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What is MEDRS for?

Apologies for the blunt question, but it's become apparent over at the RFC at Wikipedia:Biomedical information that this isn't agreed-upon. I've asked the question over there; the quotes there illustrate the lack of agreement. Hopefully we can either confirm what was previously established, or hammer out a new consensus if there isn't an old one. SSSheridan (talk) 01:39, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

The goal is to help editors write good articles that provide an accurate and properly weighted view of the facts. (We achieve the "properly weighted" point by helping editors figure out which sources are high-quality and which aren't, and consequently helping them figure out which sources to emphasize and which to downplay as "minority viewpoints", or to exclude entirely as "tiny minority viewpoints", when they are trying to apply the NPOV policy.) In the particular dispute over there, I think you will find that the NPOV policy section on WP:GEVAL is relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes, it's to help build a good encyclopedia. Quite frankly, I find the invocation of the "what is it for?" question over at the RfC to be just a tactic to try and re-cast the argument to try and end do an end-run around what the guideline actually says, in that if you posit it is "for" X, then you can say anything not alignment with "X" can be ignored. I actually think the first couple of sentences in WP:MEDRS should not be there (but maybe somewhere else) because they can fuel the misconception that MEDRS is primarily focussed on "medical advice". Alexbrn (talk) 05:56, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I've removed the rationale from the lead. The discussion "over there" is causing more heat and noise than light. People are quoting that intro sentence as though it defines that the only purpose of MEDRS is for "those seeking health information" and some are misreading it to claim the only purpose of MEDRS is to ensure the accuracy of "medical advice". -- Colin°Talk 07:35, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
@MastCell:, who wrote an earlier form of this lead sentence. In COVID discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information, this lead is frequently quoted or alluded to. With the consequent vote rationales being offered:

  • "I get why we have the above policy as walking into a doctor's office here (USA) generally costs at least a hundred dollars. Therefore, I frequently refer to Wikipedia to decide if I need to see a doctor about this or that. But the origin of Covid, which is where this all came from, has no relevance one way or the other to such decisions."
  • "The intention of MEDRS is prevent harm from including dubious medical information that might encourage readers to disregard competent medical advice, or that might encourage them to take up alternative medicine. That is not what this [the origin of COVID] is."
  • "the origins of the COVID-19 virus can in no way be construed to be medical advice, which is why the higher MEDRS standards exist"
  • "MEDRS specifically applies to medical advice"
  • "the reason for WP:MEDRS is to make sure that people won't get bad health information from Wikipedia. But the origin of our lovely pandemic is not going to affect anyone's decision about what to do if they get the virus"
  • "The origin of a virus (like the exact population of bats) will not affects anyone's medical decisions."
  • "WP:MEDRS clearly states the justification for a stricter policy, namely that people might seek medical advice on Wikipedia"
  • "The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading "medical advice" from being introduced in the project"
  • "Per many of those above who point out that WP:MEDRS is to keep anything that can be construed as medical advice sourced to the highest standards"
  • "WP:MEDRS is about medical advice, the origin of this virus is a historical matter"
  • "the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice" (repeated by several)
  • "MEDRS is meant to prevent immediate harm from incorrect/malicious medical advice"
  • "The origins of COVID simply do not constitute medical advice"
  • "there's a specific point that MEDRS exist for, which is the danger of giving bad or dangerous medical advice. That's not relevant here"
  • "WP:MEDRS deals with medical advice - and the origin of a virus is not medical advice"
  • "Others have made this point above, but the origin of a disease is not medical advice. It's that simple"
  • "The purpose of the latter [MEDRS] is to prevent adding content that could be construed as providing medical advice"

I see that some, such as Alexbrn, have tried in vain to suggest that preventing incorrect medical advice isn't the only purpose of MEDRS. I think that RFC has actually increased the amount of disinformation about MEDRS and made the COVID-origin problem worse. There is in fact a danger someone closing the discussion will expand their brief beyond whether or not the proposal passed and actually claim there is consensus that MEDRS only applies to medical advice. But much of a medical article is unrelated to medical advice. While "seeking health information" could be read as a neutral desire to learn, which just happens, at this moment, to be health related. It seems that it is more likely to be read as wanting information that concerns health personally (themselves or friend or relative) and which will then be acted upon.
Having a rationale for MEDRS was useful when this wasn't yet an official guideline. But I don't think an established guideline needs to justify itself. Particularly not when that justification is then being used to limit its scope solely to whether or not I should see a doctor about a lump.
The "explanatory supplement" whose talk page editors were voting on, already includes topics that are not medical advice and have no direct consequences for the reader's health. This includes "the molecular or cellular basis of a disease", "how a treatment works", and "epidemiology". The topic of "classification" where one discusses how doctors and scientists have chosen to group or label things one way for this and one way for that, is pure information, that has no direct health consequences for the reader. Yet we rightly expect such information to be sourced to the current consensus of professionals in the field.
As WhatAmIDoing wrote: "maybe this sounds idealistic, but I think the reason we wrote MEDRS is because we wanted to help people write high-quality articles. The way to do that is to start with the best sources". MEDRS is simply a guide to the best sources for writing about biomedical information on Wikipedia. -- Colin°Talk 09:30, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for the ping, Colin; I agree completely with you and WhatamIdoing. The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to ensure that our medical and health-related articles are the best, most accurate, and most informative that we can make them. Because there are certain sourcing quirks and pitfalls specific to biomedicine, it's been very useful to have a dedicated guideline. Yes, the guideline was designed in part to ensure that we don't give "bad medical advice", but that is only one harm that the guideline seeks to prevent (and, in any case, Wikipedia already has a strongly worded disclaimer that it does not provide medical advice, so the guideline was always designed to go beyond that).
WP:MEDRS is a set of best practices for sourcing and writing about biomedical information. It's that simple, and it's always been about more than just "medical advice". Unfortunate but not surprising to see its history being rewritten; the Covid-origin debate in particular is a hothouse of bad takes, motivated reasoning, and genuine uncertainty, but it would be a shame if the associated madness derailed a longstanding guideline that has been incredibly valuable and successful, and a major credit to the project. MastCell Talk 15:25, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
I believe that what happened "over there" was an expression of community consensus that MEDRS exists to prevent Wikipedia from giving bad medical advice, regardless of the the intent of the original authors of the guideline. I also believe that the elevation of an essay to a guideline is not a fait accompli, and that the community should know what purpose a guideline serves and agree with it. If the close of that discussion doesn't cover the status and purpose of MEDRS, then a community-wide RfC should be held to clarify it, and the text of the guideline should be revised to reflect that consensus. Geogene (talk) 20:52, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
MEDRS was never an "essay", as you put it. Perhaps some may call Wikipedia:Biomedical information an "essay". The other discussion was about trying to get a bigger weapon to settle a dispute, and was never primarily about the purpose of MEDRS. Anyway, "purpose" is not really important at the end of the day. What is important is what we agree on wrt generally editing Wikipedia articles. Guidelines should come from consensus about how best to edit Wikipedia in general. At the top of every guideline we are reminded they are a "generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow". It means that we can point to some successful articles that followed the guideline or to existing discussions that reached a consensus that the guideline affirms. The idea that editors who have spectacularly failed to reach consensus on even one single thing, and who hop from forum to forum to be disagreeable with each other, should preach to the rest of Wikipedia about how best to edit, is rather ironic. -- Colin°Talk 21:49, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Re Anyway, "purpose" is not really important at the end of the day there is a policy at WP:RULES that states Policy and guideline pages should: .... Clearly identify the purpose and scope early in the page, as many readers will just look at the beginning. Every guideline is expected to serve a purpose, and the purpose of this guideline should not have been deleted, especially not in order to influence the close of a related RfC. Geogene (talk) 22:46, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
The very first two words identify the scope (Biomedical information) and the purpose is, well, the clue is in the title: Identifying reliable sources (medicine). That is all editors need to know and couldn't possibly be "earl[ier] in the page". Perhaps instead of purpose I should have said "what encouraged some editors to write this and to push for it to become official". That aspect is now historical, and it would appear was causing confusion about scope. -- Colin°Talk 09:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
Removing the purpose of MEDRS is a significant change and requires broader input. If MEDRS does not exist to protect readers from false information that could harm them, then it has no purpose. It's already covered by RS. The best approach then would be to remove the guideline. TFD (talk) 04:54, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
MEDRS became a guideline at 00:53, 1 September 2008.[1] It began, "Wikipedia's medical articles, while not a source of medical advice, are nonetheless an important health information resource. Therefore, it is vital that medical articles be based on reliable published sources. These guidelines supplement the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Reliable sources with specific attention to sources appropriate for medical and health-related articles."
The original RfC can be found at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)/Archive 2#Should we make this a guideline?. The question voted on was, "Should we make this a guideline? reason=The reliable sources page for medicine-related articles at WP:MEDRS is widely used and widely referenced on talk pages. WikiProject Medicine solicits comments on the page before assigning it guideline status."
There was never any authority to expand the scope of the article. While the original "Page in a nutshell began, "Ideal sources for biomedical articles include," there was never any discussion about including it. Furthermore, there was never any consensus to extend MEDRS to non-medicine related articles.
TFD (talk) 06:20, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
The 2008 scope was broader: "health-related articles" could mean just about anything. Alexbrn (talk) 06:28, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
As I already explained above, I did not remove the "purpose" of MEDRS. The purpose of MEDRS is to help editors identify reliable sources that support biomedical information in Wikipedia articles. That's it. Full stop. The older text had some background information, some rationale giving a non-exhaustive reason why some editors felt it important to have this guideline. And in recent days, per the discussion above, it has become clear that some editors are misreading that text as though the only scope of MEDRS concerns medical advice. And this misreading is occurring during the heated debate about covid origins.
Look at the top of WP:V. It doesn't explain why it is important that "information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up". Look at the top of WP:NPOV. It doesn't explain why our articles should not "take sides". Look at the top of WP:NOR. It doesn't explain why articles mustn't be based on whatever editors themselves believe, even if they are really really bright.
There's always going to be a tension about the scope of MEDRS, which is why Wikipedia:Biomedical information was written. It is almost never helpful to ask if MEDRS applies to an article. Wikipedia is an general encyclopaedia, not a medical textbook, and an encyclopaedia deals with the entire range of human knowledge. So a comprehensive article on the common cold should include aspects that are social, historical, economic and political. And so should articles on the origin of covid. I know some of our editors wish we'd cover medical or health topics purely as though we were writing a reference work for patients and doctors, but Wikipedia is broader than that. -- Colin°Talk 08:34, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
While guidelines evolve, you would need community agreement to extend the scope. Attempts have been made to have special rs guidelines for other fields and they have mostly failed, because rs is considered adequate. The only reason for the medical science exception was to protect readers from misleading or false medical advice that they could rely on to the damage of their health.
Yes the purpose of MEDRS has been removed, see the latest revision.[2] Saying that the purpose of a medical rs guideline is to have an rs guideline for medical information is not actually a purpose, it's a tautology.
I agree there should not be two discussions, but there are.
TFD (talk) 13:54, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't think this "expands the scope". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Then why remove the purpose of MEDRS? TFD (talk) 20:31, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
It seemed unnecessary, and the wording seemed to confuse some (mostly newer) editors. I saw comments that twisted Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice into a belief that MEDRS only applies when giving medical advice. I know we can't expect Close reading skills from everyone, but when we have people turning "no advice!" into "here's how to put advice in articles", I think we have a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
Is there a prior consensus on the purpose of MEDRS? If not, then this would be the largest attended discussion where participants discuss the purpose of MEDRS. Even if this opinion is 'wrong', it would still be a consensus. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:06, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
The RfC was not about "the purpose of MEDRS". It was to address a specific question asked by Aquillion, which experienced editors answered without getting distracted by the confusion and politicking about the supposed "purpose of MEDRS". ProcrastinatingReader's restoration of the text is unhelpful and likely only to fuel confusion and politicking more. Quite why that RfC is being left to rumble on well past its obviously-decided outcome, IDK. Alexbrn (talk) 08:13, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
The only really binding thing here is Wikipedia:Consensus; a discussion can (and often does) find consensus for something other than the exact question that was asked, and whether it does is largely up to closer discretion. If no discussion exists which provides insight into the purpose of MEDRS, then this would be the first, even if it isn't an RfC on that particular question, given for example the list of sample comments Colin compiled above (not even nearly exhaustive). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Any broader WP:CONSENSUS cannot be divined here, because while many editors where addressing the question of the RfC, some started talking about other matters. We cannot know what the more focussed editors thought about those "other matters" (I, for example, thought a lot of editors were talking nonsense, but didn't bother saying so because I assumed the only purpose of the RfC was to answer the question asked). Alexbrn (talk) 12:36, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
I see ProcrastinatingReader has reverted the change and restored the misleading intro. TFD, the purpose of MEDRS (to identify reliable sources supporting biomedical information on Wikipedia) is very simple, to the point where the title says it all. That isn't a "tautology": very often in life, we give things self-describing titles. -- Colin°Talk 08:07, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
WP:MEDRS has never had anything to do with medical advice, ever. It's a proven essential guide for our writers to ensure accurate, balanced medical articles are written. It is for our writers. I don't know where this stuff about medical advice has come from but it needs to go.Graham Beards (talk) 16:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
The text has been in the guideline since at least 2010 and the formulation (ie, the 'therefore' in the next sentence) provides one possible interpretation for the basis for the guideline. Now some people want to remove this entirely because a significant number of people have decided to reason based on that text, before said discussion is even closed? As Geogene said, perhaps the community does not agree with the writers of the guideline on why we should have MEDRS, but that doesn't make these views any less legitimate. It doesn't really matter which 'side' is right or not, either way the dispute should be resolved through discussion and consensus, and not through bold editing to a PAG during an RfC to make many editors' views look more wrong.
Instead we have a few users edit-warring on a PAG to remove a phrasing present since 2010, solely because a large number of editors (a list of some comments compiled by Colin above, its quantity much greater than the number of editors participating here) disagree. Great show of collaboration. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:39, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
The person edit-warring is you. And this[3] contribution with its bad-faith accusations looks inflammatory, which is really unfortunate. Alexbrn (talk) 16:49, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader, could you please look at a few of our featured health/medical articles. For example Complete blood count, Menstrual cycle, Dementia with Lewy bodies, Water fluoridation, Virus, Immune system, Female genital mutilation. Many of them contain or are mostly "biomedical information" that doesn't constitute "medical advice". Writers of health and medical articles use MEDRS to guide them on the best sources to use. These are tools with which to write great articles on Wikipedia. They are not weapons of war with which to beat one's fellow editors over the head with. Wrt the poll on covid origins, complete the well known phrase: "Ask a stupid question..." -- Colin°Talk 17:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Just so, and I remember many years ago having to explain to a CIR editor (who was unfortunately egged on by a thankfully-now-absent regular who should have known better) that we really shouldn't be including a "just so story" from a radio talk show host as an explanation for the "evolutionary origin" of ADHD. Eventually I gave up and the rest of those involved wound up at ARBCOM. The problem is that there is no shortage of absolute bullshit about medical topics out there, some from otherwise-reliable sources, and none of it belongs in Wikipedia. And of course GOOP and Natural News and Airborne do their best to insist that they are not giving out "medical advice" or whatever magic quack "miranda warnings" they have to include to avoid FDA attention.

If Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to shove a jade egg into your vulva (assuming you have or can borrow one), we don't have to argue over whether that technically constitutes "medical" (or arguably sexual) advice. We don't even have to argue over whether we should worry that someone might do it. No, we just quote reputable medical sources that explain that inserting porous rocks into a mucous-lined cavity will likely lead to bacterial infection, if we mention it at all. What next, should we document that plague is caused by Jews poisoning the wells? Because I've been waiting for that classic to make a comeback these days. Presumably Wikipedia will not be giving that claim equal weight. Hyperion35 (talk) 18:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Cutting down the risk of people getting bad health advice is one reason to hold health/medicine/biology material to a very high standard of referencing, but there are plenty of others. Students, journalists, and even scientists who specialize in other topics look to Wikipedia as a place to begin reading. We owe it to them to carry out our hobby responsibly. Looking at everything through the narrow slit of "health advice" is, I'd say, a blinkered perspective. I concur with MastCell above: Yes, the guideline was designed in part to ensure that we don't give "bad medical advice", but that is only one harm that the guideline seeks to prevent (and, in any case, Wikipedia already has a strongly worded disclaimer that it does not provide medical advice, so the guideline was always designed to go beyond that). And, as Colin pointed out, there's plenty of material that probably has no direct health consequences for the reader but which we still expect to be sourced to the current consensus of professionals in the field. XOR'easter (talk) 20:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
And on that point I think the broader community seems to disagree, at least at that RfC. There's a good reason why WP:SCIRS is an essay and holds no consensus status. MEDRS is the only subject specific sourcing guideline. So do students of sciences, other than medicine, not look to Wikipedia as a place to begin reading, and are we abdicating our responsibilities towards them by not giving their articles a mandatory 'requirement' for higher sourcing (as this guideline provides for biomedical content)? The only valid argument I've heard so far about why medical articles should enjoy a higher standard of sourcing is to prevent harm to human health, as BLP policies prevent harm to individual (living) humans. Otherwise, our articles should strive to provide high quality information regardless of subject, as summarised in WP:RS. The general idea of subject specific sourcing requirements does not enjoy consensus. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Speaking of, I found Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)/Archive_25#What_does_MEDRS_cover?, so apparently this RfC is indeed not the first where large numbers of editors held this same position on the purpose of MEDRS. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
We have WP:BLP, which imposes what I'd call "subject specific sourcing requirements" in the interests of preventing harm (reputational, at least) to living people. And we have WP:CORPDEPTH, which lays out "subject specific sourcing requirements" in order to keep Wikipedia from decaying into a hellhole of advertisements. WP:PROF sets out "subject specific sourcing requirements" for writing about scholars and academics, thanks to the peculiarities of that area. WP:RSP gives plenty of examples where the reliability of a source is judged on a subject-by-subject basis. So, overall, I don't see how "subject specific sourcing requirements" go against basic Wikipedia practices.
The consensus of that 2015 RfC was to have the lede say "biomedical information" instead of "health and biomedical information". The closer noted that "health" has a vague scope. In that case, shouldn't we be avoiding language that jumps right in to talk about "health information"? (The discussion in that RfC seems to be all over the place, with accusations of imprecision in all directions, and it's tough to get a clear message out of it.) XOR'easter (talk) 01:27, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
As I say: medical articles should enjoy a higher standard of sourcing[] to prevent harm to human health, as BLP policies prevent harm to individual (living) humans. PROF & NCORP are notability guidelines not sourcing requirements; PROF is more permissive, and NCORP more restrictive for the purposes of establishing notability, but normal RS policies apply to all content. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:05, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
To Colin's point above: I've read some of those articles before. I agree there are medical articles on Wikipedia of excellent quality. Re They are not weapons of war with which to beat one's fellow editors over the head with. my only concern is about the exclusionary aspect of MEDRS, and the scope of that specific aspect. I don't think limitation of that scope harms editors, who are free to use the guidance for the entire article, or even some of the principles on non-MEDRS articles. Once you create a requirement, it does tend to be used as a cudgel. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I think it is fair to say that your "only concern" is the origin of covid-19? And I think it is fair to say that editing and talk page discussions in that area do not represent Wikipedia at its finest. Elsewhere, editors have found the "exclusionary" aspect of requiring MEDRS-compliant material to be extremely useful on other articles, and certainly not just in areas that could be viewed as medical advice. So it isn't just a case of saying folk could use it if they want to. There'd be a stronger case for shifting the scope or purpose or definitions of MEDRS if it wasn't so completely transparent that editors right now only want to do that so they can win a covid argument. -- Colin°Talk 12:47, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
In the RfC I linked, it appears a large number of editors didn't want to expand to 'health' due to a perception that the proposal was being used as a trojan horse for scope expansion of MEDRS (eg). The close said the health term had a far broader scope ... including everything from seatbelt usage to public health policies.
I think the wider community, both there and in the current RfC, saw a limit to MEDRS's exclusionary scope, and thus an appreciation that there are negatives to requiring MEDRS. I'm concerned that, after seeing editors voice an opinion on MEDRS's purpose, the response on this page has been to completely remove the long-standing relevant portions of the text so that the wider community won't be 'confused' anymore. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:04, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
The concern ProcrastinatingReader linked to is from a socking editor blocked[4] for having "very little interest in Wikipedia besides edit-warring and engaging in disputes in a narrow area of interest". I think it's fair to say this is not atypical of the kind of editor who likes to grumble about WP:MEDRS: typically they're WP:PROFRINGE advocates, people trying to market medical products, or academics trying to pimp their papers. The "exclusion" of MEDRS (which in any case is not absolute) are what most editors would call quality control. Alexbrn (talk) 13:27, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
How about [5][6][7][8][9][10] or the close itself? The reason the proposal failed was a concern of scope expansion and not being convinced that the change was solely to provide clarity, was it not? And even supporters made clear the reasons for MEDRS[11][12][13] etc... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:35, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, those diffs rather prove my point. The outcome of that RfC was to be explicit about focussing on biomedical information. So, nicely lined up with the current guideline text. Alexbrn (talk) 13:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
There is also the unavoidable problems that biomedical sourcing creates. Medicine is complicated, like really ridiculously complicated. So much so that people specialize and subspecialize and even then may not know everything about their specialty or subspecialty. And then you run into the problems of whether an expert is really an expert for a given issue. I am technically a healthcare expert, but you would not ask me for a clinical opinion because I'm not remotely qualified to do that. In Medicine, we all (usually, generally) know whose opinion is valid in a given situation without needing a formalized set of rules like MEDRS, but there are still written and unwritten rules that we adhere to. As I've mentioned elsewhere in the past, MEDRS is really basically just a rubric to try to help Wikipedia editors think like experts and source articles properly so that they reflect the most accurate and verifiable information from the most appropriate sources. Hyperion35 (talk) 04:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I definitely see the value of MEDRS as a means of succinctly summarizing a large number of sources (that often exist on scientif and medical topics). Summarizing conflicting sources can take more "originality" and interpretation than wikipedia is comfortable with, so it's useful to put this in the hands of sources. I partly think that this has more to do with the "literature landscape" than medicine or its complexity. In some topics you are lucky to have a couple of sources addressing an issue well, requiring secondary sources on these topics would result in no information on it (I think we experienced this a little on some COVID topics). I actually think that on medical topics if there are only a couple of sources addressing an issue, then perhaps it would be okay to use them, and there is a more general principle that you can apply whenever editing which is "try to place a source within the context of the literature by finding sources that discuss it".
I think justifications along the lines of harm, risk and expertise are *bad* justifications for wikipedia. I've interacted with medical students on here arguing for the deletion of entire articles critical of sections on medicine on the basis that "poor reputation discourages people seeking help", and it's quite easy for the safety argument to become very restrictive. If followed to its limits, we only quote advice written by health agencies directed at patients. This would be bad in terms of completeness, accuracy abd bias (such organizations often being as concerned about compliance and legal responsibility as they are about accuracy). There is value in having a bit of "separation of powers" as far as sources go, by including scientists and medical doctors in sources as as patient guidelines.
I've found reasoning about "medical advice" is often a little confused. What amounted to "don't say you are a medical doctor when you aren't" and "don't give advice if you are a medical doctor that leads individuals to believe that they do not need medical care" can turn into "no information on medical topics may exist on the internet". I also think we should be careful about applying the norms within medicine to wikipedia. The professional world of medicine is a large one, which can be all-encompassing for those who take part in it, but it is not the entire the world, and the norms associated with it aren't necessarily optimal for wikipedia. Norms about "who should give advice" are based the necessities of medical care such as timeframe, risk of being sued and amount of effort that an individual could reasonably be expected to exert on an issue while employed. They are also based on professional status and social relationships within an organization. None of this applies to wikipedia apart from that wikipedia may profitably make use of the expertise and sources that this creates. Talpedia (talk) 09:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Fellas, there have been numerous arguments on WT:BMI over the meaning of the first sentence that has long been status quo, and, to be frank, the bold change to the WP:MEDRS guideline while the WP:BMI RfC was ongoing doesn't seem Kosher. I've opened up an RfC below, so that the community can give further input on the specific question of the first sentence. In the meantime, it seems like there was no consensus to support the bold change, and the guideline should remain the status quo until this becomes resolved. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 14:20, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

RfC: First Sentence of MEDRS

Note: there is another RfC about this subject, created on 25 May, at Wikipedia_talk:Biomedical_information#RFC:_Disease_/_pandemic_origins.
Note 2: That RfC was closed on July 3 without implementing the proposed scope expansion.
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There's a solid consensus to begin this guideline with Option 2, i.e. to remove the bit about "medical advice" from the lead sentence. Supporters of this option offered the view that MEDRS exists to help editors find reliable sources in the fraught landscape of biomedicine literature, popular writings, et al. and is not intended to support those seeking health information per se. Supporters of the status quo can be roughly divided into two halves with distinct rationales. Half advocated that the text is basically fine, longstanding, and needs no tinkering. The other half expressed concern that removing the "medical advice" bit represents an unwarranted expansion of MEDRS' scope. For the curious (and to give a bird's eye view of the discussion) I'll add that by my tally 25 editors expressed preference for option 2, 14 for option 1. Thanks to all for sharing your thoughts. Ajpolino (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

How should the lead of WP:MEDRS begin?

Survey: First Sentence of MEDRS

  • Option 1: There was absolutely no good reason to omit the prelude explaining why we use MEDRS sources in the middle of an argument about Goddamn COVID. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than Goddamn COVID, and the reams of words that have been spilled on this topic remind me wearily of another's observation that WPMED is sometimes an odd meeting between people who are interested in writing high-quality (GA/FA) medical articles and people who are interested in debunking pseudoscience (with little apparent concern for the encyclopedia elsewhere); I am consistently unconvinced that the latter know what the actual experiences of the people writing the articles and navigating our medical sourcing standards are. There is no good reason to go around screwing with PAG wording because of a long-running content dispute, even a uniquely complex one, in a direction that makes the guideline more opaque and more removed from the experiences of the people who actually write most of the article it handles. As Proc mentions, MEDRS is quite heavily curtailed from scope creep. I am uninterested in opening the door to MEDRS scope creep with the justification This Time It's For A Good Reason, Promise. The guideline's opening should explain why we do what we do, and no further. Vaticidalprophet 15:19, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. It's not terribly important because the proposed text of Option 1 about "medical advice" was only an informative observation and had no normative WP:PAG force. However, as recent discussions have shown, an unintended consequence of this text is to confuse editors who read it and then think they then know what MEDRS "is", without reading on. It could help avoid such confusion in the future to remove it. I note too from comments on this page, that both the original author of MEDRS (Colin) and the editor who added the text in question (MastCell) think it best removed. Since this text was added we have an entire lengthy essay on WP:WHYMEDRS which does the job of explaining "why MEDRS" in depth. Alexbrn (talk) 15:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2; MEDRS is a tool for our writers to assist them in the production of high quality medical content. It has nothing at all to do with non-existent "advice".Graham Beards (talk) 15:29, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1: Editors completing misuing WP:BURO in the COVID discussion to presume that the very first sentence of a P&G completely defines the scope does not change how it is used by the rest of WP. There's the "In the nutshell" box that gets to the heart of the matter of what MEDRS does, so the opening line explaining a logical story of why MEDRS exists seems sane and makes it a more compelling read. --Masem (t) 15:36, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Keep the opening sentence as straightforward as possible. The fact that a footnote is needed with Option 1 shows why it's a bad opening. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:38, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 "For this reason" is just wrong. Factually, ethically wrong. There are multiple good reasons for MEDRS that don't fit under the "advice" heading. For example, the media might hype the possibility of a new cure for disease X, based on a trial of a drug that works in a Petri dish. This would have nothing to do with "advice" — there's nothing a reader could do, since there isn't even a black-market way to get the new compound — but we would still require MEDRS compliance. It might be fine to present a justification for MEDRS, but we shouldn't lie and say that it's the only justification. XOR'easter (talk) 15:45, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Addendum I wouldn't mind seeing some variation of Hyperion35's phrasing introduced in a prominent place: to try to get Wikipedia editors to evaluate sources the way that healthcare experts evaluate sources. And I also think the point made by JoelleJay deserves more emphasis: other science fields receive nowhere near the coverage primary studies in biomedicine do, which is additionally problematic given biomedicine is particularly rife with replicability issues and has an abysmal basic science-to-translational/clinical research track record. It's not that biomedicine is necessarily the most complicated field ever on some absolute scale of complexity, but it is complicated in a unique way. XOR'easter (talk) 16:07, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
    • Second addendum I wouldn't object to the option 3 proposed below, tweaking "For this reason" to "For this and other reasons". XOR'easter (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 It explains the context of MEDRS. It has worked well for a long time. It is important background. It is the reason why we need MEDRS and can't just follow generic RS advice: because medicine has possible direct consequences. It is not the only reason for MEDRS, but it doesn't claim to be the only reason. (Peter coxhead, that's a citation rather than any other sort of footnote. Wikipedia lives on citations. That doesn't show it's a bad opening: it shows it's a well-sourced opening.) Bondegezou (talk) 15:48, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    • @Bondegezou: there's no reason I can see why the general principle that the lead section summarizes, so doesn't need citations, should not apply here. The first sentence is not a summary of the content, which, as has been noted above, is advice to editors. See also my comment below. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:35, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Or Option 3, which is something I suggest in the discussion below: change opening to, "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this and other reasons, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge..." (Emphasis added to make change clear. Not suggesting it should be emphasised on the page.) Bondegezou (talk) 10:31, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The person (User:MastCell) who wrote the lead sentence was pinged about its removal. He commented further up the page to agree with that change and I'll quote it:
The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to ensure that our medical and health-related articles are the best, most accurate, and most informative that we can make them. Because there are certain sourcing quirks and pitfalls specific to biomedicine, it's been very useful to have a dedicated guideline. Yes, the guideline was designed in part to ensure that we don't give "bad medical advice", but that is only one harm that the guideline seeks to prevent (and, in any case, Wikipedia already has a strongly worded disclaimer that it does not provide medical advice, so the guideline was always designed to go beyond that).
WP:MEDRS is a set of best practices for sourcing and writing about biomedical information. It's that simple, and it's always been about more than just "medical advice". Unfortunate but not surprising to see its history being rewritten; the Covid-origin debate in particular is a hothouse of bad takes, motivated reasoning, and genuine uncertainty, but it would be a shame if the associated madness derailed a longstanding guideline that has been incredibly valuable and successful, and a major credit to the project.
I can only speak for myself, but as the editor who actually created MEDRS, no, we did not create and develop MEDRS solely to protect readers from bad medical advice. As WhatamIdoing wrote above "maybe this sounds idealistic, but I think the reason we wrote MEDRS is because we wanted to help people write high-quality articles. The way to do that is to start with the best sources". For biomedical information on Wikipedia, MEDRS will guide you towards selecting the best sources. The purpose is fully defined in the title "Identifying reliable sources (medicine)" and the scope is fully explained in the accompanying info page: Wikipedia:Biomedical information. -- Colin°Talk 16:53, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. As others have said, MEDRS is a guideline for editors to identify the best sources for biomedical information. That MEDRS also decrease the chances of propagating bad medical advice is incidental to the guideline's overall intent. JoelleJay (talk) 17:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The extra sentence tends to confuse people. In this case we can be more clear by using fewer words. - MrOllie (talk) 18:06, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 but really both are fine. Option 1 is theoretically perfect, so long as one reads beyond the first sentence. However, we have recently had an influx of editors with severe CIR problems who should not even be editing medical articles, if we're being honest. Option 1, beyond that first sentence, specifies biomedical information and goes on to make to clear to any native English speaker or well-educated foreigner that MEDRS goes beyond just matters of personal health advice. I agree with VaticidalProphet in this regard. I also agree with Alexbrn and others, however, in that this first sentence seems to be creating serious problems for some editors, who are using it as an excuse to push through a novel interpretation that MEDRS is not needed for many biomedical claims (or the similar claim that things like biosafety levels, biological research, viral genomes, spike proteins, etc are not biomedical issues).

    In the real world, Wikipedia would have professional policy analysts and attorneys who issue subregulatory guidance and this would be cleared up in a manner of days. Unfortunately, Wikipedia bears about as much resemblance to professionalism as porn does to sex, and so in an amateur project where people are going to make shit up as they go along, we probably need guidelines that cannot be twisted and deliberately misinterpreted by malicious individuals for political purposes. This is a tough question, because broadly speaking option 1 is fine, it's technically the same as option 2, and as we see with many votes here, competent editors are capable of understanding this and properly applying it. I agree that it's a bad idea to make changes just because of COVID issues, but the flip side is that COVID is bringing back the sort of crap we had to deal with when Scientologist propaganda was a common sight in psych articles (don't believe me? Go check the history on the ADHD article cira 2008).

    Ultimately the best answer would probably be to leave it at Option 1 and suggest that some editors would be better off creating pages for Pokemon characters. Hyperion35 (talk) 19:03, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

    • I mean in the real world wikipedia would't exist, which might tell us about the correct trade-offs between produced by experts versus editable by all (including of course, experts). I wonder which of wikipedia and professionalism is porn and which is sex in this analogy... one is done by experts for money and fame, the other is done for many reasons, some of them motivated by caring about other people, though at times just for personal gratification... Talpedia (talk) 21:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 per Alexbrn. If we wanted to throw in some sort of motivation we might try something like "A great deal of biomedical research exists and any individual primary source may misrepresent a topic for many reasons; these primary sources are summarized and contextualized in review articles and other secondary sources." Talpedia (talk) 19:30, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. There are other reasons why we must adhere to high-quality secondary sources, and not just because Wikipedia is used to make healthcare decisions. Secondary sources are our main barriers against the "scandal of poor quality medical research" (Altman) and "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (Ionannides). They filter the insane volumes of primary research being produced to a level that can be considered encyclopedic (with many additional caveats). JFW | T@lk 19:37, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Per Alexbrn and Colin. The original writers of this PAG are here and telling us what the intended scope was. That is the answer to our question. The guideline should be updated to make this clear, to avoid misunderstandings. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    The purpose is set by broad consensus of the community, not by the writers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:12, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Per Alexbrn and Colin. I'm usually not an originalist, but especially when the original author is telling me that X, Y, Z thing is making the project more complicated and should be altered, I can be persuaded to court originalism.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:40, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. This version clearly explains the scope of the guideline and the reason for it. There is already a problem on Wikipedia of some editors trying to demand MEDRS is applied to parts of articles that are unrelated to medical claims, and the effect (intentional or otherwise) of option 2 would be to weaken the protections against that. Thryduulf (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 per Bondegezou and Thryduulf. I see the removal of this long-standing text as being attempted scope expansion, which began (see the top of this section) as a concern that too many in the wider community had a different stance on "why MEDRS" than the writers. Medicine is not the most complicated subject in the world. So if the point is 'we have to write high quality articles' (true for every article on Wikipedia) then surely we should start with making WP:SCIRS a guideline, and then establish subject specific requirements to require journal articles for dozens of different topic areas, particularly in sciences and mathematics, which are substantially more difficult than medicine. Yet medicine is the only area to have a special sourcing requirement. So I repeat from WT:BIOMED: some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health. Even bad information on things like prognosis can cause significant distress. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:12, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    Also per the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines policy: Policy and guideline pages should: ... Clearly identify the purpose and scope early in the page. This proposal seeks to remove the long-standing purpose (since pre-2010) completely. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:17, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I've got a rough preferance for option 2, but I'm fine with either. Policies and guidelines should identify why we have them, but it doesn't need to be the first sentence or cited to external research articles. We have the essay WP:WHYMEDRS which could be summarized in a section, not only obviating the need for a first-sentence value statement, but reducing confusion that the value statement has introduced. I can't think of any P&Gs that do this, so I checked a few I could think of. The protection policy starts of with a factual statement that sometimes pages need protected, but it doesn't say why or for what purpose (it does so a few more sentences in). WP:BLOCKPOL starts by saying what a block is, not why we have blocks (see Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Purpose_and_goals). WP:N says what notability is used for, but not why we have it (WP:INDISCRIMINATE). WP:V starts by defining verifiability, but not why we require information be verifiable (that's at WP:NOTTRUTH). WP:NOR starts with a bold sentence not to do it. I'm going to stop here, but that seems to suggest that we don't need to have the first sentence of the lead be a value statement. It's not even a particularly good value statement. It reads like WP:BEANS but less funny: "we don't provide medical advice but people use it like that anyway, therefor don't shove beans up other people's noses". Nothing about what MEDRS is or does. We can survive cutting it or moving it later in the lead. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:13, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not going to support option 1 or 2. I think the whole covid-origin question is too close to this, and I don't want it to distort my vote. For that reason, I suggest this is the wrong time for this RfC. I think we should try again after covid is no longer a burning-hot issue. I request that the closer count this as an opinion against any consensus that the closer may be tempted to find. I think that "no consensus" is the second-best possible outcome. The best one would be to go into a time warp and not have this RfC at all, but that's not going to happen.Adoring nanny (talk) 00:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 Including context as to why we have the guideline is important.Jackattack1597 (talk) 01:38, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 because apparently when we say "no medical advice!" in the first sentence and even though the Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer says
    WIKIPEDIA DOES NOT GIVE MEDICAL ADVICE
    right there in big, all-caps letters linked at the bottom of every single page, a bunch of editors, mostly with a particular view about who should be blamed for the pandemic, show up and say that MEDRS only applies if you're giving medical advice in a Wikipedia article. We didn't have this problem for the previous decade, but we have it right now. Therefore, any mention of medical advice needs to go now. I'm open to re-visiting this in the future, as soon you can guarantee that editors will stop saying things such as:
    • "we wanted to ensure that only the best medical advice was provided"
    • "medical advice ... is why the higher MEDRS standards exist"
    • [quotation from MEDRS is] "clearly referring to medical advice"
    • "MEDRS clearly states the justification for a stricter policy, namely that people might seek medical advice on Wikipedia"
    • "The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading medical advice"
    • "WP:MEDRS is to keep anything that can be construed as medical advice sourced to the highest standards."
    • "WP:MEDRS is about medical advice"
    • "the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice"
    • "[MEDRS] is definitely for protecting readers seeking medical advice."
    • "MEDRS is meant to prevent immediate harm from incorrect/malicious medical advice"
    • "The purpose of [MEDRS] is to prevent adding content that could be construed as providing medical advice"
    • "WP:MEDRS helps to keep anything that can be taken as medical advice sourced to the highest standards"
  • All of these claims are wrong. All of these claims are inconsistent with the text of MEDRS as it originally existed. If – since – people seriously seem to be unable to figure out the difference between "no medical advice, ever, no matter what sources you're using" and "MEDRS exists to prevent bad medical advice", we need to lose the sentence that confuses people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Have you considered that these statements might represent the community's view about what the reason for MEDRS should be? Why is it relevant what a small number of editors (argugably) intended several years ago, and why is not possible that consensus has changed? Thryduulf (talk) 08:57, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
      • "The community" cannot override the requirement for Wikipedia to verify the knowledge it reports with reliable sources, even if it wanted to. This guideline is for "Identifying reliable sources (medicine)". The abstract question of what "the reasons should be" (or should have been) for doing this are by-the-by, because even if WP:MEDRS were deleted, the need would still exist for editors to use reliable sources for bio/medical topics, as for all topics. Alexbrn (talk) 10:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
        • I'm a bit confused at that response. The point being made is not about overriding RS policy. MEDRS exists within RS. The question is whether there are special requirements in a medical context above and beyond general RS. That is how I've always understood the community consensus on MEDRS. We can re-word if that needs to be made clearer in the policy. Bondegezou (talk) 10:47, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
          • The question is whether there are special requirements in a medical context above and beyond general RS ← that's not the question (and of course, there are such requirements). The question is really some kind of weird shadow-boxing match about how it might be justified that such requirements exist. The outcome of this RfC won't change that so (to repeat what I said in my !vote) the only effect of the extra text is to cause confusion. Alexbrn (talk) 11:08, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
          Bondegezou, as an aside, the special extra requirements don't even have to be due to "not providing bad medical advice". I always assumed we had this guideline to combat the abundant RS produced by MEDPOP after every successful experimental result; other science fields receive nowhere near the coverage primary studies in biomedicine do, which is additionally problematic given biomedicine is particularly rife with replicability issues and has an abysmal basic science-to-translational/clinical research track record. JoelleJay (talk) 17:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
          • That argument has been advanced by a number of people in this discussion. It's never been my understanding of MEDRS. Nor do I think the underlying claim is true (human fossils and some areas of physics see proportionately far more (poor quality) coverage of primary studies, yet don't get their own guidelines, and have plenty of replicability problems). Nor do I think, even if the underlying claim were true, it would justify MEDRS (you could just have a general SCIRS). My understanding of MEDRS, as someone who does research in medical informatics, as a longtime Wikipedian, and as someone who has done research on medical content on Wikipedia, is that MEDRS is particularly needed because of the uniquely risky nature of medical information. But if we all in this discussion see multiple reasons for MEDRS, then the compromise I've suggested as Option 3 is a way forward. Bondegezou (talk) 18:28, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
            Biomedicine receives -- by far -- the most lay media coverage out of any field, making topics in it much more susceptible to SCIPOP sourcing. And replicability in biomed is unrivaled in sheer volume of research affected -- but since translation from basic research finding to commercial product takes a lot more steps and time here than it does in other fields there is a larger probability a given positive result will receive abundant coverage only to be quietly disproven years down the line. JoelleJay (talk) 01:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
        @Thryduulf, I have never considered the possibility that "the community" can override any of the disclaimers or the foundation:Terms of use. I suspect that you don't really believe that's possible, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
        Indeed I don't think that is possible, but I also don't understand how it is at all relevant to this discussion. MEDRS is not a disclaimer, is not referred to by disclaimers and neither the retention or omission of the additional context, nor indeed the complete removal of MEDRS (not something that I or anybody else is advocating) would impact the disclaimers in any way shape or form. The disagreement is ultimately "what content needs to be sourced to a higher standard than normal RS?" and the clear consensus of the community in the covid-19 origin RFC is that the answer is narrower than most of those advocating for this change would like. Whether you agree with that consensus or not, it is does not and is not an attempt to override any disclaimers. Thryduulf (talk) 17:23, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
        Two points:
        • At this moment, we see in the TOU and disclaimers that editors may not provide medical advice on wiki. But some of the editors are claiming that purpose of MEDRS is to tell us how to provide medical advice on wiki – a thing that must not be done at all. It'd be stupid to have a guideline telling you how to do the thing that you must not do at all. These are not compatible statements. One of those views is wrong.
          (If an editor can seriously read MEDRS' old first sentence, which said "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice", and somehow concludes that MEDRS tells editors how to do the thing they're not meant to be doing at all, then I think those editors should be told that Wikipedia:Competence is required, especially when it comes to a level of reading skills we normally expect from 12 year olds, and shown the door.)
        • I don't think MEDRS sets a "higher" standard. I think it tells editors what constitutes 'actually reliable'. Every domain has its quirks, and a type of source that's reliable for, e.g., philosophy [books] and physics [journal articles] is not necessarily going to be reliable for celebrities [their own social media and popular magazines], or cars [trade magazines] or consumer electronics [online magazines] or politics [political magazines]. Much of MEDRS is telling people how to identify sources that aren't actually reliable for this content.
        WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
        Also, for those editors without a valid medical license (that's most of us), this is a friendly reminder that when unlicensed people give medical advice, that's considered a crime in most of the world. Where I live, the penalty appears to be US$10,000 and a year in jail. MEDRS does not exist to help editors give medical advice. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines do not exist to help editors commit crimes. Do not put medical advice in any Wikipedia page, even if it's well-sourced. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
        • WhatamIdoing, absolutely NOBODY here or in that origins of covid-19 discussion have said that the purpose of MEDRS is "how to give medical advice! NOBODY. And I implore thee to withdraw that argument (that thou hast repeated countless times) because thou art effectively bearing false witness against thy fellow wiki-neighbours. NOW. Case in point: surely you are aware that readers are going to seek medical information on Wikipedia, whether we want them to or not, no? The purpose of MEDRS is to prevent harm; it is NOT to offer advice. Those quotes from that other RFC are taken totally out of context, anyway: that RFC was about whether or not the scope of BIOMED should be expanded to include topics that more properly fall under history or sociology. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything that anyone could construe as "medical advice".
        • WhatamIdoing, can you please explain exactl what you are talking about when you mention "editors giving edical advice"? What, in your opinion, would constitute wikipedia editors "giving medical advice"? In other words, when does general medical information which is acceptable in your view cross the threshold into "medical advice" that is unacceptable? Sections of articles titled "Advice"? Poor article writing style, e.g., "If you have a fever and sore throat, take two aspirin and gargle warm salt water, and call me in the morning"? It seems to me this whole entire "controversy" is nothing more than an exercise of semantic gymnastics, and there is no real dispute from which any material consequences could arise.
        • I will also point out once again, this verbiage was removed from the intro with the intent of influencing the result of an ongoing RFC proposal to widen the scope of WP:BIOMED into the areas of history and sociology. THIS RFC should be read with that background in mind! Firejuggler86 (talk) 17:52, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
          @Firejuggler86, what do you think these words mean?
          • "WP:MEDRS is about medical advice"
          Do you think that they mean MEDRS is about medical advice, or not?
          How about these words?
          • "we wanted to ensure that only the best medical advice was provided"
          Do you think that these words mean that the editor believes that MEDRS exist to ensure that only the best medical advice is provided on wiki, or not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
          Also, unless your mind-reading skills are better than most, you should retract your accusation that @SSSheridan (who opposed the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information) asked a question here for the purpose of influencing that RFC, and that Colin (who opposed the same proposal), after discussion with other editors (all of whom also either opposed that proposal or didn't participate in it), removed the confusing sentence for the purpose of influencing an RFC whose outcome was already obvious. If this change is somehow supposed to influence the other RFC towards the support side, then why was it made by people who didn't support the other RFC? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
    Also, you place emphasis on the disclaimers being in big capital letters, but don't emphasise that to reach them one needs to go to the bottom of the page and click the little "Disclaimers" link. In all my time on Wikipedia, the only time I've read (or even known about) the disclaimers is when editors try to use them as an argument in a discussion, so I go and check them. Literally nobody reads them. The disclaimers are there to cover legal's ass; they don't actually stop people from seeking medical advice (or not). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:52, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    None of our policies stop readers from seeking anything. They exist to stop editors from providing some things (e.g., unpublished information, BLP's personal phone numbers, medical or other professional advice, etc. – the list is very long). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. Biomedical information is defined too broadly now to apply the MEDRS standards to all of it. Epidemiological information can be the result of a historical inquiry, journalistic or criminal investigation and I don't think such sources should be disregarded. The statement in question serves de facto as a test whether to to apply the more rigorous standards or not (see this RfC for example). Alaexis¿question? 19:39, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • No consensus: Several months ago I said this was getting a little silly, but now it's profoundly deranged. Do we really need yet another RfC claiming to be about some pedantic phrasing in the lead of a guideline, where "coincidentally" everyone who argues against the lab leak hypothesis shows up and votes for the same option, while everyone who argues for the lab leak hypothesis shows up and votes for the other option? It's vexatious, it's a pain in the ass, and it resolves nothing. In fact, it's such a pain in the ass that two weeks ago we got shiny new COVID discretionary sanctions out of this. I suggest we crack open the WMF slush fund and fly everyone out to a paintball arena, or arm-wrestle over it, or flip a coin, or any damn thing in the world besides dragging an unbelievably acrimonious argument across the talk page of seemingly every policy and guideline on the entire project as a thinly veiled excuse to cackle and shriek about politics. jp×g 07:17, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
    I pretty much agree. This COVID origins stuff is a huge timesink. In general, I would like to see less RFCs on this topic. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:30, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
    Yes, that's why I did my best to vote for "no consensus" above. Adoring nanny (talk) 23:07, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 MEDRS is meant to apply to all medical (and I would argue even broader biological) information on Wikipedia and the requirement of the highest level of sourcing for it. The people trying to argue otherwise are very blatantly trying to do so in order to allow WP:FRINGE conspiracy nonsense arguments to be sourced to similarly trash, low quality sources that is the general media. This new wording of MEDRS is much more direct and clear on the application of high quality sourcing and refutes the POV conspiracy pushers. So I am in full agreement with this change. SilverserenC 20:59, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. I'm not someone who's all that active in WP:MED or WP:COVID-19, but there are a large number of responses above that seem to deal with this as being useful (in some way) in winning content disputes surrounding COVID-19. It is, in general, not a good idea to try to change the phrasing on a policy to WP:WIN a single content dispute. This would especially be so in this case since, as ProcrastinatingReader mentions above, the relevant opening sentence has been in the article since October 2010 in order to do so. The reason that this appears to be controversial, as some editors explicitly state in the discussions that preceded this RfC and in this RfC itself, is that this discussion the talk page for biomedical information seems to have not deemed pandemic/disease origins to constitute biomedical information, with many citing the clause that is now proposed for removal as a reason why to exclude it. This clause is preambulatory in nature, but it's important in framing the context of WP:MEDRS as a whole.
Editors above have offered the essay, WP:WHYMEDRS as a counterpoint to this interpretation of the preambulatory clause, while simultaneously advocating for the clause's removal. But, the fact of the matter is, this is an essay, and essays don't necessarily reflect community consensus. While we could simply outsource our rationale of WP:MEDRS outside of the guideline itself, there is utility in having the framing in the guideline. Experienced editors, and the community writ large, appear to differ from many of those writing above in their understanding of the justification for WP:MEDRS. At the RfC on WT:BMI, The Four Deuces, for example, said that The clear purpose of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (MEDRS) is stated in the first sentence. Springee seconded The Four Deuces's point, said that The reason why we have an exceptionally tight MEDRS standard is specifically because editors were worried that bad medical information would lead readers to harm. Later in the discussion Guest2625 also made a note that they believe that the purpose of MEDRS was encompassed, in some way, by the preambulatory sentence. Bonewah stated that the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice. SSSheridan, responding to XOR'easter (whose comments in that RfC I note below), stated that WP:MEDRS is definitely for protecting readers seeking medical advice.
Other experienced editors in that discussion appeared to have given pushback on this point. Szmenderowiecki provided some pushback to The Four Deuces's response, though I found it rather vague. XOR'easter, in that RfC stated that the purposes of WP:MEDRS go beyond the purpose of merely preventing people from receiving bad medical information. Hyperion35 argued that Quoting one sentence from the MEDRS page about health advice is utterly ridiculous, irrelevant, and bordering on bad faith and noted their concern about wikilawyering that involved the contested clause. WhatamIdoing stated in the RFC on WT:BMI I think the reason we wrote MEDRS is because we wanted to help people write high-quality articles. The way to do that is to start with the best sources, and has written above on this page to expand upon their view that any mention of medical advice needs to go now because of how people have (mis-)interpreted the first sentence in recent discussions. Editors, such as JoelleJay have argued in the RfC on this very page that the fact that WP:MEDRS might decrease the chances of propagating bad medical advice is incidental to the guideline's overall intent.
In my own analysis, both in this RFC and the one on WP:BMI, I find the preambulatory clause to be useful in framing the discussion around the scope of WP:MEDRS, and I'm seeing a lot of discussion on this particularly with regards to how it might affect COVID coverage (in particularly the alleged lab leak). But, considering the discussion above and in the RFC at BMI, I am concerned about the scope of WP:MEDRS beginning to creep into additional areas that the community has generally rejected its application in. MEDRS exists to ensure high quality information on Wikipedia exists about medical information, and to help to ensure that we minimize the amount of false information in the field of medicine on Wikipedia. This is because there are particular social responsibilities that we have as a wiki with knowledge that people come here for medical information, even when we expressly tell them not to do so through a disclaimer that's available to click on through a little blue link on the bottom of our screens.
In short, the clause should stay and can provide a consensus-based framing for why we have MEDRS: namely that Wikipedia does not provide medical advice, that despite our repeated warnings, our articles are widely used among those seeking health information,[2] and thus that all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources to accurately reflect current knowledge. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 22:02, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Laurent MR, Vickers TJ (2009). "Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 16 (4): 471–9. doi:10.1197/jamia.M3059. PMC 2705249. PMID 19390105.
  2. ^ Laurent MR, Vickers TJ (2009). "Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 16 (4): 471–9. doi:10.1197/jamia.M3059. PMC 2705249. PMID 19390105.
    • Thank you for this analysis. I find it somewhat problematic, however, to say that a clause that has been hotly disputed by "experienced editors" can itself "provide a consensus-based framing" for anything. Isn't the existence of a consensus itself in question? I mean, the section title up there is "What is MEDRS for?". That seems very much in doubt. (And in the discussion below, there seems to be a bit of openness to modified language like "for this and other reasons".) If we never acknowledged the possibility that the text of a guideline could be out of line with practice, or that it could be a poor expression of the more fundamental principles at work, then every guideline would be locked in place, because obviously the way it is indicates Consensus and so that is the way it must always be. XOR'easter (talk) 17:45, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
      • Where were all of these "experienced editors" that are "hotly debating" this clause during the last 11 years that the clause was in place? Now all of a sudden that you all are involved in a content dispute, you want to edit the guidelines in order to make it easier for your side to be the victor in said dispute. The conflict of interest here is blatant. (I use that term in the broadest possible sense, not in the wp:coi sense). Firejuggler86 (talk) 18:21, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
        • Please don't speculate about motives. I gave my honest rationale for preferring option 2 (or option 3) above: the "For this reason" is an oversimplification. If this guideline were an article, I'd say that it violates WP:LEAD by not accurately summarizing the main text. For example, the WP:MEDPOP section explains in detail why sources that might be acceptable for other subjects are not so for biomedical information. XOR'easter (talk) 18:37, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The main reason for MEDRS is not solely because people come here for medical advice. It's because in the medical field, and other fields like science, you can't just use popular news sources and get the same accuracy of information. Sure, we don't worry whether something is the truth if it's verifiable, but that doesn't mean we have to take anything from any "reliable source" to be "true" for science/medicine. MEDRS should apply to any information that can be reasonably construed to be unlikely to be covered appropriately in "normal" reliable sources - not the narrow "medical advice" that some people are trying to hold it to for ulterior motives. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:08, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 The purpose of MEDRS is to avoid providing misleading or false medical information that readers may rely on to their harm. While some editors claim it is because medicine is inherently complex and the findings of new studies may not have support in the discipline, the same is true of every other academic field. TFD (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
    • It is true that every academic field includes complicated subject matter and that in every academic field, new findings take time to become established. But medicine faces challenges that, say, pure mathematics does not, hence the lengthy discussion in WP:WHYMEDRS of how the primary literature is exceptionally unreliable, of how translational research adds an extra layer of difficulty, and of the hazards of media hype. If you measure "complexity" by how many years someone has to go to school to become competent in a field, then sure, maybe all these specializations are more or less on a level, but that doesn't make their respective complexities qualitatively identical. XOR'easter (talk) 17:45, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Despite my voting in support on strengthening requirements on sourcing about COVID, there are a few things to consider. Legal considerations apply. We should stress repeatedly so that people understand that despite our best efforts, we cannot guarantee that the quality of our advice will be at par with the medical professional's one, because most of us aren't, and therefore they take it on their own risk. It's a matter of transparency. We have to articulate it clearly somewhere, though that location is unfortunate and unnecessarily ambiguous. So first sentence should have the disclaimer removed, but we should place it elsewhere.
Some would say that few who come to seek medical advice go to then BMI or MEDRS, which is true. Therefore, we should try to have that disclaimer placed nonintrusively somewhere at the bottom, e.g. where the copyright notices are and not hide it in the ToS/ToU, which anyone even fewer people read. So if anyone says that because we don't apparently give medical advice, we can broaden the scope of materials and lowering the plank for quality, no, I don't think that's the proper remedy (because scientific advice is also there, and we don't want people to get science wrong, either). The proper remedy is to tighten the requirements, at least for now, but at the same time make better communication efforts with the readers so that they understand all the caveats that come with the text (waiver of guarantees). This probably has been discussed sometime earlier and certainly falls outside the scope of the RfC, so if you have any comments, go to my talk page. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 01:23, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 It's important to understand that in 99% of cases the change (or not) will have no impact on an article. However, we have seen when politics and medicine intersect what is felt to fall under MEDRS is a subject for debate. If the objective is just to maintain a higher level of accuracy, why wouldn't we have similar standards for all places where an academic consensus might exist, conversely, why aren't the normal RS policies/guidelines sufficient? The sentence is needed because it explains why MEDRS should exist and explains what the scope should be. Springee (talk) 03:39, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1: I see no reason to scope creep MEDRS beyond where it is now. Yes, special care should be taken to avoid giving out bad medical advice. No, we should not require special sourcing for anything that is somehow related to anything medical. And no, we should not change the rules so that one side can win. Bonewah (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. Per Medical advice: "Discussing facts and information is considered a fundamental free speech right and is not considered medical advice." So a needed justification for WP:MEDRS as a guideline is relation to medical advice. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:54, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
I believe MEDRS should discourage medical advice and permit medical information. The replies here make me think that I expressed poorly so okay I will elaborate via example. Our article about Henry V says weakness from dysentery and heatstroke may have been contributing factors in his death. That is medical information. The cites are not to peer-reviewed medical texts. However, if MEDRS's first sentence mentions advice that might discourage editors from applying it zealously. I think that's good. I'll say no more. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:14, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
      • Medical advice is generally defined as "providing diagnoses and prescribing medication". Do any of you seriously believe that Wikipedia editors are at risk of trying to diagnose readers and/or prescribe medication to them?? No. What y'all are doing is jumping on every instance of an editor that uses the words "medical advice" when what they actually mean is "medical information" - ultimately because you want to change the guideline to broaden the scope to cover historical, sociological, and political areas, so that you can win one particular content dispute. Firejuggler86 (talk) 18:37, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
        I seriously believe that editors shouldn't do that, but that despite it being unwise and illegal to do so, multiple editors actually said that they thought that was the purpose of MEDRS.
        @Firejuggler86, I do not want to broaden the scope of this guideline. Stop making this false accusation. I started Wikipedia:Biomedical information in 2014 for the purpose of narrowing the scope of this guideline. You can go read the archives for this page if you want to know more the discussions that precipitated it, but in the meantime, please stop telling them what they supposedly believe. Your guesses are wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Per the rationale above. Sea Ane (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Both options have the same sentence, but the first one gives the reader an a bias of what biomedical information is before they read the actual guideline, even though WP:BIO includes non-medical advice areas such as Population data and epidemiology. The explanation of why MERDS exists can be put in a section after the lede, there's no need for it to be removed entirely. This would also allow for a more detailed reasoning, including other factors outside of the "medical advice" reason. Jumpytoo Talk 21:49, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Option 1 begins the guideline quite poorly, not even WP:NOT begins with what Wikipedia is not. That first sentence seems irrelevant and confusing. (I don't mind option 1's second sentence, but the first sentence is throat clearing, non-sequitur and really should go or at least be moved elsewhere.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:10, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Option 1 is a good thing for those who want to add dubious stuff to biomedical articles and use crappy sources for it, since it gives them an excuse to say, "MEDRS does not apply here". The first sentence with its scope-restricting is just a hook for Wikilawyers. That is the only difference between the consequences of the two options. So, removing that first sentence will improve the sourcing and the quality of biomedical articles. "Longstanding" is irrelevant: it does not matter what "the forefathers intended", only solid reasoning should count. Option 1 is also incoherent. Essentially, it says, "we are not giving medical advice, but people think we do, so the medical advice we are giving must be as good as possible". If the disclaimer "we are not giving medical advice" is really just to make the lawyers happy, there is no need for a MEDRS to improve the medical advice we do give. WhatamIdoing explained the connection between the disclaimer, MEDRS, and its application pretty well above. Another thing is WP:CIR, in this case, the competence or experience of those users who fight to keep fringe medical science out of Wikipedia articles, and who are applying MEDRS pretty much daily. A quick look at the votes above shows me about a dozen names I recognize as belonging to that group, all voting for Option 2. (Sorry if I missed one who did not.) And a few who regularly fight to put fringe science into Wikipedia articles, who I cannot recall ever having applied MEDRS, except maybe the first sentence, to prevent others from applying it, voted for Option 1. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:37, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
    MEDRS is exclusionary. So it doesn't necessarily improve the sourcing of articles. If anything, a broad interpretation makes it worse, because presumably you can remove all the case numbers we have on COVID-19 on Wikipedia citing MEDRS, since they're currently not sourced to MEDRS at all. While the purpose does not affect the scope, it does provide a lot of context for logic to be applied. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. This option is the best because it encapsulates in a sentence why this guideline is required:
Nevertheless, Our Reader's Use Our Articles For Medical Information
For content which does not involve this one sentence concern, the standard reliable sources (RS) guideline is fine. The RS guideline's scholarship section clearly states how to deal with sourcing requirements for scholarly topics like bioscience, mathematics, history, and literature. Also it should be self-evident to all editors that they should always strive to use the best sources available. --Guest2625 (talk) 10:38, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
This is the kind of response which illustrates the problem well. Guest2625 has effectively declared (whether through incompetence or bad faith) that they are only going to pay attention to one sentence in the guideline, and ignore the guidance it actually states (i.e. "Biomedical information requires MEDRS sourcing that complies with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not"). The sentence is basically an excuse for problem editors to engage in WP:WL. Alexbrn (talk) 10:50, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
This is the talk page of a guideline. On this page, the wording and purpose of the guideline is discussed. My opinion is that this guideline should only exist because:
"Wikipedia does not give medical advice; nevertheless, our reader's use our articles for medical information."
The scope of this guideline should be narrow and should be focused on the spirit of this concern. Outside of this concern this page is a great supplement to the reliable sources guideline, which already guides all the other scholarly science and humanity fields. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:41, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, and you've declared your intent to ignore this "great supplement" if it doesn't conform to the meaning you imagine can be conjured from its opening sentence (which you don't quote accurately, or even grammatically). MEDRS has plenty of wrinkles that differentiate it from other guidance, and if you ignore it you're at risk of being in breach of them, which is a problem for the Project. Alexbrn (talk) 11:50, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank-you for pointing out my grammatical mistake and allowing me to strike it through. This is how we work together and make a great encyclopedia. --Guest2625 (talk) 20:16, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
The scope of the guideline is narrow: it applies to biomedical information, whether or not the only rationale is to reiterate "Wikipedia does not offer medical advice". XOR'easter (talk) 18:17, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time parsing this argument as anything other than circular logic: the guideline is required for reason X because the first few sentences say reason X, and so the guideline must begin by saying it is required for reason X. But even if X is the most important or easiest to explain, what about Y and Z? XOR'easter (talk) 01:28, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes. (And thank you for drawing my attention that!) As for the parenthetical: Are you saying that non-biomedical information does not need to be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, or that it does not need to accurately reflect current knowledge? AFAIAA, all information on Wikipedia needs to be based on reliable published sources (with third-party, secondary sources being preferable but not necessarily required) and must accurately reflect current knowledge; that's at least two thirds of the text of option 2 that applies equally well to information on Wikipedia, leading out MEDRS with this text would imply that it doesn't apply to all articles equally. I would not necessarily be opposed to a hypothetical option 3 that says something like While it is acceptable (though not ideal) for much of the information on Wikipedia to be based on primary, tertiary, or older and potentially outdated sources, a higher standard is applied to biomedical information: such information must be based on secondary sources published by third parties, and must accurately reflect current knowledge., but this is not the text under discussion. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 19:20, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
Wait... on second thought, I'm neutral, for now. I have a strong suspicion that this is related to the use of popular media sources written by non-scientists to discuss certain "theories" about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 (and that my initial !vote was working in favour of a "side" that I definitely don't agree with). I think we can discuss this more objectively in a year or two once the pandemic is mostly a thing of the past (in wealthy first-world countries with vaccination programmes) and perhaps once the US-China trade war has cooled down a bit. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 19:31, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1 Its not a good idea to edit such an important guideline brick by brick, using one RFC at a time to remove or add this or that line. I support the status quo that Option 1 gives us, only for later having the full discussion. First, get a consensus on the philosophy of the guideline (value inputs of original creators with high weight here). Second, agree on the wording, and Third, DO add a preamble that states the philosophy of the guideline (whatevere that is). Forich (talk) 05:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Starting this policy off with what this is not is confusing. The point of this policy is here to provide reliable sources for medical information. I find it confusing to have seepage of policies into each other and find it more clear if each stays within its intended purpose. The relevant disclaimer for medical advice is here: WP:MEDICAL. Many thanks though to the contributors to this discussion who I can see have put a lot of thought into their responses. Tom (LT) (talk) 21:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 As it has been pointed out by other editors, MEDRS is a guideline to help identify the best sources for biomedical information. The extra sentence just brings about confusion if one doesn't read the actual guideline beyond the first line. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 06:56, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 per XOR et al. The extra verbiage is unnecessary and "for this reason" is not entirely accurate anymore. Levivich 16:00, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 No need for excessively rigorous, non-provisional explanation. This will increase risks of further guideline abuse. On the other side I propose to move explanatory intro into the Wikipedia:Why MEDRS? essay so novices aren't disadvantaged. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 16:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Options 2. The misunderstandings (or misrepresentations made by many people) in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information (not a policy or guideline page) is the strongest indication that application of MEDRS has come to be interpreted in distorted ways. The misinformation put forward in that discussion was explained well in the posts here by Colin at 09:30, 9 June 2021, WhatamIdoing at 21:05, 7 June 2021, WhatamIdoing again at 02:32, 30 June 2021, and Colin again at 18:00, 5 July 2021. The text orginally inserted years ago by MastCell emphasized that Wikipedia is an important health information resource; the biomedical information in Wikipedia articles goes well beyond medical advice, and yet, a few simple changes to MastCell's text in punctuation and the addition of "for this reason" rendered what is now apparent as an attempt to eeek out an entirely different meaning and purpose for this guideline. The notion that the title of the page itself and the NUTSHELL do not adequately summarize the purpose of the guideline is without logic. I helped write the guideline, and have helped write and maintain multiple Featured articles to conform with the guideline, and certainly the bulk of what we write in biomedical content is NOT "advice". As Graham Beards stated at 16:14, 28 June 2021 and at 15:29, 29 June 2021, the NOT ADVICE aspect that this has been distorted in to was never accurate (had that been the case I would not have pushed for so many years for a stronger medical disclaimer). So, it seems to be best to remove wording that is subject to distortion. Other positions that summarize my position are already explained by Alexbrn at 15:24, 29 June 2021; XOR'easter at 15:45, 29 June 2021; JoelleJay at 17:14, 29 June 2021; JFW at 19:37, 29 June 2021; Berchanhimez at 22:08, 1 July 2021; and Tom (LT) at 21:05, 5 July 2021. Most importantly, WAID's "The goal is to help editors write good articles that provide an accurate and properly weighted view of the facts" stands in contrast to a different opinion that "The purpose of MEDRS is to avoid providing misleading or false medical information that readers may rely on to their harm"; one written by a someone who writes medical content, the other not. While avoiding bad information is part of what good biomedical writing should attain, a good deal of what goes in to writing a medical featured article has little to do with information that may cause harm to readers or contain advice. All information should be based on reliable sources within the relevant field; MEDRS explains how to find and interpret the best RS for biomedical content. We already have pages about not giving medical advice. And finally, none of the original writers and frequent followers of this page, most of us involved when MastCell made the original insertion, believe the current revision reflects his or our intent when we accepted that text so many years ago. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:07, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Discussion: First Sentence of MEDRS

There has never been "a community consensus that MEDRS exists to prevent Wikipedia from giving bad medical advice". The community consensus is and always has been that MEDRS exists to prevent Wikipedia from giving bad biomedical information.

The only reason that this is being asked is because, as is well documented at User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Coronavirus origin best sources virtually every virologist agrees that "The introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway... the findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population"[14]

We have seen this before. The peer reviewed science is nearly unanimous on a question, so those who are unwilling to accept that answer ask that we abandon peer-reviewed science and instead allow sources such as newspapers, popular magazine articles, blogs, and sometimes even comedians. We have seen this regarding acupuncture, the holocaust, Ayurveda, climate change... pretty much every topic I list at Wikipedia:All your bias are belong to us.

The bottom line is that there is zero evidence that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. And every single "but it might be true so we should keep our minds open" applies just as well to the theory that Covid-19 originated in the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. (Zero evidence for that one either). Oh. wait. That theory is being pushed by lying scumbag Chinese politicians. We only apply "but it might be true so we should keep our minds open" to theories that are pushed by lying scumbag American politicians. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  • There are many heated discussions about COVID-19-related editing. Those are important. How our policies cope in the face of those tensions does act as a test of our policies. But, at the end of the day, we should not write policy to fix the specific problems of one editing dispute. I would suggest that anyone participating in this discussion with the aim of trying to win a COVID-19 editing argument should recuse themselves!
  • WP:WHYMEDRS was brought up above. WHYMEDRS is an essay, not policy. It is, to my eyes, wrong. It makes unsupported claims that human biology is exceptionally complicated and that's why we need MEDRS. As a university professor who works in a health field, I reject such exceptionalism. Yes, human biology is very complicated, but so are many other subjects. Yes, people have strong views about health-related matters, but they certainly have strong views about other matters. We treat healthcare and medicine differently in many aspects of life because it is risky. We have MEDRS not because medicine is difficult (it is, but so are many things), but because it is dangerous. Bondegezou (talk) 16:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    This. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:05, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Electronics engineering is far more dangerous than medicine will ever be. If a doctor makes a mistake or someone drinks bleach to cure Covid-19 the patient may die. If I had made a mistake on the Boeing 777 thrust reverser it could have killed 368 passengers plus the fight crew. And I don't even want to think about what could have happened if I had made a mistake on the MX Missie guidance system. Nuclear warheads are really dangerous. So if, as you claim, we have MEDRS because medicine is dangerous, should we not have a similar policy for engineering? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:21, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
A lot of people get 'medical advice' (ie learn about symptoms, treatments, prognosis, etc.) from Wikipedia and internet, for various reasons (such as doctors expensive/unavailable in parts of the world, your doctor is incompetent, waiting lists too long, convenience, not wanting to use up an appointment slot, etc.). Very few (and possibly no) people use Wikipedia as their resource to build a nuclear warhead. Also, one results in immediate harm with no supervision (eg buying 20 pills of hydroxychloroquine from the internet because Wikipedia says it can cure COVID needs nobody's approval), and the other wouldn't pass by safety checks since presumably more than one person works on (and checks) a nuclear warhead before it is deployed. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:27, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
If engineers, as highly educated professionals, are uncritically relying on Wikipedia for technical info about nuclear weapons design, then the engineering community has a serious problem on its hands that can't be solved by WP policies. Geogene (talk) 16:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • WP:WHYMEDRS is a lot more than "we need MEDRS because biology is complicated". It goes into considerable detail about, e.g., the added complications of translational research, and why relying on primary sources is particularly bad for medical matters. XOR'easter (talk) 16:44, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Saying that anyone who has participated in a discussion about COVID-19 origins articles should recuse themselves from this RFC is eerily similar to arguing that all virologists have COI when discussing the same topic. And you can read what editors think about that COI claim over here and here.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:53, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Shibbolethink, I think you may have misread what I wrote. I did not say that "anyone who has participated in a discussion about COVID-19 origins articles should recuse themselves". I said, "I would suggest that anyone participating in this discussion with the aim of trying to win a COVID-19 editing argument should recuse themselves!" I hope you can see the difference? It was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion, I realise it is not wholly practical. My point is that this discussion should not be a place for people to re-run COVID-19 editing disputes. There are many important COVID-19 editing disputes, and I broadly feel that we were far too lax in applying MEDRS to a lot of that COVID content, but we shouldn't let those issues dominate discussion about a policy that applies far beyond COVID. Bondegezou (talk) 08:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Ah yes, Bondegezou that is a fair point. This will affect a lot more articles. But I do think that the authors of MEDRS are far more equipped than I am to evaluate whether this is "jumping the gun" as it were. I am sympathetic to the argument that it should wait until COVID origins debates die down, but I also worry that it would not be revisited at that point, because the iron leaves the fire. How many times have you thought to yourself "I should really get around to X" and then never actually do, yknow?--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 12:34, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Shibbolethink, that's what {{to do}} is for. See also the approach that we're taking at WT:MEDMOS of just making a plain old list on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Although it doesn't logically follow, a sentence structured like "because of X, then Y" is easy to interpret as "if not X, then not Y". If the reason is really considered necessary, then better would be something like "All biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. This is particularly important because although Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice, nevertheless they are widely used among those seeking health information." Peter coxhead (talk) 16:37, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Guy Macon, do you think you could remove your ranting soapboxing above. There's been more than enough of that going on without established editors who should know better starting off the discussion section with a fine example of WP:SOAP. -- Colin°Talk 17:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Is this really the best use of our time? To debate a couple of sentences that some editors want to keep so they can continue to misunderstand them? As if the poll at WT:Biomedical information wasn't enough of an excuse to voice covid opinions on the internet. Now we start again on a fresh page. Good grief. We have all gone mad. -- Colin°Talk 17:21, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Comment. If consensus is that Option 2 should prevail, it would be useful to state somewhere, explicitly, the reason(s) why Biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, so as to avoid this sort of debate in the future. JBchrch talk 20:20, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Comment. Perhaps it would be useful (after the above closes) to have an RFC for a wording that says: "Wikipedia's coverage of biomedical topics is of particular importance to its educational function and the public perception of the project. Furthermore, biomedical topics are particularly troublesome with regards to sourcing, given the presence of many unqualified sources which appear reliable. For these and other reasons, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge..." This was just a first stab, as always, open to criticism.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 23:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm still puzzled by the claim that "only medicine" has specialized standards for references. As I said above, WP:BLP, WP:CORPDEPTH, and WP:PROF all say things about what kinds of sources are suitable for specialized purposes. Consider guidelines like, For the coverage to be significant, the sources must describe and discuss in some depth the treatment of the employees or major changes in leadership. Or, In some disciplines there are review publications that review virtually all refereed publications in that discipline [...] The mere fact that an article or a book is reviewed in such a publication does not serve towards satisfying Criterion 1. To say that those are guidelines for judging notability and thus aren't the same thing strikes me as introducing a spurious distinction. Guidelines like WP:BLPSPS clearly pertain to article contents, not just the question of whether an article should exist or not. But let's think about the other two. The point is that in many fields, we need to spell out the specialist wisdom about what counts as a worthwhile source. Each of these guidelines is, to quote Hyperion35's remark above, a rubric to try to help Wikipedia editors think like experts and source articles properly so that they reflect the most accurate and verifiable information from the most appropriate sources. And if all the potential sources for an article on a medical topic failed MEDRS, wouldn't we be likely to delete it for lacking wiki-notability? XOR'easter (talk) 00:23, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    • As I say: medical articles should enjoy a higher standard of sourcing[] to prevent harm to human health, as BLP policies prevent harm to individual (living) humans. PROF & NCORP are notability guidelines not sourcing requirements; PROF is more permissive, and NCORP more restrictive for the purposes of establishing notability, but normal RS policies apply to all content. Any fact in an article about a corporation can be cited to any WP:RS meeting source. The article itself needs a couple of NCORP sources to exist, but they could just be verifying the name of the company as far as the guideline is concerned. Notability standards are not sourcing requirements. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:49, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
      • They're not exactly the same, but they're not entirely different, either. Both are rubrics that try to capture expert wisdom about what kinds of sources are worthwhile. WP:PROF even covers what to do after wiki-notability has been established: Once the passage of one or more notability criteria has been verified through independent sources, or through the reliable sources listed explicitly for this purpose in the specific criteria notes, non-independent sources, such as official institutional and professional sources, are widely accepted as reliable sourcing for routine, uncontroversial details. The questions of "what can go into an article?" and "which articles should exist?" can't be entirely separated, and so it's not surprising that the same guideline may address both. XOR'easter (talk) 18:08, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I always assumed MEDRS existed because biomedicine is particularly plagued by a) the replication crisis, and b) poor translation from basic research findings to translational and especially clinical results. I consider this a perfectly reasonable answer to "WHYMEDRS", and it's completely independent of the "bad medical advice" justification. Although FWIW I would absolutely support an equivalent guideline for other science topics. JoelleJay (talk) 02:26, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    @JoelleJay, a similar proposal was made some years ago at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (science). The proposal failed; you can read more about that at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (science)/Archive 1. I believe that one of the intractable difficulties (though probably not the most important) is that more academic/less practical branches of science tend to care more about Scientific priority than medicine, which means that editors are more interested in citing primary sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
  • If people are concerned that the opening of Option 1 is misinterpreted, you could tweak it slightly without having to remove it, e.g. "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this and other reasons, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge..." Bondegezou (talk) 08:29, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Bondegezou: Yes, that would be preferable I think to keeping the problem text unqualified. Alexbrn (talk) 08:44, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    It may be a little late to add it as a third option, but I would also favor this variant, considering the importance of avoiding to give medical advice. —PaleoNeonate – 11:11, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    We should change "not meant to" to "do not".Graham Beards (talk) 11:25, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    When the sentence is agreed to, if it is added, I'll personally select it as option 3... —PaleoNeonate – 11:33, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    It's a good proposal, but I suspect adding another option to the RfC at this point would worsen this shitshow. What would be preferable is if the OP removed the RfC tag per WP:RFCEND and, if necessary another RFC launched, with some proper WP:RFCBEFORE, and preferably after the COVID fuss has died down. Alexbrn (talk) 11:42, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    Hear, hear! Graham Beards (talk) 12:15, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    I like the "and other reasons". XOR'easter (talk) 18:13, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    I agree that this would be preferable to the old wording, but it would still not stop the problem of people thinking that MEDRS exists for the purpose of giving medical advice.
    Perhaps we should consider a new section at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not that bans giving medical/legal/professional advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    We could but it would not have any material impact because whatever we say people do and will continue to read use our content as part of the process of making a decision about medical/legal/other professional matters. It would also need careful wording because content like "Treatment of an MI is time-critical. Aspirin is an appropriate immediate treatment for a suspected MI." (from the lead of Myocardial infarction) is medical advice by at least some reasonable definitions. Thryduulf (talk) 17:29, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
    Unless you're a licensed healthcare profession, giving medical advice is illegal. "Advice" is not the same as "information". The part of the MI article that you quoted provides medical information but not medical advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
    I understand fully your use of the jargon, but can you not understand that a non-specialist who does not know any medical jargon whatsoever could read that sentence and think that it is advising someone to take an aspirin if they suspect MI? It would thus be advice about a medical issue, which to a non-specialist sounds an awful lot like medical advice and thus something that should be removed from the article. The point here is that policies, etc. need to written clearly to avoid prohibiting/discouraging things other than what is intended. Thryduulf (talk) 01:31, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
    @Thryduulf, that's the problem. People don't understand the sentence. We need to get rid of it because too many people don't understand it.
    I don't know how people read "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice" and then think that purpose of this guideline is to tell you how to give good medical advice. That's a fundamental reading (mis)comprehension problem that shouldn't be seen in 12 year olds. (Seriously: If you tell told a bunch of preteens "You are not meant to be skateboarding here", would they expect what follows that statement to be an explanation of how to skateboard here?)
    But even if they figured out that the sentence meant "no medical advice!", then too many editors can't explain the difference between medical advice and medical information. The guideline has failed to be clear on this point. NOT doesn't address it in enough detail. I've been mulling a separate section titled ==No medical advice== (here, or at MEDMOS?), but I'm not sure what to say in it that wouldn't get wikilawyered endlesly afterwards. (Main problem: If the examples are too "gray area", then it's confusing, but if they're too obvious, then wikilawyers will argue that their content isn't that extreme, so it isn't banned.) I'd be very interested in hearing what thoughts you have for un-confusing editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:45, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Harmful memes

What precipitated the removal of the first couple of sentences was that they were being misunderstood (specifically, at an RFC asking unhelpfully whether all aspects of the origin of any virus were "biomedical information" and thus in scope for MEDRS). The above RFC is similarly unwise and unhelpful. There is a complaint by a few that removing these misunderstood sentences magically expands MEDRS scope, and prevents them writing about something Covid-19 related using the sources they would prefer.

At this point I'm less concerned about whether those sentences remain for now, or are trimmed or reworded. I'm more concerned that persisting with this and other endless RFCs about sourcing for Covid are perpetuating some memes that are untrue and harmful to the wider project. These are that MEDRS is a higher standard of sourcing than WP:RS or core policies like WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and that MEDRS is only relevant to medical advice.

Higher standard

The idea that MEDRS sets a higher standard than needed for other parts of Wikipedia gets mentioned from time to time. It is mentioned several times above on this page, and WhatamIdoing commented on that (03:32, 3 July 2021). I think the problem is we conflate two things. We generally regard "Scientific Journal > Newspaper" and "Proper scientist > Journalist". So the fact that MEDRS and people citing MEDRS often requires scholarly sources and is used to keep out random garbage in some newspaper makes people think MEDRS requires a higher standard of source. But it is only recommending the appropriate type of source for the topic. MEDRS would be a good guide to sources for "Facemasks help prevent the spread of Covid-19", say, but a newspaper would be appropriate for "Most Britons thinks masks should remain compulsory on public transport and in shops".

Let's look at the other polcies and guidelines.

In WP:RS we have advice: When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources and Try to cite current scholarly consensus when available and Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a paper reviewing existing research, a review article, monograph, or textbook is often better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised.

In WP:PSTS we have advice: "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources" and WP:PRIMARY says "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved....e.g. a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. This tells that a primary research paper (never mind a pre-print!) cannot assert its own WP:WEIGHT and cannot be used by editors to argue for or against inclusion of some material. It is frequent in certain areas of medicine and health promotions (especially nutrition) to find editors wanting to cite new research papers to explain their enthusiasm for some diet or supplement.

In WP:V we have advice: Base articles on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. and If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources in topics such as history, medicine, and science. At WP:EXTRAORDINARY we also have Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources" and gives an example: "claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living people. This is especially true when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them, which I'm sure is most relevant to the Covid-19 warriors.

This all finds its way into MEDRS advice to seek out literary and systematic reviews, professional textbooks, official clinical guidelines, etc, and to nearly always reject primary research papers as sources. And the WP:MEDPOP part of MEDRS explains why the popular press does not have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" when it comes to biomedical claims. When a newspaper comes out with a story that upsets the consensus of medical experts then it fails WP:V's requirement about extraordinary claims.

In my experience over the years with disputes that turn up at WT:MED, it is not unusual to find editors arguing over whether MEDRS applies. Usually this is because they find what MEDRS says inconvenient to their desire to inform the world of The Truth. Rather than arguing about whether MEDRS applies, I have always found it better to step back onto other policy and guidelines pages and explain that you end up with the same result. If you end up with the same result, how can MEDRS be "higher"?

Medical advice

The idea that MEDRS is only about medical advice appears to be a new idea. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I haven't seen it claimed until the recent dispute over covid origins. At a poll in 2015 at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)/Archive 25#What does MEDRS cover? only one editor out of one hundred voters mentioned this. I can appreciate there is frustration when discussing Covid topics, and particularly when discussing politically-charged aspects such as the claimed leak from a Chinese lab. This frustration causes editors on both sides to arm themselves with WP:UPPERCASE and say unwise things in order to win arguments. The topic is a mix of current affairs, politics and biomedical science. Finding the right balance when reporting on an ongoing investigation and political story is difficult (WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE). Most of our biomedical articles contain material that does not change radically from day to day. Our general caution and patience in waiting for ideal sources is conflicting with a constant pressure to keep the material up-to-date. As a result, my guess is that editors remove stuff "per MEDRS" (or were perceived to be doing so per that guideline) just a bit too often and for material that wasn't entirely biomedical. A deeply unwise RFC attempted to expand the scope of MEDRS to entirely cover the topic of Covid-19 origins. Since polls just polarise people, we got a backlash vote trying to put MEDRS into a tiny box concerning only "medical advice". A viewpoint that is not only absurd (Wikipedia does not offer medical advice) but bears no relation to how MEDRS has been usefully applied when writing articles over the last 13 years.

Here are some Featured Articles that cover biomedical topics. Most, but certainly not all, of the material in those articles concern biomedical information for which MEDRS provides appropriate guidance on sourcing.

  • Menstrual cycle. This is a natural bodily process for about half the world population for some of their lives. Only the "Menstrual health" section touches on issues that may warrant medical interventions.
  • Complete blood count. As far as I'm aware, most readers of Wikipedia do not have one of these in their kitchens or utility rooms. This is a set of tests requested by, performed by and interpreted by experts. It is no more "medical advice" than our pages on the H-bomb are advice to readers on how to assemble one in their garage.
  • Water fluoridation. This one is a mix of biomedical science, politics and history. Unless readers were planning to personally add fluoride to the public water supply, this doesn't count as medical advice.
  • Social history of viruses. A mix of biomedical and social history. It is the sort of scholarly-sourced professional writing that one can only hope Wikipedia will contain at some future point wrt Covid.
  • Female genital mutilation. A mix of biomedical, social, cultural and historial. The sources are mix of journal articles, scholarly books, United Nations reports, WHO reports, etc.
  • Immune system. Another natural bodily process where only the "Manipulation in medicine" section approaches any kind of information a reader might seek advice.
  • Phagocyte. Part of your immune system. There's nothing here for readers planning to make a wise or foolish medical decision.

MEDRS's scope is biomedical information and has been usefully guiding editors, none of whom are offering medical advice, for 13 years. -- Colin°Talk 18:00, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: This is very thoughtful (more so than I can manage, probably). I share the impression that The idea that MEDRS is only about medical advice appears to be a new idea. I do not recall any pre-COVID invocations of it, though I certainly wouldn't claim encyclopedic knowledge of all noticeboards and dramaboards (and my recollections only go back to the spring of 2017). XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
@XOR'easter, your impression matches mine. Pre-pandemic, if someone said "MEDRS only applies to medical advice", someone else would say "No, it doesn't. It applies to all health content [2014 and earlier]/all biomedical content [2015 and later]", and the first would reply with some version of "Oh, sorry, my mistake". They might then go on to argue that their thing wasn't health/biomedical content anyway, so in their opinion MEDRS was still irrelevant (sometimes, they were even correct about that), but people didn't insist that MEDRS only applied to medical advice. It has been strange to see this story not only appear, but get believed by so many editors during the last year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:10, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, you're presenting the situation dishonestly. Nobody ever tried to argue for inclusion of content with "MEDRS is only about medical advice" You're (falsely) claiming that editors are trying to nullify WP:BIOMED and replace it with "only medical advice is subject to MEDRS". That's dishonest. Your side were the ones that wanted to CHANGE WP:BIOMED by expanding its scope to include matters of history, sociology, and politics. That failed, and now you're falsely claiming that those that were opposed to that effectively want to throw out BIOMED altogether?! (For the record: "medical advice" was poor choice of words for what was meant "medical information": nobody could possibly reasonably think that editors intend to diagnose readers or write prescriptions for them over wikipedia). Firejuggler86 (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
@Firejuggler86, please provide a diff to your accusation that I ever said anything about wanting "to CHANGE WP:BIOMED by expanding its scope to include matters of history, sociology, and politics", or I will take you to ANI for making false accusations against me after being warned to stop it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
I don't think any WP:MED regular "wanted to CHANGE WP:BIOMED by expanding its scope to include matters of history, sociology, and politics". Any diffs? -- Colin°Talk 11:19, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps part of the problem is that we haven't done a good job of developing our approach to WP:Due weight for scientific work in general, so we keep falling back on the concept of verifiability, which isn't usually the primary problem.
A newspaper article is verifiable for the fact that someone said something. It's verifiable; the newspaper is reliable – for the fact that you said this. Mind the gap between "Alice said _____ on Thursday" and "_____ is true/important".
The problem for editors is that articles must be written in a way that accomplishes both of these requirements:
  • The specific claim is directly present in a reliable source: Did Alice say that, or not? If she didn't, then you can't put that in the article.
  • The article leaves readers with an accurate overall impression of the subject: Does what Alice said help readers understand the overall subject? If by writing "Alice said ____ on Thursday", we give readers a false impression that this is only Alice's view (e.g., that only one or two scientists believe HIV causes AIDS), or that Alice's view is important (e.g., that anybody actually cares what AIDS denialists believe causes AIDS) – then that particular sentence can't go into the article at all.
For scientific/academic content, merely getting your statements/beliefs reported in the news doesn't show that your statements/beliefs are appropriate content for an encyclopedia. Science by press conference is universally deplored. If the most you can actually verify with your source is that some scientist said something to a journalist, then that fact normally doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all.
To bring this back to the trigger for this dispute, newspapers are, first and foremost, in the business of staying in business. One modern result is clickbait headlines, but another is that they feed the public's appetite for controversy and content. It doesn't matter if Alice is right; it doesn't matter if Alice's words are important. What matters is that they post something, you read it, and they earn a couple of cents in advertising revenue. Stable, boring information doesn't generate ad revenue as well as fast-changing controversies. The news outlet doesn't earn much revenue from posting "Monday: Most scientists, especially those with relevant expertise, believe that the pandemic was a naturally occurring event, caused by a naturally occurring virus", "Tuesday: Ditto", "Wednesday: Ditto", etc. They'll get more revenue from "Tuesday: Dr. Chris Crackpot said that it's a conspiracy!" "Wednesday: Anti Activist says that biosecure facilities aren't all that secure, and maybe this was a lab leak!" "Thursday: Paul Politician says it's the fault of those Demicans!" "Friday: Joe Film says someone sent him information that convinced him that it was a lab leak!" "Saturday: Carol Conscientious found a minor data discrepancy!"
The bottom line is that merely being able to verify a sentence isn't enough to get that sentence into an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
I think that's a overly cynical view of newspapers. My own newspaper of course covers local and international politics and events on the Covid story, but also features thoughtful articles that, call me naive, I think were written with a genuine desire to educate readers. Here are some of the authors writing in The Guardian
  • Laura Spinney "a science journalist and the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World"
  • David Spiegelhalter "chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University. He is the author of The Art of Statistics".
  • Ian Sample "science editor of the Guardian. Before joining the newspaper in 2003, he was a journalist at New Scientist and worked at the Institute of Physics as a journal editor. He has a PhD in biomedical materials from Queen Mary's, University of London."
  • Sarah Boseley "the health editor of the Guardian. She has won a number of awards for her work on HIV/Aids in Africa, including the One World Media award (twice) and the European section of the Lorenzo Natali prize..."
  • Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease in Sydney’s west, with a particular focus on the social determinants that control our health. He writes a regular health blog covering science communication, public health, and what that new study you've read about actually means."
  • Prof Devi Sridhar "chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh".
  • Dr William Hanage "a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard"
I think some editors are too focused on thinking this is just a science and medicine story and not also a political and human story. Also that we are applying techniques for article writing that are appropriate for relatively static subjects onto topics that are rapidly evolving current affairs. Add in the political fighting and the anti-science agendas.
You linked to AIDS denialists so I had a peek. The History section is rather Wikipedia:Proseline but I spotted this entry:
In 2006, Celia Farber, a journalist and prominent HIV/AIDS denialist, published an essay in the March issue of Harper's Magazine entitled "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science", in which she summarized a number of arguments for HIV/AIDS denialism and alleged incompetence, conspiracy, and fraud on the part of the medical community. Scientists and AIDS activists extensively criticized the article as inaccurate, misleading, and poorly fact-checked.
It was added by User:MastCell in August 2006 and remained ever since. The original insert didn't have any sources, but subsequently it has been sourced to the Harpers Magazine article, to the New York Times and to a South African campaign group website. That doesn't really seem much different to editors wanting to mention some recent controversy about Covid and what the scientific/academic reaction to it was. Obviously 2006 is a long time ago in wiki history and standards were different then (the Harpers Magazine article was actually used as a source for several "factual" statements elsewhere in the article, and that's no longer the case). Perhaps the problem is we have forgotten to use common sense. That page says "Being too wrapped up in rules can cause loss of perspective...Our goal is to improve Wikipedia so that it better informs readers". I think our job is to write informative article text that is as accurate and fair as we can using the best sources we can. The rules are secondary to that purpose. -- Colin°Talk 17:24, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Newspapers and young journalists often aspire to lofty goals, but a closed newspaper publishes no articles, thoughtful or otherwise.
I agree that our ruleset is tuned for static topics, and fits developing news poorly.
Perhaps the most significant difference between the "proseline" bit that you quote and what draws the most opposition in COVID-related articles is that MastCell wrote "She said something, and she was wrong", whereas some edits to COVID articles sound more like "He said something, and all the views are equally valid, including the ones that most scientists label 'extremely unlikely'." WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
If I buy a lottery ticket there are two possible outcomes. I could win, or I could not win. So that's 50/50 right? Alexbrn (talk) 18:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Maybe the next approach to lottery reform should be requiring lottery players to pass a remedial math class. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
@Colin: That is very thoughtful. It is also quite far from how these policies are being applied in practice. For example, at COVID-19, we have "It is thought to have an animal (zoonotic) origin."[15] Similarly, at Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, we have It is believed to have zoonotic origins and has close genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses, suggesting it emerged from a bat-borne virus.[9][17] Research is ongoing as to whether SARS‑CoV‑2 came directly from bats or indirectly through any intermediate hosts.[16] There was a similar section at Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 declaring a "scientific consensus" that it was a Zoonosis, which was changed only after I showed[17] that even several of the scientific sources don't say that. Your WP:COMMON ideal is wonderful, but the practical reality is that the articles make claims that dismissive of the lab leak hypothesis, and changing them is like pulling teeth. WP:MEDRS is a big part of the reason. It seems to me there is a considerable gap between ideals and reality here. Do you see a way to close it? Adoring nanny (talk) 18:22, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
I don't pay attention to enough covid articles to know if we are providing a false balance as WAID says. The recent controversy I've tried to mediate was the Bloom deletion story and we had one side wanting to push "this proves the Chinese deliberately deleted information to cover up evidence of a lab leak" and the other side wanting to say ... well they wanted to say nothing at all. And I really don't understand how that fits in with our mission or serves our readers. It is like someone decided that Trump's musings about injecting bleach had no place on Wikipedia because treating covid is "health advice" and "biomedical information" and that requires a MEDRS source. Since Trump's ramblings fail MEDRS, then we must be silent and wait for "A systematic review of household cleaning products and their efficacy as intravenous Covid-19 therapeutic agents". Adoring nanny, MEDRS isn't the problem. People are. -- Colin°Talk 19:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

History of first sentence

A history of the development of the first sentence:

  • Original insertion, Mastcell June 2007:
    • Wikipedia's medical articles, while not a source of medical advice, are nonetheless an important health information resource. Therefore, it is vital that medical articles be based on reliable published sources. This version places emphasis on important source of health information.

Around 2015, several long-term medical editors stopped following WT:MED-related pages because of a situation that was finally resolved only after a 2020 arbitration case. In the interim, an emphasis had been placed on overly short and simple sentences, and many editors argued that this often changed meaning. Between 2015 and 2020, those arguments fell on deaf ears until the problems were highlighted in the 2020 arbitration case.

  • The first significant change to the first sentence was made by CFCF October 2015 with edit summary "Trimmed, should lose no meaning", resulting in:
    • Wikipedia's articles are not medical advice, but are a widely used source of health information.[1] For this reason it is vital that any biomedical information is based on reliable, third-party, published secondary sources and that it accurately reflects current knowledge. This version still emphasizes widely used source of health information.

Yet, the persistent insistence on shorter sentences continued, leading to the disassociation of the emphasized clause about important source of health information from the first sentence, which then appears to have more importance than was always intended.

  • December 2018, CFCF, again shortens the sentences with an edit summary of "Clarification and cleaner language", resulting in the version that DID change the meaning by disassociating the first clause from the intended meaning.
    • Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Yet, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge.
  • Current version, August 2019, by Eric (not a medical editor or frequent follower of the page, rather someone who was just copyediting, changed yet to nevertheless.

While none of these edits intended to change the original meaning, they clearly did, and it happened because of an undue emphasis on shortening sentences that permeated all medical editing for about five years, until resolved via an arbcase. In 2018, when this change occurred, many long-term medical editors had left the Medicine Project because of this very problem (sentences becoming increasingly simplistic to the point of lost meaning). As expressed by all long-term editors entering an opinion here, the "medical advice" aspect interpreted by some people weighing in on this RFC was never intended, and was a result of a disruptive trend to shorten sentences throughout medical content. In fact, the original MastCell version stood for 11 years, between 2007 and 2018, and the change in meaning appears to be the result of the ongoing trend at the time to shorten sentences, resulting in an emphasis on ONE clause of the original, when the intended emphasis was always on the second clause. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:MEDPOP

Interesting piece about how scientists communicate with journalists and the issues that may arise from that kind of relationship (including that news sources now "often cite tweets directly" or that "The result is that the journalist is left to paraphrase our work for us. Even good journalists can lose the narrative if overwhelmed with detail." and that "Controversy gets the microphone". Might be useful to improve that page. Anyways, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:21, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Science by press conference isn't new, and it's not a good source of biomedical information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
That's the same with any topic. Journalists are not specialists and work to deadlines. It's a trade off between accuracy and timeliness. When they get things wrong, editors can correct their narratives by using the primary sources they are based on. TFD (talk) 17:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
It's relatively unique for medicine, though. For starters, you probably shouldn't refer to primary sources (else just about everything will either cause or kill a tumor in a test tube). Talking to experts helps, but only if you talk to multiple experts, and double-check with specialty societies and at least one university department chair, and maybe the head of an NIH institute, and then check the secondary sources. It's not just deadlines. It's also not just journalists either. Everyone in medicine winds up using methods similar to MEDRS when they need answers, because it's really seriously I am not making this up, the only way to get answers in medicine. I'm not sure if this is futile to keep repeating, but the entire point of MEDRS is to try to get Wikipedia editors to evaluate sources the way that healthcare experts evaluate sources. And I think maybe we need to start being a bit more serious about making it clear that people who are not able to do that should not be editing medical articles. Hyperion35 (talk) 19:16, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
An example that comes to mind is when special weather events happen, like is now the case on the western American continent and the tendency to mention climate change or global warming. Individial weather events are usually not directly or unambiguously attributed to warming, but in some cases reliable enough sources mention when climatologists have considered the link with an event. When this occurs, it's usually appropriate for the event's article to mention it (often, it's a statement about plausible relationship without direct correlation, in other cases it's presented as more related). When directly related sources don't mention it, it's considered undue speculation for the article. All this can be done using secondary journalistic sources, but medicine is another world. —PaleoNeonate – 11:19, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
It is not unique to medicine. Science for example employs the scientific method which "involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings." The results of experiments are published in journals, but do not become accepted until other researchers can show the results can be repeated. Historians also speculate about what happened by gathering evidence and forming hypotheses which made eventually be disproven or accepted as the mainstream narrative.
I don't see why anyone would consider what journalists wrote about global warming to be more reliable than what they write about medicine.
TFD (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's what I don't get: Gina Kolata wrote for Science (journal) for many years. WP:MEDRS calls this publication a "core" journal. She then moves to the New York Times and, bang, her work is suddenly off limits according to Wikipedia editors citing WP:MEDPOP. "Editors are encouraged to seek out the scholarly research behind the news story" should be expanded to include assessment of the author as opposed to just the publication, in my view, otherwise you've got respected researchers who suddenly and illogically lose respect when they write for the mass media and can't even be quoted to a mass media source according to some zealous enforcers of this section.--Brian Dell (talk) 05:15, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Brian Dell, Science may well be a "core journal" but not all articles in journals are equal. MEDRS discourages the use of primary research articles which are a mainstay of such journals. Similarly, articles that are editorials, opinion pieces or just news reporting would not be held in such high regard as a serious literature or systematic review. Such articles are typically not peer reviewed (for whatever that is worth... see discussions elsewhere). I had a look at some of Kolata's work. For example PMID 3929381 is an article in a section labelled "Research News". Such "news" is probably unlikely to be useful to an encyclopeadia, which is more concerned with knowing what research has found academic acceptance and represents the consensus, rather than just what is "new".
I don't know if there is a specific dispute you have in mind, where we could examine the proposed article text and sources. I have been mostly impressed by the real scientists or science journalists writing for The Guardian in recent years, but it isn't consistently great, and other some other newspapers are more inclined to commission pieces from those with oddball views, either because it sells newspapers, or it fits with the newspaper owner/editor's political views. This is where WP:V's requirement for a reputation for fact checking an accuracy is critical, and where newspapers often fall down. They can occasionally be brilliant. Brian Deer did great work on the Lancet MMR autism fraud, but works for The Sunday Times. I remember when the paper was edited by Andrew Neil and promoted the idea that AIDS was not caused by HIV. -- Colin°Talk 11:06, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
You're illustrating my point tho: Brian Deer is ahead of the curve on exposing Wakefield but you want to talk about The Sunday Times instead of just Deer. It would be perfectly reasonable in my view to have Wikipedia's use of Wakefield's anti-vax paper challenged by citing Deer's observations yet WP:MEDPOP would apparently protect Wikipedia's use of Wakefield's work until the challenges went beyond Deer because of where Deer's work was appearing. The Lancet then does it again last year publishing an obviously dodgy Hydroxychloroquine paper but the Lancet is still a "core journal", as if every failure of the peer review system is to be ignored while the entire mainstream press is held collectively accountable for occasional bad mainstream media reporting.
Take a look at Didier Raoult. Who points out, in his Wiki bio, how his superficially stellar publication numbers are basically inflated? Why, the New York Times. Yet MEDPOP says pay no attention to the NYT with respect to the substance of Raoult's claims once he's been published. A lot of people who can intelligently sort out health information in detail instead of relying on a broad strokes mechanical process would prefer a preprint that's been the subject of 100 interdisciplinary Twitter reviews over a journal publication where the peer review consisted of just five people and only one statistican. Take a look at what Elizabeth Bik has revealed. European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences is peer reviewed yet has retracted 186 (!) articles since January 2020 because she's flagged what's going on.
For an example of what I think should be allowed in Wikipedia is this NYT piece by Kolata: New Cholesterol Advice Startles Even Some Doctors. It's a kind of literature review in which you'll find some worth-considering arguments for "Drugs that only reduce LDL have not been shown to be effective in preventing heart attacks." But because WP:MEDPOP exists, editors feel they can just refuse to even look at it. I think MEDRS needs to back off the hard rules; as TS Eliot once said "There is no method but to be very intelligent." Wikipedia editors are intelligent enough that if you let them argue for inclusion or exclusion based on the particular content at issue and the broader context you'll get better results than trying to enforce these overgeneralizing rules as currently written.--Brian Dell (talk) 19:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
Why would we want to cite that NYT piece when it would be way more direct and credible to cite the ACC and AHA, the two professional medical organizations that released updated guidelines? Citing a lay summary introduces an extra...grape?...to the grapevine: our readers now have to trust (a WP editors' paraphrasing of) a journalist's interpretation of a medical finding, which is much more likely to have inaccuracies than just citing the original MEDRS. JoelleJay (talk) 21:58, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
I'm afraid you are hitting against a core policy in Wikipedia rather than just MEDRS. We require reliable publications, not ones that are occasionally brilliant. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I can't read the NY Times article, but if there is "New Cholesterol Advice" to doctors, then it will be documented at the usual sources as JoelleJay notes. Wikipedia:Reliable sources also emphasises academic or professional sources. This isn't specific to medicine: I wouldn't expect an article on some historical leader, some famous artwork or how a nuclear bomb works, to be based on newspapers. Wikipedia is designed to not rely on the intelligence and knowledge of editors, but to build on the published works of others, and have definition of reliable and trustworthy publications that the community can consistently agree on, rather than argue among ourselves on every article. -- Colin°Talk 10:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
The irony here is that my position represents the broad application of WP:V (which, incidentally, is not mere "guideline" like this page is but "policy", policy that moreover explicitly identifies "mainstream newspapers" as "a reliable source") whereas your position calls for the exception. Take a look at what the Reliable Sources Noticeboard concluded about whether the NYT is RS: Absolutely no question. Now I happen to think there are good arguments for making an exception for medical articles. But that's precisely my point: special situations require more nuance and detail as opposed to overly broad rules. Making the avoidance of mainstream media a guideline is an exception to the general rule that citing a mainstream newspaper satisfies what is called a "core content policy" and so it seems inconsistent to me to turn around and claim that we've got a core policy here that doesn't allow for exceptions.
The problem with just citing the ACC/AHA guidelines, by the way, is that the guidelines don't explicitly say no link between taking drugs that lower cholesterol (and don't provide other benefits) and fewer cardiovascular events has been shown, that's rather the obvious inference one gets by looking at what elements of the treatment guidelines were updated. If I, as an editor, drew the inference without a cite to a source that states the inference I would, of course, be accused of WP:OR. This, by the way, is the classic situation where we need sources like the NYT: to get a reporter to quote experts involved with developing the guidelines in order to explain what the implications of the new consensus are for ordinary people.--Brian Dell (talk) 08:00, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Verifiability isn't a blanket qualification to use any quality RS for any context, come on.
WP:V also says If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources in topics such as history, medicine, and science.
It's a kind of literature review in which you'll find some worth-considering arguments for "Drugs that only reduce LDL have not been shown to be effective in preventing heart attacks."
It is emphatically not a "literature review". That has a specific meaning which is obviously not met by a lay person's interpretation of recent guideline releases. The article's entire position of this new guidance being "surprising" is founded on primary interviews with random doctors (i.e. anecdata) so it's not even DUE unless this change was noted by multiple medical bodies (like the AMA) -- in which case we would cite them and not lay media. Not to mention the article and guidelines are eight years old and so are woefully out of date! JoelleJay (talk) 00:17, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
That's why I was citing a science journalist and not "a lay person". I'll add that the chairman of the committee that developed the guidelines commenting about the evidence his committee found (or more precisely didn't find) isn't a "random doctor." Finally, I have to again note that I'm not the one calling for "blanket" Wikipedia guidelines that don't consider "context", quite the opposite in fact--Brian Dell (talk) 02:56, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
A science journalist is a layperson unless they have the specific relevant qualifications on the subject, which Kolata definitely does not (1.5 years studying graduate-level molecular biology who knows how many years ago does not imbue someone with expert knowledge in cardiophysiology, epidemiology, medical policy, etc.). And random doctors or non-random doctors, we are still left with only the one lay article describing the new guidelines as "surprising" but nothing in MEDRS demonstrating it actually is to the medical community. JoelleJay (talk) 03:44, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Brian Dell, since the NYT blanks the article for me, I've only just realised this "new advice" article is eight years old. An eight year old news article might be good for some historical events but certainly not for medical claims. I see now you are in an edit war at Lipid hypothesis and two editors rejecting this ancient newspaper aricle as not per MEDRS. Actually most clinical guidelines, including the ACC/AHA, extensively document the evidence behind their recommendations and also why recommendations change. Such guidelines typically classify their recommendations by strength (how strongly the panel feel this is is justified/important) and evidence (classifying it and putting e.g. large trials and systematic reviews as higher than mere case reports or expert opinion). The statin/cholesterol field is a huge one, extremely well documented with high quality literature. In 2021 there should be no problem whatsoever in finding high quality recent sources that document consensus opinion on what works and why, and what doesn't work and why, and what areas scientists and doctors agree and disagree about. This isn't some rare disease with six cases worldwide, but one of the biggest medical topics. There's no need to dig up some ancient newspaper story to source this. -- Colin°Talk 13:55, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Again, the irony: if you want to talk about that particular article, there's currently about 40 citations and the majority are a lot older than the source you call "ancient." The most recent cite goes against the article's thesis (in fact, of the cites since 1976, there are twice as many cites against as for that come from journals MEDRS specifically enumerates as "core"). I'll add that the fact recommendations typically come with levels of confidence constitutes a good argument for having the article provide that instead of insinuating there's total confidence in the thesis and only quacks dare question it.--Brian Dell (talk) 03:18, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Brian, it is a very common argument that "Well the other sources are even worse" or indeed missing entirely. It is the nature of Wikipedia watchlists and editing that recent edits may get closer scrutiny than existing text. And "other crap exists" has long been rejected on Wiki as an argument for permitting more so. Brian, to be honest, if this was a newbie edit warring non-consensus opinions into a medical article with nothing more than an eight year old newspaper clipping, I'd have assumed they were trolling us. I don't have any opinion on or knowledge about the lipid hypothesis. If you think the article is unbalanced per WP:WEIGHT then I suggest posting a friendly message asking for help at WT:MED and hopefully a knowledgable editor with access to good sources will help. I don't think you are on strong ground with this source and this topic to overturn guidance that is over a decade old and has wide community support. -- Colin°Talk 07:24, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
The source is shaky, you believe, but you've never actually looked at it. You've instead got my alleged "edit warring" over at some other location as your guide. I'll close here by suggesting we keep our eye on the ball, which is the content.--Brian Dell (talk) 11:33, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Brian, I did manage to read an archived copy, and it was a typical news article with a "The scientific and medical consensus is this but here I found and interviewed a few MDs who say that..." story, which doesn't establish anything: one can find an MD to support just about any idea. Such articles are routine in newspapers because the little guy fighting the establishment, or contradictory health advice, sells well. :::::::::Really, why are you wasting everyone's time pushing an eight-year-old newspaper article, to support encyclopaedic claims like "there remains some dispute over whether ... has been shown to prevent heart attacks". Even if there was a dispute in 2013, that wouldn't support Wikipedia saying "there remains some dispute" in 2021, certainly not in a well researched field like this. Evidence comes from research and that research gets reviewed and analysed and those reviews and analyses get published in the medical literature and clinical guidelines. If there is a dispute that extends further than the odd crank, then that dispute per WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE have some coverage in appropriate reliable sources of recent vintage. Find those, or ask for help finding them. -- Colin°Talk 13:52, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
The problem is that not all Wikipedia editors are intelligent enough. (Competence is probably a better word than intelligence here.) If they were, they wouldn't be a need for rules at all, except a few very basic ones. Every rule will have drawbacks. Removing this one would remove the Gina Kolata exclusion problem and the Brian Deer exclusion problem (not to mention Ben Goldacre) and replace them by a Nicholas Wade inclusion problem, plus a lot of similar ones. It is hard enough to keep the unfounded opinions of people like that out of the relevant articles as it is, and loosening this rule would make that job much harder.
Adding good and bad apples to a set of good apples will not improve the set you have. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:33, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
If you can't come up with convincing arguments on a Talk page for why Nicholas Wade should be summarily banned and need to be able to play a card that precludes any obligation to make your case like MEDRS may I suggest that Wade's takes might actually be worth looking at?--Brian Dell (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Nicholas Wade et al should be excluded because we cannot rely on a single (or multiple) layperson's interpretation of scientific research to accurately reflect scientific consensus. We cannot blindly trust people who can't participate in building scientific consensus, who are not even guaranteed to have adequate understanding of a subject, and whose summaries will necessarily be dumbed-down and lack details to appeal to the general public. JoelleJay (talk) 17:58, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Oh, yes, I can come up with convincing arguments, but the sort of users we are talking about here cannot be convinced by convincing arguments. They will ignore what I said and start saying the same things again. And again. And again. Other users with try to explain why including Wade is a bad idea. The user will ignore that and say the same thing again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And when the user is finally banned for being WP:NOTHERE, another user will start a new section about the same thing. Repeat until.
So you want to make it easier for the fringe POV pushers and force their opponents to work more because you believe that people are generally good and smart and competent. But I have been doing this for fifteen years now, and I can tell you it is not 100% true. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:31, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
I've been doing this for sixteen years and your basic problem in this particular case is this: what you call a "fringe POV" actually is not and your "convincing arguments" are not, in fact, convincing. That's why it keeps coming back.--Brian Dell (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
If you have been giving convincing arguments to fringe POV pushers for sixteen years, and they have found them all convincing, then I find that hard to believe.
If you define "convincing" as "it convinces everybody", then your reasoning above If you can't come up with convincing arguments on a Talk page was actually "If there are fringe POV pushers on a Talk page", because no arguments will convince them, no matter how good.
And if a position is really not fringe within science, then we do not need any science journalists as sources for it, since there are plenty of secondary scientific sources to choose from. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Fair warning: I'm hungry. Maybe I didn't catch something. Feel free to trout me if that's the case. A nice bit of trout sounds pretty good right now, actually. Lightly breaded, fried, maybe with a side of steamed new carrots...
I think that this discussion is missing the distinction between what's Wikipedia:Biomedical information and what's not. Here are a few examples of content described above:
  • They updated their guidelines on treating high cholesterol.
  • The journalist said that the update removed X and added Y to the guideline.
  • The doctor said the research results were surprising.
  • The journalist said that the doctor said that the change in the guideline was due to results that surprised the research group.
  • The researcher's citation statistics are artificially inflated.
  • The journal retracted a zillion papers.
  • The journalist alleged fraud and peer-review failures.
None of that is covered by MEDRS. MEDRS doesn't apply when the article is a "medical topic"; it applies when the exact sentences you're writing/sourcing are biomedical content. A decent news source is perfectly reliable for any of those statements.
What a decent news source wouldn't be useful (NB: I intentionally avoid the word "reliable" in this sentence) for is figuring out whether that information should be in a Wikipedia article that is primarily about a medical condition/treatment.
We have a many-years-long problem with people trying to claim that these are covered by MEDRS because what they really mean is that the content, although verifiable and reliable for the exact sentence in question, may not be WP:DUE, because, frankly, why should an encyclopedia article actually care whether the results were surprising at one point in time? Why should an article log the blow-by-blow updates to a treatment guideline (unless the guideline itself is the primary subject of the article)? So instead of saying "not important enough to mention – if this is true, then including it fails the 10YEARTEST, because it'll be widely accepted and not the least bit surprising a decade from now", and then having a discussion about a subject that reasonable people could reasonably disagree, they (we) try to dismiss the source as "not reliable", and see if we can substitute a black-and-white(-ish) rule and avoid a subjective, judgment-based, energy-consuming discussion about what's honestly, actually relevant for the article.
@Bdell555, you might be interested in my comments at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Is WP:RSP effectively a list of banned sources? I made the same general argument about authors mattering, and the people on this page are not the only ones who care more about the publisher than the author. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
The recent complaint about MEDPOP concerned an edit at Lipid hypothesis that changed the text from:
An accumulation of evidence has led to the acceptance of the lipid hypothesis by most of the medical community.
to
Although the lipid hypothesis has been accepted by most of the medical community, it has also been generally acknowledged that drugs that only change cholesterol levels and do not provide other cardiovascular benefits such as reduced inflammation or blood clotting have not been shown to be effective in preventing heart attacks.
with the latter portion citing an eight-year-old story in the New York Times. I think that is a biomedical claim, for which a newspaper is really not a good source, and better sources exist and would be expected. WP:V reminds us that work itself, the author of the work and the publisher of the work can all influence reliability. Kolata appears to be just a general science journalist, not an expert in cardiovascular therapies, so them being the author doesn't imo elevate them as a source for an article in the NYT any more than any other "science journalist" in any other quality newspaper. I would guess that their newspaper stories would be asessed by editorial staff in the NYT for spelling and conforming to house style guides, and no more. And there's the whole it-is-eight-years-old-for-goodness-sake issue.
MEDRS source selection doesn't just help with whether the statement is reliably accurate, but also with weight concerns. A primary research paper (unless fraudulent) is pretty reliable for reporting what that research did and found, but has no useful weight wrt establishing whether that is accepted or has been put into practice, say. So our emphasis towards clinical guidelines and systematic reviews is partly about determining conesensus rather than specific reliability issues. That's one reason why I've often steered folk towards WP:WEIGHT rather than having a "is it or isn't it MEDRS" argument. -- Colin°Talk 10:41, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
For any particular content matter your take may be right and mine wrong. As here. But I'm concerned about an undemocratic culture whereby a certain class of editors sees themselves consciously or unconsciously as some sort of Guardian who needs to protect the citadel from the "popular" mob and beats back said mob with (over)generalizations plucked from policies. Cite to popular press? Delete with edit summary "unreliable per MEDRS". Cite to a journal and not a review? Delete regardless of quality with edit summary "Primary & therefore unreliable per MEDRS". Delete instead of move down to some sort of "controversy" or "minority view" section, delete instead of add inline qualifications or criticisms, delete instead of contextualize and downweight. It's a city walls mentality such that the barbarians are either out or they had to be allowed in because the battle to delegitimize them couldn't be sustained. Simply purge and you're forever having to play whack a mole because people who read more broadly, including the NYT or Scientific American or what have you, know there's more going on out there than the longstanding orthodox view so they keep coming back trying to get challenges in. I happen to have a fairly high view of most of these challengers whereas the Guardians may not.--Brian Dell (talk) 02:34, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@Bdell555, Colin's likely correct about that specific sentence, but I agree with you that it's really important for readers to find something about the detail they're looking for, even if what we can give them is a very general nod to the subject (e.g., the hundreds of things that have been "researched" for COVID).
I often find it's faster to settle sourcing complaints by providing better sources. You might consider whether this review article in an excellent journal, and compliant with every jot and tittle in MEDRS, would be useful to you in updating the article. I suspect, though, that you will be even more interested in "Table 3: Deficiencies in the Lipid Hypothesis" in the chapter "Lipids and Nutrition" on page 104 of this book, and much of this book (especially chapter 9 on nutrition vs statins for primary prevention), published by Elsevier's Academic Press, looks promising. Don't forget the Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request if you need help getting access to sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
undemocratic culture - Well, science, and encyclopedia writing, are not "democratic" insofar as facts are not determined by voting. Very good sources are preferred to only normally-good sources for a reason: if something is contained in the latter but not in the former, then there is probably something wrong with it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:46, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Did anybody not think of Asimov's quotation for the age?[18] Alexbrn (talk) 08:02, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
The people who think of that as applicable to the editing community are typically the ones who see policies not as resources to consult but as tools to idiot proof the project. What I thought of was this: "The three conditions for a group to be intelligent are diversity, independence, and decentralization"--Brian Dell (talk) 21:53, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I do agree somewhat with the battlefield / defending the citadel / whack-a-mole complaint. I think it tends to occur more with editors who have enormous watchlists but no particular knowledge of or inclination towards learning the topics they watch. As you note earlier, a symptom of this can be that an edit that cites a poor source shows up on the watch list and gets squashed like a fly, whereas they ignore the paragraphs of crap already in the article, which are uncited, cite dubious sources, or aren't even justified by the sources they claim to be from. And long term editors will tend to use terse WP:UPPERCASE justifications for their edits, rather than open a talk page discussion. Ideally, we'd want each editor to examine added text with poor sources, and go figure out whether the text is reasonable, or could be made reasonable, and to improve the sourcing. Various guidelines on Wikipedia encourage that. In practice, there are far too few editors and too many articles, and not enough time, and I don't have a solution. On this particular cardiovascular issue, I don't have the knowledge or inclination towards researching better sources (we are all volunteers) but I did repeatedly suggest you ask at WT:MED. The response above by WAID with good sources is exactly what I would hope you'd get by doing that.
You mention "delete regardless of quality", but I think the "quality" we are really looking for is whether the article text is fair/justified/accurate/etc, and the sourcing can be considered a sort of evidence. That evidence has its own qualities, but those are secondary to the primary aim of good article text. The more challenging a claim being made is, the stronger the evidence needs to be.
I'm afraid the primary research paper is nearly always unacceptable for a biomedical claim, regardless of the quality of the research, simply because it is the first step of how new ideas can/might be accepted, and we want evidence that this new idea was accepted before claiming so. Many scientists, taught to cite the primary literature and to regard especially narrative reviews as a lazy second-hand source, find Wikipedia's encouragement towards secondary sources difficult to shift to. Wikipedia is tertiary literature.
There's also the matter of what kind of claim is being made. The things listed by WAID don't require much diligence to establish or education/experience to understand, so we accept them quite readily. If one doubted the journalist reporting that the guideline had changed, one can check for oneself, and we don't need a medical degree to understand it. But demonstrating that a drug is or is not efficacious, safe, and has certain effects on the body, and that those effects are a reliable proxy for a healthy long life, takes an enormous amount of work and is very difficult and costly. The research and its conclusions are not simplistic and may require complicated statistics or terminology. It needs to be appreciated in the context of existing or alternative therapies, their costs and availability, how they can work in practice and how they interfere or enhance the rest of the care a patient gets, etc, etc. Interpreting the research is best done by those with degrees in the subject and who specialise in the field. And for a major topic like cardiovascular health, there is no shortage of excellent sources written by such subject experts. For these difficult and at times controversial claims, readers expect us to be citing the subject experts, not the newspapers they can read for themselves.
Of course we have editors who read quality lay publications and want to add knowledge to Wikipedia, but we also have editors who are badly misinformed by their poor choice of reading material, or who have agendas and political views that steer them strongly away from consensus mainstream points of view. For some article topics, the latter do form a constant stream of attack, and sometimes editors fail to switch off from "engaging with enemy fire" and behave the same way towards the former kind of editor. -- Colin°Talk 11:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Democratic US senators have introduced the Health Misinformation Act, which would carve out an exemption to Section 230 coverage for websites that maintain posted information from users about "health misinformation" (at the time when such a health emergency is active, like COVID), with rules to be set by DHHS. My read is that there would be no exemption for a site like Wikipedia on this. --Masem (t) 18:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

This is something that the WMF’s lawyers are going to have to advise us on. We can adjust any relevant policies if need be, but first we need to know whether (and how) the new law applies. Blueboar (talk) 18:49, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As a note, this technically only applies to posts that are algorithmically selected by the site to be promoted to users. This may not cover something like WP's search feature, but that said, if this passed, there would need to be probably some discussion with WMF to see if that impacts WP and if so, then that would make this a legal policy. --Masem (t) 18:49, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
"If this passed" is a significant factor. Given the current state of US politics, there is no certainty that it would become law. But nonetheless, this is a very interesting development. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree, it seems to be designed to put an end to "This stuff is really popular amongst this demographic" amplification algorithms that ignore whether "this stuff" is harmful. It doesn't say what constitutes "health misinformation" but I imagine it only covers the big stuff that have a direct, immediate and harmful public health consequence like covid vaccines being dangerous or covid being caused by 5G or covid being a myth. America isn't about to do away with the right to believe and say crazy stuff. This is specifically targeting social media, and not going to put a firewall in the Atlantic that stops you guys reading the Daily Mail. So, I don't think it will affect Wikipedia at all.
But even if health misinformation was made as a bad as copyright violation, say, it would legally apply to content, not sourcing. If we take copyright for images as an example, sourcing is important for third-party images (ones you didn't take yourself) and there are procedures for an admin to tag an image as "valid licence per source" in case (as often happens) the source link goes dead. Doing that for text would be hard. We would probably end up with folk going around just deleting stuff that didn't have a working MEDRS-compliant source URL. -- Colin°Talk 08:12, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
The way I'm reading how they are defining "health misinformation" (which will be refined by DHHS if this passes), we would likely have zero saying "One theory proposed by some has been that COVID was leaked from the Wuhan lab, though this has been dismissed as unlikely by WHO.", but would be in trouble if we said "COVID was leaked from the Wuhan lab." It basically would align with how MEDRS already stands, just the question if legally we'd be required to "enforce" this like we do with BLP and NFC policies. --Masem (t) 17:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Personally, I doubt that. There's no direct health harm in being wrong about that (unless one works in the Wuhan lab). Expressing more confidence in a belief/theory than is warranted by the evidence or that is commonly accepted is not a crime. It just isn't encyclopaedic. -- Colin°Talk 13:05, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
True, it would be more like "Injesting bleach prevents COVID" would be misinformation, whereas "Some advocates inappropriately suggested taking bleach to fight COVID, but medical professionals warned people against following this advice." would be factual. But you get the point ; MEDRS already lines up with that. --Masem (t) 13:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

American Journal of Health Behavior

The American Journal of Health Behavior, published carried by Wiley, was exposed as being a likely predatory publication:

But it paid $51,000 to have the entire May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior devoted to publishing 11 studies funded by the company [...] Three editorial board members of the journal resigned over the arrangement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/health/juul-vaping-fda.html

Citations referencing the journal may need to be checked. There seem to be a few hundreds at least: special:search/insource:"10.1002/ajhb". Nemo 18:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

That's pay-to-publish open access publishing for you. At least the NYT piece says one article was rejected, which suggests some scrutiny, as opposed to in the most egregious cases. Alexbrn (talk) 20:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Nemo_bis please review this link, see my message below. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Vanity journal/issue, not predatory journal. But yes, definitely not reliable, see WP:SPONSORED. Also, as far as I can tell, it's published by PNG Publications, not Wiley. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:14, 10 July 2021 (UTC) Some links of relevance

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:18, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I started looking through the list of articles which used this source, and my first stop was obesity. Obesity uses grossly outdated sources throughout, and provides an example of the trend that took over in 2015, where only leads were updated, and yet even the lead of this alleged “good article” is outdated. We really need to remove almost every GA from WP:MED. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Also used at Spanish flu, which is also supposedly a Good article that probably is not. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
And the entire suite of article related to sexuality topics is rife with this source. Lots of work needed here; this should probably be raised at WT:MED. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Headbomb and Firegangledfeathers:, see my talk. It appears that special:search/insource:"10.1002/ajhb" posted above from Nemo_bis is returning not only American Journal of Health Behavior, but also American Journal of Human Biology ??? Not sure what that means … I am traveling and on a sketchy connection, my host is heading out now to pick up a new router to place faulty one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Is it possible that all 10.5993/AJHB hits refer to Health Behavior and that all 10.1002/AJHB are Human Biology sources? I just skimmed a few. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:36, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps it is just a faulty link above ?? I have pinged Nemo_bis. See my talk.. Also @TheTimesAreAChanging:. (Traveling, and my host just went to get a replacement for his faulty router, phone editing now, can’t go back and fix edits … but a good deal of what I edited had very dated sourcing at any rate ). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
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