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Chronic Lyme disease

We are having a dispute about an alternative name for "chronic lyme" and more voices would be useful. The discussion is at Talk:Chronic_Lyme_disease#Synonyms Jytdog (talk) 18:06, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

commented[1]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:27, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

• Have requested further input on this topic here[2] as IMO the full meaning of the term is not properly or clearly addressed in the article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

James you are surprisingly out of whack on this. I cannot figure this out. Jytdog (talk) 02:47, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

There are four conditions that go by the name "chronic Lyme". Not sure how this is out of whack? Are you claiming that PTLDS is not sometimes referred to as "chronic Lyme"? To term was redirect to that article not that long ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:53, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

In general I think having legitimate topics co-exist with with substantial altmed ones give us bad articles which are a maintenance headache (Alkaline diet springs to mind). I'd favour keeping all the fake lime stuff in one article (i.e. the three fake types of "chronic" Lyme) and making the post-Lyme treatment condition a section in our main Lyme disease article. In the real world terminological distinctions are sometimes messy and contradictory and Wikipedia needs to decide how to partition topics in a way which makes sense for the reader. Alexbrn (talk) 05:39, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

"Chronic lyme" has not used in mainstream medicine to refer to anything for around 10 years. This discussion is completely bolloxed. Jytdog (talk) 14:45, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Have already linked to:

• A 2014 textbook[3]
• A 2016 textbook[4]
• A 2013 textbook[5]

Repeating over and over again something that is incorrect does not make it correct. User:Jytdog are you claiming that these are (1) not mainstream medical sources or (2) do not refer to chronic Lyme? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:43, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

• • Here is the 2017 version of Conn's[6] that is still using the term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

why are you doing carrying out this in two places, James? You are acting like the worst of our alt med woo pushers here. With the exception of Conn's which is shamefully woo-full, mainstream medical sources today call this PTLDS. I have said this several times, and you are bizarrely -- bizarrely -- not dealing with that nor with what the refs actually say. Mainstream medicine does not use "chronic lyme" to steer clear of the muddle that you are - again bizarrely -- trying to drag the article into. The sources just briefly reference the term so that the actual medicine they discuss is connected to the society and culture controversy stuff, and that is all. Jytdog (talk) 19:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

As you also carry on in two places :-) I am stating that mainstream medicine says that "chronic lyme" is sometimes used as a synonym for PTLDS. It is also sometimes used to "describe individuals with objective evidence of longstanding ongoing infection".[7] Not sure why you find that statement "like the worst of our alt med woo pushers"? But hey I have been called worse.

When rather than adjusting your position you instead call a major medical textbooks published by respected medical publishers "shamefully woo-full" and imply that it is not mainstream, there is not really much more one can say. Chronic Lyme has been well discussed by the medical literature and we have lots of good quality sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:11, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

I said that precisely one is. Conn's actually does the Fox News "fair and balanced" thing. Critics say X and advocates say Y. They give the full-woo valid air time. FFS, I wonder if they do with the anti-vax discourse too. Jytdog (talk) 22:35, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Doc James — that article doesn't at all tell what should "objective evidence" would be, and as far as I'm aware there is only Acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans, Borrelia carditis, Lyme arthritis and Neuroborreliosis — all of which normally go under their own names. Carl Fredrik ^talk 04:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

This sounds like the "chronic fatigue" problem ("The patient has chronic fatigue, but does not have Chronic Fatigue"). It sounds like it is possible to have Lyme disease that is chronic (e.g., an infection that persisted for more than three months, since a disease that lasts longer than three months is one common definition of "chronic disease") without having the more, um, popular version of Chronic Lyme Disease. I think that's something that will have to be spelled out in a paragraph (or several). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:16, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

To put it bluntly: it is exactly like chronic fatigue, but with added antibiotic treatments and all the risks they incur. Carl Fredrik ^talk 07:36, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

On point new analysis 23 June from the CDC

• See: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6623a3.htm?s_cid=mm6623a3_w

The term “chronic Lyme disease” is used by some health care providers as a diagnosis for various constitutional, musculoskeletal, and neuropsychiatric symptoms (1,2). Patients with a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease have been provided a wide range of medications as treatment, including long courses of intravenous (IV) antibiotics (3,4). Studies have not shown that such treatments lead to substantial long-term improvement for patients, and they can be harmful (1,5). This report describes cases of septic shock, osteomyelitis, Clostridium difficile colitis, and paraspinal abscess resulting from treatments for chronic Lyme disease. Patients, clinicians, and public health practitioners should be aware that treatments for chronic Lyme disease can carry serious risks. …

Best, Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:54, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes and that is a misuse of the term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:28, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Mobile

Mobile now makes up more than 60% of our readership per [8]. Something to keep in mind when writing articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes! First sentences especially per this, which was a reaction to the problem discussed in this RfC - namely the WMF using the "description" field from Wikidata since the first paragraphs of WP articles are too often cluttered with alt names, etymology, pronunciation, and other gunk. That was particularly done to benefit mobile users. Jytdog (talk) 23:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

As Jytdog points out, the weight is truly on those first few sentences. For folks wanting to read more check out this Op-ed in the Signpost and the impact the recent change of moving the first paragraph before the infobox on mobile has had on page loading (and the potential for more attention to the first few sentences!) :) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Nucleolus organizer region-associated proteins in breast malignancy

Silver-stained nucleolus organizer region (arrow) at the tip of a chromosome (non-human)

The section on Nucleolus organizer region#Associated proteins in breast malignancy seems a bit suspect to me, since the references are mostly on the detection technique, not the actual findings. A G-scholar search mostly turns up papers from the '80s and '90s. Does anyone happen to know if this a well established concept in medicine? Is it specific to breast cancer? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:33, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

The first paragraph of that section was added by student editor Mia.Whary, and is blatant plagiarism. I have removed it, and am going to sift through the rest of the article. BTW, there are 3150 articles in a medline search of NOR, and I'm depressed that this crappy article is the best wp MCB and Genetics has done. sigh. I bet Mia got a good grade too....JeanOhm (talk) 03:16, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

It may be worthwhile to contact the instructor as grades can be changed even after graduation. Plagiarism is often taken seriously. Sizeofint (talk) 16:22, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Just realized this was a high school assignment, not a college assignment. I'm not sure what might happen in this case. Still, it may be worth informing the teacher to obviate this happening in the future. The teacher, User:Tbohrer74, does not appear active at all. Sizeofint (talk) 16:25, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@Sizeofint: Yeah, I thought about contacting Bohrer, but decided not to rub his nose in it. What I am still considering is searching wp for talk page messages like Mia's indicating that other editors are working on assignments for him. If found, then check their edits for plagiarism. Call me overly suspicious, but I wouldn't be shocked to find more. The thing that is stopping me is that there is so many other things to edit on my radar. BTW, I finished my revisions of the Nucleolus organizer region if you want to check it. JeanOhm (talk) 00:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Sizeofint: Well, good old Travis' students that I've looked at (yes, I guess I'm a masochist) aren't doing wp any favors. The principal of his school is Mrs. Courtney Long E-mail: clong@waynesville.k12.mo.us. I can't find his e-mail, but his presumed relative, Chrystal, has the email Cbohrer@waynesville.k12.mo.us, so I assume his is tbohrer@waynesville.k12.mo.us. @Countrygirl1228: blatantly plagiarised from https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Hemoglobin%20variants into Hemoglobin variants in 2013, and the thefts are still there, uncited. I'm not going to email them, because I don't have an anonymous e-mail account. I looked at a couple other of his student's edits, and they were very suspicious, but they have been removed by others. sigh. JeanOhm (talk) 01:06, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

It looks good, although this topic is far outside my area of expertise so I may not be the best person to ask. Given this Wikipedia assignment has not been repeated since 2013, contacting the teacher is probably not worthwhile. Sizeofint (talk) 18:09, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

molecular biology section could use expansion[9]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:35, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

WHO essential medicines pic request

Hi, I've recently been going through the WHO medicines list and trying to ensure that each article has a picture and is linked to a Wikimedia Commons category. I've mostly been successful, but a few have slipped through. We don't seem to have any pictures of calamine lotion, podophyllum resin, protamine/protamine sulphate or selenium disulfide. I don't suppose anybody has some they could share? Blythwood (talk) 20:48, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

[10]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:14, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Blythwood we also have this [11] by the NIH. One must still look a little further to verify and it does not like like it has anything on those topics. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I've got an old bottle of calamine lotion somewhere. I'll get a picture for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

health news review

Looks to be a good source to use per PARITY if needed to deal with health news hype - debunking U Minn professor: https://www.healthnewsreview.org -- Jytdog (talk) 12:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks a great resource to me. I'm trying to figure out the best way to access their past reviews, guessing that the search function on their site is the best bet for now. --RexxS (talk) 15:02, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

This site has an article at HealthNewsReview.org. In 2015 here at WikiProject Medicine Nbauman endorsed this website. I know the founder, Gary Schwitzer, to be a regular attendee at consumer-oriented health communication events. I like the website and what they do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:11, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

ah yes! thanks for linking that. OK for PARITY but not otherwise in my view. And of course fine for society and culture. Jytdog (talk) 03:07, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Jyt Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:50, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Hatian Creole work

User:Barbara (WVS) (aka Bfpage) has been translating several medicine-related pages into Haitian Creole recently. Her latest is about Amoxicillin. I want to say thanks today to Barbara for using her language skills to benefit the world, and also to say thanks to the editors who are working on articles on subjects that affect developing countries. Translators can't translate articles that you haven't written.  ;-)

If you won't mind me borrowing a soapbox, then I will repeat the plea from all translators everywhere: The clearer, simpler, and shorter your sentences are, the more and better translations we will get. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

And I'll definitely show this good example to my (Haitian) gf, in case I could finally convince her to also become a Wikipedian ... Thanks for the heads-up, —PaleoNeonate - 07:12, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Please do. Please beg every speaker of Haitian Creole you meet to edit Wikipedia. Most articles are one-sentence or two-sentence stubs with zero references. The articles are so inadequate that almost anything is a significant improvement. Whatever interests someone, there will be lots of room for very easy improvements. A glance at articles on such basic subjects as Music, History and History of Haiti and more will show the state of things. There are no articles at all for many subjects on the m:List of articles every Wikipedia should have, and many (perhaps most) of the existing articles are boilerplate "_____ is a town in the U.S." articles, with no content beyond what a bot could fill in ten years ago.

Anyone who tries to help out there is welcome to leave a note on my talk page to ask for help with anything (except the language itself, because I don't speak it at all). We use few templates, simple structures, and everybody there is nice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:31, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

+1 to that. If we can get created a basic list of articles such as found here [[12]] translated than we can create an offline version.

The list here is not fixed and people are welcome to switch out the listed article with others or to remove them.

Am encouraging people to just translate the leads of the EN articles. Have a list of more than 800 leads that have been well referenced and reviewed ready for translation here.

If people are interested in doing this in other languages let me know. We also have translators at Translators Without Borders willing / wanting to help us but we NEED Wikipedians to coordinate their work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:28, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The upcoming Wikimania might be an opportunity to engage Montreal's sizable expat Haitian community if someone can rattle the right cages. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:11, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

We would love to have them join us at the medical day. Reach out to any of you known them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:51, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Kombucha layout discussion

Please see Talk:Kombucha#Article_layout_discussion.3B_beverage_or_MEDMOS Jytdog (talk) 19:30, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:17, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to revive and rename Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management

The proposal to revive the WikiProject occurs at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disaster management#Project reboot & project rename to WikiProject Emergency management, where I invite you to comment. --George Ho (talk) 15:16, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

We here are happy to support the medical related aspects of emergency management.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:39, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Request for review for WP:MEDRS compliance

Could someone have a look at Braintest and the related article Self-administered Gerocognitive Examination (SAGE)? The former in particular seems to have some tone/advert issues, but I would like feedback on the reliability of the sources for the claims made; "scientifically validated" seems a bit of a red flag. Thanks! VQuakr (talk) 08:03, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

They are all primary sources, and not independent of the subject's authors. It probably fails WP:GNG. Anyway, I've cleaned it up to the best of my abilities. --RexxS (talk) 12:02, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. Novice user I admit. The links cited (and now deleted) were clinicaltrials.gov and Alzheimer's Research and Therapy (peer reviewed journal) https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-017-0269-3 - surely these don't count as 'not independent'? Thank you Kimmalki (talk) 17:18, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

When the creator of the test is the same as the author of the clinical trial of that test (whether it's reported in a peer-reviewed journal or on the NIH website), then no, I don't class that as "independent". YMMV --RexxS (talk) 17:28, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kimmalki, and welcome to the English Wikipedia.

You might find that WP:Independent sources is helpful. We have a lot of ways that we classify sources, and "independence" is an important one for figuring out whether to have a separate Wikipedia article on any given subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Looks like paid editing and is partly disclosed. We have

• Frederick Ghahramani (created by User:Kimmalki)
  • Paid by airG Inc.
  • Interesting that User:FoCuSandLeArN from Wikipediawriters.com also worked on that article.
  • This also paid Hookt it appears

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Interesting form of spamming

This user is hiding the spam link behind a legitimate source.[13] Thanks to User:Ozzie10aaaa who caught it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:44, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

thanks...partly luck --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:36, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Arizona State Level Trauma Centers

Is probably of interest to this project. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 03:50, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:HOSPITAL would be more in line with the topic. Looks like a directory. Wondering if this would be useful on Wikiversity or Wikibooks? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:55, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding the WP:Lead guideline -- the first sentence

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Request for comment on parenthetical information in first sentence. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:45, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Supplement marketing

An interesting development here: the US GAO has flagged responsibility gaps between the FDA and the FTC. Supplement marketers were using those gaps to make unsupported claims. Somehow, though, the numbers are not convincing me that they've got a handle on the real problem. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:36, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

interesting(especially conclusions[14])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Not so much gaps between FDA and FTC being exploited, as both agencies being understaffed and underfunded, and thus reduced to prioritizing what categories of dietary supplements to actively monitor. If anything, FDA tends to look harder at supplements that might detour people from effective treatments for serious diseases (diabetes, cancer, hypertension, etc.) and FTC pursues large companies with products for popular conditions - example: weight loss. David notMD (talk) 01:09, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Hypertension and vitamin D

Vitamin D

Right at the bottom of Hypertension there is Hypertension#Research, a short paragraph based on one review about vitamin D deficiency and hypertension. It shouldn't be there in the article, and I'm not certain it should be there at all. Anyone want to take a look? Ta. Bondegezou (talk) 09:19, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

there seem to be more reviews on the matter[15][16]...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:45, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps a section under treatment then? Bondegezou (talk) 12:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not really a "treatment". What exactly is the problem here? Alexbrn (talk) 12:41, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems odd to have a section entitled "Research": generally, research will be on something more specific (aetiology, prognosis, treatment, types). It then seems odd to have this research section basically be two sentences on one review. If this is good material, it should be integrated properly into the article, I suggest. Having it on its own like this at the end of the article, I'm concerned about WP:UNDUE. Bondegezou (talk) 12:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

"Research" is one of the headings recommended by MOS:MED. If something's mentioned in decent reviews it would be hard to argue it's undue. Maybe the issue is the the "Research" section is too small? For hypertension, one would have thought there would be lots ... Alexbrn (talk) 13:00, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

More sounds good. MOS:MED feels to me a bit confused on the issue of having a Research section. It does warn that, "In addition, sections containing many references to various studies are preferably not simply titled "Research" without further specification, since the space below such a header tends to develop into a miscellaneous and unorganized dump of random studies that have any link to the subject, with over-emphasis on the names of the people who conducted the studies, their research institutions and so on. Unless the contents relate to principles or techniques in researching, and could fit into the main article Research, the titles of such sections are better specified with what the studies and their results are aimed at. That is likely also what the readers want to know about." However, it then goes on to suggest Research as a subheading. Bondegezou (talk) 13:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

It is confused, or cautious. Ideally a research section should give a quick neutral review of the main areas being researched, and either mention no studies or several (in the text, as opposed to references) per area. Pancreatic_cancer#Research_directions tried to do this. What we usually get is one or two studies name-checked in the text, often with COI issues. Johnbod (talk) 13:52, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

MEDMOS encourages a section called ==Research directions==, in the hope that it will be an overview of general trends rather than "Hey, lookit this cool bit of research". I don't know how well that subtle nudge works, but what's in Hypertension#Research is not what's intended for that section. I'd be inclined to remove it (unless a review supports it, in which case it ought to get moved to ==Treatment==). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

If the content isn't controversial (passes MEDRS etc), could it go in the Hypertension#Secondary_hypertension_2 subsection? Little pob (talk) 16:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Not currently a treatment from what I understand. People are studying if it should become a treatment though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:18, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

If anywhere, Iwould rather see this content under Secondary Hypertension Causes. I question its presence, as meta-analyses on vitamin D and hypertension have conflicting conclusions. The Wikipedia entry on vitamin D cites one meta-analysis as evidence for vitamin D not affecting hypertension. David notMD (talk) 09:45, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

our Brazilian colleague Vini is profiled

Vinicius Siqueira, user:Vini 175, is our WikiProject Medicine colleague in Portuguese Wikipedia. He was just featured in the Wikimedia Foundation blog.

• Elsharbaty, Samir; Mizrahi, Ruby (4 July 2017). "Editing to change the world: Vinicius Siqueira". Wikimedia Blog. Wikimedia Foundation.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

great info[17]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:44, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks user:Vini 175 does great work :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:19, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC on "referrer" policy

There is an RfC ongoing at the village pump, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC:_Wikimedia_referrer_policy.

It has to do with what information we send to sites when people click a link from inside WP to go the site. How much, if any, information should Wikipedia send? A whole slew of interesting issues about privacy and about incentivizing people to partner with us (e.g. publishers who provide free access via the Wikipedia Library) Jytdog (talk) 18:31, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That the link comes from WP is all that they really need to know. What page the person was reading is non of their business IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:36, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I have added a 7th proposal here [18] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:47, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

To be clear @Doc James: we are only sending the domain (en.wikipedia.org) right now: which is more privacy concious than default Https:->Https: referral which would include full url, but enough limited transparency for webmasters to respond. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Astinson (WMF) but you are telling the website the person goes to that their IP address just came from WP. What I propose below would not say which IP address came from WP, just the number that came from Wikipedia in a given month. What I propose provides much more privacy. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:31, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

— I don't see the point of not giving the full url in the referrer. Anyone can search insource: to see all pages that include the url that is accessed. It is rarely the case that this url will be present on more than a handful of pages (often just the one). So, we're essentially only promoting privacy through obfuscation — the information is out there anyway. Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:42, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:50, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Genetics/aging

We have

• DNA damage theory of aging
• Genetics of aging

each of which is a MEDRS trainwreck. Don't have time to fix right now. Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

[19]commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Fasting Mimicking Diet

Peoples thoughts? Have adjust some. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:35, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Junk sources, needs a further trim at best. Alexbrn (talk) 05:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

• Any source that names any 50-year-old man as a nominee for a Nobel Prize is unreliable, on the grounds that they didn't do enough fact-checking to figure out that such nominations are kept secret for at least 50 years.
• I wonder if this is actually notable. There's been some buzz in the news about near-fasting arrangements, but I don't know if this particular trademarked variation has gotten any significant attention. I'd be happy to see this merged into Valter Longo#Fast Mimicking Diet (or other page, if someone can find a better one). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Agree, a merge is on order. Seems to have no traction in serious literature and the studies there are, are silly ("rejuvenates the immune system in mice"). Another fad diet with wonder claims based on flimsy research, picked up by credulous laypress. 06:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

merge--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done I've boldly merged the articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:WhatamIdoing Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:32, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Yup, thanks! The suggestion that 5:2 diet be merged to intermittent fasting is an interesting one too ... Alexbrn (talk) 16:34, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I've tagged the articles for merging and left a note on the (target) talk page. We can probably wait a few weeks to see what people think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

good idea--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:32, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Sports and health

Please consider reviewing the (COI) edit request at Talk:Sport#Sport and health if you have some time. --Izno (talk) 22:09, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

refs #4, #5 and #9 are fine, the others don't quite look like MEDRS[20]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:24, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

bestbets.org

• bestbets.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

What are folks thoughts on this?

It is used in about 50 articles per this.

It was discussed lightly at WT:MEDRS in 2008, here. Jytdog (talk) 22:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I think they are reasonable. Produced by a well respected institution. They do a review of topics often not covered by others. Needs to be put into context of what else is avaliable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:51, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Cochrane malarky on antivirals again - now HepC

HCV

New review: PMID 28585310, which prompted forehead-slapping articles like this one in the Guardian.

Responses saying that the review had "significant flaws in this analysis, yielding a misleading and a harmful conclusion": AASLD, EASL, Aus/NZ orgs, summarized here.

Oy. Jytdog (talk) 02:31, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

[21][22]curious..--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:54, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

The online comments to the MedPage article were, ummm, interesting. To paraphrase, Cochrane says "this parachute hasn't been adequately tested" and the maker says "that's irresponsible, and will lead to skydivers abandoning our parachutes in favour of free fall". Further bizarreness ensues. Please remember, wp:NOTNEWS. Last month's publication is not necessarily urgently needed here. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:10, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

It seems fairly obvious why they came to the conclusions they did. Hep C is mostly asymptomatic for decades before cirrhosis and liver ca hit. These meds have not been around for decades.

They do say "DAAs seemed to reduce the risk of no sustained virological response." But their other conclusions are a little silly. I do not think this review should be added. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:38, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: this is a dangerous position to take. We can't say to editors trying to add pseudoscience "you must use reliable sources such as Cochrane reviews" and then when there's a Cochrane review we don't like say "ah but not this one". There must not be double standards. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:48, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

True, Peter. But we should be careful about what we say with it, since this kind of "no good evidence exists" is often misunderstood by non-scientists.

And, of course, no editor is personally compelled to cite that source. If it happens that nobody quite gets around to adding it, then that's okay, too. Reverting someone because you personally disagreed with the source's conclusion is really never going to be okay, but I think everyone already knows that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• cochrane being somewhat like Wikipedia - a collaboration and not any kind of hierarchical organization - we should consider downgrading how we discuss Cochrane in MEDRS. Just because it is "cochrane" does not mean it is mainstream or even sensible. Depends on who writes it. Jytdog (talk) 08:09, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Within the content of articles on dietary supplements I have not argued with Cochrane review conclusions, and in some instances have added same as references. However, for this discussion I want to say that at times the Inclusion/Exclusion criteria in Cochrane reviews are in my opinion so exclusionary as to discard the majority of research, and then reach "has no benefits" conclusions. One I found funny for other reasons was a 2010 review (Hróbjartsson A, Gøtzsche PC) that doubted the existence of a placebo effect. David notMD (talk) 10:02, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

We should not be losing sight of all the high-quality reviews that Cochrane produces just because a few have deficiencies or other problems. In the case of Jakobsen et al (2017) there are already criticisms on PubMed and from independent bodies like American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, so we have the ability to produce a balanced view on that Cochrane report based on other trustworthy sources, rather than attempting to exclude its conclusions based on our own analyses. If we are to maintain our reputation as the flagship project for referencing on Wikipedia, we can never afford to take the latter course. --RexxS (talk) 13:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Earlier today, Jytdog wrote: cochrane being somewhat like Wikipedia - a collaboration and not any kind of hierarchical organization - we should consider downgrading how we discuss Cochrane in MEDRS. Just because it is "cochrane" does not mean it is mainstream or even sensible. Depends on who writes it. 

I wholeheartedly agree. We should change it to something like, "Cochrane Library reviews are generally of high quality, although exceptions exist, therefore editors should maintain a healthy scientific skepticism even with regard to respected review organizations." I have heard (or read) so many times, here on Wikipedia and elsewhere, "But Cochrane review says..." as if the Lord God Almighty had spoken and that was the end of the discussion.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 19:40, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• We simply need to realize that MEDRS is not a panacea. It is a very helpful guide to producing high quality articles, but not a universal cure for all problems. In particular it does not tell us how to deal with situations where the most reputable secondary sources disagree with each other. For that we still need to exercise a degree of editorial judgement. Looie496 (talk) 13:22, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Sure, but Doc James wrote I do not think this review should be added and that, in my view, is a dangerous line to take. Of course we must present alternative reliably sourced views, but we should not attempt to suppress a Cochrane review. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• • • Agree with User:Looie496 and User:WhatamIdoing on this. I guess I would be okay with adding it as long as it is put into appropriate context. It is about balancing all the avaliable high quality sources and taking technically correct stuff and putting it into plain and understandable language.
    • For example, the evidence that acetaminophen / paracetamol helps for fever is really poor. I still prescribe it on a nearly daily basis and it is still referred to as an antipyretic. An lack of direct evidence on effects does not preclude high quality secondary sources from making common sense conclusions.
    • Basically this supports that writing Wikipedia articles / supporting references cannot be reduced to an algorithm. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:58, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

You mean I can't ask my friendly obelisk, "Is this a reliable reference Alexa?" I'm crushed! ;-) ... On a serious note, Doc James makes a very important point.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 19:46, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Actionable change

An excellent reason to get rid of the line in WP:MEDRS that reads:

"Assessing evidence quality" means editors should determine quality of the type of source and quality of the publication. Editors should not perform detailed academic peer review.

We need to be able to question whether a systematic review really is systematic, or whether it uses the best possible protocol. There are thousands of protocols on how to perform a systematic review, a very large number of which are "shite". An even larger portion of them aren't even followed.

If we can omit this Cochrane review we need to admit that we are doing just what MEDRS tells us not to. If we are allowed to say that the conclusions were not supported by the evidence — then we are doing just what MEDRS tells us not to.

WhatamIdoing — I disagree profoundly that no editor is "compelled" to use the source. If it is the best source available that is what you should use. We should always strive to use the best possible sources for each statement — and what we have to guide us to the best possible source is WP:MEDRS.

Add that to the fact that a prohibition on "detailed academic peer review" is very difficult to define and there is strong reason to remove it. Carl Fredrik ^talk 16:46, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Disagree. It is not the role of Wikipedians to become editors. It is the job of academic peer reviewers to do academic peer review. (Some of us may do both jobs in different parts of our lives, but that is by the by.) Bondegezou (talk) 17:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Then how would you define academic peer review Bondegezou? That phrase is not about us not reaching out with comments to the authors — it is about restricting us from assessing the articles. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

You have been arguing that line for a long time now, Carl. As we have discussed before, that this would open the door to boatloads of unproductive, unresolveable arguments at talk pages. This is case where a high profile group botched things and happily there are lots of sources saying so. Jytdog (talk) 17:26, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

No, that is only as you've posited before. There is nothing that indicates it would open up anything of the sort — and I've never seen it being used to shut-down any argument successfully.

You're shooting yourself in the foot here, because by arguing we can't assess the method — we can't exclude the source, and so far I haven't seen any WP:MEDRS-compliant source that is strong enough to indicate we shouldn't mention the Cochrane review. We have one news story, one press release, one response and one position statement, there is not WP:DUE-consideration here — the Cochrane review goes in. That is unless we ignore this specific provision of MEDRS, which frankly doesn't make sense in the first place. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree we should not perform details peer review. In the case of this Cochrane review other high quality sources have provided peer review already. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

No, Carl, you're not compelled to use that source, even if you think it's the best source out there. You're a WP:VOLUNTEER. You're 100% free to just not add that source. You could edit a different section of that article. You could write a paragraph about something that this "best" source doesn't talk about. You could go edit thousands of other articles. There is absolutely nothing that forces any individual to cite any source.

I agree that it'd be hard to just remove it, if some other editor thought that it was worth including that information with that source. But finding the WP:DUE balance is always hard when (ostensibly) high-quality sources disagree with each other. OTOH, you don't really have to do "peer review" to deal with that; the usual approach is to say "You've got one systematic review that says X, and I've got four equally good ones that say not-X, so to achieve a neutral article, we shouldn't act like X is the unquestionable truth". Editors don't need to bother saying "X is bad" when "X" is clearly a minority POV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

By following MEDRS this can be resolved. See WP:MEDDATE: "Cochrane Library reviews are generally of high quality and are routinely maintained even if their initial publication dates fall outside the 5-year window." We don't delete Cochrane reviews unless a newer Cochrane review is presented. QuackGuru (talk) 22:14, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

The word routinely does not mean "we don't delete Cochrane reviews". That sentence means "The initial publication date may not be the current publication date for a Cochrane review. Don't blank six-year-old Cochrane reviews on the grounds that they're 'too old' without checking the current publication date first."

We can and should remove Cochrane reviews if they are worse than other options, or if they are minority opinions, or if they are superseded by other reviews. A Cochrane review in that respect is no different from any other review. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:20, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It says "routinely maintained even if their initial publication dates fall outside the 5-year window." This means they are higher quality than most other comparable sources. We usually don't delete them even after 5 years. Editors don't decide if a Cochrane review is worse than other reviews, or if they are minority opinions. It is a strong argument to include a Cochrane review if it has a different view. If other reviews cover it then we should use a Cochrane review instead because it is generally higher quality than a typical review. A Cochrane review is different from other reviews because they are one of the rare exceptions to rules. See WP:MEDDATE: "There are exceptions to these rules of thumb:" The Cochrane review is listed as one of those exceptions to the rules. Soon, the media may be quoting editors on this very talk page. QuackGuru (talk) 06:31, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

No. Updating ("maintaining") a publication does not make it better than other publications. It only makes it newer than the original version of that same source.

Editors absolutely must consider whether a source is a minority opinion. This is a non-negotiable requirement of WP:NPOV for all articles: "the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all" – even if that tiny minority POV has a Cochrane logo at the top of the page. Cochrane reviews get no exceptions to these rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I pointed out Cochrane reviews are absolutely one of the exceptions to the rules. That means they are generally better than other reviews. QuackGuru (talk) 06:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The "exception" in MEDDATE merely tells editors not to stupidly assume that the original publication date is the current publication date. Getting updated does not mean that Cochrane reviews are better than any other review. It means that they may be newer than the citation on Wikipedia indicates.

Think about this for a moment: Pretend that I published a Cochrane review in 2011. I updated it in 2016, using exactly the same procedure. Did the quality of my work change? (Did I get smarter about what I included, when I included exactly the same things as the first round? Well, no: I did it exactly the same way. Did I get smarter about how I analyzed it, when I analyzed it exactly the same way as I did during the first round? Well, no: I did it exactly the same way.) The quality cannot change (for better or for worse) when I'm doing exactly the same thing.

There is real value to these updates, but the value is in their newness, not in improvements to the quality of the review. A poorly designed review, repeated in exactly the same lousy way after a few years, is still a poorly designed review. (A great review, repeated in exactly the same great way after a few years, is still a great review.) But repeating it doesn't change the quality. It doesn't make it better. It only makes it newer (compared to the old citation in the Wikipedia article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The first problem with deleting the guidance "Editors should not perform detailed academic peer review" is that every snake oil salesman and crank practitioner will be removing perfectly good secondary sources like Ernst's criticisms from every CAM article on the grounds that they don't think he did a good job, or was biased, and so on. If you want to open the floodgates to the whitewashing of every dubious unscientific medical practice, deleting that guidance is the surest way to achieve it. --RexxS (talk) 22:21, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Since this article has caused quite a splash and is receiving a significant amount of media attention, I think it's inevitable that it's going to be mentioned in the article in one way or another. With that said, I concur with the earlier sentiment that if this Cochrane review is mentioned that it will certainly need to be put in the appropriate context and have its various noteworthy criticisms mentioned alongside it. This seems reminiscent of the oseltamivir/influenza Cochrane review debate when Cochrane's review clearly represented the minority opinion, caused controversy, and was rebutted by several other influential reviews. I also agree that I have seen the old "but Cochrane says" line. We should definitely amend our guidelines and policies to reflect that even Cochrane is an imperfect source of information from time to time (even if most of their reviews are very high-quality). Factually incorrect and ridiculous articles have been published in highly reputable journals before (e.g., clear precedent with Lancet/former Dr. Wakefield and full retraction comes to mind). TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:27, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Any criticisms mentioned must be from a review. Popular press do not meet MEDRS. We don't need to amend our rules. See WP:MEDDATE: "Cochrane Library reviews are generally of high quality...". It is "generally" of high quality. It does not mean they are always the best quality. QuackGuru (talk) 06:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I think position statements from the various organizations mentioned above (e.g., AASLD) are of sufficiently high-quality that they deserve mention if this Cochrane review is included. I'm sure rebuttals in the literature are on the way too. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:51, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

A rebuttal from a review may be 6 months later. QuackGuru (talk) 06:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

True, but as I said, I'm of the opinion that if this Cochrane review gets incorporated into the article before that occurs that the position statements from the various aforementioned organizations merit inclusion. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 07:00, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Content

References

Any suggestions for content using the 2017 Cochrane review? QuackGuru (talk) 07:16, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

With this post you have exhausted my patience. Please see your talk page. Jytdog (talk) 12:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I guess one could discuss it in the society and culture section of the article on DAA from the point of view of the controversy it is has generated. But should probably give it a few months for other sources to reply to it.

The first pubmed comment is a good critic "The lack of evidence of an effect is not evidence of a lack of effect." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:53, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Medical cannabis

• Medical cannabis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article has seen some heavy editing lately. I am concerned by the way some of the positions of bodies is being presented by Wikipedia. Views welcome at Talk:Medical cannabis#NPOV / Sourcing. Alexbrn (talk) 11:16, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Yup we need to use high quality sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:39, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Didn't SandyGeorgia comb through all the cannabis articles a while back to address issues like this? If so, WP's cannabis-related articles should probably be watched by members of this project, since it would mean people are periodically re-adding POV content. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:12, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I keep an eye on some of them and merged a bunch a while back. A fair bit of effort is required and thus would be great to have more eyes on it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:57, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes Sandy and some others had a rather fierce battle with cannabis advocates. Keeps coming back tho. Jytdog (talk) 03:17, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed that was back in 2015 and was more of an emergency repair job than one which led to good articles: the cannabis "suite" is still a sprawling incoherent mess (I stumbled across Hashish today) under constant assault from editors cross about how Big Pharma is suppressing this natural wonder drug and exaggerating its harms. I think a way forward would be to take in what we've got and have a centralized RfC proposing a set of named articles for partitioning the content according to some sensible scheme. An awful lot of work getting there however. To get a feel for the size of the problem, check out Template:Cannabis (e.g. 20 distinct articles on "pro-cannabis organizations" - sheesh!). Alexbrn (talk) 05:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Updating Cochrane reviews — should it always mean updating the text?

I've seen this happen a couple of times [23], where the review is "updated", but the article content remains the same. While I'm not commenting on this specific case, but if we're only swapping the url to a newer review, and not going through the content it supports — we really shouldn't be "updating" them at all.

Thoughts? Carl Fredrik ^talk 10:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The speed at which these have been "updated" (6 minutes) makes me wonder if they are being read or not [24]. Carl Fredrik ^talk 10:03, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

good point[25]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

In quite a few of her contributions, she has altered text, so I'm pretty sure she knows what needs to be done. I've dropped her a note on her talk page, encouraging her to note in the edit summary when she doesn't feel the content needs to be altered, and inviting her to say "hi" here. --RexxS (talk) 19:31, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I am Ob&Gyn from Sweden, very new here, feel free to say if I am doing something wrong. This Wiki-world feels still completely new and strange to me. I have for example seen a comment that "nothing is current at WP", got it. Regarding this [26] article, conclusions in newer review are unchanged and the "new" review is quite old, you don't need more then two minutes to check up the obvious thing you are familiar with, do you? If the results or conclusions in newer review are changed comparing to the old one I change the article text. Sometimes I read full text review as well, it have happened that I changed update to the even newer than suggested. When it is "an overview of Cochrane Reviews" as ref I try to find the particular review that corresponds to statement in the article. Something else I need to know? Any more newbie-mistakes I'm doing like that "current" one? Cheers, Julia Dr Curat (talk) 20:31, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Dr Curat. This definitely alleviates my concerns. Carl Fredrik ^talk 12:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yup over half of Cochrane updates do not result in a change in the conclusions in my experience. User:Dr Curat welcome and thank you for joining us :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:50, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback and helpful suggestions for tackling these tasks. Great idea to include a brief sentence explaining whether or not the conclusions did/did not change when performing the update. Thanks again, JenOttawa (talk) 13:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

User:JenOttawa excellent suggestion. This will make it much easier for those reviewing the changes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:10, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks goes to RexxS for the suggestion :o) JenOttawa (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Acetylcysteine#Two_issues

Acetylcysteine

Further comments requested. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Recruit new editors for the project?

Hi, Just wonder if there is any template or program in the project to recruit newcomers or new editors to join the project? Bobo.03 (talk) 18:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

We have Template:MedWelcome User:Bobo.03 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:33, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Wow, it looks good, especially the video! Thanks, Doc James. Just wonder if recruiting new editors is something the project is interested in or need. I am a PhD student at the University of Minnesota, and we are preparing for a project to help projects recruit new editors. Not sure if this is something Wikipedians in Medicine would be interested. Bobo.03 (talk) 21:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

We are definitely welcoming of new contributors. Guidelines around writing medical articles take some time to adjust to. But if people are willing to learn all typically goes well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I can imagine that.. Doc James. The idea of our algorithms is to identify editors who might be most matched to the project based on their prior editing records. So we expect the algorithms to recommende us appropriate editors to join the project! Bobo.03 (talk) 00:08, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Neurologic music therapy

Thoughts about the article above, and messages like this that are being left at the talk pages of editors who have worked on it by User:Kyurim1? Jytdog (talk) 18:02, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

As long as they use sources per WP:MEDRS and follow WP:MEDMOS... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:07, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Thoughts about WP:COI and Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest (medicine)? Jytdog (talk) 00:18, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

"We recognized that there is some ambiguous information on the page, so we are considering editing the entire page. However, we would like to kindly ask your permission before we delete your information."[27] They want to delete what, the entire page and start over? I don't believe it. QuackGuru (talk) 00:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

As I mentioned on my talk page "Would be good to disclose your relationship to the topic on your talk page." I could have said they must disclose their relationship... I do not think they want to delete it just edit it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:48, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

The editor has already disclosed the relationship: He is editing "On the behalf of the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Usually a discloser is on their talk page or user page. QuackGuru (talk) 02:04, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Pharmacoeconomics, disease burden, and WP:MEDRS

MOS:PHARM indicates that economics on a drug page goes under Society and culture; MOS:MED indicates the same for economics w.r.t. diseases (presumably, the economics of pharmacotherapies would be covered here in addition to disease burden).

That said, does pharmacoeconomics research fall more under the purview of WP:MEDRS (medical research) or WP:RS (economics research)? More specifically, I'm wondering if others think it's ok to cite both primary and secondary pubmed-indexed pharmacoeconomics research as opposed to exclusively pharmacoeconomics reviews given that we'd cover this topic under the society and culture heading. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 17:49, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

If reviews are avaliable better to go with them. If they are not I guess the question is how controversial is the point? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:34, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Hmm... basically it just involves things like the financial cost vs the socioeconomic benefit (e.g., impact on quality of life) of pharmacotherapy. E.g., in regard to pediatric pancreatitis, this source explicitly covers annual cost: "Estimated annual costs of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, diabetic medications, and pain medications were $4,114, $1,761, and $614 per person, respectively." - PMID 26704866. I suppose if there's an actual statement of cost vs efficacy made in an article, it should probably be cited to a review though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 23:16, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Short answer: It's complicated.

Long answer: It depends on what you're trying to write about. Primary sources can be the best possible sources, and even the most aggressive enforcers of MEDRS have to admit that MEDRS doesn't actually say that you can't ever WP:USEPRIMARY sources. The other problem with thinking in terms of "MEDRS only" is that MEDRS technically believes that only "medical journals" are "ideal", which is nonsense when we're talking about cross-disciplinary subjects, such as the history of medicine, the economics of medicine, the sociology of medicine, the religious aspects of medical practice, etc. An excellent paper in an reputable economics journal is better than a lousy paper in a not-so-reputable medical journal.

Your answer: You're a good, highly experienced editor, and I fully trust your judgment. Why don't you just do what you sincerely believe is best for the article? The goal is a neutral, verifiable article. The goal isn't jumping through bureaucratic hoops about how exactly a single source compares to a theoretical ideal as expressed in one guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

For the sake of any newer editors reading this: the cautions at wp:SECONDARY still pertain to non-medical assertions. Even if PMID 26704866 makes credible points which remain uncontradicted in newer publications, those points should not be recast into the voice of the encyclopedia. Rather, they should be reported as assertions with wp:intext attribution. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I suppose this will surprise many editors here, but SECONDARY doesn't even mention WP:INTEXT attribution, much less require it every time a primary (or non-WP:INDY) source is used.

Additionally, even under strict scrutiny, we routinely accept primary sources for certain content. For example, Thyrotoxic periodic paralysis#History (a Featured Article) cites six primary sources, and all of them are presented "in the voice of the encyclopedia". I would never object to encouraging everyone to "base articles upon" secondary sources, but it's important to remember that the requirement from the actual policy is only that a majority of content comes from secondary sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think this was helpful for me in determining when it's appropriate for me to cite a claim on this topic with a primary source and when it isn't. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:27, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease TFA/citation needed tag

I'd like to rerun Parkinson's disease as a main page TFA some time in August, but there is currently a "citation needed" tag. Would someone from this project be able to address it? I'll leave a note at the article talk page too. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:14, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

My suggestion is to delete the one sentence that needs a reference and proceed with the review. In the meantime we can look for a reference for the statement (if one exists). I couldn't find one offhand.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 02:01, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Bad digestion?

I am seeking input into a Wikipedia article I just started for for healthy digestion. I am having research trouble finding appropriate sources and feeling a little confused about how it should be structured.

Suppose that an otherwise healthy person eats nothing but Cheez Whiz and beer for a week. They experience diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, bloating, flatulence, and indigestion. Is there a name for this collection of general low-level gastrointestinal problems? "Gastrointestinal disease" is too extreme, and "Digestion", "Human digestive system", "Gastrointestinal tract", "Healthy diet", and other likely articles do not address this. What Wikipedia article covers that medical condition? Is the name "poor digestion"? There are lots of ways to get these symptoms. There are lots of popular press medical articles and books talking about healthy digestion.

Does anyone have any suggestions for WP:MEDRS sources which discuss how a person can eat right, exercise, not smoke, avoid stress, and drink liquid to get digestive health? I have found this to be a slippery concept in academic literature, especially considering the large drug market for over-the-counter remedies. Perhaps I do not know the academic name for the concept, or perhaps it is too commonplace to discuss, or perhaps I am just failing to find papers. Alt-med sources have a lot to say about digestion but I would prefer to avoid those.

All of those symptoms above have treatment sections where they talk about taking drugs. Typically, though, a person with these symptoms needs information about "healthy digestion", which is whatever lifestyle practices prevent these issues. I wanted to centralize discussion of digestion in one place and link the prevention section for various gastrointestinal conditions to one article. Thanks for any input anyone has into this topic. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

It would be Gastrointestinal discomfort or gastrointestinal upset. We could have an article on that. Relates to dyspepsia, gastrointestinal cramps, bloating. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:56, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that the current definition is adequate:

Healthy digestion, also called digestive health, results in the absorption of nutrients from food without distressing symptoms.

Discomfort or occasional distressing symptoms is a fact of life, and a fact of digestion at times. Perfect health does not exist — and the definition in this article risks perpetuating that myth.

There are even those that posit that irritable bowel syndrome is simply a result of our misguided expectations on perfect health at all times. This goes hand in hand with the fact that the best treatment for IBS is cognitive behavioural therapy.

We're also taking the quoted definition from Elizabeth Lipski, who promotes holistic health and herbology according to her WP-page — not exactly mainstream, and not someone we'd want to quote for a definition of healthy digestion. Carl Fredrik ^talk 09:49, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Ping BallenaBlanca who is a gastroenterologist. Carl Fredrik ^talk 09:50, 14 July 2017 (UTC) 

Carl, why don't you just make a bold edit to improve it? Or talk about it on the article's talk page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I personally understand "good" or "healthy" digestion, those people who do not notice the digestion, as they do not have abdominal discomfort when they eat and apparently most of the food fits them good. Of course, it is related to good health and they do not have associated digestive intolerances.

On the contrary "bad digestions" usually involve a malfunction of their digestive processes, which usually is evident by the presence of varied discomforts, in relation to food, ranging from burning, reflux, sometimes abdominal pain or malaise and frequent alteration of the intestinal habit (both diarrhea and constipation). Many of them are related to the presence of one or more associated food intolerances.

Best regards. --BallenaBlanca (Talk) 22:12, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Action against spammers

It might be Baader-Meinhof playing up again, but with a few recent cases and Ozzie10aaaa uncovering this — I came across an almost exact copy of that behaviour at hxbenefit.com.

What I suggest is a bot which patrols all our medical articles for newly added sources, which can be added to something similar to a watchlist. So far our catches seem to be almost incidental — when by chance someone finds a poor source being put to use one of the articles on their personal watchlist.

The spammers know they risk getting caught, so apparently there is widespread use of VPNs to post these links, which means there is no easy way to track what a single user is doing. (Several of the links I saw posted were added from behind VPNs. This seems to be a downside of VPN-services registering very many IPs to avoid geo-blocking, which means we don't block them either. )

What we can expect to achieve with such a bot is an overview of newly added links that:

1. Doesn't rely on imperfect watch lists
2. Can follow spammers as they move between IPs/accounts

Doc James & Beetstra — are you aware of anything similar and does it seem feasible? James do you know anyone who might be willing to take it upon themselves to build such a bot? Carl Fredrik ^talk 09:53, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@CFCF: this could be easily done feeding of the freenode irc feeds of m:User:LiWa3 (in #wikipedia-en-spam for en.wikipedia). Interested editors could just already go there and lurk in the channel and pick 'm up by eye (though the channel is 'loud'). The tools are there to do manual research and/or on-wiki reporting (even from-channel adding it to XLinkBot is possible, blacklisting needs an intermediate Wikipedia edit). For those who do not have IRC access, there is Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports, which gets updated by User:COIBot with links that have either been reported by human editors, or by some simple algorithms from LiWa3/COIBot (basically: links that have never been used before are now added by only an IP who does not do anything else, and some similar statistics, it is not too sophisticated). Of course that list is does not have Medical attention.

A bot could also easily read from that feed, matching article names against a list of medical articles, and maintaining an own list of articles. Similar or more sophisticated statistics could then create lists specifically for medical articles (similar to the LinkReports of COIBot). Hooking that back into COIBot for automatic report is trivial through changing it settings. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:46, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: — that would be awesome, and an automated report was exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately I don't think there are enough of us around to monitor the IRC-channel, but a report where one can see all new links, and especially those posted only by new accounts or IPs, would be immensely helpful.

For the record I updated our list of all medical articles just 5 minutes ago at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Lists of pages/Articles. (The reason we use that page and not the Category is because the recent changes tracking doesn't work with large? categories such as Category:All WikiProject Medicine articles.) Carl Fredrik ^talk 10:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@CFCF: One could start with watchlisting Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports, it is for everything that the statistics catch and for everything that gets reported to the monitored pages, but 'medical domainnames' might be visible (or one helps the community stopping some other spam, or at worst it can simply be ignored). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:02, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

In rebound of this ...

Now, m:User:LiWa3 parses all edits and finds added external links (indiscriminate: references and regular). It then counts/stats examines those links. For those who do feel like lurking in the channel/helping with above situations - it would also be extremely helpful to do the opposite - tell LiWa3/COIBot that a certain domain is really not a problem (that is whitelist them in the bot). That makes the bot faster (which has an impact on how fast we detect spam) and makes the feed more useful (as we don't have to worry about all those). Help there would be appreciated, thanks in advance! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

thank you for the information--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:49, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Sciatic nerve injury

I came across the article sciatic nerve injury today. I am not a medical professional, but surely this is not the most accurate one-liner we could be using to describe this type of injury. I noticed it was created from a renamed user so wanted an opinion from someone more qualified to assess it if possible. Mkdw ^talk 03:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

could add[28][29],(however probably better to merge as subsection to related article...IMO)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:48, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Redirected it to a section in sciatic nerve that covers it better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:58, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Mkdw ^talk 18:17, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Women's safety section on Park

I'm trying to argue that the "Women as a measure of safety" section on the Park article is pointless and unnecessary. Any agreement? 24.18.128.102 (talk) 01:17, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Seems like it is a measure used by some. Not really medical but not sure the issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

HVOD and Treatment

If anyone has the chance, there's a COI request waiting for review. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 16:06, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

commented[30]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:50, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Worked on things. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Options requested regarding diagram (File:CankerProcess.png) on mouth ulcer

CankerProcess

• [31]

Editor is wishing to add this diagram. Thoughts? Many thanks, Matthew Ferguson (talk) 09:39, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if @VHenryArt: might be willing to make us an awesome image for that process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:16, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Not based on this original research diagram I hope. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 16:40, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

well perhaps a link to a more adequate diagram (VHenryArt is great w/ images[32])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:47, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Any opinions? Matthew Ferguson (talk) 21:02, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Bump. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 09:54, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

• Mouth ulcer could use editor help(references), thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:15, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Popular press making medical claims

Opinions appreciated here [33] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:27, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Charlie Gard treatment controversy

• Charlie Gard treatment controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I'd been hoping to avoid this altogether but reading a news article about the case today prompted me to look at our article (currently getting ~4000 hits/day). Yikes - it could really use some more eyes. Alexbrn (talk) 16:37, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charlie Gard treatment controversy Jytdog (talk) 19:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

People are expecting us to discuss this issue in neutral terms. We should cover it somewhere IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I suspect it's a lost cause, but I think hosting such a "discussion" is not the job of an encyclopedia. There's a tension between WP:NOTNEWS and the fact that in practice, many Wikpedians would love to have something about Charlie Gard on the WP front page, maybe in "In the news". Alexbrn (talk) 04:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS says "As Wikipedia is not a paper source, editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events."

So the question is, is this a significant current event? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:34, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I think the "significance" will only emerge in time (in maybe the spheres of medical ethics, reporting ethics, politics, law and religion). Writing about this topic right now gives us the kind of mess we had. Alexbrn (talk) 04:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I often turn to Wikipedia when I am interested in current events. Agree we cannot say that much right now and agree because it is such a popular topic it is hard to keep balanced. I am fine with merging somewhere but I am not sure were? This is more about states becoming involves politically in the discussion of medical futility. And whether just because one can try something should they. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

This is like the Terry Schiavo thing. it is so awful how people make political hay out of suffering like this. Jytdog (talk) 05:04, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

And we have a 73K "good article" on the Terry case... Sometimes families go to the press / politicians when they disagree with a decision of the health care system. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Which happened a long time ago. I am not doubting that we could eventually create an article on this. Not now, and not in 2017 now. It is instructive to look at the history of efforts to get the Schiavo article promoted. Didn't make GA until a year after she died. De-listed in 2010. Relisted as GA only in Dec 2012. I worked with probably the worlds's expert on MCS and asked him about that case - he said that he was asked to comment a zillion times and always said no. She had almost no brain left, was not present, and was never coming back. There was never anything to talk about, medically. Even our "good article" doesn't come close to dealing with the reality. (the pain of the family was real. and terrible. but the pseudoscience was and is sickening - making political football out of pain is dogshit. ) Jytdog (talk) 05:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I just took a stroll to the shops to buy breakfast and the (British) red tops were all over this on their front pages ("Give our Charlie a miracle"). Getting back home I switch on Radio 4 and the first thing I hear is "Charlie Gard". In time, there will be considered overviews of these events but right now I'm just not sure such sources exist, commensurate with the gravity of the issues at stake. WP:TOOSOON. Alexbrn (talk) 06:45, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• Still needs eyes. Apparently it's "political" to call this disease "incurable"; and the medical stuff is ballooning again. Alexbrn (talk) 15:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I've started a discussion at Talk:Charlie_Gard_treatment_controversy#How_to_cover_nucleoside_therapy.3F and input would be welcome. I think some medical stuff is needed to explain the judge's decision and to counter the tendency on the part of some editors to push the benefits of the experimental treatment proposed, but, as that treatment is so experimental, it is difficult to talk about it within WP:MEDRS. But saying nothing makes the judgement look heartless! Bondegezou (talk) 15:55, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

You could try to find a statement from someone commenting about the controversy. That way it will be immune to MEDRS. QuackGuru (talk) 16:09, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks (and thanks also to others who have joined the discussion at Talk:Charlie_Gard_treatment_controversy). The source I was using was the court ruling, which is the judge's commentary on the controversy. But I see how there are still difficulties because this can end up making claims about the efficacy of a treatment.

The article continues to develop: I think in a positive direction. Bondegezou (talk) 16:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I think this is going to take too much of my time. Everyday there is a new issue. QuackGuru (talk) 18:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome

...perhaps add [34] to above article...(it is a review)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

References

It says it is "Under a Creative Commons license." QuackGuru (talk) 20:29, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• note: together[35] Mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome/Charlie Gard case are getting 100K views--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:24, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Response to HCV Cochrane review

Published hereby the IDSA with good summary [36] IDSA is perfectly usable IMO. Discussion could go under society and culture as it did hit the main stream press. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

agree...[37]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:27, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Category:Constituents of tobacco smoke has been nominated for discussion

Category:Constituents of tobacco smoke, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Bosley John Bosley (talk) 23:30, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Per WP:FORUMSHOP (aka WP:OTHERPARENT), discussion should take place in one single place. I strongly ask that this thread is no more expanded. See this CfD. -DePiep (talk) 14:08, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Wrong place arguing

Composition of tobacco smoke is part of the tobacco smoke article. Cats are acceptable. QuackGuru (talk) 23:43, 21 July 2017 (UTC) The list/tabular format is very limiting: Natural constituent of tobacco leaf/byproduct of tobacco curing/byproduct of combustion/ industry additive/glue/paper/filter (...by far the hardest to find info on) : carcinogenic/ otherwise toxic: Beneficial constituent?? Also a list means that any reference on the actual chemical's wiki page that it is a constituent of tobacco smoke can be removed - this removal process is happening on an industrial scale. I started [[Category:Constituents of tobacco smoke]] because of what I perceived as deficiencies in that list - it was zero help in comparing smoking & vaping and there are no WP:RS to back up what is there. I'm an intelligent bloke and I would just like some answers. Categorisation aids me navigate quickly adding that Info that is too nuanced to be listed/tabularised to the relevant article page as and when I come across it. Bosley John Bosley (talk) 00:38, 22 July 2017 (UTC) If you did create a list it can be added to the see also section for relevant articles. QuackGuru (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2017 (UTC) An unreferenced mention of a list in the see also section would have less weight/claim to relevance than my WP:RSs which are in the process of being removed, they would suffer the same fate...infact the justification would be stronger. Bosley John Bosley (talk) 01:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC) A list article must be referenced. QuackGuru (talk) 02:15, 22 July 2017 (UTC) Yes it must and when I tried to find references to back up the existing (quantified) list I couldn't find them. I found references but the actual information; assessment of risk factors and method and units of measurements all differed such that I couldn't add the information to a meaningful list; hence I added the info to the article page and added the category to tie it all together. Bosley John Bosley (talk) 02:29, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Future stuff and citations

Today's Metrics meeting is talking about long-term, worldwide ideas for the future of the wikis. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6nIP4VFIi8

One of the ideas that's briefly covered may interest some here: Young readers care more about NPOV than about verifiability. They want to be able to trust what they're reading, and especially to trust that it is not overly or overtly biased. Citations are much less important to this group. (Most young people believe that anybody can find a citation that supports almost anything, and they're probably correct.)

What's IMO not brought out so clearly in this particular talk is that the method of determining how much to trust a source is not very different from what we do on this page: They read something, and if they aren't certain about it, they talk to their friends about whether it's trustworthy. We, too, read things, and if we aren't certain about it, we talk to our wiki-friends here about whether it's reliable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

We discuss refs here based on community principles, not what people "like". People sharing news their friends "like" is how fake news spreads and how people come to live in isolated bubbles. Jytdog (talk) 20:10, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't think I'm comfortable assuming that young people have no principles and make decisions based upon what they "like". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

You'll get more comfortable with it as you get older. --RexxS (talk) 11:29, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I find that I'm rather strangely going in the opposite direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

For me this stresses the importance of being exposed to the right people and having access to the right/reliable sources, to avoid being mislead. At an early age I mostly had access to the material of a single propaganda organization to answer my many questions, until I was old enough to go at libraries unaccompanied and grant myself the right to read on "taboo" topics (including evolution); this was also pre-internet. It's also only from high-school and up, that I really could discuss with people outside of that organization. —PaleoNeonate - 20:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. The part you mention is at 24:45. Further in the video there is more discussion about how social relationships lead to content development, but I do not see that as someone concluding that citations are less relevant. I think the speaker is presenting lack of interest in citations as an opinion or perspective and not a finding backed by research or a conclusion established by evidence. As you say, even if readers are not imagining citations, I think they expect some kind of quality control whether that is conversations or anything else.

In NYC we have good participation by people in their 20s at our programs. My perspective is that Wikipedians in general care more about citations than PhD level career researchers, and that people in their 20s are more likely to appreciate the citation rules than older people. While young people in general might not care about citations, I doubt that older people do either. The most common complaint that I hear about Wikipedia is that it is low quality, and the people who say that typically are not aware that Wikipedia requires citations. The second most common complaint that I hear about Wikipedia is that its quality is too high. I hear that from older people who feel attacked that Wikipedia requires citations to third party sources, and that Wikipedia will not accept their authority alone. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:08, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that this research is about Wikipedians. (I also don't know whether they've published their research yet, but they did the research themselves, so it's not just "an opinion".)

I think your comment about the older generation being somewhat more likely to "accept their authority alone" lines up with this observation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:16, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

We generate our content based on high quality sources. Yes it is likely that most of our readers do not look at the sources. While I would not recommend they take us at face value, if they do not sure what more we can do other than to work to make our content more accurate. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:25, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

This is a fascinating discussion because out of all the MEDRS sources I've read I've noticed that even the best of sources delve into speculation at times. I find it hard to determine the 'worth' of such content even in the most excellent sources. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 16:57, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Red links in infoboxes

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Red links in infoboxes. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:39, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:58, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Persephone Borrow

This person looks like a notable medical researcher to me, who has made an impact in the medical field. I was wondering if some persons from this project could take a look at this article (here) and see if they agree. I checked Google Scholar (here) and it seems she has co-authored some highly cited papers. You will notice that she is the lead author on the first two papers which have a combined total of a little more than 3300 citations. Then on third paper she is the second author with a bit more than 1000 citations, and so on... Thanks in advance for taking a look. Steve Quinn (talk) 01:34, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for posting. Seems to meet NPROF. I added a women scientist cat and wikiproject, which might draw more eyeballs. Jytdog (talk) 02:54, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Seeing red

There are assertions at VPT that older people have trouble seeing the color red. Does anyone know whether that's true? If it is, then it'd be a fun fact to include in Red. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Source is not very good but says "As you age, it gets harder to tell blues from greens than it is to tell reds from yellows. Using warm contrasting colors (yellow, orange, and red) in your home can improve your ability to see."[38]

"Color-vision problems in the blue-yellow spectrum affected 45 percent of people in their mid-70s, and that proportion rose to two-thirds by the time people reached their mid-90s. Few people had problems with the red-green spectrum."[39]Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:33, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Better ref [40] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:50, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Timing by ethnicity at Puberty article

Do any editors here have an opinion on incorporating this into the Puberty article? I started a discussion at Talk:Puberty#Ethnicity study. Permalink here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 10:53, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Does not need its own section. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:11, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Resource templates on talk pages

Per edits by User:Barbara (WVS) this template:

Template:Reliable sources for medical articles

Is being replaced by this:

{{Tmbox
|small = {{{small|}}}
|image=[[{{{image|File:Med template logo.png}}}|80px|alt=|link=]]
|text= <small>You can improve this article by using '''ideal sources''' as references to support medical and health content added to this article. These sources are defined in the guideline ''[[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)]]''. ''Medical text books'', ''governmental health agencies'' and ''medical [[review articles]]'' are excellent sources. Here are links to some sources of information about '''{{PAGENAME}}'''.<br /> 
* [[PubMed]] provides '''[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term={{urlencode:( "{{PAGENAME}}" {{#if:{{{synonym1|}}}|OR {{{synonym1}}} {{#if:{{{synonym2|}}}|OR {{{synonym2}}} {{#if:{{{synonym3|}}}|OR {{{synonym3}}}}}}}}}) AND Review[ptyp] AND "last 5 years"[PDat]|QUERY}} review articles from the past five years]''' (limit to '''[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term={{urlencode:( "{{PAGENAME}}" {{#if:{{{synonym1|}}}|OR {{{synonym1}}} {{#if:{{{synonym2|}}}|OR {{{synonym2}}} {{#if:{{{synonym3|}}}|OR {{{synonym3}}}}}}}}}) AND Review[ptyp] AND free full text[sb] AND "last 5 years"[PDat]|QUERY}} free review articles]''' or to '''[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term={{urlencode:( "{{PAGENAME}}" {{#if:{{{synonym1|}}}|OR {{{synonym1}}} {{#if:{{{synonym2|}}}|OR {{{synonym2}}} {{#if:{{{synonym3|}}}|OR {{{synonym3}}}}}}}}})|QUERY}} systematic reviews]''')
* The [[Trip (search engine)|TRIP database]] provides '''[https://www.tripdatabase.com/search?categoryid=1,11,16,18,10,9,4&criteria={{urlencode:"{{PAGENAME}}"|QUERY}} clinical publications about evidence-based medicine]'''.
* The Cochrane database provides access to full text evidence-based medical content: '''[http://www.cochrane.org/search/site/?{{urlencode:"{{PAGENAME}}"|QUERY}} clinical publications about evidence-based medicine]'''.
* The [[Centre for Reviews and Dissemination]] issues [[Health technology assessment]]s. Enter {{PAGENAME}} into the  '''[https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/CRDWeb/ searchbox]'''.
*The [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]] provides access to medical and health content: Enter {{PAGENAME}} '''[https://search.cdc.gov/search? in the searchbox]'''</small>
}}

IMO consensus for a large scale change should occur before this is done more. My question is why not get consensus to update the original template? Also all this extra text on talk pages make them more confusing to edit. It also makes wide scale changes much harder. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:15, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I tried to get consensus before for improving the template via the proj med talk page with very little input and with only one small change. I brought it up and it didn't fly. At this point, the coding is not a template. I am the only one using it as far as I know. Also, I don't know to get the name of the page to automatically appear in the search box for the CDC and HTA. I am an amateur 'coder' at this point and if you want to turn this into a search template that enters the search term in the search box for the CDC and HTA websites you'll need someone smarter than I am. (There are a lot of folks that fit that description)

As for making talk pages more confusing to edit, comments usually appear at the bottom of a talk page and only those who want to reassess an article need to go into the project templates. The project templates are quite distinct from my coding.

I am not presuming or even proposing to replace the current template or make a wide scale change. There is consensus on its use. I've been inserting my coding onto the talk pages of articles that I want to edit to help me find additional sources. It is not in wide use and I am not trying to get it widely used. It is much faster than going to all the search sites than manual entry. My coding is more compact and with more search options. I liked using a small font and a 'cooler' graphic. I am not optimistic on getting consensus for these either.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 16:54, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

That mess up there looks like this in the real world:

Many articles we follow are not exclusively medical subjects. It may be desirable to have an expanded search system on selected articles. It looks like we could resolve most of Doc James' concerns merely by pasting the code into something named Template:Expanded reliable sources for medical content and transcluding the new template. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

When I create a talk page or edit a talk page of an article that contains both medical and non-medical content, I use this template in addition to the med template:

{{Friendly search suggestions}}

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 13:14, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Putting it into a template would very much be an improvement.

Merging changes into the existing template would be even better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:38, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

It is a merge. Everything in the current template is contained in the code.

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 13:14, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I've created Template:Expanded reliable sources for medical content as suggested. Please feel free to change the name if desired. I've bypassed the search box for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and added brief documentation. Hope that's all OK. --RexxS (talk) 14:07, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It certainly is okay with me. The CDC section is better, also.

Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 22:52, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Please also see Template_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Extra_medicine_banners. —PaleoNeonate - 23:03, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I have added the CDC and CRD here Template:Reliable sources for medical articles thus more or less merging these two templates. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:16, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

I have redirected one to the other. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:09, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Hoarseness & dysphonia - Symptom articles need work

I have a friend who was sick the other day with a hoarse voice (yes, that was red-link up until last year...), who asked me what to do about it. Of course I responded as close to "nothing" as was possible: "try not to talk and wait it out" (it had only been 3 days).

To me it seemed such a basic thing to ask that I had not even considered that it was not common knowledge. However when I searched for both "hoarseness" and "hoarse voice" on Google - Wikipedia did not even show up on the first page of the results. This is because nowhere in the lead are we even mentioning the most common terms. Google ranks our articles based of "relevance", where if the term is bolded in the beginning of the lede (together with a redirect) - it jumps significantly. The term "hoarseness" was present, but not bolded, and not near the beginning. (This is of course important not only for Google-rank, but for readers to know they are on the right page.)

In fact the article has deteriorated over the past 6 months from stating [41]:

Dysphonia, also commonly referred to as hoarse voice, is a broad clinical term meaning dysfunction in the ability to produce phonation (or voice).

to

Dysphonia, one common form of which is referred to as hoarse voice, refers to dysfunction in the ability to produce voice.

I'm not even sure what "one common form of which is referred to as hoarse voice" is meant to signify. ICD-10 equates the terms entirely, and I would suggest we move the article to its WP:COMMONNAME: Hoarseness or Hoarse voice.

This may sound like a tirade, but I was just so struck by the way the article in no way covers the most common questions. For example, nowhere is it mentioned that a 3-week long period of hoarseness should be followed up with malignancy screening, or any of the other FAQ from NIDCDs page on Hoarseness. These are basic facts that are being overlooked on a high-importance article.

This is a general theme for most articles on symptoms, and I'd really appreciate it if we could help out to improve articles on common symptoms such as:

• Sore throat (barely more than a stub)

• Heartburn

• Knee pain

• Abdominal pain

• etc. (you get the point)

The article List of medical symptoms (pretty horrible and not up to WP:MEDMOS) explains it well with:

It is rare that a person would visit a doctor and complain as follows: "Doctor, I have amaurosis fugax." They are more likely to complain of loss of vision.

The same is true for lay people searching Wikipedia. I haven't looked into the amount of views this content is getting, but a good start would be to compile a category Category:Common symptoms or similar.

Best, Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:47, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Another horrible one Difficulty breathing -> Respiratory distress. Carl Fredrik ^talk 15:03, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

That is a horrible one.

I think that this is important, and that we can do better. Thank you for starting a list of problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes I have been thinking lately regarding how we should handle / improve symptoms. Often the medical literature is less well defined on symptoms.

There is basically a diagnostic approach to symptoms with the major emphasis being to determine the underlying cause.

In the ER we try to consider and rule out the serious conditions first. Diagnose specific common conditions next and than apply diagnosis of exclusion last. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:41, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Off the symptoms you mention only abdominal pain makes the top 1000[42] which likely explains the lack of attention aswell.

Spasmodic dysphonia got 61K views in the last month while hoarse voice got 622. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

article[43] could use images[44]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:45, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Feedback would be appreciated on Cochrane (organisation) talk page

Hello, I have posted a list of ideas to improve the Cochrane (organisation) page here, along with my COI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cochrane_(organisation)#Ideas_to_improve_this_page

I would appreciate feedback or recommendations on how to proceed with improvements to this page.

Thank you, JenOttawa (talk) 02:41, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

commented[45]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Today's COI

At

• Femarelle (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

"Write to us" says the IP, while deleting negative content. Alexbrn (talk) 12:51, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

protected Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:47, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

oh man. well that was at least unambiguous spam. Jytdog (talk) 19:32, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

How the sausage gets made

really great piece from Forbes on the history of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) - how it got invented, what happened as it moved around via corporate mergers, how Merck killed it and was going to sell it off but then turned and developed it like crazy (and smartly) to bring it to market, when they realized it was important medicine and they could make a ton of money. Science, medicine, greed, how companies allocate resources to things, how regulatory risk fits in... its all in here. And how when this is done right, really important drugs become available. sorry for being swoony but i love this stuff and it is rare that such a clear (and well written) description of how the sausage gets made is published in the regular media.

• Shaywitz, David (July 26, 2017). "The Startling History Behind Merck's New Cancer Blockbuster". Forbes.

-- Jytdog (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

very interesting(as well as[46])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:12, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

An incredible story on a number of fronts. Perlmutter bet the farm and the bet really paid off. This example highlights how valuable biomarkers can be. Also the first example of cancer drug approved for a genetic marker, not the type of tumor. This one drug has transformed Merck. Boghog (talk) 20:59, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

the Bert Vogelstein story was really amazing to read. What is lacking there is if they told BMS and what BMS did or didn't do. I reckon there is confidentiality in the way. Jytdog (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Recruit new editors for the project?

Hi Doc James, following the previous discussion, I made a set of recommendations (it might contain some blocked editors who I will remove later). You'll notice that they are split between new editors and experienced editors. What do you think?

Username	Recent Edits within Medicine	Recent Edits in Wikipedia	First Edit Date	Most Recent Edit Date
Josie.faunce (talk · contribs)	1	1	2017-7-17	2017-7-17
Magnagraecia6969 (talk · contribs)	1	1	2017-7-15	2017-7-15
Ben1905 (talk · contribs)	1	1	2017-7-18	2017-7-18
TAMMY FAV (talk · contribs)	1	1	2017-7-16	2017-7-16
Solarys-fr (talk · contribs)	197	3754	2013-1-17	2017-3-27
Was a bee (talk · contribs)	314	6926	2006-4-15	2017-7-16
Rutigor (talk · contribs)	77	294	2005-12-18	2017-7-20
Ronns (talk · contribs)	301	742	2007-2-17	2017-7-14
Skoogs (talk · contribs)	77	131	2013-10-22	2017-7-13

Bobo.03 (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Wondering if we can limit the list to those who contribute to article of mid or higher importance? Much of what is low importance is barely medical. Welcomes left for the new users. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:15, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a good point. We will take it into consideration! Other than that, what makes for a good candidate new editor for your project? Some of our ideas: they've edited lots of articles within your scope; they've edited talk pages of some of your existing members; they've edited articles on topics relevant to your project. Which of these you think are important and any other criteria you think would be useful? Bobo.03 (talk) 04:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)