Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 45

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Peer review of medical research now offered for free in Wikiversity

I've been developing a system for having works peer reviewed in Wikiversity (see Wikiversity:Peer review). With the success of already peer reviewed works, I am now confident that I'll be able to arrange for a peer review of most works consisting of original medical research. Therefore, until further notice I'll arrange for peer review of medical research works for free if the following conditions are met:

  • The results and/or discussion of the article can be regarded to be of benefit to a Wikipedia article.
  • The article is not already published in a peer reviewed forum.

Let me know if you're interested in having a work peer reviewed. You may also want to sign up as a potential peer reviewer at Wikiversity School of Medicine. Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mikael, when you say "original medical research", does this refer only to "primary sources" (in wiki-parlance, i.e. lab studies, original thought, etc etc) and exclude review papers?
Please could you expand more on what is the intended pathway by which such a peer review would benefit a Wikipedia article? The author is required to then edit a specific article in return for the peer review? Lesion (talk) 20:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
This is applicable both to strict original research in the sense of e.g. lab studies or clinical trials, as well as original synthesis, such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses. On the other hand, if the work is merely summarizing existing published articles I think it can be added directly in the corresponding Wikipedia article.
The final goal is to improve a Wikipedia article, but I can assist or mentor in that process for eligible works. A more detailed description of the peer review pathway is described at Wikiversity:Peer_review#External peer review. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:01, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Er, having looked at Wikiversity:Peer review, I'm a little bit concerned that the page is promising a gloss of "reliability" that falls somewhat short of our expectations for Wikipedia sources—particularly with respect to WP:MEDRS compliance. The emphasis on using Wikipedia as a way to attract page views and attention to obscure self-published Wikiversity content is decidedly offputting.
While I applaud Mikael Häggström's enthusiasm in pushing this initiative essentially single-handed, I would be very surprised if a discussion at, for instance, WP:RSN or WT:IRS were to conclude that a Wikiversity page could ever be treated as more reliable than any other self-published source or wiki page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:52, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, as given at Wikipedia:Using a Wikiversity page as reference in Wikipedia, it is generally not advisable, but in certain cases it is of benefit. Just as in the general scientific community and all other peer reviewed journals there is a risk of aspiration for prestige and self-accomplishment as a driving force among researchers. That's exactly why I think there is a need for a greater transparency of the peer reviews for greater quality assurance. In Wikiversity the peer review statements are visible and discussable, just as the articles themselves. Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:13, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I recently reviewed that page after your post here (and noticing it was linked to from Wikiversity); I think that the instructions and assertions made about when and how it is appropriate to cite Wikiversity pages greatly overstated their likely acceptability as references for use on Wikipedia, and trimmed them back to where they were before your recent edits. Bluntly, we almost certainly shouldn't be linking to Wikiversity as a reference for Wikipedia articles, ever—and certainly not for claims regarding medical information.
It is possible that that position could be revisited after Wikiversity has established itself as a reliable and rigorous source of peer-reviewed material (based on extensive, independent, third-party review and commentary), though I have my doubts about that as well. Frankly, we already have problems with individuals trying to slip bad science from sketchy online 'journals' with 'non-traditional' review schemes into our articles (a lot of WP:MED regulars will be familiar with the F1000 Research journals and their dubious publish-first, open-peer-review-later model); such attempts are both a time-consuming nuisance for us to deal with here, and are universally rebuffed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:40, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Reflecting further, perhaps it would be helpful if you could show us where Wikiversity content is used as a source for Wikipedia articles now—preferably on non-obscure articles where that usage has been explicitly reviewed by experienced Wikipedia editors who are familiar with Wikipedia's standards for reliable sourcing. That is, you've said that there are certain cases where references to Wikiversity pages are of benefit—which pages are those? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:43, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
AFAICT, Mikael has not said that any are already being cited.
But you're setting up a chicken-and-egg problem: nobody can cite them in a Wikipedia article until someone else has already cited them in a Wikipedia article.
Mikael, it might be be more interesting to look into these as possible WP:External links. Sister sites are usually accepted under ==External links== (unless the page is really horrible). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
E.g. (although hopefully not an example of a really horrible one!) Aphthous_stomatitis#External_links Lesion (talk) 17:31, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
(ec) I read Mikael's statement that "in certain cases it is of benefit" as suggesting that Wikiversity was already being used as a source within Wikipedia; if that isn't correct, then obviously I wouldn't expect him to provide examples. But I also don't think, in general, that I am setting up a chicken-and-egg situation. Wikipedia and Wikiversity are not the only two places that things are published (on or off the internet). As I wrote above, if independent, trustworthy, reliable third parties start to treat Wikiversity as a reliable source, then we might consider doing the same. It's not Wikipedia's job to promote and implicitly endorse content from hitherto-obscure websites, whether they're associated with the WMF or not; we should be following the experts, not trying to lead them. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:44, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
There are only 3 works that have undergone peer review in this way so far, and can be browsed at Wikiversity:Category:Peer reviewed works. The first one was a prototype work to test the system. The second one, on the other hand, Wikiversity:Reference ranges during menstrual cycle, involves a couple of diagrams that have been included in Wikipedia for almost 3 years without any peer review. Still, the creation of the diagrams included a substantial amount of work, which can be regarded as original synthesis. To amend this, I moved text from the image description pages to the Wikiversity page, sent it through the peer review system, and subsequently used it as a reference in each article where one of the diagrams is displayed. I take those years as an indication that the diagrams were of benefit to the articles in their own right. Subsequently, I'm certain that putting them through the peer review system for additional quality assurance is of benefit. After all, I got many feedback points for correction and further improvement of the work. This is what is described at Wikiversity:Peer review as the intention of "having additional quality assurance of existing Wikipedia entries", but I think it could just as well have been done to add such diagrams in Wikipedia in the first place as well. Mikael Häggström (talk) 20:16, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I am glad this is being tried. There are many barriers to overcome in enacting this but I am grateful for Mikael Häggström's attempt to do this. For those who might be interested in seeing a non-Wikipedia precedent for attempting wiki-based scholarly publishing, see Scholarpedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Chiropractic again

The sources are directly related to the topic of the article and are directly supported by the material being presented

According to Alexbrn spinal manipulation has no direct connection to chiropractic but it was previously that there is a connection because chiropractors' main modality is spinal manipulation. After User:Middle 8 explained this on the talk page I thought the discussion would be over and editors would move on but the discussion is continuing.

  • Lewis RA, Williams NH, Sutton AJ; et al. (2013). "Comparative clinical effectiveness of management strategies for sciatica: systematic review and network meta-analyses" (PDF). Spine Journal. 15 (6): 1461–1477. doi:10.1016/j.spinee.2013.08.049. PMID 24412033. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) This 2013 systematic review was deleted.

This is being discussed at Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Spinal manipulation and chiropractic. The current discussion on the talk page is at Talk:Chiropractic#A 2013 systematic review and meta-analysis. QuackGuru (talk) 04:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

MEDRS compliant sources are being deleted

MEDRS compliant sources are being deleted per fringe but fringe is not applicable. This was previously explained at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Is WHO guideline a MEDRS.

Background information: Alexbrn, do you want to delete all reliable sources from chiropractic solely based on being written in chiropractic journals?[1][2][3][4] Chiropractic peer-reviewed journals are also reliable. See WP:MEDASSESS.

According to the 2010 source: "METHODS: The conclusions are based on the results of systematic reviews of randomized clinical trials (RCTs), widely accepted and primarily UK and United States evidence-based clinical guidelines, plus the results of all RCTs not yet included in the first three categories. The strength/quality of the evidence regarding effectiveness was based on an adapted version of the grading system developed by the US Preventive Services Task Force and a study risk of bias assessment tool for the recent RCTs."[5]

There was a previous discussion about this source. User:Puhlaa originally added the source to the article back in 2011 and the discussion resulted in keeping the source in the body of the article.

The current discussion on the talk page is at Talk:Chiropractic#Fringe journal or MEDRS compliant?. QuackGuru (talk) 04:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is now going on in three separate places. To consolidate a bit, I'm not answering here but on the Chiropractic Talk page. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 12:52, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I explained the sources meet WP:MEDASSESS and fringe does not apply but Alexbrn claims chiropractic is a fringe topic. Chiropractic is not fringe. An analysis of the use of complementary health practices for back pain, based on data from the 2002 NHIS, found that chiropractic was by far the most commonly used therapy. Among survey respondents who had used any of these therapies for their back pain, 74 percent (approximately 4 million Americans) had used chiropractic. Among those who had used chiropractic for back pain, 66 percent perceived “great benefit” from their treatments.. It was previously explained that Two-thirds of primary care physicians in the US recommend it. QuackGuru (talk) 17:37, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Osteopathic manipulative medicine

I am being reverted on this article by Alexbrn (and only by him) after making some additions from reliable secondary sources and adding a few sentences that were more accurate to the sources provided by Alexbrn. My purpose in bringing this here is not to complain about Alexbrn, but to get some more eyes on this and to begin a discussion on the talk page to hash this issue out. Alexbrn has a history of reverting my edits with inadequate explanations or ones I find to be lacking in merit (we clearly do not see eye to eye even a little), so I would really like to get more outside opinions from other veteran editors. I am also being accused of edit warring after a single reversion (he reverted my edits a second time) and I'm not going to violate 3RR. Here are the diffs in question: [6] and [7] (poor source considering I used secondary sources such as recent peer-reviewed journal articles), and [8]. I believed the edits I made were neutral, used simpler language for a broader audience in the lead, were far more accurate to the sources if you read the 1998 Guglielmo paper (what was originally cited, now added on Bledsoe and Salzberg) and was reverted. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:33, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

A useful convention is WP:BRD. Rather than simply re-reverting a (partial revert), it is better to take it as an invitation to discuss the contested changes on the article's Talk page. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 06:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
True enough, Alex. BRD says, "The first person to start a discussion is the person who is best following BRD." You could be taking your own advice instead of reverting at all. Some of your changes (like re-adding the confusing term allopathy even though conventional medicine is not allopathic) are rather dubious. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Where have I got "allopathy" in the article? Can only see it in direct quotations. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:33, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
In your "partial revert for neutrality, construction & style". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh, but I zapped that a few minutes later: "allopathy" is a problematic word. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 18:02, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Which is why I deleted it. I've already seen many discussions about the use of that term on Wikipedia in the past. I didn't think my edit was particularly bold, so I didn't really think about BRD. Regardless, we are here now and not in an edit war, so let's dispense with that issue since it's no longer relevant to the conversation. I'm glad the allopathy issue is resolved, but where have we landed on the other issues I have raised in this discussion? I really think those need to be addressed as well-preferably by all those already involved in the discussion and perhaps some other editors would like to join in the discussion as well please? Thank you. Last point for this response-new edits by Alexbrn seen on this diff: [9] give undue weight to certain illnesses for which OMT is sometimes used. These are definitely not the most common illnesses targeted by OMT and that is clear from the literature. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

That's what the article talk page is for. There were problems with your edit, some serious.

  • Misrepresentation of a source and an iffy edit summary[10] - making PMID 10179479 seem to say that Stephen Barrett was the only person who has thought OMT pseudoscientific while it in fact says: "To many in the allopathic community, the principles articulated by Still and embraced by his followers seemed like so much pseudoscientific dogma". This also de-synced the lede with the body.
  • Generally we don't include "calls for more research" as it's fluff (see MOS:MED)
  • ... and especially we don't include it in the lede as distinct content not in the body: ledes should summarize the body.

Also, as a general issue:

  • After reverting my revert, you make a personalized complaint about me here (probably the wrong place), without notifying me. Remember: WP:FOC, and if you start discussing other editors elsewhere, it is a courtesy to notify them. Luckily, I have this page watchlisted at the moment, and so noticed your comments. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 03:53, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
We've already moved on regarding the BRD thing. You're saying I need to focus on the content? That seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Please stop bringing that up and focus on the content issue. We are talking about it now and did not have an edit war, so let it be and let bygones be bygones. We've both already explained our respective positions about that bit. Now then, I was actually quite faithful to the referenced NEJM source. I have access to the full article and had it open while making the edits on purpose to make certain of that. it and the only one mentioned within the cited article is actually Stephen Barrett. When you reverted it, I also attempted a compromise and added Bledsoe and still you were unsatisfied (an error of omission on my part since it is discussed in the body of the article and I corrected that). There were no problems with the edit summary nor with the changes I made. It's not fluff to say calls for research were made, especially when a prominent criticism of OMM/OMT discussed in the referenced article is an insufficient amount of research. It states just that within the very same NEJM resource you had cited. It all came from that article. I can quote it directly if you wish to illustrate the paragraphs I was using. For example, "Many in the osteopathic community agree that substantial OMT research is long overdue, although they add that it's been hampered in the past by poor funding. "The result is that people either have not done clinical research or they end up doing studies that are flawed because of inadequate patient samples," says MSU's Hruby. "There's definitely a need for better and more updated work." and "To bridge the gap between belief and skepticism, Cohen suggests that the two professions mount a collaborative study to evaluate the utility of OMT. If it proves to be a valid approach to patient diagnosis and therapy, "then . . . all physicians ought to utilize it to improve the quality of the health care that we deliver." But if studies show limitations to manipulative therapy, the osteopathic profession should acknowledge them. Once these limitations are acknowledged, said Cohen, "the tension between the medical professions will . . . melt away."

I'm not suggesting we put distinct content in the lead of the article, it should be in the body of the article as well for consistency, on that point we agree. I see you having discussions on this page all the time, it did not occur to me that I needed to inform you that I am consulting other editors about a content dispute so we can include more in the discussion. I'm also not making a "personalized complaint about you", as you say, that's one way to look at it I suppose. What I am doing is discussing with other editors who have not been actively editing the article that you and I are having a content dispute and why I disagree with your reversions and am therefore asking for outside opinions. Your accusations are not appreciated. I have not filed any formal complaint about you or sought action against you at all. Speaking of courtesy, you have been quite condescending in tone and have attempted to order me around, both of which are also not appreciated. However, I would appreciate it if in the future you would attempt to have a civil discussion with me rather than use a curt tone. I already know you have the page watchlisted, that is obvious from earlier edits.

You've also yet to explain the reversion of the other edits I made to the first paragraph of the lead which was simplifying the language and removing what is clearly an attempt at a negative connotation with specific wording. The quote you used "To many in the allopathic community, the principles articulated by Still and embraced by his followers seemed like so much pseudoscientific dogma". is out of context-it is clearly referring to the past and is written in the past tense. Notice that it specifically says "that suspicion continued for many decades" indicating that the previous sentence was talking about at least several decades ago. It is not about modern perceptions. Here is the quote for all to see in context with the preceding and following paragraphs intact: "For much of its nearly 125-year history, the osteopathic profession has had an uneasy, sometimes bitter relationship with the M.D. community. It was not until the mid-1960s that D.O.s were permitted to join the American Medical Association. Today, about 8,000 D.O.s (or 20 percent of their total) belong to the AMA.

For many years, M.D.s looked upon D.O.s as cultists, determined to practice according to the osteopathic principles laid out in 1874 by founder Andrew Taylor Still. An allopathic physician himself, Still rejected the prevailing medicine of his day, in particular its reliance on drugs and surgery. In its place, he developed an osteopathic approach to care-one that traced physiological disturbances in the body to abnormalities in the musculoskeletal system. By employing hands-on therapy to correct these structural abnormalities, he believed, physicians could enhance the body's natural tendency toward health and self-healing.

To many in the allopathic community, the principles articulated by Still and embraced by his followers seemed like so much pseudoscientific dogma. That suspicion continued for many decades.

Shut out by the M.D. community, D.O.s started their own schools, hospitals, and practices, first in the Midwest and then in other regions of the country. In 1897, they also founded their own version of the AMAthe American Association for the Advancement of Osteopathy, renamed the American Osteopathic Association in 1901. Before long, D.O.s and M.D.s inhabited two parallel and, in many ways, distinct spheres of American medicine."

As for the pseudoscience bit, there is only one instance of the word pseudoscience in the entire article and it is the part about Stephen Barrett here: ""The pseudoscience within osteopathy can't compete with the science," says retired allopathic psychiatrist Stephen Barrett, author of 44 books, including "The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America," "Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions," and "Reader's Guide to `Alternative' Health Methods."

Barrett, who maintains a Web site (www.quackwatch. com), recently exchanged strongly worded letters with the AOA over an article he posted on the Net entitled "Dubious Osteopathic Practices." Most D.O.s, he writes, practice a brand of medicine that's identical to M.D. medicine, "except for [a] slight additional emphasis on musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment." But a minority of D.O.s, he argues, persist in the use of much more "dubious treatments" like cranial therapy, which he describes as a manipulation of the bones of the skull to relieve pain and cure other ailments." Please show me where else in the referenced paper there are other critics aside from Stephen Barrett criticizing OMT as pseudoscientific. As mentioned earlier, I already attempted to compromise and modify the statement from referenced sources to say Stephen Barrett and Bryan Bledsoe. I already discussed the bit about Dr. Jordan Cohen of the AAMC if that's what you're referring to. You already added his quote and it states specifically that skepticism enters in the M.D. community when claims are made that OMT can be used for non-musculoskeletal complaints. No mention of pseudoscience in his quote whatsoever and it is not ours to interpret. I can provide that quote here too if needed. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 04:38, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


  • @WhatamIdoing: please could you expand on the comment "conventional medicine is not allopathic"? Do you mean that conventional medicine is not entirely evidence-based? Lesion (talk) 18:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
OK just saw your edit on on MEDMOS and assume this is what you meant. Lesion (talk) 18:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, we've discussed it a number of times over the years. Conventional ≠ evidence-based ≠ allopathic. (There is apparently a true allopathic medicine [an alternative medicine system that is basically the opposite of homeopathy—e.g., using onion juice to treat dry eyes rather than watery ones]; you just don't see it much in English-speaking countries.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Per "concerns about an insufficient evidence base for the techniques have been raised and there have been calls for additional rigorous study to better evaluate OMT's role in medical practice" A call for more research is nearly universal for all questions. It is a given and thus not needed. Other than that really have no comment. This is not entirely medicine and thus WP:MEDRS does not need to be strictly follow. The use of secondary sources per WP:RS however is still recommended. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:00, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing that this is a nearly universal for all questions, certainly there is always more to know, even about topics in medicine that are relatively well-understood. However, the point of putting that specific sentence there was to clarify what the actual criticisms of OMT are-the most prominent criticisms of OMT from the paper Alexbrn had referenced was an insufficient evidence base, especially when it comes to claiming effectiveness for non-musculoskeletal conditions. It is clearly a mischaracterization of the quoted source to say "Critics of OMT have characterized it as pseudoscience" and use this a source. The only mentioned critic in this paper saying that is Stephen Barrett. As I mentioned earlier, Alexbrn reminded me that another critic, Dr. Bledsoe, is also mentioned in the body of the article criticizing OMT in that way in a separate reference. I attempted to meet him halfway and rephrase the "Critics" sentence by making it more specific and saying Stephen Barrett and Bryan Bledsoe have criticized it in this manner. I felt that was a fair compromise from those sources. Just having a very general statement like "critics" suggests that it is the absolute mainstream or prevalent POV and that is not supported by the provided references accompanying that statement. Even a statement like "some critics" would be an improvement. What is supported by those references is that Stephen Barrett and Bryan Bledsoe view it this way (I'm not disputing that). I also dispute the validity of Alexbrn's inclusion of the Salzberg article since quality issues surrounding this article have been noted in conversations elsewhere.

According to WP:RS "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors."

None of the references contain a statement that most scientists or scholars hold a certain view about OMT. As it says in the above quote, per Wikipedia policy, it should be the selected individual opinions and should not be phrased as the general consensus. Also, the edits regarding the language of the article's lead need to be addressed. My attempts to employ simplified language without changing the meaning and in another instance changing the language to remove an implicit negative connotation and make the language more neutral were reverted. These issues need to be addressed. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 21:16, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

The sentence isn't saying that most scientists believe something; it's only saying that "pseudoscience" is something that (nearly all) critics believe. So the question is whether "pseudoscience" is a belief generally held by critics. I'm not sure that this is the case. It seems to be that there are quite a few researchers who are critical of the evidence base for efficacy and/or safety, but not so many that actually claim that it's pseudoscience. "Some critics" is probably the accurate summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
That clarification would work for me! Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 18:14, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

A bot for managing citations

Wondering if there is support for a bot to convert cite PMID and cite DOI to cite journal? I am currently doing this manually for all articles being put up for translation as the first two are not supported in other languages. If there is support here I will than apply for permission at the bot page and possibly offer a prize for its creation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:03, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I do not favor this route without first checking in with Wikidata developers about keeping citations there. The product of the proposal has benefits that I want, but this bot proposal has a major drawback in that it makes no attempt to plan for the translation of template fields and will perpetually require bot maintenance in every language as citation formats develop. If this proposal is enacted then the problem remains that this needs to be managed on Wikidata as soon as possible, with the ultimate solution being to store citations there then call them in whatever citation style is requested. It seems to me that asking for WMF support in this would very closely align with their biggest international projects and that sorting citations would give the movement credibility which is essential and not attainable without excellent multilingual citation practices. I might work with others to draft a proposal for this. There are other related problems which would be solved by this, like for example, managing the signalling of when a link hits a paywall. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:56, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I personally want all the data of a citation within a Wikipedia article at least once. I find having to use an external source to determine when each article has been published and what kind of source it is slows editing down. If the wikidata solution accomplishes this I would be happy.
Additionally some languages change the cite journal templates so that they do not work in their language. They translate the term "journal" into their language for example without a redirect from the English. If this wikidata solution also solves this it would be a win win. Of course some in the target language do this to make translation harder. And thus might be upset about efforts to make it easier. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:00, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I believe {{cite pmid}} and {{cite doi}} are the work of the devil, because you need multiple steps to find out even the title and the journal when reviewing an article. JFW | T@lk 23:00, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes agree. They should really be deleted all together. Simply not using them is the next best step. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:07, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Okay proposed it for deletion and merge to cite journal. [11] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
As the new guy I have to say {{cite PMID}} and {{cite ISBN}} where my best friends until I learned about ProveIt. Inserting references is tough work for the newbies. Given the translation issues, I understand and agree with the sentiment but I wish I'd learned about the other ways to create references early on. Ian Furst (talk) 17:34, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes we need to promote the other ways of making references more. We have an overview here WP:MEDHOW. We also need a bot that immediately switches from cite PMID to cite journal. That would solve the issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Lyme "wars"

New article. Not even sure where to start. Sigh. WP:POVFORK comes to mind. Yobol (talk) 23:53, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I've tried a PROD. If that doesn't work, maybe a proposed merger of any usable content, to Lyme disease ? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 13:06, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Yobol and Alexbrn, please tell more on that article's talk page. What is wrong with this? Talk:Lyme_"wars"#Removed_template_which_proposed_deletion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I have suggested a solution at Talk:Lyme "wars"#Role of a fork article. Let's discuss the matter there and not here. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/John Barnard Swett Jackson

Dear medical experts: Is this a notable physician, and are the references acceptable? It would need editing to remove unverifiable detail. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Norbert Pallua

The above article has been nominated for deletion here: [12]. Lesion (talk) 15:33, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK and Cancer Research UK to recruit Wikipedian in Residence - you can still apply

Dear all,

It may be of interest that Cancer Research UK, an organisation based in London, UK, is looking for a Wikipedian in Residence to deliver a six month full time project. The application closes tomorrow, 12th February. I hope those of you interested in helping in this project will be able to apply. Details are here: https://cancer-research-uk-jobs.tal.net/vx/appcentre-External/brand-2/candidate/so/pm/1/pl/4/opp/482-Wikipedian-in-Residence/en-GB

Many thanks, Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 10:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

This is an excellent initiative that UK Wikipedians with a science background might want to look into. JFW | T@lk 16:07, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Wellcome Images

I just came across this about a new Wellcome site, which looks very useful. http://wellcomeimages.org/ LeadSongDog come howl! 23:46, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

See also Public edit-a-thon at the Wellcome Library in London, UK
@LeadSongDog: Sorry for butting in, but shouldn't this be posted at Talk:Wellcome Library? Just curious. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:47, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
No need to be sorry:-) I put it here because it is a great source for demonstrably-free high quality medical images, which will be useful to editors of medical articles. Other subject matter will be of interest to other Wikiprojects, so by all means feel free to advise editors in areas that might benefit. 16:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Professional societies

With some exceptions (e.g. delirium and now cancer), professional and advocacy groups have not in any way engaged with this WikiProject to improve the quality of articles relevant to their interest. That is strange, because as Laurent & Vickers (PMID 19390105) showed, anyone searching the major search engines will probably find Wikipedia articles before they find the material published by these organisations.

But imagine if the American Thyroid Association decided that they wanted to get involved in improving the articles on thyroid disease (COI: recently been working on hypothyroidism), what should our response be? Particularly if they offer expert input in indentifying useful information and high-quality sources?

Perhaps something else: should we be making an effort to approach these organisations and suggest that they take a more active role in supporting the development of high-quality Wikipedia content in the area of their interest? I can already foresee the problems, e.g. how to stop encyclopedia articles from turning into patient information leaflets (WP:YOU everywhere), and how to sensitively discuss common controversies. I'm interested to hear what the Project has to say about this. JFW | T@lk 09:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there could be a desire to either turn them into patient handouts or into overly complex articles based on primary sources. As we have not really had this happen to any great extent I am not sure how it would work. We have had charities simply try to add links to their own website ever where within the article. We have had "experts" simply try to link to their own work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
That is a great idea, Jfdwolff, with good potential. I feel we should strongly create a consensus policy, perhaps with the aid of Bluerasberry, that specifically defines the scope of the cooperation with outside societies. We need a clear place we can point editors when a conflict with these societies arises, and a clear place that communicates what the expected role of the society's contributions is. I feel the greatest problem preventing contributions at the moment is that they are not clearly defined in scope, and when they do occur, they get bogged down in conversations with angry editors. --LT910001 (talk) 10:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
LT910001 I imagine that editors associated with professional societies will have some experience with social media and are no stranger to the cyber-rage you might encounter on Facebook or Twitter. JFW | T@lk 11:23, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Although I get distracted doing other things, and although I have certain restrictions in what I do, the primary target of my employment is to put information from these American medical societies on Wikipedia. The Thyroid Society is not there. If anyone would like to target any of these societies then I would set up some of their content on Wikipedia, talk it over with you, and then we can present it to them and try to engage them. They all have some awareness of what I am doing and I have presented to some of them. The will is there to engage and it is my wish to establish permanent communication channels and partnerships between each of them and Wikipedia. Anyone who would like to talk about this can email me to schedule voice or video chat. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:17, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, to clarify, my meaning is not that that the societies cannot deal with this rage, but that the propensity for these discussions to arise wastes of time for the (often) few editors that are actually doing the editing on the part of these societies and, I suspect, probably acts to raise the threshold for when edits are considered. --LT910001 (talk) 12:23, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Every novice Wikipedia editor (however experienced elsewhere) surely has to face some sort of a learning curve to assimilate both the official and unofficial aspects of editorship: the multiple policies, guidelines and technicalities, often scattered around the site, and also the local online "culture" which can be a real obstacle. It seems to me that to do this successfully ultimately requires personal commitment to Wikipedia and its objectives (motivation) and not just a direct interest in the content. This factor may be one of the stumbling blocks in our relations with professional societies. How to attract/recruit competent participants who have both a) a real interest in Wikipedia, and b) the time and energy to give to it? 81.147.165.192 (talk) 13:41, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
That's a good point. I'd add, that there are many groups which have passionate views about a subject but little passion about WP:NPOV or proper sources. If we find an organization with passion for both, it's easy. If only the former, it will be a nightmare. Ian Furst (talk) 14:01, 29 January 2014 (UTC) Afterthought, what if we made a recruitment and learning program for "Wikipedian's in residence"? An informal contract with the organizations. Ian Furst (talk) 14:03, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
I kind of like this idea, but they're part of the "anyone" in "anyone can edit". It might be helpful if WPMEDF or Bluerasberry could provide training, but a contract to limit what they are allowed to do goes against the wikiphilosophy. Perhaps something to do would be to break the work down into reasonably sized, specific tasks, like "Look at all the articles in your interest area. We normally use primary sources for X (e.g., historic papers), lay-accessible secondary sources for Y (e.g., basic overview facts), and academic secondary sources for Z. Identify all statements incorrectly supported by primary sources and (a) replace them with appropriate secondary sources or (b) tag them as inappropriate." We could construct similar tasks for copyediting, adding missing sources, and so forth. We would be helping them be successful and productive immediately rather than trying to restrict or control them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing bad wording on my part. I meant more of a social contract/understanding rather than something formal. We help them find a better way to reach their populations (e.g. point out the relevant pages) in return for them training someone that will follow the rules of the road on Wikipedia. I can create interactive learning modules (e.g. mix video, slides, questions they can answer) in HTML5 pretty easily, but there would need to be somewhere to host it. Ian Furst (talk) 17:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Agree with WhatamIdoing that a positive statement of what would be most useful is a good place to start. On that line of thinking, I think that (1) classification reflecting modern guidelines (here often outdated, and/or neglected on 'child' articles), (2) symptoms + treatment (needs reliable sources and often not guideline-based here) and (3) epidemiology (here, often neglected, whereas presumably an organisation will have the most reliable data at their fingertips) should be given priority. --LT910001 (talk) 11:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
What do you mean by "often not guideline-based here"? Anyway, on one article sex reassignment therapy, I've been working to get it in line with WP:UNDUE, using reliable sources, including psychiatric reference texts. --Beneficii (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
I mean that symptoms and treatment sections often accumulate over time, and are consequently often written quite arbitrarily, with no emphasis on what is the recommended or common treatment, and no differentiation between rare and common symptoms. This sort of information is ripe for professional societies to include. LT910001 (talk) 02:27, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK has an Expert outreach programme which involves developing relationships with scholarly societies, to deliver events, create publications and so on. It started off with Cancer Research UK, as you note, but the Royal Society of Chemistry, Society of Biology, Medical Research Council, British Psychological Society, Royal Society, Parkinson's UK and in total about a couple of dozen scholarly societies or research units have been involved. The relationship with the Medical Research Council goes back to July 2011. Influenced by the contacts I've made through this programme, I've been working on brochures including one on how Wikimedia can help researchers with impact and public engagement. One of the outcomes is my current work with Jisc, through which I can influence universities and other holders of scholarly and cultural content. I think it helps to have a national angle on these things because the funding/research environments will influence how receptive the societies are to working with us. Wikimedia UK is currently calling for organisations to host Wikipedians in Residence, so if you have societies in mind, nudge them or meet them to persuade them of the value of taking this up. MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 12:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

@Ian Furst: Wikimedia UK has a Moodle-based Virtual Learning Environment. Would it be a suitable host for your interactive materials? MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 12:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

@MartinPoulter: I haven't created a module yet, but it's pretty straight forward. I haven't used Moodle yet (but it also looks straight forward). I'm not sure how much you already know about interactive learning, but from what I understand, if I create the content without using Moodle tools, I can create a package (as either .swf or HTML5), upload to Moodle and people will be able to use it. The software is SCORM compliant but I don't think it can report the scores to learning management software (LMS) from Moodle. In other words, they can do the learning module, take a test in it, print a certificate but we may not get a report back. Ian Furst (talk) 13:32, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Aims of outreach?

This discussion got me thinking further about the difficulties in recruiting good new editors through outreach initiatives. For example, the interesting medical one in Coventry a while back, where a varied selection of medical professionals came along, having been granted a day off work (perfectly reasonably I think) for educational purposes. Last time I checked virtually none of the participants had done any significant editing. Scarcely a surprise perhaps, given habitual workloads...
So does this apparent lack of effectiveness, in terms of recruitment, indicate an outreach failure? Not necessarily, imo. Many of the people there seemed to find the day interesting (and it also served useful secondary purposes within the MED project).
Taken together, it's encouraged me to think of outreach in a slightly different light, as an educational rather than a recruitment opportunity. I suspect most good long-term contributors gravitate to Wikipedia of their own accord, through a combination of an interest in providing free and reliable information and other personal factors. Outreach is a good opportunity to explain to people how Wikipedia works. But I'm less sure that it can realistically be seen as a major recruitment opportunity (at least in the short term). 2c, 109.158.185.136 (talk) 19:03, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with this sentiment. This is a typical marketing problem. To recruit editors, the cohort of people that would qualify first have to go through the classic steps of awareness, evaluation, trial and in depth review before they'll dedicate some time to it. Outreach can quickly speed people through the first 2 steps of the process and with the right software the 3rd step. If a typical conversion rate is 1-2% (and with the time commitment to learning Wikipedia, I would assume our conversion rate on outreach is lower, say 0.5%) we would need to have an outreach to 50-200 people to get one committed editor. That's the benefit of a good online recruiting program, it increases the richness and the reach of the it. Is there a medical recruitment marketing plan out there somewhere? I suspect Doc James already knows the conversion rate. Ian Furst (talk) 14:28, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Without wishing to be in any way polemical, I'm not sure I'm altogether comfortable with my post being referred to as a "sentiment". It was simply a reflection. What I was suggesting was that perhaps there is more to outreach than "conversion". 109.158.185.136 (talk) 11:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I have been involved with outreach to 100s of people. Has resulted in a couple of Wikipedias who are doing good work. The conversion rate is low. It is difficult to get people to contribute. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:05, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Adding: For example, if professionals and others come away from an outreach event with more some insights into how Wikipedia works and what it reasonably can and cannot do, then that in itself can be really useful... Especially perhaps in a field like medicine where real-life patients turn to Wikipedia as a source of information either without or with a physician. If, years later maybe, that encounter also influences someone's decision to take up editing, then so much the better. But I question the idea that outreach should primarily be evaluated by "conversion rates". And I'd perhaps also question what proportion of committed editors arrive directly through outreach events. —109.158.185.136 (talk) 12:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
As regards recruitment itself (obviously a really important issue here!), I think there could actually be a case for adopting an indirect "cultural" approach to outreach rather than focusing on enrolling ("converting") individuals directly. In other words, reaching out more to the medical community as a whole to communicate an understanding of the work of Wikipedia and the real challenges it faces (not just money, as some may initially suppose). One consequence of a broader cultural approach might be a greater likelihood of talented individuals within that numerous community eventually engaging constructively, as and when their circumstances permit...
A separate type of initiative might look at giving contributors who are either already editing or who are actively thinking of doing so the social, technical and notional support they need, in meet-ups when feasible. (This was one of the really useful aspects of Coventry, imo.) 109.158.185.136 (talk) 12:56, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Please excuse the previous post if it seems overly critical of your reflections. It was not my intent. I agree that sharing the culture of Wikipedia through face-to-face outreach with professionals has the potential to increase engagement. However, it’s a time-intensive (albeit highly personal) means of improving end-user engagement. My belief is there’s a finite supply of time available from the Wikipedians who have the energy and talent for outreach programs. If they’re willing to volunteer the time (regardless of the potential outcome), what is the more fruitful way to spend it? I believe it’s a trade-off in the richness and reach of relationships. It’s possible we could achieve a similar cultural understanding for the end-user through a less rich, less time-intensive social media program. I don’t think it is as easy to achieve the level of relationship necessary to engage a new editor without some sort of personal interaction.Ian Furst (talk) 17:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

No problem Ian (I was just trying to clarify where I was and wasn't coming from). Of course outreach can usefully take many different forms. I believe face-to-face initiatives such as the Coventry one, but also other types including online ones, could usefully be communicating to medical professionals something of how Wikipedia functions behind the page view. Less "hands-on" perhaps (though there could be room for a bit of that too), and more dialogue about Wikipedia's strengths and limitations -- stuff that is bread and butter to us, but pretty much a mystery dish to the rest of the world. My impression is that many people are genuinely curious as to how Wikipedia functions. Since physicians nowadays find themselves engaging on some level with Wikipedia content, if only indirectly through the reading of some of their patients, I think an understanding of what's going on can be genuinely helpful. And Wikipedians may in turn stand to learn from professionals' real-world experience of Wikipedia.
As regards recruitment, I think good long-term Wikipedia contributors, in this field at least, may be more susceptible to an indirect rather than a direct marketing approach. If medical professionals get a feel of what's going on and its relevance both to their profession and the general public then they may perhaps start feeling involved, and eventually even contribute.
Of course, one major challenge here is to help potential contributors implement the MEDRS guidelines in an editorially appropriate way (oh, and engage successfully with our online wikiculture...) By no means an easy learning curve. And I suspect that's one area where face-to-face meet-ups can be particularly valuable. As I say, just 2 cents, 109.158.185.136 (talk) 18:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

List of mnemonics for the cranial nerves

The above article has also been nominated for deletion here: [13]. Lesion (talk) 18:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion of "basic symptoms of schizophrenia" and "self-disorders" in the English Wikipedia

In schizophrenia research, the basic symptoms concept has become used in Continental Europe, at least, but there seems to have been less interest in the English speaking world. Also, of self-disorders, a related concept, there has been recent mention in The Oxford Handbook of the Self (2011), edited by Shaun Gallagher and published by the Oxford University Press, in an essay titled "Self-Consciousness in Schizophrenia" (pp. 521-546), written by Louis A. Sass and Josef Parnas. This source references foundational texts and authors (such as Henry Bergson) who have become notable in Europe, but less so in the English-speaking world; it also references studies done on the self-disorders, showing that they "aggregate" in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, with significantly lower rates in non-spectrum disorders (pp. 524-525). As well, a research of the literature on basic symptoms of schizophrenia (on, e.g., PubMed) shows many articles; articles on self-disorders also appear.

However, there seems to be little mention of them on the articles on the English Wikipedia, at least, dealing with schizophrenia. There was a small, single paragraph mention of them on the Causes of Schizophrenia page, but little else.

I have to ask, does this concept carry little weight, or is the English Wikipedia not giving enough due weight to basic symptoms and self-disorders because of a lack of a global perspective on the issue? Are basic symptoms and self-disorders notable enough to receive their own Wikipedia article? --Beneficii (talk) 19:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

There are also some review articles on self-disorders here: [14] --Beneficii (talk) 19:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
So what sort of content are you wanting to add? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, I was thinking of perhaps writing on the basic symptoms themselves, which appear early in the course of the illness, as written in this review: [15]
Perhaps, the second idea would be to discuss self-disorders in general or the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience, a catalogue of self-disorders forming the basis for a semi-structured interview in general. Link to the EASE: [16] (PMID 16179811) There's also the reviews mentioned above would could provide the basis for an article or section. Some interesting findings in the literature are that the EASE seems to discriminate between schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder well. --Beneficii (talk) 06:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Requesting image for article

Found Hydranencephaly, which could really do with an image. I took a look with a google free image & google site:*.gov , but didn't find any free. Is there any way to tag an articles talk page? CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

  • {{Image requested|medical subjects|of=}} for the talk page, at the top. Lesion (talk) 11:47, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Exactly what I was after, going on my list of useful templates. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:53, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Is WHO guideline a MEDRS

The WHO guideline:

has been used in the Chiropractic article at least since February 2008, judging by the accessdate. It was extensively re-assessed as a source during 2010-11 as evidenced by the talk page archives Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 31 onwards to my knowledge. Its use in 7 places in the article has not been challenged, but its use in the lead has by JzG (talk · contribs) (see above discussions). I would therefore like to request other opinions on its suitability as a MEDRS-compliant source to make statements about the safety of chiropractic. Some of the arguments brought forward so far are:

  • WP:MEDRS #Medical and scientific organizations specifically mentions the WHO as a reliable source.
  • The guidelines are over eight years old and MEDRS prefers sources less than five years old.
  • There is at best one Pubmed-indexed review within the last five years specifically concerned with the overall issue of safety of chiropractic and that (PMID 19444054 Gouveia et al 2009) comes to no conclusion regarding safety. Thus we have nothing newer that contradicts WHO guidelines.
  • "The WHO example is a case in point. That does not belong in the lede because it makes a claim that is unsupportable (how would they know if it;s safe, every independent assessment shows that there is no systematic adverse event reporting) and it certainly doesn't belong in the block devoted to the reality-based perspective, because it's a report written by industry insiders. The WHO has fallen down in this way many times, with reports on homeopathy and acupuncture also written by insiders, at least one of which they have had to publicly distance themselves from." (quote from Guy)
  • "The WHO guideline belongs in the lead in the absence of any MEDRS-compliant source that contradicts it. Your personal opinion on the flaws of the WHO are worthless in the absence of reliable sources that confirm your opinion. The WHO guidelines had consensus from three years ago and it's you who are editing in defiance of that consensus." (quote from me)

Now I've been through this treadmill before and I know when I'm starting to get annoyed by another editor. Rather than have us bickering, I'd be grateful if someone would do me (and Guy) the kindness of telling one or the other (or both) that we're right or wrong about whether WHO guidelines from 2005 are an acceptable MEDRS source for the safety of chiropractic, please. --RexxS (talk) 21:38, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes a WHO guidelines from 2005 is a reliable sources (if not contradicted by a newer Cochrane review, there is no newer guideline from WHO). And even if there are newer sources that contradict it we would write WHO says X other say Y. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:49, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
  • A source being MEDRS does not indicate that it is good or bad. It just means that it is probably good, and in any case, worthy of mention even if it is a bad source meeting MEDRS. It is possible for MEDRS sources to disagree with each other and on controversial subjects this happens. If the WHO says something which contradicts other opinions, that still does not justify dismissing the writings of the WHO. Regardless of criticism, statements by top-level medical organizations have a place in Wikipedia, and the last word from the WHO is not to be left out. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
As I already explained, this is one of those reports written for the WHO by a bunch of industry insiders, largely in response to political pressure. Example: the document asserts that chiropractic is safe if practised correctly. Based on what? Chiropractic has never had any systematic reporting of adverse events. Chiros claim that it's safe if practised correctly, but there's no evidence of any consensus for what is correct (full spine x-rays to detect non-existent spinal "subluxations"? Are they safe? How about neck manipulation? Safe, or only if you vigorously deny every report of cerebral artery dissection?). To say WHO=MEDRS is to engage in the fallacy of appeal to authority. And this is WP:FORUMSHOP. It's already under discussion at the talk page. It's valid if contextualised in the article, but does not belong in the part of the lede which discusses the reality-based perspective. Because, as a document written by the industry, it's not part of the reality-based perspective. Guy (Help!) 00:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't matter. We don't go through sources and say, "You can't use this, because I disapprove of the professions of the people who wrote it". Reliable sources are allowed to be biased. We are not allowed to exclude reliable sources merely because editors here believe that the authors are biased.
This is an inconvenient rule for all types of POV pushers and WP:Truth seekers. You are not allowed to reject a guideline on the grounds that it was written by chiropractors, and anti-surgery activists aren't allowed to reject a guideline on the grounds that it was written by surgeons (real example, by the way).
And, to echo Blue, what the WHO says is itself important to document. It doesn't matter if they're "right"; it matters what they said, because what they say has a huge effect on how the profession works around the world. If you're writing about Catholic theology, you need to include what the Vatican says about it, even if you think they're silly, and if you're writing about a healthcare issue like this, you need to include what the WHO says about it, even if you think they're wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) No Guy, you have no qualifications to do an amateur analysis of a reliable secondary source and you don't get to decide that only sources that fit your view can be included. That source has been accepted in the article for five years. And before you accuse me of forum-shopping, you'd better get your facts straight. Read WP:MEDRS. It's the guidance we use to determine what sources are to be used in medical articles. And then take note of the lead of that guideline where it clearly says:
Which part of "for queries about the reliability of particular sources ... ask at relevant WikiProjects such as WikiProject Medicine" don't you understand? Or don't you even know that this is the page that we're advised to ask on? --RexxS (talk) 00:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC) I shouldn't get so annoyed. Apologies. --RexxS (talk) 02:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think that this WHO paper is a suitable (MEDRS-compliant) reference for describing the safety of chiropractic. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Here is another source that was deleted. I think the source is reliable and the text passes verifiable. See (PMID 23171540). See Talk:Chiropractic#Reliability of Chiropr and Osteopat. QuackGuru (talk) 06:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

It's a chiropractic journal, and so not independent as WP:FRINGE asks. It's a primary source. It is US-centric (which you don't mention). but, beyond all this, it is crass self-serving speculation:

Our study suggests that chiropractors tend to establish their practices in areas that also have higher supply of primary care physicians. This is likely explained by the influence of market conditions on both groups: both are likely to locate in areas that will support their practices – however, there are many other personal and professional factors that our data did not account for. This finding may suggests [sic] that chiropractors function in a complementary role, as opposed to an alternative role, to primary care physicians.

(my italic) Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 07:13, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I really don't understand why you believe that this opinion is "self-serving".
I'm not sure that chiropractic (especially broad statements about the business aspect, rather than some of its 'spiritual' claims) really counts as "fringe". In any given year, five percent of American adults see a chiropractor. Two-thirds of regular primary care physicians in the US have recommended them. That doesn't sound like a true "fringe" belief to me.
Finally, sources are explicitly allowed to speculate; CRYSTALBALL, which you link, says "Predictions, speculation, forecasts and theories stated by reliable, expert sources or recognized entities in a field may be included". You aren't allowed to speculate, but sources may do so freely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
"Reliable, expert" sources may contain useful speculation, sure. This isn't one. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 09:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
If you took this to RSN and demanded that a peer-reviewed journal article be rejected because you thought the senior author, who is a licensed physician, professor, and senior research scientist at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice wasn't sufficiently expert to give an opinion, or because you thought after teaching at Dartmouth Medical School for more than 20 years, he was too biased in favor of chiropractic, then I'm afraid that people might actually laugh at you. I'm going to assume that you didn't spend any time looking at the authors' actual qualifications. If, after doing so, you still think that your assessment of their bias and qualifications is correct, then your next step should probably be seeking other opinions at RSN. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
No, I didn't assess the authors, but the journal. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:50, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
If the author is reliable, then the publisher doesn't matter much (and vice versa).
But I'm curious: what exactly do you think is wrong with the new (2011) "official journal of the European Academy of Chiropractic (EAC), The Royal College of Chiropractors (RCC) and the Chiropractic & Osteopathic College of Australasia (COCA)" and their stated aim to publish only "clinically relevant, evidence-based information"? It seems to me that such a journal could be a very good thing for getting the antique woo out of that field. Furthermore, we really can't reject all articles about chiropractic published in chiropractic journals on the grounds of inherent bias, unless we are equally prepared to reject all articles about surgery published in surgical journals (someone has made that claim, by the way). We don't have "special" rules for alternative and complementary medicine. We expect them to meet the same standards as conventional medicine (which, sadly, is not actually a synonym for evidence-based medicine). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
User:Alexbrn, do you agree you will stop deleting reliable sources from chiropractic. Please see Talk:Chiropractic#Reliable sources must not be deleted again. QuackGuru (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
"If the author is reliable, then the publisher doesn't matter much" ← I don't think so. Who's to say if the author is "reliable"? Or whether what is published is entirely of the author(s)? Elsewhere on WP we have a Nobel Prize-winning physicist pushing accounts of his "water memory" theories. Would that be okay by your dictum here?
WP:FRINGE guides us to use independent sources for fringe topics, for reasons of weight and prominence. If we had something outside altmed saying yes! chiropractic is being used by the mainstream as complementary medicine - then it would be usable. At the moment this does not look to me like a view that gets space outside the chiropractic/altmed world. The parallel with surgery is false: in that broad mainstream field surgeons will learn, adapt, use and (ultimately) "sell" different techniques as human knowledge progresses. In chiropractic the offering is fixed, and the interests of chiropractors is in perpetuating that fixed offering. I don't understand what you men by not having special rules: WP:PSCI obliges us to ensure fringe topics are clearly contrasted with the mainstream. Would you allow homeopathic journals the same leeway? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 18:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
If he got his Nobel Prize for "water memory", then yes. If he got is Nobel for virology, then no. But the general definition is at WP:SPS: we know that people are experts because independent publications (=publications not financially or otherwise controlled by the putative experts) have voluntarily chosen to publish their works.
His (Brian Josephson's]] work was in a relevant field. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 07:19, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
And yes, if Einstein chose to be published in a garbage-y homeopathic journal, or in a supermarket tabloid, he would still an expert.

So if, for example, a professor at a major university publishes an article claiming that abortion causes breast cancer in a non-indexed journal, is he is still an expert? I'm not positive, but I think that being an expert doesn't give you a pass on submitting your work through the peer-review process. Jinkinson talk to me 01:31, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

That's hardly the only source that makes this claim; see nccam.nih.gov for example. BTW, PMID 18435599 says that most chiropractors reject "CAM" in favor of "integrative medicine" or even, for 20% of them, regular mainstream. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't need to find other sources. Fringe is not applicable to this situation. QuackGuru (talk) 19:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Chiropractic is not fringe? Really? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 19:14, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
This is not an argument. You were unable to provide an argument to delete the source or other sources. QuackGuru (talk) 19:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

My argument above was based on quoting the WP:FRINGE guidance directly: "Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles". You countered that WP:FRINGE does not apply here. Can you explain why it does not apply? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 19:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

FRINGE is defined as something that "depart[s] significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view". Being recommended by two-thirds of primary care physicians (for treatment of musculoskeletal pain) does not typify a FRINGEy healthcare practice. In fact, being recommended by a solid majority of primary-care physicians is practically the definition of not "depart[ing] significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view".
Are there FRINGEy aspects of chiropractic care? Sure: you probably won't find many physicians recommending it for treatment of, say, endocrine disorders. But that doesn't make every single aspect of the entire field be FRINGEy.
Prescribing antibiotics to treat anxiety is FRINGEy, but giving them to treat pneumonia isn't. We don't say that everything about antibiotics is FRINGE as a result of some FRINGEy uses existing. Similarly, although there are definitely some FRINGEy issues in chiropractic, the entire field is not FRINGE as a result. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
You might make the same arguments for homeopathy: here in the UK it's available on the NHS. But I think we agree chiropractic is fringey rather than 100% fringe. However, that being the case we need to be careful about publications from inside that fringey industry. Here we have one such publication in which the authors performed their own data analysis and then, on the basis of it, speculated about how mainstream medicine might see them. I think this sort of statement would need to come from a proper secondary publication and/or from the mainstream itself (and of course a US centric thing should not have been stated as though it were global). Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 07:19, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm seeing a number of edit summaries like "You can't delete reliable sources" but that's simply not true, there are other policies like WP:DUEWEIGHT (part of WP:NPOV) and WP:FRINGE which is a related guideline that indicate that not every thing that can be reliably sourced will always be guaranteed a place in an article. The arguments that simply repeat "It's reliably sourced" simply have no weight unless they address this. Zad68 19:27, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

With regard to the journal in which the above study (Davis et al. 2012) was published, it seems as though it does not have an impact factor (at least there's not one listed on the homepage), and while it is indexed by PubMed, there doesn't appear to be a listing for it in the Journal Citation Reports. Jinkinson talk to me 18:18, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
The journal website says that it was started in 2011. It appears that it takes several years to get listed everywhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

This edit by Guy was a SYN violation. "Although" is SYN. These are different sources that are not connected. The part "published by practitioners" is not what the source says and this is a violation of WP:ASSERT. I think I am being unfairly targeted at ANI. Adding original research is not editorial discretion. Deleting reliable sources such as WHO is not appropriate according to a number of other editors.

For supporting keeping reliable sources such the WHO source in the chiropractic article and improving the article I think I am unfairly being targeted. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive259#Chiropractic. QuackGuru (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

New WP:MED barnstar.

I made this – {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Quackstar}} – for two editors in particular who I think have consistently and laboriously gone way out of their way to fix countless perceived errors in medical articles over the past few months. I also made it because it saddened me that there was nothing like this on WP:MED before now.

The new barnstar: a sense of humor is required when pushing this button ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒
The WikiProject Medicine QuackStar
The image above contains clickable links
Your exceptional duck-hunting efforts on Wikipedia have not gone unnoticed; for all your hard work in defending the Wiki from the legions of badly edited quackery, I award you the WikiProject Medicine QuackStar.
Also, good hunting. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 09:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The WikiProject Medicine QuackStar
The image above contains clickable links
Left aligned version. The default version with no parameters is on the right. The signature is autosigned. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 09:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I didn't feel like making it conform to 2.0 standards (at least, not yet), sorry. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 10:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Like it CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
👍 Like Ha! Wish we didn't need to have a barnstar like that... Zad68 07:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Dermatitis versus eczema

Per the ICD 10 these two terms are the same. I merged the two topics a while ago. Which should we use as the name of the article? Discussion here [17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, just spotted your comment by chance. I suggest everyone with eczema has a type of dermatitis but perhaps not everyone with dermatitis has eczema. For example, sunburn or scabies may be considered types of dermatitis but not eczema. Clinically, I would use the term dermatitis more broadly. Hope that helps. Myrtle Myrtlegroggins (talk) 07:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Concerning this, could I suggest that the article lede needs a little more work clarifying the two terms - preferably at the same time dealing with the fact that it seemingly contains links to atopic dermatitis and atopic eczema, while the former is in fact a redirect to the latter. (I should probably declare a COI regarding the article, having just come back from a visit to my GP and chemist with (amongst other things) a 500ml bottle of Oilatum cream- I'm thinking of changing my user name to AndyTheItchyButWellGreased, or possibly AndyTheEmollient) AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Anyone using AFT5?

Article feedback is going away entirely. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 123#Article Feedback: Next Steps if you've been using it on any articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like a very questionable decision. We should not get rid of anything that encourages people to become editors. Not to mention that the feedback is very insightful into what the readers are feeling about the article. I often enable feedback after reworking an article. It should also form a mandatory part of the GA/FA promotion too imo. Lesion (talk) 10:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I am using it for the translation project. We are looking for feedback from readers on whether or not they find they translations useful. Unfortunate to see it go. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Rotator cuff arthropathy. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Fringe theory AfDs for comment

Per discussion at the Help Desk (saved revision), three articles on what seems to be some fringe theory in mental health (with some sort of deconstructivist flair) have been nominated for deletion:

This seems like it might be within the scope of this project or some taskforce therein. Thanks. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 16:45, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I ran across Meaning-making yesterday. It is probably notable, but it might be possible to merge it with Posttraumatic growth (aka Benefit finding aka "I'm so glad that I got breast cancer, because it transformed my life."). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Given the low quality of the article, if Meaning-making is indeed a synonym for one of those two things, I'd guess a simple redirect would be sufficient rather than incorporating any of the material from the original article. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 18:21, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:Deletion is not cleanup, but I think it might be the other way around: Post-traumatic growth is the process of understanding and creating meaning from a trauma, but then there's the everyday process of meaning-making (e.g., why holiday traditions or religious rites seem "meaningful"). But it might make more sense to consider a merge with Meaning (psychology) for the general case, and leave the specifically post-traumatic situation in a more specialized article. I don't know. There are a lot of possibilities here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Well what I was saying is that I don't think the article that exists at Meaning-making actually contains any meaningful or useful information, and so if a merge is appropriate, then likely it would end up being more like a delete-and-redirect, whereas if it's independently notable, it will likely need to be cut down to a stub. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 21:34, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Cranial nerve

I'm currently working on a major restructuring and rewrite of the article, and wish to get it to at least B-class, but hopefully even higher. That way we can apply for DYK. If anyone is interested in helping out there is a draft version over here: User:CFCF/sandbox/Cranial nerve. Would do especially well with some help about clinical significance. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:18, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

For clinical significance, how about a brief summary of the signs and symptoms of lesions of each nerve? E.g. Hypoglossal, ipsilateral deviation of tongue, fasciculation and muscular atrophy. Lesion (talk) 11:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Sounds like a good plan, I'm still fleshing out the other parts, anyone can feel free to contribute to the sandbox page. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:53, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The article leads onto this page. I only knew one mnemonic (a dirty one). Axl ¤ [Talk] 03:02, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

BMI classification

Requesting further input here Talk:Obesity#BMI_ranges. Also the WHO uses "weight" however a user feels that they are wrong and it should be "mass". What are peoples thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:26, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Wondering, is one's BMI the same on the Moon as on Earth ... Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:00, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
I think someone would have more immediate concerns than obesity if on the moon... Lesion (talk) 21:22, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Soon as people start living on the moon we can determine if moon BMI is the same as earth BMI with respect to health outcomes. No evidence that they are the same currently. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:15, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
The health stats will not be comparable anyhow while moonfolk are selected on the basis of fitness and the cost of getting them off-Earth.  :-) LeadSongDog come howl! 17:55, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes but they might go there small and latter become big. That is if we can figure out how to make soft drinks on the moon. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:03, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

A question

What is the term for the air that remains in the upper respiratory tract, trachea, primary bronchi etc during an inhalation and never reaches the alveoli before the exhalation? Lesion (talk) 22:20, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Ah, no worries I just found it: Dead space (physiology). Lesion (talk) 22:23, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Just an additional: I've always taken "dead space" to be the volume, rather than the gas itself (which doesn't have to be air). In snorkelling, we need to consider the volume of the snorkel as additional dead space (which sets a practical upper limit on the diameter of the snorkel: the upper limit on its length depends on the strength of your lungs); breathing out through the nose or flushing the snorkel helps reduce carbon dioxide build-up in the event of exertion. --RexxS (talk) 00:38, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Same in vented patients. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:01, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
(ec) Yes I think you are correct, and the article also supports this distinction. In effect, the snorkel becomes an extension of the respiratory tract, and the volume of air that is left inside it is useless in terms of gas exchange, just as the volume of air in the trachea etc. Dead space (physiology)#In_breathing_apparatus. The context I was after related to exhalation of 2/3 of the vital capacity before taking a sample of the last 1/3 of the exhalation, thereby aiming to make the sample more representative of "alveolar air" rather than air that had remained in the dead space. The air that had remained in the dead space would presumably be largely unchanged in composition compared to the environmental air that was inhaled (albeit warmer and more moist), whereas the "alveolar air" would have altered composition which reflected gas exchange, not just of CO2 and O2 but also various trace gases from the blood. Lesion (talk) 01:07, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Not sure what article this is for @Lesion: but you may want to check out [article] about the effects of tracheotomy on deadspace. Patients in the unit are often trach'd to get them off vents as it decreases the deadspace which, in turn, decreases the peak airway pressures and improves the pulmonary toilet. Ian Furst (talk) 02:21, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Lesion (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

While you're all thinking about all things lung-related, can anyone answer a pure-curiosity question for me? I read a bit about the history of CPAP machines. Apparently, the treatment for severe obstructive sleep apnea was an emergency tracheotomy—really like an emergency: you show up at the emergency room not having really slept for months, and they did a tracheotomy as soon as they could get a surgeon and an anesthesiologist into the same room. Why couldn't you just intubate the patient, get a good night's sleep, and schedule the surgery on a semi-elective basis? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a long time ago. Maybe this was before intubation? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:20, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
I think the CPAP machine was invented the 1970s, and History of tracheal intubation#Laryngoscopy and non-surgical tracheal intubation would put intubation at more than 50 or 100 years older than that (depending on what you count). I'd sort of assumed that it wouldn't work (like the tube wasn't long enough), but if it isn't long enough, then how do you prevent airway obstruction during surgery? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing:I've never heard of sleep apnea being a reason for emergency tracheotomy (and I did many months of training with older head & neck surgeons, the kind that used to tell me that when they trained hypertension was a terminal diagnosis). In answer to the question, the difficulty in intubating people with sleep apnea is usually lax tissues and big tongues making visualizing of the vocal cords difficult (and more recently the realization that they have higher post-extubation mortality) rather than the length of the tube. Generally speaking if the time of intubation is expected to be <14 days they get a tube and if >21 days they get a trach but there's a lot of regional variation. Not sure if you've seen it before but take a look at how George Washington died (a trach was recommended and refused). I've seen it used for children born with craniofacial anomalies (e.g. Pierre Robin syndrome) for sleep apnea but it's a severe example. Not sure if that answer's to the question. Ian Furst (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
I am also unaware of emergency tracheotomy being used to treat OSA. Elective tracheotomy is occasionally used ([18] and [19]) but I have not seen a case. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:27, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Sacral dimple as a sign of spina bifida

Mouse models are commonly used to study SLOS.

Anyone heard of this phenomenon. I can just say that the article would never pass AfC today, and it could use some looking at, whether anything usable be merged to spina bifida? Sources are rather poor. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 10:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The (unreferenced) article appears to suggest that such a dimple is not necessarily representative of pathology. From a pediatric textbook on google books, sacral dimple is a common finding, and the majority are not a sign of spina bifida.[20] Not sure if this article is getting merged, but we will need a few refs nomatter. Lesion (talk) 11:03, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Also, if we are considering merging, pubmed results (not assessed for MEDRS) suggest that sacral dimple is not pathognomonic for spina bifida, e.g. Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. Lesion (talk) 11:30, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Ok, then. Seems merge is out of the question. Could do with proper sources nonetheless. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:42, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Preservation and harvest of stem cells

Does anyone have any expertise in this area. We've had a user add primary research about harvesting stem cells from wisdom teeth. I have no idea if it's critically important, cutting edge research (and leaving a primary source is OK) or just an extension of research that's already been done on non-tooth sources (in which case I'd wait until secondary sources can be provided). Ian Furst (talk) 13:47, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

It is investigational. Delete. JFW | T@lk 23:39, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Perfect. Thx. Ian Furst (talk) 01:29, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

medical condition and disease

An IP editor has suggested making these stand alone articles. Tried to find a WHO definition for these terms and failed. Maybe someone else will have better luck to help resolve this. Lesion (talk) 12:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Where is the discussion? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Apologies. Looks like the thread started on Talk:Disease#Bad_redirection some time ago and now has continued on talk:Medical_condition. Lesion (talk) 16:23, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
I am currently re-working syndrome. I think these articles are useful, as something other than redirects, if only to provide short definitions, and explanations (although, I realize they are not always so simple to define), rather than constantly being branched out. I think a short, well-referenced stub or start class article is more helpful than something without structure, because it prevents people from feeling the need to constantly add in their own sentence, or the new syndrome they just heard of. Just my two cents. Canada Hky (talk) 17:03, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
I've looked at (and replied to some of) the comments. When you get past the confusion with medical state, the main line of argument appears to be that the IP is unhappy that people believe that dyslexia an undesirable situation with medical implications. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Medical condition and disease should remain merged. Yes we see people upset all the time that something is called a "disease" or "syndrome" or is called a medical condition. It is all rather strange. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:01, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Pharmacognosy of Acacia (Gum)

I have removed many uncited assertions from this article. There is a merge proposal at the gum arabic talk page [21]. (I am not sure if this is the proper venue--if this is posted in the wrong place, feel free to move it elsewhere. Thank you.) Kablammo (talk) 13:30, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia and CME/CPD (or equivalent)

We should think of some way to make writing medical content on wikipedia count towards CME... Thoughts? Lesion (talk) 21:20, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

I have tried to interact with the Canadian CME certifier at the CCFP and one more or less needs to be a drug company with full time staff to figure out the paper work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:03, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Our national journal tried it with the Royal College as well (for contributors of online content v published peer reviewed stuff). It was a non-starter. Somehow, we learn nothing by writing online. Ian Furst (talk) 22:10, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Just made me think - I write a 3 page scholarly review here and I learn nothing. I do a 700 word case report with mindless references and it counts. Now I'm kinda angry - thanks Lesion... it's all your fault! Ian Furst (talk) 22:12, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Am here to be revolutionary not for CME credits :-) I did however get a bunch for the talks / teaching I did at last years Cochrane Colloquium. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:28, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
That may be the case, but others may not have as pure motives as this. I am thinking that we should make it a long term goal to get some form of CME for people who want it. I just emailed the professional body in my country to see what they say. P.S. sorry Ian ... but I agree we really should be allowed to log this time as CPD (or whatever). Methinks it might be more believable if the request was paired with publication of a Wiki article in a journal... there is more accountability and someone's name is on it instead of a user name, etc. Lesion (talk) 23:21, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
There are already opportunities to publish Wikipedia articles in journals. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:52, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that was what I was referring to. I meant: if the wiki article was published you might have more of a chance of them accepting it as CPD... Lesion (talk) 01:15, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Revolutionary.... I like that. Ian Furst (talk) 01:34, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

My CPD diary allows (UK) for self-certified entries of time spent researching and reading. Seeing that writing a Wikipedia article tends to expand my own knowledge base, this is always an option.
Jmh649 do you think the Wiki Med Foundation could play a role here? JFW | T@lk 09:53, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes we have two type of CME credits in Canada. One can get the first type from working on Wikipedia (you get to self declare these). To get the second type more or less requires staff to deal with the paper work. I am happy for the Wikipedians here to approach organizations on behalf of WPMEDF with proposals. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:25, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
They said you can put "Researching and writing wikipedia articles" as non-verifiable CPD, but you need to give the topics you worked on, the number of hours needs to be exact and not a rough estimate, and the dates when you did this work would also have to be in the CPD log.
We should work on producing some kind of generic certificate for persons who might want to claim certifiable CME / verifiable CPD etc for work done here. Sounds like this more trouble than it's worth as far as Canada goes, but what about other parts of the world? I'm going to look into how difficult it would be to become a certified CME/CPD provider. Lesion (talk) 17:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Society links in external links

On Anesthesia there are about 5 different professional societies linked from the external links subsection. Is there a policy about the use of the external link section? Should I leave or remove them? Thx. Ian Furst (talk) 01:39, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

I would replace them with one link to DMOZ but thats just me. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:59, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
?DMOZIan Furst (talk) 02:13, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
See WP:ELMAYBE. It doesn't have to be DMOZ (which people frequently say isn't as good as it used to be); it could be any webpage that lists a bunch of links. Or you could just kill them off entirely, or pick specific information pages that are actually relevant (surely at least one of them will have a good public information page?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
We should probably have a separate article for each specialty, listing their associated societies by country. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Most already have pages linked to their specialty (e.g. Anesthesiologist, Nurse anesthetist, etc...) Within those articles there are the links. I think it gets too off topic for the general page on Anesthesia. Ian Furst (talk) 17:54, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

STI/STD (HIV in particular) mention in the lead of the Condom article

Opinions are needed on this matter: Talk:Condom#STD/STI protection. Flyer22 (talk) 07:29, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Konzo

Article needs some neurology love. Related article on a major foodstuff has a casava#Food use processing and toxicity section which needs some neuro/pharma attention too. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:03, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Interesting new story in NPR

There's a recent story on NPR about a class at UCSF where the professor, Amin Azzam, instructs his students to improve medicine-related Wikipedia articles. Thought I'd put it here for the consideration of all WikiProject Medicine members. Jinkinson talk to me 19:45, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks yes. There are a few of us here who are involved. Would love to have more people join our efforts for the next class. Am flying to San Fran in a week to give some talks to the students in person for the next round. If anyone one is in the area on March 3/4 you are invited to attend. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:11, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Organ preservation for transplant

What is the largest organ that Cells Alive System freezers have been shown to help preserve beyond traditional cryopreservation? 114.94.27.250 (talk) 23:32, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Please also share your general opinion of them at Template talk:Emerging technologies#Justification for inclusion of CAS freezers? (Furthermore, doesn't that template need some emerging vaccine and engineered genetic therapies?) 114.94.27.250 (talk) 01:21, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

The whole page is poor references and sort of spammy. Any secondary sources per WP:MEDRS? Have cleaned up. May need a few watchers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:12, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Why did you remove all the conclusive peer reviewed sources? There aren't any literature reviews on the topic yet, but if you bother to do your own I don't see how it wouldn't be conclusive. 114.94.27.250 (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
There were no "conclusive peer reviewed sources". Please have a read of WP:MEDRS. Since there are not any review articles most of the article should be deleted, which is what I have done.
We are not promoting some fridge based on a couple of poorly done primary sources. The null hypothesis is the default (ie it doesn't work) until someone provides good evidence that it does. This is how science works. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
You removed:
  1. Kojima, Shunichi; Kaku, Masato; Kawata, Toshitsugu; Sumi, Hiromi; Shikata, Hanaka; Abonti, Tahsin Raquib; Kojima, Shotoku; Fujita, Tadashi; Motokawa, Masahide; Tanne, Kazuo (December 2013). "Cryopreservation of rat MSCs by use of a programmed freezer with magnetic field". Cryobiology. 67 (3): 258–263. doi:10.1016/j.cryobiol.2013.08.003. PMID 23954814. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  2. Hiroki, Kato (15 September 2012). "Subzero 24-hr Nonfreezing Rat Heart Preservation: A Novel Preservation Method in a Variable Magnetic Field". Transplantation. 94 (5): 473–477. doi:10.1097/TP.0b013e3182637054. PMID 22885880. Retrieved 14 February 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)</ref> and
  3. Hiroyuki, Koseki (January 2013). "Cryopreservation of Osteoblasts by use of a Programmed Freezer with a Magnetic Field". Cryoletters. 34 (1): 10-19(10). Retrieved 14 February 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
...all of which have literature review sections which passed peer review, and all of which are conclusive. But you left an earlier inconclusive article, PMID 22330639, in the article and cited it as authoritative, even though it is not a WP:MEDRS. Do you believe that is a neutral point of view, or the point of view of an ER doctor facing the conflicted interest of substantial training and equipment upgrades when new organ preservation technologies are approved? 114.94.27.250 (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh yes it represents a horrible conflict of interest. As an ER doc I am doing organ transplantation all the time. Now I will need a new and more expensive fridge because this evidence proves they are better. And yes Health Canada has started requiring us ER doc to buy organ transplantation equipment north of the border. Budgets and stuff.
Hum a fridge is hard to operate. You open the door and put stuff in it. Maybe they can get the same airline stewardess who teach us how to fasten our seatbelts on airplanes to use these fridges. Now back to reality. Try reading WP:MEDRS. These are not "literature reviews" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:31, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

By the way this study has a poor control group.[22]Why compare -3 degree in magic fridge with 4 degrees in normal frige? Why not compare -3 in magic fridge with magnet on and -3 in magic fridge with magnet off. One could even blind it where the researchers DO NOT KNOW which magic fridge has the magnet on or off? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:40, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Please see [23] on the second column. If cardiologists can't figure it out pretty quick, then something is seriously wrong. You could be saving long-term admits on machines every time someone gets killed by a car or moose instead of burdening the undertakers with winch repair bills. Honestly, whether cryonics will pass any single payer system's standard cost-benefit analysis in the next few decades is really wide open, but it seems more likely that there will be a firm yes or no than remain nebulous for long. ABI sells upgrades for existing freezers, and while I have no idea what they charge, the patent won't last forever and volume still balances profit margins. Anyway, I still think the three citations should be returned to the article but am happy to explain in the article that primary studies by their very nature are inconclusive without a literature review confirming them, even if they are individually conclusive. 114.94.27.250 (talk) 23:13, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Postorgasmic illness syndrome

Needs attention re WP:MEDRS compliance. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Dermabrasion vs. microdermabrasion

The article says "Dermabrasion should not be confused with microdermabrasion which is a newer and non-surgical cosmetic procedure performed by non-physician personnel, nurses, estheticians, medical assistants, and most recently untrained individuals in their homes" -- and then the whole rest of the article appears to be about microdermabrasion. I suggest splitting the article into two. -- The Anome (talk) 15:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Whole-Body Air Displacement Plethysmography

I came across this article via its mention at Body fat percentage, both of which seem written like an advert. I'm afraid I don't have time to go through it at the moment, and just wanted to give a head's up. Thanks, a13ean (talk) 19:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

In Vivo Bioreactor

Could someone with medical knowledge have a look at the new article In Vivo Bioreactor? It has some clearly promotional content to it but there may be useful, salvageable content as well. Thank you. Peacock (talk) 12:59, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Highly promotional and not novel. He's placing subperiosteal aginate so that bone is created (you can put nearly anything subperiosteal and it will create bone because bone creating potential is in the pluripotent periosteal cells, not the material you place) then moving it to a new location. It's a modification on an autogenous bone harvest/grafting where (?) the author is stimulating bone formation first before moving it. My recommendation would be for rapid deletion as non-primary sources and promotional but not sure what others think. Ian Furst (talk) 13:17, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
If there are no other opinions on this, I'd like to tag it for speedy deletion. I've never done that before (and not completely sure it's appropriate here). Can someone push me in the right direction (where do I find the tags)? Am I applying the standard properly? Ian Furst (talk) 00:16, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

A little OMG moment

I was watching a viral video featuring a kid who suffers from Schwartz-Jampel syndrome. I was astonished at the red link. Maybe this happens a lot in this field, but still, that surprised me. Just sayin'. :) --Elitre (talk) 18:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

  • Elitre I started an article. Feel free to jump in. Perhaps you could add the video you found as an external link, or share other sources. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Chris improved the article. The video was about the relationship between the boy and the dog, rather than on the condition itself. Thanks for your work! --Elitre (talk) 15:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Possibly a major copyright issue, Caister/Horizon press

I'm not sure what to do about this, if anything. There's a fairly large number of microbiology articles containing passages with books from Caister press cited as references. Many of these passages have been copy/pasted directly from the books. I believe that all of these passages were entered into the articles by a single editor who has acknowledged a conflict of interest. That editor has left Wikipedia. Over the past year I've been checking every passage cited by a Caister press book that I encounter and deleting the passage if it was copied from the cited book. I'm currently cleaning up Food microbiology. I ended up deleting a majority of the article, and I still haven't completed checking all of the sections. Sometimes the passage comes not from the cited book but from another book from the same publisher, making detection of the copy/paste more difficult (although I'm sure there's an easier way to detect this). In many articles, a citation of a book from Caister press has been added to the end of the first sentence or paragraph in the lead, even if there was already another citation. In other cases, a new article was created closely related to an existing article, with the references in the new article citing only books from Caister press (although other editors may have made additions later with other citations). For example, we have Systems biology and Systems microbiology; Food microbiology and Food Microbiology (although these were later merged); Microbial ecology and Environmental microbiology (also merged later). It's possible that I managed to clear out most of the copy/paste issues, but I continue to find more Caister copy/paste issues when browsing Wikipedia. What could be done, if anything? CatPath (talk) 08:26, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

It seems like a number of people had issues [24]. Will require a detailed review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:37, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
If the note on the user page ("Permission of the publisher (the copyright holder) is always obtained in advance and the material added to Wikipedia is made available under the GDFL licence.") is accurate, then I don't think that we have a copyright problem. When you have permission to use copyrighted material, then you can't have a copyright violation. Instead, we might have an internal-paperwork problem, because the permission needs to be documented through OTRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
"When you have permission to use copyrighted material, then you can't have a copyright violation" ← depends what the permission was for. In this case if there was permission to re-license the content under GNU FDL, then no problem. I find it hard to imagine a publisher agreeing to that, though! Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Note that the editor quit when asked to provide documentation of the permission [25]. CatPath (talk) 18:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
The publisher's default permissions are stated here. Unless the departed editor was author of the copied work, only abstracts are republishable without further permission, and even that does not make such abstracts sufficiently free for verbatim copying on WP. Has anyone asked them if they provided the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license? No need to guess. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
It's a pretty blatant attempt to advertise the publisher who doesn't give permission compatible with CC-BY-SA. We should either open a contributor copyright investigation or just go ahead and delete or merge the offending articles. A google search for "Caister Academic Press" site:en.wikipedia.org gives 602 hits (not all of them problematical), so we have an idea of the potential size of the problem. --RexxS (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
This one is messy. The publisher may be willing (if they can) to license the content. (If they can because if their license with the author doesn't permit them to, they can't release the content for our use. Some academic publishers require their writers to sign an "assignment of copyright" which gives them full ownership and control of the material. Others simply require a "License to Publish." This publisher's website is vague as to what their own policy is, as I note they say at their copyright page, "(This permission is void if Caister Academic Press, Horizon Scientific Press, or Horizon Bioscience do not own the copyright)". But what we have right now is useless to us. Unfortunately, unverified permission is as good as no permission at all. :/ His departure when asked to supply documentation is not promising. ("How did you know it was permitted?" "He said so!" "Did you ask him to prove it?" "Yes, and, well, er, he promptly quit.")
Ordinarily, what we would do here is, as RexxS mentions, open a CCI. Is there any sign of the user socking? If not, a regular CCI is probably good enough. If so, we may want to do as we did once with popularly plagiarized encyclopedia Banglapedia and list for evaluation articles that cite the source rather than simply those edited by this user. Of course, if somebody wants to reach out to the publisher to ask for a usable license, this would be great - but it would either have to be very, very general (all our content) or very specific (all the content in this list of articles; all content uploaded by the user editing as Touchstone42). Either way, if content is removed as a copyright issue and permission is obtained after, it can be restored. We've done it before. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
There's a (rather long) list of articles started on the editor's user page. --Hordaland (talk) 21:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
It's no problem listing everything he's ever edited. :) We have a very handy tool for that, and use it to populate all WP:CCIs. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Fluctuance (medicine)

Is this a true redlink or am I not looking in the right places? Many thanks, Lesion (talk) 21:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Bit of a dicdef. Fluctuance should be discussed in the physical properties of abscesses. JFW | T@lk 11:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Agree fluctuance should definitely be mentioned on abscess (I have added it just now), however according to the first 2 randomly selected dictionaries I looked at, fluctuance is defined in terms of any fluid-filled lesion and is not reserved to pus in abscesses. Lesion (talk) 12:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed - many things can be fluctuant (and the term should be used properly in those contexts) but I'm not sure we could generate an encyclopedic article on the topic. I can't say that I've run across a textbook chapter on the subject; as JFW has said it does seem like a dictionary entry. -- Scray (talk) 12:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, here is the closest entry on wiktionary: fluctuation. I've tweaked the medicine definition to reflect the 2 definitions I just saw in medical dictionaries. Lesion (talk) 12:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Disagree that an encyclopedic article is not possible, perhaps we will see one eventually. Sections: Definition, etymology, elicitation of fluctuance, a diagram, list of example lesions which give fluctuance =) Lesion (talk) 12:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
To look for a wiki home for fluctuance, I went to Medical sign. There I found the article missing a key concept that physical signs are learnt and implemented in a systematic way to aid diagnosis. For instance, lump:- size, shape, location, mobility, fluctuance, colour, temperature, tenderness and so on. If it were me, I would organize the article in order to get to fluctuance in this way: medical sign > physical sign > localized swelling > fluctuance. (Clain A. (ed.) "Physical signs in clinical surgery." Wright, Bristol, 1986 p23). Although, perhaps, these days, doctors only use pattern recognition for diagnosis? Kind regards, Myrtle G. Myrtlegroggins (talk) 22:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Medical sign seems like the most ideal location for content about fluctuance that has been proposed so far, thanks. Lesion (talk) 12:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update

As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at tools:~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at toollabs:popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man) 05:15, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tregitopes

Hello again, medical experts. Another old Afc submission which has been tagged as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic, and should the article be kept? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:33, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

2 reviews on PubMed within the last 5 years on this topic: [26],[27]... and another which mentions the term inter alia [28]. Not sure if there is a suitable immunology article where this could better be discussed, perhaps Epitope#T_cell_epitopes? Lesion (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
As someone who has done at least some rudimentary research on Tregs I don't think there is enough for an individual article, but maybe a short mention in the main article. Maybe 1-2 sentences and not a paragraph on its own. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 17:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Would suggest on Treg#Molecular characterization CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 17:47, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
This all sounds like good advice. Someone with more medical knowledge that I have should go right ahead and move or rewrite the appropriate information. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Unless anyone else does it before me, its on my to-do list. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 07:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Psoriasis GA Review

If anyone who is experienced at GA review wants to work with me on this one, please let me know. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:43, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Anyone? It's a high importance article...TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I will do it. But slowly. JFW | T@lk 21:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Paralysis

Why is the article Paralysis so terribly bad (and short)? Abductive (reasoning) 07:19, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I think this has been an oversight, one which commonly occurs in articles that would require summarizing entire fields. It would be quite difficult to adequately explain everything that paralysis is without making the article overly long. If you look at the linked articles many of them are longer and more full. While this is an argument to keep the article short, giving it some work to make it better is definitely a priority. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 08:12, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Because there are so few people working on medical content on Wikipedia. It is not one of our top 1500 viewed articles so could be worse. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Popular_pages Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Category:Disorders causing seizures

Category:Disorders causing seizures, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Tea tree oil

In a recent edit, information has been added to the article lede claiming that tea tree oil can have some medical benefit including treating herpes and lice. These claims are sourced to PMID 22998411 which, on the face of it, looks a potentially reasonable source. However the claims seem rather exceptional and/or in contradiction to sources that were being used in the article. The article itself goes further, saying tea tree oil is an "anti-skin cancer agent". Could somebody have a look at this source/content and offer an assessment - how reliable is this? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 17:13, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

"A 2012 review of academic literature has established that Tea Tree Oil is may prove effective in treating a variety of dermatologic diseases [...]" - I think the edit uses appropriately guarded language. The source does make somewhat extraordinary claims so stronger claims doesn't seem suitable at the moment. JFW | T@lk 17:20, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

The Lightning Process

The developer of this intervention has been engaging constructively in talk page discussion (Talk:The Lightning Process#help on accuracy) and has he been informed about our stringent sourcing guidelines for clinical claims. When commenting [29] I said I would refer the topic to WT:MED to try to elicit further feedback (and I see the page was already discussed here before, in 2011). Regards, 81.147.166.111 (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if it is notable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
The first thing that came to my mind when I looked at this article was that if it is indeed non-notable, it will be for the same basic reason the GAPS diet wasn't notable--there were lots of news articles about it but no scientific studies. However, the lightning process is an improvement in this regard because there are some scientific studies on the topic, even if they aren't MEDRS compliant. [30] [31] Between these and the newspaper articles already cited in the article I think it is meets our notability guidelines, even if only by a hair. Jinkinson talk to me 19:02, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

In Vivo Bioreactor‎ help

I could use the eyes of a more experienced editor. I went to the above page and removed some unreferenced claims and tried to make it more WP:NPOV only to have it reverted by user Shastri (doesn't have a user page) within hours. Same name as the person who conceived the "revolutionary Regenerative Medicine paradigm" and the senior author on all the papers referenced. Not sure where to take it from here. Thx. Ian Furst (talk) 19:43, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Looking for some quick feedback on an image for WP:FP

I'm wondering whether or not it's worth nominating this for a WP:featured picture - File:TAAR1 Dopamine.svg. I have no experience with the process, so I'm just wondering if anyone familiar with featured pictures (diagrams) thinks its up to par. Besides the fact that it took forever to make, it's more or less the culmination of everything I've learned while researching amphetamine, TAAR1, and trace amines for the past several months. Sort of surprising that there's an endogenous compound with identical pharmacodynamics (same targets, roughly the same affinities) to amphetamine, no? ;)

Transcluded image insertion template

Note: there's an annotated wikilink in this image that isn't part of the original (the "via AADC").

Pharmacodynamics of amphetamine in a dopamine neuron
A pharmacodynamic model of amphetamine and TAAR1
via AADC
The image above contains clickable links
Amphetamine enters the presynaptic neuron across the neuronal membrane or through DAT.[1] Once inside, it binds to TAAR1 or enters synaptic vesicles through VMAT2.[1][2] When amphetamine enters synaptic vesicles through VMAT2, it collapses the vesicular pH gradient, which in turn causes dopamine to be released into the cytosol (light tan-colored area) through VMAT2.[2][3] When amphetamine binds to TAAR1, it reduces the firing rate of the dopamine neuron via G protein-coupled inwardly rectifying potassium channels (GIRKs) and activates protein kinase A (PKA) and protein kinase C (PKC), which subsequently phosphorylate DAT.[1][4][5] PKA phosphorylation causes DAT to withdraw into the presynaptic neuron (internalize) and cease transport.[1] PKC-phosphorylated DAT may either operate in reverse or, like PKA-phosphorylated DAT, internalize and cease transport.[1] Amphetamine is also known to increase intracellular calcium, an effect which is associated with DAT phosphorylation through a CAMKIIα-dependent pathway, in turn producing dopamine efflux.[6][7]

Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 13:44, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Nice diagram. I've submitted photos' before but never a diagram so I'm not sure what standards they apply. I found the FP procedure and standards may be as rigorous as the FA process. If you've never submitted before, you may want to try the Quality Image candidates submission first. It's quicker and a little more friendly. Forgot to sign. I btw, I think the QI process to FP process is analogous to the QA to FA process. Ian Furst (talk) 16:13, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
I'll keep that in mind in the event things go badly - I decided to be a bit bold this morning and made the FP here: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/TAAR1-Dopamine neuron. Now I have an FA and an FP going, heh. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 17:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Good luck - if you have time post the results back here. It will be interesting to hear what the consensus will be given that most nominations are photos. Ian Furst (talk) 19:53, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Lung cancer

There is a question of if we should removed "carcinoma of the lung" as one of the names in the first sentence. [32] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:06, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Doc James, hello. After thinking about this for a while, I think, to me, as a clinician, "carcinoma of the lung" is confusing because it is so non-specific - it gives no more information than the widely used phrase, "lung cancer". http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23401443 this recent review might be of assistance. Regards, Myrtle G.Myrtlegroggins (talk) 05:49, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Glucagon rescue full of medical instructions

Someone with more expertise than I should review Glucagon rescue, which gives how-to instructions and dosage advice for a potentially life-or-death issue. Should it be totally scrapped, or just re-written? --Animalparty-- (talk) 05:51, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Have removed some dosing info. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia have an article on antibiotics?

The historical consensus is no, but I invite anyone here to comment on establishing one at Talk:Antibacterial#This_article_should_be_named_.22Antibiotics.22. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Student classes

We appear to have a Kin 412 class editing. Not sure from where. Have reverted all their changes to cerebral palsy [33] due to reasons mentioned here [34] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:49, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

This page I am sure was created by the same group. Exertional rhabdomyolysis Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I gave the student welcome to everyone who contributed to these articles as part of the group. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:15, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Appears that this is likely the same class we have seen adding info on PT and OT over the last few years. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:39, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Repressed memory article

The Repressed memory article is in a great need of work. The article is tagged for factual accuracy (since 2012), neutrality and lede. Some discussion here about how to improve it:

--Harizotoh9 (talk) 09:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if WLU (talk · contribs) has a few minutes to look at it. I think he'll know a lot more about the subject than I do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Interested in autism in "developing" countries?

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disability. --Hordaland (talk) 11:24, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I replied. Others could also as anyone wishes. I told the person doing this project to post here when they have something to share. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Resolved

QUESTION OF SECURITY OF MEDICAL INFORMATION ON WIKI PAGES

Hello all,

I am a medical student currently carrying out eHealth/telemedicine/mHealth projects with an NGO in Southern Africa (Botswana).

My main project will involve posting applicable clinical information (derived from focus groups with rural health care workers) on the medical Wiki pages and training the workers to utilize Wikipedia as an application on their mobile devices.

One of the issues raised by the IRB here was the question of a) the general reliability and accuracy of medical information on Wikipedia and b) along the same lines, how to protect and ensure the security of that information, on the off chance that it is misused by a health care worker in rural settings.

I did respond by pointing out the quality control measures WikiProject Medicine has taken to ensure the reliability of information but did not really know how to address the matter of security.

Any thoughts on how to respond to this potential ethical issue would be appreciated, especially from the leadership.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roguemed87 (talk • contribs) 22:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

There are NO guarantees of the reliability of the information on wikipedia. There can be legitimate, useful information in an article, right along side wrong, potentially dangerous information and there is no reliable way for the reader to tell the two apart. For this and other reasons, it is my opinion that wikipedia should NEVER be used in a patient care setting. Any quality control measures that may exist are incomplete and without quality guarantee. It seems like you're wanting to contribute information to wiki articles. I appreciate your motivation to contribute to wikipedia, but I ask you to keep in mind the guidelines concerning reliable medical sources found here: WP:MEDRS. According to those guidelines, original research is strictly forbidden. As a fellow medical student, I know how hard it can be to try to perform research with the limited resources available to a student. I commend your desire to do research and to contribute to Wikipedia, but it is my opinion that you should pursue a different line of research than this. I hope I answered your questions, let me know if you have any others. Attaboy (talk) 01:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
You'll find a lot of the discussion on this topic at the discussion on a medical disclaimer including research that's been done on accuracy and use in medical settings. The info is split between the project and talk page. Ian Furst (talk) 02:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
There is a reliable way to check to see if the information Wikipedia contains is accurate. It is by reading the sources supporting the content in question.
Agree with Atta about adding material. If you wish to contribute please use recent high quality secondary sources (like review articles) as references. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:20, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
To be a bit picky, checking a Wikipedia article's text against the original references in the article's footnotes is an important step in assessing that article, but it doesn't actually tell you the material is accurate. The best one can do by going back to those sources is determine whether or not an article accurately reflects the contents of its references—something that is necessary but not sufficient for accuracy. In particular, it doesn't tell you anything about the content of sources that weren't included in the Wikipedia article. Sometimes an article's editor will not be aware of the most current literature on a topic, and will inadvertently provide outdated information. Sometimes an editor will have knowledge of only a narrow portion of a field, or be unfamiliar with certain subtle-but-important details which may be omitted from our coverage. And sometimes an editor will have a particular ax to grind – a pet theory to promote, a fringe notion well outside the bounds of accepted mainstream medicine – and they will choose to present sources that only reflect their personal biases and preferences.
Ideally, we strive to ensure that medical content in Wikipedia articles reflects and summarizes the contents of recent, high-quality secondary literature and other relevant, highly-regarded sources—but Wikipedia is a work in progress, and not all of our articles meet that standard. The project is volunteer-driven, and there are gaps. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:19, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Sure if you are making any important decision it is good practice to consult a few high quality sources. Any source may contain errors and one needs to be aware of that. This includes Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:19, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The iMAS Procedure. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:39, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I am reviewing Xmen, there are some sources on this although mostly primary because this is quite new stuff so it will probably end up as a stub. But iMAS is a bit more problematic; no reasonable sources I can find, NPOV and notabiltity issues. Ochiwar (talk) 16:49, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
According to PubMed, there are 0 results for iMas procedure when searched for in quotes, which isn't a good sign for its notability. Jinkinson talk to me 17:02, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
For XMEN, it is very new... but there is one review paper on PubMed. Lesion (talk) 17:16, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Article exists already. XMEN Disease. Ochiwar (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
It is the same article as the AfC... Lesion (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
XMEN has an OMIM entry as well, if one is looking for secondary sources. #300853. Canada Hky (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Schwartz-Jampel syndrome is already an article, as has been discussed on this very same page. Jinkinson talk to me 15:59, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, some of these get past me twice (they're aout 2500 submissions at the moment). Thanks again! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 12:14, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Total free access to Royal Society History of Science journals for 2 days on March 4th and 5th !!!

As Wikipedian in Residence at the Royal Society, the National Academy for the sciences of the UK, I am pleased to say that the two Royal Society History of Science journals will be fully accessible for free for 2 days on March 4th and 5th. This is in conjunction with the Women in Science Edit-a-thon on 4 March, slightly in advance of International Women's Day, on Saturday March 8th. The event is held by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and is fully booked, but online participation is very welcome, and suggestions for articles relevant to the theme of "Women in Science" that need work, and topics that need coverage.

The journals will have full and free online access to all from 1am (GMT/UTC) on 4th March 2014 until 11pm (GMT/UTC) on 5th March 2014. Normally they are only free online for issues between 1 and 10 years old. They are:

The RS position is a "pilot" excercise, running between January and early July 2014. Please let me know on my talk page or the project page if you want to get involved or have suggestions. There will be further public events, as well as many for the RS's diverse audiences in the scientific community; these will be advertised first to the RS's emailing lists and Twitter feeds.

I am keen to get feedback on my personal Conflict of Interest statement for the position, and want to work out a general one for Royal Society staff in consultation with the community. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 12:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Guardian article on women scientists

Article in todays Guardian promoting an edit-a-thon. Ian Furst (talk) 15:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Four-paragraph leads -- a WP:RfC on the matter

Hello, everyone. There is a WP:RfC on whether or not the leads of articles should generally be no longer than four paragraphs (refer to WP:Manual of Style/Lead section for the current guideline). As this will affect Wikipedia on a wide scale, including WikiProjects that often deal with article formatting, if the proposed change is implemented, I invite you to the discussion; see here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#RFC on four paragraph lead. Flyer22 (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes they should generally be 3 or 4 paragraphs IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:57, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Reference ranges

Should we be providing tables of reference ranges on articles? Is this not something that a local laboratory or health service ought to be doing? See here: Cerebrospinal_fluid#Reference_ranges Additionally, am not sure if providing these tabulated values is encyclopedic. Request some input from other editors --LT910001 (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I suppose you could argue that this is WP:NOTHOW territory ... one of the refs is to a university lab...no sure about that... if we do have these figures, they should probably come from a medical textbook or other more general source than an individual path lab. Lesion (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
My main concern about this is similar to the issue of drug doses. It is easy for an editor to make a mistake and accidentally add an extra zero. Similarly, a vandal could alter the values without necessarily being caught. A reader coming to the article later may then use this incorrect range. Admittedly, the only people using these ranges are health care professionals, so perhaps the significance is less important than with drug doses. Also, the precise reference range depends on the local laboratory used. There are slight variations between laboratories, sometimes using slightly different techniques. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I like reference ranges. It is not like people are going to be running their own CSF analysis in their basement. And if they are they likely have bigger issues. So do not see the same concerns as with med dosing info. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:45, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Adverse effects of fluoroquinolones nominated for deletion

Reasoning explained on the nomination page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Adverse_effects_of_fluoroquinolones#Adverse_effects_of_fluoroquinolones Formerly 98 (talk) 14:11, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Clodovero Ferri

Could someone do a quick check on Clodovero Ferri? This is a new article and has a lot of medical terms that should be checked over for accuracy. Sportfan5000 (talk) 23:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

It needed a lot of cleanup, some of which I have just done, though the grammar still needs a lot of fixing. I'm more concerned about the promotional unsourced stuff in the "scientific activity" section, and I would have removed it but it's positive unsourced content, not negative. There also seems to be a COI here, since there is a lot of detail about him in the article that only he or someone who knows him well would probably know. Jinkinson talk to me 00:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Thank you! Sportfan5000 (talk) 00:44, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Dravet Syndrome

Hi all, recent changes to the CBD article are questionable. Alexbrn created this:

Dravet syndrome is a rare form of epilepsy that is difficult to treat. While high profile and anecdotal reports have sparked interest in treatment with cannabinoids,[23] there is insufficient medical evidence to draw conclusions about their safety or efficacy.[23][24]

From this:

Dravet syndrome is a rare form of epilepsy that is difficult to treat. The parents of a 5-year-old Colorado medical marijuana patient with Dravet syndrome say an extract made from a cannabis strain called Charlotte's Web, which contains less THC and more CBD than other strains, reduced her seizures.[30] In 2010, a Modesto, California father reported that he had experienced success treating his son's case of Dravet Syndrome with a CBD-rich cannabis tincture.[31][32]
By January 2014, 100 families had moved to Colorado to treat their children with Charlotte's Web, which has a wait list.[33][34]

The article was tagged by him but ignored for months until my edit yesterday. The section previous to my edits was:

Dravet syndrome is a rare form of epilepsy that is difficult to treat. The parents of a 5-year-old Colorado medical marijuana patient with Dravet syndrome say a medical marijuana strain called Charlotte's Web, which contains less THC and more CBD than other strains, reduced her seizures.[29]

I am not convinced this is helpful or more informative, and would love to be able to add information to articles here once again, without coming into contact this strange activity from some editors involved with this Project. petrarchan47tc 01:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

You omitted to mention I also created a "see also" link to our main Charlotte's Web (cannabis) article, with which this text is now back in sync. The content there has been much discussed, both here and on that article's Talk page. I recommend reviewing those discussions. We definitely should not be implying Dravet Syndrome can be treated with CBD, based on press reports. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 03:47, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Efficacy (pharmacology)?

This currently redirects to Intrinsic activity -- I suspect not the sort of information many users are looking for regarding, say, measures of efficacy in clinical trials of pharmacological agents. Just a thought, 217.42.178.17 (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Within the field of pharmacology, the above is a reasonable redirect. Please note that not many are likely to search for Efficacy (pharmacology) but rather simply efficacy and the later does discuss both clinical and pharmacological efficacy. Boghog (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Perhaps the real lack is of a page specifically dedicated to clinical efficacy? 217.42.178.17 (talk) 18:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Does Death Cap belong in this wikiproject

Please see discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#A_WikiProject_is_a_group_of_people. Thanks XOttawahitech (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 28/02

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Syndesmosis Procedure. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 12:13, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

It looks like a patient information leaflet. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, but is it salvageable? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:34, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Better to re-write it from scratch. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 03/03

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Henry van Zile Hyde. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:34, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Hyde might be notable--after all, there are lots of sources in the (declined) AFC submission, just no links. He is mentioned in this book [35] and the New York Times ran an obituary about him [36], which I imagine they don't do for just anyone. Jinkinson talk to me 01:49, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Copy and pasting in chunks of text from FDA

This user is doing this [37]. Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Also belongs under adverse effects and needs caps fixed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:10, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
It is a bit concerning since 1) could be a copyright violation and 2) while the information is correct and up to date as of today it can change and only applies to the USA. For instance there are some differences between indications, precautions and warnings between the FDA and Health Canada. While the FDA is a great resource we should come up with a country neutral way to source this information. Mrfrobinson (talk) 20:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
It's probably a copyvio; the last page of the cited source says "© sanofi-aventis 2014 All rights reserved." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
I would say it is a clear copyvio, I revered it and opened a discussion on the talk page. Mrfrobinson (talk) 22:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
I like the idea of adding safety warnings. I joined the discussion. It is definitely a copyright violation and needed to be removed for that purpose. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Should be included in adverse effects IMO rather than its own section. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes MEDMOS is clear and has established consensus and precedent for only that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:50, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Cranial nerve GA review

I've just nominated Cranial nerves for GA, as it has been vastly expanded and worked on. If anyone here would like to help out that'd be great. This is a first for me so I hope you can help me improve the article further if need be. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 11:55, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Need a question answered

By someone who is active on this project and has worked with GA/FA biographical articles. The question can be found at Talk:Joan_McCracken/GA1#Infobox and concerns the use of the cause of death infobox field and how to use it (or not). Background information can be found at {{Infobox person}}. The field is defined as death_cause but there are no instructions on how to best make use of it. Viriditas (talk) 03:18, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Unless the cause of death is a major point in the article, it is normally omitted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Dubious edits to antibiotics pages

I'm not sure what to make of the edits by Manderson91 (talk · contribs); here's an example at Penicillin that I noticed on my watchlist. Is this type of information necessary? Should we get it from TOKU-E? In any case, if the information were to remain, it would probably need to be moved and something would have to be done about the Unicode characters in the Private Use Areas that need to be replaced with real arrows (I'm not the best person to do this because I use a screen reader). Graham87 10:55, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

The nature of the content itself is not so bad imo... source could be better. Lesion (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Should not be its own section. Maybe as part of "mechanism of action"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:15, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
I have no opinion on the quality of the source, but it looks credible. While someone decides what section to merge it into, I've cleaned up the refs and the text, hopefully to make it easier for Graham to take in. There's a lesson for us: using symbols such as "greater than" and "less than", especially in close proximity to other symbols can cause confusion for editors who rely on non-visual user agents. --RexxS (talk) 21:08, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, guys. I don't know much about this subject; the Penicillin article is only on my watchlist to deal with vandalism. I thought the provided reference for the recent edits was borderline – we could do far worse though. @Jmh649: yes, the new section's lack of compliance with the medical Manual of Style also concerned me; I'd have no problem with moving the info to "Mechanism of action" as you suggested. @RexxS: Adding to my confusion, I was running on ridiculously tiny amounts of sleep last night, having just come back from a holiday (it's so nice to get back to your own bed!) For some reason I'd failed to notice that the "－" was meant to be a dash ... it's actually read as such by JAWS while arrowing through the text but not while using the "say character" function. If writing the symbols out as words confers no advantage to sighted users, I wouldn't mind if they were changed back to symbols ... using the correct dash. This would make that section perfectly clear to users of screen readers. Graham87 01:51, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Spelling it out ("from 1 to 3") produces no disadvantage to sighted readers, and might reduce the odds of someone thinking that it meant "1 minus 3". Also, this is my chance to remind everyone that "from 1 dash 3" (whether you use the proper dash or a hyphen) is prohibited by the MOS. If it starts with a preposition like from, then you must use a word like to in between the numbers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal for new WP:MED task forces

I was looking at Template:WikiProject Medicine and I was surprised to see there was no "pediatrics" or "immunology" task forces. I think that both of these topics should have task forces of their own under the WP:MED umbrella. Thoughts? Jinkinson talk to me 16:38, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

If there are willing, active editors to populate them then yes, otherwise it (currently)seems unnecessary. Lesion (talk) 16:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes task forces are formed when there are lots of editors. Most taskforces are fairly moribund right now. And most of us who are working across all specialties comment / discuss here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I feel the major role of the taskforces today is to categorize articles and make it easier for a specialists to come in and improve on their own field. Looking five years from now we will hopefully have more editors, and a slow low-demand process of tagging will be good for them in the long run. (Also didn't realise immunology didn't exist, have tagged several articles.) CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 19:09, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Identifying reliable sources (medicine) - prohibiting primary sources

"Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content" was added to wp:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). Are there any opinions about this? - Sidelight12 Talk 19:10, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Already seems to have overwhelming support, and its only a clarification of what the guidelines already express, don't really see the issue. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 19:19, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Not relying on a primary source is sound thinking in a topic area like Medicine where breaking news could drastically change article content whenever a new research is made public. Instead it is rather important for a secondary source to put the latest research findings into context. The new wording makes it clearer to new editors or people less experienced with working on medical topics. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
It's pretty much standard advice for anyone dealing with medical articles. It's not an absolute prohibition, but editors would need a good reason not to follow it. In a field where secondary sources are regularly updated, there just isn't a case for using primaries with all the risk that entails. We would all probably concede that there may be some niche areas where secondary sources are difficult to find - for example, a topic I am interested in, Nitrogen narcosis, gets 1 hit for reviews on PubMed (and that's from 1968) and 0 hits for secondary evidence on Trip database. Nevertheless, the exception proves the rule and the vast majority of medical topics have sufficient secondary sources to confirm the value of that sentence added to MEDRS. --RexxS (talk) 22:09, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Opinions requested on recent move

An editor recent moved Healthcare science to Biomedical sciences and then redirected Healthcare science to point to Health science. I think we have a case of different terminology from US/UK, and a bit of an overlap. Any suggestions on a way forward? I think the current status is less than ideal - for example,the NHS in the UK describes healthcare science careers as comprising many of the elements listed at Biomedical sciences now.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 05/03

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dr.Mahalingam Thangavelu MD. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

List peer review for List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

I've started a list peer review for List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, feedback to further along the quality improvement process would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!/archive1. — Cirt (talk) 11:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure why this is relevant to WikiProject Medicine. Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
The production debunks pseudoscience, but I agree that it's a bit a remote link. JFW | T@lk 21:51, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
I was sufficiently intrigued that I left some comments at the review, so leaving the message here paid off! --RexxS (talk) 01:51, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks very much to RexxS for the peer review participation, most appreciated! :) — Cirt (talk) 03:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Barbers and hairdressers

FYI Category:Barbers has been proposed to be merged to Category:Hairdressers and the equivalent fictional categories. As historically, barbers are surgeons (hence the red stripe on the barber pole), this may be of interest to you. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Citing Wikipedia in health science journals

Hello. A paper was just published which said that a lot of health science journals cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source.

  • Bould, M. D.; Hladkowicz, E. S.; Pigford, A.-A. E.; Ufholz, L.-A.; Postonogova, T.; Shin, E.; Boet, S. (6 March 2014). "References that anyone can edit: review of Wikipedia citations in peer reviewed health science literature". BMJ. 348 (mar05 4): g1585. doi:10.1136/bmj.g1585. PMID 24603564.

This article just presents data which indicates that the citation of Wikipedia in health science journals has been happening for a long time and is happening more now. It happens more in lower-impact factor journals but still happens in top impact factor journals.

I wrote a response to this article in which I said that the Wikipedia community suggests that actually it would be better for people seeking health information to follow the references which are cited in Wikipedia and reuse those sources after checking them and judging their quality.

I like what I wrote. It would not be my preference to have a role in which I seem to be a representative of the Wikipedia community, but it happens sometimes and I took this as an opportunity for outreach. There are two points on which I would like to comment because I knowingly said things which were not completely aligned with existing Wikipedia policy.

  1. I discouraged health science writers from citing Wikipedia articles, when the Wikipedia platform encourages people to cite its articles. Go to any article, and on the left menu there is an option which says, "cite this page". This leads users to a place which helps people cite Wikipedia articles. This is not aligned with most community thought that people should check the references which any article uses and preferably cite those, and of course the citations that tool generates are so lacking in authority that Wikipedia itself forbids they be reused elsewhere on Wikipedia. I think that people here in WikiProject Medicine would especially agree with the idea of checking the cited sources, and lots of other Wikipedians think that, but this is not actually in the policies. I think this is not even discussed much anywhere.
  2. I suggested that health information on Wikipedia ought to have citations, when there is no rule on Wikipedia that says citations have to be used at all. English Wikipedia often tells people to use citations. Many Wikipedias in other languages hardly use references. Lots of people on English Wikipedia, especially outside of health science projects on Wikipedia, feel comfortable adding lots of information with no citations. In the guidelines, the concept of WP:Verifiability is just a route to achieving neutral point of view, and not fundamental to Wikipedia otherwise. WikiProject Medicine, I feel, takes a much stronger stance that information should only be added to health science articles if it has a citation, and so far as I know everyone here strongly favors use of citations. There are lots of benefits to allowing information without citations be used on Wikipedia, but it is my opinion that ideally all information on Wikipedia should have a citation, even when it is good to temporarily sometimes have uncited information here.

I had limited space in what I could write and I said that Wikipedia should not be cited and that information in Wikipedia should have citations. I know there is more nuance which I was unable to express. I did what I could to get more information out to new health channels.

I am sorry also that BMJ was unable to publish my commentary with an open access license. I am also a supporter of WikiProject Open and I made the requests that I could to make my paper accessible to everyone online, but I failed to identify a route by means of which to do this. I thought it was important to at least reach BMJ readers and I even asked their readers to come to this board and talk with us. Right now I do not understand what limits I have in sharing my letter, but at least if anyone on this board wants to read it email me and I will share a copy with you. The paper is available for anyone to read on BMJ. Thanks everyone. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I made the requests that I could to make my paper accessible to everyone online, but I failed to identify a route by means of which to do this. - If you have copyright permission to do so, publish a preprint on arXiv or biorXiv.--cyclopiaspeak! 16:35, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Cyclopia Thanks for the advice. Let me check in with others and if that is an option for me then I will do it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Cyclopia BMJ put it in front of the paywall, so now I do not need to do self-archiving. Thanks just the same - I was worried when I expressed the concern and I should know more about arXiv anyway. Other than being free to read I do not know what other licensing terms BMJ has on this, but at least it can be read. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Should this article be included in WikiProject Medicine?

A psych student is going to be working on Retinohypothalamic tract this semester. I advised her/him to read WP:MEDMOS, and then I noticed that the article isn't included in WikiProject Medicine. If it should be, please add that info to the Talk page. Thank you, --Hordaland (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Hordaland Anyone is welcome to come here but right now, that article does not have information which specifically targets humans. If this student adds human information then it would make more sense to put that article in the scope of this project. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. --Hordaland (talk) 19:41, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Further it falls under WP:ANAT, and not WPMED. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 14:45, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Sedoanalgesia

I've had to remove most of article text as part of a contributor copyright investigation. Unfortunately this included the introduction, so what remains is now lacking context. Would anyone here be able to help by adding a suitable introduction to the article? January (talk) 09:40, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Gardasil moved

Gardasil has been moved to the article titled Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Vaccine, Recombinant by A915. This seems unnecessary, and the user who moved the article does not appear to have explained their actions, so could someone opine on this and act accordingly? ComfyKem (talk) 04:27, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Pretty blatant violation of WP:COMMONNAME, if you ask me. If we keep it there, we've got a lot of other pages to move, such as--oh, I don't know-moving cheetah to Acinonyx jubatus. Jinkinson talk to me 04:41, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
The new name is ridiculously long. We already have an article about the human papillomavirus vaccine, for which there are two brands, Cervarix (bivalent) and Gardasil (quadrivalent). WP:PHARMOS advises to use the International Nonproprietary Name (INN) if one exists. The INN common name for Gardasil is human papillomavirus vaccine [types 6, 11, 16, 18] (recombinant, adsorbed) which is somewhat different from the current article name. Wikipedia article naming criteria include naturalness (one that readers are likely search for) and conciseness (title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject). "Gardasil" fulfills both of these criteria whereas '"human papillomavirus vaccine [types 6, 11, 16, 18] (recombinant, adsorbed)" fulfills neither. I normally would support using the INN, but in this case because of the extreme length of the INN common name and the fact that currently there are no generic versions of Gardasil available, I think WP:IAR applies and we should use the more general Wikipedia article naming criteria instead of WP:PHARMOS. In fact, I think PHARMOS should be amended to allow exceptions for excessively long INNs. Boghog (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
After digging into this further, the 2009 EMA Gardasil Assessment Report states that the "International non-proprietary name/Common name" is "human papillomavirus vaccine [types 6, 11, 16, 18] (recombinant, adsorbed)". In contrast, INN Working Document 05.179 Update 2011 states that "At present, vaccines are not included within the INN system". Hence this name appears to be a common name and not an INN. Boghog (talk) 05:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Looking through {{Vaccines}} and Category:Vaccines, it seems like common names aren't used as titles. Rather, most are just called "x vaccine." I agree that the current title is inappropriate. However, should there be 3 separate articles for HPV vaccine, Cervarix, and Gardasil? Why couldn't Cervarix and Gardasil be merged in to HPV vaccine. Looking to other examples, Pneumococcal vaccine, because it has 2 different types of vaccines, has 2 additional articles - Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. Here, the common names (Prevnar and Pneumovax) are not used. And, all of the different serotype versions of PCV are together in 1 article. Since Cervarix and Gardasil are similar vaccines, just with different serotypes, why not just combine them...and since there is only 1 "type" of HPV vaccine, why not just merge it in to HPV vaccine? --Scott Alter (talk) 13:05, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
The merger would certainly solve the naming issue. However merging them would produce a very long article and there would soon be calls for splitting the article apart. I think there is more than enough material for three articles. Also Cervarix and Gardasil have somewhat different efficacy and safety profiles. Finally both Cervarix and Gardasil have received a lot of independent coverage in the press which makes them independently notable. Boghog (talk) 14:36, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
As someone explained to me a few years ago, there are no generic names for vaccines. Every vaccine from every manufacturer is at least slightly (sometimes dramatically) different. In a few cases (e.g., flu shots) the differences are minor enough to not matter for our purposes, but they aren't actually the same thing. This is pretty common for biologics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Based on the discussion above, I have restored the article name back to Gardasil leaving the redirect from the common name behind. Boghog (talk) 10:17, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

MEDRS sources and Dyslexia

Hello everyone. An editor has added material to Dyslexia that does not meet WP:MEDRS, though, it probably meets WP:RS. Please take a look at the talk page discussion and chime in [38]. Thanks. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:45, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

A claim that dyslexia is pseudoscience needs better sources than newspapers and buzzfeed. I've removed the section per WP:UNDUE third paragraph. --RexxS (talk) 13:34, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Besides the specific point raised here please bear in mind that MEDRS should not be enforced in articles that are not exclusively medical in nature. Dyslexia and many other conditions have social, educational, political, economic and other aspects that are outside of the strictly medical field. Enforcing MEDRS in such cases is counterproductive. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:56, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
No, MEDRS still should be "enforced", but not on all sections of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.85.171 (talk) 14:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Dyslexia is not a medical condition, more a shared symptom of multiple conditions which has been demonstrated by the international research of the last decade or so. The 2013 International dyslexia symposium may provide more information regarding these issues, as may some of my PubMed dyslexia related research paper collections listed on my user page. dolfrog (talk) 14:51, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Dyslexia is a health condition. Popular press is not suitable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:26, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
@Dodger67: On the contrary, whenever good quality sources are available, the guidance at MEDRS ought to be followed in any article. MEDRS sits well with WP:RS and WP:V because it explains in a clear manner how we are to treat secondary and primary sources (WP:PSTS) and the importance of not giving more weight to views held by a small minority than they are due by their prominence in the mainstream literature (WP:UNDUE paragraph 3). In the case of views only supported by weak primary sources, MEDRS tells us not to use them at all when we have secondary sources setting out the mainstream view. In what field do you propose we should be using poor sources to gainsay what is written in good quality secondary sources? I'm pretty sure there's no mandate from "social, educational, political, economic and other aspects" to do that. --RexxS (talk) 16:45, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately you have got it wrong Doc, Dyslexia is a man made problem about having problems using a man made communication system the visual notation of speech. Dyslexia is a symptom of many underlying cognitive deficits / disorders which are the real medical conditions. Much like a runny nose which has flu and hayfever as possible causes, and you treat the flu and hayfever, and not the runny nose. So the medical issues are the cogntive subtypes of developmental dyslexia which are similar to the subtypes of Alexia, (acquired dyslexia) which results from brain injury, stroke or atrophy. dolfrog (talk) 17:12, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
We have lots of man made health problems. Think ADHD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:30, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Put it another way, if we stopped using the visual notation of speech, the written word, as a means of communication then there would be no dyslexia. However the medical conditions that cause the dyslexic symptom would still exist, such, as auditory processing disorder, visual processing disorders, and attention disorders as you say ADHD. Dyslexia is a Social Construct, not a medical condition. dolfrog (talk) 02:15, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
(ec)MEDRS has sometimes been used as a jackboot to stomp out the addition of social or political content in articles about subjects where Medicine is only one of a number of interested WikiProjects. It happens fairly often in articles that are of interest to WikiProject Disability, where I am an active member. Sources such as mainstream newspapers and others that happen to be guilty of the sin of not being "serious medical journals" are rejected out of hand even when the content they support is not actually medical information. I can't cite any specific examples off the top of my head right now but I've made a mental note to report here when I next come across it.
@Doc James, your insistence that dyslexia is a purely and exclusively medical subject is a textbook perfect example of why the Medical model of disability is evil. The mind boggles how an apparently well educated and sane person such as yourself can flatly deny that dyslexia has implications for, amongst others, the education and employment of people who have it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
One of the things that boggles me most is that people love to attribute to me opinions I do not have. Where did "purely and exclusively medical subject" come from? I do not believe I ever said this. DS also has employment issues as do many other health care topics. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:29, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
But who is denying that dyslexia has implications for education and employment? We have lots of good quality articles in scholarly sources on the topics. For example, "dyslexia and education":
So why would we want to use the Daily Mail or Buzzfeed to source content on the subject? Because that's what you're suggesting we do. --RexxS (talk) 17:42, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
If that's what you think I'm saying maybe you need to be tested for dyslexia. ;) I am raising a general issue on the back of this specific incident, though this incident is not specifically relevant in the narrow sense. What I am saying is that sometimes editors with a medical POV are abusing MEDRS to stomp on any, non-medical addition to an article just because the source is not specifically a medical journal. I am also putting on record my objection to the conceit that medicine is the be all and end all of all knowledge about any topic that happens to have any medical content whatsoever. Forget about the narrow specifics of this particular incident and look at the broader concept. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:58, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
There is a need for both a medical and a social model of disability. research is still ongoing for mostr disabilities so that we can have a better medical / neurological understanding of these issues, and we need others who provide the support in social, educational, and employment areas of life to understand the practical implications of living with one of these disabilities on a day to day basis which initiself may nt be specifically a medical issues, but more about we are best able to cope and how others need to provide the undersanding and supprt we may need. So we need both. But we also needto seperate the symptoms from the conditions. dolfrog (talk) 18:12, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes that's what I'm sure you're saying, whether I'm dyslexic or not. It's easy to knock MEDRS without giving any diffs to back up the claims, just emotional crud like "jackboot" and "stomp". What you're doing is trying to open the door for crap sources to be used to refute good ones, because that's exactly what MEDRS protects us from. Now you look at the broader concept: we don't use primary sources to imply secondary sources are wrong; and we don't give undue weight to tiny minority viewpoints. Every fringe-nutjob and POV-pusher rejoices when folks like you try to denigrate the value of MEDRS. They'd love to find ways of wriggling out of MEDRS so they can spread their "true beliefs" across articles with impunity - and that's what you're enabling by smearing the editors who champion MEDRS as a bulwark against POV. --RexxS (talk) 18:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
I am objecting to the excessively zealous and narrow application of MEDRS where an article is not exclusively and purely medical, SOME, I repeat SOME! editors use MEDRS to eliminate content from articles (that are relevant to WikiProject Medicine but are also relevant to other WikiProjects, such as Disability) sourced from anything other than actual medical journals (narrowly defined). WikiProject Medicine members do not have the right to lord it over other relevant Wikiprojects and force them to abide by the narrowest misinterpretation of MEDRS. WP:RS, without the MED prefix, applies to all articles, so your argument about opening the door to tabloids and other poor sources is simply an irrelevant red herring. It may be really hard for you to understand but there are very good quality reliable sources out there in the world that are not medical journals. Show me even one place where I mentioned allowing tabloids or POV pushing sources. Do try to stop conflating the narrow specifics of the particular incident that lead to this discussion with the broader topic I am actually discussing. BTW I have already undertaken to provide relevant diffs as and when I find them. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
And I'm objecting to your evidence-free smears of decent editors who are trying to keep the latest misinterpreted news items and fads out of a serious encyclopedia. I can see you've never read the five pillars and have no understanding of our policies on sourcing or you'd be able to see that MEDRS is just RS in a field where there are a multitude of good sources. There's nothing magical about medicine that gives rise to MEDRS. It's just that a lot of editors have taken the time to spell out the consequences of WP:PSTS and WP:UNDUE in this field where good sources are generally plentiful. You have the choice of putting the same effort into whatever corner of the encyclopedia you want to work in. But don't come here naively trying to knock down something you don't understand just because you can't work out the consequences of letting the nutters build articles out of crazy theories and yellow journalism. I understand very well that you can't see that I'm talking about all serious topics, not just medicine, but to learn anything you're going to have to take the cotton-wool out of your ears and put it in your mouth. --RexxS (talk) 00:15, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
I will speak out that MEDRS is definitely in friction with RS. To speak of a line in black and white terms is a way to avoid a conversation. I will provide a hypothetical quite close to what I have experienced. What if a law is passed to ban or promote a procedure that was in conflict with NEJM? What if legal actions are taken against our best medical institutions? What if doctors were targeted by medical societies? In every single case there is both a MEDRS and an RS story, and the MEDRS people will insist that articles be written to document these questionable laws, unhelpful intrusions and unscrupulous doctors. No matter how you want to frame it there is friction, and the MEDRS folks are very assertive of all grey turf.Bob the goodwin (talk) 05:07, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
No, there is no friction. WP:MEDRS is to WP:RS what WP:3RR is to WP:EW: it's a good example of a bright-line rule applied to the issue of primary vs secondary sources. There will be exceptions, but generally it helps to avoid the wikilawyering that gets used elsewhere to wriggle dubious material into articles. As for your hypothetical, there's no problem: we find good quality secondary sources describing the legislation and its effects and use them - if it's in a scholarly journal, so much the better. The alternative that you seem to espouse is to get the information from somebody's blog site, or worse, to do your own research and use your own analysis of the law to tell us what its effect is. No thanks. Even if it means waiting a while for some quality sources to appear, it's better than the free-for-all that would otherwise ensue. --RexxS (talk) 16:44, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

We reflect what the reliable sources say. They say it's a disorder with a probable biological basis. Using medical sources to cover its etiology and management is appropriate. Zad68 17:22, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Dyslexia is the symptom of many medicallly and / or clinically diagnosable disabilities such as Auditory processing disorder which is the clinically diagnosed cause of my own dyslexic symptom and poses many more problems with regard to education and employment as a disability thyan just my dyslexic symptom. So this is more about understanding the actual causes of the dyslexic symptom and understanding the various disabilities that can cause the dyslexic symptom and their wider implications. Dyslexia is only about having problems with text, the written word. dolfrog (talk) 17:32, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Another way of looking at this is that those who do not get a medical diagnosis of an auditory processing disorder, or a visual processing disorder, or an attention disorder, or any combination of these issues are not dyslexic, but purely garden variety poor readers. dolfrog (talk) 17:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
It really does depend on what you call reliable sources there is so much marketing hype out there especially from the so called nonprofit Associations dolfrog (talk) 17:46, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
This thread is really bothering me.
"Dyslexia is a health condition."
"Using medical sources to cover its etiology and management is appropriate. (My emphasis)
Yes, neurologists do research, and that is good. Yes, our article could be better sourced, like so many of our articles.
But you're making it sound like parents of dyslexic kids should visit the family GP for diagnosis and treatment. That is not how it works. As a (former) elementary school teacher I know that all these kids are way different from each other. A psychologist can do some standard tests. Teachers, in cooperation with the parents and the child, do the management and treatment, and often the preliminary diagnosis as well. We also "treat" the emotional problems which result from not being "good enough" in many situations. BTW, of all the dyslexic children + the two with dyscalculia I've worked with, none of them have had ADD/ADHD.)
I think an article such as this one needn't have a whole lot of emphasis on the possible causes or on the ongoing research. Let's have more about living with dyslexi, the problem that it is, and words from experts in education on how best to tackle/treat it. --Hordaland (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Please remember that we are writing encyclopedia articles. We are writing a tertiary source that needs to reflect mainly the general consensus of the current state of the secondary sources available. We are not writing a how-to manual, we are not writing advice and tips for individuals affected by the conditions (or their caretakers) covered in our articles, we are not writing advocacy pieces that promote a view of how things "should be" rather than how they are. Zad68 20:29, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
A how-to manual on this subject would take a whole book or two. There are certainly educators, psychologists and others who've written, in general, on these matters in a brief, abstract-like form. --Hordaland (talk) 21:17, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
The problem there is that neither teachers nor psychologists are qualified or trained to clinically diagnose the underlying causes of the dyslexic symptom. And unless each dyslexic and those trying to provide life long support are aware of the limitiations imposed by the complex nature of the disability that can cause the dyslexic symptom then those teachers are through ignorance jepodising each dyslexics self esteme and possibly discriminating against each dyslexics disability. It is time to stop the ignorance from teachers and pschologists and have the real medical causes of the dislexic symptom diangosed and have these so called professionals learn to work as part of a multi discipline team to provide the understanding and support each dyslexic may need depending on support needs to work around the clinically diagnosed disability causing the dyslexic symptom. It is time for these so called professionals to read the intnernational research of the last decade or so and improve the quality of their so called professional service accordingly. dolfrog (talk) 23:32, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Psychologists in fact do clinically diagnose things (clinical psychologists anyway). Calling psychologists 'so called professionals' is way over the top. Anyway, thank you everyone for chiming in. Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:19, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Psychologists are not trained or qualfied to assess or diagnose any of the medical conditions that can cause the dyslexic symptom, as these issues are outside of the professions remit. They can help provide support etc after a clinical diagnosis has been made by the professions qualified to diagnose the conditions that cause the dyslexic symptom. I viewed a recent assessment by a psychologist and could not be believe the levels of incompetance contained in the report, in accurate guesswork due top a lack of understanding of the complex issues how they may relate to various conditions, and international research of the last decade. There should be a limited licence to practice and only being renewed by proving knowledge of recent advances in the understanding these complex issues. dolfrog (talk) 02:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
I will be sure tell all of my colleagues to stop diagnosing people because an anonymous wikipedia editor says they are not trained. Dbrodbeck (talk) 02:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Psychologists and not trained audiologists qualified to diagnose auditory processing disorders, nor optometrists qualified to dioagnose visual processing disorders, nor are they psychiatrists to diagnose Attention disorders, the medical conditiosn that cause the dyslexic symptom But they may be able to identify the dyslexic symptom. So what are you saying that phsychologists can diagnose with regard to these specific conditions. dolfrog (talk) 03:12, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Your distrust of my profession is really immaterial. As is this discussion. This all has little to do with sources used in the dyslexia article, and I probably should not have responded to the bait. Let us move on. Dbrodbeck (talk) 03:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
to get back to the sources in question, the book has not yet been published yet, so the newspaper reports as yet can not be verified. However Since the 2013 International Dyslexia Symposium, and DSM-5, Dyslexia is now not considered a medical condition, but a symptom of one or more underlying medical conditions. And this all results from the international research of the last decade or more. You could have a look at the CiteULike Developmental Dyslexia research paper sharing group library, and you can always add more research papers to this library that you feel are missing and relevent. dolfrog (talk) 03:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Conference presentations don't meet MEDRS I don't think. Something having multiple causation does not stop it from being a 'medical condition'. We still must follow MEDRS. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Let's look at this dispute from a different angle: The article's current Dyslexia#Society and culture section is a short, unexplained (and therefore pointless) bulleted list of seven films about dyslexia. Why doesn't someone get the review at PMID 19479891 about the social model of dyslexia and actually write a couple of sentences about the social model of dyslexia? Good sources about social issues exist. Let's use some of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Are physicians scientists?

See discussion at: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_scientists#Are_physicians_scientists_-_Guardian_article. XOttawahitech (talk) 20:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I feel the discussion sums it up pretty well. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 20:46, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
@CFCF: Unfortunatey it appears that this has prompted the removal of engineers from scientists without any discussion on the article's talkpage, sigh... XOttawahitech (talk) 14:26, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Logos of organizations we are collaborating with

Supposedly these are not allowed per [39]. Have started discussion here [40] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:11, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

An issue that is potentially more important than it seems at first glance. Great if some of us here with a more pragmatic view of these policies, and a real wish to improve Wikipedia could go and support change to this. CFCF (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

WPMED goals

I was just updating the progress on WPMED's goals and noted that some clever fellow has made some of them self-updating (self-updating goals previously being a goal for the goals). Most impressive and my thanks. Lesion (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Nosocomial infections

We have a paper here that comments on our coverage of nosocomial infections. Might be useful to use to fix the concerns they raise [41]. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:44, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

It would be hard to do so fully without massive breaches of WP:NOT and MOS:MED. The "study aims to assess whether Wikipedia can be considered a reliable source for professional updating [updating instructions for medical professionals], concerning Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI)", using 15 articles including Necktie. We are criticised for (somewhere) mentioning or recommending signs reminding about hand-washing routines, apparently not included in the 173 professional recommendations, and for not giving all sorts of detailed guidelines about procedures for the use of catheters and the like by medical staff. Another scientific paper that misunderstands the basic nature of Wikipedia, and one that couldn't be bothered to find a native speaker to look over their English, which makes several sentences incomprehensible. Since the sources of the 173 professional recommendations are not detailed, it would be hard to use the paper itself when adding to the articles, or even to locate the original sources item by item. Johnbod (talk) 05:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes the language issues make it difficult and it is not entirely clear what many of the sources are. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:30, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
The paper states "The texts of the articles have been downloaded on 23rd November 2010." Yet the paper was published in 2013. It is already more than three years out of date. The authors mention that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but do not attempt to distinguish this from a "how-to" guide or a clinical guideline. Thus the so-called "errors of omission" do not unduly bother me. However the authors do identify a small number of unreferenced statements in Wikipedia, and they also mention the presence of a few statements that contradict the clinical guidelines—these are points of genuine concern. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:21, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Barnstars to top editors

I am wanting to hand out barnstars to all editors who made more than 250 edit to medical articles in 2013 (114 in English 160 in other languages) by bot. Have proposed it here. [42] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:23, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Survey of Wikipedians Background

Hey All Wishing to do a bit of research per the proposal here. Concerns / comments? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:03, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think this should be reviewed and noted by the team at meta:Research:Committee. The advantage to doing this is that if there are any complaints about the research process then there is a oversight body to help resolve concerns. The major risk of doing a study like this is harm to community members' time, and among community members, the demographic selected is one that is more discussed than most.
I do not want to make this group exposed to regular and ceaseless surveying and it might be worth asking in advance that the Research Committee limit requests to survey this group. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:42, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services

I nominated the article Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services for GA status last October, but it failed. I would like to get as much help addressing GregJackP's concerns on the GAN subpage linked above as possible, as I am planning on renominating it sometime soon.

On an unrelated note, has anyone seen @SandyGeorgia:? She doesn't seem to have posted here at all for quite a while, which is weird. Jinkinson talk to me 01:47, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I detected increasing frustration, culminating in calling for a medical disclaimer. Shame if she has left for good because she was doing a lot of good work. Perhaps just a break after that RfC. Lesion (talk) 12:01, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
She's editing. She's just not posing here right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Input needed on RfC at Talk:Pathology

There's a debate underway at the above talk page concerning the breadth of concepts which should be covered in the article in question. However, despite the high-profile nature of the article, it has only so far managed to attract the opinions of three editors (the two original parties in disagreement and myself) and this seems like an appropriate place to secure further unbiased and informed editor opinions. Similar notices posted at WP:Wikiproject Biology and WP:Wikiproject Anatomy. Snow (talk) 16:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Group of articles need overhaul

The articles: Organic prepartum and postpartum psychoses, Psychiatric disorders of childbirth, Menstrual psychosis, Postpartum psychosis all were created or heavily edited by User:Son of Fraser and Joyce. Son of Fraser and Joyce contributions This editor was blocked in 2010 for copyright violations. I stumbled across them today when looking at content on Pre-eclampsia/Eclampsia and found some very outdated referenced content--a hundred years old--- in the article Psychiatric disorders of childbirth which I cleaned up. I removed large sections from several of these articles because the content was not well written and poorly sourced. But I didn't look specifically for copyright violations. In all honestly, some of them are so poorly written and sourced that they might need to go to Afd or be redirected. I promised myself that I would rewrite Eclampsia this week in honor of International Women's Day, so can't take on sorting this out until sometime next week (if no one else gets to it first...hint, hint that help would be nice.) :-) Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 04:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, turns out there is some literature on Menstrual psychosis - was almost prepared to AfD that one. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:48, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I think Organic prepartum and postpartum psychoses could be merged into Psychiatric disorders of childbirth. Delirium is not technically a psychosis despite having psychotic features. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:51, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Now proposed Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:48, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Excellent! I'll comment there. And thanks for the work on Menstrual psychosis. I checked the page view history and see that that the menstrual psychosis article has a decent number of page views a month. So it is goodness that it is more up to date and accurate. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

How much medical content is there

A bookshelf of all Wikipedia's medical content (in all 286) languages as of the end of 2013. Based on an estimated number of bytes of 1,015,667,193. With 8,000,000 characters per book. Thus 126.7 volumes. This does not include pictures.

User:West.andrew.g has recently calculated how much medical content we have in all languages of Wikipedia as of the end of 2013. I have put it together as a bookshelf. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:36, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

English makes up 23.7% of the content or 30 volumes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/flavonoid alkaloid

Dear medical experts: Should this old abandoned Afc submision be deleted as a stale draft, or is this a notable topic that should be improved instead? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:41, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

The reference provided does not support notability. I didn't find any suitable sources on PubMed. However this paper supports notability. This paper might or might not support notability—I am not able to view the whole paper. I am inclined to think that this topic is not notable, although it may well become notable in the future. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:19, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
The source supplied above plus the fact that the flavonoid alkaloid alvocidib, a drug that is being actively developed as a cancer treatment, makes this article notable. I have made some edits that have hopefully improved to the point were it can moved to main space. Boghog (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. Right now the article has just one source. Should the two sources mentioned by Axl be added? —Anne Delong (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
By far, the best source is the review article that has already been added. The first source mentioned by Axl is a Ph.D. thesis which has not been published in a peer review journal. The third source has been published in a peer review journal but is primary and has a very narrow scope and adds little. Hence I do not think it is necessary to add the the other two sources. Boghog (talk) 20:48, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I just added two additional review articles that document that alvocidib is a flavoalkaloid currently being developed as a cancer drug. Boghog (talk) 21:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Boghog, thank you for seeking out references. Jain's paper supports notability for the topic. Bose's paper does not support notability for the topic, but it does support the statement. Now with two references that support notability, I am more inclined to accept that the article is notable. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:46, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I have moved it to mainspace now. Can one of you add some appropriate categories? I don't understand the topic well enough. And by the way, thanks for helping out with this. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:50, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Okay, that's done. Thanks again. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Cannabis

Can some regulars comment at Talk:Tetrahydrocannabinol/Archives/2020#Marinol.2C_Cannabis.2C_and_Mortality? I'm worried about the amount of original research which is going on trying to debunk peer reviewed articles, and the use of blogs to counter peer reviewed sources (and also claims of conspiracies). I'm not medically trained and have no conclusions myself. Someone with experience in medical research to interpret the specific literature would be specifically helpful, Second Quantization (talk) 10:20, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

PMID 21353301 (a 2011 meta-analysis) is one of the papers being discussed. There are claims that nobody has ever "scientifically proven" that cannabis can kill people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:16, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I think Michael E. Mann was right when he said, “Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not for science." (Even though he was talking about a totally different field of science.) Jinkinson talk to me 15:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Featured List nomination for List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

  1. List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
  2. Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!/archive1

I've started a Featured List nomination for List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Participation would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of awards and nominations received by Penn & Teller: Bullshit!/archive1.

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Video about Wikipedia, medicine, and health organizations

Hello. Dr. Azzam (User:AminMDMA) and I were interviewed in video about Wikipedia and health.

The interviewer was Brian Lehrer.

See details about Dr. Azzam's class at Education_Program:University_of_California,_San_Francisco_(UCSF)/Expanding_WikiProject:_Medicine_(Fall_2013). Some of you may be aware that this class was highly covered in external media, including in The Atlantic and The New York Times.

Anyone wishing to become more involved in the education program could ask me anything or talk to any of the people at Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard. It is my wish that more medical schools and health organizations contribute to Wikipedia. I also wish for the success of Dr. Azzam because he has put trust and his time in Wikipedia and our community far beyond what most others have. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:21, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Blue, that was very interesting!
Info for others: the interview is the last segment of the video, starting at 30 min and lasting just short of a half an hour. --Hordaland (talk) 19:58, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 14/03

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tibial Nerve Stimulation. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:30, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

There is already Percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation, but not Transcutaneous tibial nerve stimulation ... seems like this AfC is attempting to be a parent article of both. Would support putting all this content on the same article, probably called Tibial nerve stimulation. Lesion (talk) 14:42, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Peanut butter test

What are peoples thoughts on this? Supported by a small RCT and the pop press it received. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:23, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Interesting, if the study was critiqued in a peer-reviewed journal, it would all be considered original research and deleted. Because the critique came through pop press it's different. Imo, the press served only to critique the origianl article (e.g. it didn't add some novel new angle to it) and is not otherwise note-worthy. Favour deletion Ian Furst (talk) 00:00, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
"The study's lead author ... got the idea for the study ... while studying under Professor Heilman." Conflict of interest? :-) Axl ¤ [Talk] 03:02, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
If you read thru the remainder of the media (and google it), the three major outlets pick it up right after the one press release from the University then its widly picked-up. At the end of the day, context matters and this is a scholarly report that should be subject to scholarly standards imo. It was not an event, series of events or life changing procedure where the media reported a societal event. It's just a report about a quirky medical test that happened to go viral. Welcome to modern media. Ian Furst (talk) 03:49, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I figured it out. On Oct 8 there's a press release from U Florida which is republished by Futurity.org a non-profit (with many Univeristy "partners") that features the university discoveries. Someone posts the link to the Futurity article on Reddit and it goes viral within the site (2700 upvotes and hundereds of comments). Oct 10/11 (2 and 3 days later) it's picked up by CBS, NPR, FOX, USA Today and gets bigger after that. If you want to know what special interest story will be on the news tomorrow, check Reddit today. Ian Furst (talk) 04:44, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Media like quicky quirky. Heilman is a different prof BTW :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:04, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Please tell me that's not a typo :-) Ian Furst (talk) 05:31, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
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  5. ^ "TAAR1". GenAtlas. University of Paris. 28 January 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2014.  • tonically activates inwardly rectifying K(+) channels, which reduces the basal firing frequency of dopamine (DA) neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA)
  6. ^ Underhill SM, Wheeler DS, Li M, Watts SD, Ingram SL, Amara SG (July 2014). "Amphetamine modulates excitatory neurotransmission through endocytosis of the glutamate transporter EAAT3 in dopamine neurons". Neuron. 83 (2): 404–416. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.05.043. PMC 4159050. PMID 25033183. AMPH also increases intracellular calcium (Gnegy et al., 2004) that is associated with calmodulin/CamKII activation (Wei et al., 2007) and modulation and trafficking of the DAT (Fog et al., 2006; Sakrikar et al., 2012). ... For example, AMPH increases extracellular glutamate in various brain regions including the striatum, VTA and NAc (Del Arco et al., 1999; Kim et al., 1981; Mora and Porras, 1993; Xue et al., 1996), but it has not been established whether this change can be explained by increased synaptic release or by reduced clearance of glutamate. ... DHK-sensitive, EAAT2 uptake was not altered by AMPH (Figure 1A). The remaining glutamate transport in these midbrain cultures is likely mediated by EAAT3 and this component was significantly decreased by AMPH
  7. ^ Vaughan RA, Foster JD (September 2013). "Mechanisms of dopamine transporter regulation in normal and disease states". Trends Pharmacol. Sci. 34 (9): 489–496. doi:10.1016/j.tips.2013.07.005. PMC 3831354. PMID 23968642. AMPH and METH also stimulate DA efflux, which is thought to be a crucial element in their addictive properties [80], although the mechanisms do not appear to be identical for each drug [81]. These processes are PKCβ– and CaMK–dependent [72, 82], and PKCβ knock-out mice display decreased AMPH-induced efflux that correlates with reduced AMPH-induced locomotion [72].
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