User:Novem Linguae/Essays/MEDRS simple explanation
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MEDRS is a shortcut for Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). It is a guideline. It is a stricter set of reliable source requirements that is applied to biomedical topics on Wikipedia.
The idea is that incorrect biomedical information can hurt readers, so we need to get it right. And also there is a tendency for studies to be complete junk due to the replication crisis and bad study methodology, so we need to avoid studies and focus on review articles (articles that analyze and summarize many studies... looking at many studies helps average out the bad ones).
These sources pass MEDRS
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Review articles in academic journals. Click here to search. Basically, do a PubMed search with the following filters: meta-analysis, review, systematic review, MEDLINE.- Statements by national and international health organizations. Examples: World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, National Health Service, American Heart Association, American Medical Association.
- Textbooks.
These sources fail MEDRS
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Studies and clinical trials. Single studies are often completely wrong due to a variety of factors. Please see replication crisis for more info. A single study is quite untrustworthy.- Newspapers. Too often newspapers just report on a study or clinical trial as if its results are facts, when as described above, single studies are untrustworthy. Worse, newspapers will often cherry pick the most sensational studies/results to report on. The most sensational studies tend to be the outliers, that have conclusions that deviate from the norm. WP:REDFLAG.
- Preprints. These are drafts of academic journal articles that have not been accepted by a publisher, and have not gone through peer review. This is WP:SELFPUBLISH.
- Academic journal articles of the following types: comments, editorials, news, letters. Even though these show up in PubMed and may have a doi number, they are not the same as studies, clinical trials, or review articles. They go through a different, easier process in order to be published.
- Single experts. Even if Dr. Fauci says something about COVID-19, this does not meet the threshold of MEDRS. In fact, it is easy to find and cherry pick experts with contrarian opinions that contradict higher quality sources.
- Predatory journals (journals that will accept most articles and do not have rigorous enough quality controls). Please see WP:CITEWATCH. Examples include journals published by MDPI, Frontiers Media, Hindawi (publisher), Medknow Publications, Bentham Science Publishers, Dove Medical Press, etc. A good way to avoid using predatory journals by accident is to always filter PubMed searches by MEDLINE.
