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What to do if a source is obviously wrong?

What is the policy if we are getting data from a WP:MEDRS source, and the source is obviously wrong?

In Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, table called "Vaccine efficacy against confirmed symptomatic COVID‑19", the "Age ≥75" group, the 95% CI for efficacy includes negative numbers, which is impossible. This is what the source (Table 10) is showing: a number that cannot be negative, whose CI includes negative values. Isabela31 (talk) 20:06, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

In the general case, if an otherwise solid source is "obviously" wrong for something, don't use it for that wrong thing. Alexbrn (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Good. Will you please edit the table to remove the wrong information? Isabela31 (talk) 21:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
I know nothing about the particular case and its obviousness. If there's an obvious fix to make, you know what to do. I would however, caution any Wikipedia editor from adjudging a reputable source as "obviously wrong" without first ruling out the "I don't understand it" option. Obviously wrong has to mean obviously wrong. Alexbrn (talk) 21:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
I remember seeing this when Pfizer first published their data. I assumed it was a Wikipedia editor's mistake but as you noted, it's in the source data. In fact, the negative numbers appear throughout the report. It's not an error. Rather just the result of their calculation methodology left unadjusted. - Wikmoz (talk) 21:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
How certain are we that 1 minus an odds ratio cannot be a negative number?
What would you expect this number to be, if someone who got the vaccine paradoxically had a higher risk of hospitalization than someone who did not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be consistent with the observation that extremely frail people right on the cusp of "natural" death are quite likely to be pushed over the edge by the adverse effects of a vaccine? Alexbrn (talk) 08:37, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with these numbers from statistical point of view. Such negative numbers are frequently reported in clinical trials. Ruslik_Zero 20:39, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That's not what's being reported here. What's being reported is the "vaccine effectiveness" in terms of (for the specific 95% confidence interval that includes the negative number) people being hospitalized with COVID-19. This particular range says if you are infected specifically with SARS-CoV-2-gamma, the vaccine effectiveness is somewhere between 82% and –9% (i.e., somewhere from likely to help a lot to likely to be slightly harmful). The "vaccine effectiveness" is calculated from an odds ratio, not a relative risk. The only think I can tell you with certainty about an odds ratio is that "25% relative risk" means you are a quarter as likely to get the specified result, and that "25% odds ratio" does not mean this.
On the immunology side, it is possible for a (bad) vaccine to make you more prone to side effects or more prone to infection. I don't think there's any evidence of this happening with any of the COVID-19 vaccines, but with other viruses/vaccines, Antibody-dependent enhancement is a thing. This has been a failure path for HIV vaccines in the past. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
If you want to use numbers that humans can understand, it would be worth looking for sources that discuss the Number needed to treat. This is the metric that lets you say useful things, like how many people hospitalized with COVID-19 need to take dexamethasone to prevent one death (answer: about 36). People can understand this even if they don't have graduate degrees in statistics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
A confidence interval can easily include "impossible" values, because it's mathematically derived from a statistical model, and models often include assumptions. And assumptions are there to make the model simple enough that it's useful.
A very common example would be when we model a variable such as age, which can only be positive, as a normal distribution, which goes from -oo to +oo. We do that because it makes the model very simple, and very useful. Of course, there is no free lunch: in doing so, we end up with a model where there is a small (but non-zero) probability that the variable that models age is negative. It's the price we pay.
The way we calculate confidence intervals entails inverting a normal distribution or any of a number of related distributions with similar assumptions.
As George Box said, all models are wrong, but some are useful :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 21:04, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
I would like to confirm that we are looking at this line:-
Age ≥75, n1b 0, surveillance time 0.102 (774), n1b 5, surveillance time 0.106 (785), VE 100.0, 95% CI (-13.1, 100.0)
from page 87 of the pdf? Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:54, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
For that paper, "VE is defined as 100% × (1 – IRR), where illness rate ratio (IRR) is calculated as the ratio of first confirmed COVID-19 illness rate in the vaccine group to the corresponding illness rate in the placebo group". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
I was hoping that Isabela31 would answer my question. Anyway, just as you say, WAID, VE is defined like that on page 73. Axl ¤ [Talk] 00:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
For the time being, I shall assume that the answer to my question is "yes".
Firstly, I draw attention to Alexbrn's comment: "I would however, caution any Wikipedia editor from adjudging a reputable source as "obviously wrong" without first ruling out the "I don't understand it" option."
The authors derived the confidence interval using the Clopper and Pearson method. I am not familiar with this method, but I can give some basic information about the confidence interval.
The top end of the VE confidence interval corresponds to an illness rate ratio of 0. This makes sense because no people in the vaccinated group acquired the disease during the surveillance period.
The bottom end of the interval corresponds to an IRR of 1.131 . This value would represent vaccinated people being more likely to acquire the disease than unvaccinated people.
This confidence interval is large, and includes the null hypothesis (i.e. vaccination has no effect). The reason for this large CI is because of the small number of cases. Only five people in the group of 1,559 acquired the disease. This means that we should not have much confidence with pinpointing any effect from the vaccine.
If we look at the rest of the table, we see that five other subgroups also had negative values in their confidence intervals. The most extreme value is "American Indian or Alaska Native", with a bottom value of -3429 . This corresponds to an IRR of 35.29 . If this value was the actual IRR, it would mean that vaccination would increase the illness rate in these people by a factor of 35. (This value is not the actual IRR). However we should note that in all five of these subgroups, the number of cases was five or fewer in each. This explains the enormous sizes of the confidence intervals.
There is no limit to the extremity of a negative bottom end of the confidence interval.
The top end of the CI should not exceed 100%, because such a value would correspond to a negative number of people acquiring the disease. (Such a value would be "obviously wrong".)
In summary, I see nothing wrong with the statistical method used, the presence of negative values in the confidence intervals, or the way that the results are presented. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

"Formaldehyde poisoning" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Formaldehyde poisoning to the article Formaldehyde. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 21#Formaldehyde poisoning until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Comments from those with subject knowledge would be particularly useful to the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 01:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)


Cuirass ventilators

An issue has arisen over at the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science where it has been noticed that Biphasic Cuirass Ventilation redirects to Mechanical ventilation, while Biphasic cuirass ventilation is redirected to iron lung. Some informed help would be greatly appreciated. Alansplodge (talk) 09:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Dubious redirect from Non-freezing cold injury to Trench foot

The content of Trench foot makes no specific reference to 'non-freezing cold injury', which as far as I am aware is a real medical condition, albeit one of which I have little knowledge. I am concerned that the redirect is misleading, as well as failing to inform the reader. I plan to have a go at a stub if I can find suitable sources, but if there is anyone here who wants to pitch in, please go ahead, even if just to link some good sources from the talk page. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Partially fixed. New article on NFCI about start class but could benefit from some help from experts.· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Effects of pornography

Could someone remove all the WP:MEDRS-dodging trash from Effects of pornography? Myself I'm fed up with being the party pooper at sexuality articles. So, I invite someone else to do it. tgeorgescu (talk) 14:27, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

That subject is not exclusively about Wikipedia:Biomedical information (e.g., relationship satisfaction), so it probably should cite some sources that aren't MEDRS's ideal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
True, but in its current form Effects of pornography covers a large amount of medical claims and AFAIK it's the medical claims that are the most commonly discussed ones. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 21:22, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm not a medical professional, so it feels like too much for me to handle. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing and Jo-Jo Eumerus: I have advocated for WP:TNT at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2021 November 29. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Tricuspid insufficiency#Requested move 19 November 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Tricuspid insufficiency#Requested move 19 November 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)


PANDAS advocacy

As mentioned in secondary reviews (as well as countless media sources), PANDAS advocacy is widespread on the internet and social media, with hundreds of advocacy sites and groups, including multiple Facebook pages. Misinformation in the PANS/PANDAS realm has a considerable impact on the well-being of vulnerable children.

Ajpolino recently had to re-semi-protect the article because of advocacy IP edits and vandalism, and today, talk page posts were removed. See this post at Help desk.

More eyes on the article are needed; it is not an easy topic, and editing is made harder by recruiting.

This British Paediatric Neurology Associates consensus statement is a very readable primer on the topic:

  • "Consensus statement on childhood neuropsychiatric presentations, with a focus on PANDAS/PANS" (PDF). British Paediatric Neurology Association. April 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2021. See summary here.

Here are the most recent secondary reviews:

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:12, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Writing internationally

A common problem I have when editing pages is that I know that something is common practice in a couple of countries (and can find sources), but often can't find a paper that discusses practices internationally. What are good approaches here? I am sort of reduced just to listing the policies in countries that are "important" (though I imagine for the people living there their country's policies are important... but a list of 200 countries might be unhelpful). An approach I've seen is that you have a summary in one page and then link to another page which is effectively a list of policies in as many countries as people care to find.

On this topic, does anyone happen to know the equivalent of UK's GMC (general medical council) in the US and, say, Germany or France? What about the NICE (national institute of clinical excellence). What I really want is a kind of "rosetta stone" of medical bodies in different countries.

I'm a little afraid that in federal countries like the US and Germany you will have a proliferation of bodies for each separate state - one nice think about the UK is that they often have a single national body solely governing policy for 60 million people or so.

Talpedia (talk) 13:49, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

List of national public health agencies?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Epidemiology course

Hi, I noticed an epidemiology course that may benefit from a warm welcome and a reminder about secondary sources. I reviewed the Heat stroke contribution. There is a very big edit in Tetralogy of Fallot‎ that may benefit from another set of eyes if anyone has time. Other articles are listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_Wisconsin-Eau_Claire/Epidemiology_ENPH_450_(Fall_2021) JenOttawa (talk) 17:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Bad edits at Multiple sclerosis, lot was reverted (with good reason), have not had time address this, but ALL of this course's edits need scrutiny. The instructor, Maxel Ruptor has never edited Wikipedia. This course should not be editing mainspace. @Ian (Wiki Ed): SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
PS, most of their edits will come in this week, resulting in lots of work for us, and many will likely end up reverted next week. I find it less stressful to just wait for the course to end before removing the poor work, unless it is info that is really going to jeapordize someone's health. @Lukelahood: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed):Concussions in sports student editor really really needs some extra guidance. This looks like it is from a different course and not the same instructor as above. I am sorry to revert like this on a well-intentioned student but these edits are actually the complete opposite of current best practice. I do not have time to provide guidance myself on this but I did indicate a starting place secondary source for the individual in my revert edit summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Concussions_in_sport&type=revision&diff=1058149885&oldid=1058148801&diffmode=source. This second class also just made a large contribution to Language disorder that should be looked at as well if anyone has extra time. Thank you for your support Ian @Wiki Ed. JenOttawa (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@JenOttawa: This is a writing class that shouldn't be editing medical topics at all. Thanks for the ping. Also thanks for the note SandyGeorgia - I'll try to keep this class's edits on my radar this week. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Ian (Wiki Ed); it is quite shocking to see this writing in a 400-level course. Very very busy, but I should point out to others here that Alzheimer's disease has had some really great student additions, in case anyone wants to look them over (I haven't seen the latest crop, but plan to barnstar them when I get a free moment). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:20, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Relevant RFC on the Medical Disclaimer page about adding a serious injury or death warning.

Wikipedia_talk:Medical_disclaimer#RFC_For_addition_of_a_serious_injury_or_death_warning. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 14:56, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

See old proposal from 2014 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Medical Editing Internship For ILAE Wikipedia Epilepsy Project

As the Editor in Chief of the ILAE Wikipedia Project, I from my organisation, Institute of NeuroDevelopment, have taken the liberty to announce an internship to contribute to health information on Wikipedia. Currently, we have above 40 applicants who have expressed interest and around 20 of them were present in the first meeting that we had, the recording of which can be found here. The participants are students from diverse health-related backgrounds and the roles are defined. We are going to track the contributions through Outreach dashboard from wmflabs which User:AminMDMA has created for us. User:Marium (ILAE-WiR) would be helping us through the process.

I call upon you all to help these newbies get a hold of Wikipedia. I seek your involvement and guidance for the matter. There are various roles that you could play. We are open to feedback. -Diptanshu 💬 04:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Non-freezing cold injury

New article done for now. I would appreciate if someone would check whether I have appropriately filled in the infobox, and whether there are any categories to add. Other constructive comments also welcome. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

did a couple of edits[1], article looks good--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

creating a wiki page for medical education conferences and journals

Hello! I am working with physicians to create a wiki page with resources for specific medical education conferences and one for specific medical education journals to be in one spot for educators or students interested in this field. They start with general conferences and journals that take things from all fields then they go into specific specialties based on alphabetical order. They have been rejected and their recommendations were to use WikiProject Medicine as the platform instead of just the general wiki page. I was wondering if anyone can help me or guide me to create these resources for our students. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwarshel (talk • contribs) 21:27, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mwarshel, what's the goal? Is this supposed to be an encyclopedia article, or something else? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Positive impact of MEDRS

Naturally, one might interpret these findings differently, but I choose to see this research[1] as demonstrating WP:MEDRS's positive impact.

The following journals rank in the top 1% of all journal references (not just medical journals) found on the English Wikipedia, ranking exceptionally high based on most—or even all—10 methods for measuring journal popularity and reliability.[2]

  • BMJ
  • Cell
  • Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
  • JAMA
  • Lancet
  • Nature
  • New England Journal of Medicine
  • PLOS ONE
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Miscellaneous notes

  • The article's authors all hail from the Department of Information Systems, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poznań, Poland. I don't know if the authors wrote the article in Polish and then had it translated into English or if they directly penned their report in English. Either way a professional translator would have improved the prose. It's understandable, just not standard English. And hey, their English is much better than my Polish. ;^]
  • Ironically, the journal in which this article was published, Information, is on the blacklist. My take: Even bad, black-listed journals will occasionally publish good research articles. I am hoping this paper is one of those exceptions.
  • Along those lines, I'm not an information scientist so I might not have recognized flaws in the authors' research methodology or statistical analysis. However, it is a well-organized paper that proceeds logically from one topic to the next and despite the language issue (Polish → English), it's written in a clear, crisp manner such that the complex, detailed nature of their investigation did not overwhelm this non-expert. I look forward to reading others' analysis.
  • "top 1%" is my guesstimate—see what you think.
  • I learned about this study in the Research section of The Signpost.[3]
  • The researchers analyzed a wide variety of Wikipedia sites, i.e., across continents, cultures, and languages.
  • More details about the data, quoting from the article:

    Table 9. Position in rankings of journals in English Wikipedia depending on popularity and reliability model in February 2020. Source: own calculation based on Wikimedia dumps using complex extraction and using only values from journal parameter in citation templates in references. Extended version of the table is available on the web page: http://data.lewoniewski.info/sources/table9.

References

  1. ^ Lewoniewski, Włodzimierz, Krzysztof Węcel, and Witold Abramowicz. "Modeling Popularity and Reliability of Sources in Multilingual Wikipedia." Information 11, no. 5, art. no. 263 (13 May 2020). doi:10.3390/info11050263
  2. ^ Włodzimierz et al., "Table 9. Position in rankings of journals in English Wikipedia", (2020): 19.
  3. ^ The Signpost 17, no. 10.

Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 04:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

About "a wide variety of Wikipedia sites, i.e., across continents, cultures, and languages": I wonder how often they were analyzing exactly the same content, just translated into different languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Ah, they do address that question at least to some extent. They point out that the same article often differs substantially from one Wikipedia site to another. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 08:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
To be honest, I'm having a hard time understanding what they have found. They cite the general guidelines on reliability but then seem to ignore that and create their own idea of reliability by assuming better articles have more reliable sources, and their gauge of what articles are better seems to be based on article length, number of editors and number of readers. Then they looked at what journals were frequently cited, presumably by selecting the cite journal template. I get a feeling all they discovered are that popular well known general journals are cited more frequently than obscure specialist journals. I don't see where MEDRS fits into this. There's no indication that they appreciate the need for secondary sources or that the BBC News is fine for current affairs but not for autism research. Our medical articles could be citing primary research studies and the Daily Mail and I think they'd have found the same results.
I'm a bit puzzled that their tables highlight six astronomy/astrophysics journals very highly. That's a field that, while surely interesting, is hardly a core science topic. That makes me rather suspicious. -- Colin°Talk 09:46, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

all very reasonable critiques. As I think about this further, and your response has helped in that regard, the fact that many solid medical journals take up a good portion of the highest rank journals overall, my better be said to reflect the activity of this projects editors, in other words, it suggests that this project is a strong, positive influence on English Wikipedia. That's a different conclusion than I first considered, but I'm thinking now it's more accurate.

The authors did seem to go to a lot of trouble to develop various models for measuring popularity and reliability, and they indicate in the article that one of their goals is to provide a methodology for future research, for example, perhaps their approach your parts of it might help analyze biomedical articles on Wikipedia. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 18:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

More game-playing at WP:BMI

Editor Alexander Davronov, a long-term crusader against MEDRS, has found a new avenue of attack. Because WP:BMI says:

Attributes of a treatment or drug

How a treatment works; whether a treatment works, and to what degree; factors that affect whether a treatment works; dosage and timing information; side effects, benefits, and disadvantages.

The supposed gotcha is that because the paragraph text says just "treatment" (rather than repeating "treatment or drug") then the effects etc of drugs are somehow not biomedical information. I attempted to clarify with:

Attributes of a treatment or drug

How a treatment or drug works; whether a treatment or drug works, and to what degree; factors that affect whether a treatment or drug works; dosage and timing information; side effects, benefits, and disadvantages.

But was of course reverted by Alexander.

Perhaps Sunrise, as originator of the text, can comment as to intent. Alexbrn (talk) 10:21, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Alexbrn: WP:WikiProject Medicine Is pretty convenient place to gather a crusade (or WP:GANG to be more precise), but I suggest to move this to WP:VPP for more balanced opinions. You care to take down all those personal remarks? AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
advertising a discussion at a relevant wikiproject is precisely permissible under WP:CANVAS. so I would tell you this posting is entirely within WP:PAG. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:31, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
@Alexbrn: You forgot to mention that actual discussion initially took place here: Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information#Condition & Drugs (including diffs that show what you actually changed). Was this omission done for a purpose? AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for this notification Alex, this is exactly the sort of thing we need to know about. Thx again. -Roxy the dog. wooF 12:27, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
See also Talk:Cannabis (drug)#"Inappropriate" source, Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information#Is this biomedical information? Clarification requested., and Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Secondary/Review Scientific Sources (long). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Sherif Zaki, pathologist

I just created an article for Sherif Zaki, who recently died. He was the chief of the CDC infectious diseases pathology branch. Any help with the article would be appreciated. Thank you, Thriley (talk) 06:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Penile agenesis and testicular agenesis

The article Penile agenesis and testicular agenesis seems to fall far below the standards for a medical article, and is almost completely uncited. I'd also note that an earlier revision of the article used the repellent non-medical term "nullo", suggesting that at least one contributor was motivated by less-than-medical motives when editing it. -- The Anome (talk) 11:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

It also seems to be lumping two different things together; going by this they are usually not treated together. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
I've prodded the article. These are two etiologically unrelated conditions with different treatments, both of which have pre-existing articles (aphallia and anorchia respectively, although both need substantial expansion). There is no cause for an article conflating the two. Vaticidalprophet 15:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Sex differences in medicine

Please consider providing input here. The claim currently being discussed is that MEDRS on sex differences in medicine use male/man and female/woman etc. synonymously, and that this is the overwhelming convention in MEDRS. A number of links to reviews on sex differences across disease areas are linked to support this fact that is easily verified by inspection. Maneesh (talk) 23:53, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

seems to be same article/issue as post below --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
Didn't see it, thanks. I'll try to start watching pages here. Maneesh (talk) 02:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft survey about WikiProject Medicine ready

See (still being developed) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJsrDRQBhKpajoqdFtKIKylYZ5kWQDjvvJm207FJvZ1UEjRg/viewform SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Following up on the idea I discussed a month ago (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_154#Idea:_study_of_WPMED,_from_the_social_movement_scholarship_perspective), I have finished v1 of my survey. Please let me know if you have any comments - you can see the draft here [2] (edit view)/[3] (preview view). If there is something missing you'd love to see asked, or if you think there is an error/redundancy/etc., I'd love to hear your thoughts before the survey goes live. @Jclemens, Johnbod, Bondegezou, Talpedia, and HLHJ: who responded a month ago. To be clear, at this stage the survey is not "live", so I am not asking for responces, just feedback on the survey itself. PS. I'd also appreciate suggestions on where to post the final survey besides the page here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

More significantly, a lot of what is written here is dated, inaccurate or misleading. WPMEDF editing practice was basically the subject of an Arbcase because of policy-based problems, and your questions and writeup don’t reflect those issues, or how editing has changed since the arbcase, at all. You mention WPMEDF, which is pretty much inactive, except for two editors who mirror Wikipedia content. Almost ALL of the assessments done were (and continue to be) misleading. We have B-class assessments on articles that are dated and tagged with issues (and editors who continue to assess them as B-classs) and a ridiculous number of GAs that aren’t, along with quite a few FAs that aren’t. You list active members who basically, aren’t; check the number against those who are actually active, or define how you are using “active”. All in all, I fear your research project begins from a faulty premise, and your results may be similarly skewed if you don’t address more current aspects of editing Wikpedia medical content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

That’s all I’ve got; thanks for doing this! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:25, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, that's very interesting. I was not aware of the ArbCom case (link plz? Any Signpost coverage, etc.?). In either case, your criticism is also extremly valuable, and it means there's certainly a need to update the academic state of knowledge about the more recent history of WPMED (which I gather has become a bit controversial?). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
WP:ARBMED was, on the surface, about advocacy editing in the area of drug pricing, but that kind of editing had extended to the entirety of WPMED, and most of the editors engaging in that kind of editing stopped doing that here after the arbcase, WPMEDF changed domains, and became basically inactive. The Signpost coverage was unhelpful, as the writers were … involved … would be a kind word. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
WPMED and WPMEDF have never been formally related groups. I'm not sure that the ArbCom case had all the much to do with either groups (especially when you look at the groups organizationally), except to the extent that several individuals changed their own volunteer activities at that time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
I don't disagree with what WAID wrote (except that a good deal of the evidence in that case was very much about WPMEDF-driven activity), but the premise of Piotr's study seems to be that they were formally related (only via individuals, though), and That Was A Good Thing (which I disagree with). Where we agree is that the situation today is changed based on individual changes (and not that the arbs got anything right). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:40, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
The other issue with how you (seem to?) premise the study is that the “collaborations” with institutions like WHO, NIH etc were or are helpful. I strongly disagree that any of them were or are, and a big concern was how they introduced or furthered advocacy editing and POV to medical content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:32, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I suggest something added about what you may disclose in publication. I don’t ever respond to questionnaires like this because my answers to the demographic questions would make it very clear who I am, and I already have enough Wikipedia stalkers, to the point of police involvement. The problem with ALL Wikipedia surveys of readership is that they miss so many people like me, because we would not in a million years put our demographics out to anyone in any way related to WMF or Wikipedia. Not sure how you can fix that, but you are unlikely to get me to respond, and I will then explain how your results are invalid because people like me are terrified of the putridity that exists on Wikipedia and can extend to IRL if one’s identity is revealed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Fair point, but I think it is possible to just ignore these questions (about demographics). You are right that the sample will be small, but I'll be the only one seeing the set, and frankly I don't know anything about you anyway (outside the fact that you are an active editor whom I recall from FA-related discussions). Anyway, I'll make sure that the survey doesn't require answers and can be saved with information ommitted for people who don't want to disclose their age/etc. Last note: I don't ask people about their username so a reply from a, let's say, male, age 40-45, medical research active on Wikiepdia for 4-7 years, shrugh, maybe someone here could identify that person - I certainly couldn't. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:26, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
That's helpful, Piotr; it is for these reasons that I (and likely most) women never respond to these surveys, so I don't even trust the alleged male predominance of Wikipedia editors. (Recall that when I was FAC delegate, essentially everyone running the FA process except Raul was a woman.)
Nonetheless, if your journal article were to say "an editor who met X characteristics" said Y, that could make us identifiable :) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:30, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
I understand. It would be pretty bad form for a researcher to disclose things; personally while I could and did quote things I'd never quote anything that reveals anything about the respondent or tie the quote in with identifying characteristics. That said, thank you for cautioning me and reminding me that even a simple attribution along the lines of, let's say, "a female editor" in a small enough sample could be problematic. Since I honestly expect the respondent sample to this survey to be pretty small, I can only promise that I'll do my best to avoid revealing anything about any respondent in the final paper. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Maybe add a question about our views of assessment of Wikipedia medical articles? I think there are precious few that are not dangerously dated and misleading, and think most GA and B-class aren’t. The VAST (emphasis to the max) majority of Wikipedia medical content now assessed as GA or B is actually C-class, regardless of current ratings, which are inadequately conferred or maintained. Look at what is allegedly the best of our best (top importance, top quality) here; majority fail. I could send every one of those to WP:FAR today, and without an extreme editing effort, they would fail and be de-featured. The situation at the GA level is even worse. There was a glaring COI in assessment of medical article content, when some of the people doing the (inflated) assessing were then involved in publishing glowing journal accounts of WPMED’s successes. I am concerned that your published research looks initially like it could head the same direction, but you are in time to change course :). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:32, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Very interesting. I've added a section on "What are the biggest challenges for ensuring Wikipedia's coverage of medical topics is high quality?" based on your views, please suggest rewording or new items in it! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:41, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
You now have:
  1. Too many amateurs relying on low quality sources
  2. Not enough volunteers to monitor existing content
  3. Undeclared advocacy, paid editing, spam and similar ethical problems
  4. Due to very low nunbers (typo) of volunteers, a biased active editor can significantly skew the coverage of topics nobody else monitors
First, datedness is a huge problem that should be accounted for somehow. You might also work in something about entry barriers; to adequately write medical content often requires journal access. And you might work in that ... it becomes exhausting so that one is often tempted to, or does, just give up. Wikipedia's medical content is so bad that it can be demoralizing. I no longer make even the slightest attempt to update medical articles that don't get considerable pageviews, because there is just too much to do, and it's hopeless. There are thousands of articles I am capable of fixing that are basically HORRIFIC and should have big fat disclaimers parked on the top of them; there are only 24 hours in a day. I try to focus on those that could be really damaging people, and for every edit I make, there are tens of thousands that need to be made, but there just isn't time.
Next, I would rephrase some of those.
  1. It is not only amateurs who "rely on" or cherry pick from their preferred sources, which are sometimes lower-than-best quality or dated. Using NIH or WHO or CDC to write entire articles comes to mind (let me give you the example of PANDAS which is a fringe-ish medical topic invented and furthered by the NIH ... if we were to source that article to the NIH, whose website conveniently fails to mention the loads of very high quality research that does not support the hypothesis, wow, we would basically be furthering NIH-funded quackery).
  2. good
  3. good
  4. A biased editor can skew coverage for many more reasons than low numbers of volunteers. For example, they can advance an external project, or a "collaboration" with WPMED, and get all of those volunteers to skew articles.
Just some ideas, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
About Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment: I did most article assessments back in the day. Many of the assessments have never been updated since, and are therefore either the same or under-rated (if the article has expanded since then). More than 50% of WPMED-tagged articles are currently rated either Stub or Start. It is unlikely that any of those are over-rated. Less than 1% of WPMED-tagged articles are rated according to an external process (GA, FA, FL). Only 5% are rated B-class, which, roughly speaking, requires one inline citation per paragraph, a couple of screenfuls of content written in passable English, and (if it's a disease-related article, which most WPMED-tagged articles aren't) something about all the popular sections, like symptoms and treatments. Because these higher ratings are rare, it is not likely that we have an overall problem with over-rating articles. Based on Wikipedia:ORES score analyses, WPMED tends to consistently underrate articles overall.
I took a look at a random sample of B-class articles. ORES says that Herpes simplex virus is probably C-class, but I'd rate it as B-class. HLA-DQ1 and Nucleic acid thermodynamics are overrated according to ORES, and I'm inclined to agree with it. But when I look at the ratings, I see that I rated them in 2008 and 2009, back when C-class was a new idea, and we weren't sure that we wanted to adopt it. Today, I'd give them a C, but in 2008, "B" really just meant "better than Start". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Today, we have editors (not you :) assessing article as B class even when those articles have multiple maintenance tags. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
WP:BCLASS doesn't care whether there are maintenance tags on the article. That requirement begins with GA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I think that ORES does not apply the criteria correctly, if at all. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:26, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
ORES uses machine-learning methods to copy whatever editors have used in other articles. It is an estimation of how it might have been rated, if it had been rated by the existing editors. I have never seen it be off by more than one class. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Regarding datedness, I would think that falls under "Not enough volunteers to monitor existing content"? My intention with 1 is to measure if there is an anti-amateur bias (for better or worse. I think I'll split this into "Too many amateurs making low quality edits" and separately "Usage of low quality sources". And regarding 4, you are right that I should not suggest reasons in the answer. I'll change it to "A biased active editor can significantly skew the coverage of topics nobody else monitors" Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:42, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
By the way, there are lots more typos than I noted ... if you want to ping me just before you go live, I will give it a final glance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:34, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Like many surveys, this one fails to allow for answers not preconceived by the surveyor, so has inherent bias, and may fail to pick up important data because there is nowhere to enter it. an alternative answer option "other - please explain briefly" could help. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
... which is the whole point of checking with folks before to try and minimize the effect of such biases when the survey goes live. Jclemens (talk) 18:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate that, but almost every survey I have filled in has had this problem. I have had answers that had no place to go, or no answer, but the question insists on choosing one from options which do not apply in my case. I doubt that I am unique in this, and suspect that the validity of the results is thereby skewed in unpredictable directions. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I'll make sure to add 'Other' everywhere, hopefully it comes with a tiny 'please explain' subfield. Will check. For now that's why the final question is 'tell me everything else I should know but didn't ask about' type. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia I do feel bad that you are compensating for my inability to get spellchecker to play nicely with google forms (still having troubles). Since you already went to all the trouble and are offering to help more (thanks), maybe the best solution would be for me to give you edit access to the form? If you email me an address I can feed to google, that would work. Or I could just make the entire form editable to anyone, assuming no trolls spots this. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
No need to feel bad (dare to be shallow, like me :) I would love to help you edit the small things I have noticed, but I am scared to death of google docs, and have never used them. I fear I would do something wrong. And, considering you now know my paranoia and the history of my stalkers, etc, on Wikipedia, I can confess that … I have never gone the extra mile to figure out if editing a google doc will cause the Info parameters on my Microsoft Office Word install to be revealed. Yes, I am that paranoid :). Perhaps we can convince WhatamIdoing to google-doc edit, as she has an eagle eye for typos as well. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:47, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I think I was able to fix most typos, my other computer works better with spellchecking. AFAIK Google Docs wouldn't import any info from MWord, but if your Google Account uses your real name etc. this info might be visible to the owner of the document (I need to look more into this for my own privacy concerns...). The latter problem (of revealing your main google account) can be 99.9% solved by opening a shared google doc in chrome's incognito mode, which then assigns you a temporary fake ID, so that's a workaround to know about. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:08, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
You can send a link to my work e-mail address if you want me to proofread. Contact me at Special:EmailUser/Whatamidoing (WMF). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Q3: Do you really need ages in five-year increments, or would ten-year increments be enough?
  • Q5: Does not allow for the possibility of someone not completing high school. Does not record completion of non-university advanced education (e.g., nursing school or paramedic school). Does include "other", which might be sufficient.
  • "Are you a medical professional or student?" does not include non-medical science folks. Do you want to be able to differentiate between "chemist" and "statistician" and "computer scientist" and "poet"? Do you want to be able to identify students who aren't in medical school (e.g., just beginning university, or at pharmacy school)?
  • "Do you agee or disagree with the following statements regarding why most medical professionals do not edit Wikiepdia." needs an option for "I don't know". Also, the first item, "They don't know how easy it is to edit Wikipedia", presupposes that it's easy to edit Wikipedia.
  • "Do you agree or disagee with the following statements about WikiProject Medicine?" needs an "I don't know" option. I happen to know a lot about other WikiProjects, but not everyone does.
  • On the "biggest challenges" question, maybe it would be useful for us to suggest some statements. For example, we have problems with accessing paywalled journal articles, and we have problems finding sources that cover some relevant and encyclopedic aspects of sources, such as academic sources that compare and contrast practices in different countries or that summarize large regions ("This is generally affordable to most middle-class people in developing countries" or "This treatment is unavailable to 95% of people in the world").
WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Jclemens' comment about validation makes me think that we might be trying to re-invent the wheel. @Ijon, can you recommend anything useful for measuring something like group health? Or motivation? Please take a look, and tel us what you think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Hi, @WhatamIdoing. I think the Research team is likelier to have sound definitions of group health; in my own work, I focused on whole communities (much smaller than ENWP) rather than on WikiProjects, looking at things like total active editor count, the state of content policies and content processes, etc., and I relied on qualitative interviews in addition to the hard numbers provided by stats, without any complex data retrieval or crunching, and specifically without any surveys. I therefore have nothing useful to offer regarding the Likert scales discussed here. Ijon (talk) 21:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Q3. 10 would probably be fine outside <30s range... Q4. I may add "completion of non-university advanced education (e.g., nursing school or paramedic school)", worded exactly like this, unless better rewordings are proposed, good idea. And of course 'Other'.
Regarding the non-medical folks, right now I think just splitting the answers into medical folks vs 'the rest' is enough, with the rest defined as amateurs. Does it really matter if the non-medical person is a student, poet or chemist? Levels of education and age should be enough, the more details asked about, the longer the survey and the more time consuming the filling-in effort...
I'll reword "They don't know how easy it is to edit Wikipedia" to add another option "Editing Wikipedia is difficult". And I'll probably add 'don't know' although it's not always found as an option on Likert scales.
I'll see about adding a statement regarding paywall problems somewhere. I am not sure how to word and ad something about the scope/contrasting practices, this seems more like a gap in existing literature... an interesting observation, certainly. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:49, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Nursing school might have happened at a university; at one point, in some parts of the US, students in the same class could have been divided into those who just did nursing and those who took extra classes to earn their Bachelor of Science in Nursing. @FloNight probably knows more about the history than I do. In the US, paramedic school is often – but not always – an independent program. Radiographer school seems to be a community college program in my area. So maybe the thing to do is to specify "four-year university degree" vs "technical school or other post-high school program"?
I wonder how we expect a Certified nurse assistant or a similar healthcare worker to answer these questions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Jclemens' feedback

Thoughts and suggestions:

  • “know” should be known in “know to create some of the highest quality content”
  • age “50 to 55” should be “51 to 55”
  • Some questions are numbered, some are not.
  • You give the option to decline to identify gender, but not age. Why?
  • Q5, would you like some more granularity? Does it matter whether a degree is in a medical field or not? Is an MBBS a bachelor’s?
  • re: Citizenship List of countries and territories where English is an official language might complicate your responses a bit.
  • One can be both a practitioner and a student; I am as a PA pursuing a DMSc. Many (most?) Nurse Practitioner students continue to work as Registered Nurses while attending NP school.
  • Have your Likert scale questions been validated before? The compound questions seem problematic because we don’t get to find out the antecedent answer. Jclemens (talk) 19:07, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

A useful discussion so far! I think the people who edit this kind of content vary enormously in how much they engage with WikiProject happenings, although a WikiProject can impact on people's editing and editing experience whether or not they actively seek out engagement with it. Piotrus, is this a study of the community of editors of medical content, or specifically of those who engage with WikiProject Medicine? I think it would be helpful to be crystal clear on the scope of the research. Bondegezou (talk) 10:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

The first, but with the focus on the second. Non-members are welcome to respond. Like myself, I am not a WPMED member, but I do occasionally (if rarely) edit medical related content. Both viewpoints - of core members and passerby's - will be appreciated, and in fact I think it will be quite interesting to see if they differ! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jclemens Tnx for the typos, I'll finish numbering the questions shortly. MBBS seems like it would be a bachelor-level degree, per google's explanation of the abbreviation (which I've never heard of before). Re citizenship, the error rate will likely be low. I could ask about native language, but that can also result in bad data (as in, what is the native language of some Latinos in the USA...?). If one is both a practitioner and a student, I guess the former takes presence. Lifelong education is a thing, we are all students of life, etc. :) Do let me know precisely which questions seem wrong (compound, etc.). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
In academic models, an MBBS is more like a master's than a bachelor's, or perhaps like one of those uncommon bachelor's–master's combination programs. In most countries, it's at least six years of study (post-high school level). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Interesting survey. I agree that it is very difficult to design such things well or to wisely interpret results. I wonder about

Q22. Given the current number of WikiProject Medicine members and related volunteers, and the influx of new members, how many years do you think before most of medicine-related topics on Wikipedia are considered "high quality"?

It assumes that getting "most of medicine-related topics" to "high quality" is a goal of the project. The choices with timespans suggest movement towards that goal that editors could observe and judge the speed or acceleration. Anyone here optimistic enough to select something other than "never"? And what could "other" be for, given the question just asks "how many years"?

When I started editing Wikipedia in 2005, I added an article about a drug that didn't have any lay-friendly online information. I found some scientific papers on PubMed (though I could only read the abstracts) and a package insert from the manufacturer that I had to translate from French (I don't speak French). Wikipedia satisfyingly became the #1 Google result for this topic. Today, it is about halfway down the first page, which is true also for a number of other major health topics. But significantly, there are quite a lot of major health topics where Wikipedia doesn't appear in the first page of results at all. For me, the #1 Google result for many topics is the UK's NHS. You guys probably get something else. And major reputable charities appear on the first page, with websites that have lots of professionally written content aimed at a lay audience. And there are quite a few publications offering generally high quality medical information. The NHS pages are a tad plain (no pictures) and written for a worried reader. Some other health websites are beautifully presented with professional photographs and graphics.

We've already passed the point where Wikipedia is no longer the #1 search result for most medical topics. This is important not just for those old farts still searching for things on a web browser on their computer, but also for the answers given by a smart device. Let's assume that "appeared on the first page of Google search results" is a measure of being judged a highly relevant and useful source of information on a topic. I wonder what your thoughts would be for

How many years do you think before Wikipedia's articles on most medicine-related topics are no longer considered highly relevant or useful by Google?"

And

Do you think that would be a bad thing?

One of the questions in the survey asked if "More medical professionals should edit Wikipedia", and it is hard to see why anyone would want fewer medical professionals helping out on Wikipedia. But if they had a choice between editing Wikipedia or updating the NHS page or helping review a medical charity's fact sheets or answering a journalist's questions? I mean, the amazing thing about Wikipedia is that it lets me, who has no higher qualification than a Scout's first aid badge, write stuff that people will read. But that's also a problem, which the other sites returned by Google don't have. -- Colin°Talk 16:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Colin that the only plausible answer to Q22 is “never”, so don’t think it will yield useful information.
And Colin hits the nail on the head with how Wikipedia has fallen on Google searches. This is another very demotivating factor for editing Wikipedia. Take the highly contentious PANDAS (which fits with my reasons as discussed above for editing Wikipedia, because medical information affects real people in what can be really bad ways). Almost every source of PANDAS info that google returns is advocacy related, verging on fringe quackery. (Researchers at the NIMH invented the thing, and their website doesn’t even mention the enormous body of research and consensus that does not support their hypotheses, and now those same researchers have branched out into non-profits and created advocacy websites.) One has to scroll a long time before hitting the Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia.
Colin hits on multiple other points related to medical professionals editing Wikipedia, and fails to notice that a blend of skills is needed in here. I spent the better part of last year attempting to mentor and explain Wikipedia editing to three medical professionals. They never got it, and my effort was misspent. It just seems impossible for them to grok our policies and our audience, and they want to write from primary sources, for an audience of other medical professionals. So, what do the questions about medical professionals seek to determine, and how does that relate to the demographic info we provide? What brought me to an interest in medical editing is a graduate level statistics background and early exposure to the effects of various kinds of bias or other methodological issues in medical research, so I don’t count as any kind of anything in your answers, and yet I know how medical articles are built in here, and understand the importance of using secondary sources. Ditto for Colin, and there are few editors who can better write content that is clear and digestible to laypeople. We all spend a lot of time correcting content edited by medical professionals, while at the same time, I highly value those (few) that do know how to write medical content for Wikipedia. All have a role to play in crowd-sourced content.
Piotr, I will review your latest version, and move from putting typo comments here, to putting them on your talk page,[5] to avoid bulking up this page with typo correcting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Maybe the PANDAS example depends on your search history. At Google, almost half my results, including the first link, are about Pandas (software), and some are about Pandas. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

We've already passed the point where Wikipedia is no longer the #1 search result for most medical topics

That's a little depressing. One of the nice features about wikipedia pages is they are often well referenced, that makes them somewhat verifiable. This is perhaps an area where other sources (including potentially textbooks) fail, relying on other processes for accuracy. I wonder if many readers are actually aware of this however. Few readers will find the systematic review on most medical topics, but for some purposes this is the best source. Talpedia (talk) 17:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
The rank depends on the subject. For "cancer", our article at Cancer is the first link (for me; Google personalizes results). For prostate cancer, it's about the 12th, and something in the 8th to 12th range seems typical for common kinds of cancer. Looking at some FA-class articles, Acute myeloid leukemia is about 10th. Amphetamine is 3rd in the list plus being in the side panel. Bupropion is 6th. Buruli ulcer is 3rd. Chagas disease is the 4th link. Coeliac disease is 3rd (or 2.5th? It's after two related links from the NHS), but if you search with the American spelling, Wikipedia is the 4th website. Dementia with Lewy bodies, if you search for the quoted phrase, is 6th.
As for where the readers come from, https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=PANDAS says that a quarter of the page views for PANDAS come from other Wikipedia pages. That's a bit higher than for Cancer (20%) but lower than for Chagas disease (30%). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
PANDAS is probably a bit of mess wrt analysis of incoming and outgoing because of the various new conditions that have been hypothesized when earlier hypotheses were unsupported. As the original NIMH PITAND hypothesis became controversial and hard to prove, they came up with PANDAS. When that hypothesis remained unsupported after decades, they came up with PANS (while independent researchers proposed CANS). The secondary reviews today tend to treat PANDAS/PANS/CANS as all the same thing. So there are varying search terms and redirects all over Wikipedia, and only last week did I discover that one in the suite that was AFD'd and redirected to PANDAS had been recreated while I wasn't paying attention, so the numbers should change now that everything goes to one place.
Anyway, back on point, I remember when Tourette syndrome was hands-down #1 on google; those days are gone. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Rank certainly varies. Opening an "incognito" window in Chrome should reduce the risk that Google search results are personalised. Doing that for me, Cancer gives NHS, www.cancer.gov and Wikipedia in third place. Searching "PANDAS" uppercase in quotes does give mixed results but Google seem to know this and give me a box to "Show results for..." which distinguishes "software" from "disorder". Wikipedia is in fifth place for the disorder. Given that "keto" is such a big fad diet right now, I'm relieved that asking my phone "OK Google, what is a ketogenic diet?" responds with "According to Wikipedia..." and reads out our lead sentence. If I ask my phone "What is cancer?" I get "According to the NHS..." and a perfectly acceptable definition. Sandy may be disappointed at the result I get for "What is the disorder pandas?" coming from www.nimh.nih.gov, but I do think that if a .gov website is getting things wrong, this isn't really Google's fault, and you should be writing to your political representative.
As some here will know from MOS debates about language, Google is good at finding things that exist but hopeless at finding things that don't exist. It won't find articles where the authors chose not to use a particular term, or where such a term wouldn't have even crossed their minds. So it will tend to find articles where the authors think PANDAS is a thing, and ignore those who dismiss it. The interlinked nature of advocacy websites is reinforced by Google. -- Colin°Talk 23:26, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments. I am finishing work on the survey, and based on your comments above, I've added a few new questions:

  • Q17 In your own words, can you briefly describe what you think is the main purpose of WikiProject Medicine?
  • Q23 and Q24 about Wikipedia's popularity in medical topics and alternatives
  • Q29 How do you feel about the educational initiatives, where professors assign their students to edit Wikipedia articles in the field of medicine?
  • Q30 How do you feel about outside support from organizations like WHO/NIH and similar for Wikipedia?

Barring no major issues, I hope to launch the survey in a week or so. I'd appreciate any suggestions on what other venues than WT:MED talk page (here) it could be announced at. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Piotrus Q22. What are WikiProject Medicine's biggest failures … Option 1 ??? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:25, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Typo: Support from such insitutions is problematic due to conflic of interest —> conflict. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, both fixed (also another typo in the reported sentence). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:12, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Merge Bone fracture and List of fracture patterns in bone?

Fractures-pre/post operative

Hi, I have initiated a merge discussion at Talk:Bone fracture § Proposed merge of List of fracture patterns in bone into Bone fracture as part of my WP:NPP work. The discussion has received no participation. I could close it unilaterally and perform the merger per WP:MERGECLOSE. However, since medicine is not my area of expertise, I wanted to check here whether some more competent editors wanted to weigh in. JBchrch talk 22:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Help needed at Talk:Breastfeeding

Nothing too complicated here but I'm just out of patience and it's time for me to disengage. Would another experienced editor like to respond to the students at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Breastfeeding#Induced_Lactation:_Adding_Information ? Having had to explain to one of them yesterday that using the term "breast milk" is not transphobic, I'm at risk of sounding grumpy. FYI Gandydancer and Ian (Wiki Ed). Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

At this point in the term, the easiest way to deal with poor student editing is to ignore them for one more week, and then revert. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
I'd been wondering if we could sustain a non-redirect article on Induced lactation, but one of the students says that there are very few MEDRS-style sources on the subject. If it were possible to write and source a decent encyclopedia article on the subject, then that would allow more detail. In the larger article, induced lactation (i.e., breastfeeding despite never having been pregnant) is an experience that less than 0.1% of breast feeders have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot: Thanks for the ping. These kinds of debates are starting to make me feel old. I will try to figure out how I can help. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:20, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@Ian (Wiki Ed), do the existing course materials discourage students from picking the same articles over and over? This is already the sixth class assignment for that article (and the second this calendar year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing They don't currently, but we're planning to set up a list of heavily-assigned articles that will trigger a discouraging email if students assign themselves the articles. Sage and I talked about it a few weeks ago, and I believe it shouldn't be hard to implement technically. Hopefully we can get this set up in the next month or so. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks everyone (including Colin for his detailed and wise intervention), you're a wonderful group to feel old with. Ian, we had incredible, absolutely amazing work on this article from another student earlier this term. But she was a 4th year med student who was also completing a certificate in lactation counselling. I'm wondering if certain articles should be discouraged for undergraduates but encouraged (or not discouraged) for graduate-level health care students. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@Clayoquot That's a good question. It would be more difficult to implement, but I can't speak to how much more difficult (since I'm no coder). But I'll ask about exceptions like this. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
The way I'd implement this would be to have two lists: One list of articles which trigger an email discouraging all student editing, and a second list of articles which trigger an email that says, "Sign up for this article only if you are taking graduate-level or professional-level coursework in a relevant field."
I've been reflecting on what might be going on with the current students. It is probably rare that an undergraduate course would have you learn something about breastfeeding that should be added to this article. The undergraduate demographic is also just about as far as you can get socially from the new parent demographic, so breastfeeding is not a topic they are likely to have learned much about outside of school.
The students are probably stressed that they don't know what to add, and when people are under stress we all tend to do what we know best how to do, regardless of whether it is useful. I'm guessing that what the students feel they do best is call out bias and raise the visibility of marginalized groups. So we're getting POV pushing but it's borne out of subject matter incompetence and stress behaviour. Nudging them towards articles in which they have more competence to offer is a good solution. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC) P.S. wondering if Crossroads has something to say on this. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Writing up the English Wikipedia's ordinary approach to sex-specific medical content has been on the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#To-do list for a while now. We're still looking at and thinking about the new section on suicide and self-harm content (check it out!), so I'm not sure that now's the best time to jump into another big discussion, but perhaps we should get that done before the next school year.
Speaking of the new section, one of the things that intrigues me about it is how much of the (non-Wikipedia) advice is culture- or language-specific. For example, style guides for newspapers routinely advice against the phrase "committed suicide". But in (some? all?) non-English languages, that phrase has none of the suicide-was-illegal-in-England connotations. In some languages, "committing an act" has the same emotional feel as "turning in your homework" or "finishing a project". Now, we write in English, so we should pay attention to the sensitive points in the English language and Anglophone cultures, but I wonder if the students are doing something similar, and considering only their own language and their own culture when trying to decide what's biased. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:FASA

Featured Article Save Award nomination at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Menstrual cycle/archive2. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:29, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Background: FASA is a new award for editors who "save" featured articles that are at risk of being de-listed. The process appears to be as simple as it could get: Share your personal opinion on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Abdominal pocketing

today i watched https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-leicestershire-59548902 and learnt of this surgical procedure, which could have its own wiki article maybe? RZuo (talk) 00:47, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

There is already a section on this technique in Flap (surgery)#Distant flaps; it could with some improvement, certainly. Klbrain (talk) 01:09, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

First finding from my survey

So the survey discussed above has launched, as many of you know due to talk page invitation (and if anyone didn't get it, you can find the survey here. Anyway, the first finding, before I even looked into any results, comes from the stage of figuring out who to contact and conserns the fact that at least half of people active on this very talk page (WTMED) as well as MAJORITY of editors who seem to have created new medicine-related articles (data from User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult) are NOT registered as Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Members (btw, there is confusing redunancy between this list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Participants). Hence, if anyone here is interested in outreach and getting people to officially sign up, it seems there's plenty of scope for that. (Also I didn't notice the above-linked new article report linked from the WPMED front page, I think it's a great tool to use for quality control and outreach; I do so when I have time for WPPOLAND and few others WikiProjets I am involved in). Cheers, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:34, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

RfC about rapid-onset gender dysphoria

Comments would be welcome at Talk:Irreversible Damage#RfC: Should rapid-onset gender dysphoria be described as "fringe"?. Crossroads -talk- 07:34, 12 December 2021 (UTC)


Discussion at Talk:Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies § Merge from Social construct theory of ADHD

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies § Merge from Social construct theory of ADHD. Sundayclose (talk) 02:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:25, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Magic mushrooms

There's been some discussion recently about recreational drugs and WP:MEDRS. With that in mind, I was interested to come across Psilocybin, which is a FA. Quite a portion of the claims of drug effect in this article seems to be built around primary, or otherwise non-MEDRS, sources. I've suggested on its Talk page it should be de-listed (there are other issues too). WPMED members may find this of interest. Alexbrn (talk) 11:26, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Which is where Magic mushrooms redirects to (to Psilocybin mushroom to be precise). I do wonder if those are THE ONLY magic mushrooms, however? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
There are other mushrooms used for that kind of thing, like fly agaric but (as I understand it) in common parlance thiese aren't called "magic mushrooms". As I understand it the mushrooms article should be about mushrooms and their effects, whereas the Psilocybin should be specifically about that substance. As I understand it, the so-called "Psilocybin mushrooms" have their effect because of a bunch of psychoactive constituents, not just psilocybin. Alexbrn (talk) 10:02, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Electrotherapy (cosmetic)

Some content within the article Electrotherapy (cosmetic) appears to me to be within the remit of WP:MEDRS requirements, and from a brief inspection, some of the sources cited look questionable. Perhaps someone from the project could take a look? AndyTheGrump (talk)

thanks for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:59, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Toxic effects of the herb Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera)

Withania somnifera (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Can MED folks please review this source and the content and see if it can be used to add the toxic effects of Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) (a herb used in Ayurveda). There is a dispute and these sources + content except [1] have been removed here.


References

  1. ^ Hall, Harriet (16 March 2021). "Rightful for Pain: Deceptive Advertising and a Dangerous Ingredient". Science-Based Medicine. Retrieved 16 March 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ Cooperman, Tod. "Ashwagandha Side Effects". ConsumerLab.com. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
  3. ^ Björnsson, Helgi K.; Björnsson, Einar S.; Avula, Bharathi; Khan, Ikhlas A.; Jonasson, Jon G.; Ghabril, Marwan; Hayashi, Paul H.; Navarro, Victor (2020). "Ashwagandha-induced liver injury: A case series from Iceland and the US Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network". Liver International. 40 (4): 825–829. doi:10.1111/liv.14393.
  4. ^ Spray, Ms (8 December 2021). "Drug-induced hepatocellular injury due to herbal supplement ashwagandha". www.rcpe.ac.uk.

Venkat TL (talk) 08:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Upgrades to WPMED welcome template

Announcement: the MED welcome template {{WPMED welcome}} now allows use of optional parameter |1= (alias: |article=) to specify the name of an article the user has contributed to. A documentation page has been added to the template to demonstrate usage. For example, adding {{subst:WPMED welcome|Dissection}} to a user talk page will add the welcome message that you now see at the top of this page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

very good idea--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:12, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Embolic and thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination#Requested move 18 December 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Embolic and thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination#Requested move 18 December 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 16:45, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism on List of medical abbreviations

At List of medical abbreviations: S, most of the recent edits (over the past year) are non-constructive. Can someone with more medical knowledge than me watchlist these pages to prevent bad information from creeping in? (I'm not sure it's bad enough to indef semi-protect the entire list, but it may be) User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:39, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I've watchlisted it. But to be fair I disagree with several of the abbreviations in there, and some of them I've never seen in my life. Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:54, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
In that case, all the pages from List of medical abbreviations: A to List of medical abbreviations: Z should be deleted. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 03:09, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
No, that means that the list is incomplete. See also "Medical Abbreviations That Have Contradictory or Ambiguous Meanings". There are thousands of abbreviations used in medicine around the globe. Nobody will know all of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Castle Connolly Top Doctors and similar lists

I recently removed a Castle Connolly Top Doctors mention from an article of a fringe individual because this source is known to be unreliable or an outright scam. I then realized that there are 101 hits for Castle Connolly on English Wikipedia, including many doctors. If you search for "Top doctors" there are many more results.

What should be done about all these mentions of Castle Connolly and similarly dubious recognitions? Also the Castle Connolly Medical wiki page currently does not mention the controversy. There's a 2006 Slate article about this. I understand non-medical careers have similarly dubious "Who's who" lists. Is there a Wikipedia established convention for dealing with these dubious awards? ScienceFlyer (talk) 09:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like all those "top doctor" mentions (good grief) should be deleted, for a start. Alexbrn (talk) 09:23, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
See Special:LinkSearch/https://www.castleconnolly.com and Special:LinkSearch/*.castleconnolly.com for pages linking to their website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
There are about 100 of these left in the mainspace. I'll tackle a handful, and perhaps someone else would like to chip in, too. The second search link will give you a longer list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Omicron

As you'd expect, a high-traffic article.[6] I've just trimmed a load of preprints and WP:MEDPOP. Not sure either about the big comparative table pulled together from heterogeneous sources, some very poor. Could uses eyes. Alexbrn (talk) 16:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

File:Breathing masks.png Sciencia58 (talk) 16:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Macfarlane Burnet

Is anyone able to tune up this important bio? It should be salvageable by someone knowledgeable and with a bit of time. I can't decipher what is the copyvio issue that Earwig turns up though ... hope that Australian source is PD. [7] @Graham Beards: any interest? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Tirzepatide

G'day, I thought this would be a good place to ask. Understandably, the draft review isn't a particularly a quick one, but I just wanted to reach out & get someone to look at the draft in the title & see if it could accepted? Thanks a lot. Obama gaming (talk) 03:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Obama gaming, drafts are supposed to be accepted when they have a ≥50% chance of surviving AFD. There is basically a 0% chance that a drug that finished Phase 3 clinical trials will be deleted at AFD. I have never heard of such a thing happening. IMO you should WP:MOVE it to the mainspace and not bother the AFC folks with an article about an obviously notable subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
(If you want to expand it, then it's missing a section on its development and regulatory history. "It was invented by Alice Expert in Year. BigPharma, Inc. submitted it for FDA approval on Date" – that kind of thing.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Thank you for the guidance, I'll take a look at WP:MOVe & go from there. Yes I should add in the regulatory stuff in, but as I believe as of now it's currently patent pending. Cheers mate Obama gaming (talk) 17:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: I hope you don't mind the extra ping but if you could hop on over to tirzepatide & give the history section or the article itself a brief lookover that'd be splendid. Happy holidays Obama gaming (talk) 23:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
Looks good to me, @Obama gaming. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

{{Photosensitivity warning}}

I guess the answer will be decided here Alexbrn (talk) 17:46, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

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

Template:Photosensitivity warning (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion. Is this a proper or good thing to have? -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 17:44, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

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