Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 71

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Antral Lavage

Hi. Need some expert advice on an article over at AfC: Draft:Antral Lavage. It appears to be notable, but I have no expertise in this field. Please advise. Onel5969 TT me 18:28, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

references #1-5 are all fine, but dated per Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine) ...also it should follow Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Are the references "fine", or are they "dated"? MEDRS isn't about a mechanically-applied checklist. How are the sources used in the article, and is that usage in line with MEDRS? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:47, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
since per Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine) they need to be 5 years or so -they are dated (old), (so we would try to find references along the same line seen in the draft but newer)...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:00, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I know what MEDRS says, but do you know what it means? You haven't actually told us if the information the sources are used to support is correct or not, or if it has been superseded by more recent (but equally robust) sources. What steps have you taken to evaluate the quality of the sources and how they are used to determine if they are actually "dated"? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:05, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
a PubMed search would answer that question, thanks (and look Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine) its easy to understand)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
A PubMed search isn't going to tell us what steps you took to evaluate the sources. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:36, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
refer to prior answer ([1]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:46, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Ozzie, I don't think that either "a PubMed search" or "Look at MEDRS" has any hope of explaining how you concluded that a 10-year-old textbook is likely to be an unreliable for a basic definition of what a rather old procedure is. Do you suspect that the definition changed in the last ten years? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
it says dated (old) not unreliable.... Ensure that the book is up to date, unless a historical perspective is requiredWikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Books--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:40, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
I would say that your use of "dated" and your use of "fine" to describe the given sources are...problematic in different ways, and it doesn't do to try to gloss over either.
When you declared the publications to be fine, what did that evaluation entail? I strongly suspect – and please correct me if I am mistaken – that it involved looking up each citation in PubMed and confirming that the "Review" flag appeared next to its entry. (Maybe you also checked that the journal was MEDLINE indexed, and not just in PubMed.) The problem is that that minimal check doesn't establish that a citation is "fine" for use. It doesn't test whether or not the review is in an appropriately-scoped journal, and written by authors who are recognized experts (or even competent) in the field. It doesn't test whether or not a primary source might well be relevant or appropriate (perhaps a seminal publication of likely interest to our readers, accompanied by a suitable review). It doesn't test whether or not the statements in our article are based on cherry-picking from or slanting or selectively reading the cited work. It doesn't even test whether or not the statements in our article are mentioned or supported at all by the cited work. All it does is confirm that the citation is to a publication that exists and has a "review" tag. That's far from sufficient to declare that a citation is fine.
The use of dated, meanwhile, suggests that something is old-fashioned or past its prime. Again, a naive reporting of the date of publication is woefully insufficient to make such a declaration. It's entirely useless to declare that articles from 2010 are uniformly "fine" and not "dated" (at least, for another 4.5 months) while articles from 2009 are all "dated". Some papers are dated – that is, superseded by newer, better-quality results and publications – from before the moment they appear in print. Others maintain relevance for years or decades. A declaration that a citation is "dated" should be based on a two-part test. The first and least important test is the date of publication; the second and most important (and arguably the only) test is whether or not a more-recent review exists which contains either new information (rendering the previous citation's contents at least partially obsolete) or a better and more-comprehensive presentation of established knowledge (making it a more useful resource for our readers). The first, unimportant test is something that could be done by a very small script; the second test is the useful one for determining whether or not a source is dated—and is the test that I strongly suspect you aren't doing.
The point of MEDRS is to provide guidelines that can help knowledgeable editors identify the best sources to support content in our articles (and to determine whether or not content in our articles really is supported by – and representative of – good-quality sources). It's not to provide a short, mechanical, binary checklist that lets you crank out a yes/no, reliable/unreliable determination by blindly applying an imagined algorithm. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:22, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
again view the prior answer (or ask DocJames )--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:52, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
It's not clear to me what you're objecting to—my best estimate of what criteria you were employing, or why your description of your "results" is problematic, or my understanding of the purpose and application of MEDRS, or something else, or all of the above. It's also not clear to me why Doc James would be able to tell me what you are thinking. I presume he's not your caretaker or keeper, nor that he filters your edits for you. Finally, your prior answer is decidedly uninformative; "Ensur[ing] that the book is up to date" entails, as I noted, far more than simply checking the publication date on the cover. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

No, unfortunately the sources (especially the one from 1990) are not fine – they are too old see:Wikipedia:Reliable sources in medicine. Also the article does not adhere to the Wikipedia – Medical manual of style. I think you were pointed to some better source on the talk page. I urge you to read the manual of style and sourcing requirements, they are very helpful.

Once the article is in a slightly better state please come back and we can help you out further!-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 21:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  • Recent MEDRS-compatible reviews are often not available for techniques that are described in many textbooks and have been used for many years. It looks to me like the best available source is: Elina M. Toskala (2015). "Chapter 10: Antral Lavage". In David W. Kennedy (ed.). Master Techniques in Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery: Rhinology. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 1469890798. Looie496 (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
  • One15969, this easily meets the criteria for acceptance, so I've moved it to the mainspace. If you want to leave a note for the new editor who submitted this to AFC, then that's fine with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • First of all, a HUGE thank you for everyone who responded here. I'm very pleased by the amount of play this message got. Believe me, I've left requests in other projects for opinions, and I've never gotten such a response, even after weeks of waiting, let alone on the same day. Bravo. Second, thanks WhatamIdoing - was going to do that in morning, will leave a message on the editor's talk page letting him know. Again, thanks to all of you. Onel5969 TT me 02:05, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

FDA approved Flibanserin yesterday

We probably need to cover this, and of note is also that Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is no longer the appropriate name according to DSM-V – but it should rather be "sexual interest/arousal disorder". Seeing as there is now considerable discussion about these two in the press (e.g. Approval for ‘female Viagra’ raises questions about patient power Financial Times) I think it would be pertinent to clean up a bit. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 10:52, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

There are a lot of crap news sources out there, I normally just read the FT, but these are decent and open not paywalled:
-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 10:55, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
very interesting (both posts)...The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Addyi (flibanserin) to treat acquired, generalized hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in premenopausal women. Prior to Addyi’s approval, there were no FDA-approved treatments for sexual desire disorders in men or women[2].....--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:03, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
I am sensitive to pseudoscience and there is something wrong with this drug. The pharma company that made it organized what appears to be a fake grassroots campaign to influence the FDA approval process. The odd part here is that these organizations are endorsing the drug. See Talk:Flibanserin#Even_the_Score_members.
Normally I would not want to talk about advocacy here but it seems like Flibanserin is marketed with a non-evidence based campaign mostly branded as a women's rights issue and mostly not raising the results of the available clinical trials. Experts have said this much. This might be of interest to Wikipedia because of recent talk about paid editing to influence medical policy.
Almost certainly, this is a paid editor tasked with raising the profile of this drug in public opinion. Probably other paid editors came here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:54, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
BlueRasberry, i was unaware of this, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it's quite that simple. The drug has legitimate effects and the debate surrounded if these were strong enough that it outweighs the risks. There is a grassroots movement, but it is possible outside funding makes it seem bigger than it is. As always I think we should stick to the evidence (quiet a lot available) and display the FDAs position clearly and without promotion. How do we know this is a paid editor? I suggest we start by filing an AN/I report. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 22:03, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
The edits are five years old and the only edits that account ever made, so a report to ANI would be futile. Looie496 (talk) 12:24, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Citations in lead - new tools - propose again

I just described the new translation tool in a post above.

This tool has not been tested much, but I think it would be fun for non-Wikipedians who speak two languages to use this tool to do translations for their first edits. It avoids the technical problems of Wikipedia editing and moves citations neatly from the language that uses them to the new text which needs them.

In response to this tool I would like to re-raise the issue of WikiProject Medicine recommending citations for all sentences in the lead. This issue has come up repeatedly. There has been resistance to the idea, especially from people who say they clutter the lead and are redundant. In my opinion, endorsing this new tool gives new support to the idea of requiring that all statements everywhere need citations.

More background is that Wikipedia currently does not consistently recommend citations in the lead. This is left to editorial judgment. WP:LEADCITE See previous discussion.

Medical articles have a particular need to be high quality and be translated into every language. Because of the translation tool, and because of other trends in wiki-development, I think it is a good time to insist on citations for every sentence in the lead of every article overseen by WikiProject Medicine. After some time, I think it would be good to advocate that all leads need citations following the example of medicine. Thoughts from others? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

  • obviously, this is a very good idea, insist on citations for every sentence in the lead of every article overseen by WikiProject Medicine...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Clearly this is overkill. The jist of the previous discussions was that citations after every sentence should be allowed and including citations in the lead is not prohibited. This has now been morphed into the proposition that every sentence in the lead requires a citation. Apart from definitions, information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in more depth in the remainder of the article. Since medical claims in the remainder of the article should be supported by reliable sources, citations in the lead become redundant. At the same time, if in doubt, it is better to include citations in the lead than not. Furthermore if there are a few critical citations, it might be appropriate to include these in the lead. Finally as pointed out in the previous discussions, over overzealous editors may tag statements in the lead without reading the rest of the article. Hence including references in the lead may be preemptive. If these are duplicate citations, it might be appropriate to comment out the citation in the lead so that they are not displayed in the rendered version but still visible in the raw wiki text. In short, use common sense. Boghog (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I frankly don't think that we can do this. WikiProjects simply cannot declare that articles that they want to work on are exempt from community-wide rules like the one that says, "The presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, such a local consensus would not override the established consensus of the wider community. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 22:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
I am happy as long as people do not remove the citations I add to the lead. I think the best we can do is go around and make sure the leads of articles we deem medical are appropriately references. I agree we cannot force others to add references and do not think we should remove content from the lead that is referenced in the body of the text. We should just move the ref to the lead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:35, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Boghog - This might be excessive for English Wikipedia considered alone, but having citations in the lead right now since the software change greatly increases the possibility of quickly doing translations into other languages. These translations are almost impracticable if citations are not in the lead. The new issue is deciding the extent to which this other need matters.
WhatamIdoing Matthew Ferguson 57 I would never suggest fast unilateral policy change, but the policies are there for editing as needed. None of the policies have existed for more than a few years and Wikipedia might be around for a long time, so there is time to think. Lots of WikiProjects have their own policies. WP:MILHIST, for example, makes lots of pages like Lewis Locke in which biographies are written based on primary data from government databases, which is disallowed in I think every other context. If there were change for medical articles, this is how it would happen: some people test the change in a small set of articles, years pass, more people adopt the trend, then it is proposed to the broader community. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:54, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Primary data from government databases is only prohibited for living people. It has nothing to do with MILHIST as a group, and everything to do with the fact that your example is about a man who died 95 years ago.
What's possible: Editors can make an optional choice in favor of including leads for articles that they're creating or improving. What's not possible: The group "insisting" (your word) that it happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Other unilateral proposal

WhatamIdoing Matthew Ferguson 57 Both of you objected to WP:MED overruling site wide consensus. Elsewhere on Wikipedia, if content is WP:Verifiable, it can remain without a citation, correct? But because WP:MED says that all health information needs to be verified, then policy is that health information without a reference is automatically inappropriate if it is added without a source, right? There is never a good time to add {{Citation needed}} to any health information, right? Health information that needs a citation should be deleted, right?

I am not going anywhere with this, and this does not relate to citations in the lead. I was just thinking more about whether WP:MED makes rules which are contrary to general Wikipedia rules. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:29, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Don't really object, just this is the reality of the situation. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:MED has no standing to declare that "all health information needs to be verified" (and in fact WP:MED says no such thing). The community's policy is that all material needs to be verifiable, and that only a relatively small proportion must be provided with a citation. "Health information" is not included in that short list. The policies are the policies; the preferences or opinions of a few editors are not policies. Editors at a WikiProject cannot declare that material in "their" articles is a special exception that requires material to be verified instead.
And in case anyone's tempted to say "I hereby WP:CHALLENGE all uncited health information from here to infinity", then you should consider both WP:POINT and the fact that MEDRS applies only biomedical information, which is a much smaller set of information than "health" information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing Excuse me - I misspoke, but yes you understand exactly what I asking. Could you give an opinion? Does WikiProject Medicine "challenge all uncited (biomedical, human medical) information from here to infinity"? I thought this is what we do here, and I know it is against site-wide policy, but I thought everyone here supported this, and even site-wide people support this even only for medicine though it is against policy.
I am not trying to force any changes to policy, or oppose the policies, or advocate for doing things contrary to the policies. But if we really all say that human biomedical information needs to be verified, then maybe we could agree to that here, and then bring that discussion to a site wide RfC to see what others think. It seems me to me that this might be an idea which everyone supports. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:53, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
WPMED does not challenge all uncited biomedical material. WPMED works together to improve medicine-related articles. Sometimes that work involves challenging information (cited or uncited); sometimes that involves providing better sources; sometimes that involves creating content. We do not agree that all human health information needs to be verified; at minimum, some of it is in the sky-is-blue territory and doesn't require a citation anyway ("Influenza is caused by a virus": did anybody here not know that by the age of 12 or so?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Many physicians in the United States will provide antibiotics to treat flu if the patient insists, but I get your point. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Ballroom dancing lowers dementia risk

I have tried to explain on the talk page why this article is not appropriate for Wikipedia, but the message is not getting through. Perhaps somebody else could comment there? Looie496 (talk) 20:09, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:AFD seems appropriate here...Yobol (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:36, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
The article is "prodded" and will shorty disappear if the template is not removed -- I just thought it would be nice to help the creator understand why. Looie496 (talk) 20:38, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
We had a bunch of people adding dancing related stuff to medical articles based on small primary sources a couple years ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:13, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Ecig report UK govt

Interesting day today, this was released: E-cigarettes: an evidence update – basically a report and policy statement by the UK govt. It is 111 pages so I hope we can take it slow and take time to go through it to incorporate into Electronic cigarettes and Safety of electronic cigarettes – balancing it against the 2014 WHO report. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 11:15, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

E-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes. When supported by a smoking cessation service, they help most smokers to quit tobacco altogether...useful information though I have not edited that article ive heard its [3] different--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:09, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Yup good source. Will take some time to balance it against the rest of what is out their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

MEDRS problems at Sambucus nigra

Sambuci flos dried, used as herbal tea

Sambucus nigra § Medicinal appears to have multiple violations of WP:MEDRS, and needs attention if anyone has time. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

added inline citations tags, as some had no medical reference perWP:MEDRS, --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:01, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks to all of those who worked on it; it's much better now (more can be removed if citations don't appear soon). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:22, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Naming article Norplant versus Levonorgestrel implant

Discussion here [4] Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)


give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:08, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

List of questionable diagnostic tests

Up for AFD, could do with medical editors' attention. Everymorning (talk) 17:16, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Could use some hate is more like it, as far as I'm concerned. Looie496 (talk) 18:46, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
As though that weren't enough there is also List of questionable cancer treatments. Everymorning (talk) 19:01, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
ill take a look at this article over the weekend--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:08, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
The last is a split from Alternative cancer treatments. User:JzG is responsible for all of these; perhaps he would like to explain his goals here (i.e., in a single place). For example, I kind of expected the "questionable diagnostic tests" to include things like the PSA test, which is not merely "able to be questioned" but is "actually being questioned" by quite a lot of experts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
On a quick look the List of questionable cancer treatments seems ok. There is a utility in having the long list hereded together I think. Johnbod (talk) 01:30, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
It's been together for a long time. The question there is whether it's better to have it be a (long) part of the Alternative cancer treatments article versus a separate list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
Certainly where it is. Johnbod (talk) 13:01, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

First sentence of medication articles

We are having a discussion about the first sentence of a medication article here [5]. Further opinions requested. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:25, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 06:01, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Censorship on purported psychiatric illness

Currently running into issues of censorship on the proposed condition Trypophobia. Please comment. Note that the "condition" is not even recognized. Images were removed against long-standing consensus and Wikipedia policy (note previous talk page tags) after a very short VP discussion.

-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 22:44, 23 August 2015 (UTC) Also there is misuse of terminology in the newly introduced infobox, as it is not a recognized condition. (Added the offending edit, with a collapsible image)-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 22:58, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine/Archive 71
I have started a RfC on the talk page [6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:40, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
It is not a real condition. QuackGuru (talk) 02:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Whether or not it is a "real" condition is disputed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
That's the reason it should be disputed in the image.[7] QuackGuru (talk) 02:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
The question is should we include the image, yes or no. And if we include the image should it be hidden yes or no. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:17, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I have different ideas. The image was too distracting for a short article. QuackGuru (talk) 03:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Sure I do not mind it being made smaller. Size is not the concern. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:38, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Journal filler not working

For me, when I open the edit window, click on the "cite" tab and the "Cite journal" template, and then copy-paste in a PMID or DOI and click the magnifying glass, it doesn't fill it in like it's supposed to. Is this happening to anyone else, and if so, does anyone know why it might be happening? Everymorning (talk) 21:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes it doesn't work. Not sure why. Suggest either try later or fill out manually. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
its been happening to me since two days ago,--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:09, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, it's down. It's called citoid and there is a bug report on this issue at [8]. Sometimes purging the page can help. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 23:14, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Oh, wait we aren't talking about the same system. Citoid is for visual editor and is actually much better, but it's been a little buggy the past weeks. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 23:15, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Right. The "magnifying glass" is the clue: The citoid service in VisualEditor doesn't have one. As Matthew said, sometimes it doesn't work. It'll probably be back later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Not working for me either. I use this alot [9] Nephron's tool is up much more often. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Working again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:50, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Ischemic hepatitis and Hyperpituitarism

would appreciate any help with these important articles, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:38, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Resistant starch again

Content on "Health effects" is again under dispute at this article, and also a brand new account is showing a focused interest in the topic. As always, more savvy eyes welcome. Alexbrn (talk) 16:43, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

will keep eye on--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Completely popsci-sourced article on a "new taste"

Please see Oleogustus. Is this worth trying to save or should it just go directly to AfD? -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 14:53, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It's based on a sound paper. The work described therein builds on multiple prior studies around how people "taste" fat, some of which is described already at Taste#Fattiness. However, we only have a single paper using the neologism "oleogustus". So I think either incorporate Oleogustus into Taste#Fattiness or, better to my mind, create an article called Fattiness based on the material at Oleogustus and at Taste#Fattiness (and make Oleogustus re-direct to Fattiness, at least until such time as "oleogustus" attracts wider usage). Bondegezou (talk) 15:16, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
The original article (PMID 26142421) fails WP:MEDRS. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 15:20, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oleogustus-- CFCF 🍌 (email) 15:24, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

  • I always find these sorts of things difficult. On one hand it is nice to have an article, because this is the sort of thing people look to Wikipedia for. On the other hand it would be essential for an article to make it clear that the concept has not been validated. The "oleogustus" story has not yet been covered by any strong science journalism sources such as the New York Times, only by sources that relied entirely on a press release and interviews with the authors. (Good science journalists always seek independent expert evaluation before writing a story.) If we can't make the tentativeness of this concept clear, then I don't think we should have an article at all. Looie496 (talk) 15:43, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
agree it is probably best AfD--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
It is sort of on the edge. This is not a outcomes claim about something. This is simply a new proposed taste. If not notable as its own page should be at least commented on at taste. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:16, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Not all human biology is medicine. There's sufficient basis for this: Chemical Senses is a very good journal , published by OUP, and Science News is a reputable news source, and the researchers are reputable. It may later prove to have medical implications if confirmed, and they can be dealt with. I think a challenge at afd is almost vertain to fail. And the factors Doc Jamesmentions are important also. DGG ( talk ) 12:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Collaborating with the wider world of journal publishing

  • Finally got this published in PLOS Medicine
congrats, looks great--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Ditto. Bondegezou (talk) 22:53, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
"Heilman, an emergency room physician who has been editing medical content on Wikipedia since 2007..." [10] And yet James says on his userpage that "I have been editing here since July 6th, 2008." Which one are we to believe? Everymorning (talk) 22:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
I created my account in 2007 and made my first edits in 2008 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations! Johnbod (talk) 03:10, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Pseudoscience inclusion

Consider joining the discussion at Talk:Faith_healing#Pseudoscience_inclusion Raymond3023 (talk) 09:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Explanation of arbitrary access, Wikidata, templates on Wikipedia

Some people explained Wikidata's upcoming updates to me. I wanted to share here, for anyone else who wanted to know. It is likely that Wikipedia will begin big changes in September.

I have had trouble understanding how Wikidata is relevant. An expectation that I had was that information in Wikidata could update Wikipedia articles, like for noncontroversial information like updates on a country's population or GDP. It remains difficult to make connections between Wikipedia and Wikidata.

There are two kinds of data in Wikidata - items and properties. An example of an item is the subject of any Wikipedia article; all articles are items. A property is a single characteristic of an item. So if Seattle is an item, its population and a range of other traits about it are properties in Wikidata.

Until now, there was no way to bring information about properties from Wikidata into Wikipedia without asking for that property relating to a specific item. So if there were a city infobox, one could not say "put the population here" and expect that all infoboxes would do this for every city where the population was known in Wikidata. Instead, for every city, one had to ask "tell me the population for this specific city".

Wikidata has a concept called d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access. There is hardly an explanation on that page, but it means the ability to get property information for an arbitrary item. As of those month, arbitrary access is available for most language Wikipedias. It was coming to English Wikipedia last week, but was delayed, and today it was posted that it would be coming in early September.

This is relevant for WikiProject Medicine because the field of medicine has a lot of databases and a lot of good information. The infoboxes on Wikipedia are already fantastic. Connecting them with Wikidata has the potential to make them much better. Also, this means that information in English Wikipedia by way of Wikidata can also propagate to other languages - all of the other languages. Starting with numbers is easy, like saying "molecular mass = 337.346 g/mol", or "CAS Registry number = 165800-03-3". A next step will be translating single words, like for a drug "excretion = Nonrenal, renal, and fecal" or "pregnancy category = contraindicated". Even without translation, this system is likely to lead to high or perfect matching between English Wikipedia and what the best available medical databases say, at least to the extent that the Wikipedia community agrees to publish those databases somehow in Wikipedia.

Wikidata will impact infobox first and most prominently, because those are the places where data fields already appear.

People in WikiProject Medicine may wish to think about this now, for the sake of upcoming attention which will come to Wikipedia's medical content. Sorry - I have nothing to provide for anyone to read. This seems really big to me, but there is little documentation of arbitrary access or its potential to change Wikipedia in big ways. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

infoboxes will definitely be impacted (ICD-10? [11]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
User:Ozzie10aaaa not sure what you mean? The US is going to the ICD10 just as the ICD11 is about to come out :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:07, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
your right--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
The mechanism sounds great, but the issue over ICD10 vs. ICD11 illustrates the problem: which ontologies (structures of knowledge) should we use? Standards, as has been said, are like toothbrushes: everyone thinks they're good, but no-one wants to use somebody else's. We have a multiplicity of standardised ontologies, each optimised for a different context, each necessarily making compromises in its description of reality. Annemarie Mol talks of the "multiple ontologies" of the body, the way that different parts of the healthcare system use different ontologies for their own purposes. Sorry, this is rather a big issue for a reply! This may be a discussion point for the Wikipedia Science Conference next week... Bondegezou (talk) 22:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Doc James, ICD-10 in the US could be upcoming in 2015 or could be delayed while ICD-11 is dated for a 2018 release, FWIW. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:24, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

What you explained isn't really accurate. It is already possible to connect infoboxes to Wikidata, and some fields on {{Infobox medical condition}} already use this. The way to get data from Wikidata to Wikipedia isn't well documented (at least not that I've checked recently), but this has nothing to do with the upcoming change. Currently, you can only access Wikidata property data on the Wikipedia item that matches. So currently, for example, on Diabetes mellitus, you can only access the properties of d:Q12206. By placing an infobox on an article, the infobox is able to access the property data of the item it is placed on. What you can't do is get properties from a different item on a page. So if I want to put properties of Diabetology (d:Q1207969) or Endocrinology (d:Q162606) on Diabetes mellitus (d:Q12206), that is currently not possible. Unfortunately, because of this limitation, it is hard to even give examples of the problem.

What d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access will do is allow someone to specify what item they want to access a property of. So on any Wikipedia article, one could specify any item for which to obtain an property. Currently, there is no way to specify what item to get the Wikidata from. It is assumed (and forced) that you want, and you will get, the property data from the current item (page) that you are on. The way to get property data is {{#property:P36}}. What Arbitrary data does is allow one to specify a different item by adding a new parameter: {{#property:P36|from=Q183}}.

There is no reason not to start using more Wikidata on the infoboxes now. I created a mostly Wikidata-based {{Infobox medical condition}} a while back, but it is a complicated thing to do. Trying to maintain backwards compatibility and allow overriding with values specified directly on the Wikipedia articles and not in Wikidata makes this difficult. A lot of articles contain ranges of information in the infoboxes in non-standardized formatting. It would be relatively easy to simply ignore all of the parameters specified when the infobox is placed on articles, and only use Wikidata. I think a goal should be to eliminate all of this redundant data from the individual Wikipedias and only use Wikidata, but I dont know if people are willing to do this all in one step. Something to consider. Hope this helps. --Scott Alter (talk) 16:10, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Subacute bacterial endocarditis and Pulmonary insufficiency

having difficulty finding references for the causes section of both articles any help is appreciated, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:17, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Post-Ebola syndrome

discussion Talk:Post-Ebola_syndrome on image (eye/Ebola virus) any comments appreciated, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

This article does not live up to WP:MEDRS under any circumstance. I moved it to Draft:Post-Ebola syndrome so that it can be fixed. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 11:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
your right, (it does have two MEDRS references, but needs more)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
The eye is not an eye after recovery from Ebola. It is just a nice looking eye [12] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:36, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Dark triad

Dark triad is being discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dark triad (1st nomination) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

hatnote required to distinguish stomatitis and gastritis?

An editor has expressed a need for a hatnote on these two articles believing that they are commonly confused. Thoughts? 12:44, 22 August 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk • contribs)

Not needed. We want the first sentence of the article to come near the top. There needs to be significant justification for a hatnote. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:58, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree, in my own experience I have never encountered anyone who has confused these two terms. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
@Doc James:&@TylerDurden8823:. As I already explained on Matthew Ferguson 57's talk page, when first encountered by everyday readers not very familiar with medical terms, "stomatitis" can be easily confused with "gastritis", since in layman's terms, the organ is referred to as "stomach". Hence, some people would think "stoma-"+"-itis" refers to the inflammation of the stomach lining. Which is why I feel that a hatnote would be necessary. Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 12:31, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
But any confusion would be alleviated by the first sentence of the article. As for the hypotheticals who know what -itis means but not stoma, they could easily search for Stomach inflammation.Little pob (talk) 14:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Probably, although not every reader would think to search for "stomach inflammation" or "gastritis" when they find that "stomatitis" is not that topic. Which is why the hatnote, the first line of text on the article, would redirect the reader to the intended page. How would the reader know about "gastritis", if there is nothing to direct them there in the first place? You can't automatically assume they would know where to look. Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 15:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I disagree that a person who is intelligent enough to think to search for "stomachitis" (which is "corrected" to stomatitis by both Google and wiki), wouldn't then search for stomach inflammation. Little pob (talk) 15:30, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
And you've come to that conclusion assumption based on your own knowledge and opinion? A hatnote would forego the need to search.Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 15:52, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I've stated my opinion, and have nothing more to add. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Little pob (talk • contribs) 16:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Many people want their first little bit to go before any of the rest of the content of the article. We can easily end up with a half a page describing all the things the article is not and all the things it should not be confused with.
I disagree with attempting to do this. The sentence describing what IT IS should come as quickly as possible and hats should be keep to an absolute minimum. I do not think one is needed in this case. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:10, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree with User:Doc James. Bondegezou (talk) 22:06, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
as do i--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
You know, a little sidebox that lists all the "inflammation of" options for the gastrointestinal tract might be useful. You could start with stomatitis and go all the way through to anusitis (which is not the same as proctitis–why don't we have an article on it?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:59, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
We already have this
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Which is way too big and way to complicated. I'm thinking about something that just lists them, one after the other, or maybe works like the addiction glossary, with the name and a four-word definition (";Gastritis :Inflammation of the stomach"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion

I've neglected to comment here because I wanted to hear out the different parties. I understand where the confusion is coming from, and while I very much dislike detest unnecessary hatnotes I'm willing to allow for this one. Enough readers searching for "stomachitis" will find themselves on the wrong article to justify the hatnote.
The inflammation template resides at the bottom of the article, and in my experience very few readers use these. I can't think of any other decent way to convey that gastritis is the article they're looking for. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 06:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@Doc James:. What is needed on that article is the hatnote to explain to readers that what they might be looking for is elsewhere. Technically, the hatnote is not even part of the article and the first sentence of the article still describes what "stomatitis" is. A hatnote is indeed used to list some things that the article could be confused with and if that list becomes too long, a disambiguation page is made. However, in this case, there is only one term confused with this one.Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 08:06, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think a hatnotes needed--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Everybody wants their little misconception to occur before all other content in the article. People want all minor spelling differences listed. They want similar words listed. Similar disease listed. Etc. We could have literally pages of about what X is not. What we need to do is describe what X actually is first. There is nothing wrong having what X is not at the end of the article. If there are refs for stomachitis and how it is confused with different terms we can create a disambig page their. What we also do is have a section called "differential diagnosis" under the diagnosis section where we describe similar diseases with references of course. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
@Ozzie10aaaa:: Could you perhaps state your reasoning?
@Doc James:: One purpose we strive for with disambiguation, hatnotes, etc. is to get readers to the intended article in the least amount of steps. Exactly what other misconceptions are there? I'm only talking about this one. There are no others, as far as I know. A hatnote is used to distinguish one article from the other, not differentiate this condition from another one with similar manifestations. We're not talking about what X is not, but rather that X is commonly mistaken for what Y is.Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 08:22, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
my response would be in-line with DocJames, further I too believe a differential diagnosis section could be placed to good use in this case...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:46, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

How is a differential diagnosis section going to help readers understand the difference between stomatitis and gastritis? Matthew Ferguson (talk) 12:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Can anybody explain why a differential diagnosis section would even apply in this case? It would make sense when you're trying to differentiate constrictive pericarditis from restrictive cardiomyopathy but not when the etymology is confusing.Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 16:03, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
True not for this case. The first sentence that says "stomatitis is inflammation of the mouth" and "Stomatitis is inflammation of the mouth and lips" does a great job of that. Also "stomach inflammation" and "inflammation of the stomach" redirect to gastritis. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:10, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps we should we create a redirect for the (medically redundant) "stomachitis" too? @Raykyogrou0 would this be an acceptable compromise to the hatnote? Little pob (talk) 09:38, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Well. I don't suppose I'm going to sway opinion in this century so that will have to do for now.Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 15:16, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Per WP:BOLD, the redirect is now done. A permalink to this discussion is on the redirect's talk page. Little pob (talk) 09:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for creating that. That redirect will probably do more good than the hatnote. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

RfD concerning Cochrane Reviews

Your feedback would be appreciated. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:18, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:41, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Cochrane Redirects for Deletion Discussion

Can please someone check out what's happening with this redirect discussion? It involves conflation between Cochrane Collaboration, Cochrane Reviews, and Wikipedia's TWL Cochrane access partnerships and WIR projects:

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2015_August_28#Cochrane_Database_Syst_Rev

Thanks! Jake Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Presidents of the American Psychiatric Association

A list of presidents, providing little information on most, but a great deal of unsourced material on the (claimed) involvement of several individuals with MKULTRA. How much of this (if any) is true, I don't know, but it needs scrutiny by someone familiar with the topic, and probably a great deal of trimming. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:42, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

apparently [14] done--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:20, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Mercaptopurine

A new editor made this edit to this page recently. The website he added a link to is "Trusted Therapies". There is apparently also a link to this site in the EL section of ulcerative colitis. In the opinion of other editors, is it a reliable source? Everymorning (talk) 19:23, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

No and have removed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
I removed the link from the EL section of ulcerative colitis, but was reverted by a new editor. If someone else thinks the link doesn't belong on that page they should feel free to remove it. Everymorning (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:41, 28 August 2015‎

Category:Deaths from congestive heart failure

The discussion was closed on August 26[15] with the result of "delete" with regard to Category:Deaths from congestive heart failure, for any interested parties. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:54, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

good info--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:53, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

New article

The article is The eight child killer disease. Not sure what to make of it, but the phrase that constitutes the title doesn't seem to be used very much at all outside of the article. Everymorning (talk) 13:18, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

it does not exist...it might have been the intention to name it the 6 major childhood (killer) diseases (diphtheria, measles, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, tetanus, and tuberculosis)[16] vaccination is used--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:47, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
It was draftified by MrX and is now located at Draft:The eight child killer disease. Everymorning (talk) 02:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
left note at draft talk--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 05:37, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

input requested at Talk:Naive_T_cell#Requested_move_8_August_2015

Talk:Naive_T_cell#Requested_move_8_August_2015 check. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:06, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:05, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Health information

(pinging a couple, but open to anybody:)

Health information is currently a redirect to Health informatics. This is wrong: health information has nothing to do with computing power. What I want is a way to easily contrast Health information ("The common cold is caused by a virus") with Medical advice ("You have a cold, and you should take this drug for it") for MEDMOS and MEDRS. This distinction is hugely important for editors.

Does anyone know of an article that covers this material? If not, can we find some good sources and set this up for a WP:DYK? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

[17]?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the current redirect is inaccurate/misleading. However, might I be so bold as to suggest the narrower title Medical information instead?
To me, health information is a broader topic than clinical statements of truth. A future article on health information could touch upon, and link to, topics such as Health, Medical advice, Dental hygiene, Informed consent and Health informatics (to name a few). As such, I'd put the article you're suggesting at medical information, but also change the target of the health information redirect to that new article. That will allow anyone, that does write a broad health information article, the opportunity to be a little bolder in turning the health information redirect into a new article. I think that's more favourable than an editor broadening the scope of an article on medical information without consensus; +/- copyediting an existing, stable article to a different title.
Either way the NIH FAQ might have some good starting points for someone writing a new article[18]. Little pob (talk) 10:42, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
As I understand it, "health informatics" is the correct term in academia and medical terminology for everything to do with health information, in the broadest sense. It is certainly not just about "computing power". "health information" is pretty vague - are you really meaning "patient information"? Johnbod (talk) 12:38, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
Our informatics article defines it as "the science of computer information systems"; Google defines it as "the science of processing data for storage and retrieval; information science". So I agree with the OP that the two aren't the same thing. The distinction between "health information" and "medical advice" is less clear, though. Looie496 (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
The appropriate article, Health informatics, says: "It is a multidisciplinary field that uses health information technology (HIT) to improve health care via any combination of higher quality, higher efficiency (spurring lower cost and thus greater availability), and new opportunities. The disciplines involved include information science, computer science, social science, behavioral science, management science, and others. It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. Health informatics tools include amongst others computers, clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems.[1]"

References

  1. ^ Mettler T, Raptis DA (2012). "What constitutes the field of health information systems? Fostering a systematic framework and research agenda". Health Informatics Journal. 18 (2): 147–56. doi:10.1177/1460458212452496.

I'm not actually sure this definition isn't too narrow either. I wouldn't try to define management science using science either. Johnbod (talk) 12:58, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

If you want to define "management science", then you'll need to use the 19th century definition of "science", which was basically a synonym of "knowledge". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:38, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I also would like an article for this. I know of no sources which define this topic. I looked at this some time ago from a slightly different angle - I wanted to make an article for "health science". I found no sources that I liked which explained the concept of health science, so it ended up as a redirect to Outline of healthcare science which is a way of presenting the idea as a list without explaining what it is. See these talk pages to defunct articles -
I feel like if there were a health science article, then it would be easier to have a health information article, or that the sources which explained one concept might also explain the other. The sources I found which explained these things were college textbooks written for people who were not going to study them, like "Health science for accountants". I do not know how to find the background philosophy of the nature of health information, but increasingly a lot of organizations are having to explain their limits. Pharma ads give one kind of information, but have some limit; lobbyist recommend some health laws, but have limits; non-physician health professionals give certain kinds of health advice but not others; and Wikipedia does something with health information but the limit might not merely be "no advice". I wish there were sources to articulate this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:18, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

"Health informatics" is a term that has long been contested and misunderstood. It frequently expands and contracts so as to suit the speaker's needs. So you can argue this different ways and there isn't a right answer. I guess the distinction I would make is that health informatics is a field of study about (among other things) health information, therefore it is possible to have two distinct articles, just like one does for mycology/fungi or cardiology/heart. Ergo, I would be happy to see health information as a separate article.

The question then is what goes in an article on health information (or medical information): is it something more ontological about the nature of clinical information? Or is it, as Johnbod suggests, more like patient information? (I can see how one could develop an article on patient information discussing how one should present information for patients etc. and then make medical advice a re-direct to that.) Or indeed both? Bondegezou (talk) 10:46, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

We have an article about patient information leaflets, and I see this as something completely different. Perhaps this would be a useful distinction: patient information is what a patient needs to learn for his or her personal benefit; health information is what you would teach a student in a health class, regardless of the student's personal health situation.
I'd like us to have articles that expand on the key words in this quotation:

Some patrons expect things that librarians cannot ethically deliver, such as medical advice. When providing health and medical information, it's important to remember librarians are not licensed to practice medicine and should not do so, even when patrons persist. The caveat here is offer information, not counsel.[19]

The article at Health informatics, even if it were perfectly written, isn't going to help someone figure out what a librarian can or cannot legally and ethically say. Which leads me to a new approach: We've got some librarians around, and they might have some good resources on the distinction between medical advice and medical or health information. User:Hildabast seems to be out at the moment. User:DGG? Anyone else? Maybe User:Sadads can think of someone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:38, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
"Health informatics" is a science in its own right. "Health information" is a general concept. There can be certain overlap: a quantitative academic study of how people use health information would be part of the field of health informatics. DGG ( talk ) 00:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping! The problem with patient information is that it's so often confused with information on a patient, as it means both things - and information you give to a patient such as when there appointment is, discharge information and the like. Medical information is problematic, because that implies restriction to the practice of medicine and it's literally a medicalizing term for health. Consumer health information is often used as a way out of this dilemma. Another are of overlap with these concepts is patient education - materials and in-person interventions.Hildabast (talk) 16:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Selenoplexia

The article Selenoplexia is an orphan and none of the sources likely pass WP:MEDRS. Worse is all the sources listed are over a century old. I am unsure whether or not to sent it to Afd. Can someone here help? Solomon7968 20:58, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

That looks more like a dictionary definition. Some scientific sources are visible on Google but they aren't suited for medical claims at all, only for terminology articles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:10, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
If there is information on when and how it was debunked, it might be expanded into a decent, if short, article.--Wikimedes (talk) 07:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
0 hits [20]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
It could be merged into Lunatic#History, which is the more common name. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry If we do merge, we should be removing the century old sources, don't we? Even the Lunatic article contains a reference from 1879 (ref no. 7). If you have modern references then please go ahead and do the merge. Solomon7968 14:32, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Solomon7968 There are four references at selenoplexia and all of them are about 100 years old. If those are the latest references that can be found, then they could be kept. The problem I have with them is that all four are dictionaries, and I am not sure than any one of them gives information that the others do not. At least one of them should be kept, I think, because they are the most reliable sources we have for moon sickness. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:17, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Short answer: No, you should never remove cited sources solely because they're old. Sometimes century-old sources are appropriate. Even when they aren't, it's usually better to leave them there until they can be replaced. Material verified to an outdated source is usually better than unsourced material. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes agree old sources are best left unless you plan to update them. Spam sources should however be removed even if you leave the content behind. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:19, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

    • Clarification. I have created a draft here talk

Our WP:TOU do not allow undisclosed paid editing. Our WP:COI guideline states "Editors with a financial conflict of interest, including paid editors, are advised not to edit affected articles; they may suggest changes on the talk page and should disclose their COI."

Healthcare is however somewhat different. Nearly all countries have specific rules when it comes to advertising of medications. Only two countries allow direct-to-consumer advertising and most specifically do not. Even in the US they are not allowed to advertise without proper disclosure (and we do not have means for disclosure per the FDA requirements within Wikipedia)

I would like to propose a WP:COI/MED were we clarify that those with a financial conflict of interest are "not" allowed to directly edit affected articles. We are direct to consumer advertising and I think we should follow global norms wrt the issue. Also following a couple of recent issues I think this clarification would be useful to all involved. People's thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:37, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Is there another policy page (e.g WP:COI) where that could be stated? I generally think that we should have as few policy pages as possible as they give the impression that we are a red tape factory. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:43, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I think we should also be careful to be clear this is about *financial conflict of interest* rather than about *paid editing* given the difficulties in differentiating between "good" (e.g. employed Wikipedians-in-residence) and "bad" paid editing. Bondegezou (talk) 16:56, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
We could simply amend this to WP:COI. We do have WP:MEDRS that simply clarifies WP:RS from a medical perspective.
We could state "Editors with a financial conflict of interest are not to edit affected articles health content; they may suggest changes on the talk page and must disclose their COI."Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:COI/MED would be a great idea--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
(ec)Not sure - there are no doubt plenty of sheer mistakes that people with interests may want to correct, & we know that to "suggest changes on the talk page" is often not at all productive. Initially at Cancer Research UK I didn't do much editing at cancer articles, & I had a special section on my user page where I listed edits specifically related to CRUK (adding their images etc), of which there weren't many. Johnbod (talk) 17:05, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes but User:Johnbod their is no conflict of interest unless you are editing the article about Cancer Research UK.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I could easily have generated some, eg by writing about CRUK-funded research. Johnbod (talk) 21:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Not sure People on Wikipedia sometimes go bonkers when talking about COI. I am comfortable imposing an explicit ban on the worst kind of conflict of interest, which accounts for 90% of the problems, and is usually why anyone would invoke this policy. At the same time, I would like to make space for the 10% grey area to engage with Wikipedia more deeply, and to avoid scaring experts away or making them feel unwelcome. I want more experts at more organizations contributing to Wikipedia.
One easy way to support what I want to encourage would be to say something like "staff from nonprofit organizations, schools, and government offices are encouraged to identify themselves and contribute to articles in their field of expertise so long as they identify themselves and avoid editing the article about their organization". A statement like that would not mesh with Wikipedia's general COI policy, because there are too many loopholes and because there is illogical unfairness in the statement, but I think in medicine it is a practical statement of what I wish could happen.
Also, I am a paid editor and I directly edit Wikipedia articles, so I have a COI in talking about this policy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes agree we need to explicitly state ""staff from nonprofit organizations, schools, and government offices are encouraged to identify themselves and contribute to articles in their field of expertise so long as they identify themselves and avoid editing the article about their organization"" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
This is a big can of worms. Bluerasberry's formulation would prohibit any academic scientist from contributing pseudonymously, which is more or less exactly the opposite of welcoming experts and not scaring them away. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:44, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
No this is about dis allowing pharmaceutical reps, heads of marketing from pharmaceutical companies, and their PR firms from directly editing Wikipedia articles.
This is good feedback however as it appears we need to spell it out exactly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:18, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Well, not quite. The thread as a whole is about pharma reps et al (or is trying to be). Bluerasberry's comment here, which you approvingly quoted, is about the staff of various non-profit organizations, who are to be encouraged to contribute to articles "so long as they identify themselves". Thinking of these two categories of contributors as closely related is a problem. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:17, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes I agree that thinking of "these two categories of contributors as closely related is a problem". It appears to be a common thinking so we should clearly state they they are not closely related. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Common? While researchers who self-cite a lot sometimes get some over-aggressive corrections, I can't think of an example where academic scientists and marketing reps were mentioned in the same breath this way, other than by fringey types who won't care what the policy says anyway because it was obviously written in cahoots with Big Pharma. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:43, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I object to the original formulation of this thread: we are not "direct-to-consumer advertising" and shouldn't be trying to police ourselves as such. We may be a channel through which to attempt it, but we cannot be thinking about encyclopedia articles on drugs - which are primarily articles about chemicals, not about specific branded products - as so narrowly oriented toward a consumer audience. Every time I look in on what this project is up to, it's centering the idea of the reader as a patient - not, say, as a student taking a biochemistry class - and the approach to article content consistently reflects that model in a way that may weaken coverage of other relevant material.

    I am very concerned about scope creep here. This thread is titled "paid editing" but is in fact about FCOI, which is a much broader category and not at all the same thing. It comes off as moral-panic-y. Bluerasberry's comments in this thread about FCOI then generalize to the purported COI of educational staff, which is not at all the same thing again. To go anywhere with this kind of proposal, you need to be much, much more specific about the intended scope. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:44, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Should we try to dissuade pharmaceutical companies from attempting to do "direct-to-consumer advertising" through Wikipedia that is the question.
This has nothing to do with centering our content around "patients" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:18, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
I have started a draft here [Wikipedia_talk:Conflicts_of_interest_(medicine)#Moved_here talk] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it's clear that you're trying to refer to pharma reps and so forth, but that's not what you wrote. The third paragraph of your first post starts off with "those with a financial conflict of interest" but then slides into global norms about DTC: so do you mean marketing reps, or anyone with an FCOI? As for patient information, your second paragraph, providing the reasoning behind this proposed policy, is entirely about the legalities of DTC advertising of medication. That is a category that is meaningful only in the context of patient information.
Thanks for the draft. That is better than what's in this thread, but I doubt it's within our scope to determine that some identifiable individual is attempting to DTC; that's a very specific legal claim. Outside of that attempted connection it's not clear why this needs to be a separate policy or policy subsection at all. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:17, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
You know, I'm not trying to filibuster this, but on further consideration I really really think you need to get a legal opinion before pushing any further with this idea that FCOI with pharma = DTC. As written it's practically a legal threat. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:20, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes thus the "may" in "may also be viewed as undisclosed advertising". But this bit is not needed really in the proposal. I have removed it. I agree that the pharmaceutical companies attempting to become involved in paid editing know the law and we do not need to tell it to them as they have entire staffs of lawyers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. That is an improvement. I would remove the first two bullets - they are not specific to medical content and invite WP:BEANS among the fringe elements. The third bullet for pharma reps needs worthsmithing. ("Health content" or "health care content"? Are you sure you don't mean "content related to their business or products", just like anyone in any other industry?) It's also a little strange that research scientists apparently get their own bullet in the proposed "medical COI" policy, but not clinicians. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:43, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Doc James, were you aware that WP:MEDCOI already exists?

Also, why should staff of a non-profit or government agency need to identify themselves to improve medical articles? In some countries, that amounts to nearly all physicians in certain specialties, and large fractions of others. "Being a healthcare professional" is not a COI, even if you are employed by a non-profit. 80% of American hospital staff would fall under your proposed identification rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:31, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I do not think I said they did. I said "Editors who are professors or research scientists do not generally have a conflict of interest with respect to their area of expertise and are free to edit without disclosure." Thanks for point out the other COI and I will redirect mine their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of the "other" one either. It is currently an essay - maybe we should buff it up a bit & make it official? Mainly User:WhatamIdoing and sound stuff. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I would support adding somewhere that editors paid by PR firms or pharmaceutical companies should not involve themselves in medical articles. But I see Wikipedia:COI/MED has been redirected, so I'm not sure where to look for the proposal. Sarah (talk) 20:10, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
User:SlimVirgin Moved here [21] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:20, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! Sarah (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Spamming at keratoconus and other eye related articles

A third of our featured article on keratoconus had turned into spam contributed at least partly by editors who were paid to add said spam :-(

I have just trimmed 25kb of text. Is it time for another FA drive? We need to make sure that at least all of our FAs do not become spam filled. And that people are keeping an eye on them. I have nominated the above article for review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:53, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

It's now time for another collaboration of the month if you have a particularly bad article in mind can nominate this. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 17:58, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Further issues

Eye Nevus of Ota Before I-BRITE Conjunctivoplasty
Eye Nevus of Ota After I-BRITE Conjunctivoplasty

Check this out. Not only did this surgery by Brian Boxer Wachler fix this persons eye but it also lightened their skin a whole bunch at the same time. [22] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Nominated images for deletion [23] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:24, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
The issue is that we are being hammered by spam by piad editors. We need to be at least vigilant wrt our featured articles and good articles. I guess I will watch them all. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
we need be vigilant (and get to the root of paid editing, unfortunately for monetary reasons they apparently have no limits ) --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Another set of eye related articles

User:Kcroes wrote an article about Noel A. Alpins than wrote

Here he links to his own blog [25]

Tried very hard to get a Jim Nyamu which was then put in place by User:Wee Curry Monster. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:18, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay turned out to be a PR professional editing with disclosing their WP:COI. Have blocked the user in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Here we go "Dr. Noel Alpins has a financial interest in the ASSORT vector planning and outcomes analysis software program used in this chapter." which is in the only review on the topic.[26] and it is from Mr Alpins himself. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:33, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
they're everywhere ([27]?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:14, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Which editor do you have concerns about? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:11, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
maybe its me but there quite a few with very short editing histories?[28][29]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:21, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes the first one is the author adding their own paper. It is a review and the summary is reasonable so I am okay with that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:33, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Implantable collamer lens

This user User:Greenteamochees meshes into the rest by edits to Brian Boxer Wachler. They however did start by using good references. Amazing how quickly they learned how to create redirects. Not there first account by the looks of it. Additing PR speak here [30] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:47, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

"eye industry" in general( alot of money, unfortunately [31]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:54, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes them plastics and orthopedics. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:59, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Redirect article to Intraocular lens and cutting spam. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Draft:The Oxford Hip Score

Well, six months have gone by and here's that page again. I have fixed the reference format and removed a lot of links. Should it be moved to mainspace?—Anne Delong (talk) 05:07, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm a stickler for sourcing and thus I'd ask for paragraphs #1 and #4 to be sourced before launching that draft.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:12, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
agree (reference #1,2 and 5 are beyond 5 years as per Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine) as well)...it does however have two good references --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:42, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Well, the page has been waiting years to be accepted. I don't have access to medical sources. How about [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37] ? —Anne Delong (talk) 11:10, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
those references seem good, ill take care of any additional references for the article, thanks Anne--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:05, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa – older sources (as long as they aren't ~15+ years old) aren't inherently bad unless significant change has occured in the past few years. I don't think the Oxford hip-score is especially controversial so they don't need to be updated to move the article to mainspace, even if an update is preferable. Anne Delong, mail me any requests for sources you need, I have access to pretty much anything you find on pubmed. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 15:29, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

your right( updates are preferable),thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa has improved it, so I have moved it to mainspace. CFCF, thanks for your offer, but my background as a musician leaves me ill prepared to interpret medical articles. This one was a little less cryptic than most, but I usually limit my edits in this area to format and grammar edits, except for psychology, where I do have a little background, albeit outdated. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Just a reminder that the criteria for acceptance is approximately "isn't likely to be deleted this week". It does not require full sourcing or ideal sourcing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Contributors

Hello everybody! I remember, that some time ago there was link to contributors at the top of articles. There is something similar at Phabricator. BTW, where I could find consensus about enabling and disabling the link to contributors here? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:35, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Whether the contributors link is viewable ... depends if this feature is enabled via preferences. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 17:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
You can also see the most recent editor on all pages via the mobile website at https://en.m.wikipedia.org WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
User:Edgars2007 It was a gadget that was recently removed from the gadget list. Here is the consensus for it [38]
The tool it was based on was here [39] but does not work anymore. Other discussion is here [40]
Could be an https issue maybe? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:09, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
I was told, that the tool is being rewritten, so the issue may resolve after some time. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Actual spam

Just a note in case anyone else has received this: I recently received an e-mail message allegedly from PayPal about needing to confirm my e-mail address to receive money. It was not sent through Special:EmailUser, but it was sent to the e-mail address I use in my (volunteer) Wikipedia account.

I asked two other editors about this, and one of them had also received a similar message recently. I'm assuming that some editor's regular e-mail account was hacked and addresses were copied out of it. I'm also assuming that clicking any links in it will lead to malware and more spam. If you get anything similar, please be cautious. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

good info--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Medicine without blood

Here are links to a three-part series about medicine without blood.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:19, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

most interestng--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:28, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Ecancermedicalscience

Hello again medical experts. Here's another old draft about to be deleted as stale (surprise!). Is this a notable journal? There are lots of references to be found on line, but most of them, as can be expected, are about the articles that are published in the journal. I don't want to edit it until I get an opinion, so that it will continue to be eligible for db-g13. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:44, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

it perhaps could be merged to European_Institute_of_Oncology--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:39, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
I have asked other members of WikiProject Academic Journals for their feedback at WT:WikiProject Academic Journals. I suspect that since it's not indexed in Medline, [41] it probably is not notable and should instead be a redirect to the European Institute of Oncology as Ozzie suggested. Everymorning (talk) 22:38, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Cerebrovascular disease and Hypocalcaemia

did some edits on these important articles,any help would be appreciated, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:56, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Simple first sentence

IMO the pronunciations should be moved to the infoboxes as I have done here

And the etymology should occur near the end of the lead and end of the body of the article.

Neither one of these should be in the first sentence as WP:NOT a dictionary. Others thoughts on this case and thoughts on the issue in general? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Instead of dealing with the one article, I think that we should have a discussion at WT:MEDMOS on the general question of whether pronunciation and etymology should normally be in the lead at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
That is why I started this discussion here. We can move it to talk WT:MEDMOS though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

More subcriptions now available for British Medical Journal resources

Apply at Wikipedia:BMJ. Some 30 places left. Johnbod (talk) 00:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

great opportunity--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:55, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

"Fall"

The usage and primary topic of Fall is under discussion, see talk:Fall (disambiguation); since accidental falls are covered by WPMED, I thought you would like to be informed -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 04:06, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Trademarks?

Generic

This question is about the MOS subpage WP:TM MOS:TM which says: "Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, in either article text or citations, unless unavoidably necessary for context (for instance, to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs)."

Question arises from this edit at List of cocaine analogues. I haven't seen that invoked before, and I don't think it is a good thing. Before I seek to change that at WT:TM I wanted to check my head here. Have also pinged the WP:PHARM talk page. Jytdog (talk) 19:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC) (fix Jytdog (talk) 20:11, 12 August 2015 (UTC))

I agree (I don't believe its good either)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:01, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
I should have teed up the question I have clearly - can anybody think of cases where it is "unavoidably necessary" to distinguish between a generic and brand name for a drug? Since we always use the INN I don't see much of a need, ever. "Aspirin" could have been one but Bayer lost its trademark on that. Jytdog (talk) 20:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
You wanted to link to MOS:TM, right? -DePiep (talk) 20:08, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
whoops yes i did. thanks! Jytdog (talk) 20:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
There are formulations which have different bioavailabilities which occasionally may be relevant to WP. We are encouraged to prescribe generically with the INN but pharma companies will try to make the case to use their formulation as preferable to a generic form. It may be relevant occasionally for slow-release/colonic release GI drugs such as Asacol/Mezavant -- forms of mesalazine. See here PMID 12755834. I would recommend limited use of TM if necessary to explain these differences. Jrfw51 (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't think that we should use ™ or ® (and these would be ®, as they are specifically registered trademarks). I also don't think MOS:TM intends to say that trademarks ought to be noted as such.
I think that the case that they're considering is more like "Tylenol is a commonly used drug. The Tylenol® brand of that drug was targeted by a murderer–extortionist some years ago". We avoid that by using generic names whenever possible. It's not possible with vaccines and some other biologics, because there is no true generic version. I have left a note at MOS:TM to ask them to clarify. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
In spoken English, there is no distinction between Tylenol and Tylenol®. One would always clarify whether one is talking about a generic or the brand. For the sake of clarity, we should be explicit in writing, rather than relying in the reader to understand the code of omitting the ® to indicate generics. I'm not in the pharmaceutical industry. I would have assumed the " Tylenol" only refers to the Tylenol brand product. It would not have occurred to me that it was being used to refer to anything else.Ground Zero | t 00:20, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Tylenol is like Kleenex: people who can't pronounce (or spell) paracetamol or acetaminophen use the brand name.
When giving both names, e.g., Herceptin is the brand name for trastuzumab, how would you write it? "Trastuzumab (Herceptin)"? Or "Trastuzumab (Herceptin®)" or "Trastuzumab (brand name: Herceptin)"? Something else? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
"Trastuzumab (brand name: Herceptin)" seems perfectly clear. If "Tylenol" doesn't mean "Tylenol brand" to everyone, then we should write "Tylenol brand acetaminophen". Ground Zero | t 01:28, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
And in the UK, "Tylenol" is baffling (we say paracetamol). Alexbrn (talk) 03:30, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Worse, the brand is applied to a whole line of products containing different drugs, strengths, form factors, and indications. Brand articles really should not be addressing technical characteristics of drugs, it just begs problems such as paid editing without any compensating benefit to the reader..LeadSongDog come howl! 04:56, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
We should generally use generics. When we use brands we do not need either "TM" or "R". Personally their use raises red flags for me. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:50, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

this has all been interesting... I think who ever added that to MOS:TM didn't understand that it is rare in medicine/pharmacology for the brand name of a drug to become genericized so that confusion is rarely an issue (we don't get the "kleenex" or "xerox" issue happening much). At the article that prompted this, RexxS weighed in here, who also is discussing at WT:MOSTM Also, I think in our standard way of naming drugs {"Celecoxib (Celebrex)"} we don't need to use the TM or R marks, as there is no confusion as to what we are talking about when we name the brand. Jytdog (talk) 12:38, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think "TM", "R", etc. should be needed either. I come from a somewhat parallel discipline, but when it comes to insecticides, we often refer to products by their active ingredient (e.g., lambda-cyhalothrin, similar to generic), and the trade name from a specific company (e.g., Warrior II from Syngenta) that has a specific formulation with additives other than the active ingredient for keeping the product in solution better. It's a similar setup in formal pharmacology, so if a trade/brand name needs to be mentioned specifically, just somehow indicating it's not the generic by mentioning it's a specific formulation produced by company X should be the most attribution needed if at all. It might be a few more words than a single symbol, but it should be more informative to readers. Kingofaces43 (talk) 12:59, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
The other issue is accessibility. Many screen readers on their default settings simply won't speak glyphs like ™ and ®, so any attempt to use them to distinguish between brand and generic is doomed to failure for some visitors using assistive technology. We're always going to better off, as Kingofaces43 says, conveying meaning by using words, even if it takes a few more. --RexxS (talk) 14:12, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
@Jytdog: can anybody think of cases where it is "unavoidably necessary" to distinguish between a generic and brand name for a drug? – Amphetamine#cite_note-Adderall-39 Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
nice footnote. but i think that is different. I think the example is bad in MOS:TM was bad. but thanks! Jytdog (talk) 04:15, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Talk:Adderall #Changing Title Back to "Amphetamine Mixed Salts". There are sufficiently diverse opinions to mean that using the brand name, Adderall, is no more than a majority view. There is a preference not to use "amphetamine mixed salts", but that's not the same as an unavoidable necessity. --RexxS (talk) 22:52, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes we make very rare exceptions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
"Amphetamine mixed salts" is not a nonproprietary name. It's a term that describes the formulation; it is not a generic drug name per any government, pharmaceutical, or chemical organization which assigns nonproprietary names to drugs. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 04:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
That simply means that we don't even need a non-proprietary name to unambiguously identify the formulation. It's just one more example of a context where it is not "unavoidably necessary" to use the brand name with a trademark glyph. --RexxS (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Given that this issue came up at FA when listing "Adderall" next to nonproprietary names, that note was written per a consensus at the FA nom, so yes it is. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 00:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia for Health/Safety Research and Data

Hello everyone,

NIOSH is pleased to partner with Wikimedia DC for an upcoming conference, Wikipedia for Health/Safety Research and Data, to be held in Washington, DC, on November 12-13, 2015. The goal of the conference is to make the case to government agencies in the United States that helping in the development of Wikimedia content is worth the time and money. Given the conference's focus on health research, I believe this WikiProject would be interested in participating. Please review the proposal on Meta and leave feedback. Thank you, James Hare (NIOSH) (talk) 17:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Nice and close to the Ronald Reagan airport. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:10, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

AfD

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brian Boxer Wachler (2nd nomination) Jytdog (talk) 00:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

  • give opinion/page semi-protected--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

ICPM to ICHI merger proposal

It's been proposed that International Classification of Procedures in Medicine (stub) is merged into International Classification of Health Interventions (stub). As procedural classifications, both are under the scope of WPMED. Discussion is on the ICPM talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:International_Classification_of_Procedures_in_Medicine#Proposed_merge_with_International_Classification_of_Health_Interventions Little pob (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:25, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Two articles on same topic?

Superficially, the two articles beta blocker and adrenergic beta-antagonist appear to cover the same topic, but perhaps to an expert there is an important distinction warranting two separate articles. Can someone with knowledge in this area please have a look and merge the articles if necessary? Thank you. Deli nk (talk) 15:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Adrenergic beta-antagonist is a Citizendium article according to the "References" section. See Adrenergic beta-antagonist#References. I would AFD the Adrenergic beta-antagonist article and then redirect it to Beta blocker after it was deleted. QuackGuru (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Is there any need for AFD? Content from Citizendium should be appropriately licensed to be used here, so why not just merge anything useful and redirect? Deli nk (talk) 17:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "Adrenergic beta-antagonist", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.
It can't be used under GFDL. The options I recommend are AFD or redirect without merge. I recommend AFD first. QuackGuru (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
OK, I see now. Thanks. Deli nk (talk) 19:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

"Beta adrenoceptor antagonist" is technically a broader topic than "beta blocker", but based upon their current content I think the (incorrectly titled) adrenergic beta-antagonist article should just be merged into beta-blocker instead of restructuring it. "Beta blockers" wouldn't include unconventional antagonists of these receptors - ones that don't act by "blocking" an agonist ligand binding site (e.g., some trace amines like phenethylamine are allosteric antagonists of beta adrenoceptors: PMID 22073124) - but this topic isn't covered in either article at the moment. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 00:49, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirect to beta blocker and left a note on the talk page. I am not seeing much to merge since most of it is already covered. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Concern about deprecation of template:Cite doi by user:Dexbot

I am posting to draw attention to a concern expressed by Ashill. He noticed that user:Dexbot is replacing instances of template:Cite doi with template:Cite journal and expanding the references. This means that references which only use the doi (a code) are replaced with full references listing author, title, etc.

This replacement is asserted to be based on consensus at Template_talk:Cite_doi#RfC:_Should_Template:cite_doi_cease_creating_a_separate_subpage_for_each_DOI.3F. Ashill suggests that the close of the discussion was in haste and that there was no clear consensus.

I agree with Ashill that the changes are significant. They affect not less than 10,000 articles. They are happening suddenly, now, with many articles every day changing. Since WikiProject Medicine members advocated for this change, and because I want good communication between members of WikiProject Medicine and the larger Wikipedia community, I think it would be good to reply to this person and watch for additional comments which may arise as people wonder what is happening with the bot replacing so much so quickly. Would someone comment at Template_talk:Cite_doi#Removal_of_useful_template? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:35, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 08:24, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Language use

Comments appreciated here [42] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:36, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Cochrane update bot

If someone is looking for something fairly easy to do the Cochrane bot is putting out reviews that need updating here.

Basically if the old and new review say the same thing not much needed other than updating. If the conclusions change than the text also needs to be changed obviously. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:37, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but let me emphasize that it's important to check carefully that the new reviews really do say the same thing. Even a few cases of incorrect "bot"-style updating would cause a lot of trouble. Old reviews that actually support the statements in the article are infinitely better than new reviews that contradict the statements they are cited for. In other words, this is a great thing to do, but we don't want to have people doing it in mass-production mode. Looie496 (talk) 18:21, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes of course if the new review says something different than the text NEEDS to be changed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Medical image exhibition

Detailed medical images are on display for five weeks at the University of Edinburgh.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

interesting images--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 08:25, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Are these images under an open license? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:02, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
User:Doc James, I do not know, but contact information is at http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/contacts.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Smoking ban

I was wondering if MEDRS applied to claims about smoking bans decreasing the incidence of myocardial infarction or other medical conditions, or having other health benefits. If so, the "Effects upon health" section of the smoking ban article needs a lot of work as it is sourced overwhelmingly to primary sources. Everymorning (talk) 17:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Certainly it would. The sources at myocardial infarction aren't ideal either - 2006 guideline etc. Johnbod (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
This and this might be a good places to start. Yobol (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, there are undoubtedly a lot of review articles on this subject, which is good. In fact, there's even an IOM report on the subject. [43] Everymorning (talk) 23:33, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Also, the Passive smoking#Smoke-free laws section seems to use primary sources a bit more than it should. Everymorning (talk) 11:44, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:WikEd is down

WikEd is down for Google Chrome per here [44]. It still works on firefox. I am hoping that User:Cacycle gets it up and working again soon. It and out ref tool bar IMO are our two most important editing tools. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Is it broken when you run userscripts off Tampermonkey as well? -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 13:20, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Acupuncture for Alzheimer's disease

Further input requested here [45] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:28, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Fat embolism

did a few edits to this important article, any help would be welcomed, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Deprecation of "cite doi"

We have replaced this templated with "cite journal" within most medical articles per [46]

There is another RfC regarding this templated here [47] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


give opinion--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:51, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Human-centric articles

I've noticed that diseases that are common to both man and beast are nevertheless 1) segregated by article, or the 2) treatment of animals is offhand. This seems too Human-centric for an encyclopedia, where the causes and results are much the same. In category 1) piebaldism and piebald. In category 2 is leprosy. Is there a policy on this? Student7 (talk) 17:55, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Unity is desirable, but we have to realize that Wikipedia articles are written by volunteers, who write best when they write about things they understand that interest them. The result of a policy would most likely be to make it less likely that people would want to write articles. But if you see a way to make our articles better, you are absolutely more than welcome to step in and improve them. If you have doubts, starting a discussion on the talk page of an article is a good way to begin. Best regards, Looie496 (talk) 18:30, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
I think that many of the volunteers that write medical articles are most comfortable and knowledgable about human disease, so it is somewhat understandable that there is an apparent lack of information on the animal aspects of these particular subjects. Clearly getting veterinarians or other knowledgable editors about non-human animal diseases would be wonderful. Yobol (talk) 18:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
agree (that is what would be best)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Per our WP:MEDMOS our articles typically concentrate on humans as this is what most of our readers are looking for. We then have a section at the lower part of the article occasionally on "Other animals". And sometimes we have articles called "Disease X in other animals"
Basically we should be human centric IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:59, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I think that a general encyclopedia ought to be human-centric. We call it "WP:DUE weight". However, I point out that there is a third class of disease article, which is primarily veterinary, and the treatment of humans is offhand. This is done (and is appropriate) when a disease is common in non-human animals but rare in humans. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
The comments above make some sense when confined to disease processes. Though I did write an article called Fish diseases and parasites which has a section on human health issues, but I think the article should be primarily focused on fish. There can be problems if broader projects, such as the anatomy and physiology projects, are hijacked by medical editors and the treatment of animals and evolutionary processes is offhand or disregarded. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:57, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
When people look up stomach IMO they as humans care mostly about human stomachs and there can be a section on "other animals". We can than have an entire article on Stomachs in other animals for the smaller number who care more. We just need the authors. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:25, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the focus of disease articles should be on humans, but other animals (if relevant) should be covered by simply discussing the topic in generality and including human-specific coverage of the topic in cases where there are differences between species. E.g., Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (i.e., prion diseases) does this. I can't imagine using this approach in drug articles though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 12:42, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think there can be a universal rule. Most disease articles should focus on humans, but for example the article on rabies would be incomplete if it didn't discuss how the disease affects animals. And for articles on body parts it often makes more sense to have a base article that describes the cross-species situation, and a second article specific to humans. In neuroscience for example we have brain and human brain. I would favor treating the stomach the same way. Looie496 (talk) 16:12, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I think "brain" and "brains in other animals" would be better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
The hatnote at the top of the brain article would be a good model to follow for other anatomy articles and other topics where there are both human and general articles:
This page is about the brains of all types of animals, including humans. For information specific to the human brain, see Human brain. For other uses, see WikiProject Medicine/Archive 71 (disambiguation).
(The second link here is an artifact of the template and links to Brain (disambiguation) in the original hatnote.)
When the human article is the primary topic, a similar hatnote leading to the more general article would also be useful.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
Brain is one of very few articles where there is consensus that the main topic should not be human brains. According to WP:ANATMOS including a section called Other animals is the apposite treatment.
That means no hatnote is needed, just a {{main}} under the correction section. -- CFCF 🍌 (email)
The guideline you refer to, WP:ANATMOS, never had general consensus from a representative community. It should certainly not be used to buttress arguments in this thread. It is a guideline agreed to by a group of medical editors who hijacked anatomy as a medical project and confined its scope to human anatomy. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
You may care to note that this is part of the "manual of style" that underwent a length discussion. As you know Epipelagic, we and many other editors have had a number of discussions on this point, and the consensus has always been to have articles as human centric, the main reason being that there is simply not enough content about animals on most anatomical subjects. You are welcome to propose this point for discussion (again) but I propose (again) that instead you focus on creating more content that would actually justify these splits. --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Last year we discussed Animal cancer here a bit - I suspect that this is rather typical in that very little is known about it compared to human cancer, and that little is confined very largely to the main pet & farm species vets see a lot. Generally, and I think appropriately, there is little attempt at treatment. Animals do figure prominently in Infectious cancer though. Johnbod (talk) 19:52, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Combined simian hemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus infection in cynomolgus monkeys[48](abstract only) [49]
  • Origins of HIV and the AIDS Pandemic[50]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Work of Breathing

I have started a new article on Work of breathing which has significance in underwater diving and which I expect is also within the scope of Wikiproject Medicine. Please feel free to contribute, reference, copyedit, check and all the rest of the constructive things we do here. I will be concentrating on aspects relevant to diving, and will only add content outside of that scope if I serendipitously come across good material during my research. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Errors in poliomyelitis article

As of September 7, 2015, polio had been recently found in Guinea, Mali, and Ukraine.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/07/health-polio-idUSL5N11D1X220150907

The Wikipedia article does not reflect this and incorrectly implies that a person could travel safely to those countries without fear of infection and without needing to get the vaccine first. It is imperative to fix this immediately.

In the Africa section, the sentence "Africa has had no confirmed cases polio since Aug. 11, 2014" is false.

In the lead, the sentence "In 2014 the disease was only spreading between people in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan" may be a technically true statement about the situation in 2014, but it needs to be followed with information about the current information in Guinea and Mali.

In the Europe section, the sentence "Europe was declared polio-free in 2002." may be a technically true statement about the situation in 2012, but it needs to be followed with information about the current information in Ukraine. 71.109.146.123 (talk) 03:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

WHO indicates Mali, [51]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Ukraine polio press release from WHO.[52] However, suggest IP user reads WP:FIXIT (semi-protected article), WP:Medical disclaimer, WP:NOTNEWS and WP:NOTFINISHED. Little pob (talk) 13:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
done(thanks for the link to WHO, I couldn't find it)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:09, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Microperimetry

Dear medical experts: Here's another old draft - is this a notable topic? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:45, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

certainly seems notable - I've commented there. Johnbod (talk) 03:02, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
agree (has some useful MEDRS references)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 08:03, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay, I have been offline for the weekend, but now I have finished rewriting the page to be more understandable (to me, at least). I hope that someone will look it over to make sure I haven't misrepresented anything. I moved it to mainspace, and, Johnbod, I moved your comment to the talk page. Perhaps you can apply the general source you found wherever you think it would do the most good.—Anne Delong (talk) 03:32, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
thanks Anne, --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:29, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC

Request for comment: Is Faith healing a form of pseudoscience and should it be labeled as such either in the article or by assignment of category pseudoscience? Interested editors are encouraged to join the discussion at Talk:Faith healing. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:11, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Need input

D-amphetamine

There's an issue involving dosing information on equivalent potencies of amphetamine pharmaceuticals in the template {{Amphetamine base in marketed amphetamine medications}} and current revision dextroamphetamine where this is transcluded; the thread where this discussion is taking place is at Talk:Amphetamine/Archive 6#Add table of potency of marketed amphetamines / "substituted amphetamine" term. An identical issue was previously raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 68#List of benzodiazepines dose equivalence; an entire column of data in the List of benzodiazepines was removed as a result of that discussion. Additional issues are covered in the talk:amphetamine thread linked previously. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:22, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for responding Ozzie; due to the lack of response by others in this project, I opted to simply change the guideline in MOS:PHARM and the MOS:MED drug section so that I don't have to deal with the problem. Given the lack of input from this request, I knew this wouldn't be a controversial change to the guideline. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 00:15, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
thank you --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:19, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Vasectomy

Could use some attention for anybody interested in that.Jytdog (talk) 08:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:11, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
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