Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 91

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Video Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 91

Student editing

Two weeks ago, I deleted an incorrect image from the article "Right axis deviation". My edits were subsequently reverted by an anonymous IP editor and User:Dr sunflowers. I asked for further opinions here. (Thank you, Ozzie10aaaa.) Dr sunflowers did not respond.

I asked for deletion at Wikimedia Commons, but the admin there (INeverCry) deleted the talk page rather than the file. I have pointed this out.

I would appreciate if someone fixes the problem on the page "Right axis deviation".

This matter is an indictment of student editing and their so-called supervision. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Did a mass of formatting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

As the only comments on the talk page indicate that the diagram is in error, I've removed it from the article and re-nominated it for deletion. You may wish to comment there as well as on the offending admin's talk page. --RexxS (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Doc James & RexxS. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:11, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Wondering if I should apply to be an admin on Commons again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:06, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure: you'll find that spending time there will be a big help in improving our article on Masochism. --RexxS (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

:-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

actual edit by a student

Biomarkers

In the modern time, large amounts of biomarkers could be used in various neurological practices to provide better decision for patient prognosis or in prediction of treatment affects. Although future validation of these biomarkers is needed before utilizing them into standard clinical diagnose algorithms, the importance of personalized medicine will be considered significantly to achieve more effective, cheaper and better-tailored treatment for different neurological diseases in the future. In Parkinson's disease, there is no validated diagnostic biomarker for PD yet. However, like Alzheimer's disease, perspective biomarkers are such as dopamine metabolism, oxidative stress, ?-synuclein, auto antibodies against ? synuclein and inflammatory markers. The reliable results are obtained from studies of ? synuclein, the major component of lewy bodies, and it can be found in saliva, serum, plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In addition, inflammatory markers such as higher level of interleukin 6 (IL-6) and soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor-1 are associated with PD or early onset of disease. More than 25 genetic factors have been reported to affect the risk factor for PD and the major risk factor is shown to be homozygous and heterozygous mutations of the glucocerebrosidase gene. For PD, one biomarker and a single measure are not efficient to provide useful information. The combination of different biomarkers with clinical relevant patient's characteristics can be considered to offer better and integrated information on disease.

That was a small part of a much larger edit.

The ref is ok as is its formatting, but the content is just oy. (I don't understand why people get dates of references wrong all the time; this one is just off by 6 months but i have been seeing decades-sized errors)

The Education Program's metrics seem to be all about quantity (e.g. here: "In four years, more than 10,000 students, many of whom were women, have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program, adding 12 million words, the equivalent of 45,000 printed pages, to more than 10,000 Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.")

I wonder if a productive conversation could be had with them about quality metrics, and re-thinking what they are doing somewhat to more closely manage student editing. Jytdog (talk) 07:05, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

We can ask. User:Ian (Wiki Ed), any thoughts on quality metrics? I helped out with WP:ASSIGN to try to help combat this situation (low-quality inputs). I became a Regional Ambassador, back when that existed. I have a hunch we still need to elevate some principles to a community guideline or policy to regulate the situation. Wikipedia assignments force students to become compensated editors (they are compensated to receive a grade). Why not create a policy that states no one is allowed to compel another person to edit live Wikipedia articles? Just as anyone is free to edit Wikipedia, shouldn't everyone be free to not to edit or create live Wikipedia entries? Instituting this philosophy (which in my mind already exists implicitly on the website) would leave students in sandboxes. I don't see a problem with assignments that teach students about Wikipedia and use sandboxes to do so. We could also state that student edits should only go live 1) when a professor is confident the work is of a professional quality (not easy for undergrads, I would say) 2) the student is doing so voluntarily, with all the expectations of a volunteer editor and without grade compensation, and 3) the professor and student are committed to work towards consensus on the content. Regarding the quality of student edits, I know User:Mike Christie has studied it in the past. Any ideas on this, Mike? Hello, by the way. The way I see it is this: on one side, we have millions of dollars being thrown by the Stanton Foundation to employ people to promote this idea (student assignments). On the other hand, you have "wp:the community", which is disorganized, dealing with low-quality inputs. In the past, I spent a lot of my wiki-time trying to remedy the flaws I saw, by trying to engage professors directly. User:SlimVirgin, you are experienced in devising policies or guidelines if I remember correctly. What do you think about my aforementioned policy proposal (in italics)? On a whole, the whole idea of compelling students to edit or create live Wikipedia articles seems, is at its core, an anti-Wikipedian thing to do; I'd like for us to find a solution. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Biosthmors, long time no see. I'm not too concerned about a class compelling a student to edit; a student doesn't have to take the class, after all, if they don't want to. This seems no different to me than a student who avoids a class involving dissection because of personal preference. And have we ever heard of a student complaining on this basis?

I haven't been involved with the WEF, or looked at quality of student edits, in a couple of years: I'll be interested in what Ian says, but I would think examples of bad edits are just as anecdotal as examples of good edits. Certainly if it can be shown that student edits have a net detrimental effect that would be a concern. For quantity metrics I think it's the same issue -- a large number of edits is a bad thing if they're bad edits, and a good thing if they're good edits. So yes, we need metrics on overall quality. I suspect we also need metrics on a per-class basis -- that is, are some professors likely to produce classes with high-quality edits, and others likely to generate poor edits? We've certainly had at least a class or two that were disastrous, but I don't know how common that is among the hundreds of classes that have been run. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Broadly speaking as I understand it it the education program strongly discourages teachers from grading students on their actual edits. fwiw i attempted a while ago to mention student editing in the COI guideline and that got shot down with fire. See here. To be frank most of the opposes there were a) from people with axes to grind about COI generally and b) who didn't grasp the situation that students are put into (or feel that they are in; sometimes even when instructors make it clear that the grade doesn't depend on edits "sticking", students still take it that way). but this kind of derailment is very common in community discussions of COI guideline changes.

Going back to how students feel and the very obvious COI between their relationship to their school and their role as WP editors, see this note from the student who added the above. The COI is so clear there.

But I intentionally didn't frame this as changing the behavior of students or instructors or trying to address anything by a community policy or guideline change. I don't think that is productive.

From a management perspective, we can try to change the metrics for the Education program and by changing them, change the behavior and rhetoric of ~~WMF~~ WEF employees who work in the progam and generate its marketing materials. As I said above I feel that their goal is to get more and more instructors working with them. I feel like every fall and spring a firehose turns on and I spend way too much of my time trying to deal with edits like the one above. I feel exploited - structurally I am forced into the role of a TA. ("forced" is strong language and I can unpack that if anybody doesn't understand it). I don't want to be a TA. I am not here to educate students about how to research and how to write.

So I am saying - how do we incentivize the ~~WMF~~ WEF to spend its resources managing the output of students in the program, so the community doesn't have to? I think that could be productive. Jytdog (talk) 18:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC))

Just to clarify: the WMF has nothing at all to do with the education program. The Wiki Education Foundation was launched by the WMF but no longer has any organizational connection to it at all, as far as I know; it's an independent non-profit. (I used to be a board member.) To your point about that student edit, yes, that is a problem. If a professor's grading scheme requires the student's material to stay in the article, that's unfair to both the student and to the WP community. A rev link should be enough. I'd be interested in the WEF's comments on this point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying; redacted above. My points are a) that an organization is paying people and incentivizes them to act and talk in a certain way, which I believe promotes quantity not quality of the results and b) we (including students) would all be better off if those incentives addressed quality. Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Biosthmors and Jytdog: We are more interesting in quality than quantity; quantity is easier to measure and report, but we definitely prefer quality. To that end, we've done a lot to improve the training and editing resources we're giving to students. Of course the resources aren't any good if the students don't read them, so that's something we're working to improve. We're also working to try to teach instructors the best way to do things. Unfortunately, things fell apart a bit them semester when Adam had to take extended leave.

My personal goal for next year is to look at the points where students go wrong - look at what the students who mess up do, and what the ones who do well do. The problems aren't (as much) in the courses that set out to work on medical content - the problem comes up when someone from a writing class decides to write about a disease. Guettarda/Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:12, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ian: I appreciate the work that WEF does in helping education in the USA and Canada. Those of us who volunteer to help similar projects outside of those countries would benefit from good quality materials produced that were made available to everyone. It's worth noting that the WEF spent $3 million in 2015-16 and has one of its three programme focuses "create educational material targeted at instructors and students to ensure best practices". If I had one criticism, it's that the WEF seems to have a system where a single missing individual has a large enough impact on programmes for it to be worth you commenting on. It's a shame that Wikipedia:Training/For students has not had work done on it for some time (my comments on the some of the talk pages date back over two years) and students following that guidance - unlike those in USA and Canada who follow the WEF training - still have only a single paragraph to read at Wikipedia:Training/For students/Verifiability and the peculiar interpretation of neutral point of view: In some areas there may be just one well-recognized point of view; in other areas we describe multiple points of view, presenting each accurately and in context, and NOT presenting any point of view as "the truth" or "the best view". No wonder we get problems with new users and FRINGE. --RexxS (talk) 22:19, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I am uninterested in criticism. I want structural change. I have about had it dealing with students, who often work in WP:GANGs, who are almost always in a "this is my homework leave me alone" bubble, who try to force badly written, badly sourced, badly cited, UNDUE, unintegrated content into WP, to get a grade. I want the WEF to change how it manages edits that it is bringing more and more into WP. I am not a TA and i am tired of being forced to act like one - which I am, between my obligation to not bite newbies and my commitment to quality content.

As an example, maybe the WEF can hire and train more staff to review student drafts before they are added to articles. And make sure that there are sufficient staff for each class and that those staff are actively managing the class output. Those are all measurable things. In other words, let the WEF act as a primary filter, managing the output of students.

I also want the materials used to promote more teachers entering the program, and that are used to train students, to change. Concrete things - they should clarify the COI issues for students, require students to have edits reviewed by somebody who understands WP and and the subject matter before they are submitted, and emphasize the difficulty of some subject areas, and the maturity of the content in some articles.

that's the kind of stuff i want. and i am owning that -- other people might not want this kind of stuff. Jytdog (talk) 22:39, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: You have valid concerns. If you have a chance to work through https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students/editing-medical-topics (disclaimer: nothing that I've had any direct input to), do you think that getting more students and instructors to work through that would be a help to us in meeting your concerns? --RexxS (talk) 00:06, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I've looked at the training material. It has been worked on by WP:MED members and is ~OK~. But in my view the training material should be strengthened as I mentioned above - explaining to students that even though it is homework, editing WP is nothing like doing homework, and that once they log in they must put the encyclopedia first and their grade second. There is some good discussion about the difficulty of editing health topics and there is good discussion of the difficulty of improving GA and FA articles.

But the structural changes as I described above are more important - WEF staff should review proposed edits before they even get to the encyclopedia and the community, coming here only if the proposed edits are OK with regard to policy/guidelines (including what they do to WEIGHT in the overall article) as well as basic writing. This will increase the likelihood that students have a good experience and might come back, and protects WP and the community. Everybody would win. Jytdog (talk) 01:03, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Maps Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 91

Articles tagged with this this wikiproject's banner

All articles tagged with this wikiproject seem to be "owned" by it, in the sense that references are expected to be WP:MEDRS-compliant. Problem is, this is only enforced in some cases (example: Talk:Canine_cancer_detection#Does WikiProject Medicine own this article? and Talk:Female_hysteria#It_turns_out_that_one_of_the_central_premises_of_this_article_is_probably_false) and ignored in others (example: articles in Category:Health care)

It is not clear to me, and possibly others, when one is expected to be MEDRS-compliant Ottawahitech (talk) 20:09, 25 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

You should follow the recommendations (to the best of your ability, using your best judgment, etc.) in MEDRS when you are writing about WP:Biomedical information. You should not follow those recommendations when you are writing about other things (e.g., who said what, where something is, when something happened, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

It would be good to have stricter reference requirements more widely applied but as we all know we are all volunteers. As such application is somewhat uneven. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:08, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

To be a little clearer about the implied question: Having {{WPMED}} on the talk page is meaningless for this question. The project supports all sorts of articles, including hundreds or thousands of biographies. You shouldn't follow MEDRS for Leonardo da Vinci or Oxford University Medical School; you should follow WP:RS (and probably also take a look at the essay WP:HISTRS) for those. But you should follow MEDRS whenever you're writing about biomedical information, even if this project doesn't support that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I have just added information to Thalidomide that I am sure is not MEDRS. Let's see if it gets reverted like most of my edits are. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Don't hold your breath waiting for a revert. Nobody is insisting on MEDRS sourcing for the fact that the Canadian government doesn't compensate every thalidomide victim. Your source - a TV news programme - isn't exactly copper-bottom, but I doubt if anyone will challenge it in this case. Your edit was fine (apart from linking to a dab page and using a bare url as a reference, but those are easily fixed). --RexxS (talk) 01:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS: It may be clear to you that my edit was not medical in nature, but it is a fine line sometimes, don't you agree? BTW do you want to be pinged? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:35, 29 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me

User:Ottawahitech it is pretty clear - MEDRS applies to WP:Biomedical information. MEDRS itself also defines its scope. Jytdog (talk) 16:30, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I think its very, very good for newer editors to ask these questions, to ask for clarification of what the fine points are. Doing so creates a faster learning curve and a better sense of how a community sees its own guides. Understanding of the finer points of MEDRS is critical, seems to me, in an encyclopedia that may be seen by readers as offering medical information.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:51, 29 November 2016 (UTC))

Ottawahitech is not a new editor. take a minute to understand what you are talking about before you comment, please. Jytdog (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Jytdog, please avoid personalized ad hominen attack phrases such as the above. Focus on the content, please. Montanabw^(talk) 05:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Montanabw, you missed a spot. Jytdog (talk) 06:45, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Jytdog. I said newer not new and let me explain what I meant by that. My comment was general and referred to a tendency many of us have to tell someone to go and read rather than discussing the finer points of a policy or guideline. I respect highly both Rexx and WhatamIdoing to be mature in their sense of how to apply policy and my cmt was meant to reflect that. I didn't check Ottawahitech's edit count; it wasn't important to me, but I do understand the confusion my last cmt may have created.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:53, 29 November 2016 (UTC))

(edit conflict) To be fair, Ottawahitech's normal editing area is finance, and our requirements for sourcing in MEDRS do have a much stricter regimen, which can surprise even otherwise-experienced editors. From that point of view, they are new to our topic area and their initial query was understandable, if a little naive. I'd much rather someone who was unsure about MEDRS posted here for help first, than breach its guidance and end up being reverted. Wouldn't everyone agree? --RexxS (talk) 20:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I would agree. I've seen way too many protracted arguments on MEDRS to feel that deeper understanding via collaboration with other editors with experience in an area is not a good thing.(Littleolive oil (talk) 20:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)) +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+I would agree completely. This area is filed with landmines for the uninitiated. One need not be a newbie overall to be "new" to MEDRS and its written --and unwritten-- rules. I am frequently concerned with the level of unkind, personalized attacks emitted by some members of this project over simple matters of debate. I've had substantial (and often rather unpleasant) dealings with users in this area and am particularly concerned with the inappropriate rapidity with which some project members threaten others. It feels like there is a level of burnout here. On one hand, I respect the work folks do to combat fraudulent claims that could cost lives (i.e. debunking Laetrile and such). I also think it's right to expose true quackery and to point out with precision the nature and type of research or proofs available on a given topic. BUT there is, at times, an adamant refusal to assume good faith or to acknowledge that there are issues in the public eye that require analysis as opposed to outright dismissal. I have often argued for things like this and have been pretty frustrated by such suggestions for discussing issues being conflated with "false equivalency". I am also concerned when asking a simple question, as with Ottawahitech here, gets a person's head bit off. Maybe we need a MEDRS teahouse or something, where users unfamiliar with this area can ask questions and have their mistakes explained without losing large chunks of flesh. It would also be nice if folks here could learn to tell the difference between good faith users who are working toward the same goals of WP:V, RS, NPOV, and so on versus the trolls who are arguing for a flat earth or the purveyors of snake oil who are trying to promote their own talk show or something. Montanabw^(talk) 05:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

The problem is, MontanaBW that some of us are genuinely burning out because every way we look in the coverage of medicine on Wikipedia, there really is a Big Pharma shill, or a snake-oil salesman, or a True Believer(TM) who wants to get rid of all the sources they find inconvenient and substitute ones that affirm their business/sales pitch/crusade, no matter how poor the sources are. When you've spent all of your time swinging a hammer, every target looks like a nail. And I know I'm as guilty of that as anybody. The only therapy that works for me is to take a week or two off editing Wikipedia completely, and I guess I'm due for another wikibreak quite soon. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Montanabw yes "teach the controversy" is WP:GEVAL. We don't do that here. I am sure the folks at Discovery Institute would love to have your help. And nobody bit off Ottawahitech's head. Jytdog (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

A contributory factor may be that WP:Lunatic charlatans implicitly gives MEDRS defenders "permission" to deal harshly with editors percieved as violators. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I've harped on this before but will say it again. Health related articles whose content falls under MEDRS should be written, vetted by health professionals, and locked. The imagination boggles at the harm an article could do when not controlled and under the "anyone can edit" umbrella. Editors who are both neutral and have not lost perspective on their mission to protect the MEDRS articles and content are hard to find; as our load of articles in this area grows so does the work load, and we don't seem to bring on many new editors willing to wade into these areas. In that vein, I have seen editors who really want to do the right thing but are hounded off the site. We need to be working with and training people. An editor who agrees to be trained, to spend the time, is less likely to be an editor with a fast fix agenda. Training could be a simple as following a round another editor for a determined amount of time. We have brilliant scholars who with the of best intentions do not understand the culture; we can't afford to lose them. We should be supporting them, helping them. And I agree, if civility only applies to those we agree with or like we are and will be in trouble and our site will have a toxic, vitriolic tone. I know that in many cases its the civility, the sarcasm, and the nastiness that drives prospective, good editors away or that leads them to retaliate with behaviours that don't support the site mission.

Its wise and mature to know when to take a break seems to me, and we all get to that point.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC))

agree, w/ Littleolive (as indicated above), medical articles should be better protected...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:48, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Trigeminal neuralgia

We have members of a charity attempting to promote that charity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:11, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

clearly advocacy--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:38, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

src: i.imgur.com

Reference error/merge required?

Reference here needs fixing but I'm not happy with the quality of reference supplied. In any case, does anyone think it could be merged with this article? Regards CV9933 (talk) 19:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

error fixed ...(for the merger Proposing a merger)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, I've made a merger proposal.CV9933 (talk) 14:09, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

src: thinking.is.ed.ac.uk

Mass deworming

Heads-up on Mass deworming - new review study has reanalysed the disputed Cochrane review, page now seems to be heading (back) to full blown edit war between those who believe in the medical reviews and economists. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of the whole thing, so someone else can handle it. JMWt (talk) 16:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

watchlisted. Jytdog (talk) 19:53, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

ASHA spam and copyright infringement

We have a number of accounts adding copyright infringement to Wikipedia:

User:Laurtrops
User:Abrust1692
User:Chivataj
User:EricaP

Not sure if they are students in a class or socks. They are using sources from [1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

They appear to have moved to IP addresses:

User:148.166.224.219
User:67.83.116.233
User:24.186.133.16

May need a range block until we can get a handle on this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

more...all reverted

Special:Contributions/2600:8805:FF04:101:8CD8:5048:9EFB:7239
Special:Contributions/32.214.14.120
Special:Contributions/104.148.239.199

Jytdog (talk) 01:59, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is properly characterized as "spam". Citing the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for basic information feels like citing the American Cancer Society for basic information: we can use fancier sources, but the information is probably accurate and it's not spam. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:REFSPAM. In many of the instances the ref did not support the content. This is blatant ref spamming. Am not talking about motivation only behavior. Jytdog (talk) 18:37, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

And for completeness, there was evidence of copyright violation by copying from the website almost verbatim. See User talk:Laurtrops#Copy and pasting and User talk:Abrust1692 for very clear examples that James spotted. --RexxS (talk) 21:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

There are multiple issues here; one is copyright violation/ infringement which James, Jytdog and Rexx rightly noted and dealt with. Another is whether the source is reliable for the content it supports; Jytdog indicates it isn't because the article content is not referenced in the source . The third issues is whether the source is potentially reliable, and verifiable and per WhatamIdoing I believe it is as long as content added is directly supported by the source. This is the professional association for, "professionals in audiology, speech-language pathology, and speech and hearing science, and to advocate for people with communication disabilities." as noted in our own article, and can be used as a source for basic information. Whether it is being used as spam is different than whether it is a spam site itself and improper use does not mean the source itself is not usable. I was reluctant to enter this discussion but at the same time wanted to clarify and add an opinion rather than set a precedent for rejecting this kind of site for basic kinds of information.(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC))

Agree with User:Littleolive oil and User:WhatamIdoing, I am not against this source being used. The source however must be (1) paraphrased (2) support the content in question (3) the content added must be neutral / non promotional. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:41, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

There's certainly nothing wrong with the ASHA site and it will be a reliable source for a lot of information. My concern was how it was being used in these cases. It's worth considering as well that in our striving for the best possible quality sources we sometimes don't provide the interested reader with as broad a variety of sources as we might. Sites like ASHA can often be more accessible to the lay reader than a scholarly journal, largely because they will have made an effort to reduce jargon. --RexxS (talk) 10:51, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a good and important point. "Sites like ASHA can often be more accessible to the lay reader than a scholarly journal, largely because they will have made an effort to reduce jargon." which assumes sources whether more scholarly or less are always reliable per content. (Littleolive oil (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC))

It always make me sad that you provide feed back to student editors and most of the time they never respond.[2] or edit again. They made their day of edits and are now onto another class. We put time in and they so often do not reciprocate. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:20, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Arignar Anna Zoological Park - Wikipedia

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Splitting articles about endogenous molecules used as drugs

So we recently split testosterone, and there is a discussion at WT:PHARM about leads generally, where the issue of similar articles, like ~~like dopamine, insulin, norepinephrine, cortisol~~ epinephrine, and oxytocin was raised. Shall we split ~~all~~ these two and any others? I think we should do. Jytdog (talk) 21:46, 22 November 2016 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 23:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC))

Dopamine, norepinephrine, insulin, and cortisol already contain separate pages for the medication. If the leads of the other articles can't be revised to adequately reflect the biological aspects of these compounds in addition to the current information related to medical uses, then I think splitting them will be necessary. Some of them probably don't really need to be split based upon their size though. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:05, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
Not now We had a sloppy process, a sloppy discussion, and there are some unanswered questions. In the case of testosterone, the discussion happened at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology#Proposal_to_split_testosterone_into_scientific_and_medical_articles, and Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. That is not okay. Discussions need to happen in one place. The split is tedious and makes it impossible to collect all the comments. When the testosterone split happened it influenced about 2000 links. The links in circulation are Testosterone (disambiguation), Testosterone (medication), and Testosterone (for the natural steroid). That's fine, but we need to establish a coherent rationale for determining the primary topic and that rationale needs to be backed with some data and consensus. We do not have that yet. I propose that before additional action is taken, someone draft a process for how this is supposed to work for the general case and why. It would be wise to use testosterone as a model and to go back to critics and get their buy in. This talk just happened in the past few weeks. This change applied to many articles will affect billions of pageview experiences in a given year, so this is a big deal that merits advance planning and discussion. I am ready to confirm that this is a worthy topic to consider and that I think if someone had a plan for the general case then that plan would attract thoughtful and constructive discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:08, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

The central discussion was at Talk:Testosterone#Proposed_split. This "discussion" was not a discussion, but rather a link to the discussion. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Testosterone, was not a discussion about if the split should take place, but a complaint about how the split was done that has subsequently been resolved. Boghog (talk) 05:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

You are correct that the discussion is not as I described but it is still a discussion that is related in some way, and part of the consequence of the proposal. There ought to be a cleaner more certain way to do this in the future. The process which is done should not trigger complaints anywhere. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:41, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

It is highly unlikely that any process around here will be completely free of complaints ;-) Most of the complaints were about redirects. They were being cleaned up, but just not fast enough for some editors. Another compliant is why we needed to do this experiment in the first place when it was obvious from the very beginning what the primary topic was. So one reasonable conclusion from this experience is that we should not do further tests (because of all the unnecessary redirects that are generated), but rather decide what the primary topic is based on consensus. Finally many of these problems would go away if the there wasn't such a rigid adherence to WP:PHARMOS. For example, why is it impossible to first state that a substance is a natural hormone/neurotransmitter that is also used as a drug? To state it is a drug that is also a hormone puts the cart before the horse. Also why not put function before medical uses? This order will make it a lot easier for readers to understand why the hormone is used as a drug. Boghog (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Completely agree with this - in particular, the primacy of biology/physiology as a context for pharmacology, rather than the other way around. I was surprised by the precipitous split without consensus, but hope that was a learning experience. -- soupvector (talk) 16:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, I agree that the natural hormone should usually be mentioned before the drug, but I'm not sure about putting function before medical uses. I'd rather use editorial judgment to decide what the average (e.g., person without a university degree in medicine or even science) reader will actually understand. "<Hormone> is a fleedle sprotz genamecowit that is used to treat <common disease>" is not the best we can do for these readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Primary male sex hormone ? fleedle sports genamecowit. I agree that editorial judgment and common sense should always apply. Boghog (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

In this example, and assuming that "primary sex hormone in males" is the alternative. One could equally write that "testosterone is the primary androgen receptor agonist in vertebrates", which is a more precise description of the function and has the additional benefit of not making the hormone seem like something that only males should have - but it wouldn't be either intelligible or relevant to normal people. My !vote is for writing what normal people care about and can understand. Function in simple words (e.g., "Primary male sex hormone") = good. Function in words that most people don't understand = bad. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Good point, testosterone has important physiological roles in females as well as males. Nevertheless due to the higher concentration of testosterone in males, testosterone has a more profound effect on males. The reverse is true for estrogen in females. Further complicating matters is that testosterone is a biosynthetic precursor of estrogen. Finally both testosterone and estrogen have effects above and beyond those mediated by nuclear androgen and estrogen receptors. It is impossible to condense all these nuances in the lead paragraph. It is more practical to concentrate on the most important physiological roles in the lead paragraph and discuss the "second order perturbations" in the body of the article. Boghog (talk) 17:16, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I understand some of the reasons for splitting (different audiences), but am also against splitting such articles. Once in the circulation, epinephrine is the the same whether it arrived by intravenous injection or released from the adrenal medulla, and its actions on the body are the same. Medical uses and pharmacological modes of action are easily separated using subheadings, and the question of an appropriate lede should be able to be managed in a balanced way. There may be cases for splitting articles, and testosterone might be one because of the range of societal factors which influence its use and mis-use, but shouldn't create a precedent for other articles. Klbrain (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
User:Klbrain have a look at epinephrine and its current structure. that is a mess. how do we structure that better with the two sets of content together? To be really concrete - think about where the Adverse effects section should go. It is just awkward where it is now. What do you think? Jytdog (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the specific question of the structure of epinephrine (response to Jytdog): it is currently undergoing significant changes as material moves in and out; much of this material has not been integrated, and you're right that a structural rethink is needed. I'd reduce the lede by about a half, as most of the material there is minor and better included in the body. I'd also move the physiology above the clinical uses, because the clinical uses make more sense to a lay reader once you can see that this hormone usually does. Several of the major heading should be more more minor headings - so, nothing that a strong editorial hand couldn't do. This doesn't need a split as the normal functions and mechanisms greatly aid the understanding of the medical uses. Klbrain (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I think I'd create a section for the "drug" content, and put the usual (non-duplicative) drug information in that. ==Adverse effects== would become the ===Adverse effects=== subsection under that. Generally, I think I'd provide basic information about what the molecule does naturally before introducing anything about the drug.
Perhaps there are better solutions, but that's at least one approach that seems reasonably functional. It'd also be very convenient in the event that an article needed to be split for reasons of size: Swipe the whole section on its use as a drug and paste it into the new article; replace that with a proper {{Main}} summary about the drug. The drug needs to be described in the "physiological" article anyway; the only real question is whether it's described in full detail or whether it's described in a couple of paragraphs and preceded by a link to a page that contains the rest of the information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
I would also support creating a single drug section with adverse affects as a subsection with basic information about the neurotransmitter/hormone before that. That would be a big improvement for an article like epinephrine. The problem is that this approach conflicts with WP:PHARMMOS. Furthermore if the article is already very long, splitting is probably preferable. Boghog (talk) 07:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
Support - There are significant conflicts between WP:PHARMMOS and WP:MCBMOS that make it difficult to write a coherent article that covers both the endogenous hormone and its use as a drug. It is much cleaner to split the two. Generally the endogenous hormone should be the primary topic as it is more fundamental concept. Boghog (talk) 05:09, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
Support - As in complete agreement with proposer and Boghog. As a general reader it's very confusing to have the article as it is, mixing up its existence as a medication in the same sentence as the hormone. And as argued by others - it necessitates the use of two infoboxes. --Iztwoz (talk) 01:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
support per Iztwoz--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:34, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Unsure These splits are a lot of work. The redirects need to than be pointed to the correct article and there are thousands. Someone needs to go through them. Whatever we decide it needs to be done gradually. The disambig tool helped a lot with the testosterone split. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Some statistics:
Links to Epinephrine: 3316 of which 819 are from navboxes ({{Adrenergics}} - 619, {{Hormones}} - 121, and {{Neurotransmitters}} - 79).

Links to Oxytocin: 978 of which 182 are from navboxes ({{Hormones}} - 121, {{Uterotonic}} - 18, and {{Oxytocin and vasopressin receptor modulators}} - 43).

Boghog (talk) 08:48, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

As an alternative to the Dab solver is solve_disambiguation.py. The later is a human assisted bot script that runs from the command line and while not as fancy as the Dab solver, probably can get the job done faster. Boghog (talk) 09:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
Support I have a pet opinion that medical details are too often given too much WEIGHT on WP relative to basic facts on natural function. Splitting the two frames helps create coherent narratives from both the basic and applied perspectives. I'm coming here from oxytocin, a chemical whose dominant role in neurobiology and social neurobiology is the topic of many, many books' worth of research [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]--but you'd almost never guess this from the lede, which gives details about administration and side effects which are only relevant to its use as a medication. I greatly admire the work of this WikiProject in tirelessly improving medical coverage, but I think it's important not to crowd out the basics.

That said, I agree with Doc James that this is a big job, and sadly I won't have time to help in the near future. Many thanks to those who can volunteer to do this if there's consensus. FourViolas (talk) 01:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Support There are lots of relevant points here, but it strikes me that the most cogent factor is that the audiences for medical and biological information about these substances are probably more or less orthogonal: a reader who is interested in a substance as a drug probably does not want to have to navigate through masses of information about its role in biology. It makes sense to separate out the information that such a reader will be interested in. (I might be the editor who started this trend, by splitting dopamine and norepinephrine. At the time my main motivation was frustration at being unable to create a satisfactory infobox that covered both roles, but I now think this was just one manifestation of a wider issue.) Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Chase your Dreams, baby! To whoever proposed this[[8]], I would like to say: Bravo, and well done. Einstein himself is turning over in his grave at this very minute, green with envy. You have used at least a few percentage points more of your potential than the rest of us put together. I am caused to recollect this very point has been irking me to no end for a number of years now. On this subject, I would like to say: the epinephrine and adrenaline articles should be split. Epi should deal with the med, and adrenaline should deal with the biochemical/hormone/whatever in the body its produced in. They should be separate; the way it is now is like merging biochemistry and pharmacology into one article, and all the objections to that apply to this as well.

Adrenaline should deal with the organisms that produce adrenaline, how they do so and the affects on the system its produced in. Epinephrine should deal with the companies that produce and market it, how it is priduced, where it is produced, what it is used for and medical codes and so on. Little blurb about how it replaced morphine on the fire trucks (first responder industry) in the 90s and if you wanted to be really bleeding edge, why. If someone has real balls they can try to tie all that noise to the current war in afghanistan. Finally, to the people who I suspect lifted the idea for the original merge from my tapped phone conversation about 'youd think the people killing people for their adrenaline would try to hide the fact thats where epi comes from' I would say thank you, you have proved the point and we may now revert from craycray mode. Secondly, I would like to posit murder is not the primary source of epi/adrenaline and that there are, in fact, other mechanisms for its production.

Further, these may not even be more expensive overall. Additionally merging for this reason is unwise because people are going to know what you're up to, and there is a possiblity, however slight, that this will make your 'procurement' more difficult. Incidentally, if you're trying to hide it, wouldn't the split make it less obvious? I see no other rationale for the merge. Lastly, how about a blurb in the newly split Adrenaline article relating the practice of hunting with a gun like you would with a bow and arrow because tracking the deer or whatnot after you shoot it with the arrow scares it and the adrenaline spoils the meat. See also (imperfectly executed?) halal and the concept of 'clean kill.'

Additionally the adrenaline article should state unequivocably where its produced, in the lede and ideally in the first sentence, ie 'Adrenaline is a purpurshmerbaroid that is produced in the almonderamer of the forebrain (or wherever - this one of those persistent mysteries of [bio]science?). Blah blah blah if you take too much you might poop yore pants etc blah blah...' and there should be a differentiation between the fear for life aspect of the 'flight' effect, the disregard for safety aspect of the 'fight' effect and a section equally devoted to the paralying aspect that makes rabbits freeze in the headlights because eagles and other predators rely on having their attention drawn to the movement, ie the frozen rabbit is esentially invisible (hence the legendary headlight reaction of yore). I find it very difficult to believe these are all the same chemical with identical mechanisms of action. Further, theres an unpleasant ('Area denial' aspect as well, such as when a mouse smells the urine of a house cat or a house cat smells the urine of a larger wild cat (something about making kittens be silent or something? silent and hide? especially when the mother cat isnt around?) [edit: [[9]] covered or at least good start: 'The concept of the adrenal medulla and the sympathetic nervous system being involved in the flight, fight and fright response was originally proposed by Cannon.']

"Epinephrine, also known as adrenalin or adrenaline, is a hormone, neurotransmitter and medication." Incidentally, my understanding is adrenaline is only known as epinephrine if it is removed from the body(?)(is that even possible? See 'spoiled meat' reference, above. Otherwise see 'expense' section, directly subordinate there too. As an aside you may also want to consider 'more trouble than its worth.' In fairness, I'm going to go ahead and not try to get into 'human growth hormone,' 'human insulin,' jugging or jug band hare - somebody might want to consider why no one recommends eating a lot of veal, or the trope that 'trees can get diseases from children') or if/when it is produced synthetically and stold off the back of a truck as in the infamous 'epi pen.'

Another example might be you're deleting bird, cat and monkey here and adding them under mammal and chopping that down to 'small furry animal.' Correct, yes, but just beyond infuriatingly inane for a studious encyclopedia intended for reference purposes. Incidentally, if adderall and amphetamine are split, then so should be adrenaline and epinephrine. Whats been done here is essentially akin to a merge of ritalin into PCP. Incidentally, perhaps a reference to the prohibition of using blood in violation of kashrut is worth trotting out here. Maybe, just maybe these people know what they're talking about here.

One additional gripe: why are the [results] all off kilter, tampered with and gaslighted as all heck. The first result should be adrenaline, the article; failing that it should be epinephrine (redirected from adrenaline) etc.

Just like to leave you with the usual - might want to get yourself some kevlar shorts! 55378008a (talk) 06:29, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Split epinephrine into epinephrine (medication). Not sure if the evidence supports dividing it into adrenaline for the physiology and epinephrine for the medication use? Started discussion hereDoc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Infoboxes after splitting

A closely related question to splitting these articles is what infobox should be used for the natural hormone/neurotransmitter. I have made a proposal here. Your input is welcome. Boghog (talk) 19:16, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Cerebrospinal fluid drainage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aortic_aneurysm#Cerebrospinal_fluid_drainage

I posted a comment on the talk page. If you have a chance, I would appreciate some feedback. Thanks. JenOttawa (talk) 19:17, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Wikidata and non-MED data

TL;DR following the #Wikidata for pneumonia talk, can we use non-medical data from WD in {{Drugbox}} blindly (eg, CAS number, PubChem)?

This is a spin-off topic from #Wikidata for pneumonia. The pneumonia topic is about WP:Biomedical information, WP:MEDRS, and WD data quality (So far: "do not use WD-med data automatically"). This thread is about using non-medical data from WD, like PubChem CID, and CAS number.

Background: I am preparing the WD connection for {{Drugbox}} and {{Chembox}} (17k articles). Per development choices, these infoboxes are edited in tandem at datarow level (same data item is treated same way). Data in view are the identifiers (mostly el to external resources), pilot now is with d:QID and CAS number. Extensive tracking category set is used (especially those that should be emptied by editing enwiki or WD). Datamodels for chemical compounds, in WD and in both infoboxes, to be handled (eg situation: 'article is not a compound'). First aims: align the pair en:article-d:item, and get CAS number correct for the compounds.

My question is: having read the pneumonia discussion, should I treat the non-medical WD info as suspicious as the medical data? Or can I read & show it? Note: for now, I withhold the proposal because if the discussions here. -DePiep (talk) 09:38, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I would say it depends on whether the sources are available, and whether the data has been properly vetted so that it isn't polluted like the treatments data was. Carl Fredrik ? ? 10:16, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@DePiep: My opinion is that the key distinguishing factor here is not the use of biomedical information, but whether there is a large community of individuals whose workflows may be disrupted and/or whether the change would result in a massive number of data changes. Just for context, the first template our team converted over was for gene pages. Because we run both the WP bot and the WD bot we could make sure that the content at the initial conversion was essentially identical (both in content and in form). And even with that change, we created a new template that was moved over in stages (first 10 articles, then 50, etc...) And all that was done with notifications at WP:MCB.

You may recall this discussion over at WP:CHEM about the chemistry infobox. The primary take-home from that discussion was pretty similar, that we should move slowly and in stages. We identified PubChem ID as the first identifier we would target. Sebotic has been doing an analysis comparing PubChem IDs between WP and WD. We want to get to the stage where the WD data is either the same as WP or demonstrably more accurate. (For example, there are many examples where WP Pubchem IDs are stale and expired.) We will be resuming that discussion over at WP:CHEM soon to get some community feedback on those results.

Since we seem to be the primary WD bot owners for statements on genes, proteins, drugs, and diseases, it would be great to ping us before pulling any of those data to WP, just to make sure we don't have any major changes/improvements planned. And again, there is an open invitation for anyone to participate at WD:MB. Best, Andrew Su (talk) 14:10, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for these great clarifying words, Andrew Su. But still: I am intimidated by the WD-enwiki effects. I am a serious enwiki template editor, but by now I feel I have to give it up to WD-bots (with smart people) organising it for me. -DePiep (talk) 00:17, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@DePiep: I too am intimidated by the WD-enwiki interface... ;) But I'm 100% sure we can find a way to work together productively. In retrospect, we probably could have used your talents when we created Module:Infobox_gene. But moving forward (if I may humbly suggest a few ideas), you are certainly welcome over at WD:MED and WD:MB, either as a bot developer or to help chime in on our proposed data models. Or, if you prefer to focus on WP, a long time ago we tried to prototype a few ideas of how to display related genes/drugs/phenotypes in {{Infobox medical condition}}. Or open to brainstorming other ideas! Best, Andrew Su (talk) 01:56, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

We'll be fine. (After some disappointments over here). -DePiep (talk) 02:01, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I am happy to see WD used for the type of numerical data you mention. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Rohingya insurgency in Western Myanmar - Wikipedia

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Category:FDA Approved Drugs

I'm sure this topic has been mulled over before, but I'm sorta curious what folks think about a potential Category:FDA Approved Drugs. We have a lot of pages on experimental drugs and at the moment, and I'm not sure there is an obvious category to separate out "Experimental Drugs" and "Approved Drugs". NickCT (talk) 19:57, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

This is probably obvious from my comment above, but to clarify, I'm proposing doing something like creating a Category:FDA Approved Drugs or a Category:Experimental drugs. NickCT (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Category:Experimental drugs already exists. I know there is also Category:Abandoned drugs and Category:Withdrawn drugs... Maybe would be useful to have both FDA and EMA categories. Jytdog (talk) 20:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

The obvious question is - are you going to define drugs approved eg by the EMA and not the FDA as "experimental"? And why should the FDA be the primary benchmark, when EMA covers more people? And then why not India, Australia and so on... Sounds like a bit of a can of worms to me. Le Deluge (talk) 20:15, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. The FDA is more well-known than other regulatory bodies, but I suppose other categories could be created if necessary. Is there a dash between FDA and approved (FDA-approved)? Natureium (talk) 20:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: - re "already exists" - Duh! You're right. I feel silly for missing that.

@Le Deluge: - That's a good question; maybe call out in Category:Experimental drugs that you're talking about any drug seeking approval, but not yet approved by a major regulatory body (e.g. FDA, EMA, PMDA)?

@Natureium: - re "Is there a dash" - Good question. Not sure what the right answer is there. NickCT (talk) 20:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

There's little point in having a category if it is not complete & current; in some ways that is worse. There are nearly 400 in Category:Experimental drugs and there must be thousands in Category:Drugs. Who is undertaking to sort them & maintain the cats? Johnbod (talk) 05:45, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Johnbod: - Great question. Who maintains the categories on all our other articles? Especially those weird and obscure categories like Category:Medieval European metalwork objects? NickCT (talk) 13:52, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@NickCT: As someone who does a lot of work on categories - the answer is, that things can linger in the wrong categories for years. But at least the status of something in medieval metalwork is unlikely to change - and nobody dies if it's classified as Ancient Roman metalwork rather than medieval. I'm exaggerating of course, but instinctively I tend to shy away from categorising articles by "ephemeral" characteristics. They're a lot of work to maintain that could be better done off-Wiki, and one wonders if they are WP:Defining - one has to beware WP:Overcategorization.Le Deluge (talk) 14:05, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Le Deluge: - I agree with everything you've said, but I'd hardly call FDA or EPA approval an "ephemeral" characteristic. NickCT (talk) 16:18, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Are you implying someone will die if a drug is listed as experimental when it's approved or vis-versa? Pharmacies aren't going to be stocking medications based on what wikipedia categories they are in. Natureium (talk) 16:42, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

There's this thing called the internet, you know. Some people get their drugs there. Johnbod (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think we should worry about someone who's dumb enough to buy unknown pharmaceutical drugs off the internet basing their poor decision on wikipedia article categories. Natureium (talk) 18:09, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you'll notice it has taken nearly three years to get Coppergate Helmet (begun 2007) into Category:Medieval European metalwork objects (begun 2104), & that was just because I happened upon it. I doubt the category is at all complete. Johnbod (talk) 15:00, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't really see the point. However my criticism is mainly towards categories, not so much your proposal. This is very much what Wikidata is meant to handle. Does anyone know if there is a way to autocreate categories based on Wikidata properties? Carl Fredrik ? ? 14:07, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I think there is, but it will rely on accurate "properties" set up on Wikidata being picked-up from the standard info in the articles. And then when a drug is approved, it still has to be updated. Johnbod (talk) 15:00, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The FDA's data is open so we can use that. It's probably already there as well. The EMA's data is similarly open (one of very few EU bodies that actually does open data). Carl Fredrik ? ? 18:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Suggested edit - Sarcopenia

Hi, I posted a comment on the sarcopenia talk page regarding changing the diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia in the article. I would appreciate some feedback if anyone has a chance Danagg12 (talk) 14:45, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I've commented. --RexxS (talk) 15:14, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Side note: that article has a serious problem with primary sources as per WP:MEDRS. Everymorning (talk) 03:06, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Yet more strange WD entries: "found in taxon"

So this and this (fixed the latter here) sort of thing is happening today. The person doing that is interested in drugs and metabolites and appears to be making use of the existing "found in taxon" field to list ... all kinds of chemicals found in humans (?)... but based on its talk page, that field was apparently created to hold gene/protein data - like gene X is endogenous for species Y. Hm. Asked them about it here. This too seems to be bad data.

That user appears to have a plan to use a bot to do a lot more of that, per a proposed "2016 WikiPathways sprint". There is also this bot approval....

Am bringing this up as this is the kind of "non-medical" data discussed above. Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

discussion is happening at the "found in taxon" field's discussion page, here. Wikidata really seems to be a wild west where people can put whatever they want where ever they want. Jytdog (talk) 22:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Not unlike Wikipedia in the early days (or so I have been led to believe). I'm hoping these are growing pains and it will improve over time. Sizeofint (talk) 05:26, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

We have a higher fraction of human to bots here than on Wikidata. Humans when they mess up do so much slower. We humans can also correct each other fairly easily. A bot can make a few thousand edits in an hour. As a non bot operator I simply do not stand a chance. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:52, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Montreal Neurological Institute: open science

The Montreal Neurological Institute has launched the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute.

Ushering in a bold new era for open science--McGill Reporter (Friday, December 16, 2016)

--Wavelength (talk) 05:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

We need to invite them to Wikimania :D Carl Fredrik ? ? 19:45, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Medical centers in the United States

What are the criteria for listing on Medical centers in the United States? The centers listed are all big, but there are others that are just as big or prominent. Where is the line supposed to be? Natureium (talk) 04:22, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I think you are looking for Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Hospitals BestDoc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:56, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Natureium (talk) 15:14, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Natureium, the scope of that list is described in the introduction. Based upon that, inclusion requires:

large size,
association with a medical school,
a "full spectrum" of healthcare services, and
a research program.

The list looks incomplete; for example, Stanford University Medical Center and Yale-New Haven Hospital probably belong in the list. If you were to add large teaching hospitals that seem comparable to the existing ones, I think that you are unlikely to be wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there really a purpose for the listing of some big medical centers? It's not a list article. It seems like the article could talk about the purpose, general info, and shared characteristics of medical centers in the US, and that would be sufficient. Natureium (talk)

This is a "list" article, even though it doesn't say "List of" at the top of the page. I suppose that it would be useful to medical students who are seeking prestigious residencies; perhaps that's its "purpose".

I think that the article you have in mind is at Academic health science centre. (It's also a series of country-based lists, but it ought to contain more general information on the concept.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Generational psychological issues

This may concern you all; there is an ongoing dispute on the main and talk pages of Generation Snowflake. The article seems to be primarily about psychological issues of a generation, though most of the content and sources are journalists making brash claims based on generalizations, without evidence. ? (talk) · vbm · coi) 22:26, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The article is about a neologism, not about psychology or a classification within DSM-5. Vast difference. Keri (talk) 22:57, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

User:QLao

Will editors here have a look at edits by "new editor" QLao (talk · contribs)? He makes genetic-related edits and it appears that his edits need review. On his talk page, others have complained, and I briefly commented there as well. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:23, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

will look[10]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:07, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Can Epilepsy be cured?

Fyi please see: Katie_Hopkins#Personal_life. Ottawahitech (talk) 11:40, 18 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Yes, it depends on the underlying disorder. If the epilepsy is caused by a structural disorder of the brain surgery can definitely stop it, and there is also the possibility of outgrowing juvenile epilepsy and that way being "cured". I'm not sure that one would give a blank slate so soon after the operation, seeing as it takes several years of being "epilepsy-free" in order to be allowed to drive etc. However, the passage is given as a quote from her personally, so I see no problem with it. Carl Fredrik ? ? 11:48, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect images

I am noticing occasionally incorrect images on Wikicommons, eg below. Is there a way to flag images or at least discuss them on Wikicommons? We rigorously hold our written content to a high standard but there are lots of images out there that are wrong and, when used have the potential to convey incorrect information. Example below: --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:01, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, one thing you can do is leave a comment on the talk page for the Commons file. Looie496 (talk) 14:41, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

another option, would go[11]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:43, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Neither of those options will stop people from using the file though. No-one ever looks at the talk page, and if the only solution is deleting then it should be deleted. What we're looking for is a screechy template that tells you that the file is crap. Carl Fredrik ? ? 18:35, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I think something like this would be nice, I created a template at commons:Template:Inaccurate:

Best, Carl Fredrik ? ? 18:43, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The left anterior and posterior fascicles might simple be one in front of the other :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:55, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

There are of course lots of mistakes on Commons. I wouldn't bother with the talk pages, which surely no one ever sees, but when completely sure I just edit the description, or leave a query there. What I see most of is mis-described images of real things rather than illustration-type ones that are just wrong. But I doubt even many editors looking for images to use see those comments. Images that are just wrong or very misleading should be put up for deletion I think. Johnbod (talk) 18:55, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

On the few occasions when I have found errors in diagrams, it has proven very difficult to gain the attention of anyone. I suspect that a template would be similarly ignored. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:45, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I flagged this horrible image in 2009. (It also has a companion image.) At the deletion discussion, I was told to fix the picture myself. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:53, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

As an aside, CFCF, the images I flagged should NOT be used as a building block for a corrected image. They should not be used to illustrate the subject, and they should not be available for anyone to view on the internet. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:59, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

... File:Diagrama_de_los_pulmones.svg is a featured image on Commons. I can't believe this... Carl Fredrik ? ? 14:06, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The template now reads:

I agree with you Axl that it is horrible, but Commons is impossible when it comes to these things. It took months of repeated requests to get File:Human skeleton front en.svg to lose its featured status... I don't know what to do than to tag the images -- even those that you linked are still in use. I may spend some time replacing these across different Wikipedias, we'll see how much time I have. Carl Fredrik ? ? 14:17, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Referencing Upper respiratory tract infection

I've cleaned up a bit at Upper respiratory tract infection, but entire sections parts are unreferenced. Attention from someone with access to the Cochrane database could be helpful; a previous editor noted updates to several of the reviews cited. --Shelley V. Adams <blame
credit> 15:35, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I can help for a bit. Did you tag with 'citation needed -' that way I can find what you need more quickly. Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Antibiotics

reverted here[12] this 1999 review[13]...more eyes appreciated, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

This looks like a question of DUE weight. It's indisputably true that "traditional healers have long used plants to [attempt to] prevent or cure infectious diseases" (to quote one of several claims made in this series of edits), and it's trivial to find recent sources that say as much. The possibility of deriving antibiotics/antimicrobials from plants (rather than, e.g., from fungi) might even be interesting and relevant to researchers, investors, policy makers, etc. What needs to be considered is whether that statement (in that place, phrased that way, etc.) misleads the average reader by putting too much emphasis on the supposed efficacy and naturalness. OTOH, it is in the ==Research== section.

IMO the bottom line is that this probably needs more "figure out the best thing to say about research on the next generation of antibiotics as it relates to plants" than "immediately enforce rules on all changes". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that the first link should be this. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I think that the statement is okay. Ideally, perhaps a more recent review could be found. (I had a quick glance on PubMed.) I also added another sentence based on a 2015 review paper. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa I understand your point about due weight. I agree that maybe the topic of phytochemicals was given more than the necessary attention in a wikipage about antibiotics. A discussion about phytochemicals would be more appropriately placed in an article about plant medicine, plant-based medicine, or herbalism. That being said, does the scope of our WikiProject cover plant medicine? What is our scope? Do we limit ourselves only to allopathic and osteopathic medicine? One cannot forget that several different medicines are plant-derived or synthetic isomers of plant-derived compounds (e.g. vinca alkaloids, digitalis/digitoxin, ouabain, paclitaxel, warfarin, etc.), so where do we draw the line? NJ (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The effect of this newly added material was to remove "altmed" stuff (e.g., the ===Supplements=== section heading) and substitute serious mainstream pharma-based scientific research that uses plants (which do contain anti-bacterial chemicals), rather than fungi (which are known to produce anti-bacterial chemicals), as a potential source of the next generation of antibiotics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I find Ozzie's line here to be the best one here. I am not aware of any classes of antibiotics currently in use which are derived from plants. However there is quite a following in alternative medicine of using so-called "plant-based antibiotics". This doesn't mean that the concept is false, but we should be careful about using a 17-year-old review, especially considering there are newer ones available. Carl Fredrik ? ? 19:39, 17 December 2016 (UTC) E.g.:

Plant-derived antimicrobial compounds: alternatives to antibiotics. 2012 PMID 22913356

Carl, this is the ==Research== section. Whether plant-derived antibiotics are currently in use is irrelevant. What matters in this section is whether plant-derived antibiotics are being researched, i.e., are plants an area of active scientific research for future antibiotics? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

As long as it is supported by review articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Then again isn't that exactly what I said? What I am critical about is using a 17-year old article in a controversial field with a high number of alternative medicine folk promoting nonsense. A good example is this which popped up in the Google suggestions for plant antibiotics: screenshot Carl Fredrik ? ? 22:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to trim old primary sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:12, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

thank you (for all comments)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

"I am not aware of any classes of antibiotics currently in use which are derived from plants." - CFCF. Perhaps quinine? Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Right, though I tend to use antibiotic to refer to antibacterials. I could have been clearer with regards to that.
Carl Fredrik ? ? 15:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I think some of us are getting confused by terminology, given that there's the terms "antibiotics", "antibacterials", and "antimicrobials". The first term is probably most inclusive, while antimicrobials may pertain specifically to organisms invisible to the naked eye. Antibacterials are both antibiotics and antimicrobials. NJ (talk) 16:01, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

OrthoAccel Technologies

This article was created by a suspected paid editor. The worst content has been removed, but it would be helpful if you are able to check the content regarding their product Acceledent. The article claims that it is reviewed in PMID 25707947 but I'm unable to access it and the author is not independent either. Thanks SmartSE (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Cardiac Dimensions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) suffers from the same problems. SmartSE (talk) 22:57, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Updated based on a Cochrane review. Not as favorable as the press releases. Trimmed the press releases from the other one aswell. Gah Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Acadesine and AICA ribonucleotide

The two drug articles Acadesine and AICA ribonucleotide are about two closely related chemical compounds. Both apparently are sometimes referred to by the same abbreviation AICAR. This appears to have caused some confusion and I think much of the content of the AICA ribonucleotide article is actually based on references that discuss Acadesine. One could certainly imagine the two chemical compounds being interconverted in the body (they differ only by a phosphate group), so maybe the effects of one are directly relevant to the effects of the other, but since I'm not able to access much of the references in order to sort this out, I'd like to ask others with some medical and/or pharmacology experience to have a look. Thank you. ChemNerd (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

AICAR a AMP activated protein kinase agonist...?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Low quality review

Discussion here [14]. The review appears to misquote a USPSTF statement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:20, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:33, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of primary research on Vaginoplasty

I have just edited text documenting primary research on vaginoplasty outcomes in women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, inserted earlier in the year by @Barbara (WVS):. In my view, the original edit [15] misrepresented measures of success and implied that persons treated participated in outcome measurement. Reading the research paper, neither appears true. My current edit is [16]. Comments welcome, but really the entire paragraph needs to be removed per WP:MEDRS. Trankuility (talk) 00:54, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I went back to look at the article again. I have to agree that it is not a good MEDRS source. I was probably working too quickly and assumed that because the word 'review' was in the title, it was a review article. I'm not sure how much discussion needs to take place, but now that I've seen my error, I will go back and remove the content that was added based upon the source. OR, if I can recall that the information exists in another MEDR source, I will use that reference and retain the content. Best Regards,

Barbara (WVS) (talk) 11:29, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Errors in labiaplasty section

Could someone with a track record on this article please have a look? The errors seem to date back months. The image is unlinked (but arguably there shouldn't be one anyway, for various reasons); one sentence refers to vaginoplasty generally; there's a stray clause referring to I don't know what. Thanks. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:45, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Not the first time that article has been spammed, and likely won't be the last. See these contributions by another self-promoter.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:06, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of primary research on Vaginoplasty

I have just edited text documenting primary research on vaginoplasty outcomes in women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, inserted earlier in the year by @Barbara (WVS):. In my view, the original edit [17] misrepresented measures of success and implied that persons treated participated in outcome measurement. Reading the research paper, neither appears true. My current edit is [18]. Comments welcome, but really the entire paragraph needs to be removed per WP:MEDRS. Trankuility (talk) 00:54, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Barbara (WVS) (talk) 11:29, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Errors in labiaplasty section

Not the first time that article has been spammed, and likely won't be the last. See these contributions by another self-promoter.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:06, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Mitochondrial replacement therapy (formerly "Mitochondrial donation")

i reworked all the medical-y stuff on this article; not the history or ethics which schoolkids have made a hashery of, other than fixing the refs. would be happy if anybody would go over it to see if i screwed anything up. i redirected Cytoplasmic transfer there as well as Spindle transfer....

I think the Techniques section should come before the Risks section, as the risks don't make sense unless you understand the procedure. Jytdog (talk) 05:24, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I remember briefly being involved with this article and weighing in on what to name it. It's still on my watchlist, but I'm not particularly interested in editing it. Jytdog is cleaning it up, though. I see that he also renamed it to "Mitochondrial replacement therapy." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Oops, above I thought that someone else posted this section and that Jytdog was responding to that. Anyway, I agree that the Techniques section should come before the Risks section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:46, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Acute Allergy Syndrome

new article, i have tagged for speedy.

This is a made-up thing. There is no such thing as "acute allergy syndrome". There are hypersensitivity reactions, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis but none of those are "syndromes" as that term is used medically. No sources are provided showing that this is a real thing, and there are none in pubmed. Jytdog (talk) 23:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

The only use of the term that I could find is in "Improved outcomes in patients with acute allergic syndromes who are treated with combined H1 and H2 antagonists", which is used as a reference in the article. The phrase "acute allergy reaction" (as used in Acute Allergy Syndrome #Signs and symptoms) seems commoner, but to me that should be covered in Allergy #Acute response. --RexxS (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Yep. not a "syndrome" in the normal sense of "here are a bunch of symptoms that we can't figure out" like, classically, chronic fatigue syndrome. Jytdog (talk) 01:15, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's exactly a made-up thing. I think that it's more likely to be something in need of re-naming and/or merging. It's also possible that this term is more common in the UK than in the US. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

? refs for those claims?? Looking at the article it is completely SYN. Jytdog (talk) 06:01, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Redirected to allergy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Article redirected and restored 1 year later -- Irritable male syndrome

The following article: Irritable male syndrome was redirected to Late-onset hypogonadism quite some time ago on the grounds that none of the sources included in it lived up to Wikipedia's standard of reliability. It was recently restored. Please comment and feel free to restore the redirect. This is not an accepted diagnosis and the subject of severe disease mongering. Carl Fredrik ? ? 15:56, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

redirect should be restored per CF--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Agree - should be redirected - but should this discussion happen over there? -- soupvector (talk) 16:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
I find myself agreeing with Soupvector about the location, so perhaps someone would copy all this over there. Also, why is the article all about the human concept, rather than the apparently real thing in sheep (which is where this name originates)? I could see have a vet med article that describes the 'real thing' in sheep, and merely mentions that some people use this name for something similar in humans, for which see this other article. A plain redirect means that we lose this vet med information for livestock. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

If they ever want to research the human syndrome properly, they could do worse than recruit here. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

:) Jytdog (talk) 00:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

good thinking WAID. I just took out all the unsourced fake medical content, and made as stub mostly focused on sheep, with a proto-"Society and culture" section for pseudoscience Jed Diamond garbage. Jytdog (talk) 00:58, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I've added an image of the particular breed of sheep in which this was first described, and I gave your proto-section a rather blunt title. If you don't deal with livestock, then I hope that the overall effect will be "This is not the article you are looking for". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I went and found the 2002 sheep article and can send it to you if you like. Turns out the guy who wrote it was sticking his finger in the eye of the establishment and wrote :"This brief review challenges the dogma that male mammals are constantly reproductively active following sexual maturity at puberty. Males of many, and perhaps the majority of, long-lived species, express periodic changes in testicular activity and behaviour during their normal life cycle. In the most extreme examples, as illustrated by the Soay ram, males continually cycle between the sexually active/fertile state and the sexually inactive/infertile state, often on an annual or long-term basis. In individuals, testicular activity may vary with changes in social status, nutrition, health, age and other factors. This also applies to man."

The rest of the world, except for good old Jed Diamond, has ignored him. Jytdog (talk) 06:03, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that, but the rest of the scientific community who found out about it took it for what it was: a hypothesis. Jed Diamond constructed a theory based on the possibility of such cycles and combined it with non-scientific anecdote, pushing it hard in order to increase the market for testosterone-supplements. Who hasn't heard of an "angry old fart"? Easy to label this a syndrome and sell pills... Call me a cynic but the way this works makes me so angry... Carl Fredrik ? ? 16:10, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Also thank you all for the help. I don't know what would happen to Wikipedia if it weren't for the core of science-advocates here at WP:MED.Carl Fredrik ? ? 16:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Future of magic links

In case anyone is interested, a decision has apparently been made to remove all magic links, which includes PMID and ISBN.

I can't find any discussions where consensus was established. There is Requests for comment/Future of magic links on Mediawiki; a mailing list post by Legoktm in October; a thread on phabricator, T148274; and a request to approve a bot to remove them. Spinningspark left a note about the bot request on WP:VPP. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It was decided between developers seems like, per phab:T145604 and phab:E287. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:27, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

not a good idea...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:18, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 89 #PMID magic links was the previous discussion we had (last month). --RexxS (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Researching effects of high-potency marijuana

The University of Colorado has received a grant for the study of the effects of high-potency cannabis.

CU Boulder researchers receive state grant to study high-potency marijuana effects--CU Boulder Today (December 16, 2016)

--Wavelength (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Still very far from being accepted on Wikipedia under WP:RS... Carl Fredrik ? ? 17:11, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wavelength: there might be something there usable to discuss the facts that concentrated cannabis is produced; that people inhale the heated vapours (is "dabbing" a neologism yet?); and that it's illegal to actually conduct trials in Colorado. As the research is a single "trial", not randomised, no double-blinding, with no control group - or even any measurement of dosage - the study falls into the lowest class of evidence, and so isn't usable to support any biomedical claim such as cognitive impairment or otherwise. It might be usable as evidence for the claim that stoners tend to get stoned. --RexxS (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

We have just received details from the tox lab here in BC of cases out of Vancouvers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Data visualization

Tools are here on Commons. We now need to build consensus to expand what licenses of data we accept here. Currently the recommendation is only CC0 but IMO we need CC BY so we can use UN data. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:33, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

opinions needed at commons(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:19, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Source of the article : Wikipedia

Kamis, 21 Desember 2017