely not be a subcategory of Category:Therapeutic antibodies. NickCT (talk) 02:25, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with that statement. I don't think this will solve the "problem" with which you started the thread - it's likely that Category:Monoclonal antibodies will continue to contain a predominance of therapeutic antibodies. — soupvector (talk) 02:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Soupvector: - Yes. Well I guess one potential solution would be to remove Category:Monoclonal antibodies from Category:Therapeutic antibodies, then just add the Category:Therapeutic antibodies to all the articles in Category:Monoclonal antibodies that it correctly applies to. I think this is right solution. Unfortunately, this is going to require bulk category addition, which isn't something I've done before. I think Wikipedia:HotCat can do this pretty quickly.... I'll look into it.
Anyways, appreciate your thinking through this with me soupvector! NickCT (talk) 01:22, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

mdcalc.com

A user, User: Mxdlvn, has been adding ELs to articles, and using as a ref, sites within mdcalc.com.

Examples:

They have been doing this off and on for several years now.

They seem to be pretty savvy about diagnosis, per edits like this (badly reffed but well intentioned), and same here.

Generally their pattern is add some content, then the EL to mdcalc.

If you review their talk page you will see that various folks have reached out to them, and they are not responsive; they have used a talk page twice, ever.

Bottom line, is mdcalc.com a useful EL or should we delete the ELs and refs to it? Should we add it to the spam blacklist?

-- Jytdog (talk) 00:28, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not aware of any unique value of mdcalc - have used it off and on for years - there are many competitors in that space. — soupvector (talk) 00:40, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I don't think the site is actively harmful, there isn't much evidence for editorial oversight beyond the website creators, nor could I find much in the way of reviews of the site. So it doesn't look like an RS by WP standards. The Medscape calculators might have a better shot at reliability. Blacklist seems like a too-strong stance, but also I don't see a compelling case for this being the online medical calculator of choice at WP. --Mark viking (talk) 01:42, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:External links do not have to be WP:Reliable sources. This is the kind of thing that you have to use your best judgment for: Would some readers of the particular article in question find this link interesting/educational/valuable? If so, then leave it alone. Is there a better one for that particular page (using whatever value you have for "better", e.g., works in more web browsers, has less advertising, offers multiple languages, whatever)? Then swap that one in. We don't have to use the same website for all calculators in all the articles, but it's generally preferable to have only a single calculator linked in any given article; for example, readers will benefit from having a BMI calculator linked in the BMI article, but they aren't really going to benefit from having a dozen different ones. (Since the editor has only touched two articles this entire calendar year, there's basically no chance of getting it added to the spam blacklist.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jytdog:If they've engaged in WP:LINKSPAM for years now for one particular website -- and have also ignored talk page notices repeatedly about same behavior -- is that not blockable? Sagecandor (talk) 06:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
maybe but i posted here to focus on the content issue; if folks think the link is valuable we shouldn't consider it spam. Jytdog (talk) 06:52, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If people above said there are better links instead, maybe just replace them? Then, if the guy comes back to put his preferred links in instead, again, we know his true purpose is a spammer to only add WP:LINKSPAM. Sagecandor (talk) 06:57, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
my intial question was real - for all i know some people might find great value in the ref. and in any case it is good to get consensus before making moves that affect multiple articles. am still looking for more input, as there is not really a clear consensus to me yet and this has only been posted less than a day. Jytdog (talk) 10:54, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with both Soupvector and Mark_viking -- should address the issue by repeal and replace the links in question. Sagecandor (talk) 14:16, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what we'd replace with - I would welcome suggestion of a "better" resource than mdcalc (criteria WAID suggested make sense to me) but it's ultimately a question of what's best for the readers of the article at hand. — soupvector (talk) 14:33, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, just wary if a single account is using the site for WP:LINKSPAM purposes, especially if resulting in Web promotion. Sagecandor (talk) 14:39, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Medcalc is somewhat useful and an okay EL IMO. No strong feelings. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:53, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is not LINKSPAM. This is apparently a good-faith medical professional who occasionally adds a relevant link to a web-based calculator that s/he uses. And by "occasionally", I mean that we're talking about someone who not only adds unrelated information but who has made fewer total edits in nearly three years of editing than you've made in the five days since you created your account.
(If you are still looking for the templates, try {{Alternative account}} or {{User alternative account name}}.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:55, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We have at least one current systematic review (at PMID 27154483) which looked the HERDOO2 score, the Vienna prediction model and the DASH score. It says that "none of the models can be considered ready for use". LeadSongDog come howl! 18:01, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Concern with Wikidata redux

After the thing discussed above i put changes to wikidata on my watchlist. there was a change to the entry for parkinsons so I looked it over. all kinds of weird drugs were listed there as treatments, like Filgrastim. I removed a bunch. garbage in, garbage out... Jytdog (talk) 11:12, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

it is best if we all(or as many as possible of us) watchlist wikidata for the issue(s) you mentioned...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how long i will keep watching wikidata. i don't have a lot of interest in curating a database but i do want to understand it better, especially as we seem to be moving more and more toward integrating freely with it. i have had concerns for a long time that there is a lot of garbage in Wikidata and i will be posting here sometimes when i find things I think are notable, like the one above. Jytdog (talk) 20:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The point of Wikidata is to make facts available to all of the Wikipedia projects. You could argue that as the largest Wikipedia by far, the English Wikipedia editors could do a lot to spread information beyond the English-speaking world by improving the reliability of the 24,500,000 items in the Wikidata database. We could spend a little time adding references to information there, particularly for articles that we have an interest in. Magnus has created a gadget that allows you to drag and drop references from an en-wp article onto its Wikidata entries that I've found makes the process far quicker and more intuitive. See Wikidata -> Preferences -> Gadgets -> Drag'n'drop with a quick visual tutorial at "Drag'n'drop Wikipedia references to Wikidata" on YouTube. That not only makes the data more reliable for us to re-use, but also makes reliable data available for the other 280+ language Wikipedias and third-parties. --RexxS (talk) 00:33, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. the next video that youtube presented to me was a training video, where the instructor, who is teaching people how to edit WD, notes empty fields in a WD entry, jumps to the related WP article, finds something about those fields there, and types it into WikiData. The stuff he grabbed was unsourced, and the instructor -- the instructor - didn't even pause to look to see if the words were sourced, much less if the source was reliable. Horrible. I worry that a lot of the stuff in Wikidata got there this way - that people just run around sucking words into WikiData with no regard for sourcing. Jytdog (talk) 01:21, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And in this video, Lydia Pintscher spends twenty minutes teaching an undergrad class how to create an item in WD, and they do an entry on a person. They get going and very soon in, she says, "I have been told this person is a composer" and types it in. Same thing with citizenship, member of a band the person is in, etc.. Deeper in she encourages people to go around in WD and add stuff if they see it missing. No mention of sourcing. Not a single word. So this lack of concern for whether words being entered into WD are true or false or even verifiable is apparently baked in very deep. Jytdog (talk) 01:44, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you've got the memo about how we now inhabit a post-truth world. Get with the programme, man. Alexbrn (talk) 04:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You can see the problem that many folks who spend time at Wikidata haven't spent their editing career trying to hold back a flood of POV-pushers and paid editors on the encyclopedia. It's easy for us to tell others that sourcing is the most important element in editing, but we've learned that lesson the hard way. For your edification, you can paste {{#invoke:Sandbox/RexxS/WdRefs|seeRefs}} into any section of an article and preview it; it will tabulate the Wikidata claims related to the article and the corresponding Wikidata references (if any). I always find it disappointing how many items are unreferenced or "imported from xyz Wikipedia", but you can understand why that is. I suppose it will only be when regular Wikipedia editors decide to curate the Wikidata entries corresponding the articles they care about that the situation will improve. --RexxS (talk) 21:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata new developments

I wish to confirm all the criticism stated above about Wikidata by Jytdog, RexxS, Ozzie10aaaa, and Alexbrn. Wikidata's current practice of permitted uncited content is a major problem. In the long term, lack of sourcing is intolerable. In the short term, I understand that projects need time to develop, but I think anyone would be right to worry about how long poor quality information can be tolerated and how much that poor quality information influences Wikipedia and Wikimedia content readers.

Although I have trouble imagining how to reconcile the good and bad with Wikidata, the power of the good things which I see amaze me. I also am continually surprised by the pace of development of Wikidata tools and applications, which I feel come quickly and often and with a complexity of possibility that I feel is monumental even if I do not understand them. I cannot articulate the significance of this, for example, but perhaps someone would look at this with me -

These are SPARQL queries at https://query.wikidata.org. I think that many WP:MED supporters would be interested to know that query.wikidata.org exists, and might like to check what it can do. I suggest starting with the "famous cats" query. That one is easy to understand, because it asks for all the Wikidata items that are "instance of" (which is property 31) "cat" (which is item 146). The other queries are more complicated, like "show me the breakdown of causes of death for every royal person in history", "show me the gestation time of every animal in the graphical format that I choose", or something like "map all the ABC which are not XYZ".

About the sourcing - quality control is coming. Wikidata has about 300,000 items for references. When the time comes that meta:WikiCite allows more, then I expect all 60 million of PubMed entries will be among the first to be imported, but with Wikidata currently only being 25 million entries, it would overwhelm the community there to have so many citations now. Part of the reason why Wikidata is not currently using more citations is because they do not want to manually manage a few hundred thousand like English Wikipedia - the project is anticipating grabbing PubMed, the Chinese ones, the German ones, and then the table of contents for every book and magazine in the world. I just have no idea of when this will happen, but if anyone wants to see how it will look, check out the symptoms section of gout for example d:Q133087 then follow the reference. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:26, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

good info(will continue to watchlist wikidata)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:32, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Poster for Wikipedia in medical schools

Editing Wikipedia for medical school credit

Regulars on this board saw the September 2016 post about the "Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia" paper. The update is that Wikipedians made this poster to summarize and present that paper at the November 2016 Association of American Medical Colleges annual conference.

This poster is designed to be timeless so if anyone needs anything official looking to demonstrate the opportunity of using Wikipedia in a medical school in the next few years, then please remember that this poster exists to help anyone make the case for Wikipedia in classrooms.

The documentation for this classroom outreach project and this research are at WP:UCSF. Authors of this poster are

and again, the authors of the broader paper are those plus Bresler, David MD, MA; Leon, Armando MD; Maggio, Lauren PhD; Whitaker, Evans MD, MLIS; Orlowitz, Jake; Swisher, Valerie; Trotter, Fred; Ross, Will. We all need each other here! I <3 WikiProject Medicine. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:59, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

great (and informative)poster Blue Rasberry--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:13, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Newbie editing about falls in older adults

Hi everyone. I’m new to Wikipedia and still trying to figure out my way through the wiki world . I have a special interest in ageing. I have been adding some information to the Falls in older adults article, and really appreciate the feedback you have given me so far(on the definition section). Could you please give me some more feedback on my recent edits? English is not my first language, so I’m aware that my writing could be smoother.  Thank you very much! --MonWiki (talk) 20:38, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cochrane reviews are very good references to use, your edits look fine[8]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:55, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ozzie10aaaa: Thanks for your feedback.--MonWiki (talk) 11:06, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting articles about endogenous molecules used as drugs

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

  • Dopamine, norepinephrine, insulin, and cortisol already contain separate pages for the medication. If the leads of the other articles can't be revised to adequately reflect the biological aspects of these compounds in addition to the current information related to medical uses, then I think splitting them will be necessary. Some of them probably don't really need to be split based upon their size though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:05, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not now We had a sloppy process, a sloppy discussion, and there are some unanswered questions. In the case of testosterone, the discussion happened at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology#Proposal_to_split_testosterone_into_scientific_and_medical_articles, and Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. That is not okay. Discussions need to happen in one place. The split is tedious and makes it impossible to collect all the comments. When the testosterone split happened it influenced about 2000 links. The links in circulation are Testosterone (disambiguation), Testosterone (medication), and Testosterone (for the natural steroid). That's fine, but we need to establish a coherent rationale for determining the primary topic and that rationale needs to be backed with some data and consensus. We do not have that yet. I propose that before additional action is taken, someone draft a process for how this is supposed to work for the general case and why. It would be wise to use testosterone as a model and to go back to critics and get their buy in. This talk just happened in the past few weeks. This change applied to many articles will affect billions of pageview experiences in a given year, so this is a big deal that merits advance planning and discussion. I am ready to confirm that this is a worthy topic to consider and that I think if someone had a plan for the general case then that plan would attract thoughtful and constructive discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:08, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The central discussion was at Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. This "discussion" was not a discussion, but rather a link to the discussion. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, was not a discussion about if the split should take place, but a complaint about how the split was done that has subsequently been resolved. Boghog (talk) 05:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct that the discussion is not as I described but it is still a discussion that is related in some way, and part of the consequence of the proposal. There ought to be a cleaner more certain way to do this in the future. The process which is done should not trigger complaints anywhere. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:41, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is highly unlikely that any process around here will be completely free of complaints ;-) Most of the complaints were about redirects. They were being cleaned up, but just not fast enough for some editors. Another compliant is why we needed to do this experiment in the first place when it was obvious from the very beginning what the primary topic was. So one reasonable conclusion from this experience is that we should not do further tests (because of all the unnecessary redirects that are generated), but rather decide what the primary topic is based on consensus. Finally many of these problems would go away if the there wasn't such a rigid adherence to WP:PHARMOS. For example, why is it impossible to first state that a substance is a natural hormone/neurotransmitter that is also used as a drug? To state it is a drug that is also a hormone puts the cart before the horse. Also why not put function before medical uses? This order will make it a lot easier for readers to understand why the hormone is used as a drug. Boghog (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agree with this - in particular, the primacy of biology/physiology as a context for pharmacology, rather than the other way around. I was surprised by the precipitous split without consensus, but hope that was a learning experience. — soupvector (talk) 16:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I agree that the natural hormone should usually be mentioned before the drug, but I'm not sure about putting function before medical uses. I'd rather use editorial judgment to decide what the average (e.g., person without a university degree in medicine or even science) reader will actually understand. "<Hormone> is a fleedle sprotz genamecowit that is used to treat <common disease>" is not the best we can do for these readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Primary male sex hormone ≠ fleedle sports genamecowit. I agree that editorial judgment and common sense should always apply. Boghog (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In this example, and assuming that "primary sex hormone in males" is the alternative. One could equally write that "testosterone is the primary androgen receptor agonist in vertebrates", which is a more precise description of the function and has the additional benefit of not making the hormone seem like something that only males should have – but it wouldn't be either intelligible or relevant to normal people. My !vote is for writing what normal people care about and can understand. Function in simple words (e.g., "Primary male sex hormone") = good. Function in words that most people don't understand = bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, testosterone has important physiological roles in females as well as males. Nevertheless due to the higher concentration of testosterone in males, testosterone has a more profound effect on males. The reverse is true for estrogen in females. Further complicating matters is that testosterone is a biosynthetic precursor of estrogen. Finally both testosterone and estrogen have effects above and beyond those mediated by nuclear androgen and estrogen receptors. It is impossible to condense all these nuances in the lead paragraph. It is more practical to concentrate on the most important physiological roles in the lead paragraph and discuss the "second order perturbations" in the body of the article. Boghog (talk) 17:16, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand some of the reasons for splitting (different audiences), but am also against splitting such articles. Once in the circulation, epinephrine is the the same whether it arrived by intravenous injection or released from the adrenal medulla, and its actions on the body are the same. Medical uses and pharmacological modes of action are easily separated using subheadings, and the question of an appropriate lede should be able to be managed in a balanced way. There may be cases for splitting articles, and testosterone might be one because of the range of societal factors which influence its use and mis-use, but shouldn't create a precedent for other articles. Klbrain (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Klbrain have a look at epinephrine and its current structure. that is a mess. how do we structure that better with the two sets of content together? To be really concrete - think about where the Adverse effects section should go. It is just awkward where it is now. What do you think? Jytdog (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the specific question of the structure of epinephrine (response to Jytdog): it is currently undergoing significant changes as material moves in and out; much of this material has not been integrated, and you're right that a structural rethink is needed. I'd reduce the lede by about a half, as most of the material there is minor and better included in the body. I'd also move the physiology above the clinical uses, because the clinical uses make more sense to a lay reader once you can see that this hormone usually does. Several of the major heading should be more more minor headings - so, nothing that a strong editorial hand couldn't do. This doesn't need a split as the normal functions and mechanisms greatly aid the understanding of the medical uses. Klbrain (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I think I'd create a section for the "drug" content, and put the usual (non-duplicative) drug information in that. ==Adverse effects== would become the ===Adverse effects=== subsection under that. Generally, I think I'd provide basic information about what the molecule does naturally before introducing anything about the drug.
    Perhaps there are better solutions, but that's at least one approach that seems reasonably functional. It'd also be very convenient in the event that an article needed to be split for reasons of size: Swipe the whole section on its use as a drug and paste it into the new article; replace that with a proper {{Main}} summary about the drug. The drug needs to be described in the "physiological" article anyway; the only real question is whether it's described in full detail or whether it's described in a couple of paragraphs and preceded by a link to a page that contains the rest of the information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    I would also support creating a single drug section with adverse affects as a subsection with basic information about the neurotransmitter/hormone before that. That would be a big improvement for an article like epinephrine. The problem is that this approach conflicts with WP:PHARMMOS. Furthermore if the article is already very long, splitting is probably preferable. Boghog (talk) 07:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – There are significant conflicts between WP:PHARMMOS and WP:MCBMOS that make it difficult to write a coherent article that covers both the endogenous hormone and its use as a drug. It is much cleaner to split the two. Generally the endogenous hormone should be the primary topic as it is more fundamental concept. Boghog (talk) 05:09, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - As in complete agreement with proposer and Boghog. As a general reader it's very confusing to have the article as it is, mixing up its existence as a medication in the same sentence as the hormone. And as argued by others - it necessitates the use of two infoboxes. --Iztwoz (talk) 01:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • support per Iztwoz--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:34, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unsure These splits are a lot of work. The redirects need to than be pointed to the correct article and there are thousands. Someone needs to go through them. Whatever we decide it needs to be done gradually. The disambig tool helped a lot with the testosterone split. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Some statistics:
    Links to Epinephrine: 3316 of which 819 are from navboxes ({{Adrenergics}} – 619, {{Hormones}} – 121, and {{Neurotransmitters}} – 79).
    Links to Oxytocin: 978 of which 182 are from navboxes ({{Hormones}} – 121, {{Uterotonic}} – 18, and {{Oxytocin and vasopressin receptor modulators}} – 43).
    Boghog (talk) 08:48, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    As an alternative to the Dab solver is solve_disambiguation.py. The later is a human assisted bot script that runs from the command line and while not as fancy as the Dab solver, probably can get the job done faster. Boghog (talk) 09:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I have a pet opinion that medical details are too often given too much WEIGHT on WP relative to basic facts on natural function. Splitting the two frames helps create coherent narratives from both the basic and applied perspectives. I'm coming here from oxytocin, a chemical whose dominant role in neurobiology and social neurobiology is the topic of many, many books' worth of research [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]—but you'd almost never guess this from the lede, which gives details about administration and side effects which are only relevant to its use as a medication. I greatly admire the work of this WikiProject in tirelessly improving medical coverage, but I think it's important not to crowd out the basics.
That said, I agree with Doc James that this is a big job, and sadly I won't have time to help in the near future. Many thanks to those who can volunteer to do this if there's consensus. FourViolas (talk) 01:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There are lots of relevant points here, but it strikes me that the most cogent factor is that the audiences for medical and biological information about these substances are probably more or less orthogonal: a reader who is interested in a substance as a drug probably does not want to have to navigate through masses of information about its role in biology. It makes sense to separate out the information that such a reader will be interested in. (I might be the editor who started this trend, by splitting dopamine and norepinephrine. At the time my main motivation was frustration at being unable to create a satisfactory infobox that covered both roles, but I now think this was just one manifestation of a wider issue.) Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move of "Carl Jung"

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


Recent edit to Fibromyalgia

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

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

Draft:KRN23

Is this stubby draft good enough for mainspace? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

should be merged into X-linked_hypophosphatemia...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:04, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. — soupvector (talk) 14:01, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing wrong with moving a future treatment to its own article. But if it's going to be merged, does it make more sense to merge it to the (currently) targeted disease, or to FGF23 (the molecule it binds to)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'm going to Accept it at AFC now, the merge, or whatever, is up to you folks. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:25, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nasal Mist Flu Vaccine Influenza vaccine

I realized that the US has modified their recommendations re Nasal Mist for 2016-17 flu season. I think that the wiki article should be updated accordingly, unless I am missing it. Last I heard, Canada is still supplying the nasal mist for children in 2016-2017, but also offers the injection. I am not sure about other parts of the world. Does anyone in the community want to try to tackle this in the wiki article? It comes up in a couple different sections Influenza Vaccine. It has already been addressed in the Live Attenuated Virus wiki article, and there is a link from the Influenza article, but I think that it is important to update it on the influenza vaccine page as well.

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/s0622-laiv-flu.html

JenOttawa (talk) 17:05, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

commented talk/article--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

DSM-5 article -- the New England Journal of Medicine piece

Will editors here have a look at this edit by Prinsgezinde (talk · contribs), which I reverted? I reverted because it's not lead material; it's undue weight, and because it looks like POV-pushing to me. Should it be anywhere in the article? It states, "An article in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 68% of DSM-V task-force members and 56% of panel members reported having ties to the pharmaceutical industry, such as holding stock in pharmaceutical companies, serving as consultants to industry, or serving on company boards."[1] Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

____

References

  1. ^ [1]
I'd encourage you to start a section on Talk:DSM-5 to explain your concerns, as that would be more visible to editors of the article, especially once this page is archived. I agree that the edit is far too detailed for the lead and does not represent a summary of any part of the body of the article. I doubt that the information is undue for the article, though, as a similar point is made in the last paragraph of the General Criticism section, DSM-5 #General. Perhaps you could suggest the compromise of incorporating Prinsgezinde's edit into that paragraph? --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The connection to industry is not the least bit surprising. This was fairly neutrally worded " 68% of DSM-V task-force members and 56% of panel members reported having ties to the pharmaceutical industry, such as holding stock in pharmaceutical companies, serving as consultants to industry, or serving on company boards." but I agree belongs in the body of the article rather than the lead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:22, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. Thanks for your opinions. I will address the topic on the talk page. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:29, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, never mind. Doc took care of it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:30, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Genital modification and mutilation article -- Circumcision/male genital mutilation

There is a discussion at the Genital modification and mutilation talk page about adding a Male genital mutilation section. See Talk:Genital modification and mutilation#Adding a Male Genital Mutilation Section. Thoughts? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:34, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:45, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Scleroderma pages

We presently have three pages for scleroderma, CREST syndrome (aka limited scleroderma) and systemic scleroderma. Should we continue to do so? I would propose that we have a single page for scleroderma that includes both limited scleroderma and systemic scleroderma. Would others be okay with that? Is someone more familiar with fibrosing disorders than I am and willing to spearhead the merger? I hadn't heard about this disease until earlier today so I probably am not the best person to lead this. Best, NW (Talk) 01:47, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

the NIH has three separate entries [14], [15], [16] I fail to see why we shouldn't as well--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:49, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Scleraderma is the main article. The other two are subarticles. Arranging in both ways is reasonable as long as the main article provides an overview of the other two. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:09, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dual brain theory

This article seems kind of fringy. It mainly cites the work of one researcher on a proposed psychological treatment to rebalance the brain's hemispheres after traumatic experiences apparently cause one half to become dominate. The sources look to be primary, are mostly from a single author, and half are from the nineties. It has been tagged as needing expert review for over six years. Sizeofint (talk) 09:11, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The author of the papers was active on the talk page five years ago and made a single edit to the article adding a few references [17]. The last major update to the article was in 2012 by a single purpose account with a tendency to cite the same author [18]. Sizeofint (talk) 09:20, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[19]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:17, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've started looking at this, and I think the best result is to split/merge/redirect it. There are a couple of pieces here, but the main story goes something like this: Back in the 19th century, they decided that one hemisphere was dominant over the other (and the "correct" way was for the left hemisphere to dominate; if it didn't, then you got inferior people, such as women and criminals and non-northern-Europeans). This idea was both the state-of-the-art medical opinion and also present in pop culture. Then in the 1920s, when modern medicine started, they ignored it. But then in the 1960s, it came back, because of split-brain syndrome after surgery, which developed into silly pop (pseudo-)science and doubtless some lucrative careers for buzzword-spewing business consultants (see Lateralization of brain function). The idea in this article is that something similar to split-brain syndrome can happen as a result of psychological experiences (an idea that originated in the 19th century) rather than purely as a result of surgery or other physical insults to the brain.
So my recommendation is to merge this away, leaving behind the history because of some material that I copied to another article, and also adding a brief mention in Lateralization of brain function that says this old idea (that unpleasant experiences can cause changes to brain function) has been revived by so-and-so. Does that sound good to everyone here?
(Also, if you're interested in the history of the idea, then https://books.google.com/books?id=y4YMSE9HUEMC seems to know what it's talking about.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The "Dual brain and psychology" section is probably UNDUE. That leaves the history section which is very small and so I agree merging is probably in order. Is there anything else worth salvaging from the history section? Sizeofint (talk) 06:00, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Articles tagged with this this wikiproject's banner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RODIA

Relative Optical Density Image Analysis and Rodia, Medical Diagnostics should be merged. 36.81.14.214 (talk) 00:06, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yup and done. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:47, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfC regarding addition of text

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

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

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

Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations

Colleagues may be interested in an article I've just written, about the Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations, in Hamburg, Germany. I'd be grateful for full PDFs of the two British Journal of Radiology papers I've cited (from online previews), if anyone has access, please. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:20, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

my library doesn't have it; i requested through interlibrary loan and will ping you when they come. Jytdog (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Body mass index

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

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

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

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

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

WikiProject Medicine on NPR

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

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

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

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

Good articles

Hypoglossal nerve

Several articles have been nominated for Good article status.

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

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

Is Loretta Marron in the scope of WikiProject Medicine?

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

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

Use of primary sources in medical articles - Neuroangiogenesis

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

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

Yes this is a review article[20] The journal it is published in has an impact factor of 4.2[21] Hum I have therefore restored some of the content[22] User:Stinglehammer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remember to VOTE before Dec 4th

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



Student editing

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

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

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

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

Draft:Dan Riskin

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

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