Wikipedia:Peer review/Sleep medicine/archive1

Sleep medicine

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for September 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to know if it is near GA quality, and if it could become a candidate for FA. Does my POV shine through? Are format and style, references, weighting (etc.) appropriate? (Off-wiki friends & my doctor only tell me how clever I am; now I want criticism, please.)

Thanks, Hordaland (talk) 08:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the automated look at the article. I've made several small changes based on that. Today I have "canvassed" Project:medicine and two editors from the WP:PRV list, asking for help. I'll wait several days for response from them before pestering anyone else. All criticism, suggestions and questions are welcome! --Hordaland (talk) 14:08, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Garrondo

I am a psychologist with no medical training, so I can not give you imput on correctness of facts, however after reading (fast) the article I have some (non-exhaustive) comments. First of all congratulations. It seems a very promising begining, and I am sure that it can become soon a good article. Taking it to FA will probably take quite more. Secondly I have to comment that I am spanish, so my english is not perfect, and some comments that my sound strange, or even rude many times are due to language problems. Now some criticism:

I do not know if you are a practitioner of sleep medicine, but in some points the article sounds I bit like advertising, like the writter, even when referencing everything had some WP:COI. For example in the lead accelerated, providing increasing knowledge and answering many questions about sleep-wake functioning.[1] The rapidly evolving field, or the whole certification section. I do not mean that what you say is false, but it could be a little tempered.
Regarding the certification section: Sounds very USA centred. Even if it only exists as a different speciality in the USA that does not mean that it is not investigated or performed in other countries, and having a certification does not equal higher quality. Some questions the articles should answer: Who practices sleep medicine outside the USA?, How can be studied outside the USA?, Is there consensus outside the USA of it being a different speciality?. If sleep medicine is an article on its own it can not have a section talking only about how is it carried out in the USA. From my point of view this section should be a secondary article in "certification of sleep medicine in the USA", summarised in the sleep medicine article in a section which talks about the status of sleep medicine around the world.
The tests and tools sections lacks a lot of references. Each test and tool should have a reference.
References at treatments have to be chosen very carefully. Some sentences do not have proper references (An example: Pharmacology is necessary for some conditions. Medication may be useful for acute insomnia and for some of the parasomnias. It is almost always needed, along with scheduled short naps and close follow-up, in the treatment of narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia. Specifically timed bright light therapy, timed oral administration of the hormone melatonin, and chronotherapy are used in the management of chronic circadian rhythm disorders, the most common of which is delayed sleep phase disorder, for people who wish to adjust to a normal daytime schedule.If the reference is the one at the end of the paragraph is better to add it twice since somebody may modify the paragraph and then it would be difficult to attribute it to the refence
How about an image for treatments? Maybe one of a CPAP?
References: emedicine is not too bad, but is preferable review articles in mainstream journals. See WP:MEDRS. At the same time they should have all the same format (I see refs from emedice with the author, access date, etc. but others only have the title )
Order of the article: I would probably put the history section at the end, and just before it the certification section (or sleep medicine around the world; as I propose :-) just before it. Most people would be more interested in the scope, problems and treatments. At the same time is more similar the the WP:MEDMOS proposal.
Self reference, and talking with readers is not recommended in wikipedia: Try to eliminate any comments such as "See below". See: Wikipedia:Self-references to avoid
WP:Summary style: From my point of view some sections (specially history) get into to much detail: most quotations could be converted to narrative, and the whole section simplified, it is a bit tiring.

I hope it is of use. I won't watch this page, so for any comments contact me at my talk page. Best regards --Garrondo (talk) 15:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing: Quotations in references are horrible; if you need to extract a quotation from the reference it means the point you want to make is not very clear in the ref. At the same time they make ref section too long.--Garrondo (talk) 07:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response: Thank you so much for reading and commenting on the article. (I've taken the liberty of adding Comments by Garrondo at the top.)

I did expect to hear that some sections were boring, or 'tiring' as you phrase it quite aptly. And I certainly expected to be told that the article is too US-centric; I will continue to look for information beyond the short paragraph about the UK.

But that it sounds like advertising would never have occurred to me! The bits you quote, though, point to the section I've left out; there should be a section on research. I think that Sleep research should be an article, briefly summarized here. That will be a big project (for me, if I do it), and it will show that there indeed has been rapid progress. (And no, I'm not a practitioner of sleep medicine. I'm a patient. The great strides made have meant a great deal to me personally, which probably explains the enthusiastic advertising flavor.)

The article is long. It hadn't occurred to me that the certification of sleep medicine in the USA could be a separate article, and that may be a good suggestion! I think that this much detailed history belongs in an encyclopedia, but it dominates here and is of interest to few. In that connection I'll reconsider the order of the sections, though at the moment it seems logical to me.

I didn't realize that "each test and tool should have a reference", as they are all linked to articles which are referenced (I think). I can certainly bring in references. I will check, add to and improve references with your all comments in mind. I was unaware that quotes in references are "horrible".

Found and added CPAP image! (Looked for earlier, and didn't find one for cpap. The sleep diary image I had to draw myself.)

Thanks again. This is exciting; I've never been through such a process before and already I'm learning a lot. --Hordaland (talk) 21:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's great to know that I have been useful, and its perfect that my comments serve to rethink the article, even if at the end you don't follow some of my comments. They were not thought to be commandatory, so follow those you believe are useful. I also have to say that I quite used to writting med articles, but it was also my first peer-review, so this is also new for me. Best regards. --Garrondo (talk) 08:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

comments by Jmh649|DocJames

Well I started looking at things and came across a very contentious claim: More car accidents are due to lack of sleep then ETOH. I followed the reference and it says how many accidents are caused by fatigue but does not say it is more then ETOH. Here is the CDC page on ETOH: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/drving.htm

It would be better to quote directly from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration giving us the year of the figure.

You only discuss the profession in the US. What about the rest of the world?

Hope this helps Doc James (talk) 01:58, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay looked into things further. Death from fatigue estimated 1,550 deaths. Death from car accidents: During 2005, 16,885 people in the U.S. died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, representing 39% of all traffic-related deaths (NHTSA 2006) One must make sure the first paragraph is bullet proof. If not what can one say about the rest! Doc James (talk) 02:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response: Hello Doc James!

Yes, contentious. Dr. Czeisler was talking only about fatal truck crashes, referring to the National Transportation Safety Board. He doesn't say that they are exclusively work-related, but they may well be. In any case, it was irresponsible of me to extrapolate to motor vehicle accidents in general! Your link only covers alcohol-related accidents, as far as I can see. I've now quoted Dr. Czeisler: "the leading cause of fatal-to-the-driver truck crashes" is fatigue-related. He's done a great deal of research in this area and surely has his facts straight, even if I've only found them presented sketchily. (Measuring sleepiness/fatigue is, so far, not easy. Work is being done on a spit test, no more invasive than the breathalyzer. When that, or something similar, is ready, it will be interesting to see comparisons.)
Yes, US-centric! I don't know how to find similar information, if it exists, for other countries! There's lots of research all over the world where n patients are compared to n controls, for many different sleep disorders. If they have patients, they must also have doctors! (Duh.) It's entirely possible that training lags a decade or more behind the US, but I've not found anyone other than the one UK quote willing to say so. Do you think I should (learn to change the title of an article and) change the title to Sleep medicine in the US? Alternatively, and likely better, I could pull the training and certification info out into its own article and add a Sleep research section to the present article. --Hordaland (talk) 17:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now when you say fatal truck crashes? Do you mean big truck like transport trucks? They have strong any drinking regulations. What sort of numbers are we talking about? The article you quoted said that lack of sleep caused 1500 fatal accidents the one I looked at said ETOH caused 10x that number. Not sure if such a stat belong in the lead.

Here is a page from Canada: http://www.css.to/centers.html And one from Europe: http://www.esrs.eu/cms/upload/pdf/jsr_European_Accreditation_Guidelines_for_SMCs.pdf Unless you want to add other places then yes it should be changed to Sleep medicine in the US. Which is less useful then a global overview. And would lower the pages importance rating. Hope that helps.

--Doc James (talk) 23:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that European Accreditation Guidelines link! That is mostly about accreditation for sleep centers (centres!) but includes a long list of national sleep (research) societies. I hope most of them have websites -- I'm off on the chase! --Hordaland (talk) 20:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]