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name change discussion

Comments requested here. I feel Kegel exercise is the less notable name, and a new article called Pelvic floor exercise should discuss this topic. Note Kegel exercise is in the list of popular pages list above. lesion (talk) 20:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Iris

The use of the title "Iris" is under discussion, see Talk:Iris (plant) where the plant is proposed to be the primary topic. -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 21:33, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Good article top-500 goals for 2013?

Would anyone else like to commit to getting a (consistent) top-500 page view article, or several, up to GA status for 2013 (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages for a list)? And to commit to doing as many good article reviews as nominations, say "Yes". Happy Holidays! Biosthmors (talk) 20:12, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Block users for using certain (but not other) body parts in their user name?

See Wikipedia_talk:Username_policy#Bad_block. Biosthmors (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Not within scope of WPMED (it's WP policy), and as noted there it's 2-year-old issues. -- Scray (talk) 02:59, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Tip on refs in discussions

It's common to want a list of refs in talk page discussions. If you use ref tags, though, either the refs are invisible to people reading the discussion, or you have a clunky whole-page section to manage.

There is a simpler method. Use this code:

{{reflist|closed=yes}}

and you'll get all the refs on the page above the template, and leave all the ones under it for another reflist template. If you add this to each section that has refs in it, then they can be archived intact, with all their refs displayed right there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:56, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Awesome. That'll save me a bit of coding. ([1]) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:02, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Aerotoxic syndrome

FYI, Aerotoxic syndrome has been proposed to be renamed, see talk:Aerotoxic syndrome -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 06:04, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Rule of three (medicine)

FYI, Rule of three (medicine) has been requested to be renamed, see talk:Rule of three (medicine) -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 06:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Diseases DB

Someone just added the Diseases DB to tic: [2] The information contained there is not even remotely correct. For example, tic is listed as part of TS only, completely ignoring the number of comorbid conditions where tics may be present (samples, Tic#Differential diagnosis, tics are present in autism, tourettism, and a number of other conditions).

Diseases DB does not appear to rise to the level of WP:RS, much less WP:MEDRS.

  1. Why are we including it in our standard infobox?
  2. In cases where it is clearly incorrect, why don't we just revert it? I am going to remove it from this article as it is grossly incomplete, inaccurate and misleading.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy decided to retire today, for the explicit reason of admin misconduct, a topic of discussion being raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention. Biosthmors (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the headsup, Biosthmors. I have temporarily blanked my userpage. I encourage everyone else to consider doing this in recognition of Sandy's contributions to this project and to Wikipedia as a whole. JFW | T@lk 23:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the kind words, but I hope you will all join me in standing up to corrupt cabalistic admins who enable sockmasters to ruin this place for all of us. Content contributors need to stick together now more than ever ... it seems we can't count on either arbcom or the admin corp to care about socks and disruption. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:07, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Use of primary sources

There's a discussion here, regarding the use of primary sources. The talk page itself is quite messy at the moment, so I understand if you don't want to dive in there, but I think we should sort out the basic question, if and how primary souces can be used, and with only three editors discussing we won't reach an agreement. I would really appreciate your input. --Six words (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

No primary sources should be used for medical content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
WP:MEDRS states: "Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse." I happy with the level of caution included in the statement. In general, if disputes arise in specific articles, it is probably better to remove the source (and the information if no secondary source can be found). In my opinion, primary sources are often suitable for the "History" sections of medical articles. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:01, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
You might find WP:USEPRIMARY worth a look. There are valid uses of primary sources even in medical articles, e.g., "He published a paper claiming that it works sometimes in petri dishes", but you may not use non-independent primary sources to de-bunk or challenge the conclusions of independent and secondary sources, or even to pretend that all these sources are equally valid (per WP:GEVAL). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:51, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for all your replies. The situation - in my eyes - is not one where using primary sources would be appropriate: it's about a cancer therapy that independend, secondary sources say is unproven and shows no promise (one source even calling it disproven). There are two or three secondary sources written by its 'inventor' who (of course) claims the therapy works, and there also seem to be a few in vitro tests and small case studies by other researchers that were 'positive'. I've been arguing that these studies cannot be used to counterbalance the independent secondary sources but as there were only four editors discussing this issue on the talk page, two for, two against using primary sources, and we were going in circles. Since then, other editors have joined the discussion, but of course additional commenters are still very welcome there. --Six words (talk) 09:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes primary sources may be used in rare situations but one does not use primary sources to refute secondary ones which appears to be the situation here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Conversion therapy

Could some experienced editors please take a look at Conversion therapy and help clean it up? I think some new eyes may help. Insomesia (talk) 14:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Active RFC at Circumcision

There is an active RFC at circumcision, direct link is here: Talk:Circumcision#RFC. Your participation is always appreciated! Cheers... Zad68 03:05, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Sandy's retired

[3] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:30, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Above in #Diseases DB JFW encourages considering blanking one's own user page in honor of Sandy's contributions. I did. I started a thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention and I would appreciate to see some admins from this project comment there (another user also started a related thread). I figure I should also go ahead and get User:Biosthmors/WMF Noticeboard live as Sandy seemed to have a bit of a reputation for caring about WMF activities. Biosthmors (talk) 02:51, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Very unfortunate. It appears that the event which sort of pushed her over the edge was the recent blocking of long term content contributors without any prior warning. We spent so much time trying to attract new and competent editors. And than try to figure out how to turn new editors into long term editors. Maybe what we really need to do is figure out how to keep the long term editors we have. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry to hear this. Sandy was excellent. ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 15:26, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Sad news indeed. Although she is still posting on her talk page, so perhaps she has had a change of heart. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:59, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm Sorry friends, it's the first time I've done that. I was sick Sick SICK to death of dealing with socks, sock enablers, and corrupt admins. The sock is now blocked, this time, but this place has changed for me. I don't care anymore if they block me, I am not going to be silent ever again in the face of admin corruption and sock enabling. They made this place miserable, so that we spend all our time dealing with socks instead of building content, and I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. I appreciate all the kind words here, and I'm sorry for the false alarm ... when they finally got off their ASSES and blocked the sock, I decided to come back and fight the corruption. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

"I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." <------- That sounds like a battle cry to me - a call to arms to "fight the corruption." Where do we plebs sign to join the revolution? Who is providing the weaponry? The best I can come up with is a few sticks and a couple of petrol bombs which won't be much match against the armoury of some of the lawless wikipedia admins.--MrADHD | T@1k? 00:21, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Any where you see admins supporting disruption and failing to support content builders ... we cannot be complacent anymore. It has always been a problem; now it's institutionalized because so many have left. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:28, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
The difficulty is that many of us content types do not stray far from our content work and thus are unaware of all the issues occurring until someone shows up and makes mention of it in our little domain. Things need to change. Have made a proposal here that all blocks need to be proceeded by at least a warning Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Blocking_policy_alterations Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:39, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Many thanks for following up with this. I hope something good comes of that discussion! Biosthmors (talk) 19:35, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Urethral sounding and Urethral intercourse articles

The Urethral sounding article was nominated for deletion back in 2007, and it's still an awful article. It and the Urethral intercourse article attempt to distinguish themselves from each other. But when you apply urethral sounding in a sexual context, as "urethral play," I'm not seeing in what way they are validly distinguished, except for the latter also seeming to cover accidental penetration of the female urethra, and I also ponder whether or not these two articles should be merged. Flyer22 (talk) 22:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

No comments on this from this project? Flyer22 (talk) 01:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that they should be merged. One article appears to cover a legitimate medical procedure, while the other article is about a rather strange and unusual method of sexual intercourse. Unless I am missing something?--MrADHD | T@1k? 01:18, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
There are a few pumbed hits for treatment of urethral stricture in males...otherwise seems like medicine is involved mostly to clean up the damage involved...agree merge urethral intercourse to a new section in urethral sounding, and covering the apparently substantial risks too. lesion (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

MEDRS compliance and reference lists

What would it take to get some sort of indicator in the templating system for journal articles whereby one could look at an article's reference list and see, based on pubmed's data, whether a ref was likely to be MEDRS-compliant? Pubmed seems to be pretty good at adding that metadata, and it would be a huge boon to my recent review-article OCD if i were able to just look at the list and see which of the hundred+ references in a large article most need to be checked. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 01:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

This has been discussed a number of times in the past on this page and got a fair bit of support both times. All it needs is someone to make sure there is consensus and figure out how to do it. The idea I guess would be to create a field called "review" which could be populated by a bot with a yes or no based on pubmed. You have my strong support. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
So where do i go to propose this? village pump? -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 08:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
That is a good question. I am not sure where would be best. As this would only apply to pubmed resources and pubmed is mostly medical consensus here may be sufficient. Maybe start a RfC here. Draft it in your user space and I am happy to review before it goes live. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:15, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Superficially, this proposal looks reasonable. The bot looks for a "pmid" field, then checks for a "Review" tag on Pubmed. However there are potential pitfalls: references that don't use the citation template, journal article references that don't have a "pmid" field, journal articles that aren't listed in Pubmed, non-journal references that aren't in Pubmed. Also, this metadata shouldn't be immediately visible in the article, but only in the edit window. I would agree to limited implementation in, say, 25 articles, with a view to evaluating the benefit. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Axl. Also, sadly, PUBMED listings are inconsistent with how articles are tagged. I have run across cases of articles that are clearly review articles tagged by PUBMED not as reviews, and vice-versa, and also many review articles simply have no tag at all. The danger might be that if you see "review" you won't double-check it, or that if you don't you might assume it's a problem. Is the tagging consistency and accuracy high enough to make this useful? Zad68 15:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
My view on the issues you (Axl) raise:
  • references that don't use the citation template and journal article references that don't have a "pmid" field: one of my hobbyhorses has been to go around adding PMID information to articles when i see them. this seems like it's pretty important for end-users as a way to do further research, and i think we should be encouraging the addition of PMID information where it does not exist
  • journal articles that aren't listed in Pubmed: as far as i'm concerned, if it's not indexed by pubmed then it's not MEDRS. it might still be reliable for other purposes, but not medical ones
  • non-journal references that aren't in Pubmed: I'm drawing a blank on what MEDRS-compliant secondary sources would be that are not indexed by pubmed, other than say a proper well-referenced book chapter, and while these are sometimes referenced, i have found far fewer of them than primary or tertiary sources (such as textbooks). are there other types i'm missing?
Again, this would be as an aid to MEDRS cleanup efforts, where the goal is simply to indicate to one of us which references are most prominently in need of checking -- this in no way prevents us from checking those sources in terms of content and claims.
Please also see comments below re: feasibility of a limited pilot project
-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 18:25, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I haven't noticed a problem with Pubmed mis-identifying review articles, but I'll take your word for it. In any case, it is a good reason to evaluate the situation after a limited pilot exercise. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:42, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Per Axl and Zad68, while this has the potential to be useful, any such tool would have to be very careful in the way that it presented its data or conclusions. I often tend to work in some of the more contentious article areas of Wikipedia. I can say with certainty that if a tool gives a "(likely) MEDRS-compliant" checkmark as any part of its output, we will face advocates of fringe theories who will insist "This source got the MEDRS-compliant checkmark, we must use it in our article!". I strongly suspect that we will also get both fringe advocates and plain-vanilla naive editors who will insist that any reference that doesn't get the automated MEDRS checkmark must be removed. Finally, I fear that the same problem will repeat (and be an obstacle) when those cases get bounced up to WP:RSN. Eventually, instead of sensibly discussing the proper application of MEDRS – and acknowledging that there will be gray areas and edge cases that aren't resolved by lawyerly parsing of the rules – we'll spend a lot of time bogged down in discussing how to tweak the MEDRS-compliance tool algorithm.
I've just been over at WP:RSN banging my head against a situation where more than one participant in a discussion doesn't want to acknowledge that "This book is a reliable source" isn't actually a complete conclusion for Wikipedia purposes—any given source will be reliable for some statements and situations and not others. We don't want to inadvertently exacerbate such problems. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
So I actually haven't seen mis-tagged articles on pubmed. is there any way you could post some links? What I was actually envisioning was, rather than a tag that says "likely medrs-compliant" would be something that says "pubmed tags this as a secondary source". not explicitly mind you, maybe just an additional symbol or a color change for the caret that jumps you to the citing sentence. just some kind of indicator for people doing RS reviews.
Of course this could be problematic if it were portrayed as "this is MEDRS compliant" and i didn't mean to suggest that. I don't know that this could be trialed in just a subset of articles either -- from my poking around, it seems like it would require an additional field in the citation template (which, as noted, could be named something innocuous, like "pubmed_type" and stay consistent with their XML definitions, rather than something more suggestive/problematic like "MEDRS"), and then it would ALSO require a modification of the definitions for how the citations are displayed. I imagine that you could just push an arbitrary field into there and add some javascript or css on the client side to view the field in a way that is useful to you, but that sort of thing is beyond me.
I had another idea though, which is that if we had some coordination with some php or javascript programmers, we could produce a client-side tool for this, whether via WP-user-installable-scripts or greasemonkey or the like -- let the person using the client retrieve the article type, via pubmed's Entrez API or something. This, again, is beyond my coding abilities, so we would definitely need some help, but if we could get someone interested in this it could be a really useful tool i think -- especially if it has been discussed before. Additional comment is of course welcome -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 17:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
It's not common to see non-reviews tagged as being reviews, but do a quick search on "review[Title]", and then limit it to just things tagged as "reviews". 40% of the hits go away. Most of these are probably older reviews or even things that aren't journal articles, but we're probably losing some legitimate reviews that way. And how exactly should you tag a publication that is a "case study and review"? Whether it's MEDRS always depends on how you use it, not just on its inherent characteristic. (See WP:USEPRIMARY for the basics.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Another point that i failed to make upthread is that the overwhelming majority of problems i've seen with MEDRS compliance is a reliance on primary or tertiary articles for sourcing. That is a bigger problem than the potential for pubmed-mistagged articles, by an order of magnitude i think. I am sympathetic to the issue of contentious articles and misinterpretation there, so it's definitely important that the field names etc dont suggest more authority than necessary (thus "secondary article" or "article type" rather than "MEDRS compliant") but the issue of mistagged articles seems like it would be of, at best, minor importance. If we start encountering this as an issue in large numbers, it would suggest to me that:
  1. we have make great strides in enforcing the secondary source requirement, so yay us
  2. we should be in closer contact with the NLM people to let them know they have misclassified stuff.
-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 18:07, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Regarding secondary sourcing requirement, Yes, and I have seen generally good enthusiasm for enforcement of their use lately from WP:MED. One of the reasons why I like contributing to WP:MED articles is that the sourcing is plentiful, easy to access, easier to evaluate, and you get support from fellow WP:MED members in application of WP:MEDRS.

What's so terrible about tertiary sourcing, at least for things like general overview information? WP:MEDRS talks about using textbooks.

Also, we can right now start simply adding extra fields to the cite templates. I'm pretty sure the renderer just ignores the extra fields, so you can put in "... |pubmed_type=review ..." right now, it just won't display.

Finally, I like the idea of producing tools to help us identify good sourcing. A few weeks ago I had actually proposed a "Journal Evaluation Tool" that had some of the elements you're talking about -- basically, automated pulling of information about a journal to help evaluate whether it would be useful. I can do some Python coding and have coded stuff for my own personal Wiki-use before, so from a technical standpoint I could have done the coding. Although there was sympathy for the general idea, it more or less got shot down because there was concern it would be used as a Yes/No source-evaluator without thought, and I abandoned it. I still like the idea of a tool that could help you gather the information needed to evaluate a source, but not do the evaluation for you. I imagine it could live on the toolserver or some place like that. Thoughts? Zad68 18:44, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the problem with tertiary sources is that they don't always provide references themselves. From my perspective, you could make the case that if something is well-referenced as part of a textbook, then it's equivalent to a secondary source rather than tertiary. The issue for me always comes down to a sort of equivalent to chain-of-custody in the legal evidentiary process.

I can dink asround a little bit with python, but php and javascript make me break out in hives, and i don't know how to interface python with the browser. also, i am in school so don't have a lot of time to dig into coding. if this is of interest to you though, let's see if we can't come up with a proposal or RfC first? -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 18:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the textbooks, I still think that they're perfectly wonderful to use for things like a general overview of something (let's say, the circulatory system), but they may not cover the most current scientific consensus on something (let's say, what the last three systematic reviews said about the effects of Drug X on heart rate), so if you're writing an article on Drug X, you'll use the textbook to give any needed background on the circulatory system, and the latest PUBMED systematic reviews for the most up to date scientific consensus on the drug's effects. Maybe WP:MEDRS could be updated to make this more clear if it's not.

I am interested... my previous attempt to go down this road asked generally, "What objective pieces of data are the most relevant things to pull in evaluating a source." I expected answers like: Is it MEDLINE indexed? What is the PUBMED type? Which journal is it published in? What is that journal's impact factor? Who published it? When was it published? etc... what else should we be collecting? Zad68 19:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

i would argue against the inclusion of impact factor for a couple of reasons, but maybe this is a convo better had on our personal talk pages. I would say we should probably start an rfc there too.-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 21:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes a trial of 25 articles is an excellent idea. Who want to make a bot? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:02, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Ooo oooo me me me pick me! I need help getting started and does one need any special permissions granted to them to make a bot? If so I need that too. Zad68 01:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Wow Zad if you can make bots that would be wonderful. I in fact have a whole bunch of bot projects that I need help with. While send you more details. Yes one requires permission to make a WP:Bots. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
So glad to see someone willing to tackle this. Related prior discussion at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_1#.22type.22_field_in_template:cite_journal and linked from there. A few further thoughts: a database extract could be made which would be inclusive of all entries inside Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). tags that give a pmid. Not all of these will be using {{cite journal}} etc. Lessons could probably be learned from reviewing the prior code on user:Citation bot and on user:Diberri's tool. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

There are some problems with this proposal. I'm opposed to bloating templates with more metadata that don't concern our readers. The purpose of our citations is to direct readers to the source. Adding a "review" attribute, or "pubmed_type" attribute, that only concerns medical journals, just complicates things for all the non-medical articles and is yet another thing newbies have to get right. A Publication Type = "Review" isn't the only good type of source. There's also "Consensus Development Conference" and "Meta-Analysis" and possibly others. And there may be more than one publication type attribute on a PubMed indexed article. Conflating "Review = Secondary Source" is a mistake since determining whether a source is secondary always depends on the context: what text we draw from it. We need dispel the myth that our articles should be "ideally" be built from journal reviews. That's only one type of good source and simply reflects the ease-of-access that a minority of our editors have to online journals. For many of our articles on important big subjects, reviews are far too specialised and not nearly comprehensive enough. And unless one is writing an FA or working in a contentious subject, using or requiring the most recent and most academic of writings might be a hindrence to actually writing content.

A browser plug-in for hovering the mouse over PMIDs would perhaps do the trick and would work for templates and hand-written citations. It wouldn't suffer from the problem that an editor may include the wrong publication type for a give citation, due to copy/paste or perhaps deliberately. Every non-essential field in a citation template is a maintenance problem and a source of misinformation. Colin°Talk 15:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Darn you Colin and your sensible, thoughtful analysis! Don't you know how this works, we're supposed to just start coding and maybe figure out later what the requirements are.

Yeah, let's refocus on the real goal here, which I believe is having something to assist medical article reviewers evaluate the quality of sourcing in an article. I imagine the use-case for what we'd like is: You come across a WP:MED-scope article that hasn't seen serious development in the past four years and you decide you want to update it... or you even are looking at a new article created by an eager but inexperienced editor. You'd like something to help you go through the article's 123 references to see what kind of shape the article's sourcing is in. This kind of use case was the impetus behind the "Journal Evaluation Tool" I was considering a few weeks ago.

Instead of putting metadata tags in the templates themselves, let's consider a "Medical Article Source Evaluation Tool". It's an off-Wiki tool, you point it at an article, it sucks out all the sourcing in the refs and it gives you a table of all the sources and does its best to give you as much supplemental info about each source as it can. If there's a PMID it tries to pull relevant PUBMED data. If it's a book it tries to pull interesting data from Google Books. Etc.... The output would be something like we currently get from the "Checklinks" FA tool. It does not give you any up-or-down evaluation of each source, it just gives you the supplemental information you'd have to go get yourself by hand to do your own evaluation. Zad68 16:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Another latent effort that should enter the thinking here is a check for retractions and other withdrawals. In a few cases we do need to cite withdrawn papers (e.g. Andrew Wakefield), but that is by far the exception. In most cases it should be a flag for further editorial action, if possible with a suggestion of a superceding source to use. I wouldn't much care about the means of doing so, except that structured data is much more maintainable than free text, particularly when we are talking of translating articles into eighty languages. If citation templates are the only structure we have for this, they'll have to do until something better comes along, even if that entails some bloat. From what I can tell, though, most of the template bloat relates to topic-navigation templates, which never did make much sense to me: they'd be better as seperate navigation articles rather than massive transclusions into every article in the subject area. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
The "external assessment tool" sounds pretty neat. I'd agree with Colin's cautions about adding anything new to the templates; these are already beginning to break on large pages, and any additional complexity for relatively limited benefit should be thought about quite carefully. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Maybe it could be added to this tool http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webchecklinks.py?page=Asthma Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue at Graves' disease

Our article appears to have contained a fair bit of copy and pastes from a couple of years ago per [4]. I have reverted back to 2010. Could use more eyes and may be the creation of a bot to flag these sorts of issues before they sit without our article for two years. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:57, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Notes about us in the WHO bulletin

I gave an interview there about 6 months ago and they published a few comments here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:37, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

That's a good summary. Thank you for giving the interview. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:04, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Nice. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Recommendation for good medical article to use as a model

Originally posted here[5], following up on this page per recommendations there.

Due to some unfortunate family circumstances I found myself reading everything I could find on percutaneous vertebroplasty a few nights ago. I added the best reference I found to the article and tucked it away on my watchlist to come back to later. A new editor came through shortly afterwards and, although the formatting was a wreck, he appeared to know what he was talking about. I engaged him, and he turns out to be an expert in this area (although definitely not in wikipedia editing). We're talking by email.

Rather than hand him a stack of policy pages to read I think it would be much more efficient to show him an exemplary medical article and say "Do it this way" (filling in policy as needed). What would you suggest for a unusually good article on a medical procedure that has a fair bit of actual controversy surrounding it? (By actual controversy I mean that there are very solid – and conflicting – secondary sources.)

Also, if you know of someone who works on medical articles and doesn't have enough to do already I could probably use another set of eyes on this.

Thanks much,

GaramondLethe 01:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks I have now watched the page as it seems to have fallen off my watch list. Some companies are pushing this procedure very forcefully. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Here are some WP:Good articles on medical procedures: Bates method – Birth control – Brachytherapy – Coffin birth – Condom – Mental status examination – Tracheal intubation.
Perhaps one of them will seem useful to you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Doc James, thanks for taking a look. I've pointed the new editor to your comments and expect he'll be replying within a day or so. WhatamIdoing, the tracheal intubation article in particular looks like a good model to follow. I really appreciate you suggesting it. Best, GaramondLethe 05:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Help to review new article

Hi!

Could you please help to review and suggest any changes on my article which was just accepted as a new wikipedia article?

Functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the brain

Wikipedia reviewers are particularly concerned about the overlap between my article and In vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy article. But I am sure that these need to be separate articles with links to each other.

Any comments appreciated.

Dcdace (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Where are these reviewers expressing their concerns? Both talk pages are essentially empty. Resting state fMRI is a relatively new article. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging exists. Why "spectroscopy" instead if "imaging"? What's the difference between fMRI and fMRS, in other words? Biosthmors (talk) 20:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I talked with reviewers on the help desk. Spectroscopy is different technique than imaging. Imaging gives information (an image) of water density, blood oxygenation, or some other single marker. Spectroscopy gives spectrum (not an image) of many chemical compounds in the studied region. fMRI and fMRS are two very different techniques. Dcdace (talk) 11:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. How about putting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FMRS_of_lactate.png at the top of the article and clarifying that in a picture caption and in the lead, perhaps? If you would like comments on the article I could provide them at the talk page. I was wondering though, is this article an WP:AFSE? Thanks again. Biosthmors (talk) 00:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Also, why are you certain two articles are necessary when the lead of in vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy says "MRS ... is a non-invasive analytical technique that ... stud[ies] metabolic changes in ... the brain." Please understand the reasons given at Wikipedia:Merge#Reasons_for_merger before you reply. How do you think we should proceed? Biosthmors (talk) 00:44, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Biosthmors, thanks for your feedback. I made small changes in the introduction and put the image at the top. Hope it makes the subject clearer now. I agree the best way would be to put all comments at the article's talk page.
The article was started as my assignment within APS-Wikipedia Initiative. I am studying Neuroimaging and doing my MSc project on fMRS. This is relatively new but important technique in the study of brain function and is gaining more and more interest and delivering promising results. It is a technique in its own right. Topic selection was approved by the module organizer and encouraged by my supervisor who is an expert in this field.
fMRS is an extension of In vivo MRS. However, in my view, both topics need to have separate articles same way as MRI and fMRI and other MRI techniques have different articles. MRS is not looking at metabolite changes during the function unlike fMRS. MRS looks at snapshot information. The MRS article is not well written at the moment, in my view. Yes, it is written there "used to study metabolic changes", however what is meant by "changes" there is changes between different states of illness, changes between healthy and sick tissue, longitudinal changes. But NOT changes during brain function within few seconds to few minutes of temporal resolution while subject is inside the scanner. It is similar to MRI vs fMRI. MRI can be used to study changes in brain anatomy, but not during brain function. The focus of ‘snapshot’ studies and functional studies is different.
fMRS is a developing area and even if MRS and fMRS articles were merged now, after some time it would be necessary to split them. MRS itself is broad subject and if described properly would result in a relatively long article. Dcdace (talk) 12:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hyperbaric chamber

What is the best target for hyperbaric chamber? At present we have two different targets, depending upon whether the second word is capitalised or not - see Hyperbaric Chamber and Hyperbaric chamber. Clearly, having them different can be confusing. It occurs to me that we should base the choice upon the the primary use of such chambers - for medicine, or for diving. Then we can fix up some of the redirects of Hyperbaric medicine and Diving chamber. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

"Chamber" certainly should not be capitalized. It is not a proper noun. The use of hyperbaric chambers in diving is, in a sense, medical. The purpose is to prevent and/or treat harmful effects that can arise. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Capitalisation is not the issue. The redirect Hyperbaric Chamber has existed for over seven years, so is not a recent creation that we might want to speedy delete (but it is eligible for WP:RFD).
The question is about whether the two redirects should have the same target, or continue to have different targets; and if they should be the same, which is the most appropriate? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I redirected Hyperbaric Chamber to diving chamber because diving chamber incorporates hyperbaric chamber into its lead, etc. as the same topic. Biosthmors (talk) 00:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
There is a problem of sorts. As far as I am aware, hyperbaric chambers became common for treatment of decompression illness and for surface recompression of commercial saturation divers - the former is clearly medical treatment; the latter is definitely not, but both are diving-related (hence the "diving chamber" epithet). However, their use to administer hyperbaric oxygen therapy has, over time, found value in treatment of gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, and other ailments which are not diving-related. So the question is, should the article be titled hyperbaric chamber, with diving chamber as a redirect? --RexxS (talk) 03:22, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree that "hyperbaric chamber" is the more appropriate title, because "diving chamber" is a specific application of the former. -- Scray (talk) 04:11, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Scray and RexxS that diving chamber is a specific application of hyperbaric chamber, however the current article on diving chambers includes equipment that might not ordinarily be thought of as hyperbaric chambers, such as open diving bells. There is probably sufficient scope for two articles. Diving chamber, as it is currently arranged, and Hyperbaric chamber, for both diving and medical chambers which are closed and pressurised to higher than ambient pressure as a standard operating procedure. Pressurised aircraft and spacecraft are an interesting complication, probably best dealt with by a hatnote or small explanatory paragraph, as most people would not look for them under either of the titles suggested above. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 05:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Groupthink

someone should study this as it applies to the consensus process on wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tepi (talk • contribs) 16:40, 6 January 2013

This comment doesn't seem to contribute much to WPMED. Without additional context, I would respond that I see plenty of exploration of alternative views, discussion (sometimes too much...), and this if anything can slow content generation but overall it's healthy; so, it's not at all like Groupthink, IMHO - WP editors really don't seem to avoid confrontation. I'm sure there are instances that look like Groupthink, and if you wish to engage us to address such a situation, you'll need to provide some context. -- Scray (talk) 17:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I occasionally disagree with my fellow editors. Even the ones I consider friends. I do not think groupthink is really applicable here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:32, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Scray and James. -- Colin°Talk 19:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

very funny...lesion (talk) 19:14, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

This seems to be a reaction to some frustration with a disagreement happening somewhere else. You should try to address this directly, instead of creating this rather puzzling section on a public project discussion area mostly read by editors uninvolved in whatever dispute is causing you grief. Zad68 19:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC) I disagree with Scray, James & Colin. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

there is no recent grief, this was just general observation. lesion (talk) 20:52, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

RfC for chiropractic

Currently, there is a disagreement and edit warring at chiropractic over WP:COI and WP:POV. There is an RfC for input: Chiropractic RfC Cantaloupe2 (talk) 11:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

In general, if you want to get responses to an RFC, you need to ask a specific question, not just say there have been some disputes and wonder whether anyone has suggestions.
As far as I can tell, the dispute is whether being a licensed medical professional constitutes a COI for articles about that medical profession. What's next? Nurses aren't allowed to edit Nursing? Surgeons aren't allowed to edit Surgery? This is so obviously a silly position that I have to assume that someone's trying to use COI as a means of topic-banning editors whose POV differs from his own. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
WikiProject Medicine Banner

WikiProject Medicine banner is added to Project Page, feel free to update it or remove it. Will be adding modified version soon.Thanks for creating such amazing project. AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 09:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

it looks good. 2 issues =(
Looks great. Just need to fix the rod :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:45, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Wouldn't the Star of Life be a better look than just the plain Rod of Asclepius on such a banner? (One could replace the right caduceus with the the star, and leave the left one, as the caduceus is associated with medicine (as shown by the link provided) or the left one replaced with a red cross -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 21:47, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
For me, the star of life is associated mostly with emergency medicine rather than medicine as whole. Any of the 3 symbols would be appropriate really, I was just being pernickity... lesion (talk) 23:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
the red cross was a symbol of a international relief charity no? They ended up replacing it with a crescent symbol in the parts of the world because of the crusades and because it was too linked with Christianity. International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. lesion (talk) 23:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes we should stay away from religious symbols. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:54, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
What about a Red Crystal with the rod inscribed within it? (The rod alone looks somewhat thin for a banner) -- 70.24.248.246 (talk) 08:17, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
We are not a member of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement so the crystal, the cross and the crescent would all be inappropriate. I support User:lesion's suggestion: replace the caduceus with the rod of Asclepius, and make the final "e" lower case. Thank you for doing this, Abhi. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:57, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for feedback, will update more versions of banner soon. :) AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 19:21, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Updated Banner

  • E is in small size.
  • Religious symbols avoided.
WikiProject Medicine Banner -Updated

any further corrections/suggestions?

AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 11:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I know I am criticizing someone's hard work...the ECG trace is good, not sure about heart as symbol...and the W faintly drawn on is good... Maybe try rod of asclepius and/or star of life? You are correct it is religious, but no-one is going to get bothered about ancient religious symbols, the cross or the crescent they might argue about.lesion (talk) 16:13, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Hey, Thanks for feedback, and please feel free to criticize and suggest improvements :-) Will update new one with rod, then it will be easy to compare all three! Keep Suggesting, Keep Inspiring! :) AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 17:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I really like it. Great to have someone so good with graphics joining us. A great addition to the team. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:44, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks so much for your effort, but unfortunately I can't say I like it. The red hearts and all red make me think of Valentine's Day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WikiProject_Medicine_Banner.jpg was more on the right track, with colors/design. How about something more like that with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rod_of_Asclepius2.svg? Thanks again for your effort. Biosthmors (talk) 21:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I kind of like it. A W, Hearts, an ECG. This will reach the non medical group as well :-) Anyway he is working on a logo for Wiki. Med. right now which we supposedly need before we can apply to use the term Medicine and thus change our name to keep the WMF happy. He can work on adding the rods afterwards. The black and white one though does not really grab me. We need one that is more colorful and with cleaner lines IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
It's not important to me, but the convention is to silly case the first word and to sentence case what follows, which means a capital "P" and "M": WikiProject Medicine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

It has been a while since I looked at the page "Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine". The banner incorporates a bright red love-heart. (I am aware that some medical organizations use this stylized heart.) Within this is an ECG trace showing SVT with aberrant conduction followed by a sinus beat and then a flat line. Something is sitting on top of the flat line. At first I thought that it was a roast turkey on a plate (perhaps too soon after Christmas for me?), then I thought it was a ball of wool with a knitting needle on a plate. After closer inspection, it looks like a tablet with a capsule behind it. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:35, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Tablet and two capsules, actually (see [6]). One's red and grey (white?), the other yellow and red. Could be Amoxil. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think there is another banner in progress.lesion (talk) 07:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Two at peer review, both topics have editors who want GA status

Wikipedia:Peer review/Circumcision/archive1 by Zad68 and Wikipedia:Peer review/Bronchitis/archive1 by TylerDurden8823. Circumcision appears closer to GA-class than bronchitis, which appears most held back by an over-reliance on tertiary sources. (Tyler is already aware of this shortcoming.) Maybe developing a list of good secondary sources (and identifying missing content) at the PR for bronchitis would be best there. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 23:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Another PR request for mouth ulcer, ty. lesion (talk) 14:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Medical certificate is 'Todays article for improvement'

Just noticed that Medical certificate is Wikipedia:Today's article for improvement. Its not tagged as part of the project yet either, maybe it shouldn't - we could end up with a whole heap of paperwork! looks like it is superceded in about a weeks time. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 21:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I've assessed it as a stub. The article is an unref'd, single section, ten-sentence, one-image stub. Any improvement or expansion will justify re-rating as Start-class.
For others not familiar with this, a medical certificate is informally called "a note from your doctor". It might say you were too sick to go to school (a sick note: why do we have a separate article?) or that you're healthy (medical clearance) or it might be used for legal purposes (certifying that the person really did have his arm broken in the motor vehicle collision).
People interested in airplanes (pilots must submit one for their licenses) might also be interested in helping, if anyone wants to find those WikiProjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I've also made some copy edits to the article. Thanks for posting here. Great idea with this and I made some edits to Template:TAFI too. Biosthmors (talk) 22:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Broselow Pediatric Emergency Tape

There's currently a proposed article in AFC on Broselow tape: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Broselow Pediatric Emergency Tape. The topic already has minimal coverage in the article on body weight: Body weight#Estimation in children. Anyone care to evaluate this submission? FiachraByrne (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Richard L Bruno ...

"... is internationally known as the world’s expert on Post-Polio Sequelae". Piece at AFC written by the good doctor's psychophysiologist's media consultant Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Richard L Bruno who informs us that he previously had a wikipedia article but that it was deleted due to a copyvio on the photograph. Mmm. A very, very "unusual" article, imo. FiachraByrne (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

If it's a professional media consultant, could we point them to all the relevant policies this article breaks and ask them to rewrite using RSs and NPOV? Sorry, I know almost nothing about AfC. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 22:03, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks and will do but as my own editing career attests lack of knowledge has never been an impediment on this project FiachraByrne (talk) 00:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Questions about categorising redirects

Hi. I recently made a lot of redirects from Latin terms to medical (mainly anatomical) articles. So far I have not tag these redirects in anyway, but it would be smart if these where. That way other wiki-projects such as e.g. Wikidoc and similar projects outside of wikipedia could simply copy/paste redirects for medical subjects in the free-licens spirit without having to start from scrath. Also it would be possible to systematic review such redirects and so on...

A: Is there any tag I can put on the talk page of these redirect similar to the {{WikiProject Medicine|class=disambig} we have on disambigues pages?

B: If such tag exist or is created (I have absolutely no idee how this is done). Is there an semi-automated way to add this tag and perhabs {{R from alternative language|la}} resulting in Category:Redirects from Latin language terms to at least the redirects I made (I have more than 2500 on my watchpage; if my watchpage could be "loaded" into a semi-automated browser-thingy).

I hope my questions make sence otherwise please ask. --JakobSteenberg (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. You have populated Category:Redirects from Latin language terms with a large number of Latin terms which each redirect to a Wikipedia article. Many of these terms are still in use and all of them were used in recent English-language history so it is important that they exist on English Wikipedia.
The problem is that there should be some kind of record or accounting of these terms as with any other health page on Wikipedia, and to do that, there should be some kind of template on the talk page. However, there might not be an existing template which can serve this purpose, and also, you want a bot to apply the template to all of the items in the category because 2500 items is to many to do manually. All items in the category would have the same template applied to them. The template could be used as a tool to manage as a subsection of WikiProject Medicine, much in the same way that we have a cardiology task force and so many other things here. Is this a correct restatement of your proposal? If so, I propose the following:
  1. This seems like a novel idea and a bigger than average project. Can other people say whether this is reasonable?
  2. If this is reasonable and there is no existing template, then we should make one. Probably a task force parameter on the WikiProject Medicine would be best.
  3. Once the template is created, I think we can ask someone for help getting a bot to apply the template to all pages within the category.
Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
One apparently exist! With the code {{WikiProject Medicine|class=redirect}} this comes up.
WikiProject iconMedicine Unassessed
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine articles
???This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

But should it be subdiveded as we do with e.g. the cardiology task force under the Medicine-category. Sub-categories could be Nomina anatomica, English synomyns and so on. I am only asking since I am not very interested in adding one category to the 2500 redirects and then go back an change it latter. JakobSteenberg (talk) 19:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Anatomy is outside WPMED's scope. So that's all correct, except that you should be using {{WPAN|class=Redirect}} instead of {WPMED... to do the job for the anatomy names. We take the non-anatomy ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

{{WPAN}} was not previously set up for the redirect class, but I just added that functionality...so {{WikiProject Anatomy|class=redirect}} will now properly categorize articles in to Category:Redirect-Class Anatomy articles.

Setting the technical aspects aside (they can be figured out later), there's a larger item to consider first: are you categorizing these redirects for ease of maintenance/keeping track of them, or to be a browsable part of the Wiki by readers. This differentiation would determine whether categorization should occur in the (article) namespace (as in categories like Category:Redirects from Latin language terms) or the Talk namespace (within Category:Redirect-Class Anatomy articles). You could also do both. Categorization by origin of term I believe is worth of inclusion in the (article) namespace, and it is not something to do within a WikiProject. But that doesn't mean you couldn't also add the WikiProject banner to the talk pages (but I would not create a task force-like categorization for this). You should read through Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects. I think #Categorization of multiple taxonomies is the most relevant section. Another question is, are there actual articles with titles using Nomina Anatomica that you would want to include in this category. In other words, should the category be titled "Redirects from Nomina Anatomica terms" or "Nomina Anatomica names of structures"? After you decide what the categories should be named (which would reflect their content), then we can figure out how to get the pages into the categories (ie via template or just adding the category). --Scott Alter (talk) 16:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

First, thanks for the answers. Second, I must say this discussion just got a bit too technical for me but I will try to respond the best way I can. As an example of what I am trying to do I will use a {{WikiProject Anatomy|class=redirect}}, the common iliac vein:
I use Nomina Anatomica terms in my daily life meaning I use the Latin term instead of common iliac vein, so I set up an redirect from vena iliaca communis, because I do not know/can not remember the term common iliac vein but still would like to access the English Wikipedia. Lets say somebody comes along who (writes a program or whatever and) copies all articles tagged {{WikiProject Anatomy|class=}}, moves them to a different sites and improves them. They can however not take the redirects I made from Latin since these are not marked and hence impossible to find among redirects from common birds names and so on. Again, now I can not access the common iliac vein because I only know it by the term vena iliaca communis. The same goes with English synonyms. With this example in mind I would think the {{WikiProject Anatomy|class=redirect}} on the talk page would be sufficient. Would you agree?
However, since I am going to but this project-tag on lets say all anatomical redirects in the English Wikipedia. Would it be smart (for some reason I can not think of) sub-divide these into Latin terms and English synonyms?
I am not sure why anyone would go into a category such as Category:Redirects from Latin language terms unless they for some reason was going trough them to see if there are correct. So I would say no on the browsing part unless somebody have a good reason.
I hoped I brought clarity to at least some of your questions. JakobSteenberg (talk) 17:43, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Usually, someone wouldn't try to do that. If you wanted all the anatomy articles, you'd copy all the files in the category tree under Category:Anatomy, which includes any redirect with a proper categorization (WP:DERM does it best). If you wanted the redirects, then you'd scrape anything that Special:WhatLinksHere turns up, like these for Common iliac vein.
A WikiProject is a group of volunteers. A WikiProject banner means that this or that group is interested in helping out with that page. It's not meant to provide useful information for outside users. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Although you say you say the WikiProject banner tagging is sufficient for what you want, you description of potential use fits with the opposite. Stating that you "use Nomina Anatomica terms in [your] daily life" and are looking to categorize them all together to find easily, fits with creating a category like "Nomina Anatomica names of structures". You want the redirects to be categorized by nomenclature to be easily to find - not for maintenance of pages by editors (which is what WikiProjects are for). And rather than just categorizing the redirects, I'd imagine that including actual articles with titles matching the NA (or TA) name should be in the same category. Essentially, this would be a new hierarchy for categorizing anatomy articles, in which I think adding categories to the redirect pages themselves is the best way to go (not the talk pages, unless you also want to add them for WPAN to follow).
As an aside, how similar are Nomina Anatomica and Terminologia Anatomica? If categorization by anatomic naming scheme is going to be performed, I'd think going based off the most recent accepted scheme (TA) would be best. I'm not familiar with NA, but I found TA online. After seeing TA, if it is in the public domain or its copyright enables it to be reproduced on Wikipedia, there is another option. Similar to the ATC lists for drugs (ex ATC code N03) and ICD lists for diseases (ex ICD-10 Chapter IX: Diseases of the circulatory system), maybe Terminologia Anatomica can be expanded to include the TA terms linked to the common-name articles. If this is legal, it might be the best and most comprehensive way. --Scott Alter (talk) 03:22, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I still must say that I have a bit of trouble following the creating a category like "Nomina Anatomica names of structures" with the tagging on the article page. Such a category would contain the same number of points as there are anatomical articles on wikipedia as every thing has a NA and TA name (cauda equina have however as en example kept its NA name in the TA system). But since such a list would not function as a dictionary, so I kind of fail to see the point.
With regards to titles matching the NA (or TA) name; all articles on should use be named by their TA name (I have only seen a couple of examples who are not, most likely created by non-native english speakers who use NA)
NA terms are already included in most anatomical articles (under Latin in infobox). Some are quite similar e.g. (TA) Greater trochanter vs. (NA) Trochanter major while other are miles apart.
But would it in any way be counterproductive to start adding {{WikiProject Anatomy|class=redirect}} and/or {{WikiProject Medicine|class=redirect}} to the talk pages of redirects? ...If any extra tags (perhaps on the article/redirect-page) should be added later then these are at least easier to find. In a way my original question is; should I just start to add these tags to litteraly a couple of thousinds redirect-pages as something to with the laptop in front of me wathing TV or would it be smartest to do anything first so I (or anybody else that matter) would not have to do it all over (I truly have no grand plan for changing the underlying structure to Wikipedia, just looking for a semi-productive mindless task to do while wathing TV). I hope, I at least partly aswered some of the return questions and made my thought clear and again thank you for replying. JakobSteenberg (talk) 16:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Such a category would contain the same number of points as there are anatomical articles on wikipedia
What's wrong with that?
There is nothing counterproductive to adding the WPAN banner to redirects. It just won't be as useful to someone specifically seeking NA or TA names as the category would be. We create redirects for all kinds of things, including misspellings and odd capitalizations. As for adding thousands of banners, which sounds like a repetitive stress injury situation, if you could come up with a complete list, we ought to be able to find a WP:BOT that would actually tag them. For that matter, it could tag both the WPAN banner and add the category, if that's what we would like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Just to make sure I get the idea with the NA or TA names as the category. This would create an two indexes, just like in the back of a book? I been thinking a bit further about this and this could be a good idea. So just to make sure I get the system: Lets say four categories are made instead; TA, NA, Common name and misspels/common errors... Femur would be tagged with NA, the redirect from the Latin term, os femoris, would be tagged with NA. The redirect from Thigh bone with the common name and if we find out that 2,500 a week search for femor a redirect could be created marked with the misspels/common errors.
About the list for bot-use; Could [[7]] be used for TA terms (only part of a complete list)? Maybe 98 % are TA terms so after these where tagged with the NA one could easily go through the list to manually find errors.
But since anatomy is not within the bordes of the Medicine project (I thought so when I started this topic), maybe we should move the discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anatomy? Or either yours or mine talk page until we talked a bit more and then we could move the discussion back into public space with a new topic, so people will not have to go through the quite long talk above. Repetive stress injuri?! No, no, my wrist would just slowly dissolve :D JakobSteenberg (talk) 13:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Given the length of the discussion so far, it might be better to invite them to join us here. (There is, naturally, a lot of overlap between the groups.)
Click here to see what I did to the redirect for the vein you mentioned, and click on Category:Nomina Anatomica terms to see what we're talking about doing with a cat in the namespace. If we did that for every redirect from an NA name, the category page would list them all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I am in. Again I would say four categories are needed to grop every article, disambig, redirect and so on; TA, NA, Common name and misspels/common errors (Some articles like cauda equina would then get both the TA- and NA-tag, but I find this only natural). What are your (or any others, please join in) thoughts about this? By the way I think I found the tool to make categorising semi-automated; Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. Within a month or so I am done with creating the redirects on my list and will try to see if I can tag the talk-pages of these automated for starters. JakobSteenberg (talk) 02:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Misspellings and the like usually get {{Redirect from other spelling}}, rather than a proper content category. BTW, is that category name a good one for the NA terms? If not, please tell me what you would prefer before we get too far down this path. Should the TA cat match? (Cats can't be renamed easily, so we want it to be correct from the start.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
hmm... Latin medical terms are proparly better. How about common names? JakobSteenberg (talk) 12:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Weeklong medical editing event at UCSF medical school (Jan 7-11)

Hi folks! Starting Monday there will be a weeklong lecture series/editathon for medical students and faculty at University of California San Francisco. This was brilliantly set up by UCSF med student User:Michaelturken and will be attended by Doc James and myself as our first official Wiki Med(icine) event. UCSF has shown some interest in integrating Wikipedia into either a separate elective or even potentially a curriculum component. I wanted to give you all a heads up in case a) any of you are in the SF area and want to drop in or b) if there's an influx of new editors introducing themselves, joining the WikiProject, or asking questions about drafts and sources next week. This should be a really neat event and hopefully just the start of outreach to medical schools. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 03:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a great effort by the both of you and one that I would like to see other schools adopting as well. GT67 (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Half a dozen new editors at percutaneous vertebroplasty

We have a bunch of new editors who are trying to promote this procedure. While there is some evidence supporting it use there continues to be lots which does not. Further editors would be useful. Do to concerns of meat puppetry have protected the page in question.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Good call to semiprotect. Watchlisted, at article Talk page. Zad68 04:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Some interesting work from a Georgia Tech class

[8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I emailed the professor to let them know of my availability. The assignment also has similiarities to the one I helped out with last semester at Georgia Tech. Biosthmors (talk) 00:23, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

SIECUS, Masked depression article, and clarifying again what are appropriate medical sources

How reliable is the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) for medical information? SIECUS seems like an okay source to use, but mostly for general health information. That said, the SIECUS Report journal seems more reliable than the SIECUS website. What has led me to create this section is my concern about some of the sources that newly registered editor SU ltd. is adding to medical articles; other than the Masked depression article, he is currently mainly editing articles partly or fully about sexuality. He's only used SIECUS for a biography article thus far, but it has to do with medical information. The editor's contributions currently show some sources that I'm wary about. One example of a definite sourcing issue is his removal of GoodTherapy.org at the Masked depression article he created; as his edit summary states, he removed it because it's blacklisted by Wikipedia. There was concern about the Masked depression article before it was created. And four minutes after it was created, concern that it needs attention from an expert on the subject was expressed; see here and here. So I'm worried about some of the sources SU ltd. has been using for his Wikipedia contributions and feel that he may need to be directed to the WP:MEDRS guideline. The Masked depression article, for example, significantly needs more recent medical sources. He's clearly not new to editing Wikipedia and likely edits the Russian Wikipedia, but different Wikipedias have some different guidelines. Flyer22 (talk) 21:28, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Any comments on this? I'm also concerned about the use of Russian and Polish sources; I've often seen such non-English sources thrown out when used on the English Wikipedia, per Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English sources. Flyer22 (talk) 09:59, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Flyer22! Thanks for your attention to my contributions. Of course, I’m quite aware of the fact that using non-English sources (esp. those in Russian and Polish) is inexpedient here. By the way, I myself expressed the same apprehension during the discussion of my article “Masked depression” at Andrew Kurish’s Talk Page. At first I didn’t add Russian sources to the article at all. Then he challenged the correctness of my information. That was why I adduced Russian sources to confirm the validity of my statements. To support my description of the disorder was the only reason for inserting references to Russian materials on the subject. Also I expressed my hope that these sources would be substituted by English ones in future.

As for your reproach “they are very old,” I have to say that newer monographs published by leading Russian psychiatrists a few years ago expound the same notions. For example, I can name “Endogenous depression” by A.S.Bobrov, “Depressions in General Practice: Management Manual” and “Depressions in Somatic and Mental Illnesses” by A.B.Smulevich, “Psychiatry: Clinical Recommendations” (2009, the section treating F32 in ICD-10) by Neznanov, and other books. So I can’t agree with your opinion that a few of the references are given to the long out dated publications. The only problem that should be resolved stems from the Russian language which these books are written in. Anyone who is familiar with English-speaking literature on the subject can overcome the drawback mentioned and point out relevant English books. Perhaps the current state of my article is much better that the absence of an article explaining this psychiatric condition. I was greatly surprised at the fact that there were no articles about hidden depression either in English WP or in other languages including Russian and Polish. To my mind, I’ve merely stopped the gap in.

The same can seemingly be said of your reply concerning EEG changes during ejaculation. The role of mediators (dopamine etc.) in sexual function is known to everybody, so that even lays attempts to draw a parallel between the sexual impulse and drug addiction are pretty popular. But not a single allusion to the EEG studies had been present in the article about orgasm until I added some of the sources. Now I’m asking about newer studies of the relationship between sexual stimulation and EEG records. Could you name the most recent scientific results? I don’t mean either Russian or Polish studies. On the contrary, I’d like to remove them from enwiki. I’ve merely started adding information on the subject, and now I’m asking about English-speaking publications. --SU ltd. (talk) 00:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, SU ltd. Thank you for taking the time to reply here at my request. Yes, of course, at Andrew Kurish's talk page (which I linked to above), I had seen the part of your comment about using non-English sources. But it still did not seem (to me at least) that you were aware of the Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English sources guideline. Even after I commented to you about this, I deduced that you had only recently become aware of this guideline. For example, it's only after I mentioned it to you that you added this tag to the Masked depression article. But remember that the guideline says that it is not always necessary to provide a translation, and that, even though translations "published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians," it permits you to do the translations.
As for my calling some of the sources you have been using "very old" per the WP:MEDRS guideline, although I stated that "I'm definitely worried about your use of sources that are very old," I also stated that "it's understandable when there hasn't been much scientific progress on a particular matter and when it's at least pointed out that the studies are old and/or when contrasting them with newer studies." The Use up-to-date evidence section of the WP:MEDRS guideline, for example, states, "These instructions are appropriate for actively researched areas with many primary sources and several reviews and may need to be relaxed in areas where little progress is being made or few reviews are being published." In the Orgasm article, you've pointed out that the studies are old by adding dates to them in the article's text and have contrasted them to newer studies; so that isn't a problem. It's only if you use very old sources in a way that it comes across as definitive for a medical topic or other type of scientific topic, when, in actuality, new research on the topic may be reporting something different. And when old and new research are reporting the same thing, we should use the newer sources to the exclusion of the older sources...per the WP:MEDRS guideline.
As for my reply concerning EEG changes during ejaculation, all I originally stated was "Doesn't need an expert any more than other sections, and expansion will come naturally or we'll just [leave it as part of the Brain section without the subheading]."[9][10] So I'm not sure how you deduced what you did from that reply. And, as you also know, I stated that "I'm certainly not familiar with Russian or Polish research." Yes, I have read about the relationship between sexual stimulation and EEG records, but not extensively and I can't, at this time, name the most recent scientific results. I can't even remember the studies I have read on that topic; I've read so much sexuality information, some a lot more than others, that I sometimes have to extensively refresh my memory on whatever topic is in question. On other occasions, I have what is pretty much a photographic memory. I take it that you've searched for English-language studies (such as studies done by American scientists), especially recent ones, on this particular EEG aspect? Flyer22 (talk) 01:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Strange. Not a single English review article in the last 10 years. Interesting, it is not an accepted condition anymore [11] The problem is that our article presents it as such. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Doc James-- it looks we have if not a notability problem, at least an WP:UNDUE issue, along with incomplete understanding of WP:MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks a lot for your replies. Dear Dr. James, I’m especially grateful for your reference. Dear Flyer22, I’m not going to hype Russian or Polish books in English WP and I’m far from overvaluing the importance of SIECUS, too. The website is of little interest to me except their journal. Moreover, I disagree with sexologists’ evaluation of the sexual impulse as a whole (I consider it a vice), so that I’m interested in more specific issues than general information of SIECUS. It is lack of profound research that makes me avoid AVEN and the forums of antisexuals even though I share their basic convictions.

You’re right I was searching for the most recent EEG studies when I added a new section to the article about orgasm. In contrast to your reproaches, this search of mine stems from the fact that I can’t get such information in Russia. Besides, I have no medical education. I studied humanities at university, but I’m not even a psychologist, let alone a psychiatrist. I haven’t even got friends who are professional physicians and can give me some advice or recommend me foreign literature to read, at least. I even tried to contact some of the Russian psychiatrists, but failed. In order to get relevant information I’ve thoroughly learnt Russian and Polish literature (both textbooks and a number of monographs) on psychiatry and sexology. But this kind of literature leaves many questions open if only because writings by Russian psychiatrists and (especially!) sexologists cannot be treated as reliable sources.

I’d like to cite Randykitty, apropos of that: “Being well-known in one country is not the same as being well-known in another.” The same must seemingly be said of Russian sexologists. It is known that the level of research in the leading Western countries is much higher than that in Russia. As examples, take my stubs concerning Abram Svyadoshch and Lev Shcheglov. I’ve created the stubs in order to show that these people are considered to be great authorities on sexology in Russia. But are they in a position to answer my questions? No, I’m afraid. In their books, it is taken for granted that brain activity during orgasm is similar to the neurophysiologic events which are characteristic of seizures in patients with epilepsy. An obvious question arises for me here: “Who of the scientists has obtained these data?” Writings by Svyadoshch and Shcheglov don’t reply. Neither of them alludes to the corresponding source.

The only hint that literature in Russian offers is limited to a few words in Kazimierz Imieliński’s monograph who mentions Mosovich & Tallaferro although he does not name their publication. When I had managed to reveal the source, it turned out that the validity of their experiment was rather doubtful. So I’d like to know the current state of affairs and clarify my question as to whether EEG tracings during coitus and epileptic seizures are similar. Unfortunately, I don’t understand either German or French. But I’ll be very grateful if someone names the most valid and recent investigations in English. I think it is very good that you have created this section here rather than at my Talk Page. Maybe someone will be able to help with relevant sources.

Of course, this particular EEG aspect is not the sole problem which Russian books cannot explain. E.g., the theory of sexual addiction is a hot topic in Western debates. Unlike American investigations, Russian literature on the subject is very scarce. But its meagreness doesn’t give rise to insurmountable obstacles here because books by American experts (Patrick Carnes, Eli Coleman etc.) can easily be purchased from Amazon, the main papers by Aviel Goodman being available in Moscow’s libraries.

I have dwelt on what the books by Russian sexologists are not at such length that it may, perhaps, cause perplexity. But I’m surprised to see you writing reproaches of that kind. I hope I’ve shown that I’m not engaged in advertising Russian books on sexology if only because I myself don’t think much of them. As for concealed (masked, disguised etc.) depression, it is not for me as important as EEG records mentioned above. Jmh649’s reference merits close attention, of course. But it does not dispel doubts. We are to elucidate the psychiatrist’s statement. --SU ltd. (talk) 21:04, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

SU ltd., I was wondering (without expressing it you or others) about the level of sexological knowledge among Russian and Polish scientists because I know that some countries/cultures are significantly behind others on such information. There's the AIDS epidemic and its relation to safe sex, for example. And knowledge about human female sexuality (and both human male and human female sexuality in some cases) is suppressed in some countries/cultures. So thank you for bringing that up here in this discussion. I likely would have brought up that matter to you at some point.
Regarding sources... Where do you look for sources on topics such as these? I know that you look on Google Books, but there are places like PubMed and other medical resources listed in the WP:MEDRS guideline.
Regarding reproaching you, I think you know that it's not personal. The word "reproach" makes me cringe a bit in this discussion because it sounds like you feel that we were/are reprimanding you, especially as though you are a child. It's not so much about reproach or reprimand (especially not the latter), but rather about wanting to help you and thereby help Wikipedia. Flyer22 (talk) 23:10, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks, Flyer22. You’re now helping me with my English. Yes, I often use inadequate and inappropriate words because English is not my native language.

And yes, it should be stressed in every way possible that Russian sexological publications including those of Russian authorities are by no means reliable sources. The examples of Svyadoshch and Shcheglov witness to the fact that Russian sexology is sorely behind highly developed cultures. While providing references to their books, I only wanted to point out that the experiment of Mosovich & Tallaferro had acquired international fame, so that even sexologists in backward countries (such as Russia and communist Poland) expounded these data. To put it differently, the cited statements of Svyadoshch etc. are nothing but a historical fact.

The question I’m seeking to answer is whether these statements have not only historical justification but also an actual sense. I have insufficient material to give an answer to this question at once. I’ll have to go to the Lenin library (the chief library of Russia). Maybe I’ll manage to find out something. But I have inevitable doubts concerning my ability to illuminate the question whether coitus includes epileptic brain activity. While Imielinsky simply formulates such an assertion, reading biological investigations on this subject presupposes profound knowledge in the field of neuroscience. Although I took biology at university, I know this science too little to understand EEG studies. That’s my main problem, I think. I’d better ask a neuroscientist or a physician, of course. I attempted to ask a professional, but it was not a success. And yet my reference to the experiment of Mosovich & Tallaferro shouldn’t be removed from the article if only because it indicates a remarkable landmark in the history of studying the nature of orgasm. Maybe a Wikipedian who is a biologist by education will be able to complete my reference and add information concerning the current views on EEG tracings during orgasm. If I manage to get such information myself, I’ll add it to the article about orgasm. --SU ltd. (talk) 10:25, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

A majority of the full-length papers devoted to masked depression and published in the 2000s are written in Russian [12] (with very few exceptions). Similar English-speaking publications appeared a few decades ago. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with psychiatric literature in English. That’s why I wondered if my article was not AfD. Dear Dr. James, I have some considerations concerning your reference, but I haven’t free time to express them now. Hope I’ll return to the matter later on. --SU ltd. (talk) 15:31, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

SU ltd., I combined the section back into one. Your split made it seem like you were replying to James out of nowhere and that James started a section titled Masked depression article on this talk page. That's bad form. See the WP:TALK guideline. I started the section, which includes concern about the Masked depression article, and I would rather that remain clear. If you want to start a new section about the Masked depression article on this talk page, you are more than free to do so.
As for EEG studies with regard to sexual stimulation (including orgasm), one reason I asked about where you look for sources is because there are English/American research sources about EEG with regard to sexual stimulation (including orgasm), old and recent, seen on Google Books. Flyer22 (talk) 16:53, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Dear Flyer22, thank you very much for your references! Unfortunately, I can’t read them now as I’m leaving home for a weak tomorrow morning, with the consequence that I’ll have only little Internet access. But I’ll include them in the article (“orgasm”) as soon as I read them. I attempted to divide the section into two because it seemed too long. But it doesn’t matter. MD is not really uin the center of my interest. Besides, Jmh649’s reference misses the point, I’m afraid. I’ll reply to his remarks some day. But EEG records deserve much more attention. I’m sorry I haven’t got any friends among neuroscientists or physicians. How vexing! --SU ltd. (talk) 18:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. And, in talk page discussions, you can always create section breaks (a subsection titled Section break, for example). See Wikipedia:Arbitrary section break#Resectioning. And with regard to not having neuroscientist or physician friends, there's nothing wrong with that. Most of Wikipedia's topics aren't written by experts. And while it's no doubt a good thing for a person to be well-read on whatever topic that person is going to be extensively editing, it's not, as I'm sure you know, a requirement. Wikipedia cares more about WP:COMPETENCE and following its policies and guidelines. Flyer22 (talk) 22:32, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

James D. Watson on cancer

James D. Watson has hypothesized a positive correlation between antioxidants and cancer, and has harshly criticized cancer researchers.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Watson has said a number of silly things. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:52, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Looks more like some media made a complete mess out of what he actually wrote. Richiez (talk) 18:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes more justification why we do not use the popular press as references. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
For medical journalism, there is training, as described at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101220.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:31, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikiversity school of medicine?

It doesn't seem that there is much going on this wikiversity school, I was wondering if anyone here is/was involved with this? lesion (talk) 10:50, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes would be interesting if medical schools jumped in. But it is hardly used or improved at this point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:09, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Transfer factor

Resolved

An anon IP and a new account are adding information to the transfer factor page with questionable or no referencing. The topic may be attracting new interest, but I don't believe they are accepted as treatment for any medical conditions yet. Experienced and knowledgeable contributors would be appreciated, it is possible I lack the expertise to edit the page appropriately. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Good eye. It needs some scrutiny it appears. I tagged it with {{medref}}. Biosthmors (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I am attempting to make the information scientifically accurate. I source only peer reviewed journals, outline that the human treatments as "pre-clinical", and distinguish that the research lymphocyte derived molecule described in the opening paragraph and photo is not the same thing as the dietary supplement. This is no different than the page for IL-1B (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IL-1B), which outlines the cytokines immune effects, cites a clinical benefit (from a research forum page that is a list of published articles), but does not endorse it as a therapy. I work at the NIH on transfer factor (the cytokine, not the dietary claims) and I do not lack the expertise to tell the two apart. I welcome any further opportunity to improve the scientific accuracy of this page. LCDR IAM (talk) 19:43, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Please have a look at the seven points I make at Talk:transfer factor. While your information may be accurate, that does not mean it is without problems as far as wikipedia is concerned. Note that referring to other pages for examples is always problematic, we must refer to the policies and guidelines as they represent the consensus of the community. It is, after all, a wiki - anyone can edit it. It's quite possible that IL-1B was edited improperly. I will be quite happy to improve the scientific accuracy of the page, but it must be within the strictures of the P&G - you may be an expert on TF, I am far more experienced on wikipedia than you are. So let's help each other. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 20:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I welcome your offer of assistance and responded the the points in the talk section. Please keep in mind that my original edits were simply deleted by you with a "no it should not". This does not send a message that you are concerned about the accuracy of information. But it sounds like everyone is now on the same page that I am not trying to sell this stuff, just trying to get the page to reflect the science accurately. LCDR IAM (talk) 20:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I think we're done here at WT:MED then, further discussion should take place probably at talk:transfer factor. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 21:02, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
At first, I thought that "transfer factor" referred to DLCO diffusing capacity. (I am a pulmonologist.) I do not believe that the immunological definition is the primary topic. Indeed, if anything, the respiratory definition should be the primary topic. I think that a disambiguation page would be the best solution. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Organic Milk

Request for comments at Talk:Organic_milk#RFC The Banner talk 03:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 January 14#Sexual disorders

The above linked discussion concerns whether or not Wikipedia should make a distinction between sexual dysfunction and sexual disorder. Flyer22 (talk) 07:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean to beg, but there is currently a one-on-one discussion (just two people involved) going on here and so comments from this project regarding the matter are needed. The discussion includes looking at medical sources and using those to help formulate our opinions. Flyer22 (talk) 00:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Is anyone interested in helping a professor/classroom for Spring 2013?

There should be impact to WP:MED content from courses that have signed up (Special:Courses) and here is a more complete list at Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Spring 2013 that includes those who have expressed some interest. I think there is always a need for experienced Wikipedians to establish good working relationships with professors, so that they can learn the ways of Wikipedia and design/grade their assignments optimally so that editors and readers benefit more consistently from WP:AFSE. I'm signed up to help with Signal Transduction/Saint Louis University so far, and I've spend several hours helping the professor design the assignment. (Hopefully we'll get a good article or two on some good science content out of this specific effort.) I'll ask Sage Ross to clarify needs here. Biosthmors (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd also be interested in finding others to help in either (or both) of two sections of an online Molecular Biology class that will start next week. I and the professor ran this project last semester (course pages here and here) and it was fun, but we could definitely use some more help reviewing articles and giving guidance on finding reliable sources, citing, general style, and finding and adding appropriately-licensed figures. Ideally, we could find one or two people willing to sign up as online ambassadors, but more informal reviewing, when the time comes, would also be a big help. Klortho (talk) 14:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

This one concerns me ... with 90 students in what looks like an intro course, it typifies the kind of course where we usually see issues. Do we know anything about it/them? Do we have a course page yet? OA ?

  • Anthony Derriso, University of Alabama, Educational Psychology (90 students- RA is working on setting up group assignments or making this optional)

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The RA should mean regional ambassador and here's a list[13]. I emailed the two listed as under the South region and I asked that they comment here if they were the RA. Biosthmors (talk) 15:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
What mechanisms are in place to deal with copyright issues? Sourcing issues? Etc. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Well for the class I'm signed up for I've talked with the professor about what I should do in case a copyright violation occurs. They want me to notify them in that case. This professor also knows Wikipedia prefers secondary sources and they have been made aware of WP:SCIRS. I think this class will add nearly all molecular biology information; communication will be focused at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cell Signaling. Biosthmors (talk) 02:23, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Circumcision nominated for Good Article

FYI, I have just nominated circumcision for Good Article. If we can get this one to GA it will be WP:MED's first surgical procedure article to be either GA or FA. The article is an English Wikipedia top-1,000 most-viewed article. Zad68 22:14, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

There is some debate about whether the primary male circumcision article should principally focus on the medical or on the cultural aspects of the phenomenon. The German and French equivalent both lean more toward the latter and include substantial debate concerning the merits and demerits of the procedure missing so far from the english language version--— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 10:48, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Although the Circumcision article is in much better hands now, it will take a tremendous amount of work to undo seven years of damage. I must give Zad68 credit for the improvement in stewardship of this article. The article is biased towards an American point of view in which the foreskin is treated as a vestigal flap of skin. The rest of the world knows otherwise. Circumcised editors in-the-dark about the functions of the penis have allowed bias and pro-circumcision propaganda to creep into the article. The article is full of factual inaccuracies, fallacies, and bias. The ethics/human rights of circumcision is ignored (see the FGM article for comparison), and harmful affects of circumcision are ignored. You can see the French and German Wikipedia articles on circumcision to see how biased the English version is. This article is on its way to becoming factual, but it is not yet ready for prime time. Crimsoncorvid (talk) 03:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
We don't compare articles to articles to determine neutrality. We compare articles to sources. Biosthmors (talk) 05:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
So are you claiming that the German or French language Wikipedia articles on circumcision are somehow deficient? I don't understand. Obviously, the same sources are available worldwide, so the only differences between articles would be editorial discretion. Crimsoncorvid (talk) 14:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Possibly, much of all language wikis are deficient including English. High quality references are often not consistently used. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:14, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome review please

I recently helped a new editor with wiki syntax and was impressed with the article he wrote on Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. The article was accepted and moved to article space.... I commented to a doctor friend and he replied

I agree that the article is quite impressive. However, do you know if this editor may have any ties to the pharmaceutical company that makes Eculizumab? The reason I ask is that I have seen this drug being recently promoted under the guise of "continuing medical education." Also, the amount of space the author devotes to the drug seems a bit out of proportion to the size of the article. Further, there is a very good Wikipedia article on hemolytic uremic syndrome (the context in which atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome is usually discussed) and this article does not mention that context or link to the other article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemolytic-uremic_syndrome

I am not qualified to comment, please have a look and fix, link, etc.... Regards, Ariconte (talk) 04:13, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes we should look closely at it. Lots of primary sources. Some formatting issues. Some serious summarizing needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
The article should ideally be merged with the main HUS article. As with regards eculizumab, I suspect that rather than being connected to the manufacturer the author is simply placing emphasis on the data that was accumulated for eculizumab during the outbreak of HUS in Europe last year. JFW | T@lk 06:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
While merging to the 'main' article is a legitimate opinion/option, it's an option that I would not support for several reasons. 1. Although there often can be significant apparent clinical overlap between Stx-HUS, aHUS, TTP, and other TMAs, especially on initial presentation, the field very clearly has evolved over several years (not mere recentism) toward distinguishing these when possible, and toward discussing each in a more separate way than previously (see for example:[1]: 1928, 1931, 1938  in comparison to its previous edition, and in comparison to Williams from 2010.) 2. This does not necessarily mean that Wikipedia should aspire to this level of sophistication and detail, but perhaps the 'real question' should be what is a Wikipedia "interested general reader" looking for, and when (under what circumstance/s) will they read this / these articles? For such a reader, would merging be helpful? I will do some work on the aHUS text. FeatherPluma (talk) 20:55, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

TAFI

Feel free to nominate (medical) articles to Wikipedia:Today's_article_for_improvement/Nominated_articles#Natural_Sciences. TAFI will be going on the main page with a small slot in early February, it appears. Biosthmors (talk) 08:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

And there is a merge proposal at medical certificate, which is more accurately "This week's article for improvement": Talk:Medical_certificate#Merge_proposal. Biosthmors (talk) 15:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I've nominated pulmonary embolism. I encourage you to nominate some articles. There are only 6 in the natural sciences section and besides PE they include Summer, Present, European conger, Grey Tinamou, and Listeria ivanovii. Biosthmors (talk) 21:31, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Sexual dysfunction#Move?

Regarding the #Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 January 14#Sexual disorders matter above, it has formed into a move discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 17:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Rape and Pregnancy

Hi. I'm doing a peer review on the article Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012. Aside from anything else, I think that anyone aware of the use of rape in recent ethnic conflicts (e.g. in the former Yugoslavia) would find the claim that pregnancy cannot result from so-called "forcible"/"legitimate" rape untenable. However, what's the best source meeting WP:MEDRS from which a definitive statement may be drawn on the incidence of pregnancy consequent to rape? Thank you. FiachraByrne (talk) 02:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Well:
I hope those are helpful. MastCell Talk 06:15, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you Mastcell, that is most helpful. FiachraByrne (talk) 12:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Rollback requested on Electrocardiography

Hi. I made a misstake an undid a edit with vandalism in electrocardiography, sadly the vandalism was made over more than one edit. Could somebody please make a rollback an correct it? Thanks. --JakobSteenberg (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

 Done Wasn't a big deal, thanks for keeping an eye on it! Zad68 20:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. --JakobSteenberg (talk) 20:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Transfering hospitals to WP:Hospitals

When WP:Hospitals was created in 2010, there was a consensus (here) that Hospital articles would belong there, and that the 2 projects would be complementary. There remains a historic hangover from that era, which I estimate as c 80 articles that are currently in both projects, and maybe 200 total in WP:MED that should reside in WP:Hospitals. There will be a minority of articles that should stay in WP:MED if there is a genuine Medical reason to stay here.

At a low level I have been implementing some of these changes, and ensuring that articles are tagged in WP:Hospitals. However, now I am exposing this activity for consultation before I proceed further. Comments? welsh (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this is great and happy to see all hospitals removed from WP:MED to WP:Hospital. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Good article goals for 2013

To make what has gone into the archive less forgotten as 2013 continues, I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Good article goals for 2013. Please make any goals there if you have an article you want to commit to bringing up to GA-status. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 00:25, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Regional variation in standards of care

Hi. I am currently in a fellowship and am interested in working on a project that contributes and surfaces information related to regional variations in standards of care by disease state. I have created a mock-up page, titled Hypertension in Scotland, that contains the type of information I am interested in working on in Wikipedia. I have realized that similar efforts are currently going on for HIV/AIDS by country (e.g. Category:HIV/AIDS by country). What's the best way for me to go about doing this? Thanks. GT67 (talk) 14:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here and welcome. First of all an in depth explanation of what you propose to do is probably the first thing needed. I am not sure what surfacing information means? Look at the link above are you proposing to create an article called Hypertension in Scotland than another called Hypertension in Wales, Hypertension in Canada, Hypertension in India etc? We typically have a main article and than subarticle based on our usual sections. Epidemiology in different places would be discussed in Epidemiology of hypertension, etc. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I have talked with this user previously. By "surfacing information" he means that it would be good for users to be able to see standards of care in one place and compare it to the standard in another place. There need not be commentary or sources to back this; the sources for Scotland only talk about Scotland and for Canada would only talk about Canada, and users get to be surprised by seeing variations in the two places. In this model there is no system for discussing the differences overtly or pointing them out on Wikipedia because sources which do that would be much more difficult to find and format than the practice guidelines. A key aspect of this is that hopefully, sharing regional guidelines would be something which could be replicated in rote for multiple diseases in many regions. I believe that this user is able to replicate this kind of content if the Wikipedia community finds that it is useful. I also think that this could be the basis for starting discussions off-wiki about why there are regional variations in standards of care.
Another way to state the project proposal is that it is to collect a government's description of the standard care in a region, then describe in a Wikipedia article the care for that place only. This process is repeated for many diseases and regions. This is interesting only if there is regional variation in standards of care, which there are, and I think that users would be fascinated to see that differences exist.
I see these problems with this model:
  1. Wikipedia often does not have high quality general articles on health issues, so developing articles on particular regional variations may not be a priority.
  2. It is not certain that sources describing care in a particular region will be easily found. Knowing that sources exist would make engaging this project a lot easier.
  3. It may not be easy to give all articles parallel structure. I would like to think that the information in one article, say hypertension in Scotland, could be compared with hypertension information for another region. However, this depends how easy it is to identify comparable information in the various sets of source data.
If this project were to proceed, I can imagine there being a section in the base article for a topic which was called "regional variation". This would link to a list of all existing articles on standards of care by region. This could be a lot of work requiring skilled workers, or it could be something which could be done by rote if the source data was understandable and if a model template existed.
About epidemiology - many regions track their own epidemiology. The one to which James linked is sufficient for the base article on hypertension, but there is data for many individual countries. No one has ever thought to add each countries' own statistics to Wikipedia because we had enough trouble just giving one global measurement. Undoubtedly this project would be forking each existing health article into a dozen or even a hundred more articles.
If it really were feasible to incorporate this sort of information into Wikipedia then I think that would radically improve the quality of health articles on Wikipedia in a way that only Wikipedia and not other communication platforms could deliver. The potential for interlinking in this way would be very difficult to do outside of Wikipedia and this is a novel and very creative idea. I think that this idea deserves consideration. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:56, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Sure a better example is here Epidemiology_of_obesity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
That is a much better example... wow, this is very close to the original proposal. I will have to think about that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:53, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback. I'd be happy to clarify further. Blue Rasberry has expanded on the key points well. I've learned that many countries view and/or tackle disease states differently, whether it be due to cultural, societal, economic or other reasons, and this type of information is not readily available for all to view in one standardized place. The mock-up article I created, is an example only, of the facets of information that can vary. To add to Blue Rasberry 's comments on 'surfacing information', perhaps patients and patients advocates at the local level of these regions would have notable resources that are available/visible to them that perhaps may not be to the rest of us. Doc James's example of Epidemiology of Obesity speaks to the notion of surfacing a facet of the regional standards of care and I've also seen the Management of Obesity article, which could potentially have the same notion of regionalization applied. I could also envision articles to fork into other facets such as Diagnosis by region as well. I've also seen the format used in the Category:HIV/AIDS_by_country, which stems from the Portal link of each country's articles page (see 'Health in China' in Portal:China page) and seems to mash together information into one article location. Both of these are great examples for structuring regional variations. I'd be interested to know which type of article structure would be deemed most editor- and user-friendly. GT67 (talk) 18:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
IMO each subarticle could deal with national variations as it pertains to that subtopic. This would allow people to more easily compare different stats or practices in different countries. Typically this is too much detail for the main articles. These articles often already exist and could simply be added to. I am not a big fan of "disease in X" format as it is not clear how they would be linked in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:51, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
@GT67. Is it possible you could improve unwarranted variation? Biosthmors (talk) 20:54, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
@Biosthmors. You bring up a good point. Surfacing information around regional variations in care may help discern where unwarranted variation exists. One could envision this sort of information to populate and look something similar to John Wennberg's work at the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, but on a global-regional, scale. And one could argue that with this sort of information organizations, similar to the NCQA in the U.S., could potentially be a vehicle for improving some of these variations. However, determining the route cause of the unwarranted variation is debatable. GT67 (talk) 18:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
@Doc James. I believe I understand what you have in mind. I'm going to mock-up some articles and see if the structure is on par with what you are thinking. Thanks. GT67 (talk) 18:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I've reformatted my original mock-up article (Hypertension in Scotland) and have broken it down into subtopic articles. I want to be sure the format aligns with what you have in mind; the Epidemiology_of_obesity article also contains a "regional box" at the bottom of the article. It sounds as though you prefer to have regionalization within the subtopic article as follows: Management of Hypertension, Diagnosis of Hypertension, and Epidemiology of Hypertension (please note the sections I filled in for "Scotland") rather than a regional box stemming off of the main article (See "External links" section of Hypertension). Does this look on par with what you have in mind? Thanks. GT67 (talk) 23:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
After chatting with Biosthmors, I learned that the mock-ups were a bit too detailed in faceted information and did not align well with the summary style format; I could see how this could introduce clutter. Additionally, as Doc James mentioned, it would be better served to follow a format similar to the Epidemiology_of_obesity article, where each subtopic that presents variation would fork out to separate articles, and offers side-by-side comparison of the regions. My next question is, in WikiProject Medicine, when is it deemed the appropriate time to fork out a separate subtopic (e.g. Epidemiology of obesity or Management of obesity) from the main article if let's say those articles did not currently exist? Thanks. GT67 (talk) 15:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Leverage a possible recommendation letter from WP:MED M.D.s in return for great contributions?

Many new editors that get introduced to Wikipedia through the Education Program in the sciences are pre-med (here's one). They would like to obtain recommendation letters to get into medical school. I think we could retain some of them to raise the quality of our important articles to GA if there were some WP:MED M.D.s willing to mentor/interview them online a bit (maybe three 30 min skype interviews)/and oversee some of their edits in return for a letter of recommendation. Maybe we could even recruit some M.D.s to help out with this even if they weren't super active Wikipedians. Comments? Biosthmors (talk) 00:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

User:JMathewson (WMF) (Jami Mathewson) of the Wikipedia Education Program was planning some kind of certification program for anyone who participated in Wikipedia projects and wanted some kind of reference. It might be a good idea for meta:WikiProject Med to develop standards for certification for medical courses, then allow students or anyone else to go through the screening process for that organization and get a recommendation from that organization. The idea that Jami was exploring was for the upcoming thematic chapter which will handle the US and Canadian education program to issue certificates or recommendations for that program, but I am sure they would love for other organizations to share some of the reviewing responsibility and if WikiProject Med wanted to take on that role then that would be an excellent way to partner with the education program.
If anyone were to explore this further, I would recommend checking in with Jami to see if anyone has already drafted a certification process. If not, then it needs to be drafted. Once it is drafted, then the education program and the medical review project could share it and encourage other organizations to also emulate the model if they liked in other fields.
There are other potential advantages to partnering with the education program, and the disadvantages which come to my mind are not so great. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes I think it would be appropriate to send out letters of recommendation. If a student comes and significantly improve an article here I would personally feel comfortable writing said letter. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:10, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
I like the spirit of this, but would such a letter carry much weight? An important preamble to a medical school recommendation letter is the basis of the recommendation - is it based on personal knowledge and substantive interaction? I hope students will consider this carefully. How would the letter-writer know who did the editing they are judging? Compare this with a university faculty member who leads a WP-editing course during which login-sharing would represent academic fraud. I think the stakes are too low while editing WP casually for it to be a meaningful academic activity, and identity would be very hard to confirm. In the end, such a letter might be a liability or an asset, and students should seek guidance from an academic adviser. I just don't want to manipulate very vulnerable editors if the only clear benefit is WP content. -- Scray (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Or the student uses (or declares) their real name and ends up making a right mess of their contributions. Either because they didn't understand the subject well enough, didn't understand plagiarism issues, say, or picked a hot topic where they had to mix with some unsavory types. That could bugger-up their chances of med school for good. Colin°Talk 11:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there some reason those risks identified by Scray and Colin cannot be avoided by the proper design of the "standards of certification for medical courses" that Blue Rasberry discussed? LeadSongDog come howl! 14:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Scray - I think that gaining an understanding of how Wikipedia works is increasingly becoming a fundamental job skill in many fields, including medicine. If the patients of any health care provider are getting health information from any online media source at all, then the most likely source of that information is Wikipedia. Because of this, I think that health care providers who work with people who use the Internet as an information source should understand how Wikipedia works and what information it contains. Certification for minimal Wikipedia literacy has value. This program could expand from student certification to health worker certification or into certain countries' "continuing education" requirements for jobs, because the Internet-using demographic is becoming increasingly important as a health education outreach audience.
Colin and LeadSongDog - I also think there are a lot of problems with this proposal and I do not want to sort through all of them. If possible, I would like to tie the success of this program to the success of the Wikipedia Education Program. That project is already to come up with a certification program of some kind and the people with that must develop something. If we work with them then at least they will be forced to manage reputation control for worst case scenarios, which I think is the most difficult and boring part of this to manage. I think that no one wants for this program to harm anyone who cannot complete it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:45, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with this per se. With that said, I think that there are a couple related issues that might argue against a student asking for such a letter in the first place
  1. There remains an academic bias against wikipedia as a reliable, scholarly endeavor. With very rare exceptions, I think it's probably safe to say that a letter from a WPian based on activity here will still, and for the forseeable future, get you the proverbial side-eye, because it seems unlikely to me that as a whole, admissions committees (AdComs) are going to be composed of people who do not share this bias.
  2. My understanding (and I have not sat on any admissions committees but i do have some experience with this, please feel free to contact me on my talk page or directly) is that the reasons AdComs like seeing LoRs from professors is that professors have direct, substantial contact with students, and see a lot of students each year and so are prepared to assess the promise of their students in a way that e.g. an employer is not (for reasons of turnover, standards of progress, etc). I don't get the sense that a LoR from someone on WP would go very far towards addressing the largely-unstated requirements there.
With that said, if someone has the room to pursue this (other good strong letters, etc) I would have no issue with it. It puts the issue out into the minds of AdComs, which can be useful in changing the debate. In the near term though, it has the potential to reflect negatively rather than positively on an applicant. If an applicant is otherwise strong it may be worth that risk.
-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 20:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
The opinion of medical school regarding Wikipedia has changed dramatically over the last few years. The dean of UCSF attended one of my talks about Wikipedia and Medicine last week and the assistant dean with whom we meet was interested in the project. As the most read medical resource on line and thus in the world we are in an interesting position. If a students came and did prominent work to an article I would have no problem with WikiProject Med. Foundation giving a LoR that states this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:07, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the prevailing opinion of WP is improving. That's not the same as saying that working on WP, or a letter from a WP editor whom the student has never met, would carry much weight. There's a real risk here of manipulating the hopes of vulnerable students. I'd be much more swayed by a letter from a research mentor with whom an applicant worked personally and co-authored a peer-reviewed publication (where the mentor can attest to identity, integrity, reliability, and attention to detail). I am not saying it (editing WP in hope of a recommendation-at-a-distance) is without merit, but we have a conflict of interest that should be acknowledged (we need editors, and we might value WP's goals more than we value the those of the student-editor). -- Scray (talk) 03:54, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Heads up on HIV topics

An upcoming paper is getting a lot of fanfare:

  • Ann Apolloni, Haran Sivakumaran, Min-Husan Lin, Dongsheng Li, Michael H Kershaw, David Harrich (January 8, 2013). "A mutant Tat protein provides strong protection from HIV-1 infection in human CD4+ T cells". Human Gene Therapy. doi:10.1089/hum.2012.176. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

HIV-related articles are going to need a close watch. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:04, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

This would be FANTASTIC if it bears out to be true after much further scrutiny, study and independent verification and testing! But not for Wikipedia articles right now... Thanks for the heads up. Zad68 17:06, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Rashomon effect

At WT:JAPAN we are discussing if adding macron (diacritic accents) to this title to conform to the Japanese romanization of "Rashōmon" is original research or correcting bad spelling and whether MOS:JAPAN applies to this psychological concept. You are invited to respond. -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 11:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Medical uses of silver

Concerns at the above article. User is trying to emphasis the benefits of silver. And is removing secondary sources that question its benefits in this edit [14] Also attempting to deemphasize the Cochrane conclusions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:30, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Clarity...differential diagnosis and diagnostic approach sections

As per WP:MEDMOS#Symptoms or signs; the suggested template contains both the above headings. Exactly what should be in these sections? To me, differential diagnosis section might be a list of possible causes of a given sign or symptom. If so might this be also covered in the mechanism/pathophysiology section? Then again, this section could be a list of similar things which can be mistaken for the sign/symptom in question and how to differentiate them. Is the diagnostic approach section intended to be essentially a description of a diagnostic algorithm? Or a list of special investigations that might be involved in the diagnosis? lesion (talk) 00:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

If an article is primarily about a symptom or sign, the sections about differential and diagnostic approach should cover the possible causes (differential) and how physicians will normally distinguish between them (diagnostic approach). An article such as diplopia should contain a referenced list of differential causes, and a section on how diplopia is investigated in routine practice. JFW | T@lk 06:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
Ty for clearing this up...so the differential diagnosis section is more a list of possible causes, rather than a differential diagnosis in the strict sense of the word. Maybe the diagnostic approach section would be better termed differential diagnosis, and the differential diagnosis section just called "causes" or something...lesion (talk) 14:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Hair-brushing syndrome

Hi, would anyone be willing to weigh in on sourcing at this this DYK nomination? The article seems to be of the kind which should follow MEDRS, but I'm not quite sure how it would apply and if there is any wiggle room. Thanks. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Only two reported cases...is this notable enough for an article? "hair brushing syndrome" gave no pubmed hits. Agree none of these refs meet the above guidelines. lesion (talk) 01:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
Ghastly. Didn't know the Daily Mail was a medical journal. JFW | T@lk 06:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Graves' disease

Have brought this issue to ANI [15] Not sure if people here wish to weight in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:24, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Noticed a new WP:COI/potential spam target

So I've been watching the articles Contract research organization and List of contract research organizations and making occasional edits for a couple months now. The list page is a fairly attractive target for drive-by spammers, but I've now run into two separate instances of editors adding a seemingly non-notable company's name to the list page, and when I look at the editors' talk or user pages, it looks like a prospective wp article for the company in question. I nominated one, User:Richmond pharmacology for deletion at WP:MFD, but after coming across the second one, User:Thessence, I am beginning to think that this is going to occur more frequently, and I'm not sure how to handle it. I have not yet dug through the history of the list page to try and identify similar pages.

I am wondering which other wikiprojects or pages i should mention this on? I know this is not, strictly speaking, a medical page, but it doesn't look like the wikiprojects on businesses are particularly active.

advice and direction would be appreciated. -- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 00:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:PHARMA or WP:MCB might be interested. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
These two examples are from 2008 and 2009 respectively. My concern is more when companies come and try to alter our disease related articles when they raise evidence that is negative towards something they sell. And when they do this as a way to effect regulators and maintain their profits. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:41, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

History of both High and Normal ANA Levels

I have a History of both High and Normal ANA Levels, and I found the Compounds that raise my ANA Level, in Medications and Foods and some Bacteria and Fungi, and made my ANA Level Normal to stop the pain. I need a peer review of my findings on my talk page, we may be able to lower other People/s ANA Level to stop the pain. Stopping taking Medications is the only way to stop the pain and Lower the ANA Level, because all of their pains Medications and Antibiotics and most of the other classes of Medications, contain Inert Ingredients that raise my ANA Level, causing the Immune System to destroy many different parts of my Body that show up on CAT Scans and X-rays and Urine Tests afterwards. JosephLoegering (talk) 05:22, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

We are here to write an encyclopedia by summarizing the best available literature. The above is sort of out of scope. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:22, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

We've discussed the WP:Article feedback tool/Version 5 here before, so I some of you may be interested in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article feedback. The RFC is trying to collect information from a variety of people who follow feedback to see what they think about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

New article and DYK nomination

Template:Did you know nominations/podoconiosis. Biosthmors (talk) 01:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Copyediting needed on sciatica

An OTRS ticket pointed me to a problem with the Sciatica. I've flagged it up on the page and talk page. If you know about the subject and have a few minutes, it'd be great if it could be fixed. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Infectivity period for measles

I am trying to understand what the definitive answer to the infectivity period of measles is.

There are many views on this on the net but I am sure one knows by now the truth. The wikipedia article on measles lists two different views:

The period of infectivity has not been definitively established, some saying it lasts from two to four days prior, until two to five days following the onset of the rash (i.e. four to nine days infectivity in total),[2] whereas others say it lasts from from two to four days prior until the complete disappearance of the rash.[3]

Any thoughts?

Jaeljojo (talk) 19:41, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

  1. ^ Hoffbrand, AV (2011). Essential Haematology (6th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-9890-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "Measles".
  3. ^ "Measles".

Category:WikiProject Medicine descendant projects

Category:WikiProject Medicine descendant projects has been nominated for deletion, by merging it into Category:WikiProject Medicine -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 01:53, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Need a new title?

I just created DNA computing (2013). This is the only name I could think of because the sources did not appear to specifically have a title. I based this wiki-title on the central theme. Anyway, if anyone can think of a better name for this article I am open to suggestions here. -- Steve Quinn (talk) 06:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't look like it's a WPMED article... wouldn't this be a question for WP:COMPUTING or WP:MCB? -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 09:39, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Charity promoting itself?

This user who is now editing as an IP keeps changing the words to link to his website [16]. And keeps adding these links to a number of pages. Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:47, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Although apparently well intentioned, we don't link to external websites like this. Yobol (talk) 19:53, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

COPD Cough Sound File for Bronchitis Page

Hey guys, if there are any physicians out there, I have a question for you. While searching through sound files on wikipedia, I came across some sound files that a peer-reviewed paper made available and two of the sounds were COPD coughs. Both were productive coughs and had wheezes. My question to you is whether a COPD cough file will be sufficient for the bronchitis page. I understand that chronic bronchitis is a type of COPD, but does the cough in emphysema sound any different from a chronic bronchitis cough? Or will a sound file of a COPD cough sound the same? I also believe I read something that said that chronic bronchitis patients may also have emphysema, so that is also why I am wondering if the cough is the same. This is the paper from which the cough sound files were taken: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1413549/?tool=pmcentrez and it is cough sound files 2 and 9 (2 is COPD with bronchiectasis and 9 is just COPD with bronchiectasis both with productive coughs with wheezing but the paper is more detailed). Thank you in advance for your input and help. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:46, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

"Bronchitis" is a rather vague term, and includes different disease processes. I'm not convinced that the "Bronchitis" article should be expanded in this way. It would be better to use only very brief descriptions, leading to the main articles "Acute bronchitis" and "Chronic bronchitis". In turn, "Chronic bronchitis" should also be a brief article leading to "Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease".
I'm not sure of the licensing situation of those sound files. If they have free licenses, the files should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Otherwise, it would be better not to use them in Wikipedia at all.
Regarding license, I think the sound files have already been uploaded to wikipedia or to wikimedia commons and are available to use. If you search cough under multimedia you can find the sound files. This addition to the bronchitis article was suggested during peer review. Axl, there are still links on the bronchitis page leading to main articles about acute and chronic bronchitis.TylerDurden8823 (talk) 15:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Most cases of COPD have a mixture of bronchitis and emphysema (in the pathological sense), in various proportions. Pure emphysema causes very little cough, and it would generally be "dry". Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:41, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Most acute bronchitis has no wheeze. I could take a recording of it next time I hear one.
With respect to license, yes sound files must be CC BY SA or the like. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
To clarify for everyone, I am specifically asking about the difference in the cough sound of chronic bronchitis and emphysema (if there is a difference). TylerDurden8823 (talk) 15:12, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Not that I have ever seen described. All cough excepted maybe that of croup (barky) and whoop cough (cough until you vomit for 100 days) are more or less the same. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:22, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
I would expect the cough of chronic bronchitis to sound "wet" (i.e. implying the presence of significant sputum/mucus) and that of emphysema to sound "dry". (This is my own "original research".) The study participants identified this feature correctly in 76.1% of cases; random guessing would be correct in 50% of cases, so this isn't an impressive figure. As I noted above, cough is not a significant feature of pure emphysema. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:38, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
So, is the bottom line here that the cough sound file of COPD/bronchiectasis that sounds wet with mucus/sputum and wheeze an accurate representation of the cough expected in a chronic bronchitis patient? Would you agree that this is a fair representation? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 00:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
Bronchiectasis typically sounds rather more wet than chronic bronchitis. People with bronchiectasis produce a lot more sputum than those with chronic bronchitis. I would not say that the sound file of COPD/bronchiectasis is a fair representation of chronic bronchitis, but there is a degree of overlap. In particular, during acute exacerbation of COPD, the "wetness" is more marked. Note that this is just my opinion, not a "fact" and not suitable for stating in an article. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:09, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Remember, that's only one of the COPD cough files that is classified as COPD/bronchiectasis. What about the one listed solely as a COPD cough?TylerDurden8823 (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia use by medical students

Summary:

  • Letter to the editor
  • 6-year study on 361 participants, Australia
  • 94% used Wikipedia while studying
  • 85% of non-users said Wikipeda was unreliable
  • Use was not significantly correlated with year of study (R2=0.67, p=0.12)
  • Decline in use as a first resource was significantly correlated with year of study (R2=0.81, p < 0.02)
  • Significant declines also seen with perceived reliability, use as the only resource, and being the most common resource over time
  • Ease of access and understanding as important strengths
  • Last sentence: "Medical school administrators would benefit from embracing and developing web2.0 resources and include their use in ongoing dynamic medical education."
    Allahwala UK, Nadkarni A, Sebaratnam DF (2012). "Wikipedia use amongst medical students - New insights into the digital revolution". Med Teach. doi:10.3109/0142159X.2012.737064. PMID 23137251.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Corresponding Author: Usaid K. Allahwala, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia. I can contact Allahwala about doing an WP:AFSE, or if someone else wants to, feel free. Let's not all email though. =) Biosthmors (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Some of these results (decline in use) should be no surprise when we consider that some editors resist scientific depth added by others, arguing that WP is for a general readership. I think this is one reason scientific experts editors lose interest. I'm sure this isn't uniform, just an individual observation (it's been awhile since I've seen this, in part because I self-censor scientific depth). -- Scray (talk) 03:53, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I think the most likely reason for decline is less than 1% of our articles are of high quality. There is a huge amount of work to do. People have higher demands of sources as they get closer to actual practice. This of course is a good thing. And I do not want to convince this group to read Wikipedia I want to convince them to write it. On Scary's point if anyone sees someone removing scientific depth that is well sources paste here and I am sure some of us will be happy to look into it. We have article nesting with sub articles where we can go into as much depth as anyone would care for. We have an article on obesity a in depth one on management called Management of obesity and an even more in depth one on a single aspect of management Bariatric surgery and an even more indepth one on a type of bariatric sugery Vertical banded gastroplasty surgery. Yes some of the subarticles need work. Hopefully this next generation of physicians will take it on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I was throwing away my 1st year notes (would have been 2005) a few weeks ago... I had printed of the 2005 fever wikipedia article. I compared it to the current article and it is significantly better now. I suspect many sections in mainstream textbooks on the topic would be less thorough. It is no wonder students are using WP more and more. lesion (talk) 14:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I was going to state that Scray has a good point on this. But then I read what James and Lesion think and feel that those are good points as well. Each post brings up things that play a role, or likely plays a role, in the Wikipedia readership among medical students. Flyer22 (talk) 03:01, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Life support article

There's a problematic issue at the Life support article. Fairly new registered editor AlanPage007 added some WP:Original research combined with WP:SOAPBOXING (along with speaking to readers in first person, which violates Wikipedia:Manual of Style#First-person pronouns). See here and here. As that second link shows, he's likely to revert anyone who removes his addition. His addition also comes before the medical definition. I removed his user name from the article.

I'm surprised that this article is in such a bad state, with or without AlanPage007's addition. Flyer22 (talk) 21:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the offending paragraph and restored the uncited template, and left him a note on his talk page with some advice. If he reverts again then he should probably be blocked until he reads WP:EW and WP:V at the very least. The real problem, of course, is that the article is just as unsourced as his addition, so really could do with some attention if anybody has some decent sources - perhaps some medical textbooks or handbooks for emergency responders might contain something that is relevant? --RexxS (talk) 23:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, RexxS. I may look into fixing that article up with WP:MEDRS-compliant sources at some point. Hopefully, one or more other WP:MED participants, or non-WP:MED participants, help out with that at some point as well. Flyer22 (talk) 00:21, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Recent C&P move of Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura

Johndheathcote (talk · contribs) recently performed a cut-and-paste move of Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura to Immune thrombocytopenia, citing PMID 21632906 in support. I have reverted the move instead of fixing it outright as I do not believe this to be an "uncontroversial" decision, especially in light of our naming guidelines. Further input (preferably at the ITP talk page) would be appreciated. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 10:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

ICD10 still calls it Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Thus a little early for a move IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:22, 26 January 2013 (UTC)


Zinc and the common cold

Wondering if I could get peoples opinion on how we should present the effect of Zinc on the common cold [17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

MEDRS

Could someone familiar with the guideline double check the nomination Template:Did you know nominations/Catastrophic injury to see if Catastrophic injury (or at least, the parts which would require references in-line with WP:MEDRS) is up to snuff? Thanks. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:16, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:MED pages needing attention, which needs are the most important?

User:Jtmorgan has agreed to help us by developing some code when he has spare time (which is limited) to make a pilot page that will track the backlogs or open processes of 10 project-related needs. I imagine it will be a mini and WP:MED version of Category:Wikipedia backlogs. This pilot will hopefully grow to create a one-stop-shop making the separate (and mostly outdated) pages like Template:MCOTWannounce, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Article alerts, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Cleanup listing, and Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Medicine obsolete and unnecessary. (The long-term goal is to submit an IEG that can result in a system can automatically create default (and customizable) project need pages for every WikiProject, active or not.) I plan on suggesting that we keep track of Category:Unassessed medicine articles, Category:Medicine articles needing expert attention, Good article nominations, Requests for Comment, Peer reviews, Category:Articles to be merged, Category:Articles lacking sources, Category:NPOV disputes, articles tagged with {{medref}}, and articles tagged with {{mcn}} for the 10. If anyone has recommendations for other categories in case one/some of these won't work or aren't that important to you, let me know. Biosthmors (talk) 01:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if this would be possible, or even useful... an auto generated list of article rating by date. E.g. an article is initially rated as stub or start... a lot of time may pass and the article outgrows this rating, making the stub rating invalid. I feel article ratings need to be regularly updated, say every 6 months or year, and this could aid editors wishing to make "most needed" edits by giving them more accurate page ratings without having to visit each page...lesion (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
I think this kind of tool would be nice. I think it is something each WikiProject could use. It might already exist. Try asking at WP:VPT? Usually people that know about the toolserver, etc., pay attention there. Biosthmors (talk) 17:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi there, Medicine. I'm excited to work on this little experimental feature. For this round, I will only be able to gather page counts on category pages or template pages that are specific to medical articles, e.g. (from above):
or
Cross-referencing is a little trickier and slower, so finding current peer review requests on articles listed under Medicine is probably beyond the scope of version 1.0. Although methinks that would ultimately be a pretty useful feature. Unless WP:MED uses a custom peer review request category or template? I haven't checked our everything you've got going on. Also, probably won't be able to get started on this 'til mid/late february... but hey, WP:TIND right? - J-Mo Talk to Me Email Me 03:12, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Template:Unreliable medical source is the only other medicine specific backlog I know of! Is anyone else aware of others? Biosthmors (talk) 03:14, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Labiaplasty

Could someone please have a look: I have just deleted a large amount of mumbo-jumbo claiming that any woman who has externally visible labia minora suffers from labial "hypertrophy" which is an "indication" for plastic surgery. We have had problems in this area before [18][19][20]. The article could do much more to highlight the way the marketing of this fad trades on women's insecurities; cf. the German article. Thanks. Andreas JN466 09:25, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

The article is in a horrible state, I refrain from any editing attempts there because I am not willing to waste my time with the WP:OWN and WP:CIVIL issues there. Richiez (talk) 14:05, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes same here. I typically stay away from these sorts of articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Guys, I sympathise. I really do. But that article gets 2,000 views a day. A lot of those will be teenagers, male and female; the male ones will get completely unrealistic expectations as to what labia should look like, and make their girlfriends feel there is something wrong with them when they are entirely normally endowed, and girls with completely normal anatomies looking at the article the way it was over the past few months would have gotten away with the impression that there is something wrong with how their vulvas look, and that they should go under the knife to look pretty. We have a responsibility not to let articles like that rest in the hands of plastic surgeons who edit with an ulterior commercial motive. If you yourself can't stand the interaction – and I've been there – please try to get someone else to help, or at least put it on your watchlists and leave the occasional drive-by comment to support those who are trying to ensure that these articles aren't simply advertisements for plastic surgery. Thanks. Andreas JN466 17:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I've done a superficial run-through, stripping out value-laden terms and cleaning up the English. It needs a proper working-over for MOS and repetition, and adverse events/complications are a little underplayed. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Anthony. Andreas JN466 17:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
The images need addressing. And I'm uncomfortable about our treatment of the psychological/sociocultural issues, too. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:53, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I've been concerned about these articles for some time. There was a surgeon editing some of them, who appeared to be promoting the view (with text and images) that women with normal labia would benefit from surgery. I tried to edit some of them, but it was just too depressing to have to spend time on. I did make contact with a woman doctor and academic in London who has written about this, and my thinking was to try to obtain some images from her to replace the ones from private surgeons. I didn't pursue it, because I hated having to edit those articles. (I've just removed an image again from Labiaplasty that implies that women who look like that need surgery.) SlimVirgin (talk) 18:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes have also dealt with some cases regarding plastic surgery where a surgeon was trying to promote their own work via Wikipedia. Our abilities to define COI here let alone deal with it without being blocked for OUTing is miserable. If the community is not willing to back up editors who take on these issues I am simply not inclined to try to take it on myself. I see so many other areas where I can make huge differences with little drama and few headaches all in relative peace. I however appreciate those who are willing to jump into these issues. They are definitely deserving of admiration. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:31, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I completely understand what you're saying. The COI situation has become so bad (so many paid advocates, yet Wikipedians are expected to treat them with kid gloves), that I also mostly think nowadays: "If the community want this, then they can have it." SlimVirgin (talk) 19:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
The article's edit history is usually not too active. So reverting those who should be reverted is easier than it would be on a usually active article. As for this image that SlimVirgin removed, I wouldn't state that it implies that surgery is needed. To me, it simply shows what labiaplasty can look like. And there really should be an image in the article showing what labiaplasty can look like and/or the procedure being performed. Flyer22 (talk) 18:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
We ought not to post images of women with ordinary labia who have chosen to have surgery for aesthetic reasons alone; doing so implies that anyone else who looks like this would benefit from surgery too. It is like posting a "before" image of an adult woman who weighs 120 lbs to advertise a diet. As Jayen says, the article gets a lot of hits, a lot of them doubtless from young women wondering whether they're "normal". If we have to use an image, we should request one from one of the academics who've written about this. But personally I don't think we do have to use an image. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
In what case is labiaplasty done when the woman has not chosen it? And whether the woman has chosen it or it's the result a medical situation where it was needed but she was unable to consent, it should not matter. It's an article about a medical procedure. We include images showing what a body part looks like before and after surgery all the time in Wikipedia medical articles, such as the Circumcision and Rhinoplasty (Nose job) articles. And in the case of rhinoplasty, the person has almost always chosen to have the surgery (as opposed to it being something decided for them at birth, like circumcision). Just like I don't agree that images in those articles are telling people they should have those surgeries, I don't agree that the image you removed from the Labiaplasty article is telling girls/women that they should have labiaplasty/that that's what their vulvas should look like. I only view the image as informative, and I'm certain that many other people would only view it that way as well. Jayen spoke of nothing about excluding images about the medical procedure. Flyer22 (talk) 19:51, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to write "chosen for aesthetic reasons"; I've fixed my post. There's a significant difference between labia and noses, namely that we all have easy access to what other people's noses look like, and we therefore have a firm sense of when a nose is unappealing according to community standards. We have no such sense with labia, because for the most part the only ones people see (apart from their own or a partner's) are in pornography, where they are shaved, bleached and probably operated on to look as though they belong to children. So a generation of teenage girls is growing up thinking there is something wrong with them (or something ugly about them). When they come to Wikipedia for information, it would be inappropriate to show them a "before" image that shows perfectly ordinary labia, because that would confirm the pornography aesthetic. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. I was just about to state that if you meant that we should only use images of women who did not have ordinary labia before getting the surgery, how would "ordinary labia" be defined? And why should we think this should matter with regard to our readers? After all, they will not know why a woman decided to have the surgery unless the description page of the image accurately states so; but then again, I'm certain that most of our readers don't click on images to read the description page of whatever image. My point on this particular aspect is that there is no Wikipedia policy or guideline that states that we should only use images of people who have chosen a medical procedure for a medical, rather than an aesthetic, reason.
I still see the circumcision and nose job examples as pretty much the same as the labiaplasty example. You speak of protecting young girls/women. Some would argue similar about circumcision, that a generation of teenage boys are growing up thinking that there is something wrong with them if they are not circumcised. However, I argue that this does not mean that we should not show a "before and after" image of what takes place with circumcision. By showing such an image, we are not adding on to the view that a boy/man should be circumcised in order to be appealing "down there." Having a circumcised penis is also a pornographic view. You could argue that circumcision is different because it is so widely accepted, but my point is still valid. And regarding nose jobs, many teenage boys and girls, but especially girls, are growing up thinking that they should have a nose job even when their noses are perfectly fine to everyone else (or perfectly fine to most people, at least). But this does not mean that we should not have a "before and after" image of a nose job. With the Labiaplasty article, I of course argue similar -- the fact that a lot of young people are growing up thinking that girls/women who have prominently visible labia minora are visually unappealing "down there" does not mean that we should not have a "before and after" image of what takes place with labiaplasty. You believe that Wikipedia is taking the position of "You should look like this" by including such an image; I don't feel that way, and I don't understand how any regular member of WP:MED would either. All Wikipedia is doing is providing information; we aren't taking a position by including these images. But we are taking a position by excluding them for the reasons you cited, and that's not how we are supposed to work. But I'm not interested in trying to get you to put the image back in the article; so if others aren't going to fight you on it, I'm letting this issue drop. If it comes up on the talk page of the Labiaplasty article and I see it/am available to weigh in on it/feel like weighing in on it, my argument will be the same on this matter. Once this discussion here at WP:MED is over, I'll likely mention/link to this discussion there in the Images section that's currently on its talk page, however. Flyer22 (talk) 20:55, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Is "hypertrophy" even an appropriate term? Inline with other terms to describe "larger than average" bit of anatomy that does not represent an acquired pathologic enlargement, I think "macro", "mega" or "hyper" as prefix then the anatomic term. lesion (talk) 19:01, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know much about this, but it seems to be a commonly used term (by proponents, at least).
I think that for educational reasons, it would be appropriate to show an image with truly obvious hypertrophy. We don't have to make a judgment about what's "disordered" to identify and present something that's statistically uncommon.
As for the general issue of people not knowing what the normal range of anatomical diversity is, I once ran across a webpage (some years ago; I have no idea where it is) that showed twenty or thirty areolas, with different ages, childbirth statuses, etc. noted. We might see whether a source like that was available as an external link for the related articles. Something like File:Vulva Diversity 1.jpg would maybe work, but they're all white, and I understand that there is some significant race-related diversity for labia, so it may significantly underrepresent "normal". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
If there are any situations of article ownership or COI POV-pushing requiring administrator intervention, please let me know. Kaldari (talk) 08:03, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Appart from other issues, the description of the labia minora is questionable so I am wondering if it is needed at all when we have separate articles for everything. Especially this statements: "The labia minora consist of two (2) connective folds of flesh that contain some adipose tissue" - wording and wrong histology. "The skin and the mucosa..." - misleading. "folds of vulvo-vaginal skin have a core of connective, erectile tissue (analogous to the corpus spongiosum penis)," - don't believe it without seeing a source. Richiez (talk) 11:36, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

A section called "The patient"? The content of it is mostly garbage. Richiez (talk) 12:05, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the histology of the vulva, although modern-day sources are mostly consistent in their descriptions of what type of tissue makes up what, they also sometimes differ on certain parts. That's one frustrating thing I've found when extensively researching the anatomy of the human female sex organs over the years, and especially last year, and is why you sometimes have to present two or more arguments. This source by Yang et al.; 2006 (pages 766–772), and this source featuring research by O'Connell and Sanjeevan; 2006 (pages 105–112) and others (such as Richard F Hoyt, Jr.), are great sources for the descriptions of the vulva, but they also provide different conclusions about a few things. For example, Yang et al. state: "The anatomy of the vulva is typically presented with no unifying theme, i.e. there are numerous but disparate descriptions of the vagina, introitus and its structures, urethra, and clitoris. There is a lack of unity probably because of the perceived differences in function of each of these structures. However, our previous work using MRI of the female sexual response showed the interconnectedness of these structures in the context of sexual function. Previously described vascular changes with sexual arousal occurring in the vagina, clitoris, labia minora and urethra were corroborated, but we also found vascular changes occurring in the clitoral bulbs."
As for the labia minora and adipose tissue, Yang et al. state: "The labia minora are well demarcated from the labia majora by an interface between the adipose of the labia majora and the absence of adipose in the labia minora." Flyer22 (talk) 14:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I've restored parts of an earlier version to replace some of the problematic additions. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Myofascial release

Hello,
I think that the sources used on myofascial release fall short of WP:MEDRS, so the article presents somewhat fringe views at face value. What does everybody else think? Is the article fixable? bobrayner (talk) 12:38, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I removed the unsourced physiology and efficacy claims. I guess the remainder is harmless enough. I'll leave it on my watchlist. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:45, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Nice work! bobrayner (talk) 19:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)


>5000 ECGs

More than a year ago now got an agreement with ECGepedia to release all of their images under a CC BY SA license. More than 5000 of them are now being moved over by smallman12q per here [21] If anyone wishes to help with integration of this content into Wikipedia that would be wonderful. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll admit not knowing Commons very well - I went to the page you linked, but the discussion there does not seem to point to any content. When there's content to incorporate into WP, I hope someone might provide a link. Will these ECGs be unified under a Commons category, perhaps? -- Scray (talk) 01:38, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes will post again when the content starts streaming in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:13, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Wow, that's a huge donation.
Ideally they'll be listed in a cat for ECGs plus a cat named something like commons:Category:Media from ECGpedia. The who-donated-all-this cat could be listed under commons:Media from medical journals, books, and other sources‎. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

"Side-effects" of lobotomy

I recently stumbled across the lobotomy article, and was rather dumbstruck that the "Side effects" section consisted of a single sentence about reduced empathy in lobotomy patients. I added a couple more sentences about the negative effects of lobotomy, but it still seems woefully inadequate. I'm not even sure that "Side effects" is a proper section here, as most people consider the intended effects of lobotomy to be negative for the patient. This seems to be one of those cases where the information is such common knowledge that no one has bothered to add it to the article. Kaldari (talk) 08:14, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Been meaning to do this since IP editor raised the issue a few days ago. FiachraByrne (talk) 14:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
The new section heading ==Results of lobotomy== seems more appropriate to me. "Side effects" generally refers exclusively unintentional effects. (Vomiting might be a side effect of an antibiotic, but a reduced fever isn't a side effect, even though it's a result.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Hermann Stieve

Hermann Stieve is in the news today: specifically, reports of his anatomical investigations into recently-executed women under the Nazi regime. Wikipedia's article on him reads very oddly indeed: it reads like a machine translation and seems to be at pains to portray him and his research in a favourable light. Can editors here please review the article? -- Gigacephalus (talk) 08:17, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I've rewritten for clarity, and everything's sourced now. I think it's neutral, as best as I can judge. The only crime there is good evidence for is dissection of the bodies of executed prisoners, and the article reports that - in fact, that's pretty much all the article addresses. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:10, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
And I've made this edit to ask for an inline citation. Biosthmors (talk) 19:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Done. It was the next citation (at the end of the next sentence). I wish the text supported by a citation was automatically highlighted when you hover over a footnote marker. I like the footnote text appearing, that was a great improvement, but highlighting just what claims are supposed to be supported by an inline citation too would save us from having to pop a footnote marker after every claim in a series of claims all supported by the one source. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Jokestress and Cantor: topic bans from sexology articles?

It may be of interest to some that there has been a discussion of Jokestress's participation on the Talk:Hebephilia page at WP:AN/I; there are proposals under consideration presently to topic ban either Jokestress or James Cantor or both from sexology articles. FiachraByrne (talk) 10:49, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

" Honey usage in recovering the wounds"

Eyes would be welcome on Honey usage in recovering the wounds an inaptly named and poorly written essay with lots of broken references, on what might (perhaps?) nevertheless a kernel of a potentially viable topic. For the moment I've just redirected it back to Honey#In medicine, but I sense that the editor who wrote it might be trying to get it back. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:37, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Aw, man, I want "the skin more cheerful and smoother" (from the un-redirected article). The un-redirected article's sources mostly aren't really even determinable. The target article's source are also mostly bad but at least I can tell what they are... all I can do here is watchlist both articles. Zad68 16:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Yeah. I searched a bit and found that most of the refs do seem to be based on existing and pertinent research articles – the years and volumes in the journals are missing, and some titles are misspelled, but the articles exist and there does seem to be a recurrent topic about possible anti-bacterial uses of honey on wounds. That's why I didn't just burn and salt the whole thing on sight. I'm not much familiar with WP:MΕDRS and best practices in dealing with secondary vs. primary research literature in this field though. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Have watched. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
This news is like honey on my sore nerves. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Our pleasure... sincerely, The WP:MEDRS Goons. Zad68 19:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
I just wanted to say that one of the many things that I like about this group is that people not only actually watch the articles that need extra eyes, but they often tell you that they are doing so. It's good to have the help, and it's also good to know that you have help with a dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

MAOA articles and blog

Could folk please review recent edits at Monoamine oxidase A and Brunner syndrome. These include the addition of a blog that WP automatically tags as a possible COI with the editor. I tried to remove the external link but got reverted. The blog fails WP:EL. -- Colin°Talk 12:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Added... Zad68 13:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Goals: Let's set a few. How about these?

I think we should make some explicit project goals on our WP:MED page, similar to how Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history says they "are currently working towards four major milestones". To propose these goals, I took a look at the assessment statistics table. I think we should set the goal to have all top-importance articles be B-class of higher (76% complete). We could set the goal to have 30 featured articles of top- and high- importance (83% complete). We could set the goal to have 100 good articles of top- and high-importance (39% complete). We could set the goal to have 100 featured articles total (57% complete). And we could set the goal to have 200 good articles total (66% complete). Do people support making these five goals explicit and "official", for project page purposes and to track our progress? Best. Biosthmors (talk) 20:01, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I like this idea, generally. The first we'd really have to do is go through the existing WP:MED-tagged articles and re-assess them, I'd bet a lot of those assessments are very out-of-date. In addition to getting new GA articles we need to go through existing articles currently listed as GA and re-assess them to make sure they are still GA. I'd also like to see the list prioritized... not just have "200 GA articles" but 200 important GA articles, so there's some work to check the importance assessments as well. We could have our own project-wide "Wiki Cup". Zad68 20:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
We don't have to re-assess everything. ;-) If we get close to having 100 GA of top- and high-importance articles, and we are close to saying "we've accomplished our goal", then we could double check those 100. Of course, it would be nice to know all our rankings are accurate, but that's a separate and more complicated (and lower-yield) issue in my mind. Biosthmors (talk) 20:29, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I basically like the idea of having a couple of goals. Personally, I'm not convinced that the hassle at FAC is necessarily worthwhile, but I'd be happy to see us get some decent B-class articles on the basic subjects, and to increase our number of Good Articles.
Projects like this live and die by the willingness of people to help out. I'd be willing to put in a couple of hours over the next few months for a project like this. How many other people would do the same? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm willing, of course. =) You're right FAC can be a hassle, so I'll strike the one big FA goal. I'll leave the other that only sets us up to get 5 more important topics promoted. Biosthmors (talk) 20:52, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Also, see WP:MEDGA2013. There's overlap already. Biosthmors (talk) 22:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(e/c) It depends on what we the WP:MED community think the goal should be. We can make our goal simply to increase the number of GA-listed articles, but is that really the most important goal? We could do that by directing our efforts to the easiest articles to improve, no matter how unimportant they are, and by preventing the delisting of existing GA articles, no matter how much they should probably be delisted. We'll have to discuss it, but I think our goal should not be just a count of green stars. Instead I think our overriding principle that we want Wikipedia's medical content in general to be as highly useful to and valued and respected by our readers as we can possibly make it. If that is our goal, we have to/should prioritize which are the most important articles to improve, and we also have to make sure our existing GA- or FA-listed content is still meeting those guidelines. For example, I see Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis was listed GA 4 1/2 years ago and it probably would not be now. If counting green stars is the goal we'd leave it alone; if improving the overall value and respect for Wikipedia medical content is the goal, then we should fix it. See where I'm going?? Hope I am explaining myself well here. Zad68 20:52, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

You make a good point. I agree with what you're saying. I don't want us to just count () those either. I just think of them as a correlate of progress. Of course, some good article reviews are "good", others are practically meaningless. To really satisfy our goal, I think we'd have to have consensus that things were accurately ranked and rated. But we can cross that bridge when it comes! Biosthmors (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

This is wonderful :-) I made myself the goal of bringing 80 core / top importance articles to GA over the next few years. The article list is here Book:Health care. This will be followed by translation into as many other languages as possible with the help of TWB of which progress can be seen here. These 80 articles get about 10 million page views a month [22] or 5% of total viewership for WPMED. If others wish to jump on in and pick up some of these or suggest addition / changes to this list please do. This list is partly based on my own opinion of what topics are of global importance, how they where listed by WP:MED, and page views in English.

With respect to GAs a couple of years ago I went through the list and nominated many of the poor ones for GAR. Thus we should not be in too bad a situation. I also have keep an eye on what is listed as a top importance article. Have not looked at high importance though. Anyway please combine this proposal into the translation efforts. The translators are catching up :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:58, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I think any FA or GA should have an expiry date on it before it gets automatically put on some list for reassessment. Maybe a lifetime of 12 months? And by reassess I don't necessarily mean another "formal" GA RV, just someone cast a quick eye... Lesion (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
We had a GA review drive a while ago to verify that all GAs where still GAs. And that was an important bit in getting the little green plus in the right upper hand corner. If someone wishes to take on looking at them again that would be great. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:30, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I bet that took some time... I have a sort of related Q, should editors who make major changes to pages re-assess the page themselves (up to B class), e.g. expanding a stub to decent size article. Or, is the editor considered to have bias as they worked on the page? Lesion (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Feel free to reassess any page that you believe is incorrectly marked, no matter who improved it. If you can't make up your mind, then you can list it at WP:MEDA, where someone will get to it... eventually. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

While there is some variation, there is also a good amount of consistency in how many hits articles get, and targeting the top 500 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages seems like a good idea. There are a significant number of start-class articles (73) and stubs (3) in that list. I think making eliminating anything under a C-class article a goal makes sense (we're 84.8% of the way there). I've adjusted that section on our project page. Biosthmors (talk) 23:07, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Working on gynecomastia (start class) but I wouldn't mind some help. The article was a disaster when I got to it and still needs a considerable amount of work.TylerDurden8823 (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Good work. I'll lend a hand later today. Biosthmors (talk) 23:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicinal botany

FYI, a wikiproject on medicinal botany has been proposed, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Medicinal botany -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 08:14, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Been meaning to write about Coffinism for a bit. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:13, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Viruses

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Viruses is a proposal to delete the Portal:Viruses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:06, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Should we send out an EdwardsBot notice?

Letting people know we're trying to get a journal (Wikipedia_talk:MED#JMIR_Wiki_Medical_Reviews) started? It seems important enough. Biosthmors (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Lateral surface of the cranium

Hi. This is a question relating to lobotomy. Does the term "lateral surface of the cranium" indicate the side of the skull?. Thanks. FiachraByrne (talk) 00:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Either the inside or the outside. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:42, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Drilling into in this case. Thanks very much. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
James, we're not supposed to give medical advice here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:18, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Someone will probably clarify instructions on contraception next, then Vatican City could declare war. I hope we have contingency plans. Biosthmors (talk) 18:11, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Persistent IP attacks on Physical medicine and rehabilitation

There is a very persistent editor who uses a variety of IPs who has been editing the article over a very long long time. Their edits ammount to an OR POV attack on the very existence of this field of medicine. The editor seems to have a personal vendetta against the existence of physiarty. Their edits turns the article into self-contradictory nonsense. I've had the page protected in the past but as soon as the protection expires the editor returns - with a different IP so their previous record doesn't show up. Roger (talk) 06:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Semi protected for 6 months. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:24, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Just an FYI if anyone here cares to join the conversation - the IP has (at last) opened a discussion of their position at Talk:Physical medicine and rehabilitation#Article is flawed. Roger (talk) 21:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Ehlers–Danlos syndrome

An anon has been blanking a section at Ehlers–Danlos syndrome with edit summaries saying it is advertising. Could someone with more knowledge than me please take a look at whether this is justified. Thanks.-gadfium 20:55, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's an example of the blanking. It's about the use of Arthrodesis to deal with repeated dislocations. The unregistered user seems to think it was written by a surgeon for the purpose of "advertising" the surgery. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
The content is support by old primary research. Not appropriate and I support this removal. If better refs can be found and summarized than feel free to return content on this topic. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:46, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I'll let the anon edit stand.-gadfium 20:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Ankle jerk reflex

A series of Laurel and Hardy edits has left this in a confused state. Please help. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:57, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

What is the issue? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
A couple of kind editors seem to have fixed it. Thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:22, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Is this WikiProject interested in substance abuse and related topics? There are many "opportunities" to improve articles in these areas, and I find that few of the articles in Category:Drug rehabilitation, Category:Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, and related categories are tagged for this WikiProject (or any other). If this WikiProject isn't interested, is there another relevant project? --Orlady (talk) 21:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychedelics, Dissociatives and Deliriants will be interested in some of them. We take pretty much any article with a significant part in it about diseases, treatments, or other obviously medical issues. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I can't see you picking up articles like Twelve-step program, then... --Orlady (talk) 06:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
And feel free to jump on in and begin improving. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:53, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
My history indicates that I am not reluctant to edit these articles! I'm just hoping that there's someone around here who has some relevant expertise. --Orlady (talk) 06:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
It is a very important topic area which effects enormous numbers of people world wide with serious consequences. Only a few people regularly edit those articles and it is good to see you making an effort - I did a lot of work in medical aspects of addiction, like differential diagnosis in mental health, dependence and withdrawal etc but I didn't do much of anything to the actual recovery group pages. You can hit me up on my talk page if you need some help with something although I am not on wikipedia as often these days.--MrADHD | T@1k? 03:22, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

In the WP:Article feedback tool/Version 5 comments, I've recently seen a lot of requests for information about prognosis. If you've got a list of articles that you usually take care of, you might want to see whether it would benefit from a ==Prognosis== section. Some of our readers need even the basics spelled out, so don't be afraid to include a sentence or two that tells people what's obvious to you or that repeats information briefly touched on in passing earlier in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for raising that point. I agree. Biosthmors (talk) 21:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

This is likely because of the all the publicity around the PLoS Medicine/BMJ Open work being published on the inaccuracy and problems of prognosis research, and getting more evidence-based and rigorous about research claims on prognosis: see a blog summarising it here.Hildabast (talk) 19:46, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting link. I don't think that's what's driving this, though, because the comments seem to be a lot more like "How long do people live with this?" or "My family member has this, and..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Ionized jewelry and Magnet therapy

Could someone have a look, regarding a 9-year-old primary report on the efficacy of jewelry for relieving muscular pain? -- Scray (talk) 08:28, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Correction: different references on the two pages, with opposite positions, but the same issue (old, primary ref for a medical claim). -- Scray (talk) 08:39, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
In "Magnet therapy", are you referring to this study? As far as I can tell, it is the only double-blind placebo-controlled RCT of magnet therapy. Therefore I think that there is some value in keeping it in the article. Also, the reference is from 2009—it is not old. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:11, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, this paper and this paper imply that several RCTs have been done to examine magnet therapy, although I have been unable to find them. (Oddly, the wording in the two abstracts is suspiciously similar; the authors are different.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Here's a systematic review of magnet therapy for pain. Although it's from 2007 (which is older than 5 years, which is the median shelf life for a systematic review in health), it shows multiple trials, with the conclusion that it hasn't been shown to be effective. Here's a page at NIH's NCCAM on the subject, which has been just been updated, and they continue to conclude that it doesn't work (despite one trial suggesting benefit).Hildabast (talk) 13:18, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

THC for hyperemesis gravidarum

A user is trying to use a small primary research study to state the above is effective [23]. Comments? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:33, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Added. Zad68 19:44, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
User is very persistent. Anyone else?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:28, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Jmh649 (aka Doc James), you have significantly mischaracterized what I was trying to include in the article. I certainly was not trying to state that "THC for hyperemesis gravidarum is effective". Instead, I merely stated, as anyone can verify, that "a 2005 survey in British Columbia, Canada, found cannabis sativa to have been 'extremely effective' and 'effective' in the treatment of symptoms of HG." That is substantially different from what you declared that I had stated. Perhaps your incorrect characterization explains the mindset of people who showed up, e.g. Zad68. If you think it is a correct characterization then that also appears to explain your apparent and ongoing objection to including any reference to cannabinoids in the article, despite a leading 2012 book stating that "Treatment of hyperemesis gravidarum is primarily symptomatic" (Gabbe, Obstetrics, 2012), and antiemetics are used for treatment, and it is well established that antiemetics include cannabinoids. Significantly, the antiemetics article itself already contains a reference to nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (specifically to morning sickness), and I did not put it there. Given that marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in pregnancy, we should expect that pregnant readers of the HG article may be at least considering using cannabis, so we should at least put a warning there or something. Maybe just something like the following that is already in the article: 'Ondansetron may be beneficial, however, there are some concerns regarding an association with cleft palate,[26] and there is little high quality data." A similar statement would be "Cannabinoids may be effective, however, there are some concerns about xyz, and there is little high quality data." JonathanFreed (talk) 04:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Where does it say that "Cannabinoids may be effective"? All I have ever asked for is a high quality secondary source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Jonathan. Thanks for your efforts here, have you read over all of the literature that has cited PMID 16401527 and its republished article? I'm wondering why this diff says "Though its results apparently have yet to be reproduced or reviewed in a secondary source". Google says PMID 16401527 has been cited nine times, for example. Biosthmors (talk) 05:36, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Jmh649 (aka DocJames) and Biosthmors, I would like to provide a high-quality secondary source, and no, I have not read over all the literature that has cited PMID 16401527 and its republished article. Biosthmors, I have not been able to reproduce the Google results you described. As may be painfully obvious by now, I do not have ready access to the same resources as others. JonathanFreed (talk) 06:55, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Consequently you need to rely on those who do have access to these sources. If you are told that nobody has been able to find a secondary source that explicitly discusses THC in managing HG, then it is perverse to continually insist that a primary study from 2005 should be used as a source. The 'mindset' of which you complain is that of respecting secondary sources. Your chain of logic: "HG is managed by antiemetics; THC is an antiemetic; therefore HG is managed by THC" is such a clear case of synthesis that it ought to be used as a textbook-example of how not to use primary sources in Wikipedia. --RexxS (talk) 13:42, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
I have just replied to Jonathan at Talk:Hyperemesis gravidarum stating pretty much exactly the same thing. Zad68 13:57, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

RexxS, you have not correctly stated my chain of logic and you have attributed a conclusion to me that I have not made and do not support. You have done so despite my response just above to Jmh649 about mischaracterizing what I tried to include in the HG article. It's challenging for Wikipedia to progress when assertions are falsely attributed to others.

Admittedly, I only recently learned of WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDREV after being graciously pointed to it. (By the way, please do not bite the newcomers.)

Unlike how you have asserted, I have not continually insisted that a primary study from 2005 should be used as a source when others have been unable to find a secondary source that explicitly discusses THC in managing HG. Go look at the relevant section on the HG talk page and you won't see an single reference to that primary study. Look at this section in this talk page and you won't see any insisting, let alone "continual insisting". Your assertion of the same is unfounded. My contemplated set of three loosely related statements does not reference that study.

Since I was pointed to WP:MEDREV, and especially since my edit where I finally felt that I had at least a slight grasp of WP:MEDREV's requirements (albeit one that was rejected), I have not tried to state or imply that "HG is managed by THC" or any variation of that. I have reviewed my edits to help me be sure of that. Further, I have not found an addition of mine (as opposed to a reversion or restoration) at any point in time where I have explicitly made that conclusion you have attributed to me. With specific regards to the "small primary research study" that played a central role in starting this whole debate (specifically PMID 16401527), I have been very careful to state just that "Marijuana, specifically cannabis sativa, was found in a 2006 study to have been 'extremely effective' and 'effective' in the treatment of symptoms of HG". Neither the study nor I jumped to the conclusion that THC or indeed any cannabinoid is effective in treating HG itself, or that "HG is managed by THC" (your words). Even further, I have not supported and do not support any such conclusion whether it is explicit or implied. That conclusion is simply not supported by the study. I can understand how some may think that my set of three loosely related statements implies that conclusion, but that is still not a conclusion that I am personally expressing or implying nor do I support it. My conclusion is limited to the symptoms alone. My variation of your words would be something like but not necessarily exactly like the following: "treatment of HG is primarily symptomatic; hyperemesis is a symptom; cannabinoids are used to treat emetic symptoms; however, this does not mean that cannabinoids are a treatment for HG." Then risks can be discussed. I stand by my statement in response to Jmh649 that marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in pregnancy, so we should expect that pregnant readers of the HG article may be at least considering using cannabis, so we should not just ignore the fact that cannabinoids are used to treat emetic symptoms, and it is possible to present the information in a balanced way that expressly acknowledges the lack of a conclusion about cannabinoids for HG (versus for its symptoms) and the risks of cannabinoids relative to pregnancy.

"The 'mindset' of which [I] complain[ed]" is certainly not that of respecting secondary sources. I respect WP:MEDREV. The 'mindset' that I mentioned was an apparent mindset of thinking that I was pushing a "THC is effective for HG!" viewpoint. Your own post exemplifies that apparent mindset by its false attribution of assertions and a conclusion to me.

RexxS, yes, I engaged in edit warring and was blocked for 24 hours, and no I am not perfect, but that is not a reason to pile on at this point. Respectfully beg you don't bite the newcomer in this area of articles about medicine, assume good faith, etc. If you want to respond and cite advice, guidelines, or policies right back at me, then fine, I am happy to let you have the last word, but please otherwise stop and reevaluate what I have and have not been asserting. JonathanFreed (talk) 19:16, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

For our purposes, "One study found that it is effective" and "It is effective" are not materially different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing: Huh? If there is no material difference between "one study found that it is effective" and "it is effective" then one could reasonably say that something is effective based on the results of just one single study. I don't think that's what you meant? In any case, my understanding is that far more than one study has found that a cannabinoid is effective in the treatment of emesis. See Tetrahydrocannabinol. JonathanFreed (talk) 00:26, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't assume that our users will be reading the text so closely, because experience has proven that most of them don't. You might mean "Hey, it was just one study, which doesn't mean a lot". Many of them hear, "Wow! An actual scientist did a study, so this is scientifically proven to be effective!"
Consequently, if only one study came up with a result, we tend to omit it entirely. In wikijargon, we say that just one study is non-neutral because it gives too much WP:WEIGHT to one treatment that hasn't been replicated and isn't approved for use anywhere.
NB that this isn't some anti-marijuana campaign: the rules are the same for every treatment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure it's true that you could find plenty of studies that support the use of cannabinoids for anti-emetic purposes, but I have not been able to find any peer-reviewed articles suggesting that they have a place in the treatment of hyperemesis gravidarum specifically. It appears that other anti-emetics such as ondansetron (just as an example) are used. I couldn't find any studies supporting its use in HG even though cannabinoids have known anti-emetic effects.TylerDurden8823 (talk) 00:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
The study quoted isn't a study of the effectiveness: it's about people's opinions of whether it's effective, which is not the same thing. People reporting that in their belief something works, can't be enough justification. For any treatment proposed for pregnancy, an essential step also has to be addressing the safety of use in pregnancy, including for the fetus. As with smoking tobacco, the risks of smoking cannabis are an issue that comes up in perinatal research. Good evidence would also be needed about cannabis for treating emesis: vomiting, after all, is an adverse effect of cannabis use (see this systematic review)Hildabast (talk) 13:07, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Ideas needed

So I've finally cleared out Commons:Category:Diseases and disorders. I believe that it only took me about ten months to get everything into subcategories. Now I've moved on to commons:Category:Medicine and am looking at the subcategory structure. I've already done the easy stuff, but there are some lingering problems (like one category named "medicine advertisements" and another named "drug advertisements").

One thing I'm trying to sort out is where one puts things about what you might call styles of caring for patients. Clown Care is presumably a type of something: what's the "something"? Similarly, there are health outreach programs, medical missionaries (religious and otherwise), healthcare provided by the military for public relations purposes, etc. It seems to me that these are all the same kind of "something", but what are they? Does anyone have any suggestions for a category name? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Why not Healthcare? --Hordaland (talk) 06:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Seems reasonable. Thanks for all your work on this. I assume the category backlogs of unassessed medical articles went down because of you too. Thanks! And feel free to clarify things at WP:MEDPIC if you think it would be helpful. Biosthmors (talk) 18:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
This last round, the assessment backlog reduction was almost entirely due to Scottalter, who completely cleared both categories. I did maybe 2% of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Clown Care looks like entertainment, not a form of healthcare at all. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Laughter is the best medicine Axl =D Lesion (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
=). Biosthmors (talk) 21:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I learned about it in medical school. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
LOL indeed! Axl ¤ [Talk] 01:06, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
I think I need something more specific than "health care". Putting Clown Care as a subcat of Cat:Health care puts it on par with such broad subjects as Cat:Medicine and Cat:Health insurance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Maybe "therapy" since that is its intent, in line with animal-assisted therapy? Biosthmors (talk) 21:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Not sure clown care should go with the others you mention...its more of a patient care philosophy. For the others, how about Category:Health care provision? Lesion (talk) 01:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Do you have a category for psychological or psychosocial support? Or some version of that. That's how I would classify clown care.Hildabast (talk) 12:51, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Request for comments on proposed rename

I started a debate a few weeks ago to rename Aphthous ulcer to Recurrent oral aphthae, as per ICD-10 (if we should be following this). Requesting comments... Lesion (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for posting. I commented there. Biosthmors (talk) 00:11, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Currently there is still no consensus, so I request a few more comments. I have presented useful info form pubmed searches in tables which may help editors quickly decide what term may be most appropriate without spending much of their own time. Lesion (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Epidemiology of teenage pregnancy article moved to Rates of teenage pregnancy

I decided to inform the project of this move in case any of you want to weigh in on it. The editor must mean that documenting the rates is not a medical issue. I state that because pregnancy is a medical issue. And because it is, I feel that the pregnancy rates fall under that category.

I'll also let the editor know that I've started a discussion about it here at this talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I completely disagree with the idea that this is not a medical issue, and have therefore reverted the move (and the other associated changes). I will inform the editor. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 19:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Agree better where it was before. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
You've reverted my changes, but you didn't bother to inform me. Not only that, but you've not explained why you disagree with the move.
The reasons why I moved the article are these: 1. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, epidemiology is " a branch of medical science that deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of disease in a population." Teenage pregnancy isn't a disease. 2. If teenage pregnancy was a disease, it would have an entry in one of disease lists. I failed to find any such entry.
Therefore I move the article back to Rates of teenage pregnancy.--Seerus (talk) 20:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I informed you of this discussion and explained why I disagree (above); it doesn't take much more explanation than that. As for me reverting you here and here, there is no obligation to inform you of any revert. If you want to know about changes to an article, you are supposed to keep up with those changes yourself, just as you've been doing, or by using a WP:WATCHLIST. And I explained my reasons for reverting you in my edit summaries. Flyer22 (talk) 21:04, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see that you are referring to this move by Basalisk. One thing you need to keep in mind, Seerus, is the WP:Edit warring policy. The three-revert rule is a part of that. Flyer22 (talk) 21:08, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
You wanting to move the article is something that should have been discussed first. Flyer22 (talk) 21:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I keep that rule in mind, any edit warring could be prevented if people here cooperated and didn't just revert the changes back. I'm sorry for moving the article, but I thought it was obvious that it wasn't a medical disorder. It can't be called epidemiology, it's a social issue. --Seerus (talk) 21:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi there. Sorry I didn't inform you; I actually went to your talk page after posting here, and realised that someone had already informed you of this discussion. The problem here is that you are basing your move on your own subjective opinion that teenage pregnancy is not a medical issue. You're right in saying that teenage pregnancy is not a disease, but pregnancy in general certainly is a medical issue (I think the fact that the vast majority of births happen in hospital, and that women are monitored by doctors and other health care professionals throughout their pregnancy is evidence enough of this). The way we work on wikipedia in this situation can be summed up as bold, revert, discuss. This means that someone makes a bold change. Then, if someone else disagrees, they revert it, and then discussion takes place. It is your responsibility to convince everyone that the change you're trying to implement should take place, and you should do that via discussion, not just trying to force your changes through via edit warring. I have reverted the move one last time, as I assume you were unaware of both BRD and the edit warring policy, and hope you will engage in discussion rather than simply reverting again. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 08:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I stated my reasons why teenage pregnancy is not a medical issue. You just said that you thought it was a medical issue. Do you have anything more than your feelings? Otherwise this debate won't move anywhere. --Seerus (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Well dealt with in medical textbooks and journal articles. More than 1000 article come up on pubmed with more than 100 being review articles. The World Health Organization covers it calling it adolescent pregnancy[24] as does medline which states that most teenagers do not wish to be pregnant [25] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Of course teenage pregnancy is a health issue. That's not the question at all. The problem is that epidemiologists have widened their use of the term epidemiology in a way that is simply not reflected in how the general public understands the word. Teenage pregnancy is not a disease. If there are epidemies of it, then these are purely figurative, in a manner of speaking, just like epidemies of intelligence. Hans Adler 10:19, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Almost anything can be a medical issue. Birth control is a medical issue. What I meant specifically was a medical condition, i.e. disease. And that's what teenage pregnancy is most clearly not. You won't find a single article where teenage pregnancy is classified as a medical condition. --Seerus (talk) 11:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Seerus, pregnancy, no matter what age, is called a medical condition; this can be seen in many medical textbooks and medical journals. Flyer22 (talk) 18:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
We even have half a medical subspecially "Obstetrics" that revolved around it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Exactly, no matter what age. I repeat, there is no medical condition called "teenage pregnancy."--Seerus (talk) 20:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Some questions from an irritated layman:

  • Epidemiology of teenage pregnancy is an article title like epidemiology of snakebites, epidemiology of motor vehicle collisions or epidemiology of binge drinking. Epidemiology of childbirth is not even a redirect to Birth rate or Total fertility rate, nor is it a disambiguation page. It is a redlink. Epidemiology of pregnancy, epidemiology of contraception and epidemiology of physical exercise (not a redirect to exercise trends) are also redlinks. What is the difference, if it is not that undesirable things that should be prevented get an "epidemiology" article, whereas desirable things don't, or if they do it's named differently?
  • Given that teenage pregnancies were perfectly normal over millions of years, and in fact most likely were necessary for the survival of humanity. And given that they are still perfectly normal in some cultures and stopped being normal only recently in the others. And given that nothing much has changed biologically in the recent few hundred thousand years. And given that the definition of teenage pregnancy includes pregnancies by 19-year-old healthy and wealthy married adult women who first had sex at the age of 18, and had it in part for the purpose of procreation. Is there a basis for considering teenage pregnancies in general undesirable, as opposed to only certain teenage pregnancies in certain specific social contexts? If so, why is this basis not stated in the article teenage pregnancy?
  • I am also surprised that the article teenage pregnancy makes no effort to break down the effects of pregnancy according to age group. The age of 20 is an a priori arbitrary cut-off date, and it is simply not reasonable to expect that it is a hard threshold, or even that it is a better cut-off date than the age of 17 or 22.
  • What is the expected emotional reaction of a 19-year old pregnant married woman in India to an article title "epidemiology of teenage pregnancy"?

Additional food for thought: The article Genesis creation myth was moved to Genesis creation narrative some time ago, not because its topic is not a creation myth in its most strict sense (it is the prototypical creation myth), but because creationists feel offended by the associations of the word myth in its non-technical sense and article titles must be neutral. Hans Adler 09:36, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

We would have an article on Epidemiology of pregnancy if this content grew beyond the current article. Epidemiology does not have a negative connotation. Epidemiology "is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health" as well as disease. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Epidemiology certainly has strongly negative connotations for just about anyone who hasn't been in a course on epidemiology or is otherwise used to medical lingo. There is a big difference between the technical definition and the one that has made it into dictionaries. For example:
  • WHO: Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events (including disease), and the application of this study to the control of diseases and other health problems. [26]
  • Merriam-Webster: (1) a branch of medical science that deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of disease in a population; (2) the sum of the factors controlling the presence or absence of a disease or pathogen. [27]
Even the WHO definition carries the negative connotation, but the Merriam-Webster definition doesn't even formally cover use of the term for positive or indifferent things. Teenage pregnancy, certainly early teenage pregnancy, is a factor in the epidemiology (WHO sense) of various medical conditions and maybe to some extent in the epidemiology (M-W sense 2) of diseases or pathogens. But teenage pregnancy cannot have an epidemiology in the M-W sense because it is not even close to being a disease or pathogen.
There is a lot more reason to avoid epidemiology than to avoid myth [28]:
  • The negative connotations of epidemiology are plain from the word's etymology and in most mainstream dictionaries they are present in all definitions. The negative connotation of being undesirable is factually wrong in many cases, and a large number of our readers can see this when presented with these individual cases.
  • Every reasonable dictionary carries at least one definition of myth without connotations of untruth, and it's the one intended in the title. (The word's etymology is unknown.) The negative connotation of the story being wrong is factually correct and only a small number of fringers really thinks otherwise.
Hans Adler 10:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
TLDR version: It takes a déformation professionelle or a serious lack of global perspective to deny that the title "epidemiology of teenage pregnancy" is deeply offensive. Hans Adler 10:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry it is not offensive as an English term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Summary of my comments above: When you say "epidemiology of X", then X is originally a disease that you want to prevent, but has been widened to any health problem. There is no "epidemiology of Y", where Y is not a health problem but just some arbitrary factor that makes some health problem X more (or less) likely. Teenage pregnancies can be a factor in the epidemiology of X, for various values of X, but most are not a health problem per se. (Actually there is a usage "epidemiology of Y" where Y is just any factor, but that's a recent and very significant widening of the technical term that is not understood by the general public and hasn't made it into dictionaries.)

In addition, even as a factor for health problems, teenage pregnancies are not particularly convincing. In Germany, a high-risk pregnancy is one under the age of 18, not under the age of 20. It appears that some other countries (US?) even make it under the age of 15. As of 2006, at the time of birth or abortion after a 'teenage' pregnancy, the mother was three times as likely to be aged 18-19 as she was likely to be aged below 18. (Pregnancy rate 122.3 for 18-19, 38.9 for 15-17, 7.1 for 14 or younger.) [29] Hans Adler 10:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It appears that most teenagers wish to prevent them per the ref above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:13, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you (Hans) mean by "not a health problem but just some arbitrary factor that makes some health problem X more (or less) likely". Does tobacco use count? Tobacco is a plant, not a health problem, but does it count as "some arbitrary factor"? Do you require something that is not so obviously causative? There have been epidemiological studies on the colors of the vehicles involved in collisions, like PMID 12410016. Surely the color of paint is not considered a health problem. Does that count as "some arbitrary factor"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Hans, thanks for posting here, but I think the word you should use is risk factor and not "health problem". Epidemiology of any risk factor (including pregnancy) could be a valid article title. Pregnancy is a risk factor for DVT, for example. And drunk walking is a risk factor article I created, as is prothrombin G20210A (to quasi-arbitrarily self-cite). Biosthmors (talk) 19:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Surely risk factors are "determinants of health-related states or events", as the WHO quote you cite above says. Biosthmors (talk) 19:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I think I have said it often enough and wonder why I apparently have to repeat it:
  • "Epidemiology of [put any disease here]" is a well known expression that appears in just about any dictionary and that everybody understands.
  • Constructions of the form "epidemiology of [put any risk factor here]" are not known to the general public. This is not a usage that can be found in normal dictionaries. This is the kind of jargons that journalists automatically correct after interviewing a medical researcher.
The linguistic mechanism by which such a word is broadened in this way is totally obvious to me (if anyone is interested, I can explain it), but it hasn't made general use yet. The reactions of people without serious exposition to medical jargon to various 'epidemiologies' will be roughly be as follows:
  • "Epidemiology of influenza" - Nothing remarkable, this is the most original meaning: study of epidemies.
  • "Epidemiology of cancer" - "OK, they have widened it a bit. Cancer is not usually considered to be infective and cause epidemies, but they probably don't mean to imply that."
  • "Epidemiology of snakebites" - "Pretty weird. They seem to have widened the meaning of 'epidemiology' quite a bit if they even count accidents now."
  • "Epidemiology of tobacco use" - "Are they seriously applying that word to things that one doesn't go to the doctor for? Amazing."
  • "Epidemiology of pregnancy" - "It's amazing with what misogynist doctors can come up. Since when is pregnancy a disease? Quite offensive!"
  • "Epidemiology of teenage pregnancy" - "Oh! Doctors consider teenage pregnancy a disease! I had no idea it's as bad as that. I should have known this a few weeks earlier. Maybe I should ask Dr. ___ whether it wouldn't be better to have an abortion now and try again next year when I'm twenty. What a pity, we were already thinking about names!"
I consider this a very serious problem with the title. It doesn't even seem to be a purely medical article anyway, and there is no reason to insist that medical terminology takes precedence over the terminology that would be preferred in the social sciences. It doesn't seem to make much sense as a medical topic. For that, I would expect an article about the rates (still not epidemiology!) of pre-adolescent pregnancies or a similar class of pregnancies that does not lump medically harmless pregnancies together with high-risk pregnancies just because they tend to be conflated in discussions about social issues. Hans Adler 20:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Well I do see the issue you're pointing at now, thanks. Sorry. I do tend to skim things sometimes. When I searched for http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=epidemiology+AND+factor+V+leiden (as factor V Leiden is a well-known risk factor) there were a lot of "prevalence of..." in article titles. Prevalence of teenage pregnancy might work nicely. Biosthmors (talk) 21:07, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that would be perfect! Hans Adler 21:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
As a note, something I considered is that a lot of laypeople don't know what epidemiology means; they have to look it up in the dictionary. And what they find in the dictionaries will be what Seerus and Hans Adler mentioned about that. Flyer22 (talk) 21:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Although, of course, they could read our Epidemiology article. Flyer22 (talk) 21:58, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Epidemiology includes prevalence but is a broader term. I guess we could call it prevalence of pregnancy. But epidemiology is not an "insulting" term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
In general use: Yes, it is insulting, although this may be different ten years from now when this novel medical use of the word has trickled down into general use. This is not a medical question that can be arbitrated by medical experts. It is a question for linguists, most easily settled by reading general dictionaries. And the results are clear. I also note that you have not addressed my other arguments either: How are the common pregnancies of 19-year-olds a medical problem that can be lumped together with the rare pregnancies of 13-year-olds? Seeing pregnancies of 19-year-olds as a medical problem just doesn't make sense medically, only socially. So it's not even a medical topic in the first place.
But so long as we can all agree on using "prevalence", we don't have to continue the discussion. From my point of view, that's not even a compromise, it's a perfect solution to the problem. I would even suggest to follow the distinction 'epidemiology' of medical problems / 'prevalency' of risk factors in general for all similar article titles, as this is better style even in non-controversial cases. Is there any problem with that from a medical point of view? Hans Adler 09:19, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Pregnancies generally are seen as a medical issue. So I am not sure how in a specific age they should no longer be seen as a medical issue.

In general use in my area of the English speaking world epidemiology is not insulting.

The OED states "the branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health". So is pregnancy a factor that relates to health? Fairly obviously it is.

What does the medical literature use? This has a section on "epidemiology of adolescent pregancy" [30] as does this one [31] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:54, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Hans Adler, 13-year-olds being pregnant is not rare; in fact, I'm not certain if pregnancies among 19-year-olds is more common than pregnancies among 13-year-olds. Flyer22 (talk) 18:08, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes pregnancies among 19 year olds are more common. But that is really beside the point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:20, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
It's not beside the point that teenage pregnancy, as opposed to pregnancy or pre-adolescent pregnancy, is obviously not primarily a medical topic. Hans Adler 18:27, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
18-19 is three times as common in the US as 17 and below. That seems close enough, and in fact it's even better for my argument. I just felt it was too long for literal repetition. I gave the data above including a source. Hans Adler 18:27, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Either you have no sense of language at all, or you are playing that part. The fact that you are not even responding to the other questions such as whether "prevalence" is acceptable to you makes it hard to assume good faith. Please help me with that by putting a few brain cells into this discussion.
Your OED quotation is completely useless in this case because it is about the entire field, not about any meaning that could be directly associated with constructions of the form "epidemiology of X". There is only one epidemiology in the sense of that OED definition, it is a field of medicine that is taught to medical students (I assume), and there is no way that it can be called "epidemiology of X".
Consider pharmacology, for example, which according to WP "is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action, where a drug can be broadly defined as any man-made, natural, or endogenous (within the cell) molecule which exerts a biochemical and/or physiological effect on the cell, tissue, organ, or organism." That's not an excuse to name an article about drugs for cows "pharmacology of bovines". Pharmacology is surely interested in bovines, but the term is not normally used in this way. The term epidemiology is used in this way by experts but not by normal people. I have explained why this is a problem, but you are clearly practising the WP:IDHT of driving other editors mad.
Also, stop your incantations that pregnancy is a medical topic. Neither does it follows from this that pregnancies in 12th century southern France is a medical topic, nor that pregnancy in literature, pregnancy in homosexual aliens, or indeed teenage pregnancy is a medical topic. If it's a sub-topic of pregnancy that has been selected for primarily social reasons, then it's not primarily a medical topic. (Of course MEDRS still applies to medical claims, in case you are worried about that. It applies to medical claims everywhere.) Nor would that be an excuse to summarily dismiss NPOV concerns based on, actually I am not even sure what you are trying to base your summary dismissal on. It's just like banging your fist on the table because you have all the authority and I am just an intrusive nobody. Doesn't make you appear as intelligent or authoritative as reasonable responses would do. Hans Adler 18:21, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Struck. Sorry for this. I got angry due to a misunderstanding on my side that followed some more general miscommunication issues. Hans Adler 20:11, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
PS: I just saw that you actually sort of agreed that the article can be called prevalence of pregnancy. Your last post suggested otherwise to me as you appeared to be building a front line defence against any possible change of the title. Looked like seriously ownership issues to me, but apparently I was wrong. Sorry. Hans Adler 18:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
If you are referring to me having ownership issues. I have never edited this article as far as I am aware. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: Move epidemiology of teenage pregnancy to prevalence of teenage pregnancy

  • Support. Doing it this way because there has already been a little move war. For the reasons for this proposal see above. Hans Adler 18:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Neutral Oppose Per WAIDs argument. I think things are fine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:47, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm also neutral on this. But I support the move because of what I stated above about a lot of laypeople not knowing what epidemiology means (although, as I also noted, they could read our Epidemiology article for information on it). Flyer22 (talk) 19:12, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
    The epidemiology article is about the field, which is Merriam-Webster definition (1). The problem is that this is clearly not intended in titles such as "epidemiology of pregnancy". I strongly doubt that there is a subfield of epidemiology that is concerned with everything related to pregnancy. And if there is, it's not even mentioned in the article. "Epidemiology of X" in the sense of the article is Merriam-Webster definition (2), or rather a generalisation that is not yet covered in Merriam-Webster. And the generalisation is the problem: Merriam-Webster definition (2) only works when X is a disease 0r similar unwanted problem.
    A linguistic study would no doubt show a gradual move in the medical literature from using only "epidemiology of [disease]" via "epidemiology of [medical problem]" to acceptability of "epidemiology of [risk factor]". Such developments are usually followed by the general public, but with a delay. You will have trouble finding "epidemiology of pregnancy" in newspapers, even though the word "epidemiology" alone or in connection with a disease occurs there occasionally. Hans Adler 20:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I slightly prefer epidemiology because it is a bigger topic than simply prevalence and because it matches our advice about section names and is therefore consistent with the main article and with other articles. I do not agree with this unsupported assertion that epidemiology concerns itself only with true medical diseases. There have been scholarly publications on the epidemiology of computer malware, for example, as well as for viewing porn or gambling online. On the 'positive' side, see things like PMID 12972873 and PMID 15710270 on "the epidemiology of walking". Many sources discuss the epidemiology of teenage pregnancy or births to teenagers, using those titles; there are also sources like PMID 22289743 that focus on the epidemiology of births in general. This is not an insulting term, and it is one of the titles used by reliable scholarly sources to describe this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
    "unsupported assertion that epidemiology concerns itself only with true medical diseases". You are overstating it, and when stated correctly it has been supported with evidence (Merriam-Webster). The real statement is that "epidemiology" has two related definitions in general use dictionaries. (1) a field of study, (2) a collection of data related to the prevalence of a disease or similar problem. The intended meaning here is (3) a collection of data related to a risk factor. The problem is that (3) is expert jargon that cannot be found in standard dictionaries yet. As (1) is obviously not meant, that leaves only (2) for the interpretation by a normal reader: teenage pregnancy, pregnany, walking, porn consumption, car collisions etc. are diseases or at least near-diseases.
    I don't see why the naming guideline can't take this problem into account and explicitly prefer "prevalency" in the case of general risk factors. This will nicely separate diseases from risk factors, and it is not a problem if articles go slightly beyond the literal meaning of the title, so long as they stay roughly on topic. Hans Adler 20:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Note: What WhatamIdoing stated above is why I don't fully support the move. Before WhatamIdoing's post about "prevalence" not adequately describing what the article covers, it was brought up above. Perhaps a different title suggestion is in order, with "prevalence" remaining in the heading, but being combined with different words...such as Prevalence [and so and so] of teenage pregnancy. Obviously the "and so and so" part is whatever words we'd fill the blank in with. Flyer22 (talk) 20:41, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
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