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Haltlose personality disorder

Can someone have a glance at Haltlose personality disorder? In the last month, it's grown from 2k to 25k, almost entirely by a new user and SPA almost all of whose edits are to this article, and whose username is the same as the article name (poss COI?). Along with added content, there are plenty of added references. I'm just not sure how to evaluate what's going on here; it could be that everything is fine, but I just wanted some additional eyeballs on it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 08:16, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

youtube as a reference[1]?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:43, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
Adding (@Mathglot): The contributor doesn't actually seem to be entirely SPA (cf), and appears to have a longish memory of WP editing. 86.144.125.239 (talk) 15:34, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Update: Per some consensus (I think) on the article talk page, the topic seems to be mainly, though not entirely, of historical interest. Since it seems to me to be of genuine encyclopedic interest and User:HaltlosePersonalityDisorder appears to have a strong (non-COI) editorial interest in developing the page, I have tried - in tandem with others - to foster appropriate editing, per Wikipedia policies and guidelines. While I would be prepared to tag/trim non-MEDRS-compliant clinical claims if needed (I feel less confident about due weighting of historical content), I now wish to step back. I do hope the page becomes stable in a good way. 86.144.125.192 (talk) 12:02, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • It is such a mess that's it hard to know where to start. Most concerned by WAID's finding of "dubious entities" and dated sources. I'd vote to merge it somewhere, and mention it in a historical context only, if someone could figure out a target article and started a discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:20, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Sandy. I'd support a merge too I think, but offhand I can't see any obvious target. 86.144.125.192 (talk) 14:33, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps merge something brief (one paragraph) to the History section at personality disorder? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Sandy's suggestion. 86.144.125.192 (talk) 18:41, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
That opinion appears to dismiss 62 valid references, including from psychiatric journals, textbooks and studies over the past 110 years, in favor of one throwaway sentence intended to denigrate the entire ICD-10 in a book that doesn't otherwise mention Haltlose. That seems...alarming. That said, per suggestion, I have tried to soften the language to say studies from 1936 "suggested" rather than "suggest" certain details, and use other language to help give it a more "historical" feel. HaltlosePersonalityDisorder (talk) 15:42, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
What dismisses those dated references is this. Pubmed has exactly one commentary on the topic: [2]. It looks like WAID checked books, and came up with "dubious". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I think citing a null search string might constitute WP:OR, though I don't know the rules here very fully. I see nothing "dated" about the references listed. HaltlosePersonalityDisorder (talk) 16:07, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Have you studied WP:MEDRS, which are the applicable "rules"? In all of the PUBMED-indexed journals, there is exactly one (Portuguese) commentary. This speaks to notability and whether an article should exist or is UNDUE. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:25, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes I have, and the references section of Haltlose personality disorder complies with it in extreme detail - with the exception of one link I have offered I don't mind removing since it is "lightweight", although per MEDRS it is only supporting a very lightweight point that is phrased in the Wiki article as being "possibly". Your complaint is utterly lacking, since PubMed also returns zero hits for "Female hysteria" (which is no longer widely recognized whereas Haltlose Personality Disorder remains in the ICD-10; if you want it removed or reduced "to a single paragraph and then merged somewhere" then take up your complaint with the World Health Organization and get it removed from the ICD-10; but it's not your place or mine to say we don't trust the actual authorities on the subject such as the ~62 doctors whose published works are relied upon for the article. HaltlosePersonalityDisorder (talk) 17:13, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure that I'd read too much into that one sentence. I think it's really about the differences between DSM and ICD in their handling of narcissistic personality disorder (which the one separates, and the other dumps in with 'other personality disorders').
My impression is that this was a semi-popular archetype for a while in parts of Europe. Maybe it's less popular now, but it's not "wrong" to have archetypes instead of listing every single detail separately each time. It's just a label that applies to some individuals with greater or lesser fidelity, and which might be a useful shorthand between people who are familiar with the archetype. It's a bit like saying that someone has a Type A personality, or that there was a phone call from the daughter in California. If you've hung around Wikipedia long enough, then I wouldn't be surprised if you read through Haltlose personality disorder#Symptoms and thought 'Oh, I've seen editors like that...'.
I don't think this article needs emergency action. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
(do you really indent each separate colon every time? This is hilarious) - Well at the very least I should thank you for the introduction to Daughter from California syndrome, lol - never heard of it but could guess what it was before clicking. Even defending the article as it stands (though of course, future additions always welcome - including skepticism), I do agree that it sounds like just an issue of taxonomy; one evolution of categories went with things like "BPD", "ASPD", "NPD" and "ADHD" each taking a portion of the HLPD pie, the other kept HLPD but split other things up. It's not surprising they all exist. I also went ahead and created a stub for Immature personality disorder today - might get inspired and do more work on it in the future...if anybody doesn't like my writing style, they're welcome to beat me to the punch and flesh it out before I get a chance ;) HaltlosePersonalityDisorder (talk) 00:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
(@HaltlosePersonalityDisorder, yes, that's how most people do it. But I'm running a new tool, which you can see by clicking on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine?dtenable=1 It adds the colons automagically.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Conflict of interest?

Are there WP:COI concerns with this edit to Vincristine? --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 17:56, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

That's wonky. I did some hurried clean up, but pls do not assume that anything I left is thoroughly vetted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:46, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
See also User talk:JPxG/Archive1#vincristine edits. The author blanked it and was going to try again later, but an editor reverted it back into the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Great Barrington Declaration

Great Barrington Declaration (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) This contentious medicine/covid-19/politics-related article could use medical attention for background, context, and expansion. GPinkerton (talk) 15:42, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, I think it needs more non-medical content. I looked at most of the article and I still don't know what they want. What do they mean by "focused protection"? Does that mean that you should only stay home if you have known risk factors, such as being overweight, a history of tobacco use, being male, having high blood pressure, being non-white, etc., but the remaining people (all three of them?) should be allowed to do whatever they want? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: The "Declaration" is all of 500 words long, so it's basically detail-free. But yes, basically everyone run amok unless they're weak or cowardly, in which case the idea seems to be to lock them up and wait until it's all over by Christmas. Less herd immunity, more culling the stragglers. GPinkerton (talk) 04:24, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Wow. This sort of semi-isolation is hard on most people, and it's obvious that the costs to some individuals do outweigh the benefits to those individuals. On the other hand, pandemics happen in societies, not just to individuals all by themselves. I happen to appreciate the fact that my local hospital isn't about to burst at the seams, and that there aren't refrigerator trucks filled with corpses standing outside it. I understand that the funeral homes are still struggling locally (they were pretty close to capacity before the pandemic), but we're mostly holding it together. IMO this constitutes an improvement compared to what happened back when all but the self-identified weak and cowardly were running amok.
Also, is it just me, or are they actually bad at math? You can't get herd immunity when you define three-quarters of the population as being too fat/old/male/nicotine-addicted/etc. to risk exposure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
In my understanding "what they want" is primarily to create the narrative that there are two legitimate opposing camps in science.[3] Per WP:PSCI this is really a topic where Wikipedia should be clear that what is being proposed is a fringe position. I do not think we're currently doing a very good job of that. (As a single data point, a search on twitter for "Barrington Wikipedia" just now produced this as top tweet; it seems for readers we are creating the impression this is a "two sides" issue i.e. we WP:GEVAL). Alexbrn (talk) 06:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Per mainstream views amply cited, the underlying assumption that it is somehow possible to prevent contagion from lower-risk to higher-risk populations by walling out vulnerable portions of society appears quite implausible (and therefore FRINGE). Providing reliable information to Wikipedia readers about the existence, content and context of the thing does not mean we should WP:GEVAL. 86.190.128.10 (talk) 11:37, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Sadly the intersection of this topic with politics and WP:PROFRINGE factions on Wikipedia makes that a less than straightforward goal to achieve. Alexbrn (talk) 16:10, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Because ain't nobody healthy living with or caring for vulnerable people. Right.
Well, we're going to need solid sources to clean that up, but the urgency is clear to me. Maybe creating a simple background section would help. I've started one, and let's see if it helps. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
All power to your (virtual) pen WAID. At ~20,000 hits/day this is an article it would be good to get right and soon. I shall continue watching/helping where possible. Alexbrn (talk) 17:24, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Change guidance about indexing in bibliographic databases to be open to non-MEDLINE indexed journals?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Change guidance about indexing in bibliographic databases to be open to non-MEDLINE indexed journals?. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 01:01, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:31, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Help a newer user?

Vertebral artery

Hi! I was wondering if someone could step in and help MedHelper+ with their draft at Draft:Triangle of the vertebral artery. It's very lean as far as articles go and they're in definite need of a guiding hand as far as health article creation goes. I've posted at WP:PHYSIOLOGY but there isn't a lot of discussion there, so I wanted to post here as well. My main concern is that there isn't enough sourcing to justify it having its own article as opposed to being included at say, vertebral artery. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:13, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this note, ReaderofthePack. Tom (LT) from Wikipedia:WikiProject Anatomy has already merged this to Vertebral artery. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Long Covid

Sorry if this isn't the right place for this, but Long Covid (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is rather short and bare; perhaps there's something more to say? (Perhaps from other countries/languages/newer papers?) Obviously the subject itself is breaking news medically speaking but also, it's been a while now, there should be more than this … GPinkerton (talk) 04:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I've added a bibliography of materials that might be used for more research, but they are not medical papers, mostly just news and features, with a good few quotes from various experts who might themselves have real research to quote from. GPinkerton (talk) 08:00, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Flail limb

The flail limb article is completely unreferenced. I had a go at looking for some cites, but failed to find any direct cites about this except in the context of ALS. Can anyone knowledgeable take a look, please? -- The Anome (talk) 20:11, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I found a few sources and added them. Most information I could find on this was very old. Natureium (talk) 22:34, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
@Natureium: Many thanks. The article is much better now. -- The Anome (talk) 13:21, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

RfC about the relation of occupational health psychology to health psychology on Talk:health psychology

Talk:health psychology § RfC about sources showing that occupational health psychology is related to health psychology User:iss246 Please notify me after replying on my User_talk:Iss246. Thank you. Iss246 (talk) 01:50, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:49, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
@Iss246, do you think we should take this back to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations? I know that Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mrm7171/Archive was stale, but it's just amazing how many new accounts keep turning up with the same claims. This account was created three days after the previous one stopped editing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
Never mind. They both made exactly the same edit to the same article, with very similar edit summaries (also using the same editing tools). See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sportstir. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing (@WhatamIdoing:)), I suspected as much but did not want to make the allegation. At least not yet. Psyballed, not only has the same style, but he has the same single-mindedness. The vast majority of his edits are devoted to singling out my edits. It is weird.

In any event, I appreciate your posting a sockpuppet investigation. Psyballed sure resembles the ghosts of the past. Iss246 (talk) 20:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

N95 mask / filtering facepiece respirator article naming

More input would be helpful at the requested move at Talk:N95 mask#Requested move 13 October 2020. The reasons for changing the article name are quite technical, and a lot of people are citing WP:COMMONNAME for an article title that's not entirely accurate. Thanks. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 17:20, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:07, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Confused topic at meso-Butestrol

The meso-Butestrol article seems to be about two different compounds: one related to butane and the other instead related to valeronitrile. I can't access most of the medical-journal cites. Could someone please help identify what chemical is the actual topic here? DMacks (talk) 05:45, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Medgirl131 got it sorted. DMacks (talk) 15:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Which articles would be best for a virologist to give expert feedback on?

Hi all

As previously mentioned I've been offered a few hours of time from a senior virologist working on COVID to review some Wikipedia articles. Which articles would be best for them to review?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:38, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

High-traffic articles about information directly involving the virus and disease may be the best use of time. Coronavirus disease 2019, Coronavirus, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, COVID-19 vaccine, COVID-19 testing, COVID-19 drug development, Transmission of COVID-19 and maybe others if anyone else wants to suggest any. Velayinosu (talk) 01:14, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
Graham Beards, do you have any recommendations? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Stephen Hahn move request

There is a move request you may be interested in at Talk:Stephen Hahn (oncologist)#Requested move 18 October 2020.  Bait30  Talk 2 me pls? 05:53, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:30, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

New World Health Organization Content collaboration

Hi all. We are happy to announce a collaboration w/ World Health Organization to get open access media for Commons: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/10/22/world-health-organization-and-wikimedia-foundation-expand-access/. We need your help identifying useful files for improving coverage of COVID: please share ideas on the Collaboration page on Commons. This involved a lot of long-term behind the scene conversations with World Health Organization. Thank you for everyone involved, and please help us identify and use the content from the organization. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

very good news(I believe Doc James had pushed hard for this)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:46, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Indeed, and please make requests for Media on Commons both for COVID and other topics -- WHO is super interested in bringing Open Access media to Wikimedia Commons where appropriate and it is able. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, Doc James has been pushing for this kind of collaboration for years. It's a significant achievement. So far, only one editor has made a request on the talk page at Commons. Please, all, put on your thinking caps, look over your favorite articles (especially anything that relates COVID to Neglected tropical diseases, Diseases of poverty, and core Public health concerns – these are all areas where we've been historically weak and it's not easy for an editor to make relevant images), and make those requests. The more we ask for, the more we'll get. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
If you might be inspired by looking at images, then try these Google Search image results: [4] WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
This is great news indeed. As an example, WHO shared their Leprosy map image in Dec 2019, which is presently being used in Leprosy article.JenOttawa (talk) 01:05, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Medical question at fringe theories noticeboard

Any help from someone with medical expertise would be helpful.

Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Photobiomodulation

--Guy Macon (talk) 07:58, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

StatPearls

Maybe the members of this project already have heard of StatPearls, 7500+ articles covering a vast amount of medical subjects all published under a CC-BY licence. With a bit of rework and vulgarisation they would make a tremendous addition to Wikipedia. Tinss (talk) 04:43, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

They've been discussed here before. The general take as I recall was that they are of variable quality, but probably reliable enough for unsurprising claims/information (and where not contradicted by better sources). Alexbrn (talk) 08:42, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
After that discussion, I saw some others that weren’t great ... good for basics only. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
They probably have some useful comparison value, to see if there's anything significant that isn't covered in our articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Agree about both "useful comparison value" and "unsurprising claims/information". It can be really tricky to find MEDRS to source information which professionals might generally tend to take for granted, but need reliable medical sourcing here. (OT - I feel this sort of difference in target audience can sometimes pose real writing challenges for us: we're aiming to write for a lay/general readership, mainly following sourcing written very much for professionals.) 86.186.168.148 (talk) 18:36, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
In my experience editing in the anatomy space these seem to be halfway between study notes and a textbook, hence I am guessing the name 'statpearls'. Like other such study notes, my impression is they are mostly directed at helping the readers remember information that is considered basic, but not compiling a corpus of the most up to date or reliable information. So I don't personally think these make for a reliable source at all, much as I don't think eg "SparkNotes on King Lear" [5] should be used on King Lear. That isn't any reflection on the articles, which seem to be very easy to read and often educational, however I don't think they are suitable for use as reliable citations on this website. That however is just my two cents.--Tom (LT) (talk) 06:49, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

More eyes on Stamen Grigorov - today's Google Doodle

In this edit I removed a number of unsourced medical claims regarding clinical efficacy of yogurt for a variety of conditions, and the reasons for the therapeutic effects. I was surprised to see these in the article after clicking on today's Google Doodle. — soupvector (talk) 05:44, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

thanks for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:44, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Should we try a Collaboration of the Month?

Hi all. There's lots of interaction on this talk page – I'd guess it's one of the more active WikiProject talk pages remaining – but it seems to me there's relatively little collaborative editing among the regulars here (perhaps this is an illusion because I work on low-traffic pages that few others are interested in). So my question: would folks be interested in trialing a collaboration of the month? Basically we'd pick an article each month and try to blitz-improve it. Generate a quick to-do list, work together, leave it better than we found it. It looks like a similar effort existed in the past at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Collaboration_of_the_Month but has fallen inactive for the last five years. I'm in no way wedded to this idea, so if we do try it out and there's not much interest, we can just drop it again. Thoughts? Ajpolino (talk) 04:42, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I ran the Photo Challenge on Commons for a few years (and Jarekt has run it since), which has a Themes page where people can suggest themes for future challenges. The organiser then picks from popular choices, but it isn't some rigid democratic process like the medical page seems to be. Note also that the PC theme page allows negative votes (unlike the challenge itself, which is deliberately positive) and I think that is useful to allow people to comment about potential problems with an idea. I suggest, though, we don't overthink the voting for now, and just try to pick something people will find interesting to research and to read about. -- Colin°Talk 17:32, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

A reminder for all to list more nominations and endorse the nominations that you would find interesting to work on. In the interest of non-rigidity that Colin advocates above, if several nominations are tied for the lead (as is the case now), I'll pick my favorite tomorrow evening for us to run with for November. I'm known to have poor taste, so you may wish to "vote". Ajpolino (talk) 16:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Change redirect or merge?

Cardinal symptom redirects to symptom. But cardinal sign (pathology) is a separate article, and also lists cardinal symptoms as a synonym in boldface.

I'm not sure if the redirect needs changing, or if it's better to merge the shorter article into symptom. (There are likely other options that I've overlooked.) Can someone review, please? Little pob (talk) 12:26, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Medical sign is another possibility. IMO "cardinal" should at least be mentioned in both the 'symptom' and 'sign' articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

“Cardinal signs” in medicine usually refers to the five classical signs of inflammation as described in the Wikipedia article on inflammation. I do not think that the heading “cardinal sign (pathology)” is worthy of a Wikipedia page. It would just be the definition of “cardinal” with a link to inflammation. I am not sure why the word “pathology” is included in the heading. (I am a retired pathologist.) 2601:5C4:4300:A980:D849:4B16:400B:F7CC (talk) 19:16, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Went ahead and redirected cardinal sign page to its own section on Inflammation page. --Iztwoz (talk) 17:20, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Are there simple instructions for experts to provide feedback on medical articles?

Hi all

A quite senior virologist who works on Corona as well as other viruses has offered to contribute a few hours to improving Wikipedia articles. I know that there have been projects before to consult experts on medical content. Is there a set of simple instructions I can give him to provide feedback including which kinds of references are best/allowed on medical articles?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 17:03, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

John, as you doubtless know the relevant sourcing guideline here is WP:MEDRS. How simple the instructions are is subjective. But they're what we try to follow, and what we are ideally bound to follow. A major difference from more traditional academic (peer-review) medical writing is the fact that we are required to follow (mainly) *secondary* rather than primary sourcing: that's not what researchers are commonly used to, and it can cause misunderstandings. Another potential source of misunderstanding is that we aim for an encyclopedic voice (variously interpreted), and follow a style guide (WP:MEDMOS - including article structure, broadly per WP:MEDORDER) that differs quite substantially from usual practice for writing review articles in the peer-reviewed literature (plus, of course, the aspiration, especially in the LEAD section, to write for the general public). So that's another factor to bear in mind perhaps. 86.186.120.221 (talk) 17:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia might be helpful. @John Cummings, does the expert want to edit the articles directly, or just provide some suggestions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi @John Cummings: We have found that the following resource is a helpful place to start for medical experts transitioning from academic writing to improving Wikipedia as it contains some medical-specific suggestions for editing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikipedia_editing_for_medical_experts JenOttawa (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all for your replies so far, to clarify they are only offering to review articles, not write on Wikipedia directly, I would guess they are able to give 3 hours of time. Thanks again John Cummings (talk) 19:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Doc James has coordinated work like this in the past. An e-mail message with permission to post it might be effective, if you're willing to be an intermediary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
(That would save your expert the trouble of figuring out how to post anything on wiki.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: yes exactly, that's the plan, what I want to know is what was done before with this kind of thing and what guidance was given to the experts so they could give feedback that was usable. I really want to make the most of this opportunity to get feedback from someone who has a deep understanding of corona. My main questions are around giving very clear and simple guidance on what sources can be used and what kind of thing we could ask them to help improve the articles e.g what's missing, what is out of date, what is ambiguous or poorly worded etc, I'm wondering if there are any existing academic practices that are analogous to a Wikipedia article review that they know and could go through. John Cummings (talk) 21:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
It's hard for editors to identify things that are missing or over-emphasized. We can usually spot confusing text, but we have trouble seeing what we've stated with greater certainty than warranted.
Recommending sources would be helpful, especially when they understand what we're looking for (in this case, review articles). One of the problems with COVID-19 articles is that there are so many sources that it's difficult to find the good ones. So, e.g., feedback like "Re-write Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2#Reservoir and zoonotic origin with sources A, B, and C; avoid any source from the first half of 2020 in that section" would probably be helpful. (Word-for-word suggested changes are desirable, too, but I'm betting that there won't be enough time for that.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:43, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks very much @WhatamIdoing:, super helpful, I'll let you know how I get on. What would be the best format to share the feedback in? Here? On the article talk page? Something else? I don't have a good enough knowledge of the topic to be able to integrate the feedback myself. John Cummings (talk) 19:26, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi @WhatamIdoing: and @DocJames: I know I've seen published academic papers on this work before but can't find it, do you know where they are? Thanks very much for your help. Also any suggestions of which articles he as a virologist could review. John Cummings (talk) 14:24, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Are you looking for the list that @Doc James created at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research publications? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks very much @WhatamIdoing:. John Cummings (talk) 09:57, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
@John Cummings I am a little late to this party but I would suggest a good venue is either on an article's talk page, or to create a peer review and place all the expert feedback in a single place there. Very supportive of what you're doing. --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:45, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
@Tom (LT): thanks very much indeed, I wasn't aware of the peer review pages, really useful. One thing I'm unsure how to do is to provide 'proof' that the feedback comes from a specific person with knowledge. John Cummings (talk) 09:30, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
I think at the end of the day there will have to be some element of trust involved, however I hope your expert's opinion will also be in line with most recent evidence and providing that sort of very useful feedback, so their expertise will be easy to demonstrate / verify in that sense. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi User:John Cummings, I would not think that you would need proof. All evidence added to Wikipedia would be treated the same, no matter who was adding it. Is this not correct? One approach you could consider is to add the minor improvement suggestions directly to the article and share anything major on the talk page first for a few days. Or share all in the article along with associated references (prehaps consider mutiple small edits explaining what you are doing, rather than one large edit) and then the normal Wikipedia process of community consensus/tweaking by wikipedia editors could be carried out. If there is a debate it would be brought to the talk page as usual and people could share their points using summaries of the high-quality evidence that is available. Ultimately that is the point of requiring citations supporting every sentence- experts are amazing as they can point to errors in interpreting evidence, gaps in the articles, incorrect weighting of evidence, and lead us to high-quality sources. Even an expert cannot add information to the article that is not backed by a high-quality source. Does anyone have anything to add? JenOttawa (talk) 00:53, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Draft:List of countries by prevalence of circumcision and female genital mutilation

Could somebody take a look at Draft:List of countries by prevalence of circumcision and female genital mutilation. It was supposed to be split into two articles (see AfD), but nobody got around to doing that, so it languished in draftspace until the G13 clock expired. Splitting it is easy, but it needs a SME to look at it more carefully and verify the sourcing and that there's no WP:OR, and I'm not qualified to do that. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:04, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Pinging SlimVirgin... WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. I left my opinion here during the AfD. SarahSV (talk) 21:48, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
↑ She's the expert. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:24, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Advanced Nursing Process

Hi! I was wondering if someone would be willing to help Mehwei with Draft:Advanced Nursing Process. I declined it since it came across as non-neutral in tone. It also needs some general help with organizing and preseting the information. I have some passing familiarity with medical related topics due to my work with Wiki Ed and my previous jobs, but I think it would be good to have someone with more familiarity with MEDRS help them as well. I didn't look too deeply into the sourcing since the style was the most pressing concern, but it looks like the draft does rely heavily on studies as sourcing which would pose an issue. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

might be best to blank and start from scratch...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:14, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Journal of Healthcare Management up for deletion

Normally I'd let WP:AALERTS handle this, but it wasn't tagged with {{WP Medicine}} until today, and the discussion is already a few days old. Posting a notice to let the project knows about the discussion before it's too late to opine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Headbomb, thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:10, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
@Ozzie10aaaa: you didn't comment there BTW. Did you mean to? It could use more eyes from WP:MED editors. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
thank you for pointing that out, I have now[6]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Dopamine fasting

This article could use some work. First though, is it supposed to be a biomed article or a pop culture article? Natureium (talk) 23:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Both? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I present to you, the worse paper on COVID yet

I don't know if any of you have clout with Elsevier / Science of the Total Environment, or just know how to ask for retractions, but this is an impressively terrible paper.

  • Bility, Moses Turkle; Agarwal, Yash; Ho, Sara; Castronova, Isabella; Beatty, Cole; Biradar, Shivkumar; Narala, Vanshika; Periyapatna, Nivitha; Chen, Yue; Nachega, Jean (2020). "Can Traditional Chinese Medicine provide insights into controlling the COVID-19 pandemic: Serpentinization-induced lithospheric long-wavelength magnetic anomalies in Proterozoic bedrocks in a weakened geomagnetic field mediate the aberrant transformation of biogenic molecules in COVID-19 via magnetic catalysis". Science of the Total Environment: 142830. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142830. PMC 7543923. PMID 33071142.

From the highlights:

Highlights

  • Lethal COVID-19-like disease with SARS-CoV-2-like infection in a rat colony.
  • Severe COVID-19 outbreaks are coupled to serpentinization-associated water dynamics.
  • Severe COVID-19 outbreaks are coupled with magnetic anomalies in Proterozoic cratons.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic is coupled to dynamics in the geosphere via magnetic catalysis.
  • Nephrite-Jade amulets, a calcium-ferromagnesian silicate, may prevent COVID-19.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:27, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month returns with Tonsillitis!

To follow-up the thread above, we'll be bringing back the MED collaboration of the month by focusing our efforts on tonsillitis! Perhaps we can put together a to-do list at Talk:Tonsillitis and see if we can quickly improve that article. I think a reasonable goal is that we bring it to a place where it meets the good article criteria. If we can bring it past that line, all the more power to us. Please continue to suggest nominations for future months (and endorse existing nominations) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month#Nominations. For those who would like a visual reminder, I'll be updating {{CurrentMCOTW}} each month for now. Thanks all for your input! I'm excited to give this a try. Cheers. Ajpolino (talk) 21:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I already see some edits to the article from Colin, JenOttawa, Graham Beards, Spicy, and SandyGeorgia. There are a couple of sources linked on the talk page, if you want an easy way to join in, or you can help out by reading a section and either cleaning it up or leaving a note about what needs to be improved. (I'd better get busy planning my own edits!) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
This page has been strangely quiet since election day in the US.
I've made a few edits to the article, and I encourage you to join in. Also, if anyone knows anything about the boundaries between tonsillitis–tonsillopharyngitis–pharyngitis, then please leave a note on the talk page. Even unsourced "the way I've always heard it" comments might be helpful, as this is largely a question of Wikipedia:Editorial judgement about which things to put in which articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata DLB LBD error

Who speaks Wikidata? Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is linking to Lewy body dementia (LBD) on wikidata; they are two different things. How do I disassociate DLB from the wrong page, LBD? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:22, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

RexxS does, but he's busy recovering.
@Jasper Deng or @ChristianKl, could you help us out? I believe that DLB is a confusingly named subtype of LBD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes ... utterly stupid naming of the conditions (making the articles very hard to write). Thanks, WAID, for pinging in those who speak Wikidata. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:18, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: I would argue that the English label for the item of DLB is the wrong thing here. If the linkage is wrong we need to remove the sitelinks on the existing items and reassign them accordingly.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:01, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the help, Jasper Deng but since I have no idea how Wikidata works, I don’t understand what you are saying. I only know there is a hidden error category populated at the DLB article, and when I clicked the wikidata link in the tool bar, it took me to an LBD wikidata page that was wrong. I just want the hidden error category to go away at dementia with Lewy bodies, because wikidata is wrong. Perhaps you can explain to me what I need to do, but I don’t speak the language ... I do not know how wikidata entries are created or how they are linked back to en.wiki. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:40, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
It seems like Wikidata currently has only d:Q1331905 which is apparently about "Lewy body dementia". It doesn't have an item about "Dementia with Lewy bodies" (d:Q57306397 is something different). So I figure the solution would be to create such a new item with d:Special:NewItem and then copy the stuff on Q1331905 that is about "Dementia with Lewy bodies" to this new item. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
  • It's a bigger mess at Wikidata. Likely partly becaause Human Disease Ontology treats the two terms as synonyms. Thanks for pinging me. I'm trying to sort it out.
I'm searching for some existing identifier for "Dementia with Lewy bodies". Can someone tell me whether "ICD-11: 6D82 Dementia due to Lewy body disease" is the same as as ""Dementia with Lewy bodies"? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:56, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, ChristianK1. I am not well versed in how to use ICD-11, and I can find no good reliable sources explaining how they came to these decisions, but it looks to me like they have broken it out thusly:

  • 08 Diseases of the nervous system
    • Movement disorders
      • 8A00 Parkinsonism
        • 8A00.0 Parkinson disease

and

  • 08 Diseases of the nervous system
    • Disorders with neurocognitive impairment as a major feature
      • 8A22 Lewy body disease
        • 6D82 Dementia due to Lewy body disease

So we can speculate since they separated out PDD that 6D82 is intended to be specific to dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), but we can't be certain that 8A22 corresponds to Lewy body dementia (LBD) because the underlying problem here is that PDD and DLB are only distinguished by timing. I guess that works for billing, but it doesn't give an accurate reflection that PDD is an LBD. The pieces are all there, but the tree doesn't work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:01, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Swinging light test

Hi guys, just wanted to see if there is consensus that, for an international subject, it makes sense to use its international name, rather than a regional name. What prompted this is that the article about the swinging light test (personally, I call it the swinging torch test) is under the name swinging flashlight test, which is American only. I didn't know only Americans could get Marcus Gunn pupil :) Anyway, discussion here if you're interested. Dr. Vogel (talk) 10:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

The name that should be used is one most found in English language sources. Ruslik_Zero 19:22, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Sandbox organiser

Sandbox Organiser

A place to help you organise your work

Hi all

I've made something for people like me who have a lot of half finished sandboxes to help be a bit more organised and play around with the idea of having a wiki page that works a bit like the apps menu on your computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:John_Cummings/sandbox

If you'd like your own there's some instructions down the bottom on how to copy it (just find and replace my name in the wikicode with yours) but also feel free to poke around on my one to see how it works.

All feedback very welcome, ideas for making things clearer, new sections, etc, the instructions (at the bottom) need some work so feel free to ask questions there or here or wherever. I'm not sure where to put it yet as a tool people can use, any ideas?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 18:19, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

very useful--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:09, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Agreed, thanks for sharing this template! JenOttawa (talk) 18:28, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Image sourced to predatory journal in Lymphoma, Extrapulmonary tuberculosis, Peritoneal carcinomatosis

In Lymphoma, there is this bit

Lymphoma may appear as peritoneal lymphomatosis, as can be seen on CT scan. This image depicts non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a 17-year-old who is HIV positive. A. Irregular homogenously enhancing wall thickening involving the ileocaecal region with aneurysmal dilatation of involved segments (curved arrow). B. Hepatosplenomegaly with liver metastasis (white arrows).[1]
  1. ^ Subhaschandra Singh, Y. Sobita Devi, Shweta Bhalothia and Veeraraghavan Gunasekaran (2016). "Peritoneal Carcinomatosis: Pictorial Review of Computed Tomography Findings". International Journal of Advanced Research. 4 (7): 735–748. doi:10.21474/IJAR01/936. ISSN 2320-5407.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CC-BY 4.0

Which is sourced to a predatory journal. I'll leave it to MED people to decide if this is OK, or if this is something WP:MEDRS-related. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:15, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

With similar issues in Extrapulmonary tuberculosis and Peritoneal carcinomatosis (search for '10.21474' or use WP:UPSD to highlight them). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:21, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

If you've made 500 edits and have been around for at least six months, and you like to put decent sources into articles, then please head right over to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/partners/67/ log in with the little white button in the upper left corner, and then click the big blue "Apply" button on the right. Tell them you're from WikiProject Medicine and want to use their sources to improve these articles. There are currently 57 subscriptions available to good Wikipedia editors for free.

If you're not sure whether you'll use them (maybe you're thinking that it's obviously a good idea, but will you remember to check it, etc.?), then you can request access for a few months and try it out. Please try it out. We need more editors with access to these sources.

There are also some other sources available for instant access. You can reach those by going to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org and clicking on "Log in".

If there is a particular publisher that you're interested, it might already be in the list, but if it's not, then Samwalton9 (WMF) wants links to whatever you're having trouble getting copies of, and work-me will cheerfully bug him for you if you ask me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Please help monitor article changes by this WikiEd course

Hello. this WikiEd course is ramping up with 60 students about to begin editing articles in LGBT-related subjects, which can be a controversial topic, and which may be under ArbCom discretionary sanctions. Most of these are not MED-related, but I count four or five that are, or that have med-related aspects. We need volunteers to add a few articles to their watchlist to help keep this on track, and to help provide assistance to student editors as needed.

Can you help? Please see the course watchlist sign-up sheet at WT:LGBT#Heads up about new CSUC WikiEd course and check off a few boxes. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:20, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

LGBT-related subjects are important to us all, I will try to keep an eye on one or two as time permits--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:44, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
These articles in particular have an obvious connection to health:
If you have time, please keep an eye out for these. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

What's the status of the Translation Task Force

Does anyone know the status of the Translation Task Force? If it's still active (and I hope it is somewhere in some form), is it still using the organizational system on this site? I'm asking because I noticed Talk:Buruli ulcer has a This article is supported by the Translation task force note on the WP:MED banner and is in categories Category:WikiProject Medicine Translation Task Force articles, Category:GA-Class WikiProject Medicine Translation Task Force articles, and Category:High-importance WikiProject Medicine Translation Task Force articles. If the task force is still using the categories here, could someone briefly explain to me the plan (what makes things various importances? Are articles marked because they're marked for future translation? Or are they marked because they've already been translated? Etc.)? I'm happy to help categorize articles in whatever way is useful as I come across them. But right now, I'm not sure what is useful. Also if the task force has moved completely to WP Med Foundation and isn't using those categories anymore, perhaps we can update the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force to let interested folks know where they can go to help. Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 19:12, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Just a note that my question was answered by Bluerasberry at the task force's talk page. Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 18:15, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Problems with replacing older Cochrane Review

I recently rewrote the Mumps article and intentionally did not use this review because its full text is not yet freely available. Instead I used the older version of the review twice (reference 31). A bot tagged the older review as needing to be updated and another user has tried replacing the older review with the newer one. By replacing the older review, the second instance in which I use the older review seemingly becomes unsourced / fails verification. The first instance can be sourced from the abstract alone, but I do not have access to the full text of the new review so I cannot check if the cited text for the second instance is in the new review. And if the content is not, then would there still be efforts to replace the older review if it is still used in the future? Also, when the older review was replaced with the newer one, a citation format different from the article's was used, creating inconsistency. These issues may be occurring on other articles too. Velayinosu (talk) 01:59, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Velayinosu I can access the full text, and I don't have any subscriptions with journals. Perhaps this is a UK-only thing like the BNF only being available in the UK? Have you tried talking to the person who updated the review citation. Perhaps they are happy all the text meets verification with the new source, even though you can't see it. -- Colin°Talk 18:39, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
I am able to access the full text, and the second claim (a decline from 160 cases per 100,000 to 17 per 100,000 per year in England was observed from 1989 to 1995) is not verified by the newer version. The source says After the introduction of MMR vaccine in 1988 for children aged 13 to 15 months with a catch‐up campaign for preschool‐aged children, the annual incidence of measles declined sharply in England and Wales, from 160/100,000 in 1989 to 17/100,000 in 1995., i.e. the same exact claim but about measles, not mumps. TompaDompa (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
The older review cites PMID 9046125 for this information and that article is about mumps. What reference does the new review use? Velayinosu (talk) 00:41, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
Gay 1997 (not the same "Gay 1997" as was used in the older review) and Ramsay 2003. Those are both about measles. TompaDompa (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

CBC Mainpage

Spicy is on: Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 12, 2020. Watchlist to help with corrections, pls :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:03, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RFCs and a Peer review request

There are several discussions that want your opinions. Please see if you can comment in at least one of them:

One of the services that this group is able to provide is getting good answers to people who are asking for help. Ten minutes spent answering a question can make a really significant difference to Wikipedia's contents and the community as a whole. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Help with Review of Biologist

I’ve made a number of proposals to substantially improve the article about Martha G. Welch, a Professor of Psychiatry in Pediatrics and in Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. I can’t implement these myself since I have a conflict of interest. Could someone in the project take a look at the requests? Please scroll to the revised requests about mid-way down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Martha_G._Welch#Request_Edits_October_2020 Thank you very much.KnollLane55901 (talk) 16:03, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

KnollLane55901, please copy this request to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red. They work with BLPs more than this group does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

MEDRS for Ivermectin vs COVID-19

A bunch of editors are adding material from current preprints ivermectin related to human testing against the current pandemic. That's nowhere near MEDRS, right? I think the most we can keep a general statement that it's being tested, and FDA (and other governmental guidance) regarding its use. DMacks (talk) 11:06, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that's been our typical approach.
Whenever media lights up with a particular detail, I have found it useful to mention whatever the new thing is. Once it's in the article, no matter how little you say about it, less-experienced people stop trying to stick it in there. Consequently, I encourage you to find some way of mentioning this without claiming efficacy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
There's an effort to retrospectively aggregate drug-repurposing data going on at UPenn discussed here that might deserve some attention. The recursive meta-acronym of "COvid Registry of Off-label & New Agents" is too cute by half, but the idea itself seems valuable. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic § Remove duplicated content

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic § Remove duplicated content. Important discussion relating to the treatment of viruses and pandemics such as HIV/AIDS. This could set precedent for the treatment of other viruses so more input is welcome. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  talk 10:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

At FAC

Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment

This template that provides advance notice of student editing is under consideration for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 November 17 #Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment. As we've regularly discussed the impact of student editing on MED articles, the discussion may be of interest to this WikiProject. --RexxS (talk) 21:22, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Rare disease in the news

Angiomatoid fibrous histiocytoma is quite a short article that is probably getting a lot of views right now, in case anyone would like to edit it. A 14 year old inspirational and famous person recently died of the disease, and his story is in the news.[7] Biosthmors (talk) 19:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Page views are up substantially. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Categorization of public health advisories/orders/warnings/bulletins/recommendations

Where do we want to put things like boil-water advisory AKA boil-water warning, any articles on our presently near-ubiquitous COVID-19-related orders and recommendations, and any specific health-authority issuances/proclamations that are individually notable? We don't seem to have a category for this. For now, I put Boil-water advisory in Category:Health campaigns for lack of a better place, but this seems inadequate, and many of the documents are not campaign-like, but short-term and local.

Side question: is there an appropriate general legal/regulatory/public-policy wikiproject or taskforce/workgroup thereof whose project banner should appear on the talk pages of such articles? It seems weird that Talk:Boil-water advisory has no project tag but WP:MED's, despite the topic involving a lot of regulatory matters, social-justice concerns, economics, etc. (though our miserable stub on the topic doesn't get into much of that yet).

Hell, I'm not even sure what stub tags to put on this (there's not one I know of for this kind of document). While {{watersupply-stub}} was obvious as topically connected to this article in particular, it's unclear whether {{pathology-stub}} or {{infectious-disease-stub}} would make more sense (I think one would because BWA's are about micro-organisms, not toxins). I'm going to guess at pathology. But the stub cats. are confusing: Category:Parasite stubs is a subcat. of Category:Pathology stubs, but is the only subcat.; I would have expected to also see bacteria, viruses, etc. in there. I do find them in Category:Microbiology stubs, and that might be a valid stub cat. for this particular article as well.

Meanwhile, it still is not stub-categorized (or just plain categorized, or project-tagged) in any way as a legal, governmental/regulatory, social, political, or document-type topic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Seems like we'd want a new category Category:Health advisory for this and perhaps a corresponding stub tag. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
(ec)I don't typically think about categories, so my ideas here may be a bit off. Poking around, I don't see a current category that makes much sense. Maybe we could start a Category:Public health measures as a subcategory of... Category:Public health (there's not really something like Category:Government actions I can find)? Other articles that would go into such a category seem to be wanting in the categories department now: Water fluoridation belongs only to Category:Water fluoridation. Vaccination only to Category:Vaccination and Category:Biotechnology. Food fortification only to Category:Food additives.
To your side question: not that I know of. Wikipedia:WikiProject Water is focused on the water supply (but is currently inactive) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Sanitation (currently a one-person operation I think) jump to mind. But I can't recall seeing something focused on the legal/regulatory side (Wikipedia:WikiProject Law seems like a stretch). No opinion on stub-sorting. Ajpolino (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
I assume that Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management would also be interested in this article, but in practice, most WikiProjects are very small or inactive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
They are, though they still serve their purposes. Even old lists of participating editors can help find people to consult with, and the categorization of the project tags do is often very useful (e.g. for finding articles in a topic that "Important" but still "Stub" or "Start").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:39, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
Another obvious example is Stay-at-home order. It is only categorized as related to COVID-19, disaster management, quarantines, and "domestic" (i.e. national) responses. It's not a stub, so stub-tagging is irrelevant, but its talk page has no Med (nor legal/politics) project tagging, only COVID-19 and disaster management.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Technical help with part of the project page

Hi all, I'm looking for someone with some technical know-how to let me know if something is possible. Our main project page has a Collaboration of the Month section, which just prints whatever is at this subpage. Right now, the section is a blurb about the collaboration of the month alongside a picture that cycles through three options. I'm wondering if instead the section could automatically display the first photo from whatever the current collaboration of the month is. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current displays the title of the current collaboration (and I'll update that when we choose the current collaboration each month). So my question in short: if I feed something a page name, can it return the first image from that page? Or is this impossible/not worth the time to implement? Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 02:31, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I am pretty sure I know where those images are set ... give me a minute or twenty. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Ha, I should know where they are set; I created the page (whatadork). But I copied Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/MCOTM from elsewhere, and put in images from past collaborations. We could manually change it to the one monthly image, unless someone else knows how to make it automatically grab the main image from the article chosen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
I know how to do that, and I'm feeling well enough to have a go at writing some code for you tomorrow (it's a bit late here). Cheers --RexxS (talk) 03:02, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ajpolino and SandyGeorgia: I've made Template:Findimage.

There are multiple ways of putting images into articles, and I've checked for [[File: and [[Image: as well as infoboxes that use |image= and galleries. Here are examples from Brushing (e-commerce), Coat of arms of Haiti and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/MCOTM:

  • {{Findimage |Brushing (e-commerce)}} → Suspicious seed package.jpg
  • {{Findimage |Coat of arms of Haiti}} → Coat of arms of Haiti.svg
  • {{Findimage |Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/MCOTM)}} →

If you find any others that the code doesn't pick up, please let me know. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, RexxS; since you are back among the living, I am going to leave this to you as I am so busy elsewhere, Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
(ec) Amazing! I hope you'll forgive me the need for just a bit more handholding: I want Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/MCOTM (the module on the project page) to display an image from the current article of the month (whose title is update at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current). Being a technical ignoramus, I try {{Findimage |Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}} but that gives me an error (presumably because there's no image on that page). So I try {{Findimage |{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}}}} and {{Findimage |{{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}}}} but of course neither works. So I think now I just need to know how to make the contents of a page appear within a template without making the template explode. Ajpolino (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ajpolino: You get the contents of a page by using WP:Transclusion, so:
To get the image, we use {{findimage}} on the contents (which must be a page name or you'll get nothing):
  • {{Findimage |{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}} }} → Copd.JPG
Then you can use the filename however you want. For example:
  • [[File:{{Findimage|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}}}} |thumb |upright=0.5 |COTM image]] →
    COTM image
See wp:Image syntax for more options on using images. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:53, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Ah ok, I'm almost there. Last thing, if I use your syntax, I can get that image, which is super. But if I try to preserve Sandy's image formatting and place the whole thing inside her div/gallery tags, I get no image. So if I provide the image name directly:
<div style="float:right;width:30%;"> <gallery mode="packed-overlay" heights="150"> File:Pos strep.JPG|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}} </gallery> </div>
it works fine (shown at right), but putting it all together as
<div style="float:right;width:30%;"> <gallery mode="packed-overlay" heights="150"> File:{{Findimage|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}}}}|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month/current}} </gallery> </div>
Gives me no image. The page I'm looking at is here. Does this trick not work inside the gallery/div tag? Certainly, the styling is not essential and I'm happy just using a smaller thumb as you've done above. Thank you for the much-needed explanations!! Ajpolino (talk) 20:34, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
@Ajpolino: The gallery tag has problems in the order it parses text when templates and Lua modules are called. Using Template:Gallery usually solves the problem (it has good documentation). I've added that to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/MCOTM page, Please feel free to play with the parameters to get the effects you want. Ping me if you get more problems. --RexxS (talk) 22:03, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Fabulous! It looks great. Thank you for all the help. Ajpolino (talk) 22:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Pandemrix: People probably have an opinion on this.

Hey, I just read about the pandemrix case while reading about the association between narcolepsy and h1n1 vaccine when listening to a bbc program about vaccination. I wrote about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination#Side_effects.

I imagine this is something people might have opinions on.

Talpedia (talk) 23:10, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Talpedia, I think it's in the wrong article. Why don't you split it out to its own page? There has never yet been a vaccine on the market that didn't meet the WP:GNG easily. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
I think it deserves a mention in the vaccine safety section. The fact that vaccines have showed differential rates of adverse outcomes seems quite relevant to the question of vaccine safety in general - because it is quite suggestive that vaccines can have rare but real side effects - often those of the disease they protect against it seems. Obviously WP:DUE applies. How about something like "Different vaccines for the same disease can have different rates adverse events and this has resulted in legal action. An example of this was Pandemrix, a vaccine for H1N1.", and then moving this section into the Pandemrix article? Talpedia (talk) 03:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Certainly adverse outcomes and their variability should be mentioned. However, there are vaccines with much more significant side effects than this one. Off hand, there was that disastrous flu vaccine in the 1970s that left some people paralyzed, and the dengue scandal in the Philippines, and the yellow fever vaccine whose side effects can be so bad that some travelers wonder whether the (usually small) chance of yellow fever might actually be a better alternative.
Also, completely apart from that, we should probably have an article on every vaccine that was ever marketed, or at least have a list of them all. This particular one probably has more to do with Influenza vaccine than with Vaccination in general, but I still think that you should start by splitting it into its own articlee. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Okay, that's a pretty compelling argument. I'll see if I can dig up the dengue fever case and add something high-level that links to a few cases. Talpedia (talk) 09:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
I've added a more general discussion of "post-trial adverse outcomes". Comments welcome! Talpedia (talk) 11:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Tidying up an infectious diseases navbox

Hi all, I'd like some help tidying up this navbox (I have cross posted at WP:COVID).

I have come across this navbox and find it particularly difficult / ugly - the sections are weighted weirdly, the structure makes me worry there are missing topics, and some sections such as "Transmission" seem to be a long list that could be structured in a more easy to understand way. Unfortunately I don't have a great broad understanding of this area enough to make some changes to this navbox, and thought editors here might be able to have a look. Thanks, I hope! --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:43, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

This may be just a spurt of morning pessimism but I'm having trouble imagining a more complete version of this navbox that doesn't become bloated and enormous. I'm not sure what the selection criteria were for the infectious agents, but clearly many many other common agents exist. If we must have a navbox, I might suggest splitting it three separate navboxes: a "Human infectious agents" box (perhaps there's a clearer way to phrase that; I mean bugs that infect humans), a "Concepts in infectious disease" box, and a third "People in infectious disease" box (which could be split either by time, occupation, or something else). Ajpolino (talk) 15:39, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't know that we need to aim for completeness. Trimming it could also be an option. I wouldn't be opposed to simply reverting to this version and adding COVID-19. TompaDompa (talk) 17:03, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Tom (LT), hello again. Primary thing I notice is that this navbox is titled as if it's an "overview" but then includes multiple examples of specific infections. I think the first step is going to be to remove examples of specific infections and limit it to the headings for types (bacteria, virus, etc). It actually may be a good idea to organize it at the top level by bacteria, virus, fungus, parasite - then you can have the next level separate into medications/associated people/etc. The alternative, as others have hinted at, is splitting - but I'd recommend splitting based on infectious organism types (ex: "Infectious bacteria" or "Bacterial infectious diseases" or similar). Regards -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 17:15, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
For better or worse, my opinion is we need a targeted navbox (eg as proposed above or below by myself and others) or none at all. A navbox that is simply "Infectious bacteria" will in a few years time end up being humongous. --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I also think that splitting is a plausible approach to this navbox, or just cutting. Do we *need* to have biographies in a navbox at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm glad it's not just me scratching my head over this one! Thanks everyone for your comments. How does this sound, taking into account the views above:
A Concepts in infectious disease navbox (@Ajpolino I think this is a great idea)
A History of infectious diseases navbox with "people" and "historically significant infections" as well as some general links eg History of emerging infectious diseases (nb. renaming discussion in process). ("People in infectious diseases" is, to me, a weird title as essentially we are listing them because they are historically notable in the context of infectious diseases) --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:31, 26 October 2020 (UTC) ADDIT: alternatives might just be something like Significant infectious causes of disease or Infectious agents causing significant outbreaks - this would provide some useful links between Cholera, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Influenza because of their current and historically significant spread. --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
That seems like a good idea, especially combined with WhatamIdoing's suggestion of how to heavily trim this navbox, seen below. TompaDompa (talk) 11:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
I feel that we could remove the "people" section, which is better suited to articles about the history of medicine/infectology, and add some basic stuff that we're missing such as pneumonia and UTIs. I quite like the structure otherwise. I think the other thing that is missing is some kind of hint or visual cue to the unexperienced reader that the items we're listing are just some common examples of each thing and we're not being exhaustive. Dr. Vogel (talk) 08:44, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
We could maybe add links to the most common types of diseases, but I'm not sure that it should be in the same (large) navbox. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Adding things like pneumonia is a bad idea. It would necessitate starting over from scratch with the layout and contents. The diseases the navbox currently includes have a single causative agent, but pneumonia is a condition that can be caused by several different infectious agents. There is Bacterial pneumonia such as Pneumococcal pneumonia, Fungal pneumonia such as Pneumocystis pneumonia, Viral pneumonia, and Parasitic pneumonia. TompaDompa (talk) 06:00, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking of linking to the pneumonia article. Dr. Vogel (talk) 06:23, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Right, but there's nowhere to put that link with the current layout. It's not bacteriology, virology, mycology, or parasitology. We'd have to change the entire layout. TompaDompa (talk) 06:38, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely. How about we put just the 2 most common causes (bacterial and viral) in the corresponding boxes? We're not being exhaustive anyway, and I don't really want to leave pneumonia out of this just because it has more than one cause. Dr. Vogel (talk) 20:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
Your suggestion kind of changes the scope of the navbox. I think the suggestion below is better. We'll just end up with all possible clinical manifestations of infections otherwise. TompaDompa (talk) 21:06, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I've been thinking about simplification this way:

Maybe we could do something similar for "Concepts", and remove the people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

That looks great to me. As far as a separate "Significant infectious agents" navbox that Tom (LT) mentioned above. I agree that "significant" was probably the intended inclusion criterion for the diseases listed above. If we do decide to have such a box going forward, perhaps we could have a brief discussion somewhere on which diseases fit that bill. It feels odd to apply the same label to Tuberculosis/AIDS as Tinea/Amoebic dissentary. Ajpolino (talk) 16:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
That looks good, especially if we also create a "Concepts in infectious disease" navbox and a "History of infectious diseases" navbox per Tom (LT) above. TompaDompa (talk) 11:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
I implemented the change. TompaDompa (talk) 23:41, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Concepts in infectious disease navbox

Above, creating a "Concepts in infectious disease" navbox was suggested. Here's a rough first draft of how it could look. @Tom (LT), Ajpolino, Berchanhimez, WhatamIdoing, and DrVogel: What do you think? TompaDompa (talk) 19:23, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

TompaDompa, I think that's great start. I would recommend finding a way to shorten the phrase "emerging infectious disease" as it makes the entire "header column" wider because it's long. I'd also recommend adding a "types" - to include the types of pathogens (bacteria, virus, fungi, parasites, etc) - likely this would be best as the first one, followed by transmission, followed by medication. I can make the edits to your mockup if you'd like, or if you'd like to discuss/work on it yourself that's fine too. All in all I think this provides a basis for how we can move forward. I note that the "disciplines and pathogens" will now be separated.. I think they should be included in "concepts" - and the original template (Template:Infectious disease) turned into a sidebar such as is present on things like Donald Trump or similar. That way the disciplines are still present in the navbox but can also be featured more prominently towards the top of the article. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:42, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Hi TompaDompa, I think your concept for the concepts box is great. A couple of comments:
  • we should include agents (bacteria, virii, etc)
  • we may or may not want to combine the rows for agents and medications. Something like "bacteria (antibiotics), viruses (antivirals), ...". Or perhaps as 2 separate rows.
  • I think we may want to include all the elements from the chain of infection (agent, reservoir, portal of exit, mode of transmission, portal of entry, susceptible host)
Dr. Vogel (talk) 22:13, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
I think that looks great! Since this is just a question of taste I'll share my quibbly opinions. Ignore all you wish. If you wish to shorten "Emerging infectious diseases" (per Berchanimez's suggestion), perhaps "Emerging infections" gets the point across? I'd lose the extra parentheses around "Reverse zoonosis" – it's still an example of cross-species transmission. If you choose to include the pathogen types (which I don't think completely necessary), I'd suggest just using the line from the {{Infectious disease}} template above. As far as adding things, I find navboxes' usefulness to be inversely proportional to the number of links in them (too many links, and it's a sea of blue words I don't bother reading). I think you've done an excellent job picking a fairly minimal set of "concepts"; I'd add more only with caution. Also I'll have to disagree with the suggestion above about turning {{Infectious disease}} into a sidebar. Sidebars are fairly prominent on articles, and I don't think its appropriate for articles like Bacteriology, Mycology, etc. that are much broader topics than just their role in infectious disease to have such a prominent sidebar. All that said, you've done the heavy lifting here. I don't think anyone will fault you for splitting disagreements to whatever your own preference is. Thanks for all the work on this! Ajpolino (talk) 22:28, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Seeing as people seem to like this draft, I created Template:Concepts in infectious disease and implemented a few of the suggestions above. Feel free to edit that one. I might create a draft for a "History of infectious disease" navbox later. TompaDompa (talk) 22:49, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

History of infectious disease navbox

Above, creating a "History of infectious disease" navbox was suggested. Here's a (very) rough first draft of how it could look. A few thoughts of my own:

  • I'm not sure what to call the first row. "History of individual diseases" would perhaps be a bit long, methinks. "History of..." is a potential solution, but feels a bit unprofessional. I welcome your suggestions.
  • With regards to the people, we have to decide how inclusive we want to be – the only two people I think have to be included here are Fleming and Jenner, all others could be debated. I personally think Credé, for instance, can be cut. Nightingale is also more associated with nursing in general than infectious disease, specifically. Especially when it comes to people who made microbiological contributions such as Pasteur, we could potentially include an enormous number of people—starting with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and including Alexander Ogston, George Miller Sternberg, Theodor Escherich, Barry Marshall, and so on—so we have to limit ourselves.
  • In the list of epidemics, I included the three deadliest ones and added COVID-19 (mostly because it would be such a conspicuous omission if I didn't). This means the epidemics that are listed here all have different causative agents. I'm not exactly opposed to adding the Plague of Justinian (which would be the fourth-deadliest one according to List of epidemics) or e.g. the Hong Kong flu and/or the 1957–1958 influenza pandemic, but then we would have multiple ones caused by the same(-ish) infectious agent, and I worry that that would result in an excessive number of epidemics being added over time. There's no point in duplicating Template:Epidemics.
  • I considered adding a "Timeline" row, for articles such as Timeline of peptic ulcer disease and Helicobacter pylori, Timeline of human vaccines, Timeline of antibiotics, Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic, Timeline of HIV/AIDS, and so on. Those articles are kind of bad, however, so I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

@Tom (LT), Ajpolino, Berchanhimez, WhatamIdoing, and DrVogel: What do you think? TompaDompa (talk) 01:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I personally think that looks fantastic. Like you say there are a lot of tricky elements to discuss but I think your approach and the contents here are really spot on. --Tom (LT) (talk) 05:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I created Template:History of infectious disease with a reduced number of people included (that way, the "people" row isn't way wider than the rest). TompaDompa (talk) 12:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Expert help needed: Gamal Esmat

Hello everyone,

I am trying to de-orphan the page of Prof. Gamal Esmat which is supposed to be a famous hepatologist and a Board Member of the strategic and technical advisory committee for viral hepatitis (STAC-Hep) from WHO. Unfortunately I am not able to find any meaningful and reliable source in order to back up this (and other) statements, given that I mostly found researches about hepatology under his name.

Since my field of work is in the IT I do not feel qualified with carrying on looking for sources myself, but rather than nominating this article for deletion point blank I would like to hear a second (or third) opinion in this matter.

Would someone be so kind to help me in this task? I am also tagging this article as expert needed, fyi.

Thanks a lot in advance!!

Regards

I-Bin-A-Bibi (talk) 19:05, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


I just did a Google search for "Gamal Esmat" and restricted the search results to news stories. There were lots of them. So definitely don't delete this article. It should be straightforward to de-orphan the article using these news stories if someone wants to put in the effort. Jaredroach (talk) 19:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes people make a list article (e.g., List of faculty members of the Courtauld Institute) or make a list of notable faculty as a ==Section== in the article about their current employer. I'd bet that David Eppstein could suggest a few other ideas.
Often, biographies are just left as orphans, and we don't worry too much about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
My knowledge of both Egyptian and medical academia is weak. But his citation record on Google Scholar looks strong enough for WP:PROF#C1 and his distinguished professor title is probably enough for #C5, at least. He is cited in Schistosoma mansoni so linking him from the citation there should at least provide one incoming link. I'm not enthusiastic about lists of faculty at institutions; categories do that better. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello again,


thanks a lot for everyone's help, the article is now de-orphaned!

Kind regards,

I-Bin-A-Bibi (talk) 06:24, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Medical student editing initiative

Hello, I am supervising a group of medical students from Queen's University while they improve 17 Wikipedia medical articles. We are using the following project page which is also linked to an events dashboard. I will be moderating all the edits as they are made and we have the following series of steps to verify that what the students add is of high-quality, is accurately paraphrased, and is supported by WP:MEDRS sources. step 1: Faculty member "tutor" chooses a Wikipedia article in their field of expertise that they feel needs improving (most are B or C level articles). 2) Students share proposed article improvements with faculty members and health librarians via a series of course assignments including a lesson on MEDRS. 3) Students share a brief summary of their individual proposed change on the article talk page including the exact citation they propose to include. I will be moderating the 17 talk pages in case they need cleaning/citation tweaking, etc 4) Students practice editing, adding citations in their sandboxes. 5) Students edit their article based on feedback from talk pages. Each student aiming to add a paraphrased sentence or two along with its high-quality secondary source. 6) I will be moderating all the edits that the students make to the actual article to ensure the "final" improvement is of high-quality and meets Wikipedia guidelines. I do not need additional volunteers for the aforementioned steps, but if any of these articles interest you, encouraging and positively expressed feedback for the students would be great. It would be wonderful if we could show them how fun and interesting it can be to improve medical articles on Wikipedia and maybe a few of them will stick around to help us here at WP:MED! This is our fourth year running this short course following this similar work flow.JenOttawa (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Great! Best of luck. One question, I see Cirrhosis is on this list. If I understand correctly, that means it is one of the pages chosen for student work? It's also currently a Collaboration of the Month nominee so if you're planning to improve it with your students, let me know and I'll pull it from the COTM nominations page for now. Ajpolino (talk) 00:38, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Good catch @Ajpolino: Thanks for noting this! Yes, one of the faculty identified Cirrhosis as needing work and chose it for their students. Sorry that I missed this. The students will not be completely overhauling the whole article, just improving different sections. They will be finished in 2 weeks. Thank you again, JenOttawa (talk) 02:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Got it, thanks. We just won't pick it this month then. To your original point, I'll keep an eye on Amyloidosis and help out (or just interact positively) with folks there. I'm glad to see all the work on this! Ajpolino (talk) 03:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Bye-bye baby, hello toddler

Although it requires some work, I don't think the current changes to the Toddler article are an improvement, more eyes needed please. CV9933 (talk) 10:47, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

This looks like a simple edit war over what age a toddler is/isn't. Adding some sources, such as this one, might help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Immune thrombocytopenic purpura

Purpura

This article is a bit of a mess. For a long time, the I in ITP stood for idiopathic. But now, it is no longer idiopathic, but instead an autoimmune illness (the I now being immune). The article, even the lede, swings back and forth on if it is idiopathic ("...absence of other causes of low platelets") or not. It really could use some love. I'm not at all confident that I could fix it without causing more harm than good. So I thought I'd come here and hope someone has the time, interest, and ability to clean this up. Thanks. Hobit (talk) 23:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

We usually move disease-related articles when the ICD changes its official name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
It's not the name. The problem is that at one point ITP had an unknown cause. Now it is known. But the article still indicates, in places, that it is unknown. Such as the quote I gave that's in the lede. I'm fairly sure that quote is now wrong (and has been for years). Hobit (talk) 13:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
"It's an autoimmune disease" is not always what people (especially patients) think is "the cause". What makes the autoimmune reaction start? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Any of a variety of infections, drugs, ... things that stimulate the immune system. — soupvector (talk) 20:06, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Presumably genetic susceptibility is a factor, too.
In my experience, when people want to know what the cause is, they usually want to hear something like "that drug you were taking" or "the nasty chemicals you use in the garden" or "smoking tobacco". They don't want to hear "it's caused by your immune system attacking your body". That's true, but what exactly made this immune system attack this body? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Maybe that's what the article is trying to say? Not sure. I know a fair bit about ITP, but I don't know enough (either about ITP or how we write medical articles) to feel qualified to do a large rewrite here. Hobit (talk) 22:30, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

DANMASK-19

Today's Guardian has an Opinion piece: "We need scientists to quiz Covid consensus, not act as agents of disinformation" by Sonia Sodha, which discusses reaction to the recently published DANMASK-19 trial. In particular, the author is critical of the response article in the Spectator magazine: "Landmark Danish study shows face masks have no significant effect" by Prof Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson. The Spectator claims "Carl Heneghan is professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford and director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine Tom Jefferson is a senior associate tutor and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford". The study appears to be deeply flawed, as well as not answering the question some claim it does. A good roundup of expert reaction can be found at "expert reaction to paper using an RCT to assess mask use as a public health measure to help control SARS-CoV-2 spread (DANMASK-19)". In particular, the excellent Prof Trish Greenhalgh's comments are damning.

I think it worth looking at the variety of expert comments there, because some clearly want to say positive and nice things about the paper before mentioning that it doesn't answer the more important questions. Why is it that some are saying "well-designed and carefully presented study" and "a good study" and "a well-run trial with enough participants to have high confidence in the results" and "This is a very valuable community study. The paper is very clear, the analysis correct and the interpretation appropriate" and yet Greenhalgh, author of the book "How to Read a Paper", tears it apart so thoroughly that one wonders how it got published. For example, it appears to fail the basic ethics requirements of the journal it got published in. One of the responses Greenhalgh links: "Letter of concern regarding »Reduction in COVID-19 infection using surgical facial masks outside the healthcare system«" notes "this study is uninformative regarding the benefits (or lack thereof) of wearing masks outside of the healthcare setting." and says the study "poses a serious risk of mistranslation".

Coming back to article in the Spectator (a right-wing British magazine), it claims "As a result, it seems that any effect masks have on preventing the spread of the disease in the community is small." which is not a claim the study could have produced, even if it was well designed and conducted. Those authors also make a comment about observational vs RCT studies that appears over-simplistic and perhaps that has consequences for us also when we assess the evidence. It seems the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine is highly respected and does important work, yet this Spectator article appears scientifically incompetent and non-evidence-based. The Spectator have corrected the article title to no longer say "face masks have no significant effect to "no significant effect for facemask wearers".

The Guardian article concludes "The moral of this sorry tale? Trust science, not the scientists. They are only human, subject to the same cognitive biases, the same whims of ego, as the rest of us." -- Colin°Talk 12:32, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

See also Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 40#Effectiveness (or lack thereof) of face masks, where it has been considered and rejected. The actual result of the study, which does not align with the media descriptions, appears to be that recommending that adults wear masks (which is not quite the same as actually wearing them), in a community where most people don't use face coverings, probably has little or no effect on reducing the potential mask-wearer's chance of contracting COVID-19.
I gather that the upshot is what health authorities have been saying all along: masks primarily protect healthy people from the mask-wearers' potential germs, rather than primarily protecting the mask-wearers from non-mask-wearers. If we are feeling mean, then we could phrase this bluntly: People who refuse to wear masks when COVID-19 infection rates are up really are selfish jerks who don't care if they make other people sick. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
It is worse than that. The analysis of the study's design and limitations reduce the conclusion from "probably has little or no effect on reducing the potential mask-wearer's chance of contracting COVID-19" to "did not find anything informative about the effect of participants chances of contracting COVID-19". Not being able to demonstrate an effect (and quite a strong effect of 50% protection, equivalent to what some hoped a vaccine might produce) is not the same as demonstrating no effect. There were compliance issues and fundamental problems with the testing that meant some positive cases were likely infected prior to the study and some negative cases were likely to become positive after testing stopped. The study was under powered for a realistic threshold: rather than 50%, a even 10% protective effect might well have been cost-beneficial at reducing the R number below 1, but would have required a much larger study and/or a country with much higher prevalence. It is almost like they wanted it to fail.
However, I'm less interested in this specific study than in the reaction where experts failed to pick up the flaws or even reported results that were pretty clearly not evidence based from this study. I know the Spectator is not a MEDRS source, but the authors are experts one might expect to publish a review or meta analysis in a journal. Would their mistakes be caught there? I hope so. -- Colin°Talk 14:37, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Some thoughts. Obviously this stuff is contentious (everything can become about intent, and it's true that it can be about intent), so it becomes important to be technical about the analysis. I think the study itself is quite clear about what it does and doesn't do, and includes confidence intervals. I imagine the power analysis might have been driven more by the number of participants available than anything else. Yes, it would have been good to do the study on 60k people, but that requires you to do a study of 60k people. One point worth bearing in mind in that in the *observational* studies the effect of masks was upwards of 60% (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext) - I'm suspicious here. You could view the study more as a punt at the effect being large than anything else. I think the comments about ethical concerns aren't necessarily very relevant to the analysis itself - studies that violate ethical principles often give you useful results - they might be relevant to the people who took party in the studies. I suspect that the authors would not make mistakes in journals. The critique about the antibody tests not being effective within the time period o the study is perhaps more interesting.... though does not necessarily reflect upon the authors. Talpedia (talk) 23:16, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
@Talpedia: I don't agree with your analysis of the study, particularly the assertion "the study itself is quite clear about what it does and doesn't do". A lack of evidence of effect is not evidence of a lack of effect, and the conclusion "The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use." is not supported by the study. The study does not acknowledge its two largest flaws: (1) its duration (4 weeks for each cohort) is too short to sensitively measure differences in effects, particularly as the volunteers ("community-dwelling adults aged 18 years or older without current or prior symptoms or diagnosis of COVID-19") were not screened for existing asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic infection; (2) it makes no attempt to compensate for random variance resulting from the probability that most cases of infection would occur in the 19.5 hours when the subjects were indoors, rather than outdoors either wearing masks or not. Those two effects swamp the numbers reported (42/2392 and 53/2470) and invalidate the confidence intervals quoted. There are good analyses in the comments section of the study. Increasing the sample size of the study would have helped to a small extent, but running the study for a much longer period would have far more effect on reducing the contribution from pre-existing infections in the first two weeks of the study. --RexxS (talk) 18:20, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
"A lack of evidence of effect is not evidence of a lack of effect" Certainly. It provides covidence intervals that make it clear that a masks could still reduce the risk of infection, "it makes no attempt to compensate for random variance" a RCT compensates for other factors by randomizing group selection so that these factors just add variance, rather than changing the results - observational studies need to compensate for other factors, RCTs do not. "and invalidate the confidence intervals quoted" these increase the size of the confidence interval but as far as I can tell do not exactly "invalidate it" (if B > b and A - b < x < A + b then it is still True at A -B < x < A + B). The systematic bias is perhaps a different matter. I guess the quoted numbers for the difference in effect are potentially wrong due to the protocol. The rates will be of the form p * R_intervention + N_1 + a and p * R_no_intervention + N_2 + a, where the two N noises are identically distributed, it's legitimate to look at the difference. I guess by making the trial longer you can ensure a is small comparted to R and then you can calculate an *odds ratio* thereby eliminating p. Talpedia (talk) 20:08, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
"a RCT compensates for other factors by randomizing group selection so that these factors just add variance" – not really. Consider the possibility that three times as many infections occur indoors than outdoors when masks are not worn (a not unlikely scenario). Then we would expect around 40 of the 53 infections in the control group to be due to infection indoors, with the remaining 13 due to infection outdoors. In the masked group, if the masks had no effect, we would have expected 51 infections, 38 due to indoor infection and 13 due to outdoor infection. Since we found only 42 total infections in the masked group, that would mean wearing the masks outdoors reduced the number of outdoor infections from 13 to 4, which makes a nonsense of the techniques used in the study that ignored the effect of indoor infection. Hope that's clearer for you now. --RexxS (talk) 23:28, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Yup, that's a systematic error the "a" term in "p * R_intervention + N_1 + a" (I guess you could think of it as biased error / noise as as well), if you look at the *difference* between infection rate (as the study does) you can remove this bias. You get p * (R_intervention - R_non_intervention) + N' , where N' is an error term and p is constant less than one. Taking a large number of cases gets rid of the N' term (but not the p ter), allowing you to calculate whether the study does or does not have effect. It does make the calculation odds ratios problematic though - but the paper doesn't calculate an odds ratio exactly, it does a power calculation - hopefully before the study began. If there had been a significant effect it would still have been significant despite `a`. By analogy, if you say, "putting seatbelts in cars cars reduces the road traffic death rate" but you include pedestrian deaths then your analysis is still correct. I guess when it tries to reference the power calculation in the conclusion it should take account of this. Hope that's clearer for you now. :P Talpedia (talk) 08:43, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
The maths here is a bit impressionistic (there's an edge case where *everyone* gets infected - so the experiment tells you nothing). To do this properly I should be playing with probabilities and binomial distribution. The edge case is going to be to do with P(not_infected)=P(not_infected_while_outside)*P(not_infected_while_inside), P(not_infected_while_outside) = P(not_infected) / P(not_infected_while_inside) which becomes impossible if P(not_infected_while_inside) = 0. Talpedia (talk) 08:43, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Non-pharmaceutical intervention

Hello -- I notice when I linked it that a redlinked editor has recently rewritten this article, and much of it now does not seem neutral/balanced/readable. I wonder if someone here could take a look? If nothing else, readers will be predominantly looking for coronavirus mitigation measures, which have been rather drowned out. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 06:28, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Well... it certainly needs some cosmetic clean-up work, and some basic wiki-editing (e.g., to add links). The previous version was about three sentences long, so this is an improvement in some ways.
It's not clear to me whether NPIs are specifically non-drug ways of reducing your risk of getting infected by a pandemic virus, or if they're what it says on the tin, i.e., all non-drug treatments, including surgery, self-care, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I've done some clean-up work. It needs a lot more. Alexbrn, if you've got 10 minutes to spare, I think the middle of it would especially benefit from your kind of help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:16, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The latter (or at least not just the former). See PubMed: cancer-related fatigue, diabetes mellitus type 2, multiple sclerosis, occupational noise-induced hearing loss. TompaDompa (talk) 07:22, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone. I've never seen it used to refer to surgical interventions. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I split it: Non-pharmaceutical intervention for the term in general and Non-pharmaceutical intervention (epidemiology) for the specific use in epidemiology. TompaDompa (talk) 08:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Espresso Addict, in your experience, is this usually more like a "doesn't require direct assistance from healthcare professionals" concept than a (narrowly) non-drug concept?  ::::::WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing: My personal understanding is that it refers to prescribed specific interventions or, in the current case, specific public-health guidelines that do not involve pharmaceuticals (or afaik surgical intervention). I wouldn't use it for general wellness-type advice of the sort that could safely be given by anyone to anyone. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Hum (ping:Alexbrn), would WP:Dictionary perhaps be pertinent here? (as in, "what it says on the tin"). Entering non-pharmaceutical intervention epidemiology into GoogleScholar currently retrieves a lot of (recent) publications directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But on PubMed, it's a somewhat different story (cf [8]). Fwiw, as a former medical writer I would have understood/used the phrase in relation to any non-pharmaceutical preventive or therapeutic intervention, whether in the context of clinical medicine or public/occupational health, etc. In other words, anything you could trial in an intervention study of efficacy/effectiveness; cf PICO process, etc.
Of note, in the Non-pharmaceutical intervention (epidemiology) page (started April 2020), I don't see why the term should necessarily be restricted to epidemics and prevention of spread of a contagious disease (permalink). 86.186.155.162 (talk) 17:30, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
It looks to me like an area which is not neatly partitioned in the real world, so Wikipedia will need to decide how to manage the topic space. This can be done with careful use of definitions in the opening sentence, hat notes, etc. Alexbrn (talk) 19:18, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, if done carefully, with circumspection, as you're suggesting, I think it has the potential to become a useful page(-s?) highlighting the range and relevance for human health around the world of interventions which don't actually rely on drugs etc. (A broad topic though.) 86.186.155.162 (talk) 20:41, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

I suppose we'll end up with an article for every COVID vaccine candidate. I note (with approval) there has been push back on relaying the claims about the Russian "Sputnik" vaccine, until verified by WP:MEDRS. I have removed claims about the Oxford vaccine on the same principle, especially in the light of questions[9] about the research. Alexbrn (talk) 08:20, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

We should probably have an article for every vaccine that was marketed (for any disease, ever). I'm not sure that we need an article for every candidate. I think that candidates would be better handled in a list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Quoting from what I wrote at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19 #Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine:
Here's a ringing endorsement of our policies from the NYT article:

Menelas Pangalos, the AstraZeneca executive in charge of much of the company's research and development ... responded, "I think the best way of reflecting the results is in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, not in a newspaper."

He might as well have added "... nor in our press release".
Cheers --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Woodruff

Is anyone able to fill in any of the red-linked conditions at FA Michael Woodruff? Some of them may have articles, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:11, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, as part of WP:URFA/2020, could anyone glance at that article to see if there are any issues? I don't see any, but am concerned that the original author is multiple-blocked for socking, and want someone else to lay eyes on the article before I mark it as "Satisfactory" at URFA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:16, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
I made a redirect for the easy one. I'm not sure what to do about Antilymphocyte serum. It's a thing (MeSH), but I'm not sure if we have any obviously related articles. In practice, it's sort of like antivenin, except that instead of the non-human antibodies attacking venom in a human, they're supposed to kill human lymphocytes to produce an immunosuppressive effect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:09, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Antilymphocyte serum is linked to Anti-lymphocyte globulin later in the article, but I'm not entirely sure it's the right link, as the ALG article claims "Its use was first reported by Thomas Starzl in 1966" while the Woodruff article claims he was studying it in the 1940s-50s. Not enough time to investigate this right now.... Spicy (talk) 02:37, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
Anti-lymphocyte globulin (specifically and more conventionally now, anti-thymocyte globulin, ATG) as a concept in suppressing immune responses has been around for more than a century - it's a fairly obvious concept once one has awareness of (1) antivenom (as WAID noted above), (2) lymphocyte infiltration of tissue/organ grafts during rejection, and (3) the tolerizing effects of thymectomy. That someone "worked on" something isn't very notable, unless they materially advanced that field or if that work specifically informed other notable work. — soupvector (talk) 12:06, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
It sounds like I should not be marking the article as “Satisfactory” until we have time for a deeper look ??? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:58, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Dyskeratosis congenita

A request edit template has been on the talk page of Dyskeratosis congenita since August. I tried evaluating the request but I do not feel comfortable adding medical information to an article, especially if there might be a WP:COI. Can an editor from this project look at the request and give an opinion on if this information should be added to the article? I am more than happy to "clerk" the request, or you can follow the instructions at Template:Request edit/Instructions to do it yourself. Thanks for your help, and ping or post on my talk page if you have any questions. Z1720 (talk) 16:32, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC on how to define "suicidal ideation" and compose the lead paragraph

WP:MED is one of the WikiProjects listed as having interest in the article, Suicidal ideation. A request for comments (RfC) is currently underway at: RfC on how to define "suicidal ideation" and compose the lead paragraph. Your input would be very helpful. Thank you - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 16:09, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

That is unfortunate timing since WhatamIdoing and I have been formulating a broader RFC with Masem ... to hopefully deal with the number of inconclusive RFCs on the topic everywhere. This seems, though, to be focused on a a narrow aspect of one part of that lead, so probably a different thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Medical items on Wikidata

Hi All,

For those editing Wikidata, I've made a Mix'n'match query where it is easy to connect external medical databases about illnesses, conditions, etc. to Wikidata items. Feel free to use it.

Best, --Adam Harangozó (talk) 17:15, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:59, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Question on phrasing

Hi all! this says Acute respiratory disease of recruits (ARD), a major cause of morbidity in all military training camps, during and after World War II, and as defined clinically and epidemiologically at Fort Bragg, is a specific etiologic entity caused by several adenovirus types.. I'm having some trouble actually figuring out what that means, so I was hoping someone could advise me. Would a simple way to describe it be Acute respiratory disease of recruits is a condition caused by several adenovirus types? Does that make sense, or am a totally incorrect here? Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask. Cheers, Eddie891 Talk Work 23:45, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Eddie891:, I hope you'll forgive our field's poor writing. Your description is correct. I'm not sure how much of the sentence you do(n't) understand so apologies if I'm telling you something you already know, but the long sentence you quoted is saying several things at once: (1) There's a disease they call ARD, (2) it causes substantial illness in all training camps, (3) it was originally described in a study of recruits at Fort Bragg, (4) that study was in 1944, so the disease has been tracked in the U.S. military since WWII, and lastly (5) it can be caused by several different adenoviruses. I hadn't heard of the condition until this evening, so if you have other questions feel free to point me in the direction of other sources and I'll do my best to help. Ajpolino (talk) 23:58, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Disinfection at Cryptosporidiosis

Could someone please look at Cryptosporidiosis and see if the answer/clarification requested here is simple and obvious? It's about how to kill the pathogen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I commented there. — soupvector (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

the science academy of turkey - should be removed from WikiProject Medicine

Hello, I just edited "The Science Academy Society of Turkey" article in tr and en. In en.wiki it was somehow considered to be within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, but that's a mistake. this is not about medicine and it's not a medical academy, it's a scientific academy in general. I believe it should be removed from the medicine portal, but could not do so myself. please have a look. thanks! Danende (talk) 20:25, 28 November 2020 (UTC)danende

According to the article, The Science Academy Society of Turkey appears to have 31 of its 180 members from the life sciences, which would suggest to me that it is probably in the scope of WP:MED. More specifically, the project banner was added on 28 October 2014 by Cirt (who had just nominated it for deletion). At that time, it contained the statement "The Science Academy has presently a total of 144 full members (86 from the fields of natural sciences, mathematics and engineering, 35 from social sciences and humanities, 23 from medical sciences)", so it seems quite reasonable that Cirt placed it in the scope of WP:MED. --RexxS (talk) 00:24, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Danende, thanks for this note. At the English Wikipedia, any group of editors (called a "WikiProject") can support any article they want. Tagging articles is only meant to to make it easy for a group to keep track of the articles. In this case, it might be appropriate to add a tag for Wikipedia:WikiProject Science as well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Perioral reflex

Bonjour ladies and gentlemen, I come to you with another stubby orphan. Should it be merged? Left standalone? Deleted, even? As usual I'm prepared to do legwork if pointed in the right direction. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:50, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Could be merged into reflex in the cranial reflexes section. Your thoughts? Spyder212 (talk) 02:18, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Agree that it belongs in that list. Each reflex could, with suitable detail (images, pathways, clinical uses, perhaps comparative neurology...) warrant its own page - each is notable. That said, the page linked in this section header doesn't warrant retention. — soupvector (talk) 01:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Brilliant. I merged it to List of reflexes, although that list seems a bit redundant to Reflex and/or {{Reflexes}}. I'll let y'all hash that out. Thanks guys! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:25, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
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