Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 34

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Proof read of section requested

Please could someone with a good knowledge of immunology read over Aphthous stomatitis#Causes? It was all supported by sources, but during the integration of these several sources into the subsections of the article "bad things" may have happened. Thanks Lesion (talk) 15:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Dubious open-access publishers

There are some interesting conversations ongoing around Wikipedia about the publishing practices of some open-access journals and publishers. The discussions were probably kicked off by this New York Times article on the predatory practices of some such publishers; the phenomenon has also been noted recently in a series of articles in Nature ("The Dark Side of Publishing", "Open access: The true cost of science publishing", "Sham journals scam authors").

The articles focus on a subset of open-access publishers which employ dubious methods of peer review, questionable handling of editorial-board duties, and predatory financial practices. The articles point to a highly regarded list of "predatory" and dubious open-access journals maintained here by an academic librarian.

I think it's worth being aware of these issues, and possibly consulting the list of dubious journals (or even linking it from WP:MEDRS) in terms of the sources we use in our medical articles. As usual, DGG (talk · contribs) has some very thoughtful commentary on his talkpage on the subject; I'm not advocating a blanket search-and-remove of these journals, but it would be interesting to know how often, and in what contexts, we cite them in our articles. In any case, I just wanted to raise the issue here so that it's visible going forward, and would invite any discussion. MastCell ^Talk 17:14, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that. One of the comments under that NYT article says scientists are not paid to do reviews. Is that always the case, or do some journals pay their reviewers? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any reputable journal which pays its peer reviewers. (I sometimes wish they did, but...) It's a volunteer job. MastCell ^Talk 18:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:08, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

• Is there a list kept like the WP:LSP? If not, anyone want to set one up for dubious journals etc? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:56, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

There is great conflict between "open access" publishers and "publishers supported by advertising revenue and subscription fees". Both have their issues as a model of publishing and IMO open access has far less than ad revenue/pre print based. Many subscription based journals for example will be pressured to publish an article as the company/authors publishing it have agreed to by 10,000 copies once it is published sometimes at the cost of $100,000. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:17, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews

Of all the initiatives being championed by Daniel, James and others, JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews (a peer-reviewed open-access journal of Wikipedia articles) is to me the most exciting. If all goes well, it could foster much greater involvement of experts in the creation and curation of our articles, by offering them the incentive of a citable publication while removing the disincentive of mutability (at least from the reviewed version of the article). But the strength of the incentive will depend on the status afforded Wiki Medical Reviews by the academic community, which in turn will depend among other things on the standing of the peer reviewers engaged and the rigor of their reviews. I'm wondering if, at least for the first few years of the journal's life, while it is establishing its reputation, we should consider offering sufficient compensation to reviewers to ensure the most highly-regarded minds in each field are engaged, to help the journal acquire a reputation for excellence from the outset.

It could be that the gods of each field will be climbing over each other to get involved from the start, which would be great, but if that's not the case, is compensation a sensible approach? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:08, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure. There is a related problem of what to do with gray literature, which is what I would say Wikipedia articles most closely resemble in their current form when considering all types of scholarly publication. There are a lot of organizations which are already compiling the kind of information which would be useful for inclusion into Wikipedia, but because it is layman-targeted, it is not appropriate for publication within a scholarly academic journal. I also think that Wikipedia articles are not appropriate for publication in traditional academic journals because they also are layman-targeted, but this JMIR project is an excellent and novel approach to getting base versions of Wikipedia articles reviewed through standard channels.

Recently this board was visited by someone from Eli Lilly and Company's Clinical Open Innovation lab who had collected a lot of gray literature in the form of government publications on standards of healthcare. These included well-cited reports based on recommendations from various countries' leading medical societies, and were the basis of national health policies, but were not published in traditional academic channels for a variety of reasons including, I think, some of the same reasons why a "Wiki Medical Review" journal has never existed before now.

On my end, I work at Consumer Reports, a United States-based non-profit organization which collects health information from medical professional societies and republishes it so that the general public can understand it. Our work here is a lot like what Wikipedia does now, except Consumer Reports has done this for decades on paper and without publishing it in academic journals. We also are considering whether any of our work should go through the process of formal peer review (it already is "peer reviewed" informally, and so are government publications and a lot of gray literature, but not like an academic journal), get indexing, and then be available for reuse in some way.

I think it is not so wild to assume that other organizations would freely share their guidelines if someone offered them a path to publication, archiving, and indexing of their gray literature. And far from requesting pay to have them offer their work, I think there might even be funding available for such a community effort to share their information. Likewise, I expect that getting reviewers will not be a problem. The surest route I see to making this progress is supporting the JMIR project and talking more about this. Anyone who participates will want to see evidence that there is community support and demand for this. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

We are still slowly working to get the first article, Dengue fever, published in Open Medicine. We will then see how much interested there is from academics. This is simply a carrot. They still need to come to Wikipedia and bring one of our articles to FA status through the usual channels before it is submitted for publication / formal peer review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:34, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

And maybe we should try to get 5, 10, or more carrots like this published before we assess interest. Academics might want to see a track record of success before they perceive a proof of concept—that Wikipedia editing can be a reliable way to generate potential publications. It seems ideal, to my mind, to partner with an existing journal or two or three at this stage. Biosthmors (talk) 01:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Anthony, maybe we should try to get volunteer peer reviews first. Since Wikipedia is a volunteer endeavor, we could appeal to them to volunteer their time towards Wikipedia in that way. Essentially they will have become a contributor, except that their comments might not appear on a talk page or peer review page. Has anyone tried to do that with a medical article, by the way? Biosthmors (talk) 01:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely; if very highly regarded leaders in their field want to volunteer their time to review our articles, that's the best outcome.

I emailed the corresponding authors of the main sources for Cancer pain before I put it up for GA review, as a courtesy, giving them the opportunity to correct me if I was misrepresenting them. Several simply thanked me, a couple said they saw no problem with my interpretation, and one worked with me until she was satisfied with the weight and meaning of her section. I guess that's a kind of informal review. (I've asked the lead author of one of the article's core supporting textbooks if he'd like to collaborate on bringing it up to JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews standard.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

The JMIR will take care of finding peer reviewers for the articles submitted. What we need is academics. You will notice the anonymous comments from the peer reviews for our first article here and me trying my best to address them [1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews editorial board would be finding and proposing reviewers. Will the names of the Dengue Fever reviewers be published, James? Am I right in thinking the reviewers of JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews articles will be published? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Peer reviewers are generally anonymous as far as I know. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:38, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yep. But I thought I saw something to the effect that they would be declared, somewhere on the JMIR website. Could be wrong, though. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

James, is there an article you have in mind to be #2 in line to work on after dengue? Biosthmors (talk) 21:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

My hope is that academics will then show up and begin editing, taking article from poor to professional. I do not really need publications myself. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright problem

I just posted this in the striatum article:

I have found an important copyright problem in striatum. It has been there for almost two years. On March 2011 User talk:FrozenMan [4000k ] of text (the biggest addition up to date). In May 2012 some copyright problems were found as seen in his talk page. I do not know if they were solved. I have found further problems since lots of text have been copied from "The Role of the Dorsal Striatum in Reward and Decision-Making--Bernard W. Balleine, Mauricio R. Delgado, Okihide Hikosaka". This probably indicates the full contribution by the user is tainted. Since the copyright problems have been here for so long not sure on how to act.

--Garrondo (talk) 13:23, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Issue has already been fixed by Looie. Nevertheless it is really sad that such a clear copyright infrigement (tons of text completely unwikified) remained in an important article for two years. --Garrondo (talk) 15:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't really consider that a very important article. Basal ganglia is more important. We have lots of terrible articles about parts of brain structures. Looie496 (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Well... it is not as important as basal ganglia, but much more important than many other brain areas... Nevertheless the fact is that we were unable to fix this for quite a long time, even when the evidence was just in front of us.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Just found some copyright issues myself here [2] ~2000K of text which had been in place for a year. It is an uphill battle. We need an automated plagiarism detection tool that notifies volunteers right after the edit is made. I know a few people are working on one. IMO the WMF needs to be helping develop this sort of thing as a priority. And this should be done before we encourage more people to edit via the education project or make editing easier via the new WYSIWYG. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

You should take a look at User:CorenSearchBot which is intended to help with the problem. Folks with time on their hands could help clear the backlog at Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC) Addendum: the job is actually run by User:MadmanBot at present; backlog still dates back to 29 March, though. --RexxS (talk) 21:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Advice requested on atherosclerosis

If anyone who has knowledge of the above could take a look at talk:atherosclerosis#Re_Panoramic_radiograph#Detection_of_carotid_atherosclerosis and see if they can give any advice, this would be good. Thanks, Lesion (talk) 20:59, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

A perfect example of why we need to use secondary sources. This deserves at most a couple of lines per WP:DUE. I have seen AAA on plain X rays of the abdomen. Am not ordering them to diagnosis this though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:09, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Expert help

Some people here might like to see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013_April_6#Template:Expert-subject. There are currently 326 WPMED articles tagged with this template (list will be slow to load). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

They are silly templates IMO. I guess we could just remove them from WP:MED articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternative Medicine

Do you agree with the alternative medicine articles to be treated differently from mainstream medicine articles?

Such as adding a section about it in WP:MEDRS? Or better yet establishing WikiProject Alt Medicine and establishing it's own version of MEDRS - ALTMEDRS?

Many articles about Alt Med are not informative. That is because few or no reliable secondary sources exists to support the content. That are the facts on the ground. By virtue, anything is generally called Alt Med because not enough research has been conducted. Once enough research has been conducted it's generally no longer Alt Med.

I would give an analogue to Olympic games and Paralympic games. Can we request Paralympic athletes to follow all the regulations and perform similarly to Olympic athletes? Aren't we giving them special considerations? So far there is only one athlete, Pistorius that has managed to perform well and cross from Paralympic to Olympic games.

Is there any editor that is aware of any Alt Med article that has been nominated for GA? Many editors said that under current conditions it's very difficult to maintain Alt Med articles. Many editors have agree that there are many gaps in alt med article's coverage on the Wikipedia. Ryanspir (talk) 15:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

If you're talking about making the use of secondary source non mandatory for alt med pages (not sure if this what you mean, since there are no specific details provided as to how you would change the policy), this is not merely making it non MEDRS, its making it non WP:RS...basically suggesting that the same content rules that apply to the whole encyclopedia should not apply to alt med topics, is that correct? Lesion (talk) 15:44, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, at this topic I do not propose any concrete measures. I'm letting know of the issue and would like to receive possible proposals. Thank you. Ryanspir (talk) 16:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Apologies, I thought from what you said you were proposing the above. FYI, I think there is already a WP:WikiProject Alternative medicine. Lesion (talk) 16:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad that I have provided a clear clarification. Thanks for the link. Are there also 1. anything like altmedrs; 2. guidelines for writing alt med articles? Ryanspir (talk) 17:06, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Ryan, yes, Wikipedia has a special guideline covering the sourcing for biomedical claims made in alt-med articles, or for health claims for alt-med interventions made in any article, anywhere. The guideline is: WP:MEDRS. Zad68 17:15, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

This is just wrong: "few or no reliable secondary sources exists to support the content"—you know, except for the 8,000 review articles published in the last five years that you find at PubMed if you search for alternative medicine, not to mention the hundreds of books on the market. (Most health-related books are secondary sources.) There has been so much research done that we've even got reviews of other reviews, like PMID 23472485. There is no shortage of research. Once you've fully exploited those thousands of sources, then you can come back and complain about a lack of acceptable sources.

This is also wrong: "Once enough research has been conducted it's generally no longer Alt Med." Something becomes conventional, rather than alternative, when it is accepted, not when it is supported by evidence. Some AltMed is evidence-based; most is not. This is not normally because of a lack of research, but because the research proved that it didn't actually work. Most conventional medicine is evidence-based; some is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

@Ryanspir: Moreover; since prior probability of alt med theories is so very low (See for example homeopathy), and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence I would agree with you that there should be an specific guideline for altmed (ALTMEDRS?), which however (from my point of view) should indicate that any proposed claim of evidence regarding altmed treatments should be taken with huge care unless there were simply no possible doubt on its scientific validity and reliability.

ALTMEDRS in a nutshell:Only clear consensus among the highest quality secondary sources can be used to propose the efficacy of any treatment with a low prior probability of working due to a lack of scientific base. This includes most treatments under the umbrellas of Alternative medicine, CAM or integrative medicine.

--Garrondo (talk) 22:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Support adding this as ALTMEDRS Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:37, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

That sounds a bit like "Don't say that anything 'alt med' works, unless you can get the Cochrane Collaboration to triple-swear that it does." I don't really believe that we need special rules for alt med. There have been so many thousands of research papers and reviews published on alt med therapies that we can follow the same standards that we would use for a conventional treatment. For example, the type of sources you would use to write about the efficacy of antihistamines when you have the common cold are the same type of sources you should use to write about the efficacy of an herbal preparation when you have the common cold. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

This is not special rules for alt med. This is more like the same rules for alt med as for medicine. This is "if a 2006 Cochrane review says it doesn't work do not dig up an 1998 systematic review quoted by a 2008 literature review in an attempt to refute said Cochrane review" which is were we are at now. Or if a review in JAMA says it does not work do not attempt to say it does with a source only available in Chinese.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any need for a separate alt med guideline. We require exactly the same strength of evidence behind any health-related claim, regardless of who's making it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:50, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

When I wrote the line on Altmedrs I was half in "irony mode" half not. While I do not really think Altmedrs is neccesary as a separate page, I wrote that lines since it is probably a good idea to have in mind that alt med is a domain were it is specially important to describe scientific consensus among secondary sources since it is quite easy to find (short of) secondary low quality sources (either reviews or metanalisis) in crappy journals which are far from being reliable. In this sense it is specially so for meta-analysis since primary research is of so low quality that metaanalyisis of that data is in many cases invalid but widely done to make a point. I do not know if it could be useful to integrate some of this content is MEDRS or is really not necessary.--Garrondo (talk) 19:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking some clarification on alt med could be added to medrs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:33, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Fundamentally Support adding some sort of Alt Med clarifying statement to WP:MEDRS and liked the direction Garrondo was heading in. We should then create a WP:ALTMEDRS shortcut to it. Agree with others here that we're not making up special rules for Alt Med by doing thus, just clarifying the application of existing sourcing policy and guideline to this area. Zad68 04:26, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Support creation of Altmedrs and propose to move the talk to AltMedicine talk page. That's where it should be decided what have to be included in it.

Propose also an essay/policy that will overview the issues facing editors while writing alt med article. Propose to have some special considerations for alt med, according to a consensus on AltMedicine talk page. Recommend to explicitly explain what do in case no secondary reliable studies can be found, and in cases that also no reliable primary research can be found. Ryanspir (talk) 15:10, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The requirements for any medicine-related article should be the same. I strongly oppose any hint of allowing a different set of policies for alt.med. The only content that could possibly be relevant in an altmed policy would be reiteration of what is required and accepted for a medical article. Since this would be redundant with what we already have there is no reason to add it. With regard to:

"Recommend to explicitly explain what do in case no secondary reliable studies can be found, and in cases that also no reliable primary research can be found."

it is already clear. Secondary sources are preferred for medical claims. Notable primary studies can be used under some circumstances. If neither primary or secondary sources exist then no comment can be made.Desoto10 (talk) 18:01, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

How about anecdotal reports, amazon reviews and other practical use information? Shouldn't we use them especially in cases that no reliable sources exist? Ryanspir (talk) 14:14, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely not, per WP:V and WP:RS. If as you say "no reliable sources exist" the solution is not to start using the unreliable source that is customer-provided Amazon reviews. This idea is a complete non-starter. Zad68 14:34, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

New article

A reader at help desk mentioned that we should include Period of purple crying in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Help_desk#period_of_purple_crying (April 13) for detail. This subject is way out of my expertise though. Thoughts?.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I hope someone writes that one. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:28, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The basic framework is done in my user space. The video reference has a 'nutshell' description and probably just needs paraphrasing (to avoid copyvio), into a short lead. The external link should have more detail in text. I would probably make a mess if I expand it further.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:41, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

~35K hits on google, so seems to meet notability. Consider including content + linking the main crying article. Lesion (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

... And ~4 hits on Trip Database, of which zero are secondary. The popular press and social media seem to understand the phrase, but medical literature seems only to mention it in association with "shaken baby syndrome". I'm not very impressed by the credentials of the sources that Google turns up either. Do any of the sources from Google "have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? PMID 22954642 and PMID 19255028 look like the best bets for establishing notability, but all of the primary sources need to be used with care. --RexxS (talk) 18:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

The Dr. in the Youtube reference I added to the draft article is claimed to be a world expert. He claims that he is asked about it often. Is there a way to check his notabilty/credentials, etc? "Dr. Ronald Barr, Developmental Pediatrician and World Expert on Infant Crying, explains the Period of PURPLE Crying Program..."--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

It is a campaign to raise awareness about child abuse. A mention there might be sufficient.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I am wondering if it could be an actual syndrome(?) that could cause child abuse similar to Posttraumatic stress disorder causing issues with soldiers recently. I don't know if it has been researched or codified at all. It may be a recent label on a very old condition?--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:03, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

This book states "A national campaign, “The Period of Purple Crying,” is underway to educate parents about the normalcy of crying in infants and the dangers of shaking an infant. (See the website of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome)"[3] which is similar to many other books. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:10, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

It is also a registered trademark, diseases and syndromes are not.[4] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

As I said in the OP, I am out of my fields here. Could we have it as a redirect to "shaken baby syndrome" with a description of the campaign and the definition of the acronym? With the trademark I don't think we are violating copyright just documenting it. When readers wish to know what it refers to then at least they can find it by the common name. Does 'Two all-beef patties...' redirect to Mcdonald's?Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. An article on the awareness campaign may work as well. --Canoe1967 (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure that would be fine with the campaign discussed in the section on "society and culture" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

You could mention this idea at Crying#Types_of_crying_in_infants. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Healthcare quality

We have a category, Category:Healthcare quality but no head article on Healthcare quality. Do you think one should be written? and (b), what should be the criteria for inclusion of an article in the Category:Healthcare quality category? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:37, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

It seems like one could definitely be written. If it was well written, I'd like for it to exist and that would help address your second question. Biosthmors (talk) 23:46, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I also noticed this recently. I started an article. I am not sure what should go into this but I would develop it further if others participated. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

DualPortGYN Surgical Technique

Could members of this project please have a look at DualPortGYN Surgical Technique? I can't find any coverage of the technique from reliable, secondary sources online, just lots of company press releases. None of the secondary references cited so far mention DualPortGyn, though all talk about dual port laparoscopy, which certainly seems to be notable. But how is DualPortGyn WP:Notable enough for an encyclopedia article? Thanks, Captain Conundrum (talk) 10:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes agree. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:04, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Also agree that we should probably make a dual port laparoscopy article with much of this material moved there first, then split off in the future if the material warrants. Yobol (talk) 13:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Well it's just been proposed for deletion by another editor, so there's a week left to move it (or copy to a draft subpage). If someone with a reasonable knowledge of laparoscopy can point out the good content, I'm happy to help dig for more references etc. Thanks, Captain Conundrum (talk) 08:39, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

One possible template to work from for dual-port laparoscopy is the existing article single-port laparoscopy. Captain Conundrum (talk) 17:46, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

PLOS Medicine Edits

Hello, I've made some edits to the PLOS Medicine page - I know that this group is primarily interested in medicine rather than medical journals so I've been in discussion with the group at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Academic_Journals#PLOS_Medicine. User:Biosthmors suggested I should let this group know about my edits. I'd be very grateful if members of this group would take a look at the edits I've made to ensure that they are fair, especially given my competing interest - I am an editor at PLOS Medicine (Paul Simpson). Thanks --Pjsimpso82 (talk) 09:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Could anyone who comments on this please do it at Talk:PLOS Medicine? Also, I encourage people to comment in any way. This seems like an excellent opportunity to have a discussion about the relationship between academic journals in medicine (which are the source of so much content here) and Wikipedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Waldemar Olszewski

Hi everybody, I need your help and advice. I created an article about a world known lymph specialist Waldemar Olszewski. I added to my article his main publications on the lymphatic system which are very important for his scientific profile. There is a person, his name is Captain Screebo, who deleted already twice all the publications fro my article. He says that my article is too long and if I don't stop undoing his addition (on my article!!!) he will report me and block my account. What can I do about it? Is it ok if I add those publications? They all have got PubMed index number and are important. The person who deleted all of them has no conections to medicine and has no idea what is important or not!!! Please give me an answer. Thanks! Anna Karolina Heinrich (talk) 15:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

If you take a look at the edit history for that article, you'll see that it wasn't only Capt. Screebo, but also at least three other editors that trimmed the publications list or reverted your re-additions. It would be a good idea to discuss your proposed additions at the article's talk page, since there doesn't seem to be a WP:Consensus for adding them. Thanks, Captain Conundrum (talk) 15:15, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Also Anna, please read WP:OWN. As surprising and frustrating as it might be, once you create it, the article is no longer your article, it is Wikipedia's. The thing to do about it is to read Wikipedia's policies regarding biographies of living persons WP:BLP, understand that you do not own any of the work you submit to Wikipedia, and learn about working within Wikipedia's collaborative developing environment. Zad68 15:30, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Lots of page protection

Very popular health articles including obesity, Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and many others are under page protection - perhaps perpetual page protection - which restricts unregistered users from editing them. I am not sure how page protection works, but some of these pages are showing a lock and some do not, and right now all of them are locked. Could I get some thoughts from other members of this board about the risks of leaving these unlocked? I believe that when it is practical, pages should be left unlocked, and that it is generally a bad idea to intend to leave articles locked perpetually. Thoughts from others? How much of a burden is there from unregistered users making bad edits? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:02, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

IMO most articles of good or featured status should be semi protected if they receive a fairly high degree of poor quality edits. This is especially true when they are of top importance and are some of our most viewed medical articles as the above are. None registered users can add comments to the talk page to suggest changes. I find pending changes to be a little clunky. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

100% agree with Doc on this. Zad68 14:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

In addition we typically need to protect many pages deal with sexually transmitted illnesses and psychiatric conditions as they get a great deal of vandalism. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

While we're on the subject, I propose that we give the gynecomastia article more protection. This is another page that gets a good amount of vandalism as well. Thoughts? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 17:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I have to disagree. Wikipedia can only flourish if we encourage new editors, and we know that making as many articles as possible editable by IPs has been a successful strategy since Wikipedia began. I know it's irritating to revert the piece of vandalism for the 100th time, but that's the price we pay for attracting new editors. May I suggest that for many of the articles that are presently semi-protected, we could consider changing to pending changes? That would keep vandalism out of view, but still allow IP editors to submit good-faith edits. We know there are certain types of article that PC doesn't work for (vary highly vandalised articles is one example), but is there any reason why we couldn't try changing some of those popular semi-protected articles to PC as an experiment and see if it helps? --RexxS (talk) 19:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with sticking to WP guidance (i.e. use PP as briefly and reluctantly as possible) to avoid frustrating new users and appearing to own articles. While we have differing levels of new content contribution and involvement (e.g. mop wielding), I suspect that one of the things most WPMED members share is an active and diverse watchlist. -- Scray (talk) 21:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I support James here. I'd say that edits to these articles are >90% vandalism or highly misinformed edits. Health articles get a disproportionate amount of vandalism because of their visibility and troll magnetism. I'd much rather be doing editing rather than reverting/correcting total rubbish. JFW | T@lk 21:58, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

This is exactly the point. Also, I question whether in general there really is "lots" of page protection. If I remember right there are tens of thousands of articles under WP:MED scope. How many are actually under protection? Is that number really at a higher ratio than for other projects, especially if you focus on the articles with the highest visibility, at GA or FA quality, and with the longest history of vandalism or poor quality edits? I also question the idea that semi-protecting the most visible and most contentious articles really goes against the principle of attracting new editors. IPs that make poor-quality (even if well-intentioned) edits at contentious articles with an invested editor base can get shot down hard, especially if it is (as described) the 100th time that kind of bad edit has been made. At these particular articles, the more likely thing that would happen to that IP would be to get driven away after a bad experience. These articles are the last ones you'd want a new IP editing for the first time. Also, if the principle is not just to attract new editors but to retain existing experienced editors, protecting those articles helps that for the reasons as Jfdwolff describes. Zad68 22:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

We have two kinds of problems: One is malicious ("John has AIDS!") and mostly affects sex-related articles. The other is the garden-variety vandalism that any popular page attracts (it might be interesting to look at the protection status for the 100 or 500 most popular pages).

I like RexxS's suggestion for using pending changes, but I have a suggestion: why not run a randomized, controlled trial on reducing protection? Why not pick out a dozen or two medicine-related pages under long-term semi-protection, and randomize half to PC and half to SEMI? If dropping to PC works (e.g., does not result in lots of edits, because PC doesn't function so well on high-volume pages), then we'll do more of it. If it doesn't, then we can rest easy with our choice of SEMI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I would bet that less than 1% of our 26,000 medical articles are semi protected. I consider how we have used it right now "briefly and reluctantly". While I support pending changes in principle it is clunky and slow right now. We have it on breast cancer and it makes the article a pain to edit. It is even slower reverting vandalism with it.

We need to have a balance between everyone editing and making sure people have some commitment before editing. The first article I ever tried to edit was one that was semi protected. I made suggestions on the talk page and edited a less viewed article before returning and being able to bring this one to GA.

I have recently cut back my watchlist as I much prefer to write content than deal with vandalism. Most people can still edit most of Wikipedia most of the time. Many poor quality edits / vandalism never gets reverted (just check out some of these edis here) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Bundle branch block

Hi, I am reviewing Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tachycardia-dependent bundle branch block for AfC. My first instinct was that it should be merged to the article Bundle branch blocks. I find however that the following exist as seperate articles: Heart block, First degree AV block, Second degree AV block, Third degree AV block, Right bundle branch block, Left bundle branch block, Left anterior fascicular block, Left posterior fascicular block, Bifascicular block, Trifascicular block. Is this OK? Or would it not be more practical and give the reader more of an overview to merge all these articles under the title heart blocks or bundle branch blocks? At least in the case of Tachycardia-dependent bundle branch block, it is in my view better to treat the topic toghether with the Bradycardia dependent blocks under the title "rate dependent bundle branch blocks". But I think all the above named articles are better merged. What do I do?Ochiwar (talk) 18:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

While I know nothing about this subject, GScholar and GBook searches show the term to be an important part of multiple studies, so the article could conceivably pass an AfD test. The article under review discusses both bradycardia and tachycardia dependent versions and mentions rate-dependent bundle branch blocks multiple times. Based on my very superficial understanding, I agree that "rate-dependent bundle branch block" may be the better topic. As someone who has eagerly waited for the results of an AfC review in the past, I wouldn't recommend holding up this article for the potentially considerable discussion it would take to make the proposed 12-way merge to Bundle branch block. --Mark viking (talk) 18:44, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Tachycardia-dependent bundle branch block is just a rare event in patients who have BBB. Usually is due to reciprocating rythm. There is no reason to exist an individual page. Is better to put it as a section of BBB and of tachycardia articles. Doc Elisa ^✉ 19:13, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I have accepted the article and taged it proposing a merger to Bundle branch block. I have also taged the following articles, proposing a merger with Bundle branch block i.e Right bundle branch block, Left bundle branch block, Left anterior fascicular block, Left posterior fascicular block, Bifascicular block, Trifascicular block. If there is consencus on this, I would prepare a tentative merged article containing all of the above for approval here.Ochiwar (talk) 16:35, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Without having gone through all the literature, I would suspect that left bundle branch block and right bundle branch block both could easily have enough material for their own articles, but I suspect every other article in that list could probably be merged into one. Yobol (talk) 13:42, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

These shouldn't be merged. These are very broad subjects, and the different types of blocks are identified and managed in different ways. A merged article would be unwieldy. --Arcadian (talk) 13:30, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Improper use of case studies and possible conflict of interest

I've removed everything added by Kazem.fa (talk · contribs) and 174.50.25.48 that hadn't already been removed, due to major concerns about their use of case studies and promotion of particular authors. Hope this is OK. Graham87 09:14, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

See Kazem's response on my talk page, noting that he was unfamiliar with our guidelines for medical articles. We're now talking about this through email. As far as I'm concerned, this is resolved now, unless somebody strongly objects to my actions here. Graham87 15:04, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:38, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

First of all I would like to sincerely thank Graham for kindly providing me with the guidelines of Wikipedia on how to write and revise the medical articles. As he mentioned I was not familiar with the guidelines for medical articles. However, there are some issues that I would like to discuss with you: What I added to medical pages was all based on scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals. My assumption was that if each member of the scientific community adds the results of his or her studies to Wikipedia, it will help to spread the knowledge. Moreover, I added similar content to several pages because those fields are related to each other. I completely agree with Graham that systematic reviews and meta-analyses are the most reliable sources of information in the medical field. However, in order to be able to do systematic reviews and meta-analyses, you should have a minimum number of studies, usually more than 10. Most of the medical articles that I revised in Wikipedia were about rare diseases like pemphigus vulgaris, uremic pruritus or malnutrition in hemodialysis patients. Currently there are no systematic reviews and meta-analyses for these diseases specifically related to the field that I discussed. It's also noteworthy to mention that most of the studies that I referred to were done for the first time and therefore were novel. Therefore, I briefly mentioned the findings of those studies in the articles. As I mentioned previously, my goal was to share the new medical knowledge in layman's term in those Wikipedia articles. Please let me know what we should do in this situation that we don't have systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Should we withhold the information from the public until systematic reviews and meta-analyses may become available few years later?

Many thanks for your consideration. Kazem.fa (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Take a look at WP:MEDRS, our guideline in choosing sources (you may already have). While secondary sources are preferred over primary articles professional text books are considered adequate secondary sources. I am sure that you would be able to find some info to such rare diseases in specific professional text books. If not, in most cases it means that actually content may not be notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia, altough (very) occasionally primary articles may be used (with extreme care). Regarding the "we could each add our results": wikipedia is not a repository of primary articles but an encyclopedia. Since there are hundreds of thousands of investigations each year the only way we have to weight them in in order to create meaningful content and not simply a list of articles (for that we already have pubmed) is to use secondary sources that indicate which results are important and which are not.

--Garrondo (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Just as an example, Trip Database shows 125 articles matching "uremic pruritus" of which 12 are identified as secondary. There were however 35 controlled trials and 64 e-textbooks, so how would we decide which evidence to include unless we relied on secondary sources? I should also mention that "pemphigus vulgaris" has a 2009 Cochrane review and a British Association of Dermatologists guideline for management, so why would we want to try to analyse the 450 primary results on Trip ourselves? --RexxS (talk) 00:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Garrondo and RexxS, many thanks for your clarification. I generally agree with what you have said. However, most guidelines and meta-analyses focus on management and treatment of diseases; i.e. other issues like pathophysiology of diseases are not usually included in these reports. For example the 2 secondary sources you have introduced about pemphigus focus on treatment of this disease. They don't discuss its pathophyisology. Moreover, it usually takes at least 2-3 years for new information to be cited in medical textbooks. Therefore, the textbooks are not usually up to date. That's why websites like uptodate.com have been developed that renew their articles every few months. However, I certainly agree with you that it's better to use secondary sources as references when they are available in order to reduce bias of selection. Thank you again. Kazem.fa (talk) 01:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Literature reviews are usually good for pathophysiology and it allows new ideas to stand a bit of test of time. Uptodate.com does not really discuss pathophys either. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:49, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Elevating Alpins Method entry from low to mid priority

I'd like to request your permission to elevate the importance of this article (Alpins method of astigmatism analysis) from low to mid priority (as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine appears to have made the original assignment). The article fits the definition for mid priority: "Normal priority for article improvement. A good article would be interesting or useful to many readers. Subject is notable within its particular specialty. This category includes most medical conditions, tests, approved drugs, medical subspecialties, well-known anatomy, and common signs and symptoms."

The Alpins Method is notable in its particular specialties: refractive, cataract, and corneal surgery. Groups of ophthalmologists devote themselves solely to these specific individual areas, such that they refer to themselves as a refractive surgeon, a cataract surgeon, or a corneal surgeon. Each of these areas also have societies and journals devoted specifically to the respective areas. The American Academy of Ophthalmology acknowledges these subspecialty areas (http://www.aao.org/careers/envision/subspecialties.cfm).

The Alpins Method is of clear importance to these specialists, and is used daily in their professional lives by many.

Thank you. Kcroes (talk) 21:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

This article seems very narrowly-focused, but I agree that the importance scale indicates it should be classified as "mid". I'll change the assessment, but will not be wounded if someone corrects me (as has been said before, the best way to learn the right answer is to post the wrong answer in a public place).  Done -- Scray (talk) 23:07, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

It's worth remembering that the "importance" of an article is only a way for a Wikiproject to determine which articles are its priority for working on. It has no currency beyond a Wikiproject, so when you want to work on a given article, it will be "top importance" for you, even though a particular Wikiproject may not have the same priorities (as reflected in the definitions that you looked at). --RexxS (talk) 01:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I appreciate the clarification regarding the meaning of assigned "importance" levels. Kcroes (talk) 02:20, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine - #4 in active watchers

The tool for checking how many users watch a given WikiProject has been updated to show how many of them are active on Wikipedia. It now says that WikiProject Medicine ranks as #4 by number of active Wikipedians with this page on their watch list. More popular are military history, video games, and mathematics. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:25, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

An Idea for Multiple Nomenclature infobox

A large number of articles under medicine portal are about conditions or disorders with multiple names. These articles start with a long list of these alternative names, which is actually ridiculous when you just want to know what the disease is. Many readers must be having to get through large bold-letter lines until they reach the definition of condition. Example 1, Example 2

I think these articles should have a multiple nomenclature infobox situated just above regular medicine infobox. To increase the readability of medicine infobox, this (multiple nomenclature) infobox should be collapsed by default. The standard nomenclature included in first line/intro/definition should be the one from article heading. (Although many articles have eponyms as article headings, which should actually also be standardized). Other terms will be enlisted in multiple nomenclature infobox.

Do you think this is a good idea? Saurabh P. (talk) 02:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it is a bad idea to have more than one infobox. I do not see having a couple of names listed to be a big deal. I think it is silly to list variations in spelling. We could add this to the disease infobox.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:58, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Right! It would be great to add parameter |other_names= to {{Infobox disease}} and the articles can be re-edited as required. As Wavelength suggested Current Medical Terminology or International Classification of Diseases can be used for standard names of articles. How do we proceed? ——★Saurabh P.  |  ☎ talk 07:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Per James, overlong lists of alternative names could be shrunk by excluding minor variations. I think significantly different names should be mentioned in the first, defining, sentence. A lot of people never look at infoboxes, and moving the alternatives out of the first sentence would remove them from the snippet in the Google result, which I often don't go past if I just want a definition. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes just the major names in the lead with the rest going in the section on society and culture.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:20, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I tend to include spelling variations in the list of synonyms, as you commonly see this done on medical pages. Are we not supposed to do this? I didn't find any guidance in the MEDMOS one way or the other. According to the main MOS: "If the subject of the page has a common abbreviation or more than one name, the abbreviation (in parentheses) and each additional name should be in boldface on its first appearance." and later "significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, and significant names in other languages." ...although the wording isn't very definitive either. Lesion (talk) 10:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Isn't this what redirects are for? Put the main name(s) in the article. Put redirects or soft redirects from the more obscure ones.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:32, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that when we list all the names, the readers are more confident that they're in the right place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It would be easy enough to add a parameter for |other_names= to {{Infobox disease}}. We'd also agreed at one point that it would be desirable to add |specialty= to that (as in "cardiology" for various heart diseases and "pediatrics" for childhood diseases), but I don't think that anything happened there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

See JAMA Network | JAMA | Standard Medical Terminology. There can be a standardized name for the article title, and a list of alternative names in a hatnote or an info box or the first sentence or (if there are many alternative names) a separate paragraph.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Eyes needed

...at Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency and its talkpage. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:59, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:27, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK

Daria Cybulska of Wikimedia UK having two meetings which may interest members of this WikiProject. Those who live near London my even be interested in joining Daria as member of the Wikimedia community.

By coincidence, both the meetings are on the 3rd of May.

• Wellcome Collection meeting will look at options of future cooperation. e.g. opening up the collection to wikimedians and free knowledge
• Cancer Research UK will look at their recent external funding bid for a Wikimedian in Residence and see how we can improve it.

See wmuk:Water cooler#Wellcome Collection and CRUK meetings

Yaris678 (talk) 17:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Technical review needed for Immunologist bio at WP:AFC

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alain de Weck needs a technical review to see if this immunologist's biography is up to Wikipedia standards for people in his profession. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

D-mannose

This substance works by letting E-Coli bacteria to attach to D-mannose and be "escorted" out of the body. The reliable sources about how it functions can be found on the WP:MEDRS discussion.

My question is, is that mechanism of action is absolutely unique? Is there any medicine on the market or in the development that works not by killing bacteria, but rather by allowing bacteria to attach to it? Thank you.

P.S. I'm asking this question, because it's a very interesting mechanism of action that may not result in bacteria resistance. Ryanspir (talk) 15:40, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Why is the question being asked here? And were exactly has it been asked before? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:36, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Doc James; when you point to the right page for discussion, I'll be happy to explain some of the ways in which those statements about mannose and E. coli are incorrect. -- Scray (talk) 03:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it any problem with this question being asked here? We can make a long discussion about that, but perhaps a short answer would be more appreciated, like yes, there is this name of medicine that works with a similar action; or no, we are not aware of such a medicine.

Scray, lets not make it a discussion about how effective (or not) d-mannose is. My question in this topic is purely on the mechanism of action. Ryanspir (talk) 17:03, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

We care less about the believed mechanism of action and more about if something works or not.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

• Let me just note that the appropriate place for questions of this sort are the Reference desks -- in this case WP:RD/S, the Science desk. Looie496 (talk) 19:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Looie496. I have posted it at the suggested location. To Doc James, of course its very important if it works or not, however it's also important if the targeted bacteria can or will develop a resistance. Its my observations, that many types of bacteria has developed some level of resistance to anti-bacterials in the past ten-twenty years. I'm proving a hypotheses that this novel action of curing might not result in resistance, since no bacteria is being killed. The potential is enormous, anti-HIV drugs for example that allow the virus to attach itself to the drug and be escorted out of the body without killing the virus. That's just an example, please don't capitalize on the quality of the example. Ryanspir (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I think your view of resistance is probably over-simplistic. First of all, d-mannose resistance already exists in a number of bacterial strains which cause UTIs (e.g. PMID 15557655, PMID 17854474). That's not surprising if you think about it. Let's assume that d-mannose impairs bacterial adhesion. If a single bacterium happens, through genetic variation, to produce adherence molecules resistant to the effect of d-mannose, then it will remain in the bladder while all of its competitors are "escorted out", as you put it. This bacterial clone will then enjoy a huge ecological niche, since all of its competitors were eliminated by d-mannose, and will rapidly expand to fill that niche. This is the same principle by which bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, and it's sort of magical thinking to believe that d-mannose would be exempt from it. MastCell ^Talk 17:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Allow me to correct myself. I meant to say 'evolving resistance'. And this is precisely my point. Because bacteria is not being killed, but being tricked to adhere to d-mannose and then escorted out of the body, I think it may not develop any resistance. Do you see the potential brilliance of it? The bacteria evolves resistance in order to survive against agents that kill it. But in this case, there is no killing present and the bacteria knows its outside the body only when it's already outside the body. While it's adhering to d-mannose, it still believes it adheres to bladder walls. :) Ryanspir (talk) 14:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Again, I think you're missing the point. It doesn't really matter what a particular bacterium "believes", insofar as bacteria are capable of belief in the first place. Bacterial cell death is not necessary in order for resistance to develop. All that's required is for a particular mutation to confer an advantage in a particular niche.

Assuming d-mannose works as advertised, it will remove most bacteria from the bladder, leaving only d-mannose-resistant clones behind. Those clones then enjoy a huge advantage - they have the niche all to themselves without any competition, and can proliferate to "fill" the bladder niche. And then you have a d-mannose-resistant UTI. You're committing a common logical error, in supposing that "natural" or alternative treatments are magically exempt from the basic biological principles which apply to rationally developed pharmaceuticals. MastCell ^Talk 18:24, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply MastCell. Actually I thought about the reasoning you have posted even before you have posted iy :). I think that the resistance you are talking about is inherited resistance. But I'm referring to evolving resistance. What do you think? Just please give it a bit of deep thinking before you will reply. It might be you will see my point clearly and consider that I'm right. However, of course I might be wrong. Waiting for your opinion. All of bacteria has resistance to different agents, however it's the evolving resistance that currently challenges mainstream medicine. Ryanspir (talk) 19:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that you might have a special understanding of "evolving resistance". What MastCell described is evolution. It is an extremely basic type of evolution that even die-hard creationists recognize: if you have red bugs and black bugs, and you kill all the red bugs, then the next generation will be all black bugs (or mostly, depending on the number of genes involved and and which colors are dominant). That's evolution, and that's exactly the process that MastCell described. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

As I have said, I might be wrong. If MastCell will not agree with me, I'll elucidate what I mean further. :). What I'm saying, is that the action of "escorting out of the body" won't produce escalation of bacteria's resistance to the substance to which it binds, comparing to the resistance to an agent that kills bacteria. Ryanspir (talk) 16:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Why not? If you kill all the red bugs (all the bacteria in the urinary tract that are susceptible to mannose), then why would you not expect all the remaining bugs to be black (all the bacteria in the urinary tract to be resistant)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

BTW, as was suggested above, this is addressed RD/S#D-mannose. -- Scray (talk) 20:02, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is beyond the remit of WikiProject Medicine. (For what it's worth, MastCell is right.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Regeneration therapy - Mainstream?

Is Regeneration therapy a mainstream therapy? My PROD was removed and it is asserted that it is on the talk page. It also should be under wikiproject scope. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:45, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Not a single proper ref. I have restored the PROD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:08, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

James actually does know that you can't restore a declined prod (other than a sticky BLP prod) :D. So the article is now at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regeneration therapy. --RexxS (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank Rexx I remember just after I placed it and than changed to AfD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:32, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Now "Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached." --RexxS (talk) 01:31, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Medical applications of rebreather technology (recycling breathing gas)

I am looking for information on medical applications of breathing gas recycling. Can anyone point me to relevant sources and, if they exist, Wikipedia articles? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps anaesthetic gas scavenging? I couldn't find an article about it on Wikipedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, there is a basic article: "Scavenger system". Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:44, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood your question. (Closed) anaesthetic circuit is probably more relevant. Here is a web page. I couldn't find anything about it in Wikipedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Axl, your link is excellent. A pity we don't have the equivalent on WP yet. Unfortunately I am a diver, not an anaesthetist, and I don't have access to the references in the article, which would make it difficult to produce an equivalent. Nevertheless it gives me what I need to improve the rebreather article. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Fringe pushing at lotus birth

I just chanced across an article about a non-mainstream child birth practice, lotus birth, which was in the state of an incredibly tendentious fringe-pushing advocacy screed due to what appears to be the years-long work of a single-purpose account [5]. Since I couldn't find any old edit unaffected by this advocacy campaign all the way back through 2006, I pulled the emergency brake and stubbed the article back to a one-sentence stub. Competent help in reconstructing it would be appreciated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems quite extreme. I'm not sure if such an emergency stubbing was necessary. There are plenty of books on the subject and the article had references. a dramatic pruning - yes - but a 1 sentence stub (and a claim of no sources, when you didn't even copy over the sources that were cited) - is not very fair. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, feel free to rebuild, with whatever of the sources may have met WP:MEDRS. I did not have the time to go through the article and check what was salvagable in detail, but I do maintain that temporarily having only a one-sentence stub (or indeed having no article at all) will be better than having the article as it was when I found it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Wait, why would all sources have to meet WP:MEDRS?? The older version of the article I read was just as much about the social practice as it was the medicine. If medical claims are being made, I understand a higher standard, but not for all claims in such an article. "I did not have the time to go through the article and check what was salvagable in detail," - then revert to an older version, don't just ice the whole thing... Or, if you don't have time, start a discussion on the talk page. Do you realize this page has been around since 2004? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't need a discussion to determine that the article in its present state was unacceptable. Yes, I know the article has been around for a long time. Which makes things worse. The alternatives at this point are simple: (a) have a newly written, neutral article (best solution). (b) find an old revision in the edit history unaffected by the POV-pushing and revert to that (perhaps an acceptable solution). (c) have only a one-sentence stub (not very good). (d) Leave article as it was (completely unacceptable). Hence, the article after my edit is better than it was before. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:57, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, not sure that it's entirely fair to characterise this as the work of an SPA, but it's clearly problematic. The broader rubric seems to be feminist anthropology, though xhe has edited most extensively around childbirth-related topics. It might be best though if an admin with more obviously clean hands were to review the block. "Seen to be done" etc. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:03, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• According to stats.grok.se this article gets about 27,000 visits a month, which is rather popular. Evidently a lot of people are seeking advice on this topic from Wikipedia, and I imagine that some of them are wanting health advice about whether to do this. I agree that health claims in this article ought to comply with MEDRS guidelines and that any cultural critique ought not be presented here as a medical claim. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:45, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed rewrite of Premature ejaculation

A new Wikipedian, Michael Castleman, has asked for comment at Talk:Premature ejaculation#Replacement of most of the current article. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

So far, only Anthony and Zad have commented here, and a few more comments would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

James Cantor has worked some of Michael's suggestions into the article. Michael comes back from vacation on 12 May. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:41, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Keratosis & Hyperkeratosis

Are these terms not interchangeable? Lesion (talk) 12:22, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. The fact that there is a condition called hyperkeratotic actinic keratosis pretty clearly indicates that they aren't. As I understand it, hyperkeratosis is a thickening of the skin due to excess keratin, whereas keratosis is the appearance of horny keratin patches on some part of the skin. It's certainly true that our articles ought to clarify the distinction, though, if it can be properly validated. Looie496 (talk) 14:32, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Looie is correct. They are closely related words but not exact synonyms. Rarely the term "keratosis" is even used to describe a non-hyperkeratotic condition (for example keratosis pilaris atrophicans). --My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Would you be able to add a sentence explaining this? Is keratosis more of a clinical description and hyperkeratosis a pathologic process?

Here is a definition of hyperkeratosis I found: "an increase in the thickness of the keratin layer of the epithelium, or the presence of such a layer in a site where none would normally be expected" So one meaning of hyperkeratosis could be "normal" keratinizing epithelium (i.e. doesn't necessarily look thickened/altered color to the naked eye) developing where normally there should be nonkeratinizing epithelium? I'm trying to understand these terms as they are applied to mucous membranes rather than skin, which may be part of the problem. Lesion (talk) 15:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hyperkeratosis may be pathologic or nonpathologic (for example, as with thickened skin over the knees in someone who works down on them all day (like a construction worker who installs carpet)). Strictly defined this is due to thickening of the stratum corneum in the skin and, therefore, does not occur on mucous membranes (often I see leukoplakia used an alternative descriptor for a similar phenomenon in the mucous membranes in which the stratum spinosum is thickened (and my understanding is that leukoplakia is always pathologic (even if the etiology is unclear in any given case), just FYI). Keratosis is always pathologic, and it has been used to describe cutaneous conditions of the skin (example, actinic keratosis). A keratosis may also be due not just to thickening of the stratum corneum (as with hyperkeratosis), but also proliferation of the stratum spinosum. I am not sure if keratosis has be used to describe any conditions of the mucous membranes (maybe check The List). I hope that helps. ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 18:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Would it be good to include an allied definition of hyperkeratosis on that page for how the term is used on mucous membranes? (e.g. similar to the definition I quoted above). It is probably the case that oral medicine/oral pathology have bastardized these originally strictly defined terms from dermatology. Certainly several oral medicine/oral pathology sources seem to use keratosis and hyperkeratosis to mean exactly the same thing, and certainly several oral lesions have "keratosis" within their name. Indeed oral white lesions generally are sometimes termed keratoses. In oral pathology, I am fairly sure that thickening of the prickle cell layer/stratum spinosum is called acanthosis rather than hyperkeratosis...but some of the sources state that acanthosis can be a cause of leukoplakia, or more usually hyperkeratosis. It is v confusing, and I think some of my sources may be confused too.

While I have your attention, could I ask your opinion about rete peg. I understand this to be the mucous membrane equivalent of dermal papilla, but not sure if is correct to merge. Thoughts? Lesion (talk) 19:08, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

These are two different structures you are referring to. Rete ridges (aka rete pegs and rete tips) are epidermal thickenings that extend downward between dermal papillae (which are the upward extension of the dermis). These two structures interdigitate to bring the epidermis (rete ridges) and dermis (dermal papillae) together, between which the two layers interact through the basement membrane zone. All of this is found both in the skin and mucous membranes. ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 01:31, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, didn't realize this. Rete rigdes- extension of the epithelium, dermal papilla- extension of the lamina propria. I'm reading now that sometimes the extensions of the lamina propria in mucosa are called connective tissue papillae instead of dermal papillae, since the connective tissue/lamina propria is also not termed dermis and the epithelium is not termed epidermis in mucosa...

I've done some more reading about hyperkeratosis and mucosa. Keratinizing mucosa does contain a stratum corneum and a stratum granulosum (and therefore the dermatologic definition of hyperkeratosis can occur keratinizing mucosa). Non-keratinizing mucosa does not have a stratum corneum or a stratum grnulosum, and often the the prickle cell layer/stratum spinosum is instead termed the stratum intermedium and the stratum superficiale. For hyperkeratosis to occur on non-keratinizing mucosa, the dermatologic definition is insufficient. Looking at some popular dental dictionary entries for "hyperkeratosis", we have "an excessive formation of keratin (e.g., as seen in leukoplakia)." (Mosby's) or "Thickening of the horny layer of the epidermis or mucous membrane." - not a great definition since as you pointed out some mucosa shouldn't have a stratum corneum in the first instance. I personally prefer a definition I got from a textbook that I quoted above: "an increase in the thickness of the keratin layer of the epithelium, or the presence of such a layer in a site where none would normally be expected" which allows for the term to be used even on normally non-keratinizing mucosa. So if no-one objects I will add this definition and a short note explaining it to hyperkeratosis, as and allied definition to the dermatologic one. Lesion (talk) 15:18, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Leukoplakia

Recently reworked the above article, but there are a few related issues remaining:

1. this article now nearly totally focuses on oral leukoplakia. A few sources (notably the ICD-10) state that leukoplakia can occur at other gastrointestinal mucosal sites, from oropharyngeal to anal mucosa, and also may occur on genital/urinary tract mucosae. If someone knows anything about "extra-oral" leukoplakia, it would be good to have sections on these other locations of leukoplakia in case of undue weight.
2. Acquired dyskeratotic leukoplakia. Is this a real subtype of leukoplakia, or even a notable synonym to be included? I am not sure since there is only one pubmed result from 1988 [6], and no modern source has used that term that I have come across. It might be better to exclude it from the article entirely. I have also nominated that single sentence stub page for deletion on grounds of notability, but again I am not 100% sure this is correct. Comments requested here please. Lesion (talk) 18:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding point 2, the phrase "acquired dyskeratotic leukoplakia" was the descriptive diagnosis in a single case. Although the paper has been referenced,([7]) a description of features in a single case with no deeper characterization of the underlying pathophysiology is not particularly notable. The little weight it received in a dermatopathology textbook gives a pretty good index to the weight Wikipedia should give it.Novangelis (talk) 18:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. Yes sounds like there has only been a single reported case of this, and further it is not synonymous with oral leukoplakia since multiple sites are involved. Sounds almost like a historic misdiagnosis of something else. Agree not notable for its own page, and perhaps redirect to leukoplakia is inappropriate too... Lesion (talk) 20:10, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

References for Leukoplakia of the Bladder. There are also several older references to leukoplakia of the portio or vulva such as here. There are also several articles that describe leukoplasia in Barrett's esophagus Ochiwar (talk) 22:31, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for these links. Some papers are primary source, but it confirms that there should be sections included in the article coving other sites of leukoplakia. The review paper/case report that this ref list is from is this I think: [8] which maybe can use. I've started 2 of these sections. It would be good to know if:

1. the term leukoplakia is common use for white patches on other mucosal sites, or is it a largely historic term? As you pointed out some of these refs are a bit old for WP:MEDDATE. This textbook from 2007 has a short section on "esophageal leukoplakia" [9] that does not use "eseophageal leukoplakia" as a historic term, but here "bladder leukoplakia" is described as a historic term [10].
2. Is the definition of leukoplakia of other mucosal sites similar to oral leukoplakia, i.e. does it refer specifically to idiopathic white patches or to white patches of any cause?
3. Is leukoplakia of other sites rare? This might help to decide how much weight to give it in the article. The above source for example starts out by saying that esophageal leukoplakia is rare.
4. Does the terminology that has developed with oral leukoplakia (homogenous, non homogenous, proliferative verrucous leukoplakia, etc apply to leukoplakia of other mucosal sites?

Suspect there are no general answers to some of these Qs and it's a mixed up, confusing mess of non-standardized terms and definitions, and contradicting opinions, as usual =D Lesion (talk) 15:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

"Psychos"

the usage of Psychos is under discussion, see talk:Psychos (TV series) -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 00:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

My Clinical Trial Locator

http://myclinicaltriallocator.com has been described as a potential alternative to http://clinicaltrials.gov/. I am not convinced, but thought I'd mention it here anyway. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 08:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Medical English students starting articles

My medical English class are starting their final projects, articles for en.wiki either 600 (min) or 1200 (min) words long, depending on whether it is being done alone or in pairs. I created sandboxes for these projects so that we do not have conflicts. I have worked to explain WP:MEDS guidelines on sources and believe we are following these (they did annotated bibliographies first). We could use whatever time you may have to browse through the articles in progress and give feedback, especially as to the content as Im an English teacher, not a doctor. The sandboxes are set up here for the two groups User:Thelmadatter#Medical_English_Spring_2013 Thelmadatter (talk) 17:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

When do they have to turn in their projects? JakobSteenberg (talk) 17:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Here you say that the projects are on en.wiki but on your userpage you have the project listed as an effort to translate English to Spanish. Could you clarify what is happening? Thanks, I want to support this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

For background, it's worth investing 20 minutes to watch Leigh's presentation at Wikimania 2012 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-Gp4A3G8E (starts at 31:56) where she talks about her goals and methods. Her submission is documented at http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Experimenting_with_Wikipedia_at_a_Mexican_university as well. --RexxS (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Side comments

600 words is quite a lot of content, specially for foreign-language students. This usually ends with students creating tons of not really relevant text, not really well sourced content. For 600 words they should actually use( and previously understand) around 20 references (rough estimation), and 20 secondary refs in English for a Spanish speaking person is really a lot (I am Spanish and not a doctor, so I know what I am speaking about).

Moreover: most of the articles you have proposed are in line with other educational assingments were they create really secondary topics that serve nothing more than to end in the dark corners of the wiki and nobody ever updates again...

A proposal: get the students to improve the referencing and content of the parent articles of the ones you initially proposed them to writte. So for example instead of creating Efforts to change the obesity in Mexico, improve Obesity in Mexico, which is actually already absolutely abandoned, very very low importance and very very low quality.Instead of writting nutrition transition in Mexico they could wikify nutrition transition, add further references and include a section for the Mexico case. Instead of creating Parkinson's disease gene therapy put them to improve parkinson's disease clinical research; a very badly sourced article with multiple issues... Otherwise some of your content may face deletion and any other content will be simply lost in the 4m articles on enwiki. I would also recommend that you halved the number of words and on the other hand doubled the effort in the use of sources and quality of text.

Bests.--Garrondo (talk) 20:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it's more of a translation effort: User:Thelmadatter#Articles_being_translated_from_en.wiki_to_es.wiki, unless I'm missing something. Biosthmors (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that Garrondo's source-length calculation is valid. Thyrotoxic periodic paralysis is about 1,600 words and has only 13 sources—and half of those are citations to historically important primary sources, not "real" sources. If an FA can be that length with basically six sources, I don't see any reason why someone couldn't write half as much with only a couple of good sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

As far as I have understood it has both aims: translation and writting (which makes sense in a medical English course). See User:Thelmadatter/Sandboxes_Group_1 and User:Thelmadatter/Sandboxes_Group_2, and above he asked for help with the second aim. --Garrondo (talk) 06:47, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Regarding number of sources and words: my message is that maybe writting 600 words for foreing students on highly technical topics in medicine may be too ambitious. Even if it is not maybe the topics chosen are not the best and maybe instead of centering efforts in increasing quantity in non-existing articles it would be more interesting for both his students and the encyclopedia to center efforts in improving quality in already existing topics. --Garrondo (talk) 06:47, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

There have been two assignments for the semester. One was to translate an article from English to Spanish, which has been completed. What we are doing now is creating new articles. I tried to steer students to doing biographies and articles about medical institutions, primarily because these are topics I can (more easily) give feedback on. I did not go for improving articles because articles from scratch are easier to assess and make sure that students are doing the kind and amount of work needed to get something out of the assignment. I dont agree that 600 words is too ambitious as that is not even enough to do a decent biography of many, if not most, notable people. These are final projects for the semester. Our last class is May 8, but I can extend that for a few days afterwards for those who need the extra time. So they have over two weeks. I had them do an annotated bibliography to get them to assess their sources, making sure they had information and avoided primary source information. This week they are starting outlines. The one about the embryonic germ disc is problematic because the student jumped ahead of the game, writing something I have a very hard time understanding and when I looked around the web to figure out what he is writing about, I found germ layer which seems too similar.

A number of the selections are quite good... San Hipolito Hospital, video games for training surgeons, smallpox in Mexico are all topics that can be researched well within the guidelines and I can easily give feedback on. Its the highly technical topics that are problematic. Thelmadatter (talk) 13:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

@Garrondo... The articles are in sandboxes and some of them may indeed be merged into existing articles as you suggest rather than into their own articles.Thelmadatter (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Biographies and organizations like Red Cross of Mexico would certainly be easier than writing an article on a truly technical subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

"I did not go for improving articles because articles from scratch are easier to assess and make sure that students are doing the kind and amount of work needed to get something out of the assignment." The problem is that what makes life easier for you and the students (self-contained piece of work) makes life harder for us (deletion/merge discussion followed by merge into existing articles if required) and stressful (articles nominated for deletion perhaps). It also goes against the whole purpose of the site, which isn't distinct articles written independently and as a one-off, but a hyper-linked collaborative encyclopaedia where existing material is improved as well as added to over time by multiple authors. This approach has a tendency to create tangential orphan articles that become abandoned, repeat existing material, confuse the reader and builds up a debt of rationalisation/re-organisation. But you are not alone in this approach and working out how students can improve the encyclopaedia rather than just add bits (of varying quality) to it is a hard problem. If you can consider how you might in future set assignments that build on and are incorporated into existing articles, it would be wonderful, and worth sharing with others. Colin°^Talk 12:10, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

While I understand your point of view as a Wikipedian, the kind of modification work you request would require a committed response/help from the community, especially WP:MED as you have more requirements than the rest of Wikipedia. Education projects are based on article writing, not collaborating with other Wikipedians because there is no way to assure that volunteers will collaborate at all, never mind within the time constraints of a course. Please see [11]. For this reason and the others I stated, it is impossible to do the kind of work you request. The sandbox concept exists because of some of the problems you state. It allows students (and others) to develop articles apart from the mainspace and to put it there when it is good enough,avoiding deletion. there is no guarantee that the work being done in the sandboxes will wind up in the mainspace, although that is the goal. It depends on how well the students do.Thelmadatter (talk) 16:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

What you are proposing seems likely to do good and unlikely to do anything bad, so I support your effort and am grateful for it. I would give any professor this support, but I am especially pleased with you because I am aware of the time you have spent coming to understand the community structure here.

I cannot promise that Wikipedians will ever support this class or any other but I can promise to promote your future classes if you want more community review, and I can say that I think that it is likely that you would get support if you wanted it. You are currently hosting your class on your userpage, but we actually have automated templates for professors which are intended to make it easier for them to monitor all the students' work and to allow Wikipedians to support the class. This board would be very positive about supporting your class if your class wanted feedback or technical assistance, and there are other dependable processes for seeking community review also. I would be interested in tracking your successes because professors promoting health topics in multiple languages are very aligned with Wikipedia goals.

I really appreciate your interest. Your translations are invaluable and your classes new articles are almost certainly much better than the new articles coming from any other source. I would like to see you continue to manage your class's Wikipedia project as you like and feel very welcome and appreciated to do so. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

My main concern is not the collaboration but that these assignments are focused on new articles only, because it makes marking easy. I don't think this is scalable and is already leading to problems. As you point out, some of the Education Programme material encourages this thinking. I don't agree with it. Colin°^Talk 17:57, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Creating articles that don't exist, but definitely should exist (like an article over one of the biggest medicine-related charities in Mexico, which is proposed for this class) is not going to make anything difficult for us at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

What is your point, WhatamIdoing? What you've said may be factually true for that article, but doesn't change the point I'm making. Garrondo's suggestions have been rejected apparently because they make marking harder and the assignment scope harder to define. The Obesity in Mexico example is a no-brainer and is an Afd/Merge waiting to happen. Colin°^Talk 21:50, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Most of the articles in this case aren't likely to get merged or deleted, including Obesity in Mexico, which is definitely not a candidate for a deletion/AFD. We've already got 26 articles in Category:Obesity by country. If someone wants to have a go at writing a better version of one of those in his sandbox, then that's okay. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

(outdent) Re-read Garrondo's post above. The existing article is Obesity in Mexico. The proposed one is Efforts to change the obesity in Mexico. In addition to the three of Garrondo's examples, we also have

• Embryonic heart vs Embryology of the heart
• Management of HIV/AIDS vs HIV Treatment Guidelines
• Liver#Cell types vs Liver Cytology
• General medical examination vs Well-woman examination
• Microcirculation vs Capillary exchange
• Add to Parathyroid gland or Organ transplantation before creating Parathyroid transplant surgery
• Human embryogenesis vs Embryology development of the first month
• Add to Serious game before creating Serious games for surgery
• Various articles deal with smallpox in Mexico vs Introduction of smallpox in Mexico
• Inner ear#Embryology vs Ear embryology
• Nicotine withdrawal already exists
• Arguably Medical student needs its own article even before creating Stress in medical students.

I think the case is strong that all these proposed articles either repeat existing content or would have been better added as new content into existing articles (first -- with the creation of new material only when it gets too much for the parent article). There are certainly deletion/merge discussions pending if these were to be created as new articles. Colin°^Talk 06:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Moreover: while anybody is free to choose the articles they want to improve I always thought that one of educational assingments aims was to receive feedback from other editors. This is harder the darker the article so if less obscure subjects are choosen collaboration from other editors is likely to increase.

On the other hand I hope my comments were not taken as a critique. I said this specially since in this specific case the educator was an experienced wikipedian, so I thought he is fully qualified to fullfill both his educational efforts and improve a bit more the encyclopedia with only a slightly bigger effort.

As a consensus proposal for this term or other future terms could be that students wrote the specific articles as subsections of already existing articles instead of separated articles. If I were the instructor (which I am not, so take this with a grain of salt) I would give this 75% of the final marks, with the other 25% given to improving the already existing parts of the article, including a summary of the section in the lead, and even creating a single summary sentence that would be integrated at an even more general level. In the specific case of Obesity measures in Mexico: in this case I would specifically write the article inside Obesity in Mexico as a subsection, wich would be 75% of the marks, the other 25 would go to improving the overall article (which would be easily done with references used for the specific section) and I would even create a single sentence to include in the Obesity article if adequate.

To end I only want to strain that I admire the courage of educators (and specially this case, where the teacher knows wikipedia ways), that this was only a proposal for getting the best from the assingment both for the students and the wiki, and that as an Spanish editor interested in medicine the teacher can count with me to comment on students articles, whichever they finally are.

--Garrondo (talk) 07:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

For now, I will have students continue working on their articles in the sandboxes. As they are short (600 or 1200 words depending on if done alone or in pairs), we may very well wind up simply adding the information into currently existing articles. Nicotine withdrawal is being rewritten and expanded. Microcirculation and embryonic heart can certainly fall into that category too. I may well be an experienced Wikipedian but Im not a medical professional. My med English students are Wikipedia novices. While we did what we could to avoid the same topics under different names, obviously we are not perfect. As I am seeing how the obesity article is shaping up off wiki, it is likely his information will be merged to the already existing article (probably by me). I disagree with the assessment of the smallpox article as its introduction in Mexico had very significant historical consequences. I believe the well-woman exam deserves its own article. If we can have an article on Bullying in medicine I think we can have one on stress in medical students. The serious game article is already long enough, another 1,200 words just on surgurical applications and nothing else (like flight training) would cause problems like WP:Undue. As a language teacher, I have to focus on the production of language. Simply adding citations or corrections does not meet the requirements of the course goals.Thelmadatter (talk) 02:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The approach of writing specific section is one I have also recommended at various places in all subjects. In the course of normal development, those that can be expanded into articles will sooner or later be expanded. I have similarly recommended in all applicable subjects writing biographies or articles about organizations. Choosing narrow subjects has to be done carefully, and it is probably a good idea to get feedback before the students starts work on them. Of the ones listed, I think Parathyroid transplant a perfectly viable topic if there is enough material: other organs have analogous articles, and the material would be buried in am ore general article. I understand the special point about the introduction of smallpox to Mexico, but wouldn't it be better to do it as Smallpox in Mexico, even if only the introduction of the disease is substantially discussed, for it could then be expanded to cover the eradication, etc. ? The Human embryogenesis is very unbalanced: after some general considerations, it then mostly talk about the initial stages. I would not suggest students try to reorganize to such an important general article, but I think articles specifically on the first trimester or the first month both valid and necessary topics. Meanwhile, someone experienced enough should do expand the existing general article to include a chronological description. The one thing not to try for a school project is reorganizing or writing a long general article. The parkinson's disease clinical research article is as mentioned very defective and wrong in tone. Doing it right is a project for someone with extensive experience here who can as a secondary factor understand the material on the subject. If a student were to work on this, I' d think they would do much better writing a part of it such as gene therapy separately than to try to add something to such a poorly constructed article. (Since Parkinson's is I believe one of the key earlier prospective conditions for gene therapy, I think we need the specific article. On the other hand, some of those first mentioned are indeed duplicates, and shouldn't have been undertaken as such. There are many ways to do things right, and equally to do the opposite. DGG ( talk ) 18:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Uploading of articles

Almost all of the articles have been uploaded in the past couple of days (and boy am I bushed!). The lists can be found at the two groups' sandbox lists User:Thelmadatter/Sandboxes_Group_1 and User:Thelmadatter/Sandboxes_Group_2. The articles were uploaded first into the sandboxes then moved or merged into new article space or used to expand short articles. Most need clean up work and all need to have wikilinks (I did not require them), but all in all they are not too bad. Ill put up a direct list tomorrow. A number of the suggested changes were indeed made as we developed the materials.Thelmadatter (talk) 21:50, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I have a list up at [12] in outreach wiki. Those with a link to the article are ones which I have gone over and made changes.Thelmadatter (talk) 18:00, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit requests on medical templates

Greetings - an IP editor has recently posted requests for edits on two semi-protected templates: Template talk:Virus navs and Template talk:Influenza. The basis of the request is that the abbreviations at the ends of the templates are confusing and that the abbreviations should be expanded. I'm not familiar enough with this topic area to really help here. Can someone please take a look and respond? Thanks! --ElHef (Meep?) 22:04, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The Template:Virus navs is only used as a child of Template:Influenza, so there's only one fix needed in practice. I've suggested a replacement for Template:Virus navs at Template talk:Virus navs but more opinions would be helpful. --RexxS (talk) 02:01, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

It's also a child of the main Template:Virus topics, which is used on almost all virus articles. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Please do not make any changes to this template without a much wider discussion. All of the medicine-related templates have a similar linking scheme, I believe created mostly by User:Arcadian. Take a look at Template:Medicine navs. There are 36 medicine navigational box footer templates, which are used on hundreds of other templates and thousands of articles (and probably most articles within the scope of this project). I'm not for or against any changes, but if any are to be made, they need to be made in the context of all medicine navigation templates and kept consistent across all of the templates. --Scott Alter (talk) 02:27, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't intending to make any changes, but I did want to have the discussion. How (and where) do you suggest we go about having it? There are two complaints about unintelligibility at Template talk:Medicine navs dating back to 2010. --RexxS (talk) 05:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

It's completely insane to use unintelligible abbreviations when there are plenty of electrons for actual English words. EJM86 (talk) 02:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's what I did on Template:Virus navs and here's what it makes Template:Influenza look like. Any objections to doing the same with everything else in Category:Medicine navigational box footer templates? EJM86 (talk) 03:13, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted the change to the virus navs template. The edited version contained an embarrassing spelling mistake and the freeform text did not work visually in its context. However, I agree that the current version is pretty unintelligible and could do with a rethink. This discussion needs to be broadened to include WikiProject Viruses; I will notify them. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:29, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The spelling mistake should have been corrected, not reverted. The "freeform text" is actually a list and is not only more informative, but also more accessible than the present set of abbreviations. Are you seriously suggesting that:

Index of viral disease Description Virus classification Viral proteins Disease Systemic HIV and AIDS influenza Cutaneous Zoster Human papillomavirus Zoonotic Symptoms and signs Treatment Drugs antiretroviral DNA RNA Antibiotics

is an improvement on:

Medicine Virus (topics proteins classification) Skin conditions systemic diseases HPV HIV & AIDS Flu Chickenpox & shingles Other diseases Symptoms DNA virus antivirals RNA virus antivirals Antiretrovirals Vaccines

because if it isn't an improvement, you shouldn't have made the revert on those grounds either. --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Other problems are it appears to duplicate content in the main virus topics box (tho' that is linking articles, not templates); and pure text doesn't look right in the context -- it looks ragged and unfinished. One solution might be to simply delete it altogether (which is what I did in the Viruses portal, where I first encountered the problem). I'm not sure the current version is doing much more than providing a multi-coloured base bar. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting deleting them: the links to the other templates are helpful. But "cutn" as an abbreviation for skin conditions is just as utterly absurd and unhelpful to the readers as all the rest. These aren't even dictionary abbreviations; someone just made them up without any precedent or context. What's wrong with the way I had it? "Ragged and unfinished" in what way? I suggest that ragged and unfinished is several dozen steps up from utterly incomprehensible. EJM86 (talk) 01:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Tables summarizing section content

We have a table summarizing the first sections content in our Alzheimer's disease article as seen here [13]. The content is already dealt with in the text. Wondering what peoples though are regarding doing this more widely? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

My impression is that it should be a case-by-case decision. We want to be efficient and not redundant, but tables can help people digest prose and understand important concepts. Biosthmors (talk) 11:12, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

In the case with Alzheimer's disease, I really like. It simplifies and sums up what is equal to one - one and a half pages of text in the article. It is helpful, if I just want a quick look and would otherwise skim the text or if I read the text and needed to sum up some of the information I just read.

I agree with Biosthmors that it is a case-by-case decision. But in this case it works. There are of course the same pitfalls as there are with pictures: The table must be able to be understood without reading the text and the other way around. JakobSteenberg (talk) 11:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I have made some other tables. I am considering making more. In some cases the tables summarize article content and in other cases they share new content. Right now I am experimenting slowly to see what gets a response. In many cases I am not even making complete tables; I am just sharing what information I have and leaving empty spaces in hopes that someone else would share more.

• Statin#Adverse_effects
• Pap_test#Indications
• Drugs_for_acid-related_disorders#Availability_of_drugs
• Anti-diabetic_medication#Comparison
• Headache#Diagnosis_approach

Could I have feedback on these? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the Alzheimer's table, the only thing I dislike about it is that it is hard to see anything that links together the entries on a given row. I think tables can be very helpful to readers, but they ought not to be used unless the information has both column structure and row structure. Without row structure, you really just have a set of lists with an artificial structure imposed on them. (Note: It isn't clear to me whether there actually is a row relationship that I've merely been able to decipher.) Looie496 (talk) 15:48, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I also felt the same problem, so I changed it. This new format does not convey any parallel structure by rows, I hope, which this old format did. The source content is here on page 5. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:36, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you have an WP:ACCESS problem with your current designs. If you're going to provide a summary (which is not a bad idea for very long sections), then why not use a plain old list? Why not say:

Effects of aging on memory not diagnosable as Alzheimer's disease

• forgetting things occasionally
• misplacing items sometimes
• sometimes failing to remember names of things

Early stage Alzheimer's

• minor loss of short-term memory
• misplacing items and then forgetting the memory lapse
• deeper difficulty remembering recently learned information

This list is simpler to read, quicker to make, doesn't require you to have the same number of items for each category, and can be easily edited by anyone without knowing how to keep the table intact.

And if you really want to have a table floating on the right, then why not use a simple one? Why not this:

Classification	Characteristics
Effects of aging on memory not diagnosable as Alzheimer's disease	forgetting things occasionally misplacing items sometimes sometimes failing to remember names of things
Early stage Alzheimer's	minor loss of short-term memory misplacing items and then forgetting the memory lapse deeper difficulty remembering recently learned information

This kind of table doesn't have those checkerboard squares that make everyone wonder whether the items in a given row are supposed to be related to each other (which is almost certainly an ACCESS violation), it's a bit quicker to make, and it will be simpler to maintain. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, thanks a lot. I have no idea how the idea to do it the hard way got into my head. I will implement this later this week, but until then, I will pause and see if there is other feedback.

Let me reiterate all of this - WhatamIdoing is saying that the table code on the back end is unnecessarily confusing, which it is, and that there is a less complicated way of doing things. I agree to reformat tables such that people who want to edit them can do so without understanding the templates I used. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:36, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I think a straight-up-and-down stack-of-boxes or list format is, from the reader's POV, quicker and easier to decipher than the grid/box format. Of the two, I think a simple bullet list is the more readable - and probably is more accessable for those using text-to-voice screen readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

ADHD in GAN

ADHD has been nominated for good article as a psychology article (see WP:GAN#PSYCH) by user:MrADHD and asked for reviewers in the psychology project. Maybe somebody in the med project would be willing to review it since it is one of the most visited (the 23rd specifically) of the articles in the project. --Garrondo (talk) 19:45, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree it is an important article. I will provide a review but as I have contributed significantly probably should not perform the primary review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Doc absolutely feel free to jump in an provide review comments at the GA review page. Zad68 02:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Whoa 167 refs, that will take some time to get through. Zad68 20:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I picked up the GA review. Man, I'm a sucker. Zad68 01:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for picking it up! Biosthmors (talk) 00:06, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor is coming

The WP:VisualEditor is designed to let people edit without needing to learn wikitext syntax. The articles will look (nearly) the same in the new edit "window" as when you read them (aka WYSIWYG), and changes will show up as you type them, very much like writing a document in a modern word processor. The devs currently expect to deploy the VisualEditor as the new site-wide default editing system in early July 2013.

About 2,000 editors have tried out this early test version so far, and feedback overall has been positive. Right now, the VisualEditor is available only to registered users who opt-in, and it's a bit slow and limited in features. You can do all the basic things like writing or changing sentences, creating or changing section headings, and editing simple bulleted lists. It currently can't either add or remove templates (like fact tags), ref tags, images, categories, or tables (and it will not be turned on for new users until common reference styles and citation templates are supported). These more complex features are being worked on, and the code will be updated as things are worked out. Also, right now you can only use it for articles and user pages. When it's deployed in July, the old editor will still be available and, in fact, the old edit window will be the only option for talk pages (I believe that WP:Notifications (aka Echo) is ultimately supposed to deal with talk pages).

The developers are asking editors like you to join the alpha testing for the VisualEditor. Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box at the end of the page, where it says "Enable VisualEditor (only in the main namespace and the User namespace)". Save the preferences, and then try fixing a few typos or copyediting a few articles by using the new "Edit" tab instead of the section [Edit] buttons or the old editing window (which will still be present and still work for you, but which will be renamed "Edit source"). Fix a typo or make some changes, and then click the 'save and review' button (at the top of the page). See what works and what doesn't. We really need people who will try this out on 10 or 15 pages and then leave a note Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback about their experiences, especially if something mission-critical isn't working and doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

Also, if any of you are involved in template maintenance or documentation about how to edit pages, the VisualEditor will require some extra attention. The devs want to incorporate things like citation templates directly into the editor, which means that they need to know what information goes in which fields. Obviously, the screenshots and instructions for basic editing will need to be completely updated. The old edit window is not going away, so help pages will likely need to cover both the old and the new.

If you have questions and can't find a better place to ask them, then please feel free to leave a message on my user talk page, and perhaps together we'll be able to figure it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Correction: Talk pages are being replaced by mw:Flow, not by Notifications/Echo. This may happen even sooner than the VisualEditor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Atypical trigeminal neuralgia (Trigeminal neuralgia type II) with Trigeminal neuralgia

Comments requested here. Lesion (talk) 11:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Project Med Foundation

Hey docs and other science-y folks,

Just wanted to give you another update about the global non-profit we're working on called Wiki Project Med Foundation. It's goals are similar to WikiProject Medicine, but more globally and outreach focused. Ventures like partnering with medical institutions, universities, translators, libraries, and publishers are top on our list of what we're working on.

The first newsletter for the group will be sent out on Meta this week. If you'd like to sign up to receive a monthly update, please add your name to the list of interested folks here: Meta:WPMED#People_interested.

Best, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Chocolate and Nobel prizes

You might remember this paper published in NEJM last October showing that there is a correlation between chocolate consumption and nobel prizes. It is currently included in Health_effects_of_chocolate#Other_research despite the author admitting that the article is a joke. I've removed it twice and been reverted. There is a discussion here: Talk:Health_effects_of_chocolate#Chocolate_and_Nobel_prizes. Could someone take a look? Thanks SmartSE (talk) 15:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Tendentious edits concerning antipsychotic drugs

We currently have a new editor, Mandragua (talk · contribs), editing a number of articles on the "antipsychotic drugs are evil" theme. The edits are very far from neutral, and certainly don't represent mainstream opinion. The articles concerned so far are psychosis, antipsychotic, thought disorder, and frontal lobe disorder. The editor has also been doing numerous logged-out edits, from IP addresses that geolocate to northern Spain. There are strong indications of a battleground attitude, including accusing another editor of "terrorism" for reverting edits. Experience tells me that it will take action by multiple editors to get this problem under control. Looie496 (talk) 16:08, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, this is mandragua. It is not a question of representing opinion because irt is not opinion, all my edits are substantiated and unbiased. Thanks. I am not going to contact anymore. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mandragua (talk • contribs) 17:01, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I have now raised this issue at WP:ANI#User edit-warring at several articles concerning antipsychotic drugs. Looie496 (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Editor and accounts are now blocked. Thanks for reporting, Looie. Drmies (talk) 16:04, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I have fixed problems in one of the articles (Frontal lobe disorder).--Garrondo (talk) 20:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Project Med Foundation Newsletter, Ok to send?

Hi docs and folks,

We have our first report from the early months of building Wiki Project Med Foundation as a global non-profit focused on medical outreach. We have 70+ editors signed up as interested members on our Meta project page. I'd like to also message the English WikiProject Medicine participants, the signed-up members.

There's an easy link to remove oneself from future deliveries.

Objections, thoughts?

Here's the full newsletter, but the messaged version I would sent out is just a short summary with a link to the full version. Meta:Wiki_Project_Med/Newsletter

Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Just to be cear I'm wondering if anyone has any objections to sending out The Stethoscope to Wikiproject Medicine members? I think it's relevant and reasonable to do at least once, so if I don't hear back from anyone today I'm going to send it out. Thanks! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm active in the group and it seems prudent to wait until the organization defines how to become a member. This might be our only chance to do outreach this way, and I'd rather us have a clear path to official membership when we do. Biosthmors (talk) 18:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Whether to send it is first up to you and the rest of the board for the non-profit. When/if you all have agreed that you want to do this, then it's next up to us to decide whether it violates any policies here at the English Wikipedia. IMO a single "mailing" is not a policy violation on our end, so long as what's sent clearly distinguishes between "us" (WPMED here at en.wp) and "you" (WPMEDF, a separate non-profit organization with some similar aims and some overlapping membership).

I don't believe we've cleaned out our membership list for a long time, and you might find it useful to do that before trying to use it. We probably have a lot of inactive members listed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ossip Groth and links to reviews

As I understand it, Ossip Groth (talk · contribs) is working on a website database that is a collection of links to free reviews on certain subjects. Here and here is some background. I just felt the need to revert some additions of Ossip (they appeared to be malformated external links that were a bit spammy), but perhaps this project has a way of meeting WP:Elyes. Biosthmors (talk) 19:09, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the links I agree that they are not appropriate within the article. Maybe on the talk page? We have had discussions of creating a box containing high quality sources for the talk page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Since my edits are reverted, here is a sample linkout to one of my bibliographies to see what indeed it is: sample linkout BDOM --Ossip Groth (talk) 09:17, 10 May 2013 (UTC) The reverse part will be done, items from 1 to a - the yellow ones - are done, see this collection of my topics — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ossip Groth (talk • contribs) 10:20, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

So what is the point of this? I do not see its use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:28, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I am setting up the mysql matrix of bdom-.-wiki thesaurus compatibilities. Its no 1subject:1subject task because I have some bulk topics like this one on HIV which gives linkouts to 650 reviews and 30 wikipages including templates and lists. More typical is this one. I should make a firefox addon which grabs the actual wikipage url, transforms it into a bdom.php request which would give the bdom article or at least write it into a todo list for accelerated consideration. --Ossip Groth (talk) 22:44, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

So basically you are making an exhaustive list of review articles for a specific topic? How is this different than pubmed? Maybe it could go on the talk page if this is what it is? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Data are from Pubmed. (Non-PubMed tech. possible but not done so). The searches done are not forward searches - formulating a search strategy, running a search and selecting papers - this makes 10 small searches of 400 retrievals each per workday, 2000 workdays on the whole: Impossible. I am doing the reverse, from the monthly convolute of review/tutorial/meta, I select my hits by "Overall appearance" which means 25% on retrieval, then by tagging it to the appropirate terms and regularly, by expanding my thesaurus if things dont work. (Genome has 18k and I have 14k - things are lacking). Items are streaming-in continuous and the site is upped monthly. It is essentially to have the collection on a remote server to maintain data integrity, and to get an idea into a worked-out application to make it useful and acceptable to others. I have some topics which are default collections like Statistics or Structure Determination which reflect complex concepts, whereas most are like Adrenalectomy, only the latter theoretically applicable to forward pubmed - applied to TRPV4 which has 260 original articles without openness restriction. A further difference to pubmed is the fact that I am currently streaming-in (the bulk has only freefulltext[sb] flag) reviews from journals which do not give openness flags to pubmed but which are hybrid-open, indeed. You can see what I mean by running a simple pubmed search on www.kidney.de/sitesearch.php which gives 3 blocks of 150 results - "PubNeph", PubMed with freefulltext flag and the rest of pubmed - with a bulk of yellow boxes which tells me that things are free. By freeness restriction, I am in lag of data, I can predict openness on a hybrid journals behaviour and on funding-source, but I depend on pubmeds work on tagging the publication-type. I have no ideae how to integrate streaming datasets into wiki unless to bot up them individually; wiki doesnt frame-in things for good reasons, and I am too stupid to make a real bot - I tried a couple of years ago but I could only down-bot. I think it should be tech. possible to bot-up the whole dataset onto the articles disc page; I understand php, js and vb if someone has some sourcecode which handles the registrating cookies. People would try to add or, correctly, kill references, and a regular bot-up would be regarded as a reset therapy which is against the spirit of a free wiki resource. Dont know, a pretty-beutifully designed template box which would integrate the specified linkouts could be a solution but it could not reflect the streaming effects which appear when trying to match 40k of +1M wikipages to 14k of mine. I think that the art.disc page is an acceptable location to put in a pretty template which would do the BDOM-Topics linked to this article - linkout. (The php there checks a mysql which of my articles are similar to the wiki, with some small or vast content overlap). --Ossip Groth (talk) 09:31, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

COOL ! --Ossip Groth (talk) 09:46, 11 May 2013 (UTC) {{BDOM|14-3-3_protein}} Now as my template. --Ossip Groth (talk) 10:21, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

*Nephrology Review articles collection from the BDOM

I initially called it Metatextbook of Medcine but I have only setup the Nephrology Chapter. --Ossip Groth (talk) 10:44, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Nephrology Review Collection here it is ! --Ossip Groth (talk) 11:27, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

The advertisements seem a major distraction - a real turn-off. This seems promotional to me, without sufficient value to justify that promotion, so I don't endorse adding these links to WP. -- Scray (talk) 11:32, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Googleads make 500$ per 100k intended siteviews. The USSR/CCCP has gone. Full-job Creativity means retracting from dependent employment being worth 80.000€ p.a. in my case. It's a rule of thumb that such a task could not work in a neoliberal environment. But I have earned cash to do what I wanted to do, not to buy a second car, to walk around, or to enjoy any other convertibles. I am just making Bibliographies. Thats what I like. --Ossip Groth (talk) 12:52, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Let's stay focused on improving Wikipedia's content. -- Scray (talk) 12:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Dear Ossip Groth, that's not a Wikipedia article. That's a link farm acting as a front page to your own website. I've nominated the page for deletion, as you may have noticed. Qwertyus (talk) 11:34, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay I am lost. I still have no idea why we should add this link to Wikipedia. What is the point of this link? Ossip you should not continue adding it without clear consensus here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:36, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Opinions requested about facial pain pages

Wouldn't mind other opinions on some issues surrounding a few pages:

• Talk:Trigeminal_neuralgia#Proposed_merge_with_Atypical_trigeminal_neuralgia. "Atypical trigeminal neuralgia" I do not feel is universally accepted as a Trigeminal neuralgia subtype. I think that it can only exist as a category if the definition of atypical facial pain is narrowed. Some sources seem to treat atypical trigeminal neuralgia as a synonym of atypical facial pain. I feel the content from the current atypical trigeminal neuralgia page should be merged into either the main trigeminal neuralgia page. Or into atypical facial pain.
• Furthermore, I feel that the Trigeminal neuralgia page should follow international classifications like the International Headache Society (IHS) or the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP).
• Similarly the neuralgia page.
• The IHS and the IASP now prefer to use the term "Persistent Idiopathic Facial Pain" (which I've currently created as a redirect) instead of atypical facial pain. The ICD-10 still uses atypical facial pain, and I have one textbook that states it is still in common use by clinicians despite the naming controversy. Pubmed yields many more "Atypical facial pain" hits.

Opinions much appreciated. Lesion (talk) 20:27, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

NIH

A couple of us are spending a week at the NIH at the end of this month. Will be meeting with a number of groups there regarding how we can better work together to get high quality health content out to the world. A few ideas:

1. More images under an open license
2. Creating an automatic list of high quality reviews on the talk page to help people with sourcing
3. A Wikipedian in Residence at the NIH (it sounds like they are interested, are their any potential applicants among us?)

Do people have other suggestions? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Please ask them to require trial registration as a condition for indexing journals in MEDLINE. (This video has more detail.) If a medical trial wasn't registered with its protocol in advance, it shouldn't be published; if it was registered then the results should be available whether the outcome was positive or negative. This lack is the number one source of pharma industry abuse today. If the NIH threatened to pull MEDLINE indexing for journals that don't include this as a publication requirement, then it would be fixed overnight. Please be bold about this! EJM86 (talk) 01:55, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree completely. Will bring this up. But this of course only applies to experimental human trials not to review articles or other types of literature. Maybe we could ask if they could tag article to indicate this. Another useful peice of info is if the primary end points have been switched. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:03, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The quality of review articles on health topics is highly variable, and the NIH could address this as part of their public information mandate. As a reader, I see many primary publications that have a better-quality summary in the introduction than is found in the most recent review on the same topic. As a referee, I am often amazed by the low quality of the other referees' critique(s) of review articles (in fairness, they're a lot of work to review; doing so in detail is laborious because their scope is broad). The usual 2-3 referees may not be enough, and the lack of crowd-sourcing (post-publication) means that errors don't get fixed (the PLoS journals address this in a limited way by allowing comments). NIH-funded investigators have little incentive to publish review articles - they are given little or no credit by NIH study sections when assessing the productivity of an investigator, because reviews involve no experimentation. If referees of review articles were named (after the review process is complete, perhaps), that might make them feel more responsible for the content, and limit their temptation simply to suggest citation of their own publications (then 3 referees, plus the associate editor, might be enough). In summary: NIH needs to provide incentives to NIH-funded investigators (intramural and extramural) to publish and referee high-quality reviews; if they could encourage journals to handle corrections (e.g. through refereed edits, or some other mechanism) that would be even better. -- Scray (talk) 20:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem in rating a review is what the reader wants to know - it could be 5 lines of a Physiol-Rev or the XVIIth Receptor compilation in Pharm-rev, or how to eradicate h.pylori. Or the reader could be someone who heard the word electrospun and is in need of an introduction. A systematic review is somewhat complete like a 200pp HTA but unreadable by principle. The current PT qualifier has many options, but in the Reviews, it does not differentiate (e.g. systematic vs. narrative) but has some complementary options(Interactive Tutorial (207), Introductory Journal Article (24800), Lectures (5685), Meta-Analysis (38400), Practice Guideline (17500), Video-Audio Media (4200), Webcasts (277) Editorial (328k)- and Review (1759857)) as displayed here, which should be included in the official pubmed filter if one clicks "review". A bigger problem is to access 'the rest' - NOT review, e.g. to look at reviews from 2000 to current and all publications from 2012 to current. As I have immediately understood, the Review filter is exactly review[PT], there is no composite filter as proposed, and 'review' gives 2.1M, 'review' AND the filter only 1.7M; review[TI] is 241k, review[TI] and Filter only 135k, obviously these authors and journals think that these items are reviews... . Quite a lot of arguments showing the errors which are inherent in the cryptic and insufficient filters. Personally, I have my own medline application and it is by definition the best available, but users would trust the original. It is technically impossible to give a fair humanized rating system and a correct assignment of a review to its subclass i.e syst or narr, and such a task would lead to worse roc for the users who do not understand such a two-dimensional rating scale - rating field. Some roots of humanity lie in the equality of man, and I would not trust 1 or 5 star ratings - at least 3 or 4 would not differentiate at all. Knowledge would get lost for the researcher if PubMed would enable a hieroglyphic pseudointelligent rating system like google. Every collection of evidence has its own and equal worth and nobody should differentiate between 4/5 and the rest if the result should remain scientific valid - not basically informing. Last opinion is the fully consent on the idea that a good paper has a good introduction and a well-done compilation of the essential papers as the first references given. Should one set a PT 'review-like introduction' for exceptional introductions ? This is a way to proceed, but how to rate 4.000 papers a day ? Should one encourage people to write reviews, if you are excluded from science, you are not from fiction, or to let their brain generate really new output - I would say people should communicate their current opinion if they urge to do so, but they should not be urged to do so to rate-up in the funding rounds. This would lead to an explosion of hyperfractionated reviews, not 7200 G-protein-coupled receptors, each on its own... Some thoughts, its late-night now... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ossip Groth (talk • contribs) 00:22, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

If you're responding to my comment just above in this section, then it might help if I clarify that my comments were about the process of refereeing a manuscript (submitted as a review of a topic) prior to publication. I just can't be sure what you're saying, but I think you're talking about post-publication assessment; we seem to be talking about two very different things. Also, I did not mean to hijack Doc James' request regarding his visit to NIH - I was just suggesting that review articles could be a topic of discussion. -- Scray (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit request at Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Greetings all - an editor posted an edit request to the Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder article about two weeks ago and it has gone unanswered. The request is to add material to the "Controversies" section and includes multiple references. Apparently the editors regularly monitoring edit requests are ill-equipped to respond to this - could someone please take a look? Thanks! --ElHef (Meep?) 02:56, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I am doing the GA review of the article. The editor requesting it User:Grpryor3 looks like a school student doing the edit for an assignment. It looks like some form of that edit got into the article already. Also, the sourcing looks terrible - something from 1934 was used to support something talking about "modern cultures". I am probably going to complain about all of it when I get to reviewing it. Zad68 03:40, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

File:Chromosome location of CCDC113.gif

File:Chromosome location of CCDC113.gif has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 04:15, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It was not properly uploaded. It would have been trouble for me to fix it so I just uploaded it again properly. Next time use Commons:Special:UploadWizard and chose the option which says that the file was made by the US government and therefore in the public domain and available for reuse.

The page at User:Bene0143/sandbox looks great and could be merged to CCDC113 immediately. If you need help then let me know. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:44, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Antipyschotics

FYI, the disruptive editor mentioned above who edits antipyschotic-related articles appears to be back with a new account, User:Booklaunch, after the last two were blocked. See Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mandragua. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.2.194.57 (talk) 14:22, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Since links are not correct I cannot find discussions named, but it seems indeed that mandragua is back. This time he has edited Antipsychotic, Risperidone and Dopamine, filling them with OR and POV editions. Help is needed since it is a really perseverative user, and until he is blocked (and even then) he will continouly readd his texts.--Garrondo (talk) 14:48, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not 100% certain that this is Mandragua, although it very well could be. Mandragua's sockpuppets and IPs made exactly the same edits as Mandragua did. Booklaunch is editing the same articles on similar themes, but with different content. Unfortunately meatpuppetry is a real possibility for this topic. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the articles, and file an SPI request if the situation clarifies further. Looie496 (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The benefits of antipsychotics are controversial with the WHO reporting better outcomes for schizophrenics in developing than developed countries. Long term antipsychotic use was 16% verses more than 60% if I remember correctly.[14] Life expectancy is also 12 to 15 years less in those with schizophrenia which is primarily attributed to the side effects of the "new atypicals" including obesity and metabolic syndrome [15].

We know they have a small benefit in the elderly and a number of harms including shortened life expectancy / stroke and EPS symptoms.[16] They are thus not recommended treatments in this group. Two of them are the 5th and 6th most prescibed medications by sales in the USA [17] so there of course is a strong financial incentive to show them in a good light. The history is interested as the original antipsychotics were referred to as "pharmaceutical lobotomies" in a positive manner in the 1950s when these were still believed to "work" [18]. High dose antipsychotics were also used to "torture" political dissidents in the USSR. [19]. I will have a look... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It is widely recognized that antipsychotic drugs, especially the older ones such as chlorpromazine, have terribly serious problems, including very nasty, unpleasant, and long-lasting or even permanent side effects. The only excuse for using such nasty drugs is that not using them may have consequences that are even worse. Our articles already cover the negative effects, and there could probably be even more coverage of them. But basic policies such as NPOV and MEDRS still apply. Looie496 (talk) 17:11, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree completely and there are excellent references to improve these pages. Do we have a clear ref for "The only excuse for using such nasty drugs is that not using them may have consequences that are even worse." Of course when one says "may" it equally means "may not" but the sentence does not work as well. This 2010 Cochrane review on respirodone is a little more sedate in its conclusions [20]. And here is the review stating that the difference between atypicals and typicals is unknown [21] Doc James (talk · contribs· email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:21, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

By "consequences that are even worse", I mean things like walking down the middle of the road at night with no clothes on, as a schizophrenic friend of mine once did during a psychotic break. Whatever else they do, antipsychotic drugs acutely suppress psychotic behaviors of that sort. They allowed a huge reduction in the numbers of people who were long-term institutionalized. There is some controversy about whether it might be better to use drugs less heavy-handedly in hopes that the condition will eventually remit, but there is no serious dispute about the acute effect of these drugs in suppressing psychotic behaviors. Looie496 (talk) 18:07, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The WHO multi country study however gives pause regarding the long term benefits of antipsychotic treatment. And the comparison of risperidone with placebo by Cochrane looking at short term benefits also gives pause. To be a bit of a devils advocate lobotomies were also affect in decreasing these behaviors and tentative evidence supports antipsychotic use decreasing brain matter.[22] This statement "They allowed a huge reduction in the numbers of people who were long-term institutionalized" is also controversial. Having spent a few months treating people with schizophrenia in Vancouver most of them were in "supportive housing" and far from independent. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Dealing with the specific edits in question. In this [23] he refs [24] which is a 2007 systematic review. However his conclusion from it sort of misses the point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:50, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I do not think anymore that it is a sock. Attitude is clearly different, much less oppositional and edits seem to be more well intended. --Garrondo (talk) 18:39, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

We should probably move this discussion to the article talk page :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:01, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Further comments and help needed in the Antipsychotics article. I have explained several problems of last edits, but I cannot revert per 3RR. More eyes would be really useful.--Garrondo (talk) 21:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I really need further comments (in any sense) at talk page, since the editor feels I am in a personal crusade against him. He has just gone to Doc James talk page trying to get me blocked.--Garrondo (talk) 13:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I still happened to have that article on my Watchlist from Mandragua. Booklaunch may have a point, but the most recent edits didn't look like article development accurately reflect the best sourcing. I have removed the recent changes while discussion continues on the Talk page. Surely you do not have to worry about the request on Doc's User Talk. The best thing to do is just ignore anything not related to article content and let's use the Talk page and see what consensus develops. Zad68 13:36, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I was not worried of getting blocked, but since nobody expressed any opinion the feeling this editor had of being a victim of a personal persecution by me was being reinforced. Moreover I do not really have an opinion on his POV on drugs since it is outside my area of expertise, so in this sense, any direction the edits take is ok for me if MEDRS and NPOV are followed (Which was not the case right now). Thanks for the comments.--Garrondo (talk) 14:14, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes this users edits are not cool. Have weighted in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

virtual surgery, serious games for surgery, surgical simulators

One of my student's topics was the use of computer simulation for the training of surgeons. It is up as Serious games for surgery. Im reviewing it but I found a short article Virtual surgery. Another name the students found was "surgical similators" However, "serious games for surgery" comes up a lot more on Google than the other two, despite its perhaps less impressive-sounding title. Id like to see what the community thinks before I put the rewrite/merge onto Wikipedia.Thelmadatter (talk) 15:22, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest "Surgery simulator"—along the lines of "Flight simulator" and "Driving simulator". Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense. The new version is up under Surgery simulatorThelmadatter (talk) 15:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I nominated this article for "Did you know?" recognition because it is awesome. See here if you like. After a week or so check the pageviews to see how many people read it. I wish the best for your students - encourage them to nominate each other for Did you know if they want the attention. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:01, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

File:Multiple Normal Tissue Expression of A1BG.jpg

File:Multiple Normal Tissue Expression of A1BG.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 01:06, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Causes of autism

I've started a discussion on Talk:Causes of autism#Postnatal causes - are these even needed?, and more opinions would be appreciated. The causes of autism article as written currently is more of a catalog of proposals, especially in the postnatal section, where a lot of refuted ideas are given a large amount of space. So basically, is it worth giving things that aren't causes of autism their own sections in an article about the causes of autism? ComfyKem (talk) 14:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Videos from Science Museum, London

Hi All

I'm the Wikimedian in Residence at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London for the next few months, today the Science Museum released 3 videos about pain under an open license as a test to see how open knowledge projects can help them in their educational aims. I think they're really nice and hopefully will be useful.

--Mrjohncummings (talk) 22:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Some of the issues I have with videos is 1) the content is not easily verifiable 2) they are not easily edited by others. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:58, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is the sort of thing that you would add as an image in an article, or link under ==External links==. I looked at the first bit of the first one, File:Virtually Painless. Science Museum Painless Exhibition Series.webm, and it's an interview with a patient about his personal experience with phantom limb pain. It's not the sort of thing that needs to be verified or edited; it's not an encyclopedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I watched them all and like them all. James is correct - videos are not easily verifiable and the content is not easily edited by others, but I also agree with WhatamIdoing in that further verification is not necessary in this case. Since the videos are coming from the Science Museum, London and since that is a respected curator of science media, I trust the source as reliable and I am satisfied with these meeting verifiability requirements of being single accounts of health conditions each co-presented an expert and a patient. I do not think that these claim to represent all perspectives any more than any image in any article on a health condition represents all cases, but videos like these are an excellent attempt to present the subject matter of Wikipedia articles in a way that compliments the existing text.

I added these videos to the following articles:

• Phantom_limb#Phantom_limb_pain
• Twilight anesthesia
• Congenital insensitivity to pain

I can think of no rule to determine when videos are good or bad, but it is my opinion that these videos are ideal for inclusion into Wikipedia. They are high-quality, short length, and exemplify concepts which would be difficult to to communicate in any other way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:26, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

See the video at Dysthymia#External_links. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

John, would you consider putting me in touch with the producers of the videos? I'd like to learn more about what they're up to. (I both have an interest in pain medicine, and am very keen to see Wikipedia embrace video.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:20, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, yes of course, email me at Wikimedian@nhm.ac.uk and I'll pass you on to them, I'm meeting with them next week some time Mrjohncummings (talk) 11:00, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Kratom, neutrality issues

I came across this article doing some supplement research. The tone is ridiculously not NPOV, almost as if it was written by Kratom suppliers.. I don't have time to address it right now, but it seems like it needs some eyes on it and a solid cleanup. Thanks!!! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:25, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I worked on it a little bit and identified a few problem areas. You're right though, the article needs a considerable amount of revising.TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Neuroaid

is marketed as a stroke treatment. I have cleaned-up the article which seem to have a lot of poorly-sourced content - but medicine is not my core area so this could probably do with some wise eyes. (Cross-posted from WP:MEDRS.) Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 18:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks like mostly primary sources, mostly very weak and in some cases misquoted. Will have time too look in detail in 18 hours or so.Ochiwar (talk) 19:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The article has been cleaned up quite a bit by Garrondo, Biosthmors and myself. I am still a bit unsatisfied about the use and quality of references in the article and would like to make use of this case to learn a bit more about the use of medrefs on wikipedia. A specific example is this ref used in the article. This is basically the only study that ascribes any positive effects from the use of Neuroaid. The problems I have with this reference are firstly that it is original research and primary source (as are most if not all other refs in the article). Secondly (and more importantly) there is an obvious conflict of interest inherent in the study. Several authors of the study are shareholders and employees of Moleac which produces the stuff. At the time of the study David Picard was the CEO of that company and other authors where paid consultants (examples Marie Bousser and Christopher Chen) and/or shareholders. To quote the study itself under the section "Disclosures" (near the very end of the PDF)

. S.X. is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board and a shareholder of Moleac, which owns the commercial and intellectual property rights of DJ outside China. DP is a shareholder and an employee of Moleac. C.L. served as an employee of Moleac until July 2006

I had tried to introduce some of these facts in this edit of the article, but it was modified by Garrondo. In its present state the article does not adequately inform the reader of these important facts and associations concerning this study. Garrondo requires secondary sources for me to include such a warning in the text of the article but the information is contained in the reference itself (see quote above). To my understanding, it is rather the reference/study itself which is original research/primary source and not the self evidenced (and referenced) facts I added to try and put the claims into perspective for the average reader. My question here is that since the inherent conflict of interest is specifically declared in the study itself (see section Disclosure) would it not be pertinent for us to at least hint at this (to the understanding of the average reader) while using this study as a medref? Ochiwar (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

My opinion, although it could be discussed: there are many articles where a potential COI is stated, but it is only "potential", by itself it does not invalidate the article conclussions. If we say something in the line of "the article is not valid because there is a COI we are drawing our own conclussions and therefore it is a case of mild original research unless somebody else (a secondary source) has said that that COI is indeed probably invalidating the article. At most we could say something like: authors declared a potential conflict of interest since XXX. In this sense we are not drawing a conclussion since we are not saying that the article is not valid, but just quoting the content of the primary source. Nevertheless my personal preference is to not indicate the COI unless it is stated in a secondary source and explain succintly the conclusssions of the primary source using a secondary high quality source if possible, but if not using with GREAAAAAAT CARE the primary source. In this case I tried to explain with care the primary ref, using as help the commentary in the pakistany journal (secondary, but probably not peer-reviewed) you added, and eliminated your probably a bit POV edit on the COI. Opinions?--Garrondo (talk) 19:42, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

To my mind using such a ref with great care would include boldly mentioning a potential conflict of interest, for example in the way you suggested above. My intention is not to invalidate the reference but to let the reader know not to take the study at face value but to have a closer look before making conclusions as to the value of the study. The reader should be able to put the source into perspective. Your suggestion above: "authors declared a potential conflict of interest since XXX" or something along those line would do the job nicely. Ochiwar (talk) 04:24, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I would rather leave it without mentioning it per reasons above, but lets see if anybody else gives their opinion. I am not sure if there is any written policy in this sense.--Garrondo (talk) 09:07, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I avoid saying that a published source is "original research", because it's easy to confuse people here. "Original research" in the WP:NOR sense is something that Wikipedia editors must never do, but that our sources are freely permitted to engage in.

I think that the "debunking" effort was too much. We can't say that the neutrality of the study (another thing that sources aren't required to do) "may be questioned"; either it was, in which case you should cite it, or it wasn't, in which case we don't mention that. We could add a very brief mention of the authors ("In a paper published by several of Neuroaid's employees..." or whatever the facts support).

In general, I think that whole section needs to be revised and substantially shortened. Have a look at WP:MEDMOS#Writing style, especially this item:

Do not provide a detailed analysis of an individual study unless the analysis itself is taken from a published reliable source. Wikipedia should concisely state facts about a subject. It should not discuss the underlying literature at any length. Generally speaking, the facts will be found in the conclusions or results section of a study, not in the detailed methodology. Articles that rely on secondary sources are less likely to fall into the trap of discussing the size of a single study, its methodology, its biases, and so forth. Thus, "washing hands after defecating reduces the incidence of diarrhea in the wilderness", not "An uncontrolled survey involving 132 experienced long-distance backpackers on the Appalachian trail in 1997 concluded that washing hands after defecating reduces the incidence of diarrhea in the wilderness."

Keep in mind, too, that average people (i.e., not you) usually assume that the inclusion of methodology details like sample size means that we're trying to say that this is a good, trustworthy, fully scientific study. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the links especially the one on original research as it has helped me with the terminology and explains the distinction between original research and primary source. Yes I agree that the debunking attempt was a bit plump, but my fear is exactly that which you address in your last sentence: average people will think that we are saying that this is a good trustworthy, fully scientific and unbiased article, that is "sanctioned by wikipedia" unless we somehow make our reservations clear. To that effect, I have added a list of ingredients (and made them readable to the average person)to the article which I think puts the whole product into perspective very nicely (at least to the discerning reader). The list had been published by Moleac only in latin. I think I understand why because going through the list in english brings up associations of Snake oil in me. Anybody who knows what is in the stuff would probably look twice at any studies or references, I hope. Thanks Garrondo and WhatamIdoing for the explanations.Ochiwar (talk) 17:45, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wow. The current version lists "horn of an endangered antelope species" as an ingredient in this stuff. Thanks for your contributions. Biosthmors (talk) 18:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Preventive mastectomy article/topic

Simply alerting editors of this project who are unaware of this new article about surgery, considering that it was very likely created in response to Angelina Jolie's preventive double mastectomy (the article was created yesterday), the topic is getting a lot of attention right now, and there may be significant improvements editors of this project may want to make to the article. Flyer22 (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

IP 110.174.147.166 at Heterochromia iridum article

IP 110.174.147.166 has repeatedly added unsourced information and WP:Original research to the Heterochromia iridum article. The IP has been repeatedly warned about this, and blocked twice for such editing, including for edits to the Eye color article; see his or her talk page and this insulting section that he or she created on my talk page. The IP has very recently added a source to accompany the text that he or she wants in the Heterochromia iridum article, but it is poorly sourced and so I reverted here and here. Like I also noted, the IP is not above altering an image's description at Wikimedia:Commons just to add a WP:Original research caption for the image in the Heterochromia iridum article or elsewhere on Wikipedia. I don't know what else to do about this IP, except report the IP at this project for help in combating his or her edits to these articles. The Eye color article is already currently semi-protected because of this IP. Flyer22 (talk) 05:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The IP is also back to fouling up Talk:Eye color, which was recently semi-protected because of the IP. Flyer22 (talk) 05:28, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I've asked for PC protection of the article at RFPP and for semi-protection of the image at Commons. Either they'll agree and protect it, or they won't, but we'll find out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and for your revert. Flyer22 (talk) 06:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Pending changes protection was added, but there are likely to be some instances where the IP's dubious edits will be accepted through pending changes. So I'll still need help making sure that the IP's unsourced changes and WP:Original research stays out of the article. Thanks again. Flyer22 (talk) 07:17, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

That's a friendly comment. Suggest you direct them to wp:no personal attacks, which surely does apply to that. Lesion (talk) 13:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Proton therapy

Any thoughts on the costs section of the article? See this discussion, I appear to have stumbled into a minefield while checking out the contributions of a particularly bizarre IP editor. Graham87 12:12, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Medline plus

This has probably been discussed before, so apologies for not paying attention, but is medline plus an acceptable source? Especially when it seems that high quality sources (e.g. Cochrane) contradict some of the content...sometimes it seems that the task of writing a patient summary on medline plus has been outsourced to another organization, although usually these sound like mainstream, reliable ones. Lesion (talk) 13:43, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

All sources are reliable for something. A free, mid-quality website (like Medline plus or WebMD) can be useful to many readers, especially the ones (the majority) who are unable to access or even understand technical papers.

That said, if a mid-quality source is contradicted by most high-quality sources, then you should go with a better source. If it's just one high-quality source, then it's possible that the expert opinion is divided, or that there is new information in the field, and then you have to figure out DUE weight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I typically never use it as there are better sources. Is it acceptable, yes but barely. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:50, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem- if it is a problem- is that it is already used several times before I started editing the page. I think in this instance I will try to find better sources and see if I can remove it entirely as a source. Lesion (talk) 18:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes that is what I do when bringing an article to GA. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:05, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Axona

User:AxonaForAD has made some request for corrections in the article. Maybe there is somebody interested in answering here.--Garrondo (talk) 19:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I have it watchlisted... The editor has been pointed to WP:MEDRS. Personally I think the best course of action is just to wait until new article content is proposed, but feel free to reply. Zad68 19:21, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Megadose redirect

The above currently redirects to Megavitamin therapy. I thought megadose can be used to describe any medication given in very high quantities? Lesion (talk) 18:26, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

E.g. (albeit very short) list of pubmed hits with titles including the search terms "megadose steroids" [25] Lesion (talk) 18:31, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

New pages

TedderBot is back! See User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult to find new articles that might be medicine-related. Also, Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles is filling up again, if anyone wants to spend a while removing anatomy articles and assessing the rest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I am currently rating many anatomy articles on the importance scale and will gladly remove the WPMED banner from proper articles when I come across it, but... Is there a clear cut definition on when and when not an article should have both banners? I tried to look into this earlier, but came up empty. I know that the discussion have been brought up many times before but it seems to me that a clear consensus never been reached (so I abandoned the idea again). If such a consensus exists I will gladly remove unnecessary WPMED banners, when I come across them and maybe more important they (or some sort of guidelines) can be posted on WP:AN to reduce double work in the future. Does an article about an anatomy subject fall under WPMED if:

• If it has one or a couple of sentence about pathology or clinical relevance (Posterior tibial artery)?
• It has a clinical relevance section (Middle meningeal artery)?
• It has some sort of developmental biology or physiology section (Round ligament of liver)?

If someone could sort out these three examples for me, I could remove a lot (or few depending on the answers) of WPMED banners for you (I am pretty much just lurking on this side of the fence). Kind regards JakobSteenberg (talk) 12:38, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

No anatomy articles fall under WPMED IMO. Some of us here also edit anatomy articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:46, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that was easy (if everybody else feels this way). If none of three examples above falls under WPMED, then for my purpose it settles it (I got 951 anatomy stubs left to rate at the moment, so I can pretty much remove the banner when I come across it). But just to be clear; even articles about organs e.g. liver and heart are correctly labeled at the moment (only WPAN)? JakobSteenberg (talk) 13:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I have not seen those debates, and would like to hear more from Doc James or others regarding the "none" position. You (JS) have provided some great examples. The clinical content in those is potentially (and in some cases, currently) substantial. Do we advocate deletion (and prevention) of such content, or leave curating that clinical content by WP:AN editors? -- Scray (talk) 13:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

No we do not advocate deletion of any content and we are all free to be WP:AN editors and curate these pages. We need to draw a line somewhere. Lead of course has lots of medical content in it but it is not part of WPMED (Lead poisoning is). Breast would not be part of WPMED but breast cancer is. It keeps us a little more disease / clinical focused. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense, thanks. Agree. -- Scray (talk) 13:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I would very likely keep the leg artery, I might or might not keep the brain artery (the longer I think about it, the less likely it seems), and I would reject the ligament. Generally I keep both tags when the current article has more than a sentence or two about diseases, especially if the material isn't sky-is-blue obvious, but developmental biology or physiology generally doesn't justify a WPMED tag to me. On pages that are purely physiology, we're taking them largely because no WikiProject Physiology exists, and since WPAN is also taking these pages, then it isn't necessary for us to double-tag these partly-physio pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

What is your rationale for wanting posterior tibial artery double tagged and not middle meningeal artery? JakobSteenberg (talk) 17:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

How to find the pulse is an obviously clinical/medical action, and "stuff healthcare professionals do every day" is within our scope.

The second contains some obvious material (head injuries sometimes damage blood vessels in the brain: a good way to WP:Build the web, but not really news to anyone) and some information about research (the artery is easy to study in century-old dry specimens), which is not so much "medical-ish" as "research-y". This could go either way; I would probably remove it if I ran across it, but I wouldn't insist on it being removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Rads Wiki images at commons

I have found the following category at commons: Images from RadsWiki, consisting in radiological data. Images in this category are taken from radswiki.net. They are published under the following license:

The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the radswiki.net is properly attributed. Derivative work is permitted. Commercial use is NOT permitted.

Following this license, in which commercial use is not permitted, they should be eliminated from commons. I have gone to radswiki.net and it seems they are part now of radiopedia.org, in which content is not free. Anybody knows something about this? Some of these images are surely included in articles from the project, and they may have to be eliminated. Unless somebody knows or proposes anything I will contact commons for a mass deletion.

--Garrondo (talk) 21:51, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

OK: I found that this had already been discussed at commons: there was a license change, so images previous to that license change were kept. In that case something should be made about the license text. --Garrondo (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The person who runs rads wiki is also a Wikipedia. He has agree to allow us to use images on a case by case basis under a more open license. If there remains issues send me a note. I have a bunch of email releases from him for certain fills. Were other images deleted?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not really sure, it seems that does uploaded to commons after 2009. With those before 2009 they were kept, but the license thing should be changed: now they say that the cannot be used commercially, but it seems that before 2009 the licence permitted commercial use, and they were kept because of that. In such case license should state so. Nevertheless this is only what I have understood from a deletion discussion.--Garrondo (talk) 10:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Primary or secondary?

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11915652
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12569969

Could someone please tell me if these sources are primary or secondary? much appreciated, Lesion (talk) 12:23, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

An important consideration when making such a determination is, "for what claim?" That said, from the abstract of the Shankland reference I have the impression (with phrases like, "As a result of this study, it appears ...") that it is a primary report, so it's unlikely to be a secondary source for much of anything (it's also from a very specialized journal of low impact). Schwartz & Freund appears is a review article about the use of botulinum toxin for treating facial pain, but it's published in a supplement with the note: "Publication of this supplement was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Elan Pharmaceuticals, Inc". Elan Pharmaceuticals markets "Myobloc" (botulinum toxin). I would be cautious in using that. -- Scray (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

So even if these are secondary, they may be secondary sources which seek to advance a particular view, and I think I read somewhere that these kind of sources are bad =D. I'm really looking for a reason to remove these sources from the article rather than wanting to add them, and you make good arguments for their removal. I can get better sources for the content they support anyway, thanks. Lesion (talk) 13:51, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The second one is a perfectly good source unless there is some specific reason to think it doesn't reflect the mainstream of opinion. That doesn't mean you can't find a better one, of course. Looie496 (talk) 17:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't the possible conflict of interest highlighted above call the validity of the information into question? It was supporting at least some of the second paragraph of this section: Bruxism#Botox. There are Cochrane reviews, and few other reviews to hand... Lesion (talk) 17:56, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The first is primary; the second is secondary. It's perfectly fine for a source (primary, secondary, or tertiary) to advance a view. You may not advance your view. Sources may freely do so. In fact, some of the best sources are ones that advance a view, e.g., Cochrane Collaboration papers that are "advancing a view" that the subject they covered either do, or don't, have enough evidence to support a particular action. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:MEDRS#Respect_secondary_sources - yes, you are correct. Here's what I read/misread "Synthesis of published material that advances a position is a form of original research and should be avoided in Wikipedia articles" the advances a position refers to the action of an editor, e.g. cherry picking references that support their own view, and not to the sources themselves. I might actually read these policies fully at some point, but life just seems too short. Trial and error is not so bad either =D. Lesion (talk) 18:18, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

There are many great sources out there with a estatement of COI, and many more that even if they do not estate it it is out there (which is probably quite worse). I would say that unless 1it -contradicts another better source, 2-A secondary source states that this COI may be relevant in this case; the COI does not invalidate the source. When in doubt search for a better source (more recent and/or better journal) and see what they say on the issue, and if there is a contradiction follow both the better source and your judgement.--Garrondo (talk) 19:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Vagina article

So we just got through discussing the vagina in the #Human vaginal size article section above. I'm here about the vagina again because the Vagina article, a little earlier this hour, was significantly expanded with information about "the vaginal ecosystem." That information was first proposed as an article for creation (see Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Vaginal ecosystem), and then it was suggested that it be merged into the Vagina article. I need this project's help to determine whether or not some of this information should be removed because some of it is based on old sources that are far behind WP:MEDRS's Use up-to-date evidence criteria and because a lot of it is based on primary sources. I'll go ahead and do some heading and WP:REFPUNCT cleanup for the addition in the meantime. I first thought that the editor who added the information was a student, because, as a lot of you know, we've been getting significant expansions of sexual, medical, psychological and physiological topics from students (often times problematic expansions....ranging from problematic in a minor way to problematic in a big way or huge way), but now I'm not sure. Flyer22 (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

A link from the talk page to evidence

Pubmed allows one to sort literature into "review article" and "last 5 years" and "free full text". I am wondering what people think about adding something like this to the article talk pages to help our fellow editors find high quality sources? I have created a mockup for the talk page of gout. Ivo Varbanov (pianist)

From http://ivo-varbanov.com/about-me/short-bio/ There are a few issues that need to be address before possible rollout. While we can currently get a url that links to a specific top, we need to have the url also specify the filters. I will speak to the NIH about this. Would also need a bot. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:42, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Great idea! I think we can refine the links. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think the link at the end of line 2 assures the reader they'll get free full text (isn't it just a Pubmed search), nor does this provide much assurance of high-quality journals. Some options to consider including searching:

1. Pubmed Central for the same "gout" term: guarantees free full text results
2. Pubmed for "gout AND review[pt]": review articles on gout (not all full-text)
3. Pubmed Central for "gout AND review[ti]": full-text reviews (imprecise; I don't know whether PMC supports the Publication Type ([pt]) field)
4. Pubmed for "gout AND review[pt] AND jsubsetaim": this last flag limits the search to the Abridged Index Medicus, providing a limited but high-quality subset of clinically-oriented journals

Of course, any of these can be limited to a range of dates as desired (in Pubmed, could use 'AND "last 5 year"[dp]' - rather than using a specific range of years that will go stale quickly). The kernel of the idea is great. I think we should leverage PMC (with its full-text guarantee) and flags like "review[pt]" (need this for PMC) and "jsubsetaim" (would be great to use this in PMC, and if there were other lists that included a broader swath of high-quality biomedical journals). -- Scray (talk) 23:58, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Try this. --Ossip Groth (talk) 00:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

That page does not give me a list of free full text reviews that I can see. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:54, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Metatextbook of Medicine - Instructional Picture 05

Pic05 : At field (6), date and review filters can be set.

Metatextbook of Medicine - Instructional Picture 08

Pic08 : anything with funny colored buttons is free to download; slight blue only in germany. --Ossip Groth (talk) 16:07, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Have added search function for www.wikipathways.org; available since month is wiki en und de. All at (4) at maximum scrolldown. :) --Ossip Groth (talk) 16:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The NIH link is not clean yet. I'm working on getting the link to limit the search to "review" "last 5 year" and "free full text". The NIH wants to emphasis "systematic reviews" which are definitely the way to go for specific question but not as useful for writing certain aspects. Until we get a proper link this will not be ready to go. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:53, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I know of two projects doing this in other contexts. One is Template:Library resources box, which seeks to connect any given Wikipedia article to library resources. This proposal has the attention of Wikidata and WMF folks but still does not have community support. Another project is Wikipedia:GLAM/smarthistory, wherein external links to videos from a Khan Academy project are given special preference in Wikipedia articles. There are things that I like and dislike about both of these proposals. This proposal to have special talk page linking on health articles seems simpler to execute than those and a good idea presuming that people would find and use them, but I am not sure that users would. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:53, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

This is more for editor (I am not sure if that is what you mean by users). It is NOT to go in the article space but only on the talk page. The examples above appear to go on the talk page and thus appear to be for readers rather than editors. Not sure what I think about these. Not a big fan of adding ELs to videos.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:08, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Somebody at WP:WikiProject Philosophy was trying something like this, too. Unfortunately, he was trying it on category pages, which are not appropriate pages for external links, which isn't okay. You can see the template at {{Philosophy reference resources}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Figure out the pubmed link that goes right to reviews from the last 5 years [26] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:39, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting a problem with the PubMed results, James. I looked at the box at Talk:Croup and cross-checked the PubMed results with the Trip results. I wasn't expecting to get identical results, but I was expecting something similar.

PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Croup+AND+%28Review[ptyp]+AND+free+full+text[sb]+AND+%22last+5+years%22[PDat]%29&cmd=DetailsSearch) shows me 3 results that look very good, but Trip finds 70 secondary sources, which on inspection shows (as an example) a 2012 Cochrane review on "Glucocorticoids for croup (Review)" which I can see as full text. I agree that it's confined to one aspect of croup, but it seems too good to miss - in fact it's used in the article. I suppose there's a tension between getting a very precise set of hits from PubMed, which are going to be first choice, and a broader set of results from Trip that you have to do some work on if you want to expand the article. It certainly shows to me that Trip is a very useful alternative to PubMed and deserves its place in your template. Good work, by the way! --RexxS (talk) 01:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Cochrane is not free full text in my area of the world. The TRIP results also show none free secondary sources. SO yes some overlap but we should have both. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Progress

I have managed to figure out how to link directly to free full text review articles from the last 5 years automatically based on the name of the article in question. Examples are here Talk:Croup and Talk:Gout. I still need to fiddle with it to figure out how to get it to work for two work articles. Do people support this idea in principle? Would it be reasonable to apply it to all medicine disease related article talk pages / medication talk pages? If so we could look at a bot to put it there. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:55, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Have it working for multi word titles Talk:Streptococcal_pharyngitis Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:23, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support I think that's great and would support wide use in WPMED. I am surprised this isn't getting more comments; perhaps this thread has drifted too far up the page for folks to notice. -- Scray (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
• Template needs cleanup but Support the idea. Zad68 17:34, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Like Hold on this didn't get the recognition it deserves! Doc coded a new message box using WP:MAGIC! That's awesome! Zad68 17:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• I think this is a good idea and impressive work. I am new, but appreciate the effort and time put into this and would love to see it work.Ochiwar (talk) 21:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
• Impressive bit of work, indeed. It looks very useful. I'm not sure, though, that we want it to pre-ignore non-free sources. It has been a while since I last saw a discussion on FUTON bias. Have we come around to accepting the inevitability of bias for freely available sources? I wouldn't object, but I'm a bit surprised it got past me. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:44, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes agree. TRIP of course is both and I am about to adjust pubmed to also link to all reviews. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:53, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not a bias to look at free reviews first. It's about understanding who reads and contributes to Wikipedia and trying to start from a more accepting place. Just because someone came up with an acronym for a provocative hypothesis doesn't make non-free reviews better. Generally for any established topic I have trouble finding non-free reviews which don't cover what free reviews already do. II | (t - c) 04:22, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

First of all: Greaaaaaaaaaaaaat work. Second: While I would say that most commonly non-free sources are more useful than free ones, I think that in this case it would be more useful to leave in the template only the free ones. Most of us who have access to non-free sources are also used to finding them so we do not really neeed the help of the template. However this template could be a great way to engage new editors who do not have neither the knowleadage nor the access on how to get to secondary sources. Best idea is to have the two options as I see that has been done in at least some articles such as ADHD. --Garrondo (talk) 06:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The abstracts of non free sources such as Cochrane reviews however can still be useful. Thus the three options. Hope to eventually combine User:Ocaasi work on getting access to paid sources via Wikipedia:TWL into the template. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Next step

Okay since there is general support the next step will be to have Zad create a bot to add this template to article talk pages which 1) have a infobox disease 2) have a drugbox 3) have a infobox symptom Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Have moved the main copy of the template here Template:WPMED/Evidence Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:48, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• First, have a look at this quite simple template-based wikipage to cope with a multitude of search terms of different ROC (sensitivity/specifcity) characteristics:

Example FcRn

• then, feel free to view the sources of that page and of the essential template:y - they are located on my private wiki on my serva.
• I will up the sitesearch.php in a few days as a wikimedia extension and I will debug on my private wiki.
• Remember, my private wiki does not accept contributions (because it turned to be the web's major place to talk about buyviag and other funny things until I stopped-off the spamers).
• remeber, filters will be set at the sitesearch.php level, and I have the NOT-REVIEW option,too, and I have a higher freefulltext retrieval than pubmed because i own a major db of all hybrid journals from which i can predict openness.
• remember, searches are funnelled into sites like WILEY, SPRINGERLINK, HIGHWIRE, J-STAGE and DOAJ to run searches on these external servas to get really bulk papers !

--Ossip Groth (talk) 20:29, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

If I might make a suggestion: I would tweak the wording a tad to suggest that those two links would be "a good place to start looking for MEDRS compliant sourcing" or some similar wording. While it is not explicitly stated, a new editor might see this notice and assume that any and all search results from either database automatically meets WP:MEDRS, which is not necessarily true (especially with the increasing number of non-MEDLINE indexed "open access" journals in PubMed now through PMC, and the usual fringe topics published in foreign nursing journals). Just my 2 cents. Yobol (talk) 23:44, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes good suggestion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, this is nice! Some suggestions:

* Move the template to the top of the others (I did this for Talk:Croup). I think if you want to have any hope of it getting noticed/used, this is important.

* Have some kind of bold header line in the template box, like "Finding sources for this article", in order that it might catch people's eyes. Maybe it would be enough to bold "Ideal sources" in the beginning, but I'd vote for something a little more.

* Unlink "review articles" -- anybody reading this template will know what a review article is.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way of linking directly to PMC search results just for review articles ... I should know this, but the closest filter I could find, "research and review articles"[Filter], is not the same.

Klortho (talk) 03:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree moving up looks good. The picture makes it fairly bold and have added the additional bolding as you suggest. Most people are not clear the difference between review article and peer reviewed thus the link. How would a like to PMC be different than the current link to all free reviews on pubmed? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm ... you had asked about linking to PMC above, so I set about trying to figure out how to do it. But now I see that what you have here, linking to PubMed, is better, because it lists free full text articles whether they're in PMC or available free from the publisher. Cheers! Klortho (talk) 03:54, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• preliminary, my linkout has reached hellow-world state of development as to be seen at Example: Juxtaglomerular apparatus not renin

--Ossip Groth (talk) 09:01, 20 May 2013 (UTC)--Ossip Groth (talk) 12:16, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Ossip I still do not get how this site of yours works. Thus until you get consensus for it use we probably should not add it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Images for deletion

File:Proteinplekhm3.png has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 06:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

File:Minimum free energy.PNG has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that those files should be deleted. However it is unclear if they have been tagged for speedy deletion or sent to WP:FFD. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:00, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

As currently tagged, they are up for slow-speedy deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:56, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Vaginal flora article

Same editor that I mentioned in the Vagina article section above is now working on the Vaginal flora article; that editor/that article clearly needs help in this regard. Flyer22 (talk) 12:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Folk Medicine

Can we add something like a "Folk Medicine" section to medicine articles?

The purpose of this section is to include all treatments that lack sufficient evidence to prove or disprove their suitability to affect the condition in question.

Why have this section? - There are treatments that are popular in certain segments of the population and may not have been subject to randomized controlled trials. Therefore, we can't say that the treatments are equal to placebo as there have been no tests. It is possible that these treatments have been in use for thousands of years and may be effective. - This can also be a place to put experimental treatments, so maybe "Folk" is not the best term. - This will also help control a treatment being added, then removed, then re-add and a long discussion on he talk page about secondary sources and despite the treatment being "common knowledge" it isn't proven, so eventually removed. Then after some amount of time, the process will start again with another well intentioned person adding the obvious oversight of a popular treatment being ignored by Wikipedia.

What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sthubbar (talk • contribs) 17:34, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The recommended headers include "History" - (the history of the science), and a "Society and culture" sections. Personally I would tend to put folk medicine/traditional remedies etc into the latter, although it could be argued that if such treatments were common historically then they could also be included in the History section. These are suggested headers in the MOS, not mandatory, so I say if you think a particular article would benefit with such a section then go ahead. Also remember you can always use subsections...e.g.

==Society and culture==

asdf

===Folk medicine===

asdfasdf

Lesion (talk) 18:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

But nevertheless we still would need adequate (secondary) sources for such sections, although in such cases we do not need to prove that they were effective, but merely that they were used.--Garrondo (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I notice that someone added a lot of references to ayurvedic medicine treatments on several medical pages I've worked on, and these tended to be placed in the society and culture sections already ... mainly I think because they are still in use and therefore not historical. Lesion (talk) 19:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

You could also include ineffective remedies under ==Treatment==, like "aspirin is not used for children with fevers due to Reyes" or "dextromethorphan is commonly taken for coughs, but it doesn't really work worth beans". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Lesion, thanks for the suggestions. I think it would then fit best under the "Treatment" or "Management" sections and add a sub-section header of something like "Other Treatments".

WhatamIdoing, I'm more thinking about treatments that haven't been subject to modern testing and may still have been used for many years, like Ayureveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine, so it's not really possible to say if they do or don't work according to WP:Medicine guidelines.

Garrondo, your requirement of "But nevertheless we still would need adequate (secondary) sources for such sections" violates the whole purpose of the section. The whole idea is that there are many treatments that may have been used for thousands of years, or may just be some crack pot idea that someone came up with yesterday. There are no secondary sources, though these treatments may or may not work. I'm OK with providing a link to some external website, tough not requireing secondary sources. Does that make sense?Sthubbar (talk) 07:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

No, it does not IMO: We would need somebody reliable saying they are used, independently of their efficacy, and certainly an external random website (for example of the person selling the product) would not be valid if not reliable by itself. With this I do not mean that such secondary sources should be MEDRS compliant or peer reviewed (although they would be perfect if found), but they have to be reliable for the kind of statement we are making. The kind of sources I am talking about and would be valid:

• First I would look for reviews on medical journals: For example there are many reviews on traditional or alternative medicines and they might indicate if such products are used. These would be the best possible sources.
• Second I would look for non-MEDRS-compliant high quality secondary sources: I am thinking for example on newspapers reports where they indicate that a treatment is used (it does not matter if they say that it is usefull or useless)
• Thirdly, I would also accept in this case (although these could be debateable) a primary peer-reviewed article which has its main focus on the use of such products: I am thinking for example of articles where they have asked people if they use this product, how often, etc.

Moreover: I would not include them under the section treatments unless it is made absolutely clear that there is no indication of usefulness in reliable sources. A subsection called "other treatments" is IMO misleading since it implies they are valid. --Garrondo (talk) 09:48, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Garrondo, how about this:

==Other Treatments==

The following treatments lack reliable evidence to prove their efficacy, safety and/or lack of either.

? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sthubbar (talk • contribs) 12:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

It is a possibility, but negative statements pose a bit of a problem for MEDRS: they are a medical claim (that such treatments are not effective or have not been studied) that should be sourced, and therefore there would be a need to find reliable (secondary) sources indicating that they are either not effective or have not been well studied. If there are no secondary sources on their efficacy, or their use is more "folk" than "medicine" (such as leaving a key at night outside to be later put in the eye for eye problems- traditional Spanish remedy) it might be wiser to directly include it in the society and culture section instead of treatments.

Nevertheless I would again strain that the most important thing for such additions is to find high quality sources on the importance of their use in folk medicine. WP should not include a list of all possible remedies that any crank has proposed for a disease, but only the notable ones (even if completely crazy), and such notability would be indicated by the existance of secondary sources.

--Garrondo (talk) 15:02, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

It all comes down to sourcing. If you want to talk about historical treatments that goes in the history section. If you want to talk about current use of ineffective treatments were the notability is simply how much they are used than that would go in society and culture. Some may also go in the treatment section under alt med. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:36, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I haven't yet seen a folk remedy for which secondary sources couldn't be found. Keep in mind that "secondary" is not a weird way of spelling "peer-reviewed, scientifically sound review article". The Great Big Book of Grandma's Favorite Folk Remedies on the self-help shelf at the bookstore is a secondary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

...and can also be used for fuel once fossil fuels run out. Lesion (talk) 15:48, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes usually we expect good secondary sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Bruxism

Reworked, MEDRS version of bruxism (apart from a few MEDDATE issues...) since the version we had before was in a bad way with advertising, mostly based on primary sources, fringe claims, undue weight, large gaps in coverage, etc

Most common cause of awake bruxism appears to be stress. The psychosocial factors section in causes is very short. Also the psychosocial interventions in the treatment section is very inadequate. I have requested at wikiproject psychology if anyone wants to expand these, but maybe someone here might be interested, or not. Lesion (talk) 15:54, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Or maybe someone with knowledge of sleep disorders. Lesion (talk) 15:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

End of the year

It is the end of the year and students are appearing again. Some issues discussed here. Please drop me a note if anyone needs pages protected. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:23, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

File:NSPS.jpg

File:NSPS.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 06:52, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Human vaginal size article

Note: As mentioned below at the same time as this small piece of text, I should have initially thought of this topic outside of anatomy in a strict sense/medical sense when seeing this article. Flyer22 (talk) 22:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

So this article was created late the previous hour in response to the Human penis size article, though the vagina is not homologous to the penis. Since the editor participates at WP:Feminism, and was at that project right before creating this article, a feminist aspect might also have something to do with the creation of this article; I know that some of our feminist editors, and non-feminist editors as well, feel that Wikipedia lacks balance between the sexes/genders. And while I understand the need to create such an article in response to the Human penis size article, the Human vaginal size article clearly cannot be expanded beyond a stub and therefore I see no reason that this topic should not be directed to the Vagina article and covered there instead. The editor has already taken some information from there, using this and this poor source (the latter source is also a dead link), and added it to the Human vaginal size article. Once I get around to significantly fixing up the Vagina article, which is long overdue, I would likely redirect the Human vaginal size article there. But I am obviously open to hearing comments on this matter. I'll alert the creator of this article, and WP:ANATOMY, to this discussion. Since this WikiProject (WP:MED) is significantly more likely to leave a few or more replies on this matter than WP:ANATOMY is because WP:ANATOMY is significantly less active, I've decided to have this discussion here. Flyer22 (talk) 20:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for offering to improve it, and bringing it to notice here; a poor stub is all I could produce, and it could be greatly improved. I think the relevant factor in interlinking the two is not that the structures are homologous (they're not), but that one is (typically) inserted into the other as part of their key biological function. It could easily be expanded, if there's data for the changes in size due to sexual intercourse (there's at least one in vivo MRI study of the mechanics of human sexual intercourse, although that had N=1), and childbirth (for which there is abundant data.) I'm not sure about merging it completely into the main article, though, unless you can find a way to pare down all the figures to something that flows smoothly as text. Perhaps this is a case for the {{main}} template? -- The Anome (talk) 20:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

As always it comes down to sourcing. If there's lots of good sourcing for human penis size but nothing or next to nothing for human vaginal size then we should have a fully-developed article about the one and not the other... real-world differences in how humans think about or study male things vs. female things will be reflected in Wikipedia content in the same way, it isn't good or bad or biased, Wikipedia content just reflects the sources. (I think I'm preaching to the choir here.) If doing the redirect becomes an issue, bring it to the attention of WP:MED... Zad68 21:00, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

(As an off-topic aside, yes, it's really quite interesting to compare the extreme interest in one to the relative disinterest in the other -- it certainly suggests that the primary interest in the size of the penis isn't its ability to fit the vagina -- which actually works just fine in all but the most extreme cases -- but male insecurity and competition.) -- The Anome (talk) 21:44, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree, Zad. Thanks for weighing in.

The Anome, wow, how did you type a response so fast? Considering that you posted here before I posted on your talk page about this topic, were you already alerted to this discussion, perhaps by the new notification system? Regarding the article, I still don't think it can be expanded beyond a stub, certainly not much beyond a stub. It wouldn't be an issue at all to have it as a subsection, or as a few subsections, in the Vagina article. I'm more for not creating a WP:SPINOUT article unless needed. But I'll wait and see what more editors state on this matter, if more comment on it. And the "main" template wouldn't be needed unless there was a section in the Vagina article specifically about the size of the vagina; we would use the main template to point readers to the Human vaginal size article for in-depth information on the topic. But again, there is not a lot of information out there on this topic, and the Human vaginal size article is a stub, so not having the Human vaginal size article merged with the Vagina article means that the Vagina article would have a very small section on the topic just to point readers to the main article on it; and per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Paragraphs, "[s]hort paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheading." Flyer22 (talk) 21:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy to defer to the subject experts here about both content and layout. Yes, it was the new notification system. I'm surprised to find the new system, which I initially disliked and found gimmicky, is actually more useful than the old one. -- The Anome (talk) 21:36, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I have no expertise here, but two points. First, it seems that human vaginal size is a notable topic. Searching for "vaginal size" in GScholar nets 248 hits. Glancing at the first few papers suggests that there are a number of relevant issues surrounding this topic, both medical and non-medical: vaginal dilation at birth and during sex, physical anthropology studies of different human ethnic groups, size issues surrounding sex-change surgery, sociological and psychological perceptions of size, vaginal tightening surgeries, etc. There are nearly 800 hits in GBooks. I wouldn't think that lack of material would be a problem. Second, this article is being actively developed by an experienced editor. It is already beyond a stub, IMO. Why the rush to merge? --Mark viking (talk) 21:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Not a rush to merge; after all, I did bring the topic here for discussion. It's that I have doubt, as expressed above, that the topic should have its own article. Besides that, it doesn't seem that The Anome was aware that this topic, aside from social aspects, is going to require WP:MEDRS-compliant sources. But you have touched on aspects that now make me think that the article should exist. As for the article's size, it has been divided into sections, but it's still not beyond a stub. I am waiting to see how it develops, and may expand it as well. But discussing whether or not it should exist is productive. Flyer22 (talk) 22:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for the assertive tone of my question; I intended no challenge. I agree that it was good to bring the topic here for discussion and look forward to seeing what others think. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 22:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. At the moment, I know it's a very crude stub article that does not meet WP Medicine's standards, for which I apologise. However, I believe it was still worth creating, as fruitful soil for developing a proper article on the topic. In particular, the sexual arousal, intercourse, pregnancy and childbirth aspects are surely of medical and scientific interest, both from the viewpoints of sexology and obstetrics, but currently non-existent in the article. There must surely be material out there in the literature that is more recent than Masters and Johnson that touches on all of these. (Also, as an afterthought, perhaps the article should also touch on the topic of vaginal atresia, Müllerian agenesis. and intersex conditions which create unusually-sized, missing or deformed vaginas?) -- The Anome (talk) 22:21, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Mark viking, no problem. When seeing this article, I should have thought of this topic outside of anatomy in a strict sense/medical sense, especially since the Human penis size article also covers social aspects. Taking into account the aspects you mentioned, some of which the article already touches on, it can be easily expanded beyond a stub. Flyer22 (talk) 22:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not yet convinced that this proposed material covering vaginal size should be anywhere else besides Vagina. "Chamberousness" (if I may make up a word) is part of the essential nature of the vagina's two main functions: to support sexual intercourse and childbirth. Vaginal size already has some coverage at Vagina, and that article is only 13 Kb of readable prose, there is plenty more room for content to be expanded there before considering spinning it off to a subarticle. Absolutely Wikipedia should cover it, but with the information we have right now it should be in Vagina. Zad68 23:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Try: vacuousness (I think that is a word). While you guys are talking about this stuff I noted on potential space that the vagina had been listed as an example. I understand that a potential space does not exist in health, and requires pathologic separation to be created, e.g. spread of pus that dissects between fascial plains. If someone can confirm that the vagina is anatomically classed as a potential space with a source please add to article. Lesion (talk) 00:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool mergeist, so you may discount my view, but I really think that this should be integrated directly into the main article. All of the basics and at least most of the pathological variation needs to be covered at the main article anyway, so there would be a lot of overlap.

My suggestion is to merge now, and to split later if it's really necessary. It is far easier to merge in a stub and split out a major section than to merge in a more significant article, especially if there is significant overlap in the two independently developed pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this. Biosthmors (talk) 19:07, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with a merge too. I think the most important related parameter is the maximal potential size of the canal during childbirth, which is completely missing now, and I can't recall any study on this topic. The current contents of the article describing baseline dimensions are relatively unimportant, but if we merge this article to the Vagina article we can deal with this issue later. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:32, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

As it looks like there's good support here for the idea that this content should be merged directly into Vagina I've tagged the article for merge, discussion is here: Talk:Human_vaginal_size#Proposed merge into Vagina. Please voice your opinions, and if there's consensus to merge we'll complete the merge. Zad68 02:03, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Airway management rewrite?

Hi! I'd like to work on Airway management as I've mentioned on its talk page. As I am very much learning to edit Wikipedia, I just wanted to check here to make sure this proposed edit is ok. Any suggestions/objections would be appreciated. Bron (talk) 05:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The title of that article initially made me think of managing airlines and the routes (airways) airplanes fly on. Flyer22 (talk) 05:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Have a look at tracheal intubation and the contributions by DiverDave (talk · contribs). That might be helpful. JFW | T@lk 16:26, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I have proposed merging Artificial airway to Airway management. The topics are basically identical in my view. Opinions?Ochiwar (talk) 15:12, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal.DiverDave (talk) 01:41, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Started Laryngeal tube. Needs c/e. Ochiwar (talk) 20:18, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Bupropion

Bupropion has several problems that I feel compromise its status as Featured Article. Please read Talk:Bupropion#Problems for my two cents. If these problems are not addressed, I will take it to FAR. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 07:28, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree FAR might be a good idea. A little out of date. Many refs are primary sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:08, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

An invite to the NIH

If anyone is in Maryland, wishes to visit the NIH next week and meet with fellow medical Wikipedians join us. [27] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Vitamin U

Does vitamin U really cure ulcers? I stumbled upon this article and found much of the content dubious, but I don't know enough to try to fix it. Can anyone here take a stab at it? Edgeweyes (talk) 11:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

This article should be merged to S-methylmethionine, I am fairly sure they are the same thing. Lesion (talk) 12:31, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to comment here again, but more input is required to reach a consensus here, thanks. Lesion (talk) 10:46, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

extended discussion transferred to Talk:Vitamin_U#Merger

The NCI thesaurus entry is pretty clear that S-methymethionine chloride and Vitamin U are both synonyms for Methylmethionine sulfonium chloride, so it's just the difference of the chloride ion. Should be one article with redirects and an explanatory hatnote. Certainly the sourcing should be improved, there are scads of primary sources in there. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC) It seems from the history of S-methylmethionine that vitamin U used to redirect there, but was made into a stand alone article. Since, there has been a discussion to merge it to Methylmethionine sulfonium chloride before, citing the same source as you have above, however the consensus (incorrectly imo) did not merge it. Might be good to alert wikiproject molecular biology about this. My merge tags were taken off with the explanation that this merge was proposed before. I directed one of the IPs to WP:MEDRS and another secondary source treating Vitamin U and S-methylmethionine as synonyms. Might be the case that there are sources using the term slightly differently from each other, but the source you provide above sounds authoritative to me, and I think we should follow that. Lesion (talk) 16:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC) Further support for S-methymethionine chloride as a synonym: CID 14220 from PubChem and Vitamin U at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Unfortunately it appears there is a lack of suitable Vitamin U review articles. Boghog (talk) 16:37, 23 May 2013 (UTC) 75.152.123.238 (talk) 16:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC) To do the merger properly, all of the content from one article would hav to be put into the other article. At this point, that means moving all content from S-methylmethionine to Vitamin_U, then making the chemical name into a redirection, so that the other chemicals in Vitamin_U can be accomodated. Note that accomodating the other chemicals invalidates three dictionary entries for being overly simple. Note also that such a thing az an appeal to authority iz. Following the rules will not get the job done. -- Dilbert 75.152.123.238 (talk) 16:54, 23 May 2013 (UTC) I am not prone to doing the merjer, because I suspect that s-methyl-methionine will be shown az a downstream metabolite of I3C, at which point there might be a race to find out whether I3C haz more effects on microbes, which it probably duz. To believe it makes it true, therefore it's brain fart. 75.152.123.238 (talk) 17:42, 23 May 2013 (UTC) Doing the merjer actually requires deleting content from MMSC, because the chembox would be confusing: It would lead people into thinking that Vitamin U wuz one compound. That iz my second reason not to do the merjer; lost content. QUANDO OMNI FLUNKUS MORITATI (when all else fails, play dead) --Red Green Review at http://jocpr.com/vol4-iss1-2012/JCPR-2012-4-1-209-215.pdf LeadSongDog come howl! 01:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC) This review again lists vitamin U as a synonym of S methylmethionine. My understanding of this situation is as follows: we have 3 reliable secondary sources which describe the term as a synonym. we have an IP editor who turned the original vitamin U redirect into a stand alone article, which apart from the secondary sources recently added, is based almost entirely on primary sources the IP is using some of the primary sources to over-rule the secondary sources and change the tone of the article to state that vitamin U is not a synonym but a term referring to several chemicals. The IP particularly prefers to use the primary sources of one author, which could be argued constitutes WP:CHERRY, WP:COI and WP:UNDUE. WP:NOR may also apply here. the IP has failed to provide a reliable secondary source to support the content currently supported by these primary sources they are also willing to make personal attacks towards other editors and edit war Given the multiple primary sources, and the other problems of undue weight to fringe theories, and the fact that we have several reliable sources which use the term "vitamin U" as a synonym of one chemical, I support merge, either to Methylmethionine sulfonium chloride or to S-methylmethionine, and deletion of the content supported by primary sources. Lesion (talk) 14:09, 24 May 2013 (UTC) I am largely in agreement with Lesion, but this extended discussion really belongs on the article's talk page and not here. Boghog (talk) 17:40, 24 May 2013 (UTC)