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Mindfulness

Having a discussion about it for the presentation of anxiety disorder here. My concern is that the articles discuss anxiety rather than anxiety disorder. Do people consider that sufficient? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

UpToDate says:

"Mindfulness-based (ie, nonjudgmental observation of moment to moment experiences) psychotherapies have been shown to be efficacious in decreasing anxiety symptoms in an uncontrolled study of individuals with GAD and panic disorder. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) combines mindfulness with acceptance of internal states and orientation of actions towards valued goals....A preliminary randomized trial of 16 patients supports the efficacy of an ACT approach for GAD."

So yes, it may be sufficient for GAD, pending further studies and reviews. -A1candidate (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes we already state it is effective for treatment. This is a discussion of prevention. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:23, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
None of the sources mention anything about prevention, so the statement "currently there is no evidence on the effectiveness of preventive measures for GAD in adult" should remain. -A1candidate (talk) 23:04, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
by maintaining it, how would this add in a positive manner to the article ?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
If none of the sources even mention prevention, then we cannot say that there is no evidence, because that would be a WP:NOR violation. If no source mentions the subject, then we don't mention it either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
One of the sources specific says "currently there is no evidence on the effectiveness of preventive measures for GAD in adult" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:00, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

dyslexia

hi, im helping out on the dyslexia article[1] (after it had some issues [see above]) however I myself could use some help, whether its editing, proofreading , etc, theres no one else at the article (additionally I do the ebola/west Africa article), thank you for your time--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:18, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi! I'll add it to my watchlist and do a copy edit. Cheers, Basie (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Eicosanoid class

Eoxin could use some love.

@Jfdwolff or anyone interested: The pathway map - File:Eicosanoid synthesis.svg (to the right) - should probably be updated at some point; see Eoxin#Human biosynthesis. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 02:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Recent Changes box

In the box "Recent changes in Medicine" I have reordered the bullets, now Articles are in top. I added a new link for Medicine navigation templates (ca. 625!). This should help editors who follow changes in that area. There is activity in Template talk:Medicine navs. -DePiep (talk) 13:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

great idea--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Draft:John Alexander MacWilliam

Hello again, medical experts. Here's an AfC draft with an active editor. I'm sure it's a notable topic, but there are a lot of statements that need verifying. I have helped with formatting the references, but that's as much as I can do. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:41, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Hearing loss

Further thoughts here Talk:Hearing_loss#Changes? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Layout error

There is a layout problem - the bullet points are superimposed on the image. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks. Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk) 10:39, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

THey look fine using google chrome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:48, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes normally I use chrome and never noticed this problem before. But using IE now the layout is broken. Maybe is browser-dependent. Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk) 10:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I am currently using Internet Explorer. The bullet points are indeed overlying the left-aligned images. (Sorry, I don't know how to fix this.) Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:01, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm using IE 8 and it looks fine to me. NW (Talk) 14:42, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
The bullet points have moved slightly, but they still appear superimposed over the image... Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk) 16:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
The "problem" is that {{multiple images}} is not entirely perfect. Also, for WP:ACCESS reasons, it was in the wrong place, since content in Section X, including related images, needs to be present in the wikitext for Section X, not at the end of the preceding section.
I've re-formatted them as a proper gallery (showing multiple related items is one of the officially accepted uses of a gallery), and made them larger. I'm not sure about the "hover" setting; if it's too glitzy for you, then feel free to remove "-hover" from the gallery tag (leave "packed", or the size setting will stop working correctly). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

They also look fine in Firefox, what version of IE are you using? Not sure which versions are supported by MediaWiki (main page). Maybe it should be brought up there seeing as most browsers are displaying it properly it shouldn't be an issue with the template but rather with the rendering of something like Module:HtmlBuilder that doesn't work with certain version of IE. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 23:58, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

That said the new solution looks better, but sending a bug report might be a good idea anyway, seeing as they are often happy to get them and few actually send reports. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 00:01, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
"what version of IE are you using?" A version that the UK National Health Service can afford. Some sort of server edition, I think. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:19, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
The help menu will have an About entry that will tell you. LeadSongDog come howl! 07:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Version 9. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Substance dependence#Article split into Drug dependence and Drug addiction

This is a WP:MED High-importance & level-4 vital article page split.

Insert your 2¢ if you have any. If anyone objects, propose an alternative; I'm going to follow through with some action to address the problem within a month since I won't let that travesty of an article remain as is. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 13:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Elsevier ScienceDirect results mostly out, but more to come?

Over at this page, offering free 1 year subs to Elsevier Science Direct, the initial applications seem to have been processed, and some readers have had good news & some not. I've been told in my joining page "Already Elsevier has agreed to expand the donation of accounts based on the fantastic editor enthusiasm.", and I would urge any editors who have not applied & think it is too late to sign up on the pending/waiting list. So far there only seem to be about 4 further unrejected applicants for the Health & Life sciences section. Applications appear to be being judged strictly on perceived and presented merit, as evidenced by track record, rather than order of signing-up, so take a little time to blow your trumpet, and say clearly which option you are applying for. I helped run the very similar applications process for the Royal Society journals last spring, and everyone suitable who applied within a reasonable time ended with an offer. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:43, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Dyslexia upgrade effort under discussion

There is currently an upgrade discussion effort at Talk page for User:Zad68 for the Dyslexia medical article following the ICD-10 reclassification. Interested editors are invited to join the discussion there. Cheers. FelixRosch (TALK) 17:29, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

After some frustration, I've finally managed to find this discussion. To save others the trouble, it's at User talk:Zad68#Your interest in medical articles. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› 00:27, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Ok things went down hill fast in this case... can we get some eyes over at Talk:Dyslexia#‎Merger with Alexia please. -- Moxy (talk) 01:08, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Discussion is continuing as stated above for all interested parties on Dyslexia at User talk:Zad68. FelixRosch (TALK) 21:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
…and Talk:Dyslexia. Re: ICD-10, apparent edit war, Merge of Alexia into Dyslexia. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› 20:35, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

those that are interested, can now go down to the "Dyslexia" section, towards the bottom of this page to contribute. thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Diversity

Evaluative diversity was linked from neurodiversity, and when I checked the freely available sources, some of them never mentioned either term, and one was a small primary study. If anyone has time and access to more of the sources, I suspect that the majority of evaluative diversity may be original researach/synth. And/or a general pushing of Simon Baron-Cohen theories, using sources that never mention the terms. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

ANI: [2] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

RfC notification

Hello, there is an RFC related to traditional Chinese medicine: RfC: Is the Nature article an appropriate source for the claim it is attached to?. Diego (talk) 12:47, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Current status, since I suspect that more people who commented over there are watching here than there:
  • There's been a proposal to use WP:INTEXT attribution, in the spirit of compromise. I think it's a laudable proposal, except that the source that's being used to assert that there is no valid mechanism of action is an unsigned opinion piece (not peer-reviewed, not even a news article), and it's kind of difficult to attribute something in-text when you don't know who wrote it.
  • Separately, we've just begun talking about whether a declaration that a medical treatment does (or doesn't) have a valid mechanism of action is "biomedical information", which would make using the opinion piece be a major MEDRS violation even if you could figure out a reasonable way to attribute an unsigned opinion piece to a person. Previously, everyone was distracted by the "pseudoscience" language, and didn't pay much attention to the rest of the sentence (including me).
All of which adds up to: If you looked in a week ago and haven't gone back, then you probably should. The conversation has developed in directions that might surprise you, and people are even trying to find actual compromises. Your idea really might be the one that helps settle the question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Split non-human animal content from the Fight-or-flight response article and rename the article?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Fight-or-flight response (in humans)#Humans. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 04:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Manual medicine

Anyone know anything about this? Only source is in German. Is this distinct from chiropractic, and is it in fact "an integral part of mainstream scientific medicine" in Germany? Doesn't sound promising. Basie (talk) 11:22, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The German article is poorly sourced, but quite a lot longer. Maybe the best idea would be to alert the German de:WP:MED and ask if they can help verify any of the content. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 11:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks CFCF, will do. Cheers, Basie (talk) 04:51, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Teixobactin WP:NOTE?

This article has been created based on primary sources and news articles. As per that there are no WP:MEDRS sources, which begs the question if the article should exist at all? -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 14:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Slightly worse, it snuck its way into Drug resistance (gone now). -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 14:42, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
Hmmm, also discussed at Talk:Antibiotics#BBC_News yesterday. Formally, WP:N doesn't require a WP:MEDRS, just a WP:RS. In that sense, then, an article's existence can be justified, but of course it shouldn't make biomedical assertions in the voice of the encyclopedia. That limits the scope somewhat. Something tells me there will be reviews, and soon, so it really won't be a big problem for long. The methodology used for identifying candidate agents is certainly interesting, if nothing else. :-) LeadSongDog come howl! 17:30, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
I strongly agree with LeadSongDog. This is an important research breakthrough that deserves mention in Wikipedia. I think we need to start a frank discussion about the scope and limitations of WP:MEDRS which in my view is increasing being misapplied. The scope of Wikipedia is wider than WP:MED and WP:MEDRS. Furthermore even WP:MEDRS doesn't prohibit primary sources. Clearly Teixobactin is notable given its wide spread coverage by reputable news organizations. No medical claims are being made here. What is claimed is there may be future medical applications. The sources cited clearly point out that it will be a number of years if ever before teixobactin or a derivative could become a drug. Boghog (talk) 18:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
  • The article should be part of WP:chem. Extensive news coverage is sufficient for notability. The definition of primary sources is unworkable, no need to mention it. The compound should not be listed in the antibacterials box. This box should not be present in this article. This discussion should belong in Talk:Teixobactin V8rik (talk) 17:52, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
It is a potential antibiotic that is under research. As long as we are not saying it is available for human use I am happy with an article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:05, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm already beginning to regret my optimism above. Editors seem insistent on an unqualified lede statement in Vox encycl. that it is an antibiotic, althogh that still rests on a single publication, even if that was in Nature. LeadSongDog come howl! 02:45, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
nature is a top journal, (though it is a primary source)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
We all understand that, but not infallible. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:19, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

New article/emerging news story: Sleeping illness.

Sleeping illness was recently created based on a news item that seems to be getting recent western coverage: BBC, Daily Mail but see also e.g. Siberian Times. Not sure if it's already mentioned somewhere or if a dedicated article is warranted, but there seems to be no consistent common name for the condition: sleeping sickness, illness, disorder, etc. are variously used in press, and certainly MED:MOS sources should be consluted. --Animalparty-- (talk) 06:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, & having consluted them this should probably be deleted, at least for now. It is of course nothing to do with African trypanosomiasis, "Sleeping sickness", but might conceivably be Encephalitis lethargica or "sleepy sickness". Sleeping sickness is a disam page. Johnbod (talk) 14:32, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Continued navbox discussions and cleanup

A wide-ranging cleanup effort of many navboxes under WPMED and WPANT is planned. Discussions include regarding titles, colours and more. If interested please contribute here. Also feel free to identify any navboxes under the scope of WPMED that need some cleanup here. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:59, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical industry article

Two months or so back I started a major rewrite of this article (still only half done). As summarized on the article Talk page, there are now some objections to some of these edits. Would appreciate the groups input. I think the arguments for and against are well summarized on the article Talk page and so will not attempt to influence anyone by further comments here. Thanks. Formerly 98 (talk) 22:16, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Watching! Jytdog (talk) 15:18, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Rant and counter-rant on Jimbo's talk page:" "Lunatic charlatans" and MEDRS"

User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#.22Lunatic_charlatans.22_and_MEDRS, MEDRS, WP medical style, medical research .... Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:43, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

oy, the section above that is hard to read. The alt med people are really pushing. Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Fexaramine‎

could use some eyes on this article. a study was published last week about some mouse studies done with an old compound - huge hype about a "new diet drug" and resulting pressure to write that up in WP. oy. Jytdog (talk) 21:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I tagged it for "refs",curious if this article should exist?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:26, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Fexaramine‎ is an investigation drug/research tool that has not yet been tested in humans and therefore is outside the scope of WP:MED. It has been mentioned in at least one secondary source (PMID 15330745) and therefore by definition notable. Boghog (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
I see logic needs to be introduced, as your "talk page" for the article itself indicates it is within the scope of Wikipedia medicine and therefore subject to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles ,it seems to be an agonist of FXR (nuclear receptor) a protein in short, the results must be reproduced with a Western Blot , the kilodaltons of the band in question and intensity must be reproduced .thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:34, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
by the way, your ref is from 2004--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:52, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa the article was created around the recent Nature paper and took away the hype-y description of that paper. I went and found the one secondary source that is there and threw up the drugbox. I agree that it maybe shouldn't exist, but it wouldn't survive an AfD b/c too many people would wave at the Nature paper and the press around it. This is not a big deal, I gave up on it actually. Jytdog (talk) 14:52, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
I can only applaud you for having tried, I cant believe they got this far,--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:54, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Since this article is not within the scope of WP:MED, I have removed the {{WPMED}} project banner from the aricle's talk page. This compound is no longer a drug candidate. However it does remains notable as a research tool. The date of the review article is irrelevant. Once notable, always notable. If you have any doubts whatsoever about whether fexaramine‎ binds to the farnesoid X receptor, please take a looks at PDB: 1OSH​. Boghog (talk) 17:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Point of clarification:

  • "Within scope" == participants here want to work together to support the article.
  • "Biomedical information" == subject to WP:MEDRS (irrespective of whether people here want to work on the article)
  • "Medical article" == subject to WP:MEDMOS (also irrespective of whether people here want to work on the article)

These are completely separate considerations, and the presence or absence of the {{WPMED}} banner does not tell you anything about the applicability of the two guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

1986 review

A user is repeatedly adding a 1986 review [3] which does not appear to be supported by more recent articles.

Discussion is here [4] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:07, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

A typical Wikidata health discussion

At d:Wikidata:WikiProject Medicine a common skill among volunteers is being able to manage databases and hierarchies. It is less common for the volunteers to have experience in the fields of information which they are managing.

A typical discussion is happening now and needs comment. Users are seeking a term for "surgical procedure that makes a temporary incision in the musculoskeletal system" so that all such surgical procedures which have Wikipedia articles in any language may be grouped together. Right now the term being used is "musculoskeletal otomy", which might be a made-up term, or might be a term used in technical sorting or by non-English speakers. Anyone who has input into this discussion can comment at d:Talk:Q15636253. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup on aisle Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults

It's a bit of a trainwreck, with longstanding debris from a COI/selfcite/copypaste/spammer, 2009 class editing, primary sourcing, and you name it. There are recent review sources available, so there's hope it can be fixed if someone will take it on... LeadSongDog come howl! 21:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Fixing categories

Does anyone know how to fix these categories? [5] There is a category with a capital S and a low case s. Not sure how to merge. Need to fix this to get this table to work [6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:00, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Doc James: What exactly do you need changed in the titles? Write it out in a "change X to Y" format and I'll deal with it. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 17:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
See the below post about Wikidata. Probably categories on all Wikimedia projects will be managed there in a few years. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Oh... wait, you just want the capital S in "Sanitation" changed to "sanitation" in all the category names? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 17:33, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
In the event you want to do it yourself, you'd need to follow the instructions as listed here: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion#Speedy_renaming_and_merging. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 17:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Doc James, is the template providing the correct cat now? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Looking here I am seeing 21 articles in "B-Class Sanitation articles" and 18 articles in "B-Class sanitation articles" with the only difference being the capital s [7] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
The ones in the 'wrong' category haven't been edited since you changed the template to use the 'right' capitalization. If you make WP:NULL edits to each of those talk pages, they'll switch categories. Otherwise, you can just wait until the next edit, when it will happen automatically. (Purging the page isn't enough; I checked.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Ah thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:08, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

New editor on Evidence Aid

Hi I am a relatively new editor and I would like to do a draft page for Evidence Aid and have someone experienced look at it before it goes public. How/where can I do this, thanks! AmyEBHC (talk) 12:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

AmyEBHC Start by creating something in your sandbox at User:AmyEBHC/sandbox, nothing can go wrong there! Also it would be good to get it out of the way at once - if you are affiliated with the organization you must disclose this on your userpage (especially if you are paid to write an article - I don't know the exact requirements, but someone will come along and help you I surmise).
Once you have a draft I'm sure people from here will be willing to help. Also WP:AFC, but they generally direct anything medical related to here anyway. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 14:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
I haven't followed WP:COI for a long while, but it's generally only if you're paid by the organization that you need to disclose, and that disclosure need not be on your userpage. In some cases, it makes more sense to disclose in edit summaries or talk pages. We don't require students to disclose that they attend the school whose article they're editing, or similar things like that. However, if you're coordinating work with an organization that you volunteer for, even though you don't get paid, it would be ethical to disclose even though it's not necessarily mandatory. In case that doesn't make any sense: if you're working on the article about Wikipedia, you don't need to disclose that you're a normal volunteer at Wikipedia. If you're working on the article about Wikipedia while talking to the Wikimedia Foundation's public spokesperson about what the article ought to say, then it would probably be a good idea to disclose that. And if you're working on the article about Wikipedia because someone (anyone) is paying you to do so, then you must disclose that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I just opted to try out this new Contributors link on medical articles. Right now it's awful. The problem is that you're relying on XTools, which is an incredibly flaky tool. Sometimes a person is lucky and can connect to it but more often the connection hangs or doesn't display everything.

Even if the connectivity problems to XTools are resolved, the contributors - which are supposed to be the main reason for the link - are displayed way at the bottom of the page. If you're going to display all of the article stats then it would be better to call the link "Article stats" because "Contributions" is misleading.

Honestly, if you must have a Contributions link (and I'm not convinced that it's necessary), you'd be better off having an overlay come up populated by something that works all the time. Ca2james (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

its down, most of the time, I complain to the "village pump/technical"--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:38, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
The idea was to encourage professionals and academics to contribute to wikipedia and feel they would get some personal credit. Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk) 22:59, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Background links on this are here:

Agree that work is required before it is expanded beyond a single article. We need to rearrange the page in question to put authorship/editor stats first and we need work to make it more reliable. I have a programer who is interested in this work but we have not had the time to develop it further yet. Even though we have universal support within this project Wikipedia wide support has been lukewarm. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

More background is at Wikipedia:Wikicredit. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
It doesn't make sense to change the Article stats page for your own needs because that page already has a purpose: to list overall article statistics. It would be better to either use the output of Article stats to display what you want or, better, to create your own page from scratch.
I completely understand the general lukewarm response to this proposal: contributor information is already listed on the History tab, the number of edits may not the best way to determine who is at the top of the list, and putting the contributors out there like this seems to be at odds with the collaborative nature of Wikipedia and may encourage ownership of articles. Ca2james (talk) 16:42, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I'd also like to add that IMHO this trial has been badly run as there were no clearly defined parameters for it. We have Doc James saying only one article is affected, Michael Chidester saying there was consensus to try it on a couple of hundred articles, and in reality there are 5965 articles affected. There was no discussion of start and end times for the trial and and there is no clearly defined central discussion place for feedback. In fact, there was no broad consensus to run the trial at all and the discussion was never actually closed; you all just went ahead and did your own thing because WP:MED supported the idea.
At this point, I think this trial should be ended and the Contributors link removed from all affected articles. You have had quite enough time to decide whether it works and you know, based on feedback at Talk:Heart_failure#Author_link and here, that it doesn't work due in no small part to technical problems. After shutting this trial down, I suggest that you take the time to fix the technical problems and re-propose the trial with clearly defined start/end/article parameters and then wait for someone to determine the consensus and close the discussion before starting it up again. If consensus goes against you, then don't implement this change. Like it or not, WP:MED is still part of wikipedia and is subject to broader consensus. Ca2james (talk) 17:13, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Ah not exactly. Firstly right now it is on zero articles. The code was one one article. There is a feature that might add it but it does not add it for anyone who do not turn on the feature in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:18, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I recognize the significant technical problems which Ca2james describes. I also acknowledge that the limits of this trial are not clearly defined, and recognize the value in having a clearly defined trial. I have no opinion about whether this trial should be ended because I fail to see a claim of harm; I am not expecting any defense or argument, but I would expect someone to state a claim that something is being hurt here with the current tests. This trial is the result of another claim of harm, that contributors do not get meaningful credit in a way that normal people understand, simply ending the trail would harm the stakeholders in its outcome and I wish that a goal could be to balance the needs of all stakeholders. I have no opinion about some consensus versus WP:MED consensus versus site-wide consensus, because I have thought that the footprint of this was small and easily reversible, and I have been happy to support this trial based on what support it has gotten. At this time, I can say that I would support clarification of the experimental schedule including any information about technical development and the creation of a place to report complaints about this. If there is harm happening from this trial, then I would like people to know where to voice their concerns. Perhaps a link to a project page can be built into the template somehow, either on the article page or at least in the code. I would like for this project to avoid seeming forceful because I think it so closely aligns with Wikimedia community values. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:31, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I can't see this anywhere. Has it been turned off? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
WAID, enable via preferences > Gadgets > Testing and development > "A three-month test of a more prominent link to the contributors of a page. Part of WikiProject Medicine." Matthew Ferguson 57 (talk) 18:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes and if you do not want to see these you can simply de-select it under preferences. It is by default off. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Doc James, my concerns aren't about whether an editor can turn this option on or off; they're related to the technical problems and, of greater concern to me, what I see as a circumvention of procedure (similar to the concerns I had with the Copy and paste bot, whose scope was extended before the BAG was notified). Is this a trial, or isn't it? If it's a trial, it must end. Without a defined end date and evaluation criteria, it seems like this is being called a trial but it's actually something that is going to be permanent. Ca2james (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
What technical problems exactly? The proposed trial was this going live. It has never gone live thus no trial has every occurred. AT least not one I proposed. Yes the page linked to needs to be better before a trial can occur. There are still efforts to do this but they will take more time.
With respect to the "copy and paste" detection bot nothing was circumvented. There was support for having the bot go global. There is also support for paid staff to help if needed. Some of your comments in these discussions have been a little off color. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Quite frankly, it seems that WP:MED will do whatever it wants to do regardless of broader community consensus; it's as though the project sees itself as separate from Wikipedia (a walled garden, as it were), with its own rules and goals.
Although there was WP:MED consensus for the trial, there was no broader community consensus for it and you all just went ahead with it anyways. How can anyone know whether there has been harm or negative feedback for this trial when there's no central place for feedback? Also, if the trial was only supposed to be for three months (according to the Preferences page), then that time is up. Ca2james (talk) 00:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

"in reality there are 5965 articles affected." I looked at a few of the articles listed, but I did not find a "Contributors" link. Did you actually look at any articles and find such a link? Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:41, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

"enable via preferences > Gadgets > Testing and development > "A three-month test of a more prominent link to the contributors of a page. Part of WikiProject Medicine." " I don't see that option at all. (I can see an option for "Mobile sidebar preview".) Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:46, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Strange - I have it as the last of 3 options in that section, so the last item on the page. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Axl, if the option is set then each of the 5965 articles in the category show the Contributors link. I don't know why you don't see this option in your preferences. Ca2james (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
The trial which was proposed was to have this go live on a fixed number of articles but this has never occurred. The potential concerns was that this was going to promote improper editing of Wikipedia. We were going to have 100 articles in which it was "on" and 100 which were controls. There is not nor has there been a trial which I have been involved in running. All there has been is discussion and someone creating a gadget. The gadget does not allow a trial to occur. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:18, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
It's called a trial on the Preferences page, and people can try it out so to an outsider it looks like a trial whether that's the trial you planned to run or not. The technical problems I refer to are the ones I mentioned in the first post in this section related to the use of XTools. As for my remarks being off-colour, above, when I was referring to the copy and paste bot, you and the bot owners did extend the scope of the bot without having permission to do so: you all asked for permission from the BAG afterwards (and received it) but not before. I know you're trying to improve the medical articles and Wikipedia but when things appear to happen outside of consensus and process it can be a bit frustrating, as I'm sure you understand. Ca2james (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
You will need to bring up the comment about the gadget being a trial with the person who created it. Yes agree there are technical issues. Xtools is working less well than usual.
The comments I found unusual was this one Also, if you're incapacitated or killed, what happens to that person? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:10, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
I see how that could be thought of as weird and I apologize for making such an unsettling and odd comment. I try to think of how things will be taken by others but I don't always succeed. To be clear, I wish you no ill will of any kind and I hope you live for a long time. Ca2james (talk) 03:33, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Appreciate it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
User:Ca2james, you might be a bit less frustrated with innovations like this if you read WP:PPP and took it to heart (or WP:NOTBURO, if you want the Official Policy™ version). Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a "jump through the correct hoops" project. It's supposed to be a WP:BOLD one. Trying (and usually failing, but then getting up and trying something else) is how we get things done in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
we learn by doing, (trial and error)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:44, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Safety of electronic cigarettes needs eyes

An editor is insisting that material cited to this position statement by the American Association for Cancer Research and American Society of Clinical Oncology needs to be either removed or qualified because a minority of the authors have previously received money or honoraria from various pharmaceutical companies (see this diff for an example of what they are proposing). I have never seen this done before, can we have some outside input as to whether this is appropriate? Thanks. Yobol (talk) 04:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Nice canvassing. AlbinoFerret 05:13, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Albino, posting to relevant WikiProjects is not canvassing. I'm pretty sure this conversation has been had already some time ago. Since this is about medical sources, this is about as relevant as it gets and is plenty appropriate. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm staying out of the actual article, but per WP:MEDRS, "Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions." That doesn't quite cover this case exactly, but the spirit of it should be clear where we are not be be engaging in original research. There is a point where digging into author affiliations at this level becomes a form of original research or even axe grinding at it's worst, not to mention a red herring. In scientific sources, peer-review and statements by professional organizations are vetted in some fashion by the publisher, so we normally don't consider such statements to have a financial conflict of interest even in such an example as this. If something was indeed biased with a source we generally consider reliable, we'd need another reliable source to demonstrate that the statement was incorrect and biased because of previous involvements. Otherwise, a diff like you provided would be undue weight as we're not in a position to determine whether the authors were unduly influenced or not. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
If these companies had directly funded the position statement than yes there could be justification. But there is no indication that they funded the position statement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
The former example is a really interesting idea I hadn't thought of. If it were funding for a study done by a university that was peer-reviewed, we wouldn't be scrutinizing the funding source (as Wikipedia editors at least) because there's enough separation. For a position statement though, it seems like we could get into a big gray area depending on circumstances. Are you basically saying that we'd need a smoking gun (source) showing that the position statement itself was prodded along by outside funding, but that the authors simply having previous affiliations wouldn't quite be something we could use in that context? That's at least my general take on it, so I'm curious if that's where you're drawing the approximate line too. Kingofaces43 (talk) 07:02, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

A fairly amazing discussion regarding "position statements" from major organizations not being usable on WP Talk:Electronic_cigarette#Policy_Statement_from_the_American_Association_for_Cancer_Research_and_the_American_Society_of_Clinical_Oncology Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:55, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the source is a WP:MEDRS and its content due. Hard to think of anything that could be more "on point" for this topic as things stand. I'd have no objection to attributing to the originating organizations though (if anything that enhances its credibility to our readers). Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 08:19, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
be it "e-cigarette" or anything else, it is always "disturbing" when a company is (possibly) involved--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:42, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Because scientists don't need to eat, unlike normal humans? Because government and non-governmental funding has such a stellar track record of being unbiased?
You shouldn't automatically be disturbed if a business is involved. At least with a business, you know what their interests are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
its obviously "no" to the first two questions, though that doesn't make the third option any more appealing ( having said that I understand the need to have" the doors open to everyone ") BTW "heliocentrism" sometimes has its drawbacks too.--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:08, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Wandering a bit off topic here, but easily 90% of papers listed at www.retractionwatch.com are academic papers on research funded solely by government and non-profit sources. Competition for funding is fierce, and the desire to acquire funding does not become a greater or lesser COI based on the source being governmental or private. Then there is the desire for tenure, promotion, and peer recognition. I don't think anyone who has spent substantial time in both places would argue that there is less fibbing in academia than in industry. Formerly 98 (talk) 15:54, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
I think principal investigators (P.I.) are focused aside from grants on going- assist. prof. to assoc. prof. to prof. Having said that many times their grant proposals are such that they don't have too much competition (ie vector is mosquito) or the model organism is dictyostelium [8] , therefore less competition within the university for grants IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:23, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
I wonder what someone like User:Tony1 would make of your assertion that "many times" research grants "don't have too much competition". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
my opinion is still the same (in academics,,, as I originally said I don't care to much for companies, no offence to those who do). thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Should the "junk sleep" article be undeleted?

This article was recently deleted because it was mistakenly believed to be a neologism. Nonetheless, this word appears in several books written by medical doctors that were published several years ago.

Will it be possible to undelete this article at any time in the future? Jarble (talk) 03:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a neologism to me. I do not see any medical textbooks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:24, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Things are deemed notable all the time despite not being mentioned in medical textbooks. ;-)
Jarble, it looks like "junk sleep" is defined in most of those sources as being exactly the same thing as poor quality of sleep, in which case, it would make sense to write an article at the more formal title. In a few cases, they seem to use it to mean poor quality of sleep specifically due to eating junk food, and in one, it appears that it means poor quality of sleep due to playing with electronic entertainment devices. (If you want to do write that article, then it would also make sense to beg User:Hordaland to help you.)
Have you thought about asking for a WP:REFUND? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:47, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't feel that there is a need for an article by that name. The term is newer than Junk food and it may not last as long. Sleep quality is a possibility; is there a need for it? Readers should get a 'hit' when searching for 'junk sleep', I suppose. The term 'sleep quality' appears in the article Sleep in the section "Nutritional effects on sleep"; the new term could be mentioned there or, perhaps better, in Sleep hygiene. Or just in Wictionary, where I find both junk food and fast food but not junk sleep.
(Looking around at related articles, I notice that the article Activities of daily living does not include the word sleep. An oversight that should be fixed! Sleeping is even included in the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.) --Hordaland (talk) 12:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
It has been recreated and nominated for deletion. See here. Everymorning talk 21:03, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to Participate in a WikiProject Study

Hello Wikipedians,

We’d like to invite you to participate in a study that aims to explore how WikiProject members coordinate activities of distributed group members to complete project goals. We are specifically seeking to talk to people who have been active in at least one WikiProject in their time in Wikipedia. Compensation will be provided to each participant in the form of a $10 Amazon gift card.

The purpose of this study is to better understanding the coordination practices of Wikipedians active within WikiProjects, and to explore the potential for tool-mediated coordination to improve those practices. Interviews will be semi-structured, and should last between 45-60 minutes. If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment for the online chat session. During the appointment you will be asked some basic questions about your experience interacting in WikiProjects, how that process has worked for you in the past and what ideas you might have to improve the future.

You must be over 18 years old, speak English, and you must currently be or have been at one time an active member of a WikiProject. The interview can be conducted over an audio chatting channel such as Skype or Google Hangouts, or via an instant messaging client. If you have questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Michael Gilbert at (206) 354-3741 or by email at mdg@uw.edu.

We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryzhou (talk • contribs) 19:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The link to the relevant research page is m:Research:Means_and_methods_of_coordination_in_WikiProjects. Md gilbert (talk) 00:26, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Finasteride

Request for comment on what if any additional weight to put on sexual side effects and persistence of same post treatment. This has been a long running debate and it would be helpful to get enough outside input to reach a firm conclusion. Issues well described on Talk page. Thnx Formerly 98 (talk) 03:25, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a complicated issue that requires more than just a cursory review. The current version of the article references a single study that concludes finasteride does not cause sexual side effects. However, there are many more studies of higher quality that indicate otherwise including the original clinical trials for Proscar and Propecia, a long-term study on Proscar, and an official label update from the FDA.Doors22 (talk) 03:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Actually, it sounds like what that article needs is indeed a review—a recent review article or meta-analysis, to be specific. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, what do you know - it has just that: PMID 23768246 (though Doors refers to it as a "study"). Doors is arguing that this is a "complicated issue" beyond what that review concludes. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 07:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
It is primarily a network meta analysis of 11 RCTs and does not thoroughly review the literature. There are far superior meta-analysis that look at a larger body of literature. The following is written by more respected authors (in fact a leading urology expert and not a dermatologist who doesn't specialize in the field), it is written in a much more influential journal, and it actually reviews the literature. The Gupta review must actually be accessed to see why it used a poor methodology. http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1517/14740338.2013.742885
Other strong supporting sources show there is a large amount of undue weight on this one low quality article.
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/ucm299754.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4064044/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12639651
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481923/
This last article is another 2012 meta-study, albeit in a less influential journal, but still conducts a more rigorous review of the literature.
DocJames, if you and others would take the time to review the sources in depth it would be much appreciated. Finasteride is prescribed as a cosmetic drug and much of the Wikipedia traffic is driven by potential customers who are trying to seek reliable information about the potential risks of using the medication. There has been controversy about the possibility of irreversible side effects in the media, amongst doctors who prescribe the drug, and over the years a growing body of articles documenting case studies. I am not proposing to write the article as though this is a foregone conclusion because more controlled studies are still in progress at the moment but I do think it should be discussed. Globally respected institutions like the FDA and Harvard University among others are taking this matter seriously which is notable. As for the already established causual existence between finasteride and sexual adverse events - this has been established for decades and is readily available in dozens of articles, the clinical trials, the warning label etc. For some reason, the existence of one concise, poorly devised study with an outlier conclusion is all that is credited in the article currently. Doors22 (talk) 14:04, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The AUA and EAU guidelines each dedicate 2 sentences to the subject of sexual side effects, describing them as uncommon and declining on continued treatment. Neither makes any mention of "persistent" sexual side effects. I would suggest we follow their example. Alternatively we could include at most a single sentence/phrase stating that there have been a small number of case reports of persistent side effects (which is what we have now). I don't know if we have any policies on this subject but I am not aware of any other articles in which we dedicate more than a single carefully worded sentence to AEs that have only been described in case reports, especially when non-fatal. In this case there are about 50 of them out of millions of patient years of treatment. Even assuming the usual 10:1 ratio of adverse events to reports, we're really down in the weeds here and could equally warn our readers about the risk of dying in a car accident on their way to pick up their prescription. Formerly 98 (talk) 14:38, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Context: Doors22's Special:Contributions/Doors22 is a WP:SPA pretty much all focused on this issue - his edits have generally given UNDUE weight to mood disorders and sexual dysfunction as possible side effects of finasteride. This conversation is happening because after a long discussion in October that settled things, Doors came back and re-added UNDUE material which Yobol reverted, then Doors edit warred to keep it in. The edit warring has stopped, thanks goodness, but he has responded with walls of text like this on the Talk page and my Talk page. He is not dealing with UNDUE.Jytdog (talk) 14:40, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Making one reversion with changes in order to try and effect a compromise doesn't qualify for "edit warring". Wikipedia also does not put minimums on how many articles a user must actively edit in order to participate. The more important aspect is whether or not he/she is abiding by Wikipedia policy and I have been overly cautious in doing so for this issue simply because I am outnumbered.
DocJames, thank you very much for your edits. I have a couple additional comments I would appreciate if you would review on the finasteride section. Doors22 (talk) 02:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
man Doors you just digging your hole deeper. If you don't have the self-awareness to acknowledge you are a WP:SPA and you have the issues that come with it, you will not get far. Jytdog (talk) 02:26, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing with the WP:SPA issue, but I think it's more important to focus on the content. It's important to prioritize. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:48, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
Have looked at the evidence regarding the matter at hand and it is mixed. Thus we should present it as such. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:02, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I agree with that. I had originally made a subsection called "controversies". What I deadly oppose is giving UNDUE weight to it. Jytdog (talk) 03:10, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
USER:Doc James I don't believe the evidence is actually mixed other than that one low quality article. I have provided several more higher quality studies that specify finasteride, not just Proscar cause sexual side effects. The clinical trials indicate such as well. Would you please review what I have recently posted on the bottom of the Finasteride talk page and provide feedback? Thanks Doors22 (talk) 04:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Include "Conditions and findings named after foods"?

Since Wikiversity Journal of Medicine is not yet acceptable as a reference itself, its main function is now to be an entry point for texts and images that qualify for inclusion in Wikipedia in their own right. I think that qualification is best discussed even before publication in this journal, and therefore I will now make entries on Wikipedia talk:Wikiversity for new submissions to the journal, starting with the most recently peer reviewed submission, Table of pediatric medical conditions and findings named after foods. Please join its discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Wikiversity#Include "Conditions and findings named after foods"?. Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:50, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:TRIVIA. These lists are kept in social media domains but it doesn't sound encyclopedia. JFW | T@lk 12:58, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
it probably is--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:22, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks JFW and Ozzie10aaaa for your comments. To the best of our knowledge we are not aware of such lists existing in the social media domains (unless they have originated from the published literature or they are spontaneous lists - of debatable quality - that have not been peer reviewed). In addition to the several references that we cite in our article, here are more examples of such lists in the published literature.[1] [2]
Also, WP:TRIVIA that you refer to states, "Trivia sections should be avoided. If they must exist, they should in most cases be considered temporary, until a better method of presentation can be determined." Our list is not temporary and has been presented in a way accepted for scholarly material as highlighted by our references. Our list falls under Medical eponyms (eponym - named after a person, place or thing) making it undoubtedly encyclopedic material. LK and GM. Part (talk) 04:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Wynia MK (1995). "Culinary Metaphors in Medicine". Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice. 4 (6): 437–440. ISSN 1536-9943.
  2. ^ Kumar K, Kumar A (1994). "Gastronomic pathology". Journal of General Internal Medicine. 9 (4): 207. ISSN 0884-8734.

Deprecating some obsolete welcome templates

The WP:MED page has some welcome templates for new editors. Some of these give out of date information, and in any case, I see no reason to have so many with so little variation. I am removing these from the project page and marking them as deprecated.

I put these in Category:WikiProject Medicine archives. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Bluerasberry I still use those fairly often. Why couldn't they simply be updated? JFW | T@lk 23:59, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Jfdwolff They could be updated. I had no way of knowing if they are being used, but since I thought the two big ones were giving outdated information, I thought they were not being used. The short one I imagined that no one would use because of the trend of longer welcomes to new users.
Should I update both of the big ones? Do you use the small one too? Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:06, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I also use the second one in that list (it's an easy way to provide links to WT:MED), and I can't imagine how the very small amount of information in it could be "out of date". I normally use David Ruben's {{MedWelcome}} instead of the first one in your list, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing I deleted the second one thinking that no one would use it because it was short, only gave two links, and one of the links is to the portal. I assumed that no one here promoted the portal. Here are the changes to the portal since 2006 - I think it would not be entirely wrong of me to say that no one has developed the portal in the past 9 years, and because I felt the portal was neglected, half the pitch in that welcome, and not promoted in other templates, I thought that this template was outdated. You might have another perspective but I hope you can see a bit of mine also. I will post the second template back to the WP:MED front page so that new users can find it, and not pursue further changes with it unless someone else wishes to discuss it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:19, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't really care if it's listed on the page, so long as it doesn't have a "historical" tag on the top of the template. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Bot to replace {{cite PMID}} with {{cite journal}}

I would like to propose the creation of a bot to first replace the {{cite PMID}} template with {{cite journal}} template on all medical articles. And than to regularly run on medical articles to make the change when new ones are added. We previously replaced these on our top 1500 most viewed articles per consensus here. User:Boghog previous developed the bot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doc James (talk • contribs) 18:39, January 15, 2015


Support

Oppose

Discussion

Enobosarm

Can someone please review this edit that I've been slow edit warring over. Thanks SmartSE (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:37, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Major change proposed to infobox disease

It has been proposed to add a line for: causes, affected regions, treatments, further developments and prevention to the infobox disease. Have started discussion here [9] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

{{Estrogenics}}, {{Glucocorticoidics}}, {{Mineralocorticoidics}}, {{Progestogenics}},?

A proposal to rename the above navboxes has been made here. Your input is welcome. Boghog (talk) 11:05, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Appears like they need to be moved back. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:38, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

ebola /sierra leone

[10] ..seems to show a discrepancy between the WHO 3,000 fatality count [11] and the objective numbers it offers--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

We typically ignore the popular press. The telegraph is not known for its reliability. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:42, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
your correct about the press, however this isn't the first time Sierra Leone fatality count has been questioned--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:51, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes and when a review article questions it, we will include it. The telegraph is such a bad source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:33, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
very well--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:00, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Looking more closely. WHO says 3062 deaths in SL.[12] Telegraph says "Sierra Leone is now the worst-infected of all the West African nations hit by the Ebola epidemic, with 3,062 of the 8,429 deaths across west Africa so far" What is the issue exactly? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

if you look towards the start of the article,"exactly how many of the 4,400 corpses laid to rest here since August are victims of Ebola is impossible to say,"..again your right about the source, but come now with more than 10,000 cases (per WHO) the CFR is clearly off. Having said that a review article is in order--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Which "case fatality rate"? It is between 25% and 90% and 35% is in that range. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
so,,, Guinea is 2,817/1,821 is 65% CFR, Liberia is 8,362/3,556 is 43% CFR, SL is 10,150/3,067 is 30% CFR and these are the three most infected (the numbers are per Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa now that deviation must have a reason--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
[13] ..CFR reference (one of many used for Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa & [[[14] ,,a little more reputable--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Effect

Some of you doubtless helped this young man in his quest: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/01/16/high-school-student-cancer-test/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:45, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

How to deal with Russian pharmacology literature?

I'm currently looking at our article on noopept, and it brings me back to a problem I've perceived several times before. There are a substantial number of Russian "patent medicines" that were invented in Russia and are backed only by Russian literature that makes dubious claims for their efficacy. For many of them there are good reasons why they're unlikely to work as advertised -- some for example are homeopathic. Of course there is some Russian literature that is perfectly fine, but it's clear that there is also a boatload of Russian literature that is extremely dubious. It's hard to find any systematic way of distinguishing the good from the bad, though. Basically I'm wondering whether there is any policy-compliant way of getting these facts across in an article. Has there ever, for example, been a high-quality review of the quality of the Russian pharmacology literature? (It's not just Russia, by the way -- Ukraine and other former-Soviet nations also.) Looie496 (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

From [15]:
  • "One of the best illustrations of this phenomenon is the total absence of negative results in Soviet science. In 2002 the first author of this paper, in his role as editor of a medical journal, announced a prize of a free subscription to anybody who could provide an example of a medical dissertation with negative results. In two years no single example was offered."
  • "Articles published in Russian medical journals can provide a distorted picture, as they cannot claim to lack outside influence. Up to 50% of articles in major Russian journals are connected to advertisements published in the same issue"
  • "Medical journals are far behind the international practice in promoting editorial independence, adopting peer-review processes and other standards of modern scientific publishing."
--Sunrise (talk) 21:41, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
It depends. If the statement is that of the Russian government and we are commenting about the position of the Russian government than sure. But otherwise care should be taken if nothing exists in English. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:41, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
How would you suggest handling something like the noopept article, where dubious statements are made solely on the authority of Russian literature? The problem can partly be solved by dumping primary sources, but some of the sources are secondary. It seems to me that it would be helpful to come up with some sort of generic statement indicating that drugs supported solely by Russian literature should be viewed skeptically, or something like that. (To clarify, I'm specifically not talking about Russian government publications. I'm talking about Russian medical journals. I have never even looked at a Russian government publication.) Looie496 (talk) 03:00, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Trim the primary sources first and see if anything is left. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:57, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Saquinavir, Ritonavir and MEDMOS

Saquinavir and ritonavir are historically important drugs, as their back-to-back approvals marked the beginning of the age of HAART and was immediately followed by a plummet in the U.S. AIDS death rate by roughly 2/3s. Prior to these approvals deaths were running at 50K per year and increasing at an annual rate of about 5,000 per year.

With the advent of better protease inhibitors, and of non-nucleoside pol inhibitors with an increased barrier to resistance development, the use of each of these protease inhibitors as antivirals has fallen to near zero. Ritonavir is still used as a pharmacokinetic booster at doses of 25% or less those formerly used for HIV treatment, and saquinavir utilization appears to be essentially zero, irrespective of whether one is referring to developed or developing countries. In spite of this our articles on these two drugs look much as they would if they had been written in 1998, when these drugs were mainstays of HIV therapy.

I propose to rewrite these two articles as follows:

  • Ritonavir: emphasizing the use as a PK booster and its historical importance as an HIV drug. The AE section will be rewritten to emphasize those AEs seen at the PK boosting dose of 150 mg, which is that experienced by 95% or more of current users.
  • Saquinavir, in my opinion, is no longer primarily a drug article but a historical one. Twenty years ago this drug was associated with the conversion of HIV from a certain death sentence to a chronically managed disease. Under MEDMOS, this episode is not discussed until the 8th paragraph of the article, instead giving priority to its medical use today by a few thousand people worldwide. This seems very strange to me. I propose to change it, emphasizing the historical aspect, and dropping the MEDMOS organizational scheme.

Feedback in advance of these proposed edits would be appreciated. Formerly 98 (talk) 21:26, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Both are on the current WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines so while they may be of historical importance in the United States it does not appear that they are in the developing world.
The ref you link to states "Lopinavir boosted with low-dose ritonavir (LPV/r) was the predominant protease inhibitor, received by 95% of adults." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:30, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Being "on the list" doesn't mean that they're used much. I would expect it to be very difficult to get an HIV drug removed from that list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Were in the paper Formerly does it say their use has fallen to near zero? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:12, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

So is your position that if even 1 person somewhere is still using this drug, that MEDMOS dominates its historical importance as the birth of the HAART paradigm that is now the basis of ALL HIV treatment? God help us if we had an equally adamant History Project with its own style guide. ;-) Formerly 98 (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

No that is not my position. I am not seeing that these medications are rarely if ever used "yet". I may simple have not looked hard enough. Which part of that paper says use have fallen to near zero? All I am asking is for a quote of the passage so that we can at least be working from the same text. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:34, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Yup, we are on the same page on ritonavir as being used mainly as a PK booster. But the ref shows most developing world pts who use a PI being on lopinavir, which is a superior drug and also generic. So aside from the fsct that saquinavir is not mentioned individually in the article, it also is inferior to other generic PIs, so hard to imagine getting much use. I'd say its historical significance greatly outweighs its current medical significance. Is there an established procedure for removing drugs from the WHO list? Hasit ever been done? Formerly 98 (talk) 01:28, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Not sure if meds have been removed. Interesting question though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:34, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

This 2013 paper says "Our results support WHO guidelines6 for selection of second-line antiretroviral therapy using ritonavir-boosted lopinavir plus two or three NtRTIs. The results also support an alternative strategy of switching to an NtRTI-free regimen of ritonavir-boosted lopinavir plus raltegravir." [16] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:40, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Let me look for some more papers on this. The "ritonavir boosting" refers to the use of ritonavir as a CYP3A4 inhibitor. It extends the half life of a lot of other drugs this way and is used in a lot of HIV regimens for this purpose. It is also part of Abbott's HCV regimen for this same reason. Formerly 98 (talk) 14:58, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

This ref from 2009 says "Ritonavir-boosted saquinavir is a frequently used and widely available protease inhibitor (PI) for the initial and salvage treatment of HIV disease." [17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:12, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

If you want to know whether something is used, then you want sales data, not guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:42, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
In my experience, some academicians don't really have a clue of what drug markets look like and throw phrases like "widely used" around pretty promiscuously, as drug markets are outside their interest and expertise. Have I misunderstood the paper that I cited above? Based on actual survey data and not just as an unsupported statement in a paper introduction, it states
"the vast majority of adults (98%)were receiving first-line regimens and 2% of patients were receiving second-line regimens. A vast majority (99%) of people on first-line ART, and 87% of those on second-line ART, were receiving regimens recommended by the WHO."
So we have 98% treated with first line regimens, which according to the WHO recommendations include only triple nucleoside combinations and combinations of two nucleosides plus a NNRTI. Protease inhibitor based combos are not recommended 1st line. Ritonavir-boosted saquinavir is one of several recommended second line agents taken by the other 2%, but Figure 1 shows that only 11% of this 2% (0.2%) are taking non-lopinavir based regimens. Table 2 shows 2008 saquinavir utilization at 0.00 million person-years, or <5,000 out of a total of 10.3 million person years of antivirals. Assuming triplet therapy this is 3 million people, so we can estimate saquinavir is used by <0.2%. Formerly 98 (talk) 08:43, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes number for SQV are low (less than 20,000 individuals). Numbers for RTV are 160,000 to 480,000 individuals if I am reading the table correctly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
So are you OK with the following?
  • Reorganizing the the saquinavir article, expanding the history section and moving it up?
  • Possibly doing the same with indanavir, which according to the same paper appears to be even less used than saquinavir. Indanavir was the PI with which the persistent effiacy of HAART was first demonstrated, but it reached the market later than saquinavir and ritonavir.
  • Expanding and emphasizing the AE profile of ritonavir at the lower dose (150 mg) used for pharmacokinectic boosting and reducing discussion of the AE profile at the 600 mg dose formerly used when ritonavir was used as a protease inhbitor in its own right. In addition to the up to 480,000 using ritonavir as a pharmacokinetic booster in HIV regimens you noted above, there will be large numbers taking the 150 mg dose as part of Abbvie's HCV regimen in coming years. So the utilization of the 150 mg dose may be 100x as common as the 600 mg dose at this point.
Formerly 98 (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Sourcing dispute about population genetics

This is not a medicine issue but it is in the field of genetic analysis, which many of us deal with. I'm in a sourcing dispute about population genetics or maybe better, Genetic genealogy with another editor and have opened a thread at RSN here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Secondary_vs_primary_sources_for_population_genetics_in_Mexicans_of_European_descent. Please comment. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu)

Dear medical experts: Here's another health-related AfC submission which will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is this worth improving instead? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:33, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

we already have an article on it - see Mesoamerican nephropathy. Jytdog (talk) 04:36, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
...and I see that there is already a redirect with a similar title, too. The draft has been deleted. Thanks, Jytdog. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Child and Adolescent Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Portfolio

Dear medical experts: This draft was never submitted to be added to the encyclopedia. A lot of work has been put into it, but to me it doesn't seem much like an encyclopedia article. Is this something that should be kept instead of being deleted shortly as a stale draft? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Does not look useful. Tones of primary sources. Unclear what the article is actually about (bipolar versus ADHD). Someone handing in their school work on Wikipedia by the looks of it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:20, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Okay, Doc James, it's gone. Thanks for taking time to look at it. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Funny stuff going on at some articles

Special:Contributions/75.82.147.215 did some funny edits, verging on outing and WP:BLP violations. He/she may have a point that Wilson and Carnes have a WP:COI in respect to those articles, and it is not so much that I disagree with the ideas of this editor, but I find his/her way of doing it troublesome. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:20, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Website for evaluation

Could some editors from this WikiProject please have a look at the website http://cortisone-info.com and the edits from Linotte01 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)? It came across as inappropriate linking to me, but I think it would be a good idea to have some additional opinions. Thank you. Deli nk (talk) 11:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

According to Contact Cortisone-info, the website is financed by the ARCEMI (Association for Clinical And Epidemiological Research in Internal Medicine) which appears to be non-profit and independent of pharmaceutical companies. The site does appear to contain useful information which is relevant to corticosteroid and hence including a single link in the external links section ‎to this web site may be appropriate. Boghog (talk) 12:30, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I also think the source looks fine. But the way the source was added amounts to linkspam - I was on the verge of reverting myself but Deli nk beat me to it. I think it could be usefully used. Jytdog (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

There seem to be two issues about the use of the website in Wikipedia.

  1. The editor Linotte01 is adding the website as a reference to the Wikipedia articles on corticosteroid, prednisone, prednisolone, and dexamethasone. WP:MEDRS describes several sources including biomedical journals, books, and major medical/scientific organizations. The cortisone.info website fits into the "Other sources" category. While the material on the website seems to be uncontroversial, as far as I can tell, it is not peer-reviewed. Linotte01 is using the website to support statements that are well documented and uncontroversial. Moreover, the website is often being added to an already existing reference. I recommend removal of the website from referencing in Wikipedia.
  2. "including a single link in the external links section ‎to this web site may be appropriate" – Boghog; "I also think the source looks fine.... I think it could be usefully used." – Jytdog . According to WP:ELNO, a link to "any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article" should be avoided.

Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I had a long discussion at WT:V last year about this sort of situation. Here's the story:
Given: The material in question is known to be accurate, appropriate, and encyclopedic. You do not want to change the sentences in question at all, not even the spelling.
Situation: Someone adds a source that is okay—not great, and maybe not even all the way to good, but not obviously unreliable, either. Maybe it's a newspaper article that says that hernias can be treated with surgery. Maybe it's an altmed journal article that says antibiotics don't kill viruses. Maybe it's a website that contains information that you happen to know contains accurate information. But it's not obviously a very good source, and you personally would like the article to contain the best possible sources. (Notice that this discussion did not cover WP:REFSPAM situations, and I do understand why adding so many links to the same website might be worrisome.)
Question: What are your policy-supported options?
Answer: You have exactly two options:
  1. To upgrade the source yourself.
  2. To accept it and go work on something else.
In this case, Linotte01 seems to have added sources to articles that were (mostly) under-sourced. In some cases, such as when another source was already present, this may have been more enthusiastic than necessary, but there's nothing wrong with that. Ideally, the links would not have been WP:Bare URLs, but it is flatly unreasonable to expect a new editor to be able to cope with our complicated citation formatting. (mw:Citoid's coming, but probably not for a couple more weeks, because of WMF staff event schedules.) It would have been preferable if Linotte01 had removed the {{citation needed}} tag when she supplied the citation, but, again, that's a detail that new editors can't be expected to understand, and most of them feel uncomfortable doing so, because it seems arrogant to mark your own work as being good enough to remove the tag. In short, IMO these edits constitutes an improvement, however slight, to the articles, and should have been (mostly) kept and built upon in a collaborative manner.
Linotte01, if you'd like to try citation formatting, then I have a suggestion that might make it easier. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and choose the "VisualEditor" item. Save your prefs, and go back to the article. That will give you two buttons for editing: "Edit source" (what you've been doing) and "Edit beta", which works like a word processing program. Inside that, you'll find a "Cite" menu. You can "Cite web" and just have to fill out a simple form. VisualEditor is widely used at the French Wikipedia these days. If you want technical help in French, then User:Trizek or one of the other regulars at w:fr:Wikipédia:Forum des nouveaux will be able to help you out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
This is Linotte01's first edit. Linotte added the website as a reference 15 times. Of these, 10 are clearly added to existing references and create unhelpful duplication. I am confident that the remaining five statements could have been supported by the existing high-quality references. (If you choose to challenge this, I shall spend/waste more time to demonstrate it.) I am unsurprised by Jytdog's suspicion of a possible conflict of interest. Linotte01 appears to have denied any conflict of interest. I am willing to assume good faith on this matter.
The best course of action is not to leave all of these references in the text. Rather, we should politely direct Linotte01 to a better way of finding and adding references.
Your comments about WP:BOLD, citation formatting and "citation needed" tags are irrelevant to this discussion. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:15, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
actually my query about COI was based on the likelihood that Linotte works for the organization that created and maintains the site. In the diff you linked to, that issue is not addressed, and Linotte has not responded to my query on her talk page. This remains an open question for me. Jytdog (talk) 13:20, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, Linotte01's comment at Deli nk's talk page is somewhat vague. I am not surprised that you remain cynical. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:27, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it "cynical". It's a typical behavior for a newbie editor with a COI. In my view COI is not a bad thing per se, it just needs to be disclosed and managed. It becomes a bad thing when it is not disclosed and managed.Jytdog (talk) 13:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Wow, the above is depressing. Doesn't anyone think to welcome and guide new editors before dumping on them? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:27, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
good point......welcome (don't be discourage ,good luck)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:27, 20 January 2015 (UTC)


Linotte01 (talk) 18:02, 21 January 2015 (UTC) hello everybody. Thanks for all your comments. All of this is a bit new to me and it is not totally clear. I understand that I cited to much pages from cortisone-info.com but most of the links I added were to illustrate data that were mostly unsourced. It is a good idea to link the website as an external ressource instead of citations. I will try to do that this next week-end. Not sure that I will succeed but I will try.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linotte01 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 21 January 2015 (UTC) and thanks Axl for your help! I am sure that User:Trizek will be very helpful

New student training modules

Hello everyone,

The Wiki Education Foundation has gone ahead with some changes to the student training. Of particular interest is the addition of a new section intended for students who may touch medical articles, including psychology.

This section of the training is now live, here.

Thanks to BlueRasberry for contributing to this project, and we are, as always, looking for further suggestions and feedback!

Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:55, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Eryk (Wiki Ed) for compiling this.
Other news is that Helaine (Wiki Ed) has a "course onboarding checklist" which Wiki Ed is using as inclusion criteria when it supports classes. Here is the medical criteria from this initial version of this checklist:
  • If there are more than 50 students in a medical or psychology course, we have actively discouraged them from doing a Wikipedia assignment in this course.
  • The instructor has indicated that students might edit medical/psychology articles.
    • mail the medical or psychology brochure to each student
    • follow up: will instructor actively discourage if the topic of the course is not primarily medical or psychology (e.g., an information studies or composition course)?
    • add a Wiki Ed category to the Course Page so WikiProject Med members can monitor if they want
Red Flags:
  • may edit medical or psychology articles
Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Michael Davidson shooting

For those of you that missed it on the news yesterday, a CT surgeon at the Brigham in Boston was shot and killed by the son of a patient. I feel we should have a page about him, since he's been on the front page of CNN, etc, and it doesn't look like we have one. Here's a good article about the shooting from a few hours ago from Forbes.

As a physician who works across the street from where the shooting took place, I feel I'm a little involved to be completely objective about this, but I'd like to help. BakerStMD T|C 16:16, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Might be best to give it some time. We're an encyclopedia, not news. Giving it some time will help us avoid WP:RECENTISM. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
still, though we are not news ,we can place the more objective information, his contributions not only as a physician but as a human being,Davidson, on paper and by reputation, was a star. Degrees from Princeton and Yale, a residency at Duke, all leading up to a staff position at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the nation’s finest medical institutions. A 44-year-old cardiovascular surgeon known for “saving lives and improving the quality of life for every patient he cared for,” the hospital said in a statement on Tuesday. my condolences "Bakerstmd"--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Is that really notable though? It sounds like standard obituary material. Otherwise we'd have a page for every doctor out there. His main claim to fame for Wikipedia would seem to be his murder, so that's why I'd be wary right now. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
fine, wait--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the thoughts, Ozzie. I appreciate it. Aces, we do write articles about people who are only notable for the manner of their death, particularly when it garners much outside attention and focuses a larger debate. I'm thinking of Michael P. Murphy, although it's an imperfect analogy. BakerStMD T|C 17:44, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

There are multiple options here. Perhaps a biography is warranted. If the focus is on his death, though, it's probably going to be named "Death of Davidson" (maybe later being moved to "Murder of" if the shooter is convicted). It's possible to add a paragraph about this incident to the article about the location where he was killed; this would be most appropriate if that changes policies at the hospital. Finally, it might be appropriate to see whether we have enough information to build a list of healthcare workers killed by patients of their families. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Bakerstmd, I'm quite in agreeance that Wikipedia does have articles where a person is notable because of their death. The problem is that if that death just recently occurred, we need to wait a bit for the reasons I mentioned above. That'll let the sources settle down and let further developments be documented before someone goes to actively start writing it up. We're supposed to be behind the ball as an encyclopedia, so best to let things develop first. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@ user:Kingofaces43, I certainly understand the reasons we should wait, and waiting might well be the prudent course for the reasons you mention. However, there isn't likely to be anything that changes about the facts of the shooting: The shooter killed himself after shooting Dr. Davidson, so there won't be a trial. While I think the long-term impact will become clear over time, the basic facts are set, and the facts are reasonable for an encyclopedia. And @ whatamIdoing, i was thinking too that it might be reasonable to title such an article "Michael Davidson Shooting" or "Brigham and Women's shooting" rather than just a biography. BakerStMD T|C 23:29, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

template for good sources - change to "health" instead of "medical"

I just came across the template for Talk pages, guiding folks to good sources. (there is so much i am ignorant of in WP still.) What a great tool! i want to use this everywhere. But it discusses "medical" content, and I think it might be better if it mentioned "health" instead.

I started a discussion here. thx. Jytdog (talk) 16:35, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree and done. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:36, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks~! Jytdog (talk) 00:47, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Doc James is there a way to make it so the article name is in quotes for the searches, so they are better delimited? (e.g "organic food" instead of just organic food) I tried to do it and it broke the template :0 which I then undid. Jytdog (talk) 01:28, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Not sure. Would be nice though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:48, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing do you know how, or do you know someone who could help, add quotes to the template, so that the search is better delimited? Thanks~
I just noticed that Template:Find_sources_AFD is able to launch searches of external sites of a string (in quotes) using Wikipedia:Lua. I am going to ask Mr. Stradivarius to apply that to our template... hopefully he will. Am assuming that will be OK with folks. Jytdog (talk) 13:47, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
he pointed me to use "%22" to create the quotes, and that worked. hooray! Jytdog (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Wellcome Library donates 100, 000 medical images to Wikimedia Commons

The target of uploading 100,000 high resolution historical images from the Wellcome Library to Wikimedia Commons was hit last month and there is a Foundation blog post telling the story of out today. Fill your boots! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:42, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

This follows previous notices here:
Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
That is a great wealth of free information. Many thanks to all involved. Chillum 17:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
a very generous gift thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I believe that the most sincere form of thanks will be to find an image and use it appropriately. Also, please keep in mind that there are ~280 other Wikipedias, and it's generous to give them a hand if you can. Our treasured bilingual and multilingual editors can do this, of course, but I tried it a little while ago using pictures of famous historical figures. It turned out to be pretty easy, because the caption can be just their names, which I copied from the local articles. I checked back later, and none were removed and several local people had written much better captions. Collaboration works.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Image issue

So I learned something today that might interest some of you:

The Android app for Wikipedia (NB: not the mobile view that you get in a browser) has some interesting features. For example, you can save copies of Wikipedia articles to read when you're offline. (I hear the sound of some people with travel-heavy jobs clicking to the Android app store; we'll wait for them to get back.)

The Android app also has a different page layout, which is fine, I guess, but it's got one quirk that matters to us: the first image on the page, no matter what that image is, will be displayed as the top third of the first screenful. Recently, if you went to an execution-related page, you would see, as if it were the "lead image", a map of a particular country, which leaves the reader with a sour, non-neutral association, as if this were the only place in the world where this mattered. You can see the difficulty: open up an article about any crime, and put put some WP:BLP's image as the first one on the page, and it's now "the lead image" on the Android app, even if it's actually at the end of the page. Even with a caption like "Alice is a professor of law enforcement who studied this crime", it's still going to have an undesirable, non-neutral effect on the article over all.

This is particularly complicated for medicine-related articles, because we sometimes explicitly do not want to shock readers with gory or highly technical images as their first (and very large) impression of a subject. We want them to learn, not to run away, and most of us know how to find the scientific research that proves that neither strong emotions of disgust nor feeling overwhelmed and discouraged is conducive to learning. Also, if your image is highly relevant to a later section, then the image won't be present in the section where you are referring to it, because it will have been swiped for the pseudo-lead image.

The solution is pretty easy: add another image, anywhere above the one that you want to keep in the lower section. I think that most of our articles are probably fine, because we tend towards images of cells or anatomy drawings in the infoboxes, but I encourage you to keep an eye out for articles that might benefit from the addition of images that comply with WP:LEADIMAGE even if the image isn't explicitly placed in the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Yikes. This feels like something that should be raised with the developers. Have you taken this to WP:VPT or some other venue? An image that isn't in the lead section (or maybe the first section of the article body) almost certainly won't be sufficiently general to act as that sort of 'title' illustration. While the result of this design choice (when it goes wrong) will usually just be disjointed or bizarre, it has the potential to be horrific or libelous. (The problems are obvious with our most sensitive classes of material: biographical articles and medical topics.)
Incidentally, I'm not sure that infobox images necessarily get included. The mobile app doesn't show any images above Ahuatlán (to take a random article), for instance, though the article contains three images. The city seal and the flag of Mexico (included through a template) are both part of the infobox at the top of the article; they both appear in a collapsed information box in the mobile app. The third image, a locator map, appears in the navbox at the bottom of the regular article; the navbox is omitted in the mobile version. In other words, it's not 100% clear to me what the conditions are that enable an image from an infobox to appear as the 'title' image for an article, and we shouldn't necessarily rely on infobox images to 'insulate' use from the negative effects of the mobile app's design choices. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:29, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
I believe that the devs have already had a couple of very bad examples pointed out them. I don't have any Android devices, so I can't check the details for myself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

There are other problems, too, such as images cropping badly; see screenshots in Commons:Category:Wikipedia mobile app beta bugs - 2014-12-18. I [raised this https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2014-December/008441.html with the developers] on the mailing list, during beta testing, but they seemed unconcerned, and released the app anyway. (Some heuristics are applied, to exclude things like (IIRC) maps and coats of arms.) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I asked; images that are in infoboxes should be used just like any other. Perhaps what Andy says about omitting maps and such is responsible for that Ahuatlán's infobox images not being pulled out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions for all of CAM

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Acupuncture closed by motion on 12 January 2015. The result is that all articles and all edits about complementary and alternative medicine, "broadly defined", are now covered by Wikipedia:Discretionary sanctions.

  • If the article is about CAM, then discretionary sanctions apply.
  • If the edit is about CAM, even if the article is about a different subject (for example, if you're writing that Joe Film uses an herbal supplement), then discretionary sanctions apply.
  • If there's even a hint or a question about whether the article or subject is about CAM, then discretionary sanctions apply.

This is going to affect thousands of articles, including a few hundred supported by this WikiProject.

If you're not familiar with this system, this is a "one strike and you're (maybe) out" system that applies to everyone, as a result of the bad behavior of other, previous editors. If an editor causes even a small problem at an article, and the editor has already been officially warned about the existence of the sanctions (this message doesn't count, because no one could prove that anyone else read it), then he can be blocked, topic-banned, or otherwise punished by any single uninvolved admin.

Discretionary sanctions are supposed to be applied even-handedly according to editor behavior, not according to an editor's beliefs or viewpoints. It is not supposed to matter whether the editor's work is pro-science or pro-altmed or anything else.

It is likely that we will see an increase in the number of formal RFCs and other efforts and dispute resolution as a result, and I hope that uninvolved editors will be willing and able to keep responding to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

*sigh* Kudos to those editors who waded through the pages of repetitive arguments and managed to reach a sensible compromise (sort of). Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:04, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
I sense a negative tone above, but I think discretionary sanctions are needed (if they didn't already apply under fringe science). It's the kind of situation DS was designed to handle, where editors have uncompromising/entrenched views in an "area of conflict". One problem is that CAM advocates can potentially WP:EXHAUST run-of-the-mill independent editors, whether or not that is the intention, and this can cause articles to be less conforming to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Yes, DS applies to all parties, and admins do not rule on content, but CAM advocates seem to more commonly exhibit WP:IDHT behavior, which is sanctionable. Manul ~ talk 17:20, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
We could equally say that anti-CAM editors WP:EXHAUST run-of-the-mill independent editors by their focus on adding the word pseudoscience, excessively quoting their favorite skeptics, and even blocking efforts describe the subject itself (because of their POV that all the reader needs to know is that its efficacy hasn't been scientifically proven to their satisfaction).
To give you a glimpse into this side of the problem, we have had articles about obviously non-scientific religious beliefs that have claimed that religious actions like Prayer are pseudoscience. Every basic source about the demarcation problem says that religion cannot possibly be pseudoscience (because it does not pretend to be any kind of science at all), but that doesn't seem to stop some editors from trying. The problem is certainly not all on one side, and I am concerned that an analysis of our enforcement actions compared to editors' POVs would prove to be embarrassingly POV-driven. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
I would certainly be interested in seeing such an analysis of enforcement actions. No matter what, CAM articles are desperately in need of many more dispassionate and uninvolved editors. Herbxue (talk) 01:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Smart meter

I'm unsure what to do about this edit. Will someone knowledgeable about this subject check it out, and the other edits by the IP? -- Brangifer (talk) 02:54, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Electrodiagnostic medicine

This article was recently created. I am posting about it here because I want to see what other medical editors think about it. Everymorning talk 02:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I rated it as class=Start and importance=low. That's about what I think of it. I don't think it should be deleted though. BakerStMD T|C 19:09, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
yes, I think that's how it should be, with a little work im sure it can go up in class, good luck--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:24, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

There is already an article over at Electrodiagnosis, and I suggest we merge them. Electrodiagnosis is an important and substantial part primarily of clinical neurophysiology. The Electrodiagnostic medicine article doesn't mention ECG at all, though electrodiagnosis does. ECGs aren't the first thing that pops to mind, even though they build upon the same phenomena I would think electrodiagnosis normally refers to nerve-cell function? If we merge the articles I'm not sure if ECG should be in the hat-note or have a separate section? Any ideas? -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 09:57, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Looks like Electrodiagnostic medicine is a more substantial page than Electrodiagnosis, so probably logical for the latter to be merged with the former. I'd say ECG should be mentioned in the lead in a prose statement of the commonly performed electrodiagnostic tests ("common electrodiagnositc tests include ECG, EMG, etc"). Underlying the field is the physiologic concept of Membrane potential which occurs in nerve and muscle cells, allowing them to generate and conduct electrical potentials, the byproducts of which we can measure. That should probably be mentioned in there somewhere too. BakerStMD T|C 22:16, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Help needed with Nicorette

Please take a look at Nicorette. I think that more information is needed on the efficacy (that will probably be very close to NRT) and not just vs. placebo but other non-nicotine medicine (like cytisine and other). -- Bbarmadillo

I think it might be best to place it under 1. "nicotine replacement therapy" as the article looks a bit commercial in nature, it does not seem IMO to fit into standard "manual of style" mode. 2. there is already a page tag suggestion to merge with "nicoderm"--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
The article is about the brand, not the therapy. There is no need to merge it with "Nicoderm" - see my explanation on the talk page of the article. I think that you are probably right that the efficacy should be at NRT article. -- Bbarmadillo (talk) 12:03, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Should merge to the generic nicotine gum. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:05, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
If the subject is actually the brand, then you should not merge it away. Tylenol is not "just" paracetamol. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
If you make it to para 2, you read: "Nicorette product range consists of chewing gum,[2][3][4][5] lozenges,[3][4] patches[5] of two kinds (transparent and non-transparent),[3] oral spray (Nicorette QuickMist),[6][7] inhalator,[3][5] sublingual tablets (Nicorette Microtab)[3] and nasal spray.[3][8]" Johnbod (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
The question is whether there is anything particularly notable about this brand in particular vs the generic. In this instance, I don't see it. (with tylenol we had the cyanide thing, etc). Having an aritcle on the brand in this case just seems like PROMO to me. Jytdog (talk) 23:28, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
yep--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:42, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Very few articles on Brand names should not simple redirect to the generic term. Tylenol is one of the few. Most of the time it simply results in duplication of content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:27, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Well you may say that but you are running against WP orthodoxy, where half the contents of an American supermarket have articles. It is the old consumer product vs pharma argument that runs on at Electronic cigarette. Personally I think, as the oldest brand, Nicorette and its history are unquestionably notable, but the pharma-like sections should be removed, with links to the generic articles. In any case far too many different products are covered in the one article for these to be useful. Johnbod (talk) 00:55, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Sophora flavescens

Can I interest anyone here in taking a look at Sophora flavescens? Though it is an article about a plant, I think members of this WikiProject are well suited to fixing its problems because most of the content is about its potential medical uses. The article has been marked with a "factual accuracy is disputed" tag for about 4 years and the problem has never been dealt with. Most of the medical-related content seems to be in violation of WP:MEDRS. If no one here wants to try to deal with the article, I will (but you WP:MED experts would probably do a better job). Gnome de plume (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I cleaned up and consolidated the chemistry information. I removed medical claims related to individual chemical components because those claims aren't relevant to properties of the plant itself. There are many additional medical claims in the "Research" section that still need review from a MEDRS perspective. -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:56, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
it looks as if it would benefit, from a good CE--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

A discussion of further reading

Is occurring here Talk:Autism#DiscussionDoc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:59, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Artist

Hey All. We have a medical illustrator who has recently. Please welcome User:VHenryArt Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:02, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

welcome--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
Happy to be here! -- VHenryArt (talk) 14:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I just looked at File:Obstetric Fistula Locations Diagram.png, and I have three things to say:
  1. Wow.
  2. There are three lines leading from the label "areas fistulas commonly occur", but there are four "red hot" spots in the diagram. Should the anterior vaginal wall also have a pointing line?
  3. Would you mind making a separate one that uses numbers instead of words? Words in a drawing are best, unless the words aren't in your own language. If it says "1, 2, 3, 4" instead of "Bladder, Bowel, Vagina, Areas fistulas commonly occur", then it could be used in any language, with the translations given in the caption. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
Agree with "Wow" – this is great! More quality artwork on disease-related pages would be a great benefit – encyclopedic images which most of our general readership, I think, are comfortable with. And much better, imo, than prominently filling pages with *repellant* (for many) clinical images and *undecipherable* (often, for many) pathological images, etc – material which mostly would be better off tucked away in relatively unobtrusive galleries that are still readily consultable by readers who choose to. 86.134.203.235 (talk) 09:35, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! I agree that illustrations can often do a better job at visually describing a concept than a photograph (and not just because I am a medical illustrator!). I am excited to lend my talents to the world of Wikipedia (and notably the WikiProject Medicine) to hopefully help people get a better understanding of what it is they are researching.
--To address WhatamIdoing's suggestions, I added an extra leader line to the fourth fistula position - good catch. For the labels, I have uploaded a couple of options (http://vhenryart.com/ObFistula_Labels.jpg) and I'd like opinions on which makes more sense. One option is a combination of words and numbers (this means there isn't a need for multiple versions of the file). The second is just numbered. Both versions would include corresponding numbers in the image description - where a translator can make changes. I am open to doing either. VHenryArt (talk) 22:05, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
I think that either of those are workable. (I'm assuming the "box" on the second would go away. I don't like the box covering up your diagram.) Having only numbers means that a non-image-editing person can easily label it. Some Wikipedias strongly prefer to never see any English. (Most probably don't care much, and would just provide the translation in the caption.) Who else has looked at this and has a view? In addition to hoping that some of our translation-oriented folks would take a look, I'll ping User:TylerDurden as well. Tyler's been working on writing in plain English, and he'll probably have a sound opinion on what will be most easily understood by readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
the art is awesome (numbers would be better)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:36, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
From my limited understanding... the ideal solution would presumably be some[feasible?] way whereby the named labels could simply be relabeled in the target language. Matching labels to numbers requires more cognitive work by readers, at the expense of focus/assimilation. Bilingual labeling systems would probably be the least preferable option for the lay reader (though they might actually be convenient for some students/professionals who need to familiarize themselves with terms both in their own language and in the scientific lingua franca of English. 2c, 86.134.203.235 (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
- These are all good points and this is a good discussion to have. I can see the benefit to being able to adapt an image for translated pages. But, I do agree that having the labels directly on the image is the best approach, and so I will keep English labels on the main version. I've uploaded the version with the numbers and labels and included a corresponding table in the description. While I think the look of the combined version is less visually appealing than either just labels or just numbers, it does provide a nice compromise. I don't know if there is a way in the Commons to add dynamic text onto an image. I will look into it and see what I can find out.
- I would like to mention that it is very easy for me to make an alternative version of the image with translated labels in place of the English. Should a translator feel it would be beneficial to have that version he or she is more than welcome to request it. I have added a note to translators in the image's Discussion section informing translators that they are free to request a specific translated version of the image. VHenryArt (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
VHenryArt, greetings and welcome to WP, thank you so much for your willingness to contribute your talents. Seems the easiest way is two copies one with English and one with numbers. The one with numbers could be used for multiple languages other than English. Alternatively how about "numbered English" this would preserve the label in the drawing, give the lingua franca English and provide numbers that could be used for adding other languages. I agree it would be good to hear from the translation folks. Again thanks. - - MrBill3 (talk) 06:02, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
both could be used, but perhaps if it were just numbered,this might be best (all languages would be equal)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:49, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
If the images are in SVG format, any labels in them can also be easily translated using this tool. --WS (talk) 10:58, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
It is good to know about the SVG format labels. I have uploaded a file in that format, but only the lines and text are vector since the drawing is raster.(File:Obstetric Fistula Locations.svg) The labels can be edited by a translator, should they not want to use the tool, if they are comfortable with downloading it and editing the XML directly in any text editor. I found another quick solution to the label issue by adding annotations to the image. Annotated version (Wikimedia Location). It seems like a bit of a hack, but it gets the job done. Anyway, now there are multiple version of the file to pick from. This has been a good exercise, I've learned a lot. Thank you all for your participation! VHenryArt (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
thank you for bringing your extraordinary talents, readers benefit from illustrations very much, and the articles will therefore be much better--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:40, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirects involving Dr. Who and medical doctors

Here's a rather interesting issue that's come up that is at least partially relevant to folks here. Essentially, the folks over at Wikiproject Dr. Who want to redirect the term "the doctor" to Doctor (Doctor Who) whenever someone searches for that specific term. [18] Currently, searching for either "doctor" or "the doctor" will lead to the same disambiguation page, Doctor. Does anyone here see issues with having the two terms lead to different disambiguation pages? One disambiguation could eventually lead to a single primary topic, but that's not really the question I'm posing right now at least. It seems like a silly distinction at first (I thought so too) but it seems like something that could use a look by the wider community. Discussion on this question is at Talk:Doctor#Propose_splitting_out_all_.22The_Doctor.22_terms. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Memorial University of Newfoundland

At Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 January 25#Template:MUNAnatomy, we are talking about deleting links to the Memorial University of Newfoundland, because they are dead and unarchived, as far as we can tell. If anyone knows if there is another source for these pages, a comment at that discussion would be appreciated. Thanks. —PC-XT+ 06:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello from a new pharmacist editor

Hi All - I'm a Canadian pharmacist and pharmacy prof at the University of Waterloo. I'm learning how to edit Wikipedia. I'd like to eventually teach my students to contribute their knowledge as well. I'm open to any tips and tricks and welcome any feedback. Kagpharm (talk) 16:07, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Welcome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:30, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
hi glad to have you here--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Further reading

An RFC at Talk:Autism, related to books authored by women. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Intimate partner violence article -- "Gender symmetry"

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Intimate partner violence#"Gender symmetry". A WP:Permalink to the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 03:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

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