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WP:MED Newsletter

It's back. This month's issue is below. I won't be posting these to WT:MED to avoid spamming those who don't care, so if you'd like to receive this fine monthly missive, add your username to the delivery list.

WikiProject Med Newsletter - Issue 21 - June 2023

Issue 21—June 2023 WikiProject Medicine Newsletter Hello all. Another irregular edition of the newsletter; pardon the six-month gap. I was inspired to collect this after seeing how much activity there is in the GA space on the medicine front. Please review a GAN if you have time, and help to welcome more medicine editors into the fold: Recognized content (since January 1!) Trinidad Arroyo nom. Thebiguglyalien, reviewed by Mike Christie Mycobacterium nom. BluePenguin18, reviewed by Ealdgyth Nominated for review Hanhart syndrome nom. Etriusus, under review by Dancing Dollar Persistent stapedial artery nom. X750 Howard Florey nom. Hawkeye7 History of penicillin nom. Hawkeye7 Cataract surgery nom. Pbsouthwood COVID-19 pandemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa, under review by Shibbolethink Mohamed Hamad Satti nom. FuzzyMagma El Hadi Ahmed El Sheikh nom. FuzzyMagma Mansour Ali Haseeb nom. FuzzyMagma Sinus tarsi syndrome for peer review by Pear1020 WP:MED News Wikipedia:Good article reassessment is back in business, with a new process and new coordinators. If you see medicine-related GAs that may no longer meet the GA criteria, feel free to nominate them for attention/reassessment (please, not too many at once, lest we get overwhelmed). I'll incorporate them into the listings above. Major depressive disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dengue fever are featured articles that need updating. Feel free to chime in at the talk pages or WT:MED if you have the time/bandwidth to help update. They'll likely go to featured article review for more feedback in the near(ish) future (probably in the order listed). Newsletter ideas, comments, and criticisms welcome here. You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

If folks have thoughts, feedback, or ideas for the newsletter feel free to post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter (or in this thread). Enjoy. Ajpolino (talk) 04:13, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

This is a good opportunity for me to post an update on our 2023 reference campaign. Please sign up! Points are retroactive, even if you sign up late.

Looking at the leaderboard, it appears that our current winners are JenOttawa, SomeoneOK, and V3ganf3lix, who have added a total (net) 331 refs to WPMED-tagged articles so far this year. (Only inline citations using ref tags are counted, and re-use is counted the same as a separate source.) At the other end of the leaderboard, Firefangledfeathers, Julius Senegal, and Ajpolino are leading the "defense against the dark arts" group, having removed 262 more refs than they have added to WPMED-tagged articles. We need both the addition of good refs as well as the removal of inappropriate ones, so I offer congratulations and thanks to both of these groups.

Joining the contest should take less than a minute. (The password is qyoufwds if it asks you to enter it separately.) Once you sign up, everything else is automatic. It's really quick and easy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Tea component theanine and its putative cognitive effects

Theanine is a 1-2% constituent of dried green tea leaves, is sold as a dietary supplement (~250 mg), and may act alone or combined with caffeine in tea or supplements to improve alertness, reaction time, and other cognitive effects.

A sentence in the theanine article states that theanine and caffeine combined produce 5 cognitive effects, such as "faster simple reaction time, task switching, sustained attention, and faster numeric working memory reaction time", with 7 primary sources (each with n < 50 published 11-15 years ago) supporting the statement.

Issues raised with this sentence:

• the combined effects of theanine and caffeine stated in the sentence do not allow understanding of theanine by itself - the object of the article.
• 4 of the 7 primary sources were included in a 2014 review ("Camfield") which one editor refuses to use. The review does not synthesize clearly what the cognitive effects of theanine in isolation are.
• the Camfield review states that "there were insufficient studies to conduct meta-analysis on the effects of L-theanine in isolation", while one small 2008 study found no effect of theanine alone on alertness (250 mg), and another in 2008 reported improved alertness 2 hrs after ingestion of theanine by itself (200 mg).
• a 2021 review in Cureus was proposed as the most authoritative review on theanine's cognitive effects. This review concludes that combined theanine and caffeine improve several cognitive measures, while theanine itself showed minor improvements in a cognitive test (from one 2008 primary source). Cureus remains as a red flag source on WP:CITEWATCH, and is not MEDLINE-indexed.

What do medical editors think of this sentence ("faster simple reaction time, task switching, sustained attention, faster numeric working memory reaction time and improved sentence verification accuracy") in the theanine article, the use of 7 primary sources to support it, and absence of conclusive evidence from two reviews on the cognitive effects of theanine in isolation?

Should the review(s) be used to make a statement that the putative cognitive effects of theanine alone have not been established, as only a few primary studies have been conducted and not replicated or reviewed with firm conclusions since their publication more than a decade ago? - an unsatisfying, unencyclopedic statement for the general user, imho. Perhaps it's better to eliminate the existing sentence with only primary sources, and say nothing at this point of such limited research. Zefr (talk) 18:00, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

If everyone did decent research and got clear results, it would be much easier to write some of these articles. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. Having claims sourced to a shopping list of old primary sources and dodgy journals (Cureus? seriously?) was not great. I just expunged it. From a quick look, there just isn't any decent sourcing on the effects of theanine supplements on brain power. Bon courage (talk) 05:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Watchlisted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:04, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

This already in progress WP:DRN#Theanine. — Invasive Spices (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

So we have Dispute resolution and a Reliable sources noticeboard post, neither of which were in favor of these additions based on marginal and primary sources, [1] [2] and yet today we have another addition of content from a WP:CITEWATCH, MDPI, non-PUBMED indexed source. [3] I've been watchlisting now for several days, and it seems we need more eyes before this ends up in topic bans.[4] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:28, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Medical claim at British Pakistanis

Would someone with more expertise on medical studies be able to assess the claim added in this edit to British Pakistanis ("British Pakistani couples are 10 times as likely to birth children with genetic defects than all other ethnic groups in the general UK populace") and whether it's justified based on the source cited? Thanks. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:06, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm - the ultimate source here is a rather small primary study on a Derbyshire health authority in 2002 - I think it was 53 Pakistani heritage children with genetic defects in the group. But there is other research - this 2015 paper summarizes a lot of it. Some form of the rather scary figures should go in the article. It is a very sensitive issue, with some in the community pushing strongly for recognition, and others very intent on ignoring or hiding it (the 2015 paper covers both views). Someone better qualified than me should work out how best to summarize the state of research. But it is clear from the 2015 paper that awareness of the issue is low among many who would potentially be affected. Johnbod (talk) 22:56, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

As is often the case, the Relative risk is probably not the best way to present scary figures. The absolute risk is given in the 2015 paper that Johnbod linked (2–3% for unrelated couples and 4–6% for consanguineous couples (Cousin marriage, from the looks of it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Cordless Larry has used this section to justify removing all material on the topic at the article. I don't think this is what we are saying here. Ideally someone should craft a few sentences on the issue, fully referenced. Johnbod (talk) 01:31, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

No I haven't. What I did was revert an editor who was repeatedly adding the material against consensus, telling them to discuss it on the article's talk page instead. On the talk page, I linked to this discussion so that they were aware of it. Unfortunately they've since been blocked as a sockpuppet. The rest of the section remains in place and I agree that a non-blocked editor should probably add to this. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Rotator cuff tear#Requested move 11 May 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Rotator cuff tear#Requested move 11 May 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk) 05:23, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Accessible image

The article Accessible image has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

attempted to find sources unsuccessfully; not verifiable

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. SomeoneDreaming (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

This has been redirected. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion about Healthline at RSN

Deprecation or blacklisting? Zefr (talk) 20:30, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Zefr see the similar example above, at the discussion of Green nail syndrome. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:58, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Extra help needed at the Concussion article

Hi, can a few other people add Concussion to their watchlists? I moved some material on Earthquakes being a risk factor to the talk page (as the source did not reflect this) and there is repeated editing back in of the same material. Recent edit . I am hesitant to revert it again as I do not have experience with back and forth edit disagreements. Thanks. JenOttawa (talk) 13:09, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks JO. I also reverted, posted at talk, and watchlisted the article. Ajpolino (talk) 16:03, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I left a long comment on the editor's User talk: page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for helping keep an eye on this article. JenOttawa (talk) 14:05, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that the editor is heading for a block. Most of the posts are "Have you ever been uploaded <name of something> to Internet Archive (archive.org)?" It's bad grammar, and multiple editors' requests for clarification have been ignored.

@SEPRodrigues, you blocked this editor at the Portuguese-language Wikipedia last September. Could you tell me whether the editor might speak Portuguese natively? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Dementia#Risk factors

In the (unlikely) event that anyone has a spare moment (yea, right), anemia is missing as a dementia risk factor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

 Done SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:31, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Green nail syndrome

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common bacterial cause of green nail syndrome

So, I've been trying to do my part in cleaning up... this mess... and I came across the page green nail syndrome. It looks to me like "patientcareonline.com" is some kind of fly-by-night aggregator site that fails WP:MEDRS, but it's cited repeatedly. There's also something from an osteopathy group, a nail-makeup magazine... The page could use attention. XOR'easter (talk) 05:51, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

did a few edits[5]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:42, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

This article needs some serious attention (probably nuking large amounts of content). There are huge numbers of citations to:

• patientcareonline.com
• dermatologyadvisor.com
• nailsmag.com
• mydrcom.au
• a dubious Indian journal

This article is a good example of why we have MEDRS, and when we need to act. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I've excoriated most of the dubious sources, flagged some that aren't egregious uses, and now the article needs to be properly cited.[6] As it turned out, I only nuked two bits of content that looked potentially harmful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't appear useful to post to the student editor who added all that (Special:Contributions/Sm999), but I do wonder why it stood for three years. This is another apt example, reinforcing #Discussion about Healthline at RSN raised by Zefr; with all good intentions, a student editor chunked up an article based on garbage sourcing when good sources are available, and now multiple editors have to go in and fix what could have been done correctly from the get-go if something had stopped the student editor from using those sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I glanced over the article, and I did a quick search for sources. I didn't spot anything in the article that was obviously wrong. (The bit about keeping nails dry, for example, could be cited to any number of proper sources.) Sources are IMO a means to an end. If the article content is correct, then fixing it seems less important (more "cosmetic", perhaps?) than the ones where the article content is incorrect or outdated.

Also, there's a WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT issue: if someone got the information from a less-than-MEDRS-ideal source, then it can be useful for subsequent editors to see that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I ended up deleting very little text, as most of it can probably be cited. But I don't think Wikipedia needs to be hosting non-reliable medical websites (which may contain dubious info) as long as we preserve the content that doesn't seem problematic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Other editors object to hosting uncited material even when they're pretty certain that it's correct. Consider, e.g., this edit, which blanked more than half of an article, including photos and other material that we normally wouldn't cite, because citations weren't added to apparently correct information fast enough to suit the editor who tagged them. If you remove citations, you make the content vulnerable to a WP:CHALLENGE purely because it's now unsourced. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I can live with that; no information is better than potentially bad information in the health realm. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

While moving in better sources, I have definitely encountered some things that should not have been there. Anyway, partially cleaned up, still waiting for the journal source mentioned below. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Student editing followup

Student editor User:Sm999 issued messages to two other student editors, likely from the same course, and those edits lead to user:Bcritical. Ian (Wiki Ed), might you reach out here ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

It looks like Marchjuly reached out to them in 2020 while that class was active. It doesn't look like they've posted at WP:ENB before, so I'll point them there. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:04, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Request for journal article

Almost everything used at green nail syndrome is a sub-optimal source. If anyone can access PMID 33492004, could they please email it to me? Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:55, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I have access to it, but the "Email user" function does not allow attachments; how would you like me to send it to you? (Not watching, please ping.) --JBL (talk) 22:55, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

JayBeeEll I can email you and then you will have my address, from which you can attach it ... thank you so much ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:31, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Done, and you're welcome! --JBL (talk) 00:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

JayBeeEll it hasn't arrived yet; I can check again in the morning, but might you doublecheck that you got the right email address that I sent you? Thanks again ... progressing on the article meanwhile. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

It still has not arrived. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi SandyGeorgia, I'm not sure what the problem is -- is it possible it's gone to your spam folder? (The e-mail address is automatically filled in by the Reply function, to a g-mail account that seems obviously to be correct. I sent it a second time this morning. My account is a yahoo.com e-mail address. Sorry this is less smooth than expected! --JBL (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

JayBeeEll ah ha! Found in spam! Thank you so much, and sorry for the extra pings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:00, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Phew, great -- glad I could help! --JBL (talk) 19:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Green nail syndrome or chloronychia

I am unsure whether to move this article to the scientific or recognized medical name (chloronychia). It does seem to be the name used in the most recent sources, but there aren't enough sources overall for me to be assured that it is preferred over the lay term. On the other hand, the only indication I can find of Goldman-Fox syndrome come from one author (Schwartz), so I'm fairly sure that should not be the article name. Help? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Found another Goldman-Fox syndrome here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Under ICD-10, it was "Cellulitis of finger and toe", more specifically "Infection of nail". Under ICD-11, it is any of the "Infections of the nail or perionychium". Neither of these turned out to be helpful, as they mentioned neither the simple "green nail" nor the Greek-derived "chloronychia", and both are about any type of infection rather than this specific one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Done, ready for others

I've done all the damage I can do at green nail syndrome; ready for others (article name matter pending above at #Green nail syndrome or chloronychia). @XOR'easter and WhatamIdoing: out of my depth, did what I could. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Unwatch; there is still a lot of work to be done there, but I'm out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

RFC on GA criteria

People who have written FA and GA articles may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#RfC: change GA criteria to require inline citations in all cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Source-finding links in {{Talk header}}

Hi all, currently when {{Talk header}} is on a talk page with our project's tag, it replaces the standard "Find sources" links with {{Find medical sources}} which looks like this:

The intended purpose is to help guide newer editors to reliable sources on the given medical topic. I'm wondering if to that end, we should trim a few of the links, to focus a newer editor on the resources that are most likely to get them to the best sources most easily. Personally, I use Pubmed far more than those other links (and I'm curious to hear what you all prefer). The Cochrane link seems dispensable as Cochrane reviews show up on a Pubmed search. I don't know much about DOAJ, but testing it on "Prostate cancer" (use the example links above), I can't seem to filter to just reviews or books, so I'm being swamped with primary sources that wouldn't be ideal for the article. Gale also seems unhelpful for medicine topics. It searches magazines, which is neat for many topics, but probably rarely helpful for us? I never use the links to the individual publishers (ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley) but now that I click, they actually do have some potentially useful eBooks that wouldn't come up on Pubmed. So I'd propose cutting the links to Cochrane, DOAJ, and Gale. But I'm curious if others have thoughts, and if I'm overlooking the value of these links. Ajpolino (talk) 01:33, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

We have thousands of articles that basically aren't about anything scientific. This simple search in PetScan indicates that about 30% of "WPMED's" ~45,000 articles are biographies, most of which won't benefit from PubMed or similar links. Additionally, even the most obviously biomedical subject could have non-biomedical content as well (e.g., which company developed it, who the most famous patient is).

The link to TWL could be hidden in CSS for new editors, since most of them won't have access to it (unless they have made 500 edits at a different wiki). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Hm. That is a good point. I'd support hiding TWL for certain editors, though doing so is well behind my technical capacity. Maybe cutting Cochrane (available through Pubmed) and DOAJ (there's a "free full text" filter prominently displayed on Pubmed, so I think Pubmed provides DOAJ functionality plus much more filtering. But again I could be not thinking through a use case well). Ajpolino (talk) 01:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I mostly use google scholar which isn't on the list, but perhaps I it's a new fangled-thing (one feature I really like is being able to search through the papers that cite a particular paper - which is great for checking if your material is up-to-date). On Cochrane... I sort of think of it as a statement that systematic reviews are good for peopel who don't read / don't quite get WP:MEDRS. Do we need science direct, spring etc though? I'd also point out that the most used and important form of access for scholarly writing (if a legally dubious one) is not on that list. I don't know if we can or should put it there... but it does make the whole of providing people a set of sources slightly odd Talpedia 07:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

True, we don't link to Sci-Hub (for those out of the loop; assuming I'm catching your meaning correctly) because we try to avoid linking to sites that violate others' copyright per WP:COPYVIOEL. We could certainly consider adding "back" GScholar – it's in the original set of source-finding links that displays on non-WP:MED pages. Ajpolino (talk) 13:43, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Wrt to the biographies issue, there is a solution to that, if desired: it involves adding automatic recognition of the Biography project tag to the {{Find sources}} template as well, and ordering the precedence of project recognition to place Biography before MED. As currently engineered, that would result in suppression of the entire set of MED links displayed above (for those articles belonging to both) in favor of the links for Biographical articles. (These links are available now, and can be seen at {{Biographical sources notice}} and used at will on Talk pages, but are not part of the automatic project recognition on Talk pages, as MED-related projects now are.) If there is consensus to carry out auto-recognition of Biography articles, then a request should be made at Template talk:Find sources to implement it. Any such consensus should presumably involve interested editors at WP:BIOGRAPHY as well. They were notified in Archive 76 of this possibility, but there was no follow-up at that time, so auto-recognition of Biography-project was not implemented, but it's a simple fix. Mathglot (talk) 19:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Source weightiness

While this is clearly a commentary, and as such should not be used for statements of fact, can project members advise me on the weightiness of this source for attributed opinion? link. RSP is no help. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The author appears to be a physician who founded a small advocacy organization after his wife died from improper treatment.

How to give this POV due weight depends in part on what the rest of the sources say. Is this a common POV? Does it disagree with other sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Medicine-related CCI

Mostly epilepsy related: Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations#Marium_(ILAE-WiR). Wikipedian in Residence indeffed, cleanup needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:57, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

These are mostly about epilepsy. There's a note about needing access to a paywalled source. Someone may be able to help with that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm just venting here, sorry. So we have had a Wikipedian-in-Residence, no less, who was a serial copyright violator, and who dumped alt-med rubbish into our medical content? I shouldn't be surprised, but... (Again, sorry for just venting.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

The trouble is, there's no control over the use of the term "Wikipedian-in-Residence". Anyone who can talk an institution into it (or vice versa) can set themselves up as a WiR, paid or unpaid. Often the institutions put up internal candidates or others with little or no wp experience, preferring those who understand the institution. This can be a mistake. I don't know what happened here; was the post advertised? Johnbod (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

This position was advertised here by User:Diptanshu Das almost two years ago: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 153#Wikipedian in Residence for ILAE Wikipedia Epilepsy Project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Template under discussion

Two of this project's templates are under discussion:

• Template:Infobox medical intervention
• Template:Infobox medical intervention (new)

Little pob (talk) 12:36, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Commented. D6194c-1cc (talk) 13:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Use of ChatGPT output in MED articles

Discussions, mentions, or uses of OpenAI's large language model "ChatGPT" are being held all over Wikipedia, and editors are using ChatGPT output on Talk pages, Help pages, and sometimes even directly in main space articles. This is starting to happen in MED articles as well: witness three discussions at Talk:Femur, and the subsequent rewrite of the lead of Femur using ChatGPT-produced output (diff). In this particular case, the user specifically asked the bot for a less jargony version of the lead, replacing terms like proximal, distal, patella, tetrapod with Simple English-like equivalents or expansions.

This particular case is less concerning to me than the more general issue of the direct use of bot-generated output in articles, which may be subject to inaccuracy, artifice, and fake references, much more so than the very restricted case of jargon-simplification in the Femur example which is less likely to be problematic. Nevertheless, I wanted to alert you to the issue and let you know that AI bot-generated output in main space is not theoretical, it is happening now. Even worse, imho, is the prospect of it happening stealthily, unlike in the Femur example where the editor in question was perfectly transparent about what they were doing, and indeed, invited feedback on the TP before modifying the article. (No feedback was forthcoming.) Use of AI-generated content in MED articles is only likely to increase, and to the extent that this may affect content in MEDRS-related topics, perhaps it's time to discuss how this may affect Wikipedia's overage of MED-related topics and what, if anything, we want to do to address the issue before it overwhelms us. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

There is a policy guideline in development, WP:LLM. Zefr (talk) 19:47, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I hung about a bit on WP:LLM and found that it was all a bit... hypothetical, trying to regulate for something that does not get used yet. I sort of feel that one needs looser tools than policy for such hypothetical issues. I would also advocating for considering AI *improved* content in addition to AI generated content. Talpedia 14:33, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, following with interest. EMsmile (talk) 16:01, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Lactational amenorrhea and Breastfeeding and fertility

Aren't these two articles basically about the same topic, so that they should be merged? Note that Breastfeeding Infertility redirects to Lactational amenorrhea.  --Lambiam 22:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

yes...though the former is better organized...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Methadone articles

Specifically methadone, methadone clinic,methadone maintenance, Opioid agonist therapy. These articles could benefit from attention from someone who knows the subject better than I do. Some should probably be merged or renamed. Prezbo (talk) 23:34, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:39, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Diaphragmatic breathing

As part of an ongoing cleanup operation, I came across the article Diaphragmatic breathing. Some of the sources look iffy: there's a lot of "complementary and alternative" being thrown about. Suggestions welcome. XOR'easter (talk) 00:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is problematic. Diaphragmatic breathing is something recommended by everyone from voice coaches to mental health professionals to speech therapists to altmed people and even outright quacks. But: It's okay for the article to admit that this article is about the same thing that the yoga teacher was talking about. The article doesn't say that the altmed folks are correct; it merely says that they make certain claims, like breathing exercises help stressed people calm down. In fact, most of what's labeled in the article as being altmed isn't actually about altmed at all. Whether or not one in eight US adults have tried diaphragmatic breathing is not an altmed-specific fact.

If you'd like to increase the impressiveness of the citations, consider replacing existing citations with PMID 33076360 or PMID 31436595. The review PMID 33530033 will cover the information about hypertension, and the Cochrane review PMID 32212422 covers asthma (result: it helps, but they add their usual whinge about research quality). The COPD researchers seem to have mixed feelings about it, though PMID 31719191 and PMID 32808571 suggest it's a net benefit. The "stomach conditions" mentioned in the article likely mean GERD specifically, and PMID 35123084 and PMID 35842548 say that it works.

In short, I'd say that if anything needs to be done in this article, it's to stop deriding overall efficacy as merely being an altmed claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, I don't have the background to edit medical articles in more than the most generalist way; I'm the kind of doctor who can't cure you, unless your problem is a lack of hearing about theoretical physics. XOR'easter (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

(Hey, I do have that problem! Nobody ever talks to me about theoretical physics.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Peroneal tendon

Peroneal tendon is currently a red link. Should it redirect to Tendon, or elsewhere? Or do we need an article? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Spelling is perineum or perineal described here. Or more likely you were looking for the tendon associated with the common fibular nerve, aka common peroneal nerve. Zefr (talk) 17:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure they are referring to the tendon of the peroneus muscle. TompaDompa (talk) 18:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Reviews - commonly associated with ankle injuries. Zefr (talk) 18:22, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I was trying to link the string "peroneal tendon", spelling as shown, in Schilling tendon procedure to something useful. I note the same spelling in the title of a source in Fibularis brevis. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:03, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: if it's the part of the peroneal muscle that turns into a tendon, as explained at Peroneus longus (redirects to Fibularis longus): "The muscle becomes a tendon that wraps around and behind the lateral malleolus of the ankle" then perhaps it should redirect there. But this source makes it sound like "peroneal tendon" can be that part of either the peroneus longus or the peroneus brevis muscle where it becomes a tendon, which would make a redirect target of Fibularis muscles seem a better one. TompaDompa? Mathglot (talk) 02:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Microbiota Directed Therapeutic Food

Please could someone familiar with nutrition help review the above draft, it is one of the oldest pending review at AFC. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:02, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Article and section should use sentence case, per WP:AT#Sentence case and MOS:SECTIONS. Mathglot (talk) 02:42, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@Dodger67, I'd rather see this turned into a short section at Therapeutic food. Katemeshi101 has been away for a few weeks, but might be interested, especially if someone else could help out with any necessary attribution "paperwork". Or EMsmile might be interested in this subject? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

ELI5 anatomy time

So I was randomly cleaning up Swimsuit (see, I had a fun fact to add, and a picture was too tall for the layout, and then I noticed another problem, and while I was there anyway I thought...) and now I have an anatomical problem for you: Where, exactly, is the groin?

I kind of doubt that the claim in Swimsuit#Women's swimsuits that a bikini covers the groin is accurate, but aside from calling it "the diaper region" in the pre-potty-training age range, I'm not sure what exactly we call that region of the body. But perhaps a bikini bottom only covers the upper/inner half of the groin, since if they go down the thigh at all, even a centimeter, they become a pair of swim shorts? Also, the bikini bottom goes up sometimes to or above the navel, which I think isn't groin territory at all.

Is there any chance that someone could upload an image that highlights exactly which bits count as groin, in the formal/non-euphemistic sense?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Not sure; but your question led me to Two-piece swimsuit, which is a redirect to Bikini. The latter, marked as a good article, has plenty of stuff I disagree with, not least an implication, or at least a confusion about whether bikini is a synonym or just an updated term for two-piece swimsuit (certainly not, in my view; the former is a specific subset of the latter). I fixed up some clearly unsupported stuff in a caption, but other that haven't tried to go further, or to raise a TP discussion; but given your interest, I thought perhaps you might like to take a look. Mathglot (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Electroencephalography, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Pseudonymous journal article author

How common is it for a paper published in a reliable journal to have an author whose name is identified as "a pseudonym", and should we be concerned about that? This article in Archives of Sexual Behavior was recently retracted, and the retraction note specifies the lead author as pseudonymous. Is there any reason for us to be concerned about a pseudonymous author, if the journal itself apparently is not?

For additional background, please see Talk:Rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy#Bailey article retraction. There is already plenty of controversy surrounding the topic itself (ROGD), and over the other author (J. Michael Bailey), and the retraction is generating the kind of public culture war (e.g., Twitter thread) previously seen for the ROGD topic; don't know if that's relevant to my question. The article and retraction were first brought to the attention of the ROGD Talk page by DanielRigal. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

In my experience, it's very unusual for an author on a paper to be a pseudonym, let alone the lead author. Like a lot of people, I'm curious as to who the lead author actually is, and whether they are or are not active as a researcher in this field under their actual name. This wouldn't be the first time someone connected with the ROGD theory has been less than truthful with their identity.

That said I'm a lot more concerned about the paper's reasons for retraction (lack of consent from study participants), that it has the same serious methodological flaws that resulted in heavy criticisms of Littman's original ROGD paper (relies solely on parental reporting from a single source website and subject to heavy self-selection bias), Bailey's attempt at "Streisand[ing this thing"], and Bailey's plan to republish the paper in some no-name journal that he's on the reviewer panel for, than I am about the lead author being a pseudonym. Even if this paper gets republished in this other journal, I think it falls far, far short of the standard required by MEDRS, even as a primary source for the parental self-report data.

I am also concerned about the reliability of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Though largely a discussion for a different noticeboard, that this paper was published despite the glaring issues is concerning, and I think we would be remiss not to take note of the concerns that have lead to 15 researchers in the field refusing to review submissions to the journal, and a further 58 avoiding submitting papers to it due to concerns about the editor and bias of the publication. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I've been doing further reading, and according to one source, the lead author is one of the parents at the website ParentsofROGDKids.com where the survey of parents was carried out, and this parent was in charge of the data collection from the parents which became the raw material for the study. I don't recall where I saw this just now—I have dozens of tabs open—but when I find it, I'll update this. Mathglot (talk) 00:57, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Unless there's something hidden in Elisa Rae Shupe's email cache, I suspect we may never know who Diaz is. But given the history of similar identity concealment in relation to this theory (see first link in my last message), I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Diaz turned out to be the owner or someone connected to the owner of the ParentsofROGDKids website. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:15, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

As a sidebar, reading further, at ASB there are some IRB consent requirements that have to be completed before a study is done, which weren't done in this case; but they apparently the requirement doesn't apply if the lead author doesn't have a professional position, so it sounds like Bailey switched to "correspondent author", placed "Diaz" as primary, which then obviated the need for prior consent demonstration to the IRB. I'm not 100% confident of my interpretation, because a lot of these concepts are new to me. In the end, the stated reason for the retraction by ASB (according to Bailey) was the failure of the consent protocols, but ASB knew this going in, and Bailey claims that the retraction in fact had nothing to do with consent protocols ex post facto, but rather is an ideological opposition to his paper's conclusions. The non-academic media response reminds me very much of the media frenzy that occurred immediately after the PLOS reevaluation of the original Littman paper in 2018, only this time it feels more organized and "on message" across different outlets. But, we're getting away from the main point, and I'd like to hear more about pseudonymous authors as this is the first time I've encountered this. Mathglot (talk) 02:11, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Following up on primary author: per Bailey at UnHerd, "Suzanna Diaz is the mother of a gender dysphoric child she believes has ROGD. 'Suzanna Diaz' is a pseudonym." This is not where I originally saw mention that Diaz was a website survey parent, which perhaps relied on this article for its reporting. Mathglot (talk) 02:19, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

From what I can see, the pseudonymous author was tagged as being associated with "Parents of ROGD Kids, New York, NY, USA" (in the same way as Bailey is associated with "Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL, 60208, USA") More information about an author is of course useful when determining sources of bias. Authors are not reliable in declaring conflicts of interest, which often are discovered by others afterwards. I think it is relevant that an author is strongly pro- or anti- a contentious subject they are writing about. Bias happens whether the potential cause of it is part of someone's identity (e.g., that they are trans or black or white) or wealth (e.g., fund manager or on disability benefits) or social or political beliefs (e.g., gender critical or liberal lefty) or funding (e.g., a think tank or employer). It matters, for example, that the review of the NHS Gender Identity Development Service is being conducted by Hilary Cass and not Kathleen Stock, say, even though both are no doubt intelligent people capable of analysing data and drawing conclusions.

Here, I don't think the pseudonym harms things because we know from the declared association that the potential for bias is immense. For both authors. And so the paper is rightly viewed with a high degree of suspicion. I can see why a pseudonym provides a degree of protection for this parent and hope nobody is trying to dox them. I wonder if any of the research on/about Wikipedia has been done with Wikipedia usernames as authors, or whether everyone has been happy to give up their anonymity to appear in print. -- Colin°^Talk 09:40, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I'll just mention Nicolas Bourbaki and "Student" (William Sealy Gosset) of guiness fame. Talpedia 12:00, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

There is also Dr. Henry Anonymous, although I don't know if he published anything. There are a handful of articles, such as https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbv145 that have anonymous authors.

On the general policy question, there is no rule requiring sources to name their authors at all, and therefore there can't be a rule against a source truthfully declaring that it refuses to disclose the author's name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:55, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Aspartame

Aspartame

Popular press are reporting that WHO will designate aspartame as "possibly carcinogenic" come 14 July. There have already been attempts to add this, but @Zefr and others have been on top of it. All the same, it might be worth a few other med editors adding to their watchlists for a month or so. Little pob (talk) 13:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It's usually more effective to mention this somehow in the article, than to keep it out entirely. If it's missing, people assume they're "helping" by adding the exciting new news; if it's present but downplayed, they usually leave it alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:08, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I will have also an eye on that. IARC has evaluated every man-made substance as at least possible cancerogenic with one exception so far: aspartame. IARC's assessment are so useless. --Julius Senegal (talk) 16:37, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Endothelial cell anergy

Is it just me or does that read like advertisment? --Julius Senegal (talk) 16:37, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It needs some work to sound like a Wikipedia article, but this is not a bad article for a new editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, I am not sure if this particular concept is in fact called "anergy". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Clonal anergy is a thing, but this doesn't sound identical. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

[7]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Seasonal infections

We don't seem to have an article on seasonal disease or seasonal infection. Seasonality is much more general (e.g., electrical usage is higher during the summer). What would you call this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

An omission. I have begun at User:CFCF/Draft:Seasonality in disease in draft-space so that it can go to DYK. Feel free to assist in the draft. I think it makes sense to discuss seasonality in all disease, because there is seasonality in things such as trauma, psychiatric disorder, heart attacks, neurological disorders as well. CFCF (talk) 12:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

That looks like a great start. Do you want to include something about heat illness? I believe heat waves cause a predictable seasonal pattern in deaths.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Communicable_Diseases_6th_Edition/oaLDDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA17&printsec=frontcover mentions temperature and rainfall as the determining factors for seasons, and says they drive diarrhea and malaria. Its claims about pregnancy might also interest you, though I'm not sure how much of this is a global phenomenon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I commend you for the draft! Since the autoimmune disease seasonal patterns are mentioned, I was wondering if it'd be relevant to mention the attempts at Climatotherapy for psoriasis. Also, there's this article for seasonality of COPD exacerbations that might be interesting - it associates it with respiratory infections of course (and other possible causes) [8]. Sto0pinismo^0_o 09:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I think "seasonality in disease" makes sense. Out of the 2 suggested by @WhatamIdoing, I think "seasonal disease" is best because it's more generic. I'm thinking another plausible option could be "season-associated disease", in the same vein as HCAI. Also noting this. Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

See also article that I wrote: [9]. Seasonality of respiratory infections must me a separate article. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:41, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@CFCF: This article might interest you (direct link: ru:Сезонность респираторных инфекций). D6194c-1cc (talk) 09:56, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Good article criteria

The Wikipedia:Good article criteria have been changed to require an Wikipedia:Inline citation for basically all information, and specifically at the end of every paragraph (except the lead). I glanced at five articles in Category:GA-Class medicine articles (out of 344) just now; none looked fully compliant, but all looked close. If you are interested in any of these articles, please consider adding a few citations.

(Also, please join https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikipedia/WikiProject_Medicine_reference_campaign_2023/students/overview ). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I suspect it's highly unlikely that most of the medicine GAs can be brought easily to the new standard, because a) many (most?) of them haven't been looked at for years, and are likely dated; and b) many of them were declared GA during a time when only the leads were being updated, so the bodies are not only out-of-sync, but may have had no attention to sourcing even at the time they were brought to GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

pseudogout

Hi guys, would there be any consensus to rename calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate crystal deposition disease to pseudogout per WP:COMMON? I don't want to do a bold move or start an RM without checking what we here as a group feel first. For some more context, the article has never been at the "pseudogout" title, there are no previous RMs, and there are no previous moves in the opposite direction (the only moves were related to chondrocalcinosis being a different article, rightly so, because chondrocalcinosis can be caused by other conditions than just pseudogout). Dr. Vogel (talk) 02:26, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the term I have encountered the most is "pyrophosphate arthritis", though a quick PubMed search suggests that "pyrophosphate arthropathy" is more common. TompaDompa (talk) 02:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @TompaDompa, if it came to those 2, I think arthropathy would probably be more appropriate. What country do you practise in? (I'm in the UK, and my perception is pseudogout is by far the most common term here). Dr. Vogel (talk) 09:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Also UK; I see pseudogout and occasionally crystal arthropathy when coding patients. WP:MEDTITLE, however, tends to ignore WP:COMMONNAME. Of note ICD11 uses calcium pyrophosphate dehydrate deposition disease. (Is "dehydrate" a typo?) Little pob (talk) 10:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

lol - ICD11 is such a mess - seriously, they only had one job.

Yeah true people say crystal arthropathy a lot, but the problem with that term is that it's ambiguous - both gout and pseudogout are crystal arthropathies (and so is pseudopseudogout!).

MEDTITLE does allow for "recognised medical name". But if it's not a term that our colleagues in other countries are happy with, then we'll have to go with some kind of mouthful.

But I am prepared to invoke IAR if anyone decides to use the name given by ICD11 :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 15:01, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at List of intersex Olympians

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List_of_intersex_Olympians#Suggestion_gathering:_improvements_to_coverage_of_intersex_and_DSD_athletes , which is within the scope of this WikiProject. Kingsif (talk) 06:31, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:09, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

German Neuroonkologie to English Neuro-oncology

Is it okay to copy German "Neuroonkologie" into English "Neuro-oncology"? Best regards, Wname1 (talk) 17:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but when translating you need to add the {{translated page}} template to the article's talk page, to comply with the requirements of the CC-license. Also, I see your last attempt to add information was challenged, so I think whatever concerns were raised would need to be addressed. Draken Bowser (talk) 18:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. I just declined a related importation request. Graham87 06:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Draken Bowser:The article Neuroonkologie is good, what else should be done so that it is in neuro-oncology. Best regards, Wname1 (talk) 06:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

You would need proper sources as footnotes for whatever information you'd like to translate and then add to the English article. Unfortunately, you've been challenged on the article talk page over adding footnotes that don't verify the claims you've been making, which is a serious concern. Before you attempt to expand the article, I suggest that you provide an explanation or acknowledge any mistakes made. That would probably make things easier going forward. Draken Bowser (talk) 07:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Draken Bowser:The German article "Neuroonkologie" is perfectly fine, there are about 48 references. Regards, Wname1 (talk) 08:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

That's fine, and no one has disputed the quality of the German version. The concerns were specifically about using footnotes that did not verify the text you added. Regards. Draken Bowser (talk) 10:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Draken Bowser: English "footnotes" in German "Fußnote" are like "Einzelnachweise" in German and in English "References". The "Neuro-oncology" there will be 48 "References", when "page importation" works. Regards, Wname1 (talk) 14:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are more issues here. I have studied your Swedish translation of "neuroonkolgie" from last year. It is likely machine translated and I consider it a content fork of brain tumor, rather than an article on the discipline of neuro-oncology. Based on that I regret to inform you that I don't think translating the article to English is a good idea. Regards. Draken Bowser (talk) 11:25, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I also note that your last comment to me on svwiki ended with "greeting phrases". This makes me believe that you machine translate your talk page comments. It wouldn't surprise me if your talk page comments on here are machine translated as well. The fact that you've translated "neuroonkologie" to about two dozen languages would also suggest use of machine translations. I don't know exactly what to do about this apparent cross-wiki issue. Draken Bowser (talk) 12:34, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Student editing notice

https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Wesleyan_University/Foundations_of_Contemporary_Psychology_(Summer).

https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Wesleyan_University/Foundations_of_Contemporary_Psychology_(Summer)/articles/edited?

--Whywhenwhohow (talk) 20:34, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Terminology usage for routes of administration of drugs and other terms in article intros (seeking consensus)

I apologize if this post is going to get rather long. I will attempt to be as concise as possible but it is not something I can adequately explain without getting somewhat lengthy. While I hope people will read this post in its entirety, I am including a brief summary at the end which you can locate by finding the bold and all-caps word "SUMMARY" at the bottom of this post. I ask only that you please consider what I am saying with an open mind.

I recently made this edit, which I believe to be consistent with WP:MEDMOS which states, "Good encyclopedic writing will naturally teach the reader new words and help them build confidence with harder ones. While this can be done explicitly, with definitions in parenthesis for example, the most natural way to achieve this is to use the idiomatic words, the ‘proper’ words for something, in context. Good writing will allow the reader to pick up enough of the meaning from this context." Despite having made similar edits to numerous other articles without anyone ever reverting it or raising objection, my edit was reverted with the edit summary “Lay terms are preferred.” I then started a new topic on the article’s talk page and it was requested by the other editor that I instead post here to seek consensus on the issue, so that is what I am doing.

Personally, I would prefer if articles simply used the “correct” terminology for routes of administration, since as long as the term is linked to the relevant wiki article, then anyone who is unfamiliar with the term can simply click it to find out what it means, but I thought including both the lay term and technical term, one in parentheses, was a reasonable compromise. (However, I contend that the word “orally” is so common as to not even qualify as “technical terminology.” Terms such as “intravenous” and “intramuscular” are what I would consider very basic-level “technical terminology.”)

To help explain my rationale for this, I am copying this from my user page, which I wrote some time ago:

“I'm very concerned by the way Wikipedia articles related to medicine are being dumbed-down. People looking for simplified medical information have plenty of other online resources available. Changing things like 'intravenous' to 'injection into a vein' or 'myocarditis' to 'inflammation of the heart' is just plain patronizing. (The latter example could even cause potentially dangerous confusions as "inflammation of the heart" could also conceivably refer to conditions other than myocarditis, such as endocarditis or pericarditis.)

Some editors have even changed a word so common as 'orally' to 'by mouth'! People who don't know the meanings of words such as 'intravenous' and 'orally' probably aren't reading Wikipedia to begin with, but even if they are, then they can simply click the word to go to an article about it and find out what it means. Such simplified wording may be appropriate for Simple English Wikipedia, but there is no good reason to do this on the regular English version of Wikipedia, and countless reasons not to.

If you treat people dumb, then they will stay dumb, and nothing good can come from keeping people ignorant. Let's please keep Wikipedia a place to expand knowledge, and not a place to limit it. No other sections of Wikipedia seem to be subjected to this phenomenon of intentionally being dumbed-down, and, if anything, medical-related articles should be the last to be butchered like this.”

Here are a couple examples of problems with specific terms:

—The term “injection into a vein” is too ambiguous. I don’t know how other people interpret the term, but personally, when I hear “injection into a vein,” I think of IV push injections, as I think of “injections” and “infusions” as different categories. But the term seems to be used in Wikipedia article introductions to refer to IV push injection, pump infusions, drip infusions, as well as central venous catheters. It is certainly relevant and useful to many readers to differentiate between the different types of intravenous administration, as there are very significant differences between those different routes of administration. (And if our readers aren’t expected to either already know or be able to quickly figure out the meaning of the word “intravenous,” then is the word “injection” really that much simpler? Should we start saying “shot given into a vein” instead?)

—The term “by mouth” is also potentially ambiguous. In addition to oral administration, are not sublingual and buccal administration also “by mouth”?

It seems to be the norm that there are a large degrees of inconsistencies within the majority of medical articles, with the simplistic terms being used at the beginning of an article’s introduction, but then terms much more technical than “intravenous” or “orally” appear in the rest of the article, sometimes even in the very next paragraph. For an example, see the article for ondansetron. The first paragraph uses the terms “by mouth,” “injection into a muscle,” and “into a vein,” yet the very next paragraph uses the terms “QT prolongation,” “serotonin 5-ht3 receptor antagonist,” and “muscarinic receptors.” Do we really expect the same reader to not be able to handle terms like “intramuscular” but to be totally comfortable with “serotonin 5-ht3 receptor antagonist”? In either case, if they aren’t familiar with any of those terms, they are all linked to their respective Wikipedia articles and can be clicked and then the reader can easily find out exactly what they mean.

For an even more extreme contrast, see the introduction in the article for natalizumab, which assumes our readers don’t even know the word “nausea,” as it says “nausea (feeling sick),” (which, by the way, would only be a proper explanation of the word for those who understand British English, and not American English), yet assumes our readers have no problem knowing (or figuring out) what “cell adhesion molecule alpha4-integrin” means?

I understand the concerns about making medical articles accessible to those who may have virtually no familiarity with medical concepts, but that shouldn’t be at the expense of information that is useful and important to readers who do have an understanding of (marginally) technical terms. If both terms are provided, then every potential reader should both comprehend what is being said, and will not be without information that is notable to them, nor would there be risk of confusion due to ambiguity. For examples of the compromise format that I am proposing: “orally (by mouth)”, “slow drip infusion (injection into a vein)”, or “IV push (injection into a vein)” or, if preferred, the order of which is first and which is in parentheses could be reversed, such as “by mouth (orally).” I can’t fathom how such a compromise could cause any harm, but there are many ways in which it would be an improvement over using only the more basic term alone. This is the way it already is in some articles; for example see the first paragraph of the article buprenorphine, which in the first paragraph provides both the basic terms and the proper terms, thus clarifying things and avoiding misconceptions or ambiguity for those who are familiar with the terms, and helping to educate those who are not familiar with the terms. Everyone wins that way!

Done in the way I am proposing, readers who are proficient in medical terminology will have the information they are seeking and will not feel patronized (I know I certainly feel patronized every time I see “by mouth” instead of “orally”), whereas readers who have little familiarity with medical terminology will be able to learn new terms and expand their knowledge. (Isn’t the whole point of Wikipedia to expand knowledge?) Just saying “by mouth” or “injection into a vein” without also using the “real terms” can do nothing but keep people ignorant instead of expanding their knowledge. If someone doesn’t know these terms, then ask yourself “why?” It’s because they haven’t been exposed to them. Isn’t it better we give them that exposure to teach them what they mean instead of keeping them in ignorance?

I would appreciate if other editors could respectfully share their thoughts about this matter and hopefully a consensus can be reached. Even if you think the simple terms are better, then I ask what harm could there possibly be from having both terms together? And if anyone has a better idea of a compromise other than using a term with parentheses, then please share your idea.

SUMMARY: There has been disagreement as to whether medical articles, especially articles about medications, should use terms such as “by mouth,” “injection into a vein,” “injection into a muscle,” etc. or if terms such as “orally,” “intravenous” (or more specific terms such as “slow drip infusion” or “IV push injection”, etc.), “intramuscular,” etc. should be used to describe routes of administration. Or, as a compromise, using both kinds of terms together, for example: either “orally (by mouth)” or “by mouth (orally).”

I contend that only having the more simplistic term without the “real” terms can lead to a number of problems, the specifics of which I detailed above. I also think using the “real” terms and “basic” terms in combination is consistent with WP:MEDMOS which states, "Good encyclopedic writing will naturally teach the reader new words and help them build confidence with harder ones. While this can be done explicitly, with definitions in parenthesis for example, the most natural way to achieve this is to use the idiomatic words, the "proper" words for something, in context. Good writing will allow the reader to pick up enough of the meaning from this context." I cannot see how this compromise could cause any harm, but I can see how plenty of harm can come from just using the basic terms without the “proper” terms. For specifics of what harm I mean then please read my entire post above, but some of the issues are that the simple terms (used alone) are often too ambiguous, do not provide sufficient information for many of our readers, and ignore an opportunity to educate those who aren’t familiar with the terms. (The point of Wikipedia is to educate and expand knowledge, isn’t it?)

I understand some editors may have other views, which is why I propose the compromise solution of using both terms together, one in parentheses, but I am certainly open to hearing other ideas. I hope to get respectful input from other editors so that a consensus can be reached. Vontheri (talk) 09:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

There are pros and cons with using more scientific vs lay terminology. I personally believe that avoiding jargon and words that readers are less likely to know needs to be balanced with avoiding ambiguity and there isn't a one size fits all solution. Using multiple terms is also detrimental to readability, and the purpose of encyclopedia articles is to teach people new concepts not new vocabulary imo. (t · c) buidhe 18:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that most of our readers aren't already familiar with very basic-level technical terms. (Are there really very many people out there who know how to read and know how to access Wikipedia who don't know what "orally" means?) "Injection into a vein" is certainly ambiguous in that the term is applied to such varied methods of administration, from IV push injection to infusions to central venous catheters. Distinguishing between those varied administration methods isn't so much about teaching vocabulary as it is about avoiding ambiguity and teaching different concepts. I don't think of "injection" and "infusion" as exactly the same concepts.

I'm not saying we should say "cerebrovascular accident" instead of "stroke" or "renal calculus" instead of "kidney stone" every time those concepts are mentioned, but I do think that when it comes to very basic level terms that barely even qualify as "technical terminology" then it's patronizing to our readers to use such basic terms as "by mouth," especially when those basic terms appear so nearby to terms like “cell adhesion molecule alpha4-integrin.” Vontheri (talk) 03:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

My local pharmacy has been giving directions for taking pills "by mouth" for years. Are they patronizing me? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

In my view, yes, I feel patronized by that. My prescriptions say "by mouth" maybe 80% of the time and "orally" maybe 20% of the time. Also keep in mind that people who aren't intellectually capable of accessing the internet also need to take prescription medications. Someone intellectually capable of accessing Wikipedia is almost certainly also intellectually capable of understanding the word "orally." Whether or not it's patronizing was not a primary part of my argument, however. The primary reasons are as I listed above in my original post. Vontheri (talk) 08:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I think you need to give up on this "intellectually capable of accessing the internet" line. Have you seen a toddler with an iPad? You don't have to know how to read to be able to "access the internet". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's patronising at all. We can't not have the lay terms. We should probably have both, but we musn't do away with the lay terms. Dr. Vogel (talk) 09:46, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Whether or not something is patronizing is ultimately a matter of opinion. It was never meant to be one of my main arguments. The other points I made were about more objective issues, such as the problems with the ambiguity of "injection into a vein." I think having both terms is a good compromise. Vontheri (talk) 10:01, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah but I think that @WhatamIdoing's point (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that if it's not patronising, then it's therefore useful (and appropriate) for communication. Dr. Vogel (talk) 10:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

This discussion went into a tangent about what is patronising or not, I don't think that's relevant. I agree with the proposals, with a preference for "by mouth (orally)", exactly because there is ambiguity in 'by mouth' alone. The style of communication should be accessible, but not inaccurate. The spirit of WP:MEDMOS seems to trend that way as well. Sto0pinismo^0_o 16:12, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

There is ambiguity in "orally" as well, since sublingual and buccal administration are also forms of "oral" administration. Orally means "by way of the mouth"; the word does not exclusively mean "by swallowing".

I personally dislike "injection into a vein", especially since I think of injections and infusions as different things, and I wonder sometimes whether it could be adequately replaced with "via a vein". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we should say "swallowed orally" instead of "orally" and just "swallowed" instead of "by mouth"? Although in a medical context regarding drug administration, I'm pretty sure that "orally" virtually always means "swallowed".

In addition to injections and infusions, I've also seen the term "injection into a vein" used for medications administered by central venous catheters. Central venous catheters are a bit more complex than what is implied by both the terms "injection into a vein" and "via a vein." Imagine a patient seeing a Wikipedia article say a medication they are about to be prescribed is administered "via a vein", and them expecting an injection, only to find out they are going to have a tube sticking deep into their body for several days or more! And isn't buccal administration technically "via a vein" as well, despite not being injected? Vontheri (talk) 03:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Then a simple 'oral', linked to Oral administration should suffice in an encyclopaedic article, as in Amphetamine. At best, this information could even be improved by adding 'oral tablets' when it applies, etc. Sto0pinismo^0_o 09:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I have also felt that some Wikipedia articles are "dumbed down," and I have made a few edits regarding this, only to have them reverted. I agree that complex medical terminology may not be appropriate, at least not without further explanation, but changing rather basic words like "insomnia" to "trouble sleeping," "nausea" to "feeling sick," and "orally" to "by mouth" seems unnecessarily simplistic and not totally accurate. "Feeling sick" is a broader term than "nausea" and can mean many things. I once changed "injection into a vein" to "intravenous infusion" because an infusion is not exactly the same as an injection, and "injection into a vein" was not accurate in the context of the article. It was immediately reverted. Perhaps "intravenous infusion" is borderline, but I think the average (and even below average) reader would know the words "insomnia," "nausea," and "orally" and really does not need to have these fairly basic words dumbed down. As far as words like "intravenous" and "infusion," links can be provided for the few readers who do not know these words, and they can click to learn more. I think there is a balance to be found. I don't like overly technical language when unnecessary or using a "big word" when a simpler word is just as adequate, in an attempt to sound pompous; nor do I like unnecessarily simplistic words being used because it is assumed people don't know basic words like "orally," "nausea," and "insomnia." GeodeRose (talk) 23:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

This reminds me of something I read a few years ago: An elderly woman went to the doctor and said that she had been constipated for days. The doctor recommended a laxative and gave her the usual advice, and she left. A few days later, she went to the emergency room with the same complaint, saying the recommended laxative hadn't helped. The doctor prescribed a strong laxative and referred her to a specialist. A few days later, the specialist called: "Remember that woman you sent to me? I've got her on a good treatment plan, and she's much improved now. Also, she didn't have constipation. She had diarrhea."

Perhaps more relevant to the local situation, is your average reader always a native English speaker? The English Wikipedia (also French and Arabic) get a lot of people for whom English is a second or third language. We don't necessarily need to worry about "reading" per se, as people get information from Wikipedia via smart speaker, but we do need to worry about whether people actually know what the words mean.

The "word (other word)" approach works well in many articles. In other cases, perhaps when we are more confident, we can use whichever words we want (and we must Wikipedia:Use our own words), but link to the relevant article (e.g., Oral administration) as a "just in case" fallback option for anyone who needs to check that word. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I know plenty people who have difficulty remembering which is left and which is right, or what way to turn a screwdriver to fasten a screw. So the constipation/diarrhea story doesn't tell much much more than people often mix up opposites words and that their doctor was negligent in even asking "when did you last go, and what did it look like". So negligent, I wonder if the story is made up by wherever you read it in order to make a point.

The non-native thing keeps coming up but I think there are problems with naive approaches to helping such readers. For a start, someone with very poor English is going to be reading via Google Translate, and we are simply at their mercy as to what they make of our words. Most of the rest aren't children and so they use the grown-up "proper" words for "oral" and "intravenous" in their own languages. Many of them will know the grown-up words in English and so be puzzled to read "inject into a vein" or "by mouth" instead. Indeed some of my foreign friends are jealous of English having so many words for things compared to their languages and love learning new ones.

While I hope not many children need to know the word "intravenous", any child in the UK knows "oral" as "Oral B" is the biggest brand of toothpaste and toothbrushes. I guess that may be so in the US too. And adults don't need a PhD or MD to know what "oral" is... type "oral" into Wikipedia's search box and you'll discover the NSFW topic I'm talking about! And it is the lay term!

Naive approaches forget that e.g. "oral" has identical or nearly identical equivalents in other European languages and "by mouth" does not. "intravenous" is "intravenosa/intravenoso" in Spanish and Portugeuse, "intravenös" in German, "intraveineuse/intraveineux" in French. If you are an adult in one of these European countries then you already know the "correct" word for oral/intravenous and yet when you go on English Wikipedia, you "discover" that the English don't have a word for it and have to write "by mouth" or "injected into a vein". That's actually an educational negative and a gross failure of translation.

Google Translate does a great job and AI tools continue to improve. We need to stop treating non-native-English readers as simpletons. When they read our works, with the proper words for things, translated into their languages, they will see the proper words for things in their language. And if they read them untranslated, they will be pleased to note that our proper word is nearly the same as their proper word. Easy-peasy. If we try to second-guess which words they might struggle with, we'll be wrong. And when we do that but write immediately next to it, "route of administration", which is jargony and bureaucratic officialese, we just look a bit silly. -- Colin°^Talk 14:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

The desire to avoid words perceived to be jargon is quite inconsistent. Sometimes I think that perception is wrong and in conflict with our mission to be an educational resource, an encyclopaedia, rather than an patient information leaflet or an NHS help page. The latter have an extreme desire that their readers understand just enough, but no more, in order to take their medicine or know when to see their doctor. The NHS website is not afraid to use words like "poo" and "tummy" though draws the line at using baby words for what's in your underpants. For example diazepam uses the term "rectal" even though I doubt many people use that word in every day conversation. The NHS uses second person ("you'll need to take this for four weeks") which is more direct and conversational than the prose we find here. Their conversational style means that once they've said the drug is a tablet, they assume you know where to stick it. Wikipedia, with its info boxes and its tediously formulaic leads, ends up stating this information in a template way. A good writer would have mentioned the words "tablets" at some point in the prose and the reader would be informed without anyone having to worry about whether to say "by mouth" or "orally".

The main place this terminology appears is in info boxes. Have you looked at a drug info box? Valproate. Are we really thinking that the number one priority for making the article accessible is that after the jargon term "Routes of administration:", we write "by mouth" rather than "oral". Which is sandwiched in between "Pregnancy category: Au: D" and "ATC code: N03AG01 (WHO)". This is a drug who's carton has a large (many cm) icon of a pregnant woman inside a red circle with a red line across. The #1 information the drug company is telling anyone picking up this drug box is that it should not be given to pregnant women. Our article infobox? "Au: D".

We should stop fretting about this and teach our reader the proper words for basic medical facts. I'm all for avoiding unnecessary jargon but an encyclopedia that fills its info box with meaningless crap like "IUPAC name 2-propylpentanoic acid CAS Number 99-66-1 PubChem CID 3121 IUPHAR/BPS 7009 DrugBank DB00313 ChemSpider 3009 UNII 614OI1Z5WI KEGG D00399 ChEBI CHEBI:39867 ChEMBL ChEMBL109 NIAID ChemDB 057177 CompTox Dashboard (EPA) DTXSID6023733 ECHA InfoCard 100.002.525" and labels this attribute as "Routes of administration", has other problems. -- Colin°^Talk 07:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Colin this bit made me laugh out loud: "This is a drug who's carton has a large (many cm) icon of a pregnant woman inside a red circle with a red line across. The #1 information the drug company is telling anyone picking up this drug box is that it should not be given to pregnant women. Our article infobox? "Au: D".". Thanks for that - I'm having a tough day at work today.

I think one thing does not preclude the other, i.e. our prose and our infoboxes serve 2 very different purposes. I find our infoboxes very useful for looking up the odd technical detail when I need to, without having to read through text. But our prose is there to be read and it needs to be as accessible as possible, so that the only difficulty is the concept itself and not the language, otherwise the reader has 2 gaps instead of 1.

I feel that we need to keep our text as jargon-free as possible, and the example you give of NHS websites using words like "tummy" and "poo" is an extreme - we don't need to use informal words, just not jargon. Or just not only jargon, and least of all in the lead. Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Neither I, nor anyone else, is proposing that we only use the less-basic words ("jargon"), just that we use both terms, at least when it comes to routes of administration in introductions and info boxes.Vontheri (talk) 20:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the infobox, for drug articles, is clearly an experts-only zone. Nobody ever, on receiving their prescription from the pharmacist, said, "I say, madam, would if be possible, perhaps, that you could offer me some assistance as to the route by which I am supposed to administrate this medicinal compound?" So if we are going to begin with the officialese of "Routes of administration", next to our ATC codes and whatnot, then we might as well use the official term. And be consistent, so someone reading several info boxes doesn't read several terms for the same thing.

For body text, we can be more clever than thinking, as so many of our medical articles do, that we need to follow a template for how to write the text. There are only specific times we need to mention how it was taken. As a general rule, for the lead and much of the body, there isn't a reason to mention it, and I think generally we don't. Most medicines taken outside of a hospital setting are taken orally. They are tablets. It is only really notable when this is not the case. For example, we describe it as a cream that one rubs onto the affected area, or a gel one rubs into the skin to be absorbed, or eye drops. It comes naturally in the sentences. I have no problem if some body text says "injected into a vein (intravenous)" as long as we acknowledge that English does have a word for this, rather than pretend it doesn't or that even if it did, our reader is too stupid to know it. Mostly, when the body text needs to be specific about route of administration, it has already scared the reader with a section heading "Pharmacokinetics" and continues with talk of "plasma concentrations" and "cytochrome P450 enzymes". Scattering simple language in among that just looks foolish. In these advanced sections, I don't think it is good even to use the "injected into a vein (intravenous)" formula. Because if your intention is that someone lacking even that word can understand the sentence, what are you going to do with cytochrome P450 enzymes"? If you really wanted a Pharmacokinetics section that anyone could follow, you'd need to have section lead sentence(s) that had a very very basic overview. -- Colin°^Talk 08:00, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't often get very involved in talk page discussions, so please forgive my lack of familiarity with this process, but exactly how and when do we determine that a consensus has been reached, and what happens after? It's my impression that, at least at this point, the consensus is at least leaning in the direction of using both terms together, such as "term 1 (term 2)", but that there may be variability or exceptions based on the exact section or part of the article. Is that the impression others have as well? Vontheri (talk) 16:14, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes what the consensus isn't is more important. Nobody seems to object to using a both/and approach in principle, and nobody thinks language like "orally" or "intravenous" is the worst problem with writing articles.

I think your next step is to copyedit a dozen articles. Aside from improving the articles, it would let you know if your ideas about improvement will scare up any opposition (I don't expect any). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:50, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I think your next step is to copyedit a dozen articles.

:grin: Governance and abstraction must be shackled to the honest toil of the concrete and useful. Talpedia 15:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that it has resulted in opposition when I changed "by mouth" to "orally (by mouth)". That was the catalyst for me making this thread to begin with. See here. (For some reason that editor hasn't posted in this thread to explain the reasoning for their objections, despite me informing them of it.) What should I do if that happens again? Refer the other editor to this thread? Vontheri (talk) 03:22, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Need input at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Post-Vac

  (t · c) buidhe 06:17, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Naloxone / harm reduction

There is currently a discussion about whether it is due to name harm reduction providers/organizations in the naloxone article at Talk:Naloxone I have removed names of several organizations that were dropped in the article Special:Diff/1165371309 and another editor believes such name drops have a place in the article. I wanted to get broader input on this. Thank you Graywalls (talk) 21:04, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

If the organizations are involved in distribution or advocacy of naloxone then I think it is most likely notable and has at least a minor place in the article. If they are just general harm reduction organizations and distribution or advocacy of naloxone is not a major part of what they do then it is probably not notable in the naloxone article. Vontheri (talk) Vontheri (talk) 07:18, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest leaving comments at Talk:Naloxone rather than here to avoid splitting discussion more than necessary. Prezbo (talk) 08:33, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Then that would be hundreds of needle exchange programs and local governments. It would be easily possible to gather sources for them quite easily. Rather than name any specific organization, I think the more reasonable approach is to say they're commonly distributed by drug users health clinics/needle exchange programs in more generic way especially for the naloxone article so it conveys the information without resulting in a coat rack like Narcan is offered to the community from organizations/agencies, such as Washington State Department of Health, OnPoint NYC Multnomah County, Oregon,City of San Francisco Graywalls (talk) 08:04, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

References

Prezbo - Next time I will do that. Looks like it's too late now for this thread, though.

Graywalls - Don't let me be the tie breaker, but I think generally saying something like "commonly distributed by this type of organization and that type of organization etc." is better to avoid listing hundreds of organizations. I would probably find it notable to mention a couple specific organizations if there is some specific reason that makes them notable. For example, I would find it notable to mention the organization that was a pioneer and was the first to advocate for and/or distribute naloxone. Or an organization that has distributed far more naloxone than other organizations or that was the primary party involved in changing laws or things like that. Those are just examples. Simply being an advocate or distributor of naloxone is not enough to be notable in the naloxone article since there are such a large number of such organizations, but if there is something specifically significant about the organization's activities with naloxone then I would think it is probably notable. Perhaps a separate article in list format called something like "list of naloxone/narcan distributors or advocacy organizations" would be a good place to list all such organizations in their entirety. Those are just my thoughts. Vontheri (talk) 06:51, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Medical law and Health law

There's a merge discussion (to merge Medical law into Health law) in need of some more views before closing; if you're in the mood, please head over to Talk:Health law#Merger proposal. Klbrain (talk) 10:27, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:04, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Commented according to [10]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:40, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Post-finasteride syndrome

See #Proposing undoing of mutliple edits removing majority of secondary/tertiary sources from Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction article

I reviewed a draft on Draft:Post-finasteride syndrome by User:Xardwen, and they and I are unsure what to do next. There was previously an article on the syndrome, which was then cut down to a redirect to Finasteride. There are questions as to whether there is a well-defined or definable syndrome, and either creating an article or redirecting are contentious. There were persistent attempts by unregistered editors and new editors to recreate an article. The conclusion was to put the parent article finasteride under ECP protection, and to make the redirect from Post-finasteride syndrome to Finasteride a permanently locked redirect. When I reviewed the draft, I advised the author to discuss at Talk:Finasteride and obtain a rough consensus as to whether to recreate an article on the syndrome. There hasn't been any discussion there, and then there hasn't been any discussion at WikiProject Pharmacology. So my question is both what to advise the author to do next, and what I should do next. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:26, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Probably the best approach would be to expand Finasteride, if warranted, and then if the PFS stuff becomes too big, argue for a split. The draft contains the eyebrow-raising claim that "as of 2023, there appears to be an emerging consensus among the medical community that it represents a real and serious, if rare, iatrogenic disorder" sourced to the journal Annals of Medical and Health Science Research, which does not appear to be reputable and in any case says no such thing, which rings a loud warning bell. The protections currently in place are there for a reason. (Add: and, looking at the user's contributions there seems to have been a concerted effort to shift the POV across the Project on this topic, with less-than-stellar sourcing, e.g.[11]). Bon courage (talk) 14:55, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

The editor also wrote Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, which I tried to clean up but tbh I'm still not sure if the article should exist. (t · c) buidhe 06:19, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

As the Finasteride article currently stands, there is already a substantial section on PFS; I personally feel that a separate article is warranted to give adequate space to discuss the reported symptoms, research, and controversy surrounding PFS.

Regarding the claim about emerging consensus on the nature of PFS, the relevant quote from the review is as follows: "Based on the existing literature, the medical community believes that these patterns of symptoms constitute the basis for PFS in individuals predisposed to epigenetic susceptibility. The medical community must define and characterize the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying PFS, and more attention should be devoted to patient education and counseling as well as to developing novel management modalities. Further highquality clinical studies are needed to evaluate the potential neuropsychiatric side effects of finasteride in humans and to establish whether finasteride has any exact causal relationship with suicidal ideation and other reported side effects." This seems like an explicit acknowledgement, by the authors of this review at least, of consensus among the medical community that PFS is a legitimate disorder, and warrants further research and investigation; I acknowledge that I may have been too bold in my statement to this effect in the draft, and will re-phrase accordingly.

Regarding my "concerted effort to shift the POV across the Project" on the subject of PFS, guilty as charged- I personally feel that the level of skepticism surrounding PFS that has been expressed on the Wiki is disproportionate to the amount and quality of peer-reviewed research on this subject. I will make an effort to provide more high-quality sources to support this position.

Xardwen (talk) 04:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Concerning post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, the clinical decision aid I'm subscribed to (updated as of June 2023) has the following verdict: "...there is no compelling evidence that SSRI-induced sexual side effects persist after discontinuation." It makes me think this syndrome is not exactly recognized. Draken Bowser (talk) 13:42, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

No indeed. I've been attempting to clean up but the article was spinning hard and the sourcing was terrible (including a mention of reddit forums) & often misrepresented. When it's cut back down to sensibly-sourced stuff, it should probably be re-merged to the SSRI article, as per previous consensus. Bon courage (talk) 14:59, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing at post-SSRI sexual dysfunction worthy of coverage that is not already at selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor#Sexual dysfunction. I'd support a merge back, recognizing that there are at least eight SPAs recruited to the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, seems like the best option. Draken Bowser (talk) 14:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Disorder subtypes

I've noticed that there are quite a few missing articles that are just subcategories of diseases that already have their own Wikipedia pages. I was wondering if disease subtypes should have their own Wikipedia articles or just be redirected.

For example, Acrofacial dysostosis Catania form, Acrofacial dysostosis Preis type, Acrofacial dysostosis Rodriguez type, Acrofacial dysostosis Weyers type, and Acrofacial dysostosis, Palagonia type are all missing articles however we have a wikipedia page for Nager acrofacial dysostosis. Should these be redirected or made into articles?

Forgive me if this topic has already been discussed, I am new to editing wikipedia. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 01:18, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, those should generally be redirects. From the titles and some of your edit history, I'm guessing you're going through Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Missing diseases? Most of those aren't missing -- it seems to be a dump from some kind of medical encyclopedia that uses a different title structure to us, and a lot of the time covering very rare or speculative concepts that may not clearly correspond to clear-cut 'things' (e.g. a syndrome defined in a much more speculative era of medical genetics that doesn't actually correspond now to a specific genotype). Most of what's on it should be redirected to existing articles. Vaticidalprophet 01:55, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I;ve only found about 3 actual conditions with enough documented cases to make an article. I've mostly been doing redirects.

Thanks for the clarification and help! CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 02:00, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome! Yeah, there are a few legitimate ones on there, but even then the titles are usually wrong. The whole WP:RA/WP:MEA complex is surprisingly useful even today, but you need to get a good feel first both for what's inclusion-worthy and what's structured right even if it is. Vaticidalprophet 02:10, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I've noticed the naming issue. I think I'm getting the hang of things but I still have to remind myself when to just call it quits instead of getting in over my head. Browsing through missing links has been surprisingly helpful as it gives me a place to start and helps me learn the more technical sides of editing. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 02:25, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath, thanks for doing this work.

By the way, we have a sort of tagging system for redirects that you might be interested in. They're called the "R from" templates. So, for example, if you are redirecting a title that might be suitable for an article (perhaps it's a borderline case), then you can add {{R with possibilities}} at the bottom of the redirect page. If you a redirecting an exact synonym, you can add {{R from other name}}. There are dozens of these, and they're not mandatory, but you might find them interesting. You can find the list at Wikipedia:Template index/Redirect pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! This was exactly what I was looking for! I will check it out and start using the templates to prevent any future confusion. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 19:56, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Medical privacy discussion

I have started a discussion about medical privacy at Talk:Caster Semenya#Medical privacy. I would love to get the opinions of folks from WikiProject Medicine, as this seems to be an important topic that hasn't gotten widespread discussion (as far as I can tell). How do we properly balance the interests of our readers against the right to privacy of our subjects? Nosferattus (talk) 00:05, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:37, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Theranostics

Hello, Medicine WikiProject,

Can we get some eyes on this new article? I know little about the medical field except my own experience as a patient so I'm not sure if this field is fringey or mainstream. But it just plopped down in main space, fully formed, today and I'm a little skeptical about articles by new editors that present entire areas of science and have so little page history to show how our understanding of the subject has evolved over time. Thanks for any editors with medical knowledge who can okay this one. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:28, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Fastily, what was User:Alan Crofts 2023 before you U5'ed it? I echo Liz's concerns, as the "new" article is already showing up in Google searches for the term, as we might expect it to be. Jclemens (talk) 04:05, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Here's the text of the page at time of deletion. As written, it's spam, although if it's notable someone can probably clean it up... -FASTILY 05:09, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I am Alan Crofts, author of the article and medical affairs expert. I have written the article myself and populated it with all the references. I believe it is important to have a page dedicated to theranostics as it is a new promising field and I am quite sure we will hear more about it. May I have more information on why the article I have written has been flagged as spam and deleted? I am willing to improve it as much as I can. Thanks, Alan. Alan Crofts 2023 (talk) 07:13, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, @Alan Crofts 2023. The original uses language like "remarkable progress" and "revolutionized the field", which is not what encyclopedia articles usually sound like. There have been revolutions in medicine – vaccination, sterile surgical fields, antibiotics – but it's too soon to know whether this is one of them.

It's also wordy. Consider this bit: "The evolution of theranostics has been driven by collaborations between researchers, clinicians, and industry partners. By combining expertise from various disciplines, scientists and medical professionals can address the complex challenges associated with developing and implementing theranostic strategies." The underlying fact in here is something like "It is an Interdisciplinary field". What you originally wrote sounds a lot nicer, but what we might suggest is:

• no metaphorical Evolution,
• no driving forces (except when someone's actually Driving),
• no commercial interests euphemized as "partners",
• no implying that only the best ("expertise") of each discipline is used,
• no sciencewashing ("scientists and medical professionals", but the patients, managers, support staff, funders, etc. contribute nothing at all?), and
• no overegging the problem space (I'm sure they "address the complex challenges", but they probably also do a lot of routine and boring work, too).

I'm sure it seems like I'm being overly picky – and I am! A smaller amount of this kind of language is normal, natural, acceptable, and even desirable – but I wanted to give you an idea of some of the little bits that might get mentally classified as "spammy" or "flowery" instead of "just the basic, boring facts". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @WhatamIdoing. This is really useful. I will work on this feedback and resubmit the page soon. Alan Crofts 2023 (talk) 08:15, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

You don't have to resubmit anything. The article is "live" already. Just find a sentence you'd like to try re-writing, click the edit button, and make your change. If you do one sentence and check back tomorrow, you can find out if other editors thought your change was on the right track (by checking, e.g., to see whether they reverted your change, left it alone, or changed it even more). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

How is combining diagnosis with therapy an 'emerging field'? Looks like good old fashioned bullshitology to me... AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily? The idea of combining diagnosis with therapy is an everyday medical activity ("If this treatment works, then you have ____"), but it's not just someone making up whatever they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Failing WP:V because of missing article titles making it hard to look articles up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Citations now filled in, some issues remain. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:33, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Small instances of too-close-paraphrasing found already, but with most journal articles not available online, there may be more. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:54, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Cannot find reason for concern wrt copyvio, but have not completely ruled it out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:33, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

This sort of text, plus the numbered refs within the article, are suggestive that a deep-dive for copyvio is warranted.

• Molecular imaging methods, such as PET and SPECT, can be employed to visualize and quantify tumor characteristics, such as hypoxia or receptor expression, aiding in personalized radiation dose optimization¹⁰.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I took a quick look at the draft and have listed the first 6 references. Can we start by assessing the references and see if they meet WP:MEDRS? Here is what I found:

• ref 1 Review article (weak secondary source),
• ref 2 narrative review (I had to look this one up, please correct me if I am wrong),
• ref 3 appears to be a commentary in Nature Medicine ,
• ref4 commentary/maybe a review article (likely not meet MEDRS but I only skimmed the abstract) ,
• ref 5 appears to be a commentary ,
• ref 6 is a powerpoint presentation https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/presentation/presentation-theranostics-nanoparticles-peter-dobson-oxford-university_en.pdf.

I do not have time to finish this list right now as I had to search for each one manually. The next is ref7 or 8 in the PET section.JenOttawa (talk) 13:29, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I had never heard of theranostics before but can see some clinical practice guidelines and statements from medical bodies are starting to refer to it. Example I found using a quick google search is [12] from the american urology association. Are there any textbooks or systematic reviews vs the narrative reviews? I think that the commentaries/presentation citations should be removed but could be used to look for stronger sources. I think if much stronger sources are used and the wording like "valuable insights", "crucial role", "pivotal role" are avoided you could try to redo it and resubmit. Just my two cents... I have never created an article and have never had to decide if an article is justified/notable so others on here will likely be much more helpful than me. I hope that this helps a little bit @Alan Crofts 2023:. JenOttawa (talk) 13:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I was completing the incomplete citations as you were looking them up. Done now; some I could not find. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Systematic reviews are excellent sources if you are trying to prove the efficacy of a treatment or otherwise answer a statistical question. They are not really pointful sources for, well, almost anything else. They are not inherently bad sources for anything else, but they're not necessarily better than other secondary sources.

A quick trip to https://books.google.com indicates that there are many books written about the subject. The one whose title appeals to me is Theranostics: An Old Concept in New Clothing, but it is published by IntechOpen,[13] an open-access publisher about whom we have no article (@Headbomb), so I don't know if it's a reputable publisher. Theranostic Imaging in Cancer Precision Medicine from Frontiers also sounds suitably generic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

InTech is a vanity press. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:23, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Headbomb what about https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/VIW.20200134 ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

John Wiley & Sons is a reputable publisher. Surely you must have come across them before. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:28, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, so why is it not PubMed-indexed, as they usually are? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:45, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Not currently indexed for MEDLINE. Citations are for articles where the manuscript was deposited in PubMed Central (PMC) in compliance with public access policies.

My guess is that this is seen as too unrelated to medicine to include. But it's a guess. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:06, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

If that is the case ... interesting ... unrelated to medicine :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:53, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

The topic seems to meet notability as there are scores of secondary reviews. But there is some poor and incomplete sourcing, perhaps some WP:UNDUE, and tone issues that need to be addressed. I've filled in the missing citation information, and flagged the secondary reviews as such, so someone else can take it from there on cleanup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:43, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Amazing work helping here Sandy Georgia! Sorry, I did not realize that the drafted article was still 'live'. I was going off of the pastebin text version linked at the start of this conversation. Have a great day! JenOttawa (talk) 14:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to you, too ... I have only scratched the surface, and done for the day. Someone else needs to take a very deep dive here. There is a lot of repetition and redundancy, along with the sourcing issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

References

Low-fat diet

The article low-fat diet is in a bad way and needs expansion and better clarity from someone who is experienced in medical editing. Timeshifter a user who has left a lot of bold text on the talk-page has strong views on the subject, there is a current discussion about some 2015 systematic reviews and a low-carb diet author David Ludwig [14].

My understanding of low-fat diets is that they were indeed recommended by health and medical organizations in the 80s and early 90s, back then there was some misunderstandings about fat and there was an outdated idea that all fats are bad. The American Heart Association for example, used to recommend a low-fat diet (reduction of total-fat) but as research progressed and new data emerged it was realised that polyunsaturated fats are beneficial in the diet and there is no reason to reduce all fats or total fat intake, instead the culprit for increasing cardiovascular and cancer risk is saturated fat which should be limited, not unsaturated fat or total fat intake. All of the health and medical organizations like the AHA currently recommend a balanced diet similar to the Mediterranean diet and Nordic diet which includes nuts, seafood, seeds and vegetable oils high in polyunsaturated fatty acids but low in saturated fats.

The low-fat diets of the 80s and early 90s such as Nathan Pritikin, Dean Ornish and John A. McDougall are very much on the fringe of nutrition. Most modern nutritional textbooks are not recommending a low-fat diet. I can definitely help improve the article with a "history" section making clear how the consensus has shifted over the last 30 years.

I am requesting help from experienced medical users to remove/improve any out-dated reviews on the article in the "health effects" section. There are multiple discussions on the talk-page. Unfortunately there is still some confusion about this topic with the outcome being that some people are mislead by low-carb conspiracy blogs into thinking the current consensus from governmental, dietetic and medical organization guidelines are still recommending low-fat diets. There are a lot of references on this but this quick Harvard Health Publishing article gives a good summary if users here are not aware about this, "For the last half of the 20th century, most major health organizations, including the American Heart Association, recommended a low-fat diet. Yes, they did, but the message has changed dramatically. Now, the American Heart Association, the federal dietary guidelines, and other nutrition authorities have shifted away from advising people to limit the total amount of fat in their diets" [15] Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:32, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, that likely explains why he's over at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) complaining about a supposed lack of transparency in systematic reviews. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Fugue state#Requested move 28 July 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Fugue state#Requested move 28 July 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. SilverLocust 💬 10:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:17, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Iffy Redirects

Hello, WikiProject Medicine,

I came across an editor creating redirects to SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant and I noticed that there are over 50 redirects to this article. I realize that this is not a high priority task but if anyone could look through them and nominate the ones that are invalid or made up to WP:RFD, you'd be helping keep this place tidy. Thanks very much. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:39, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

There are 57 redirects at the moment:

• B117
• VUI - 202012/01
• VUI-202012/01
• B.1.1.7
• H69/V70
• VUI – 202012/01
• VOC-202012/01
• B117 strain
• B117 strain COVID
• B117 strain COVID-19
• B117 strain coronavirus
• B117 COVID
• B117 COVID-19
• B117 coronavirus
• U.K. Coronavirus variant
• UK Coronavirus variant
• U.K. Covid-19 variant
• UK Covid-19 variant
• U.K. COVID19 variant
• UK COVID19 variant
• COVID-19 UK variant
• COVID-19 UK strain
• UK coronavirus variant
• Variant B117
• Variant B.1.1.7
• 501.V1 variant
• 501.V1
• B1.1.7
• U.K. variant
• UK variant
• U.K. strain
• UK strain
• B117 pandemic
• Variant Under Investigation in December 2020
• VOC - 202012/01
• 20B/501Y.V1
• B.1.1.7 lineage
• First Variant Under Investigation in December 2020
• UK COVID-19 variant
• British virus
• UK covid variant
• U.K. covid variant
• Kent variant
• Kent virus variant
• 20I/501Y.V1
• Variant of Concern 202012/01
• B.1.1.7 variant
• Kent variant COVID-19
• COVID-19 Alpha
• Alpha variant
• Lineage B.1.1.7
• Kent variant COVID
• Alpha (SARS-CoV-2 variant)
• Covid alpha
• Alpha (SARS-CoV-2)
• Kent COVID-19 variant
• Covid-uk-20

The "British virus" links to a section, and all the others are to the article in general. One of our more virology-focused editors, such as Graham Beards, would know the nomenclature better than me, but nothing stands out to me as being patently unreasonable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Proposing undoing of mutliple edits removing majority of secondary/tertiary sources from Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction article

See post-SSRI sexual dysfunction

See #Draft:Post-finasteride syndrome

Dear Wikiproject Medicine editors,

I believe that in multiple edits, user @Bon courage has removed tens of secondary and tertiary sources whilst claiming they are "original research" or "primary sources". In my opinion this has brought down the quality of the article significantly.

Here is a sample of the edits (there are many more):

link, their claimed reason for deleting | why I think they shouldn't have been removed

1, "original research" | user has removed all sources which comply with wp:MEDORG and WP:MEDRS (NHS,Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, British National Formulary,FDA,American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5),Textbook of Rare Sexual Medicine Conditions, and the textbook Psychiatry and Sexual Medicine: A Comprehensive Guide for Clinical Practitioners).

2,"trim OR" | removal of wp:MEDORG compliant sources from Health Canada, NHS and Hongkong Department of Health.

3,"original research and some awful sourcing"| as mentioned in wp:MEDRS "News sources may be useful for non-biomedical content, such as information about "society and culture" – see WP:MEDPOP"

which the news articles were under the society and culture section.

4,"re-base on secondary source" | removes many many review articles (secondary sources) and their content

This source (5) is one of the sources that could have been used to improve the etiologies section, instead of wiping the section.

6"no secondary sourcing" | It removes the whole society and culture section which had mentioned a BBC panorama and other news articles WP:MEDPOP applies here. (link1 and bbc panorama link)

PSSDnetwork and ... were mentioned in the news articles which would be compliant with WP:MEDPOP

7 , primary, would need MEDRS|another wp:MEDORG, from Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency which the editor is calling primary for some unknown reason.

It's very strange to see removal of so many compliant sources and claiming them to be "original research".

I propose an undoing of the edits made, a minority of changes that were proper should be applied after undoing in my opinion. In case the edits were due to not being familiar with wp:MEDORG or WP:MEDRS please refer to this MEDRS flowchart guideline.

After removing all the mentioned(and not mentioned) compliant sources, the same user has said that "it should probably be re-merged to the SSRI article, as per previous consensus."(from years ago) which was related to lack of enough wp:MEDRS compliant sources.

How is removing so many compliant sources while calling them "Original research" or "primary sources" then pushing for a merge a good idea?

In case my understanding of the policies is faulty, please correct me. FallingPineapple (talk) 22:49, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

This is being discussed in the Finasteride section above, but just to take your first example, the NHS (which is usually a good source, agreed) cannot be used to make statements about PSSD with a source which makes zero mention of PSSD. The page was fairly transparently being used to abuse Wikipedia for the purpose of WP:ADVOCACY of a POV without proper sourcing, and the mention of reddit (good grief) leads us a post suggesting coordinated editing of this article to push an agenda.[16] That's not going to fly. You should be aware of WP:MEAT and WP:COI. Bon courage (talk) 05:12, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

"the NHS (which is usually a good source, agreed) cannot be used to make statements about PSSD with a source which makes zero mention of PSSD."

The following is from the source.

"Sexual side effects usually pass after the first couple of weeks. However, very rarely, they can be long lasting and may not get better even after stopping the medicine." source

"Symptoms of sexual dysfunction occasionally persist after discontinuation of fluoxetine treatment.

Priapism has been reported with all SSRIs." 2 FallingPineapple (talk) 06:52, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

It's about one drug. No "syndrome" of any kind is mentioned. Your stretching it from one to the other is WP:OR. Bon courage (talk) 06:57, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

In the leaflets from Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency mentions the term SSRIs/SNRIs as a general term.

"Medicines like Fluvoxamine Tablets (so called SSRIs/SNRIs) may cause

symptoms of sexual dysfunction (see section 4). In some cases, these

symptoms have continued after stopping treatment." [1]

or

"Sexual problems:

Medicines like sertraline (so called SSRIs/SNRIs) may cause symptoms of

sexual dysfunction (see section 4). In some cases, these symptoms have

continued after stopping treatment." 2

Can these be used as tertiary sources? FallingPineapple (talk) 08:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Those pages (archived version of them anyway) don't mention PSSD or any "syndrome" at all. We should be using the WP:BESTSOURCES directly on the topic, rather than arriving with a pre-determined agenda and trying to twist sources into fitting it. Bon courage (talk) 08:42, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@FallingPineapple, perhaps this might be clearer:

There is an important difference between "long-term side effects" and "a syndrome". If you want to write about a syndrome, you normally need sources that use the exact word syndrome in it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Easily four (and probably more) new SPAs spinning an article, with the Reddit, probably warrants an ANI or an SPI rather than discussion confined to WT:MED. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

And this is a copy-paste (much too far back for REVDEL), so all of Xardwen's work now needs review for copyvio or too-close paraphrasing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

There are at least eight SPAs, all coming from the same internet fora. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

And there is recruiting today at a different forum. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Draken Bowser, Bon courage, and Buidhe: the conflation with PSSD and DSM-5 has been plastered elsewhere. See Escitalopram. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:46, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

As has the evident falsehood that it has been somehow officially recognised by the EMA. A lot of campaigning and/or useful idiocy in other words. Wikipedia of course won't be falling for that! Bon courage (talk) 12:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

@Bon courage: that, unfortunately, comes directly from Peleg (2022), a secondary review which appears to misstate the facts. The 2023 review I just added (Tarchi) may be useful, but I'm out of time, and will be busy for the next two days. Perhaps you can do something with Tarchi. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:42, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's an apparent falsehood which has found its way into secondary sources - but that just calls into question the quality of those secondary sources. In evaluating sources, that they contain such errors is a major consideration - the idea that a medicines agency can establish a condition is WP:EXCEPTIONAL and it seems the EMA themselves have explicitly disowned this misinformation, assuming the written answer in the UK parliament[17] came from them. Bon courage (talk) 13:19, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I will not be able to work on this today or tomorrow; someone who can access the full article needs to look at whether Peleg (2022) at post-SSRI sexual dysfunction should be entirely removed. I suggest that Tarchi 2023 is a better source all round. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

PS, here's what I can see of what Peleg says. From their own documents, I've seen NO indication that's what the EMA said at all, and Peleg even gets the name of the European Medicines Agency wrong: "PSSD gained official recognition after the European medical agency concluded that PSSD is a medical condition that persists after discontinuation of SSRI's and SNRI's." So, source may be dubious overall. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:14, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Well... I'm first curious whether there's a footnote (in the body of the paywalled article) that supports this.

I also wonder whether the article could be corrected. Getting the name wrong looks like a translation error; the fact that it's not true means the sentence probably should be removed. The managing editor for the journal appears to be https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-goldstein-299a6434 if anyone's already signed up with LinkedIn and wants to inquire about the possibility. (I only spent two minutes looking, but I didn't see a simple "Contact us" form on the journal website, only the generic publisher one and a Twitter link for the journal.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Source request

Can anyone access https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/bjon.2023.32.14.678 and if possible, email it to me? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Now live at Talk:Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor#Merge proposal. Draken Bowser (talk) 11:39, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Merger input welcome

Received request to merge the Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction article into the Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor article on July 29, 2023. Reason: (See ongoing discussion following an AfD decision. Join the discussion >>>HERE<<<). GenQuest ^"scribble" 15:47, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-01/Tips and tricks

This gives an overview of various citation tools out there. I figured many of you would get something out of this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Menstrual synchrony#Requested move 21 July 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Menstrual synchrony#Requested move 21 July 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk) 10:57, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Commented. Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:48, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Credibility bot

I am reaching out to this project because it uses templates from WikiProject X, including {{Load WikiProject Modules}}. I am working on building a new project to make it easier to set up WikiProjects with built-in bot reports. As a proof of concept, see Wikipedia:Vaccine safety/Sources. For medicine in particular, it may make sense to narrowly focus on sources that are definitely unreliable, since that seems easier to pick out. If this is something you might find useful, your support and general feedback at User:Credibility bot would be appreciated. Thank you. Harej (talk) 21:34, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Harej, have you seen the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia/Questionable1? Some of the items in the list are mixed ("this journal by MDPI is good but that journal from the same publisher is bad"; or even "this one's good before 2003") but quite a few of them are definitely unreliable.

@Kuru, you know something about the Wikipedia republishers/ed-tech scam; are you interested in this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, will take a look. The one publisher I usually label as "ed-tech scam" is a con artist that created about 40 "books" which were solely unattributed Wikipedia articles on science topics; "Scientific E-Resources" or "Ed-Tech Press" are the usual brands. I fear there are still hundreds of references to them in main as people often just supply a naked Google Books URL. Sam Kuru (talk) 22:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)