Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 41

Latest comment: 10 years ago by WhatamIdoing in topic Hip pain
Archive 35Archive 39Archive 40Archive 41Archive 42Archive 43Archive 45

Student editing alert

Please browse topics at

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

This last course, with the point structure, has quite an appealing way of marking that (I hope) will increase the quality of submissions. LT910001 (talk) 00:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Education Program:Case Western Reserve University/ANTH 302 Darwinian Medicine (Fall 2013)#Summary_and_students targets high-profile medical articles, and the course syllabus earlier suggested editing with a POV (a Darwinian perspective). The students have begun adding text from sandbox to articles. There are occasionally good sources, but more often there are not; there are sources I can't locate on Google Scholar or PubMed, and even when there is potentially one or two sentences that can be gleaned from a good source according to due weight, the text sometimes strays off-topic. Also, the students rarely link their sandboxes on talk, and don't always engage talk, so you have to browse the contribs of each student if you don't find the sandbox on article talk.

    As university term-end approaches, these articles (and classes listed above) will need attention! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

We won't be done with these til the term ends. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)


Need some help over at WP:Anatomy concerning terminology

We're currently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anatomy#Link to terminology undergoing discussion editing a few articles that may be of quite high relevance to you over here. The proposition we have been acting on is to combine articles to a shorter entry on human anatomical terms at Anatomical terminology. A draft for a new article is available at User:CFCF/sandbox/Anatomical terminology and is a slightly adapted text from [1] which is CC.

The reason I believe this article is relevant to you is that it sums up at least three articles (which also need to be expanded in the near future):

At least this last one is very much up your strasse, and I hope some form of cooperation because all these articles are in dire need of expansion. To help, please proofread User:CFCF/sandbox/Anatomical terminology and copyedit and expand (do not remove anything major as its better to discuss). Then there is the question of sources on that article, the entire text is pulled from a secondary source, how do you attribute this? Is it by referencing every line??CFCF (talk) 13:03, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Brangifer. As an update, we have moved the article to mainspace here: Anatomical terminology. --LT910001 (talk) 22:40, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging the Body article into the Body (disambiguation) page

Comments are needed on this matter: Talk:Body#Merge with disambiguation page. Flyer22 (talk) 00:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

How Wikipedia welcomes new medical editors

[2] Thoughts? Lesion (talk) 14:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is our friend user:Stefan2, international expert on photographic copyright/ medicolegal law and official Wikipedia welcoming ambassador. Lesion (talk) 14:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, the rules (WP:IOWN) are very simple: if an image was published outside Wikipedia before it was uploaded here, then the uploader needs to provide an OTRS ticket. The notifications on the uploader's talk page provide information on how to do this. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:46, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I am unhappy with the impersonal and aggressive treatment you have enacted on this new user, and the level of help you have offered (i.e. none), when I directed you to where the user in question had attempted to provide more detail of the origin of the images (which you appeared to have ignored and instead continued to send deletion notifications to their talk page). In your desire to rigidly follow an arbitrary set of rules you are harming the encyclopedia by deterring new members, in this case one with apparent skills that are very much needed. Lesion (talk) 17:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes the copyright office around Wikipedia/Commons is getting a little out of control. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Lesion, I understand where you are coming from, but I would have probably worded it much more softly. Like this: "I am unhappy with the impersonal and aggressive treatment you have enacted on this new user, and the level of help you have offered (i.e. none), when I directed you to where the user in question had attempted to provide more detail of the origin of the images (which you appeared to have ignored and instead continued to send deletion notifications to their talk page). I think it would have been more welcoming and helpful of you to leave a personalized message that offered assistance instead of all the templates over and over. In your desire to rigidly follow an arbitrary set of rules you are harming the encyclopedia by deterring new members, in this case one with apparent skills that are very much needed. In my opinion, it is not in Wikipedia's best interest to adopt the style you have chosen. We should instead try to attract this type of content contributor as much as possible. Might you perhaps try instead to use a friendlier and more human-like strategy? Best regards." Anyhow, Stefan2, I think that was the gist of it. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:07, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Stefan2 is one of the leading anti-medical image editors. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:18, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
O my, I'm going to assume good faith and hope that's not true... =( Do you have any links to help me learn more about Stefan's editing behavior? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:20, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Re phrasing, I don't think my (second) attempt at this was overly harsh. Tonality is hard to convey in text. In the context of the struck first comment the tone may have been altered though.
There are have been a few long threads on this page not to long ago. Most of it is on Commons I suspect. Stefan2 aka Stephan4 appears to be waging a crusade against medical images such as clinical photographs, x-rays, CTs and other imaging, making leaps of logic like "The company who manufactures the x-ray machine holds the copyright" and other nonsense. Lesion (talk) 22:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
"The company who manufactures the x-ray machine holds the copyright" - is this claim actually backed up by law or something? Do we have a specific policy regarding this? Because I don't really follow. Wouldn't that also mean that all photographs taken with a Canon EOS 5D camera belong to Canon Inc., and any music played on a Yamaha piano belongs to Yamaha Corporation? --benlisquareTCE 22:46, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
So as to nip this in the bud, we had a rather long discussion not long ago about this topic (see probably Archive 37 or 38). The conclusion was that there is not only no specific policy, but also no legal precedent, and that we can't act on an absence of evidence and therefore assume they are illegal, and we we ought to assume WP:Good faith in that consent was gained by the uploader. Might be useful to add a section to MEDMOS on this for future reference. A Wikimedia analysis on use of X-rays exists here, in Wikimedia: ([3]). LT910001 (talk) 23:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey LT agree with your crossed out text. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:03, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

@Benlisquare:, no, I don't think there is any evidence for this statement. See link posted above by LT. I think James was also working on a advisory document on these issues, which I can't find now. Lesion (talk) 13:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

No one has any idea the copyright of X-rays or even if they are copyrightable. And than if they are copyrightable does the license go to the ordering physician, the radiologist reading it, the patient, the X-ray tech or the hospital? And does this vary depending on the country the image is taken in? Than are the images held to the copyright of were the images are hosted (the USA) or the country were the images are taken? It seems each edit on Commons makes up their own version of what they think the law is and than begins trying to delete X-ray images from there. It is a huge waste of time for those of us trying to build an encyclopedia having to deal with those who are trying to destroy one.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:26, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors: there was a long discussion here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:41, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks User:Axl. I haven't yet read this, but I'll note that I've seen someone else lodge a complaint against this user's approach to copyright... Perhaps they are a troll? I don't know what to make of it. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that you should label him a "troll". I believe that it is a genuine good-faith attempt to enforce Wikimedia's regulations. However I believe that the approach is misguided. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Agree. Trolls live under bridges. This user just wants to build a bypass... --LT910001 (talk) 13:34, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

To give the end to this tale: several of the images were now deleted. It is clear that the user is the copyright holder of the images and has even attempted to accommodate us by jumping through these arbitrary hoops [4]. Lesion (talk) 10:36, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much for paying attention to this Lesion (looks like you didn't sign). I really hope user:Stefan2 rethinks his approach. These automated messages need to be used carefully and the folks at Wikimedia focusing on Editor engagement experiments (see the Growth for details) and in particular Template A/B testing, although note that the results page says that a template is often better than no information at all (and short welcome messages are generally better). II | (t - c) 22:31, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Well I'm mainly involved in this because the editor in question seemed to be from the same specialty as me, but in general I do think this is a problem. As suggested by LT, let's all try and give new medical editors a "core service" greeting of either a quick personalized message or a friendly template like MedWelcome, (which WAID mentioned is available in TW... haven't tried this yet) before any avalanche of templates or newbie biting occurs. Lesion (talk) 10:36, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Change in citation style affecting medical articles

Discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Reboot: inconsistent citation style due to change in long-standing URL v PMC parameters. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Use of a source to comment on something it does not mention

At e-cigs here Talk:Electronic_cigarette#Problem_with_this_edit_.5B20.5D. Comments welcome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Also unsure as what to make of this edit [5] -- CFCF (talk) 15:35, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Best place to request an article?

I'd like to request that someone start an article on diffuse alveolar hemorrhaging, and I'm not sure if there's a specific place within this project to do that. It was recently announced that a voice actor from a game series I enjoy has the condition, and as someone without a medical background, I couldn't make heads or tails of any of the descriptions on other websites.

If there is a better place to request this, please feel free to move it there and then ping me.

Thanks, Sven Manguard Wha? 18:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Sven Manguard As someone quite new to this project I don't know where better to request an article, but for a start it may be good to go to the article Pulmonary hemorrhage, if that isn't enough the description in this abstract might be a little less technical than some other articles out there [6] -- CFCF (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi Sven Manguard - The official spot to request a medical article is at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine; I've added DAH to the Diseases; conditions; signs; symptoms section. It is a kind of pulmonary hemorrhage, so a section in that article might be appropriate instead. --Mark viking (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
"Pulmonary hemorrhage" needs clean-up. It is focussed on neonatal hemorrhage. I have added a subsection on diffuse alveolar hemorrhage. If the subsection becomes large, it could be spun out into its own article. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:31, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Microsleep

This article has just been expanded by a student. I've fixed format & some copyedit. There's a lot of medical/technical stuff there which I can't evaluate. Would someone please look at it, and also change "start class" on the talk page. Thanks, Hordaland (talk) 03:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Primary sources

I do not often use primary sources. But I have added one per Talk:Cardiac_arrest#Recent_RCT_questions_benefit_of_hypothermia. What do people think? This new RCT is twice as large as the previous meta analysis and was published in the NEJM. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to question your judgment on that, but I have (many times) pointed out that the NEJM once published a completely inaccurate definition of Tourette syndrome. Just sayin'. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes agree. No journal is perfect. And the NEJM did publish the trials that previously showed benefit [7] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Certainly not perfect, but things published there benefit from strong peer review, high visibility/expectations, and an active correspondence section; thus, things published in NEJM that are wrong tend not to stand for long unchallenged (exceptions are instructive, of course). The majority of other journals lack at least one of these characteristics. -- Scray (talk) 06:30, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Pageviews

Our pageviews have been down these last four months Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Popular_pages. This however may be due to a recent changes in peoples usage of HTTP versus HTTPS rather than a true change in readership per Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-11-13/News_and_notes.

We also see this same drop for other groups of articles using [8]. Even though overall pageviews have increased significantly per [9]. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you have any idea why the number of medicine articles has dropped so much during the past few months according to the count at WP:MED500? Accurate metrics are important to me. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
No idea. I havn't removed many tags. I think LT may have been as per discussed previously. He/she was talking about removing hospitals from this project which I supported. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:03, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
As he said above, the stats program apparently only counts people going to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whatever, not the (now quite significant number of) people going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whatever. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Further details here [10] Something is up though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Bullying RFC

An RFC on Template:Bullying is taking place at Template talk:Bullying#RfC: Template links. Input from project members would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 08:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Contact at NIH

I'm creating three new articles about aspects of the NIH:

Do we have a contact at the NIH - an NIH insider with a good grasp of their history and functions - who can review my work when I'm done and possibly offer structural, sourcing and other guidance as I go?

User:Hildabast maybe Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:59, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I've asked at her talk page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Should I use {{WPMED}} on an article about an NIH study program?

National Institutes of Health Clinical Research Training Program? (I know it's barely notable. It will probably end up in an overview article eventually.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:00, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I would say so. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:30, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Candidal vulvovaginitis

These edits [11] seemed to remove secondary sources and replace with one primary source; and change the tone of the section from saying there is no evidence. I don't have time to look in detail at this right now, but it looks like it might need reversing from a very superficial analysis. Lesion (talk) 11:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Done Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Electronic cigarette

There is a dispute about the proper application of WP:MEDRS, primary studies, and position statements by major medical associations on this article. Further input would be appreciated. Yobol (talk) 13:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

It is 2 users (possibly) who seem to think that they will overturn the majority consensus by arguing the same POV flawed points endlessly. Lesion (talk) 13:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
This single user has long been a problem on the article in question. He resorts to name-calling, and seems to disregard any evidence presented that goes against his campaign. He certainly isn't paying heed to WP:MEDRS despite countless efforts suggesting him to do so. -- CFCF (talk) 00:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Has been blocked a number of times. It is sort of a test of Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I haven't been watching, but that explains my views. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:28, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

We have a primary source being misinterpreted and given undue weight right now Talk:Electronic_cigarette#Primary_source Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

GOMER

GOMER could use some work. I remember a book I read saying it was more applied to the lonely who had lost their "humanness" and just came to the ER for human attention. I forget what book it was, but it might have been the one by Robert Martensen (RIP). Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 06:50, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I have added a reference. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Move Safe sex to Safer sex?

Comments are needed on this matter: Talk:Safe sex#Requested move. Flyer22 (talk) 00:56, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

  Resolved

More comments would be welcome, but this talk has gotten four responses already. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Help needed with new editor

I will be out today for a family friend funeral. There are a number of competency issues with a new medical editor, and from what I've seen, everything s/he has done may need to be reverted. There is also copyvio (see Talk:Psychosurgery). I don't have time to do anything today, can anyone help? [12] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

hmmm. Back. I think I got to this one, more eyes would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Intersex article

The Intersex article could use help from this WikiProject. A class is currently working on that article and it's quickly become a dumping ground for all sorts of intersex material, with formatting issues and the like. I'll also alert WP:Anatomy to this matter. Flyer22 (talk) 02:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Student editing? Revert it all. If something is not done, per WP:ENB, ANI ahead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:07, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
About 10 new users have posted lots of content to this article in the past few days. I put welcome templates on some of their talk pages and told them that if they are in a class then they should have their professor do education program training. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Since it is increasingly unlikely we will get any help from the WMF, and increasingly likely we will see more and more of this, I suggest that we are going to need to develop our own templates for dealing with these situations, and perhaps our own watchlist page, subpage, or place where we can track all of the problems and courses. This talk page is being taken over by problems with student editing, to the point that it is becoming hard to get attention to other, more worthy articles and issues.

This course seems to be UC Irvine, Women's Studies, 60A Gender and Science. And there seem to be quite a few of them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:24, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thank you both. Other articles that I am seeing student editing at in this regard are the Sex and gender distinction‎, Sex differences in humans and Rape by gender articles (at least I think that a class has recently targeted the Rape by gender article, and is focusing on the under-reporting and double standard with regard to the rape of males by females); except for rape, these latter articles are largely outside of WP:MED's scope, but there is sometimes poor medical information being added to these types of articles (such as in the case of the Rape by gender article, where I reverted some of the recent edits). Flyer22 (talk) 22:42, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, judging by the username Social Inequality (talk · contribs), I initially thought that it was simply a WP:Activist editing the Rape by gender article, but Sherry209380 (talk · contribs) showing up soon after that editor's edits made me think that it's a class project matter. Flyer22 (talk) 22:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Template for students

did it myself because the nimwits at WP:ENB couldn't be bothered ... please, folks, watchlist this one so it will work for us, because everything we have tried to do via the ENB has been watered down to fluff and promote their project that is creating more messes than we can keep up with.

{{subst:Welcome medical student}} SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Appreciate it, Sandy. And watchlisted it. Flyer22 (talk) 04:13, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey, Flyer, and thank you. I added the new template at User talk:Social Inequality, but I can't figure out why it runs into the template you already had there. Don't know what to do. Too tired to figure it out. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that moments before initially replying here about the template. No need to worry too much about that matter, at least not at this time; get some good rest. Flyer22 (talk) 04:48, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Oh, and it probably runs into the template I have there because "my" template is not the full version of that Welcome template; notice how I have it formatted, where it's most of the template, with some alterations. Flyer22 (talk) 04:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Another round of attempts to delete diagnostic images

User:Stefan2 per here Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_files/2013_November_20#File:Hscbefore.jpg has put a diagnostic image up for deletion on Wikipedia. It is interesting as a very similar one uploaded by the same user was deemed to be fine here [13] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The other image was not deemed to be fine, but I was unaware of its existence. I only noticed the first one because you mentioned it on a page I happened to have on my watchlist (User talk:Sfan00 IMG#X-rays, then continued on your talk page). --Stefan2 (talk) 01:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess we can have another RfC regarding diagnostic image here if you wish. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:07, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
We need to take a stand against Stefan2 and his supporters. Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts on sourcing

If a reliable source appears to have "copy and pasted" from Wikipedia is it still a reliable source? Do we say that the Wikipedia content has undergone formal peer review and can we than use that ref to support our own content? Ref is this one [14] published in Dec of 2012. Here is the history section of our article back in 2010.[15].

Anyway to address User:SandyGeorgia's concern regarding a lack of medical warnings. We are writing many of the worlds textbook and journal articles unattributed. Not sure if that is a good thing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:25, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I haven't fully compared those links, but unattributed text is clearly a copyright violation, and I'm not sure what to make of that. Legal action is at least as I see it not desirable, but on the other hand the book in mention is published by a large medical publishing house, and that is if what you are saying is correct a major issue of plagiarism.
Regarding the question of whether it is a reliable source, that isn't really effected in my eyes. If we would otherwise regard the book as a reliable source, we should regard it as if the violating content to have undergone peer review in the publication in that book, but I see it's not quite so simple. Rather the interesting situation. -- CFCF (talk) 11:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes we have a good half dozen of these situations now. And those are just the ones I found without really looking. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:41, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

NO. Whomever is doing this, it needs to stop; if it doesn't, ANI is needed. See WP:ELNEVER. A number of ebooks scrape WikiContent and reproduce them. They do attribute the content to Wikipedia, so they are not copyvios (I don't know if that particular book does), but precisely because they are mirrors of Wikipedia, in addition to the copyvio issues, they are not reliable sources. They are scraped from a website (Wikipedia) which by definition (user contributed) is not reliable. Whomever is adding wiki mirrors or ELs that contain copyvio as sources needs to be stopped, and reverted. That is a basic contradiction to WP:V (not reliable), or in some case, copyvio if the attribution to Wikipedia is not given. At FAC, we once came across a copy of an FA in an ebook on Amazon. I ordered that book, and we discovered that they had scraped the entire FA, paired it with "Jock strap" (from Wikipedia), and marketed it. Since they attributed it correctly to Wikipedia, there is nothing we can do about that, but Wikipedia mirrors are NEVER reliable sources. See further description in FAC archives. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

There are literally thousands of that kind of ebook. Made up authors I suspect and produced en masse from probably not so many different sources as a cash cow which relies on the gullibility of consumers who think they see a highly specialized original book. Lesion (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I think it would be good to see a specific instance to comment. If some third-party source uses WP content, then it is required to abide by the terms of the WP:CC-BY-SA license under which that content is made available (broadly, it's got to be attributed [?and available free-of-charge?]). It is theoretically possible for a reliable source to do this by adding a layer of peer-review/fact-checking into the publication process; however it is unlikely because the resulting product would be difficult to monetize if abiding by the license. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 13:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Alex, please see the link above. The scraped FA was written by Elcobbola (talk · contribs) who IMO is Wikipedia's finest IP person, most knowledgeable in copyright. I ordered that particular book, we reviewed and discussed it, and since it was correctly licensed, there was nothing we could do (if memory serves). Regardless-- because they are Wikipedia mirrors, they are by definition not reliable sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
      • Yes, I see: Wikipedia would need to use CC BY-NC to preclude commercial re-use; CC BY-SA merely seems to preclude royalty collection. As I say, if the content had been submitted (say) to a respected publisher and subject to the full rigour of a peer-review process then the resulting text, changed or unchanged, if it were made available and correctly licesnsed, could be RS couldn't it? This would however be very unlikely to happen - as you say, the more likely scenario is that the content is just repurposed verbatim, in which case it's unreliable like any wiki. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 13:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

This is on the other hand a very different matter, where we are talking about a very reputable publishing house, and that on its own should be enough to except sufficient peer-review. The book does not carry a disclaimer that it doesn't give medical advice (although a different disclaimer is there). I don't think this is at all that simple, and it needs to be discussed at a larger forum than WP:MED, but first it may be good to summarize several of these cases in a list. WP:CIRCULAR is not clear concerning anything other than websites. -- CFCF (talk) 13:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The CC-BY-SA license allows for commerical re-use. What it doesn't allow is a) failure to attribute the original copyright holder (Wikipedia) and b) releasing the material under a more restricted license. If it has indeed copied verbatim and extensively from Wikipedia, Managing COPD (mentioned by Doc James above) fails on both counts—Wikipedia is nowhere attributed and the book was released under exclusive copyright to Springer Healthcare forbidding any reproduction without their specific permission. Voceditenore (talk) 14:06, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
A very reputable publishing house would know better than to scrape content from Wikipedia. Revert them all. They do not meet WP:RS, much less WP:MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Yikes. It's almost certain the publisher had no idea of the WP provenance of the text (if that is what's happened) since if there's one thing publishers take seriously, it's licensing. More likely some person contributing to the text would have got the content in there on the quiet, and so, if this escalates the real "problem" will be between the publisher and the contributor. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 14:14, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Got this nice write up a while ago :-) [16] Another example is mentioned here [17]. The issue is that the doc in question copied stuff from Wikipedia that was wrong. I corrected Wikipedia of course but unable to correct this book. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting is that Springer is quite a lot larger than Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers, and this might have a larger impact if it comes to light. No doubt the book is of very high quality, and most likely it has at least seen to it not to copy inaccurate passages. I'm very much on Alexbrns line that this must be an issue between the published and contributor. Odd though that it wasn't caught when copyediting the book.-- CFCF (talk) 14:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Hah! Fascinating. It's odd that publishers don't run the content they get through the plagiarism detection tools routinely used on university students' work; I'm sure the results would prove interesting and could spare some red faces ... Hmmm: that gives me a business idea ... Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 14:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
However, looking at the History section of our article from 2010 and the corresponding Springer text, while there are some points of similarity and phrases in common (a whole sentence in one case) the text do not seem that close - or am I missing something? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 14:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Just some similarities. Not nearly as much as the Jaypee brother case which was more or less the whole Wikipedia article. This is a borderline case. I was just thinking of using it to support our text. I havn't looked at it close enough to determine if their is a case.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Alex, having looked at it closely. Apart from the one sentence, it's not close enough to qualify as an infringement, and certainly not a case of "scraping". Voceditenore (talk) 17:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes however was thinking of using it to support that one sentence. I have used a different source instead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
One tool to help manage such cases is the use of template {{Backwardscopy}} atop the article's talkpage so that other editors will be alerted to the existence of the mirror.LeadSongDog come howl! 07:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

This journal article copied much more liberally from our Wikipedia article on COPD without attribution [18] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Doc, I cannot bear to participate in that board anymore, but I think this example needs to be added to the discussion of why the integrity of our medical content is important, at Wikipedia:ENB#MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:27, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Doctor needed on student editing at Congenital distal spinal muscular atrophy

What the heck is the difference between Distal spinal muscular atrophy type 2 and Congenital distal spinal muscular atrophy and why is there no link anywhere in that article to a main condition, and which would that be and why is Spinal muscular atrophies in the plural rather than singular? I am not a Dr. I don't know if this new student article belongs elsewhere, needs to be merged, duplicates an existing article, and this student article generally needs medical review. There's a mess in there. Why do we have Spinal muscular atrophies and spinal muscular atrophy and why does one of them mention "Autosomal recessive proximal spinal muscular atrophy", which also seems to be a redirect, and how is that different from the congenital type? A doc is needed to sort out all of this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

That mess evidently [Talk:Spinal_muscular_atrophies started years ago]. The plural title for Spinal muscular atrophies does seem to make sense, as that article is one step removed from List-class, with a tabular list of more specific conditions with distinct genetic causes. I've added a hatnote to distinguish Spinal muscular atrophy. I am more concerned about the abundant use of rather outdated and primary sourcing in some of these articles. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:20, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Consensus on archiving threads >5 days

Would like to archive threads > 5 days per consensus previously reached. Talk page is getting unwieldy and slow to load. However will not do this if reverted. Is there still consensus on archiving threads > 5 days? --LT910001 (talk) 07:52, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of 5 day archiving, but I can see no viable alternative. I would ideally like answered threads to be archived faster, and unanswered threads to stay longer, but the bot doesn't discriminate like this. Lesion (talk) 12:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
This page is not that long... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:32, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Fair enough. --LT910001 (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
If you notice a thread that has obviously been firmly resolved, it's OK to cut and paste it into the current archive. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:34, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Is any bot even archiving at the moment? Most of the archive bots are down. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Archiving here has been off. Five days is premature, and open topics are being archived. Install the one step archiver (see my contribs for how to find it), and use it to selectively prune the page of topics that are truly done, or where there is consensus to archive, and let open topics stay longer (say 10 days at least, particularly since the Project has gone moribund and we aren't getting responses on lots of things). The page is NOT that long, and stuff is getting missed. And, this business of no third-level headings is what is making the page a mess. Restore normal talk page headings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Could we make it a point to acknowledge when threads are resolved and signal when they are not?
  • {{Resolved}}
      Resolved
  • {{Unresolved}}
      Unresolved
  • {{done}}  Done
  • {{Not done}}  Not done
I agree with Sandy - pending topics should stay 10 days at least but things which are revolved could be archived sooner. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Will marking a thread resolved/unresolved be recognized by the bot? Lesion (talk) 19:02, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think so, but it will allow us to One-click manually archive it, which should allow us to a) restore the third-level section headings, and b) keep open threads longer than 5 or 7 seven days (say 14, which is more normal). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, I'll remember to do this. If you want 3rd level headings feel free to restore them.
It doesn't seem like it would be difficult to have a bot which discriminate between sections marked with resolved and those that have not. Since there are bot archiving issues atm, this suggestion probably is best not broached for a while, but I think it would be a good long term goal to aim for. I've noticed that with the current set up, unanswered threads sometimes go unanswered and then disappear into the archives. It would be good to avoid this. Lesion (talk) 19:27, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I read this page almost entirely as diffs, so the presence or absence of some or all of the TOC is really pretty irrelevant to me, as is the overall size of the page. I suspect that I'm not the only one who does this, either.
On a related point, this is one of the problems that WP:Flow is supposed to solve. Active conversations will always move to the top of the page. Inactive ones will always settle to the bottom. And comments that you personally have read can be automagically collapsed, so that you only need to look at new comments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Quick clarification: That setup and plan has changed since the original prototype. Flow will not be changing topic-order, at least in the initial releases - Topics will remain in chronological order of posting.
Additionally, features such as automagic collapsing of "read" comments are something that still needs to be investigated, as it is both database intensive, and potentially very confusing. (I'm walking out the door for a dinnerdate, else I'd hunt down specific FAQ/documentation links. HTH.) –Quiddity (talk) 05:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that anybody expects very much from the initial releases. But eventually, these are good ideas, and I hope that they're implemented (if possible without killing the servers, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Quiddity, is there a YouTube video on the concepts behind Flow? I'd like to easily digest what it is, but I don't know what it is. I don't comprehend its core purpose. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
@Biosthmors: There aren't any video recordings at the moment, partially because the devs are just finishing up the minimal feature set, but that's a good idea. I'll put "make a screencast" on the to-do list, so that we can do a rapid tour through new/changed features. –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Personal experience

We have a user who is trying to add their own personal experience to the article on Social anxiety disorder Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Watchlisted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Update: admin watch. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

And, because he revealed his IP on my talk page, a history of edit warring revealed here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

ANI SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:44, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Help needed at Electronic cigarette

A single user is constantly reverting edits here made by several editors from WP:MED, and is not following consensus on the talk-page. I have been forced to revert a number of times relying on WP:3RRNO, but I don't want to rely on it anymore. Please help by reverting or talking sense in to the editor. -- CFCF (talk) 14:06, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not able to revert the article in that way, but this edit [19] should be reverted. -- CFCF (talk) 14:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
User has also been reported 3 times for breaking 3RR in the last few days. [20] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:23, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
From what I've seen of the user I'm sympathetic to them. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

EFMR

Please see Epilepsy in females with intellectual disability. You won't have heard of this syndrome before, because it doesn't exist. It was invented by Wikipedians. Please comment on the naming dispute at the talk page. -- Colin°Talk 18:43, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Moved the article back to the previous name. Warned person who moved it. Looks like a lot of primary sources. I guess the question is how many more of these moves are there to terms that did not previously exist. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:46, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo and others talking about health articles

See User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Expert_review_project_again. Thanks for starting this user:Anthonyhcole. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:27, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that discussion is pretty much over. I just wanted to know where he stood, and was pleasantly surprised. (No one's contacted me about mentoring at UCSF. Have students been allocated mentors yet? Is there some discussion I should be involved in?) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
We are just going to be all available as a group. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:11, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

UCSF

It's going to be random and not one to one, so I guess we should just keep an eye on their edits (5 students listed at WP:MEDUCSF). Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I mentioned at DocJames talk that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a literature section being added to the already massively-huge Major depressive disorder; he said he planned to talk about that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes. It is large "61 kB (9295 words)", with a nicely-sized society and culture section already. Hmmmm... I suppose a paragraph there wouldn't hurt anything, but yes, it's not like it's needed clinical data, which I think was the highest hope for the course on my end at least. But if that's what the students are passionate about, then I don't want to discourage them. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Yea, but. If they want to expand the article, it will need to be done at Sociological and cultural aspects of depression, as in Sociological and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome, to manage the length. (They also should be encouraged to do the expansion based on journal sources whenever possible.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Good point. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I dropped a note on the student's talk page. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Agree completely with Sandy and that is what I will do. We will split it off as a subpage. I was hoping they would concentrate more on our top disease related articles. We will see how it goes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:13, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
That's a shame. With a very experienced medical editor partnered with each student - from the choice of topic forward - I was hoping this would be one course that created no problems for the wider medical editor community and turned out five very high quality articles or sections. Without one-on-one mentorship, isn't this going to be as riddled with problems as any course? Or is there something about its structure that sets it apart? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:35, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't know what is meant by "it's going to be random"; please expand? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I was in an email thread and heard that User:Kevin Gorman recommended against making one on one matches at UCSF (but we can). Someone assign me a student, I don't care, and I'll keep tabs on what they do. Anthony, do you have a choice? I'll take responsiblity for one student. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Not really, no. Without a formal pairing-up of some kind, with the imprimatur of the professor, I'm more comfortable just watchlisting the articles and seeing what happens. What was Kevin's rationale for canning the pairing-up? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't know. I'm curious myself. I'll email him to comment here. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I didn't actually recommend against it, I just said it wasn't customarily done anymore. The first couple semesters of the public policy initiative paired online ambassadors and students 1:1, but it frustrated many of the experienced Wikipedians involved because often their students would be unresponsive (even when writing good content,) so the people in charge of the PPI stopped the practice. It may be a good idea to use 1:1 pairings here, although since there are only five students involved, it'll probably be just as easy to just watchlist all involved articles. The students involved had read over our medical referencing stuff thoroughly enough that they were familiar with most aspects of them off the top of their heads before I arrived, and have the contact info for me, Bios, and Doc James - I suspect they'll end up doing well, regardless of whether or not they have 1:1 pairings. (Sorry for the late reply to the username ping, I have been busy.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:25, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Database of rare diseases by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare has undertaken a large scale drive to create a database of rare diseases and disorders that affect less than 100 people per 1,000,000.

The ultimate goal is to raise availability of information about these diseases and conditions. Additionally a drive has been undertaken to translate this material into English because it was seen that many who accessed the material were not from Sweden. It is a high quality source of medical knowledge, and could most likely expand many articles on Wikipedia. Available here: http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/rarediseases (Unfortunately the material is subject to copyright law, but that does not hinder it from being a reference material, or linking to it). CFCF (talk) 11:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

So could you convince them to release it under a CC BY SA license? If we could convince them to release these under that license we could cut and paste them into place for articles where we have nothing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:12, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
I've actually already been in contact with them, their response is that they prefer it if people are directed to their web-page so as to have access to the most up to date versions. That doesn't mean they could not be persuaded to release it if we show them sufficient evidence that Wikipedia is a major distributor of medical knowledge, such as your graph showing that Wikipedia is more used than the NIH's page. CFCF (talk) 12:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes and we will link to their website and give them attribution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:47, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Thread started

Have posted and re opened. Have also put forth a proposal here [21] as it appears that the community is in charge of the education program. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:07, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Dengue diagnosig

Hello. In Tourniquet test You can read "The test is positive if there are more than 10 to 20 petechiae per a circle 2.5 cm(1 inch) in diameter". In Dengue: "cut off being more than 10 to 20 per 2.5 cm2 (1 inch2).". Inch^2 isnn't equal to 2,5 cm^2 and, what is more, π(inch/2)^2. Which version is true? Mpn (talk) 06:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Have you checked the refs? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:04, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
The 2009 WHO source does not state the cut-off value, only saying that "A positive tourniquet test in this phase increases the probability of dengue." The Free Dictionary does not state the cut-off either. Another reference was incorrectly used. On page 180, Halstead describes "the number of resulting petechiae counted in a 2.5 cm square.... A test is considered positive when 20 or more petechiae are observed in the 2.5 cm square." Halstead continues on page 429: "The 1997 WHO guidelines define a positive test as 20 petechiae per square inch, while the Guidelines for treatment issued by the Southeast Asia Regional Office of WHO accept a more widely used cutoff of 10 petechiae or more per square inch."
I have fixed both articles.
Is it original research to state that one square inch equals 6.25 square centimetres? Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Not OR but common sense. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:16, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Barnstars

Would whoever took the barnstars off of WP:MED put them back please? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

And they're not even at WP:Barnstars?   Facepalm Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:53, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
No wonder I haven't been able to find them :/ SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
They are on this subpage. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
They are linked from WPMED: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine#Awards. Oppose moving the full awards content back in, they take up too much space on the main page. Lesion (talk) 20:59, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Your "Related changes" in a nice box

 
 
Recent changes in WP:Medicine
Articles and their talkpages:

Not mainspace:

 Top  High  Mid  Low  NA  ??? Total
 100  1,070  11,552  38,919  20,684 1,274  73,599 
List overview · Lists updated: 2015-07-15 · This box:

To install on a page: {{WPMED related changes}}.

  • You can also add individual pages:

Using like: {{WPMED related changes |mylinks1=Leukemia |mylinks2=Malaria|label2=My interest topic}}

-DePiep (talk) 00:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC) -DePiep (talk) 00:05, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

All I have to say is WOW!!!! and thank you. That's brilliant. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:55, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Holy moly. This is amazing. God bless DePiep. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Especially the positioning of the stethoscope took time (I am not a doctor). Now if you do not put this in top of WP:MED and on your user homepage, I won't look at you again ;-). -DePiep (talk) 09:01, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I like it Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:08, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. -DePiep (talk) 09:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Done. It looks a little odd, but I'll take function over form any day. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:07, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Dumber than I look ... do I put this in my own user space and link to the articles I follow? And why is the template called WPMED-- would it not work for any kind of article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Placing the base box on your page:
1. Copy this text (as you see it):
{{WPMED related changes}}
2. Open your userpage with Edit
3. Paste the code somewhere into that page & Save it.
4. You should see the box with four links. (If it overlaps other areas, call me here). -DePiep (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
It is called Template:WPMED ... just to show that it is fully tied to this Medicine project. That's all. It does not act as a switch or sign for something. Just a reminder for persons who read the name. In the box, the first four links are fixed, and MED-project related.
About individually added pages: |mylinks1=. See link examples 5 and 6 (Leukemia and malaria): free to choose. Can be any wiki page (|mylinks3=Napoleon), or a userpage: |mylinks4=User:SandyGeorgia/my hot pages. This will act like a handmade watchlist. Note: Related changes does not show that single page's edits, but the edits in all links on that page (e.g., edits of white blood cells, via the leukemia page). -DePiep (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

This looks wondeful! As someone not so versed in the technical side of Wikipedia, would it be possible to appropriate this to WP:Anatomy as well? CFCF (talk) 12:00, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

This question moves to here, before this disappears in an archive. -DePiep (talk) 04:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I have split one page into Top+High and Mid-importance. Reason is that the big T/H/M page covered only 16 hours or so: you'd miss a lot of earlier edits. Now it is 20hrsd for thee Mid-activities. Not enough, but better. T+H covers some 48 hrs.-DePiep (talk) 18:06, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Open access icon in refs

We discussed this issue here [22].

IMO it would be useful to our readers to have "open access" icons in our refs. This will let them know if they should bother hitting the link or not. A bot would take care of adding / updating this info as it changes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:39, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Without reading the entire discussion I think this is a wonderful idea. Although it may seem that everyone on WP:MED has access to journals, the vast majority of the public don't, and this will help them find relevant sources. Three clicks on links someone can't access and they will stop trying, losing out on the links they can access.CFCF (talk) 10:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
It's a lovely idea, but the devil's in the details. It is a maintenance nightmare, because what's open and not changes over time (e.g., everything in Blood is open access after a year—but every journal has its own system). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
The only way it would work is if it was 99.9% automated by bots. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections

I know that some of you have banner blindness, so here's a reminder that the ArbCom elections are underway, and a note about a problem that caused all early votes to be discarded:

Voting is now open to elect new members of the Arbitration Committee. Voting will close on Monday, 9 December at 23:59 UTC. (Important note: Votes made prior to 00:01 26 November 2013 were discarded due to a technical error)

Pay attention to that "important note" if you think that you've already voted. You can see the list of successfully recorded voters at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Log. If you tried to vote, and your name isn't on the list, then you need to vote again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

We have reached "college level"

This book copy and pasted some of the images I have uploaded. They have even borrowed heavily from our text copying my strange writing style word for word.[23] Anyway we are getting some good reviews on Amazon [24]. I wondering if we are being used in any schools yet? I am looking into it. This could be a big break and maybe news worthy :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:14, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It is under a CC BY SA license. They do not seem to give proper attribution though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Wow it is all us through and through. Hundreds of pages. Unfortunately they have left out all the refs and do not appear to mention who they got it from. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:21, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Okay found the attribution. It is here to us [25] Thus looks sort of okay. It is simply a published mirror. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:31, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
And this articles says much is from us [26] and we have an article on the company Boundless (company) Used by 4000 universities. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Looked like an exciting concept, but seems like they have begun charging money for their text-books now. Wonder what prompted that? Doubly odd seeing as the material is (or maybe the old material was) CC-BY-SA [27]CFCF (talk) 19:42, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It is still listed as CC BY SA at the end. CC BY SA is copyrighted just it is an open copyright. They are putting some work into it. We do need to come out with our own textbook formatted work. I am not sure what prevents people from just buying one copy and then sharing it? You should be able to download a copy of each and start your own website selling them for 99 cents or nothing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:27, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Amazon lists the Kindle edition as being free, though it seems it only runs on some of the Kindle models, not all. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:41, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
We should be adding these to WikiBooks / WikiVersity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:01, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking at it more. This appears to be a potentially useful collaboration. It is freely available online such as here and does attribute us [28] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

About Boundless

Boundless (company) is publishing these books. It seems that this is a startup commercial operation which raised about USD 10 million and is seeking to supplant the entirety of the USD 8 billion textbook industry by replacing all texts, especially introductory texts, with free equivalents. I am not sure what their funding model is. On Amazon they seem to give away their books, and then charge for supplemental learning guides.

I read that they have an ongoing lawsuit. The best summary I found on first glance is at insidehighered.com but the court complaint is accessible also. The accusation is that Boundless is starting with any given copyrighted textbook and paraphrasing it in entirety to create a free version. The plaintiffs allege that the paraphrasing is too close and constitutes copyright infringement.

I would not support infringing behavior, but I am in favor of replacing all popular textbooks with free equivalents. This is a goal of the open educational resources movement and WikiProject Open also promotes these ideas. It might be the case that with Boundless facing legal trouble for whatever method it was using to generate textbooks, the company might be favorable to a partnership with the Wikipedia community in getting advice on compiling future textbooks. I feel that a partnership with Boundless or any other such community could be in Wikipedian's favor, and starting with medical texts might not be a bad idea. I would be delighted if Boundless leveraged its resources to improve Wikipedia articles so that they would be more fit to insert into its textbooks, especially since its textbooks seem CC-By-SA and could be remixed and reused by anyone.

How would others feel about inviting Boundless people here to discuss putting a medical text on Wikipedia? If a textbook were dropped here, how should it be hosted? Wikisource? Wikibooks? Wikiversity? How do people here feel about commercial companies like Boundless packaging Wikipedia content and tapping volunteer contributions for resale? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

  1. I am happy with them packaging Wikipedia content as textbooks and this appears to be primarily what they have done for the textbook I have mentioned (It is more or less bits and peices of our article)
  2. They however must properly attribute us. I am in discussions now.
  3. Have not see any evidence that this is paraphrasing of others textbooks as it all looked like the above. Large companies simply like to sue people as a form of intimidation as I know from personal experience. They are so rich they do not care about the legal fees.
  4. We are a good five years away from coming out with a basic medical text. I am of course working on one here Book:Health care with translation occurring into 60 languages.
  5. Textbook could go at both Wikibooks and Wikiversity. Trying to get a format that can be easily moved over there. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Cough medications

Is this info reasonable in a section on society and culture in the cough medicine article? [29] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

User has deleted a review article and replaced it with a fact tag [30]. Review article is here [31] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:43, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I looked in, and see what looks like a good-faith content dispute; I'm not sure I can take a position on that one, but I'm no Dr-- maybe something I'm missing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:18, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Issue is the removal of the review article and replacing it with a fact tag.[32] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't know what australianprescriber.com is, and I'm getting a dead link. Is there a PMID? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:24, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

As above. Review article is here [33] Pubmed of course has the best coverage for US stuff. Less from other parts of the world. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:37, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Don't know if it adds anything to the discussion, but in Sweden we almost exclusively use pubmed for all research, but not for guidelines which are administered by [34]Socialstyrelsen & [35]Läkemedelsverket - The medical products agency. It may only be that the prescription guidelines from many countries aren't present on pubmed. It could be a good idea to summarize the different agencies of the world in a list (if it hasn't already been done), so that we can see what sources are reliable. CFCF (talk) 10:42, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

This is from the Medical Products Agency - Sweden, translated by me (with great care not to influence the guidelines)[36]:

Hos vuxna är den akut påkomna hostan i samband med en infektion svår att påverka men lindras nog bäst med varm dryck. Olika läkemedels effekt på hosta är dåligt studerad och resultaten svårtolkade. Läkemedel mot hosta är därför inte rabattberättigade. Om torr rethosta föreligger, kan man pröva centralt hostdämpande farmaka, t ex noskapin, och är hostan mycket besvärande nattetid kan man med vederbörlig försiktighet skriva ut läkemedel innehållande etylmorfin, såsom Cocillana-Etyfin. Antibiotika påverkar inte förloppet.

In adults acute cough in conjunction with an infection is diffucult to influence, but is most likely helped best with warm beverages. The effect of different medication on cough is poorly studied, and the results difficult to interpret. Therefor pharmaceuticals against cough are not entitled to reduced rate[in Sweden]. If dry irritating cough is found it is possible to to try a centrally cough-reducing medicine, for example noskapin, och if the cough is very inconveniencing during the night one can with proper caution prescribe pharmaceuticals containing ethylmorphine such as Cocillana-Etyfin. Antibiotics do not effect the course of events.

Hos barn är det viktigt att först skapa sig en bild av den underliggande infektionen. Det gäller att behandla en eventuell obstruktivitet i första hand. Får man obstruktiviteten under kontroll avtar ofta också hostan. Att ge slemlösande medel är verkningslöst. Hostan kan ofta förklaras av att det tar tid för flimmerhåren att återbildas efter infektionen och den går över efter 1–2 månader utan behandling. Ett barn i 4–7-årsåldern kan efter en period av recidiverande nedre luftvägsinfektioner ha utvecklat postinfektiös hyperreaktivitet och hostreflexen har blivit mer lättutlöst. Sannolikt finns ett kroniskt inflammatoriskt tillstånd i slemhinnan. Vid långvarig hyperreaktivitet kan man pröva inhalationssteroid i lågdos 1–2 gånger/dag. Antibiotika påverkar inte förloppet.

In children it is important to form an image of the underlying infection. It is due to treat a possible obstructivity in first hand. If you get the obstructivity under controll the cough will often subside. To give exporants is without effect. The cough can often be explained by the time it takes to regain the cilia after an ifection and it will pass after 1-2 months without treatment. A child 4-7 years of age can after a period of recidivating lower airway-infection have developed a postinfectious hyperactivity and the cough-reflex has become easier to provoke. Most likelt there is a chronic inflammatory condition in the mucous membrane. During prolonged hyperreactivity one can try an inhalation-steroid in low dosage 1-2 times a day. Antibiotics do not effect the course of events.

CFCF (talk) 11:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The article has recently been rearranged against WP:MEDMOS and a summary of the best available evidence removed from the lead. Wondering if people can comment on these changes here [37] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:13, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm having trouble understanding why you presented this as having been "rearranged against MEDMOS". The dispute is over exactly two sections, ==Examples== and ==Effectiveness==. MEDMOS doesn't have either of these sections, and therefore it is actually impossible to put them in a place that MEDMOS recommends against. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Contraindications do not go at the end and the stuff moved into contraindications wasn't. Typically we discuss effectiveness under medical uses.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:16, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
MEDMOS does not demand that the sections suggested in it be placed before sections that are not listed in it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Postmenopausal confusion

Another at WP:ENI#Postmenopausal confusion, Georgia IT SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:28, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Cholera

Student editing cleanup needed, see Talk:Cholera. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Because Sandy and Biosthmors have both expressed negative opinions about the addition, I've opened a discussion at the Education Noticeboard incidents page. I'd like to suggest we have the discussion over there, rather than at Talk:Cholera, since it's of interest to both medical editors and editors working with the education program. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:36, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Have reverted the most of the changes in question based on the issues mentioned on the talk page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Alzheimer's disease

Another at WP:ENI#University of Manchester, AD; regulars here might as well watchlist the education noticeboard incidents page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Please see the post at WP:ENI#University of Manchester, AD-- the problems here go beyond Alzheimer's. This editor has created numerous articles that have MEDRS, notability, and UNDUE issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Medicine-specific advice for educational projects

(@SandyGeorgia, Tryptofish, Jmh649, Biosthmors, and Colin: cross-posting here from the education noticeboard, since I know some of you folks are trying to keep that off your watchlists.)

I've gone ahead and taken a first stab at building a module of topic-specific advice for the educators training. (We can similarly add these to the student trainings as well.) Take a look at the trainings starting here: Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Topic-specific modules.

The content for the medical editing module lives here:

Please improve! We can add more pages if necessary, but I strongly recommend not letting any individual pages get much longer than these; the less information on each page, the more of what's there will sink in. --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Sage. I am, for now, completely burnt out and unable to face this topic any more, but I have made myself a sticky note and I *will* get over there as soon as I can ... stomach ... it :) :) Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:57, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
+1, though Sandy will probably make it over there before I do. What a shitshow. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:34, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Sage Ross (WMF), Mike Christie and Jami (Wiki Ed): I've regained ... ummm ... my composure and gotten a second wind, and would like to get this done before holiday guests arrive. But I'm unsure where you want to coordinate the discussion. Do we just put comments on the talk pages associated with the pages above, or do you want everything here, at ENB, what? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Here is a good place. --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Feedback from SandyGeorgia

Collapse done SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:32, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

1. Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Topic-specific modules

A problem that we have is that the profs/students don't always realize the extent of MEDRS (that is, health-related or medical content). I would suggest changing:
  • If you plan to have students contribute in medicine-related topic areas (including psychology), please go through this additional section. ... My class will be working on medical topics.
to
  • If you plan to have students contribute in health or medicine-related topic areas (including psychology), please go through this additional section. ... My class will be working on health-related or medical topics.
  Done --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

2. Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Medical topics 1

Looks fine to me.

3. Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Medical topics 2

"including reports of original medical research published in respected journals ... "

They don't get this ... heck, most established editors don't get it. I suggest changing it to ...

"including reports of original medical research, such as case reports or clinical studies, published in respected journals ... "
  Done, with some related rewording.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

4. Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Medical topics 3

This is the page where we might strongly advise them to have their students *first* propose their sources, before they waste time writing. Much frustration can be avoided if we can get them to have us review their sources before we all waste a lot of time.
  Done, and this content now lives at Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Medical topics 4. --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

5. Missing: we need to somehow get them to add PMIDs. That could involve adding one more page explaining how to search pubmed for a PMID. Having a PMID in the citation significantly lessens our burden when we review the student's work. Can we add one more page on this?
6. Missing: Could we link somewhere to Wikipedia:MEDMOS#Sections. A big problem with student work is that they haven't focused in on what they are writing and where it will be added. If they see how we typically organize articles, that will avoid a lot of agida. Is one more page getting too long ?

  Done, sort of. I put both of these in a new page on "style conventions", which is the new page 3: Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Medical topics 3. I don't know how to explain searching for PMIDs efficiently, but if folks agree that it's important to have a howto and someone writes one (maybe just for the students, and in the educator module we note that such instructions are in the student version), I don't think adding more pages is a problem.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this! Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:51, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Thanks for the excellent suggestions.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Sage Ross (WMF) Nice job of incorporating my concerns, Sage Ross-- thanks. There is only one thing that we might look further at:

In the interest of space and not overwhelming the students, sending them to the "cite pmid" template is the fastest and easiest. But most medical articles don't use that template, and it generates a horrid citation that we don't mostly use in medicine (we use the Diberri/BogHog citation filler template, which yields a more compact citation). And since most students use regular citation templates, the cite journal generated by BogHog would make sense to them. But I'm not sure you can work that citation filling template in with brevity. But I don't want to be recommending they use the cite pmid template, because in most medical articles, that will run them afoul of WP:CITEVAR-- don't change established citation style, which is usually Diberri/BogHog. I'm not sure how you can fix this ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:32, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I've replaced the cite pmid bit with a simpler exhortation to include the PMID within the citation. (It's unfortunate that our citation conventions are so convoluted. We really need a single standard way of inputting reference info, with control of how they get displayed at the article level rather than determined by the citation itself. Alas.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Sage Ross (WMF) Yes, that is the problem! Your newer text is great. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

APS

By the way, User:Mike Christie and User:Jami (Wiki Ed), will the WEF please ask the American Psychological Society to cut back on promoting their garbage? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 07:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I only have time for a brief glance as I have to go to work, but will look again tonight. Can you clarify? Is this a course that is going badly? Or are you referring to APS's general attempts to improve coverage of psychology topics on-wiki? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:35, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I am referring to the class I forwarded you my email about and the APS initative. People need to know that disruptive classrooms can be blocked. They need to know our policies and guidelines. I've had enough of this "anyone can edit" garbage. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
OH dear, I wish I hadn't seen this thread just when I can't take any more of this. Psych students encouraged to further theories from one specific book via Wikipedia. Talk about COI, potential promotion, all kinds of issues. I don't want to know about this; I had just gotten over the desire to quit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I know, it's a sad sad sad situation. But let me bring us full circle, if you don't mind. The real issue here is that students were being abused by professors (and supported by the WMF) into paid advocacy editing (because any abuse of primary sources necessarily leads to WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV issues), in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:24, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Neural control of limb stiffness

Should this even be an article? Don't even know where to start ... student editing, perhaps someone should open an incident at WP:ENI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I am prioritize my efforts and more or less turning a blind eye to articles that are infrequently read. One can easily burn on working on these. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Ugh. Tweaked, then left tp advice. Seems notable (several cited works address the topic more or less directly). Probably worth (eventually) fixing. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
This is a topic in motor neuroscience and biomechanics; GScholar shows 1,260 hits for the search expression "limb stiffness" neural. If you have ever "braced for impact", you have probably exerted neural control over the stiffness of your limbs. While it has some medical implications (I think there are diseases that affect neural control of limb stiffness and stiffness is an issue in medical prosthetic limbs), this isn't a pure medical article. There is a unfortunate lack of secondary sources, but it is in pretty good shape for a nine day old article--inline citations to lots of reliable sources, the prose could be improved but is readable. I don't see how this warrants WP:ENI, especially since there has already been some engagement. See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience#Incoming students --Mark viking (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Flow invitation to kick-the-tires

Hey all, We've reached the stage with Flow where it's relatively stable, and we'd like to invite you to take some time to try it out and chase bugs. It currently lives on a staff-run test server, which means it isn't hooked up to Single User Login - you can either edit anonymously or, preferably, create a new account under your current username.

The software has a minimal set of features at the moment; normal discussions with wikitext and templates should work fine (although Quiddity has only imported a few hundred templates), but there are some known bugs (and features that we're working on this fortnight) with the software. We're not looking to deploy Flow to enwiki in its current form, nor asking you to give your seal of approval to that.

What we'd like is for you to use the software, test it out and let us know two things:

  1. If there are any bugs (you can report them here);
  2. What changes or features you'd need added, to be personally comfortable with deploying it on your WikiProject (which you can explain here)

On the off chance that Flow is really, really broken for you, to the point where you can't post (maybe a browser issue?) you can of course use the enwiki talkpage for both purposes. If you have any questions about the test, you can post them there too :). We're going to be holding this testing open for a week to allow people to really hammer on the software, although we may not be around Thursday or Friday (it's Thanksgiving). If not, don't worry: we'll reply to you when we return.

Thanks! –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Will look. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

History of HIV/AIDS and Pediatrics

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV) was discovered in 1981. In the thirty-one years that we have known about HIV substantial progress has been made in understanding and treating the virus. However, understanding of the virus as it pertains to children and adolescents is still a relatively new research area. In the late 1980s, researchers and health care professionals turned their attention toward adolescents as an at-risk population[1]. This population was cited as at-risk due to adolescents believing they are impervious to the virus as well as the risky sexual and drug experimentation that occurs during this period of development. In order to prevent high-risk behaviors that could result in the acquisition of HIV, the authors called for HIV/AIDS education in the schools.

Children who have been perinatally infected with HIV are now living longer and relatively healthy lives due mostly to antiretroviral therapy (ART)[2]. Researchers take the stance that HIV/AIDS should be viewed not as a death sentence as it once was, but as a chronic illness and calls for an integrative and multidisciplinary approach in caring for these individuals that takes into account many factors including psychological well-being. Children infected with HIV/AIDS as well as their families have many new challenges to face due to longer longevity. These challenges are affecting children with HIV/AIDS differently from other chronic or incurable diseases. For example, children may have had to watch family members become ill and die from HIV/AIDS. They face stigmatization, lack of resources, family disruption, and exposure to abuse. Not only do they have to deal with external sources of stress they are also dealing with thoughts of their own mortality and feelings of guilt, loss, anger, etc.

[2]states that mental health interventions must become incorporated into the standard of care for those children living with HIV/AIDS. However, health care systems often fail to provide this need. Researchers call for a multidimensional approach that would incorporate primary care physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, and families. Primary care nurses, school nurses, and general practitioners can learn to recognize the signs of mental illness and manage the most basic of mental illnesses or make an appropriate referral. Or, a clinical psychologist could be present at these children’s primary care facilities.

[3] states a particularly disturbing statistic that more HIV infections are attributable to adolescents and young adults between the ages of 13-29 years of age. Researchers state that “HIV is an epidemic primarily of young people.” Psychiatric disorders that have high prevalence rates among adolescents with HIV/AIDS which include but are not limited to: attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, anxiety, behavior problems, and oppositional defiant disorder.

|}--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:37, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Wegener's granulomatosis or granulomatosis with polyangiitis.

Please participate in the move discussion on Talk:Wegener's granulomatosis whether the eponym or the descriptive name should be the article title. JFW | T@lk 13:04, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Wider advice requested as to which personages constitute notable cases in trigeminal neuralgia

In the last several months a few different persons have added various "celebrity" figures, often unreferenced to this section of the above article. My gut feeling is that we should scrap the whole section. Or if you have any thoughts on who should stay and who should go, please comment here Talk:Trigeminal_neuralgia#Notable_cases_section. Thank you, Lesion (talk) 17:11, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLP stuff should just go immediately. Most disease articles have a small section of notable individuals who have had the condition, I don't see the need to remove it out of hand. Canada Hky (talk) 17:15, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
On the general question, these lists normally want two kinds of people:
  • Something that is clearly historical, like the first person diagnosed or a really famous, long-dead person.
  • Something that had a significant effect on modern times, like a person who founded a large charity. In these instances, you should be able to easily find something to say that goes far beyond "Joe Film has this disease", and extends to something like "Joe Film has helped raise six billion dollars for patient support in the last ten years" or "After his daughter was diagnosed with this disease, Peter Politician sponsored the 'Cure My Daughter' law that tripled research funding".
When we find more or less random examples of entertainers or business people who happen to have the disease, then those should normally be removed as trivia. There is some information at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Notable cases; we could expand it if that seemed helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello again, medical experts! Is this a notable topic, and can the "essaylike" qualities be removed to make a good article? If not edited right away, it will be deleted as a stale draft. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:29, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Dear medical experts: Here's another old declined Afc submission that is about to be deleted. If there is any value in it, please someone make an edit to postpone deletion so that it can be improved. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

We could use an article on HIV/AIDS in children. Some of this content could possibly go there. Much of it is unreffed though the few refs there appear to be secondary sources. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it has now been automatically deleted. If anyone want it back to use some of the content, it can be retrieved by clicking on the link and following the instructions. Sorry for the short notice. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:01, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
How can it be "automatically deleted"? It looks like Sphilbrick deleted it. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Not automatically deleted, but deleted per G13 because it was started in May 2012, and then abandoned.

Sorry, I should have been more careful to write clearly. It was automatically nominated for deletion. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Here's the content, if someone wants to work on it, let me know and I'll restore it

Human Nutrition help

I have been editing human nutrition as part of a class assignment in recent months, and am seeking feedback and advice on Human Nutrition. The article was previously exclusively made up of the same exact content as Nutrition, and as tagged as so. I am wondering if any of that content should remain there or not? How can I get the banner to be removed? I have been adding content to provide a social perspective to understanding access to nutrition, nutritional status of countries internationally, organizations involved with nutrition, and the prevalence and effects of malnutrition. Any feedback, edits, additions, or guidance would be appreciated. thank you! Lbockhorn (talk) 00:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Bad title, merge and delete. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. However, I have been advised by our education coordinator not to remove any of the material in the article that originated from Nutrition. I found this to be a perfectly advisable strategy. I foresee that eventually someone may find it useful to provide more information about nutrition not pertaining to humans in the article Nutrition, therefore, I would not like to be responsible for removing human specific information from Human Nutrition. Thank you for your suggestion. Lbockhorn (talk) 08:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

High importance article- Human nutrition

I am in the process of editing Human Nutrition, and having trouble organizing the different challenges involved with malnutrition. There needs to be consideration not only for the individual effects that malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies can have on an individual, but also a consideration of the social affects of widespread malnutrition issues. The organizational structure of malnutrition needs some more work I believe. Does the following structure provide a better combination of the previous article and the new social information that needs to be incorporated?

Individual nutrition challenges

4.2.3.1 Illnesses caused by improper nutrient consumption

4.2.3.3 Mental agility

4.2.3.4 Mental disorders

4.2.3.5 Cancer

4.2.3.6 Metabolic syndrome and obesity

4.2.3.7 Hyponatremia


Global nutrition challenges

2.1 Malnutrition and causes of death and disability

2.2 Child malnutrition

2.3 Adult overweight and obesity

2.4 Vitamin and mineral malnutrition

2.4.1 Iron deficiency and anaemia

2.4.2 Vitamin A deficiency

2.4.3 Iodine deficiency

2.5 Infant and young child feeding

2.6 Undernourishment

Are there any comments on this structure? Thank you Lbockhorn (talk) 15:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

How much time to you intend to spend on this? If you plan on doing a complete rewrite of this article and have 200 hours to commit to doing it, then discussing a huge upheaval of content could make sense. The article already has the precedent of several thousands of hours of review to have gotten it where it is now, so shifting a lot of content and seeking a dozen people to weigh in on this is not something which will lightly be done.
My advice would be to neglect a full re-outline for now. Spend 10-20 hours thinking about the article as you work on 3-4 sections, and after you have done that much work, then propose a grand vision for sweeping change. When you propose a total change, find a nutrition textbook which seems comprehensive and propose to model your changes after what an established respected textbook has done.
Article outlines are very difficult. If you want to discuss malnutrition, here is how the medical manual of style would recommend that you do it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your detailed and thorough response. I agree that much work needs to be done on this page, and still needs to be done. I have implemented some of the structure suggestions I listed before, which turned out to help organize content I had already provided in a more accessible manner. However, I did not edit the structure of any of the material that was already provided from the creators of Nutrition, from where all the material has been copied from. I did not implement all of my structure changes. I have left some subsections blank in the hopes that other Wikipedians may have interest in further providing information for this article. You have been very helpful and I appreciate your comments. Lbockhorn (talk) 08:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Looks like a student essay

Diet and bone health Have returned it to their sandboc. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Muse Cell

...has all the hallmarks of a student creation, but nothing explicit to indicate that. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't look like a student article to me. It looks like it was created by somebody with a high level of topic-area expertise. Looie496 (talk) 16:11, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Some of the technical stuff would be better with a simpler explanation. Interestingly, the original creator is Muse2000 (talk page). Benboy00 inappropriately warned Muse2000 for vandalism, including the reversion edit summary.
The quality of the referencing and the accuracy of information are good—not suggestive of typical student assignment editing. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
While the article may need work I believe the behavior of Benboy00 is detrimental to Wikipedia as a new and potentially knowledgeable/helpful editor can be scared off from contributing further when their edits don't seem to be appreciated. Would probably be good to inform Muse2000 that the warning was in error. CFCF (talk) 13:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Pardon me, but I do not believe that the warning was in error. Muse2000 edited after a revert. I left a level one (i think its level one), polite warning on his/her talk page. This succeeded in getting him/her to stop making those disruptive edits, and did not scare him/her off. Benboy00 (talk)
Benboy00,
"Editing after a revert" is not vandalism. This odd formatting is not vandalism. This says, "Hey, this is my fourth-ever edit to a very complicated page, and I'm trying to make it look right on my computer screen". This does not say "I have bad faith and am deliberately trying to break things".
If you're going to issue even "polite" warnings for vandalism, then you need to actually know what the definition of vandalism is. See the lead of the policy: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. Examples of typical vandalism are adding irrelevant obscenities and crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page." Manually increasing the size of the section heading, rather than using the normal level 2 section heading, is not vandalism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that it may not have been deliberate, but the warning i left was completely appropriate. I apologize for saying that it was vandalism, because its not, but I still feel that the warning is not overly harsh in any way. It assumed good faith, and directed the user to experiment in the sandbox, which seems like a good idea. Since that user seems to be a one page SPA anyway, I doubt it matters very much in the long term, but even if that weren't the case, I still think that that warning was fine. Benboy00 (talk) 18:09, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
You left a warning that says the user was "making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia", when in fact all the user did was use <big> to change the size of the text rather than the Wikipedia-specific method of doing this, which is ==Level 2== headers. You left a warning that says these "edits appear to constitute vandalism", which by definition means "these edits appear to constitute a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia". If you still think that these accusations are "completely appropriate", then IMO you do not have enough experience and judgment to issue warnings of any kind whatsoever to anyone. The fact that the last half of the vandalism warning contains some useful advice does nothing at all to make up for your false accusations in the first half.
Oh, and what you're deriding as a "one page SPA", and therefore concluding that it's unimportant whether the person sticks around, is what the rest of us call a likely subject-matter expert who is trying to add only information that he or she actually knows something about, rather than random garbage he read on the internet. We have enough problems with WP:Expert retention without people like you calling them vandals because they didn't know how to format(!) a Wikipedia page! WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Benboy00, I notice that you've now posted a note at the user's talk page saying that you simultaneously:
  • "fully stand by this warning" and
  • "apologise for using the vandalism template, instead of the disruptive editing template".
This is a self-contradiction. If you think you used the wrong template, then you cannot "fully" stand by the template you chose. You can only "partly" stand by using that warning if you think the first couple of sentences in your warning were inappropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing that out. I also apologise for my momentary lapse in concentration. What I meant to say is, I fully stand by the giving of a warning, just not the giving of that particular warning. Hopefully that straightens things out (I will correct this on the talk page). Making a page hard to read with strange formatting (twice) would, in my opinion, count as an unconstructive edit. The alternative is that its a constructive edit. Would you consider that a constructive edit? Someone did something wrong. I reverted it. They then did the same thing again. I gave them an AGF warning. Again, I apologize for the wrong template. However, it appears that it worked. It also appears that the person wasnt "scared off". If you would like to start some sort of official procedure to revoke my ability to warn people, then I would have no problem with this. However, until that time, I have nothing further to say. Benboy00 (talk) 00:45, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Your ability to issue warnings can only be revoked by removing your ability to edit any page at all, i.e., a WP:BLOCK of your account. Your permission to issue warnings can be revoked through a topic ban. If you will agree to make an effort to improve, e.g., by not ever calling good-faith edits "vandalism", then I will agree not to request a topic ban at AN today. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I already said several times that using the term vandalism was a mistake. However, you are still more than welcome to ask for a topic ban. Benboy00 (talk) 03:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Absorption (skin)

Hello again medical experts! Here's another Afc submission that may be of interest. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:29, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

BMI1

This article is in desperate need of some love. Recent papers are showing it to be a theraputic target in preventing oncogenesis for many types of cancers, but the article doesn't have any refs from the past decade! LeadSongDog come howl! 20:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Advice requested: is a description of an ongoing clinical trial an acceptable Wiki page?

I would like to ask for your opinion on a draft text I've written, describing an elaborate clinical trial which is currently ongoing and funded by the European Commission (FP7 project). We simply wanted to increase our exposure in the scientific community before the results come in (expected in 2 years from now, study started 3 years ago). The intention is explicitly NOT to recruit patients or new sites through this page.

The 'general' Wiki team took a look at the text I wrote and recommended to ask for advice here. They indicated they rather see the description of a completed study, results, impact etc. They indicated that describing an ongoing clinical trial -even within any indication that we are still looking for new patients and/or participating sites- may not be appropriate. I certainly agree that it is much more interesting to report about new results, but I also think it is important to show what innovative research is currently being conducted.

Anybody willing to give some advice? Many thanks in advance, Inge Winter, PhDIngeWinter (talk) 10:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry to say this topic is certainly unsuitable for a general encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not part of the scientific community, and its role is not to drive research. We tend to reference reviews, systematic reviews and meta analyses, as well as mainstream textbooks when writing encyclopedia articles. Whilst Schizophrenia is very much a notable topic for an encyclopedia article, the page you have written is not an encyclopedic topic. Even if the study had reached completion and been published, we do not dedicate whole encyclopedia articles to individual studies. Advice is to wait for the study to be published and other authors and organizations start commentating on the results, at which time content might be generated on the schizophrenia article. See WP:MEDRS for more info. Thank you, Lesion (talk) 11:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Lesion. The only exception would be if there are multiple, independent reliable sources talking about the study, see our general notability guidelines. However if you need exposure, I suppose there aren't. --cyclopiaspeak! 11:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Yeah what they said - sorry, unless independently notable, we'd be waiting for a Review Article (i.e. secondary source) to comment on it before adding. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback - however there seem to be various wikipages on other ongoing research within the same funding institution (framework 7 program from the European Commission), don't think it's reasonable to allow some and not others? IngeWinter (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean the subpages of this list: [38] I wasn't aware we had any such articles. They strike me as not particularly notable. I don't have any problem with the projects being summarized as they are currently on the organization's article. Not sure how others feel. Lesion (talk) 12:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Definitely not suitable for a medical article until summarized and put in context by a secondary source. Not sure if it would be appropriate for that page. Are there secondary sources? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
It is highly unusual for ongoing trials to have sufficient notability for independent mention. This becomes relevant only after their findings have been published, and it becomes easier when the notability of a trial is confirmed by its appearance in secondary sources. JFW | T@lk 22:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

FYI: A somewhat similar discussion to this one occurred in 2011-2012 about articles about EU research projects. It is generally more friendly to the idea of such articles in Wikipedia than the current one is. It's a long page and it's here. Hordaland (talk) 03:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Thanks for asking, IngeWinter. I like the idea of having articles on clinical trials when this can be done in compliance with Wikipedia community guidelines. The biggest problem in complying with guidelines is finding third-party sources to cite. Wikipedia has a policy that all content added to articles - ideally every sentence - ought to come with a citation. Your proposal does not do that. Furthermore, the citations should reference a source which is not written by the subject of the article. Since you are not using hyperlinks and do not have all your material referenced anyway, I am unable to quickly judge whether your proposal can comply with this, but in past attempts to cover clinical trials, this has been difficult.
I am a big fan of clinical research and I came to Wikipedia to explore using it as a communication channel to bring information about clinical research to the public. Wikipedia could be a great platform for this but it would take a lot of dedication to build the policy infrastructure to make this easy to do. If you want to explore this further then let's talk more sometime. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:07, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everybody for your comments! Unfortunately, we cannot comply to the requirements regarding citations just yet, but as soon as the first publications appear I will definitely re-visit this plan! IngeWinter (talk) 19:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Good luck, Inge!
Clinical trials are a particular challenge due to Wikipedia's rules. On the one hand, to qualify for its own separate article, you must have:
  1. multiple,
  2. third-party/independent sources (i.e., nobody who is working on, funding, or associated with the trial), and
  3. secondary sources (e.g. a review article or graduate-level textbook).
And for medical content, we often add #4: it must be a "scholarly" source (e.g., peer-reviewed papers).
So your best bet for an independent source about an ongoing clinical trial is often a newspaper or magazine article—but that's not "scholarly" (and often not "secondary", since they rarely analyze trials themselves), and is removed on sight by some editors. And your best bet for a "scholarly" source is papers written by the people actually involved in the trial—but that's not "independent", and is removed on sight by some other editors. And so forth.
And if you try to put a paragraph in an article, like saying in Hypertension that there is a clinical trial about hypertension, then yet another group of editors will come around and complain that it's WP:UNDUE and WP:NOT#NEWS relative to the main subject of that article.
So I'm not trying to be discouraging, but I want you to know that it is difficult, mostly because Wikipedia's rules weren't written with clinical trials in mind. (They were written mostly with garage bands and herbal-fad-of-the-week in mind.)
My suggestion for you is to consider writing an article about the organization—WP:ORG has the notability requirements, which don't normally fall afoul of these problems, because a medical organization is subject to the same rules as any other government agency, non-profit, or commercial business—and to consider a list with a very brief description of each major activity inside that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Medically reliable sources on human population genetics

Hi, everyone, I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. I am not a medical doctor by training, but I still enjoy this kind of recreational reading. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us who collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human genetic history and related articles. The Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

As you know, the guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies.

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

On the topic of human population genetics and variation within and among human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.

  • Lewontin, Richard (1972). "The Apportionment of Human Diversity". Evolutionary Biology. 6. Springer: 381–398. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-9063-3_14. ISBN 978-1-4684-9065-7. S2CID 21095796. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2013.

Quite a few Wikipedia articles specifically disagree with Lewontin's overall conclusion (which has been updated in a source listed below) but don't always rely on medically reliable sources to do so. As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.

Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to a commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when his primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays

in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book

which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article

in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.

So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are or have been available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.

  • Koenig, Barbara A.; Lee, Sandra Soo-jin; Richardson, Sarah S., eds. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4324-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.

  • Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S., eds. (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.

  • Ramachandran, Sohini; Tang, Hua; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure". In Speicher, Michael R.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Motulsky, Arno G. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches (PDF). Heidelberg: Springer Scientific. pp. 589–615. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Retrieved 29 October 2013. Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29]. Given the central role this work has played in our field, we will begin by discussing it briefl y and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defined 'races' (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30], Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifications. ... His finding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20]). {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

Like Whitmarsh and Jones (2010), the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.

  • Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Anthropology series number fifteen. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013. Actually, the plant geneticist Jeffry Mitton had made the same observation in 1970, without finding that Lewontin's conclusion was fallacious. And Lewontin himself not long ago pointed out that the 85 percent within-group genetic variability figure has remained remarkably stable as studies and genetic markers have multiplied, whether you define populations on linguistic or physical grounds. What's more, with a hugely larger and more refined database to deal with, D. J. Witherspoon and colleagues concluded in 2007 that although, armed with enough genetic information, you could assign most individuals to 'their' population quite reliably, 'individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own.' {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Barbujani, Guido; Colonna, Vincenza (15 September 2011). "Chapter 6: Genetic Basis of Human Biodiversity: An Update". In Zachos, Frank E.; Habel, Jan Christian (eds.). Biodiversity Hotspots: Distribution and Protection of Conservation Priority Areas. Springer. pp. 97–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_6. ISBN 978-3-642-20992-5. Retrieved 23 November 2013. The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates, that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species' genetic variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof.

The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.

  • Bliss, Catherine (23 May 2012). Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7408-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)
  • Barbujani, Guido; Ghirotto, S.; Tassi, F. (2013). "Nine things to remember about human genome diversity". Tissue Antigens. 82 (3): 155–164. doi:10.1111/tan.12165. ISSN 0001-2815. PMID 24032721. The small genomic differences between populations and the extensive allele sharing across continents explain why historical attempts to identify, once and for good, major biological groups in humans have always failed. ... We argue that racial labels may not only obscure important differences between patients but also that they have become positively useless now that cheap and reliable methods for genotyping are making it possible to pursue the development of truly personalized medicine.

By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to some Wikipedia articles.

An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.

GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM

In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.

Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions.

A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.

  • Lee, Sandra; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara; Altman, Russ; Brown, Melissa; Camarillo, Albert; Cavalli-Sforza, Luca; Cho, Mildred; Eberhardt, Jennifer; Feldman, Marcus; Ford, Richard; Greely, Henry; King, Roy; Markus, Hazel; Satz, Debra; Snipp, Matthew; Steele, Claude; Underhill, Peter (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics" (PDF). Genome Biology. 9 (7): 404. doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. ISSN 1465-6906. PMC 2530857. PMID 18638359. Retrieved 3 December 2013. We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time Human genetic variation within continents is, for the most part, geographically continuous and clinal, particularly in regions of the world that have not received many immigrants in recent centuries [18]. Genetic data cannot reveal an individual's full geographic ancestry precisely, although emerging research has been used to identify geographic ancestry at the continental and subcontinental levels [3,19]. Genetic clusters, however, are far from being equivalent to sociopolitical racial or ethnic categories. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |display-authors=18 (help)

Other current review articles related to human population structure include

  • Barbujani, Guido; Pigliucci, Massimo (2013). "Human races" (PDF). Current Biology. 23 (5): R185–R187. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.024. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 23473555. Retrieved 2 December 2013. What does this imply for the existence of human races? Basically, that people with similar genetic features can be found in distant places, and that each local population contains a vast array of genotypes. Among the first genomes completely typed were those of James Watson and Craig Venter, two U.S. geneticists of European origin; they share more alleles with Seong-Jin Kim, a Korean scientist (1,824,482 and 1,736,340, respectively) than with each other (1,715,851). This does not mean that two random Europeans are expected to be genetically closer to Koreans than to each other, but certainly highlights the coarseness of racial categorizations.

There are a lot of factual claims about humankind that impinge on specifically medical claims. I appreciate the work of the participants in this project who put together the WP:MEDRS guidelines over the last several years, as those help improve Wikipedia articles by identifying better sources. I look forward to working collaboratively with the Wikipedians involved in this project in updating a variety of articles within the scope of this project in the next several years. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

What is the short version? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Doc James, I think that WeijiBaikeBianji's general point is aptly summarised in this comment randomly selected from the interweb:

Here! Here! You talk the truth my bruther and your smart too. Everyone trys to make nazees sound like a bunch of dumasses but they forget how close we came to winning world war 2. Hitler was not a dumass — their the dumasses. White people have allways bin smarter then everyone else its just that we let blacks and jewdiasm get into our blood which is making us weak. We need to get smart again like you and Hitler and become doctors like those other guys you talk about. Only white people are smart enough to be doctors. Did you ever notice that? I don’t see any jew or black doctors at my hospital. Never have never will. 88!!!

Or, if you prefer, Lewontin's thesis that there's more genetic variation within rather than between human breeding populations has been broadly supported and refined by much recent research on population genetics. FiachraByrne (talk) 00:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, there may have been some doubt in 2003 that imputation of ancestry by tracing genes that covary indicates that there is not a lot of variation within each geographic population, but there is no doubt at all in 2013 that imputation of ancestry by tracing genes that covary sometimes produces surprises, and in any event does nothing to constrain most genes of phenotypic effect from appearing in most or all world populations, with great variation even in local populations. The statement that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" is indeed a finding replicated multiple times, and taken up by all the professional literature on human genetics these days, as is the related statement "individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own." -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Your interweb source spelt docters wrong. Igit. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 02:17, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your work on finding these sources. I see that you've posted it on WikiProject Genetics and certain article talk pages as well, so it should hopefully result in improvements at these projects. Mikael Häggström (talk) 21:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Category:Excretion

A user added a number of articles to the above category recently, which I feel are at best indirectly linked. I asked the user if they had any evidence that such articles were classified as excretion in the real world, but they failed to respond so far (User_talk:SummerWithMorons#Excretion). Should articles such as pus be in this category? Thoughts? Lesion (talk) 11:41, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Peer review notification

FYI, an editor has significantly expanded dental implant and has now requested a peer review which has gone unanswered for a while: Wikipedia:Peer review/Dental implant/archive2. If anyone familiar with MEDRS/MEDMOS is interested please have a look. Possibly @Zad68: who has experience writing another surgical topic, perhaps some advice is transferable? Lesion (talk) 13:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


And there is also Mylohyoid muscle at WP:ANATOMY. --WS (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Mylohyoid has some comments now. Please anyone feel free to add. Dental implant peer review remains unanswered. Review page located here: [40]. Thanks, Lesion (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

BLPs

I would propose that we remove BLPs from WPMED. I consider this to be a project more about diseases and their treatments than about specific individuals. There is WP:BIOG.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:42, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Ack -- there are plenty of medical BLPs that fall within our territory and need our expertise. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I think they belong here. BIO is really a catchall, rather than a home for all BLPs, it is tough to have medicine without people. Perhaps a Disease task force, but certainly not removing bios. Canada Hky (talk) 01:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
LT made a similar proposal to this I recall. Lesion (talk) 09:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Who's LT? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:23, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Apologies. user:LT910001, a very active editor when s/he is not on holiday (like now). Lesion (talk) 18:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
There are certainly people whose pages may fall under our aegis, as actively practicing physicians whose notability is mainly in their medical practice, or clinical scientists whose main notability is their medical research. I think we should remove {{WPMED}} from any doctor's or clinical scientist's page whose main notability is not because of their medical practice or research. JFW | T@lk 22:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Lesion. I think there are certainly compelling reasons to remove BLPs from MED, most notably that there can and will be an awful lot that may overwhelm the majority of other clinical medicine-based articles by factors. On the other hand, I agree with JFW that it's strange to not include these under our aegis and so support their continued inclusion. I intended for the Society and Medicine task force (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Society_and_medicine_task_force) to be an umbrella for all these BLPs, articles about relatively non-notable charities and so forth, so that we could at least start to get some stats about these articles (and also so that, if these are branched at a later date, these are already collected). Unfortunately I can't get the articles by quality table to work, so at the moment it's a bit of a limp duck; consequently I haven't made a formal announcement about this taskforce. Perhaps DePiep can help. --LT910001 (talk) 06:42, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
From outside. I am not convinced by the original problem, posted here. No Nobel prize mentionings in WPMED then?
My first suggestion is to group the BLPs into a WP:Taskforce, within/below WP:MED. That allows searches and overviews (bots) to separate them systematically.
Second thought is: expand it to all BIOs, not just BLP. Importance & relevance for MED does not change by death, I hope.
Example: see WP:Military history, five times the size of WP:MED. It has taskforce Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Military (organised in WP:BIO, btw). -DePiep (talk) 07:58, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
All biographies, organizations, and similar non-disease/non-treatment articles are (or should be!) already listed as |importance=low for WPMED. Most of them (physicians, surgeons, researchers, etc.) should additionally be listed with WPBIO's group set to |s&a-work-group=yes (probably not patients, although there aren't that many of them). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Why separate the person from their contribution to medicine always? Why would their work be "Low importance", just because it is in a WP biography, and has not split into a separate article? -DePiep (talk) 12:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
"Importance" is misleading. It's really "priority", and it means "what we want to work on first" (and what we think the WP:1.0 team ought to include first).
It isn't possible to merge in every organization and person into a relevant medicine-related article. There are thousands of these. Just a paragraph on, say, each dermatologist who did research on acne or wrinkles, in the articles about those conditions, would result in a ==Research== section that is half the length of the article and WP:DUE complaints.
The problem ultimately (IMO) is that notability standards for BLPs are too weak. Two stories about you (and your business) in your local newspaper, plus either enough persistence to learn wikitext or a paid editor, is all you need to create an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
This reply is not about your 23:57 remark I wrote about. Your point was: "BIO so always low importance". That is what I object to. It does not allow any BIO ever to be relevant for MED, which is simply not true or correct. WHO is low-importance? You are abusing the "low" criteria when grouping bios/orgs by that. At 17:16 you approach your point from the other side, starting about "every" organisation or person, I won't go into that. I stick to: a BIO or ORG can be of any importance. -DePiep (talk) 18:41, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Again: "importance" does not mean wikt:importance; it means which articles this group of people happens to feel like improving sooner than others. This group of people has decided that their WP:VOLUNTEER hours are far better spent working on Common cold than working on World Health Organization (and they have, if you look at WP:MEDA; the fact that nobody's updated the rating at the article since I was a newbie is neither here nor there). It means "As far as my time as a volunteer is concerned, I think it's more important to have a good article about Common cold than about WHO." That decision has nothing to do with the relatively importance of the subjects in the real world. You will notice, by the way, that other WikiProjects put a very different priority on these articles. That's fine: an article can be very low on our list and very high on theirs.
We have talked about following WPBIO's lead and renaming the parameter to "priority", which is more obvious, but it would require a bot run on thirty thousand talk pages. So we're stuck explaining this misleading name to someone every year or so. It doesn't mean what the dictionary says it means, just like WP:Notability, WP:Neutral, and a whole lot of other wikijargon terms don't mean exactly what the dictionary says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
It's not about understanding the "importance". It appears that WPMED has decided that persons may never be other than "Low importance". That is new to me, and explains why I didn't get it in the first place. -DePiep (talk) 22:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

{{Medheader}}

Template:Medheader (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 70.50.148.105 (talk) 04:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Dentistry

I noticed that Template:DentPortalTalk (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion. This showed that WP:WikiProject Dentistry is inactive. Perhaps dentistry should be merged as a taskforce into this project? And Portal:Dentistry should come under the WPMED banner? -- 70.50.148.105 (talk) 04:04, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

There are a few dental editors, but no real activity on the Wikiproject for several months. I don't really mind if it gets merged/deleted, but I would point out that there are many inactive Wikiprojects that do not get deleted. Personally, I think leave the talk page in case some new editors come along and it slowly comes back to life. In the past it has been more active, in Wikipedia's early days... there is no real reason why this may not happen again. Lesion (talk) 05:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Expert review requested

Could members of this project please review the section in Anthony Holland (composer) on his cancer research experiments, and join the discussion at Talk:Anthony Holland (composer)#Seeking qualified unbiased editors? I've tried repeatedly to clarify in the article that this Holland is not a trained scientist, and that the work he's carrying out, which appears to be a new variant of the Rife machine, is fringe, alternative medicine. The consensus in that talk page discussion, from all editors bar one anonymous editor, is that it's appropriate and accurate to note that he's carrying out amateur research. Thanks, Ruby Murray 12:02, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the request for review. Ruby Murray is engaged in an edit war to push a negative, non neutral tone to the article. Recruiting friends to support his versions and actively attempting intimidation in accordance with his history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.200.208.230 (talk) 12:45, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
  Resolved

Apology

I've apologised to JFW and James elsewhere but I'd like to do it here, too, for my uncalled-for insults yesterday. They didn't deserve that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Your anger shows that you have passion and that Wikipedia is important to you. I wish that more people cared so much. I appreciate that you made an attempt to protect the project but the differences between people on this board are only nuance compared to the antagonism against us all lurking on the outside. We are all friends here. Be upset at the forces which discount the public's right to access encyclopedic health information. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I am glad to see this, although I can't endorse the notion of "antagonism against us all lurking on the outside"; I believe those on the outside most often believe that content in here is vetted and are frequently unaware that our content is written by RandyfromBoise.

    On a related note about our differences, I want to bring up a historical example that some folks might not be aware of. Some want a disclaimer, some want expert review, and some want to work as hard and as fast as they can to improve content. My comment is about the feasibility of bringing our content to any level and keeping there.

    Who has been here long enough to have remembered or to have worked with TimVickers? He arrived here with the same enthusiasm of DocJames and Anthony, he did boatloads of good work (quickly writing a number of GAs and FAs, helping restore and maintain others), he helped develop resources like our dispatch on sources in medicine, and he published some journal articles about Wikipedia and medical content. I was particularly fond of him.[41] Tim has made about eight edits this year. What has happened to all that content he developed and defended? Well, together Tim and I improved tuberculosis when it was at Featured article review, and for quite some time, we tried to defend it to FA standard. After Tim's departure, tuberculosis fell into disprepair, and it is now defeatured.

    Draw what conclusions you may about how likely we are to ever raise and keep any number of articles in here to standard. I appreciate everyone's attempts, but offer this example as one explanation for our differing views. I hope DocJames doesn't burn out, but if he does, history shows us that all of the content he has upgraded and defended will quickly sink to the usual low level in here. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Again the answer is to have more people. An article's long term success or failure should not be dependent upon one person. And yet we drive people away by making them jump through so many arbitrary hoops that any sane person quickly realizes they have better things to do. Currently, Wikipedia is a place for people who love rules. Lesion (talk) 15:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Tuberculosis is at GA (I updated it not to long ago). FA and GA standards have increased significantly over the last 5 years on English Wikipedia. Articles go out of date eventually as the underlying science changes. So yes continual work is needed to keep any article at a high standard. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Thing is, previous FAs (and GAs) can act as a single reference/stable point to check against and save a helluva lot of time - so like with schizophrenia, one can, after time, check the curent version against a set point when it was deemed to have Featured Status and quickly review and adjust. I think this really helps when reviewing articles. This is the single and by far the best reason for pursuing GA/FA status and is the main reason I try and park everything I work on at a stable point. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Sorry to rain on this parade, but I'm just not a believer in the notion that FA/GA status means anything wrt these concerns.   Autism hasn't been updated since Eubulides left, so what are we flagging? And the FA process is ... well ... not functioning as it used to. And GAs are only as good as the reviewer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:31, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
May I ask what is the problem with FAC? Axl ¤ [Talk] 00:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Most of the best reviewers are gone, new reviewers haven't appeared, and sub-par articles can pass FAC these days. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:45, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, the sinking of Aspergers into Autism in DSM 5 will be a bigger problem to reshape all the articles. Sigh. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Improving citations

Just a wild idea: since much of the thrash is around recent work that hasn't yet got high quality secondary sources, let's make the work of identifying the lower-quality sources easier. The {{cite journal}} template takes parameter |type=review or alternately |type=clinical trial etc. If we actually made use of this parameter, it would be far simpler to know where we need to seek secondary sources. Failing that, perhaps MOSMED could ghettoize the primary recentism in one limited-size section. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I didn't know that. Does Boghog know that? I suppose it's not possible for a bot to pick up that info, and we need to do it manually? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Agree that getting that parameter in would help a lot. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:33, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Possible, yes. Desireable, maybe, but only with human intervention. Pubmed has an equivalent XML "<articletype>" field which a bot could copy. It isn't universally reliable, or even populated, so human agency is necessary. This is particularly the case for "oldmedline" or new "in process" records. It could, though, be usefully done in a hidden comment. As a general rule, if the field says "editorial", "systematic review" or "review" it will be correct. A very special case comes up for "withdrawn" articles, which we need to do a much better job of identifying. There occasional articles that need to cite these (e.g. Andrew Wakefield) but mostly we need to revisit any article referencing such papers. Cyclic systematic reviews, such as Cochrane's, routinely withdraw outdate releases when the new one comes out. This should trigger re-examination of statements citing them.LeadSongDog come howl! 17:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Agree as well. It would be nice if we had someone to flag Cochrane reviews as soon as an update comes out. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
IMO the most practical way to make this happen on a relatively large scale is to update Diberri's tool to add it. It's possible that the citation tool could automatically interpreting some of the simpler items, but if it simply added the blank parameter, that subtle suggestion would result in the field being populated far more than it is now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't personally know how, but it's certainly technically feasible. Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia harvests all of the values for "journal=" in the template on a regular basis, so once the information is there (the main sticking point), a bot could pick it up. Choess (talk) 19:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
According to the {{cite journal}} documentation: Type: Additional information about the media type of the source. Hence using this field to store the PubMed publication type might clash with the current usage of this field. It might be better to create a new special purpose field in Module:Citation/CS1 to store the publication type. It appears that the Publication Type (PT) (see list of publication types) is accessible from the Entrez E-utilities. So in principle it should be possible to modify Diberri's template filling tool to populate this field as well as create a bot that could add this information to existing citations. Boghog (talk) 19:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Right, so it's meant to be a MIME type (e.g. "application/pdf") then ? Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 19:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Could be, or it might encompass a wider list of media types (e.g., print, web, radio, tv, audiocassette, etc.). Boghog (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
From {{cite book}} and {{cite web}} that also use Module:Citation/CS1: Type: Examples: Thesis, Booklet, CD liner, Press release. Boghog (talk) 20:19, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
oh, my, I don't want to have to deal with that mean jargony person over at the cite template pages again; I don't know what language that person speaks. Anyway, I've been trying to flag reviews at medical cannabis today, and even doing it manually, it is not always clear to me when sources are really reviews, or just partial reviews ... so I'm not sure how a bot can do this or how we can incorporate it into Boghog/Diberri. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:28, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
On second thought, if {{cite journal}} is used, the medium should be obvious (print and possibly also web). Hence one should not normally need to specify the medium for a journal citation. Therefore we could modify the definition of the type parameter to be the PubMed publication type only within the cite journal template. This way we leave Module:Citation/CS1 untouched. The only change we need to make is to the cite journal documentation. The required modifications to the template filler and creation of a bot should be straight forward. Boghog (talk) 20:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose the "format" param already can give an indication of "media type" ... Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 20:50, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I forgot about the format parameter Format of the work referred to by url; for example: PDF, DOC, or XLS; displayed in parentheses after title. One minor issue is that the type parameter is displayed after the journal name:
  • {{cite journal | author = author | title = title | journal = journal | type = type | year = year | format = PDF | url = http://en.wikipedia.org }} →
  • author (year). "title" (PDF). Journal (type). {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
Logically the publication type should come after the title and not the journal name (many journals publish more than one kind of article type). Boghog (talk) 02:04, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Right. The format would rarely be specified for a journal article citation, so more typically we might see:
  • {{cite journal | author = Last FF, Another SS | title = Developments in citation practice | journal = Journal of Secondary Studies | type = review | date = 12 Never 2013 | volume = 11 | issue= 13 | pages = 78-82 | pmid = 123456 }} →
  • Last FF, Another SS (12 Never 2013). "Developments in citation practice". Journal of Secondary Studies (review). 11 (13): 78–82. PMID 123456. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
LeadSongDog come howl! 04:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Terminology

There are three main terms per the International League Against Epilepsy:

We seem to muddle these up. So does the NHS [42] so at least we are in good company. I am going to try to apply the ILAE structure to our articles. Anyone have any other ideas? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Khan Academy

Are interested in collaborating. They are looking into the issue of copyright non compatability. Thoughts on this end? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:06, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

When we talk about copyright non-compatability are we talking about images or text? Does this have to do with diagnostic images? CFCF (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
External videos
  Post-Impressionism, Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884, Smarthistory[4]
CFCF, we are talking about both of those and video and audio, plus probably technical support to develop those resources and routes to get things translated to other languages. I think most people here desire their media content. Khan Academy is already on Wikipedia in a major way with their Smarthistory project. Controversially, what they have wanted in the past is for Wikipedia to provide outgoing links to their content. Their content is excellent but the consensus of the Wikipedia community has been that non-commercial licensing is incompatible with Wikipedia's mission and putting outgoing links into the bodies of articles is a discouraged and worrying practice. My personal wish is that Khan Academy could adopt Wikipedia-compatible licenses, but barring that, I wish that they could at least make a thoughtful public statement about why they insist on noncommercial licenses. Though it seems extraordinary, I sometimes wonder if their policy makers on licensing fail to recognize the high costs of using non-free licenses, because otherwise I cannot imagine how an organization with such prestige and so much stake in the open movement can be so cavalier and silent about the unorthodox way in which they do their outreach.
  • Wikipedia:GLAM/smarthistory - this Smarthistory project is fantastic. I am so grateful that this radical project has been tested on Wikipedia. I encourage everyone to support it, but I am doubtful about applying this external-link model to aspects of Wikipedia other than art history and do not want it in medicine at this time without some public discussion and some answers from Khan Academy.
  • The Signpost - Khan Academy's Smarthistory and Wikipedia collaborate
  • Smallbones has organized Khan Academy collaboration with Wikipedia in the past and he is highly conscious of methods by means of which outside influences exploit Wikipedia's community. I have a lot of respect for the input he has had in making the Smarthistory project work on Wikipedia in a way that benefits the community, because it could have been otherwise.
Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes I have made it very clear that for Khan academy material to be within medical articles it must be under a CC BY SA license. They are having internal discussions about this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I was informed of this conversation by that little red box thingee at the top of the page, and have been thinking about how this might work. I'll give much more advice later, but first
  • to see how this might work, see [43]
  • understand that 3 separate non-profits are at work here (at least in the example above). Nobody should get involved with this if there is any commercial or monetary motive - it would just ruin everything. At the same time dictating license requirements might be impossible. An external media template (a long time Wikipedia option - nothing new here) might be the best way to go. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:08, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I strongly oppose linking within articles to external videos. If organizations wish to have their content considered for on Wikipedia than they need to release it under a license that we can use.
Otherwise they can link it to DMOZ and we will link to it there. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:11, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Some background

I don't know much about this project or your need for videos and other media provided by well-recognized non-profit educational organizations, and only a bit that I've heard about the need for external validation/checking of medical articles. I have seen Doc James and Blue Raspberry around and respect their work. I think I've only edited one or two medical articles in the 7 years I've edited on Wikipedia. That said, I think if you need either good media or some (however weak) type of "external verification" then this would be a good opportunity for this project. I just ran into this discussion via the Wikipedia notification system today and wanted to give you a thoroughly researched overview of all the issues, but it's taking too long, so some bullet points will have to do for now.

  • Khan Academy (KA) is well-respected organization with a goal of providing "A free world-class education for anyone anywhere." I take this to be almost identical to our goal of "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."
External videos
 
  Flu Epidemiology, Stanford School of Medicine with Khan Academy[5]
  • KA is well financed by the likes of the Gates Foundation, Google, and many well-known foundations [44]. They would not be trying to get any money or commercial advantage from us (since they give away all their products for free), but they might turn out to be important partners in ways beyond just providing media.
  • About me
    • I have no connection to KA except through the WP:Smart project which I do entirely on an independent volunteer basis.
    • I may be something of a leader in the fight against paid and commercial editing on Wikipedia. Among several other reasons for opposing this type of activity, I think it complicates cooperation with non-profit educational organizations like KA and GLAMs
    • I've worked with WP:GLAM since before it was started, but don't concentrate on GLAM projects. Mostly I work with WP:NRHP and take photos
    • I'm very interested in seeing WP get up to date on videos, which is my main interest here.
  • KA licenses its videos (entire website?) CC-BY-SA NC 3.0 US and encourages everybody to download them. The only limitation is that they can't be used for commercial purposes (which they give a meaningful definition to). The NC restriction is, of course, the main problem with uploading their material to Wikimedia sites. But I have to say that this is mostly our problem, not theirs. They are about as open with their material as any site I've seen, except Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia has a major problem displaying any video. Have you noticed that if you're not using a Chrome browser, or haven't gone through a long song and dance installing various add-ons, that you can't reliably view videos on Wikipedia?
External videos
 
  Fragonard's The Meeting, Smarthistory[4]
  Fragonard's The Swing, Smarthistory[6]
  Beneath the Painted Surface: Fragonard's Fountain of Love, Getty Museum
  • The external media template has been around on Wikipedia essentially forever, and has long had a specific exemption in the WP:EL guideline allowing it to be used in the body of the text. The template actually encourages it or even requires it to be used in the body of the text. The media should be used where it gives the best experience to the reader.
  • The external media template is a bit clumsy the first 10 times you use it, but is actually very flexible. For example, it can include multiple photos, audio, and video from different sources, as well as text you want to add.
  • I've used the external media template hundreds of times on Wikipedia and not just for Smarthistory (the art history arm of KA). I've used it to link to half a dozen museums, TED talks, to YouTube (when I know that the uploader there has the copyright), and likely several other sites.
  • There is a group of Wikipedians who are horrified that any external link can be put in the body of the text, but mostly, when I explain the rules and the specific exemption in WP:EL they will go along with the use of the template. In deference to the widely held mistaken belief that the template is not allowed in the body of the text, I generally use it near the bottom of the article.
  • The Smarthistory website is linked to in 379 articles, probably about half via the external media template. They are likely linked via YouTube in 100 or so more articles. Some of these are plain links in the external links section by random editors who like the site, but most of them have been done via WP:Smart. Smarthistory has 562 videos and 302 essays, all done by professional art historians or otherwise well qualified educators. I think the KA site is almost exclusively videos.
  • I've only seen 5-10 of these links removed over the year that the project has been going. This is likely a record for non-removal of "external links", so I think it's fair to say that the links are generally accepted. That said there are 3-4 editors who concentrate on art history who dislike these links and have in some cases made them hard to include. I think it's a shame when otherwise good editors claim ownership like this, but I just avoid articles where I see they've edited.
  • It takes some work knowing what to include and where to include the links - one size does not fit all. I started with a "one painting-one video - one article" model, which works pretty well. But other models work almost as well, e.g. "one artist-multiple videos-one template". Other situations, like an article on an art movement, rarely work.
  • While I've gotten to know one of the Smarthistory principals fairly well, via 6-8 e-mails, she and Smarthistory in general have been totally hands-off, making 2-3 suggestions, answering my questions, but understanding that I am an independent editor exercising my independent judgement. Otherwise KA has been totally absent in any discussions.

Well, that probably more information than you wanted to know. Feel free to ask any questions here or on my talk page or even via e-mail. I do hope that you get something going with KA because I think it would improve the encyclopedia, especially improving our use of videos. since I don't know much about medical articles, I doubt that I'd do too much inserting of videos. Maybe just enough to show a couple of people how it can work.

All the best,

Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:59, 4 December 2013 (UTC) (minor ec)

An even better solution would be for Wikipedia to allow NC images and videos :-) Anyone interested in taking that on? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
In general I'm not afraid to take on big projects (one or two at a time), but that one seems too big for me. There would be one huge downside. Since Wikipedia really cannot reliably display videos stored on our sites, uploading CC-BY-SA NC videos might do more harm than good, in the short term. As far as the big question, the argument against NC videos is that we want to encourage totally free (including format) media, and if we accept NC videos, nobody will make non-NC videos anymore. It's quite wiki-centric in my view, and if that is really the main goal of our policy we probably want to think in terms of achieving part of that, rather than aiming for an unrealistic total victory. Redeploy, retreat, whatever you want to call it. We've already lost the war if total victory is our only goal. But some folks are married to a fully-free media policy, to the extent that they are willing to exclude 99% of all educational videos ever produced. Show me how we'd win the battle against that attitude and I may join in. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I could be convinced to have these in the external link section. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:04, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
OK, that's a good place to start. And since you guys are the ones who will implement it, that may be as far as you'll get. But I will argue that almost nobody reads the external links section (1 out of 1000 readers?) and even then it's just skimming so they won't even know it's a video. And then the link gets removed in a few months by somebody in good faith trimming the external links. In my view, I think that would be a waste of time. Try it if you'd like, then decide if it's worth the effort or you want to upscale to examples similar to the above. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
My hope is to convince the Khan academy to release some content under a CC BY SA license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Go for it. But see below. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:37, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Excluding CC-NC content is important to me. A lot of educational projects are commercial and non-profit and NGO infrastructure is a luxury for the developed world. Many places in the developing world have commercial models for providing what would be non-profit services elsewhere. While I am tolerant of the idea of illegally or illicitly distributed educational materials to promote health awareness even in violation of copyright, I recognize that this is not an ideal solution and I hate the idea of forcing the poor and underprivileged to continually be in the state of violating the law and maintaining what is perceived as good citizenship. People should have legal access to educational materials and as Creative Commons has stated, there is little agreement or understanding anywhere of the concept of non-commerical use. I do not oppose Khan Academy using non-commercial licenses but I do object to them using these licenses carelessly. I would be very interested to learn if they have a rationale for doing this other than arbitrary choice or following of precedent without considering other options. It seems to me antithetical to their educational mission. Is there more to learn about their perspective? Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that we need to keep all the text CC BY SA. But having images and files that are both CC BY SA and CC BY SA NC I do not consider to be an issue. People reusing our content will just need to figure out which they need and just use that part.
I have managed to convince one fairly large organization to switch from CC BY SA NC to CC BY SA :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:00, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I'd love to hear about that organization and what points they saw as most important in making the switch. My guess on why most organizations, including KA, use NC licenses has to do with funders. For example, if Google or Microsoft are funding, they may well be saying to themselves "This is a great thing to do in general, it's great for the internet, it'll probably have some indirect benefit for us (maybe in hiring or just making the internet bigger), and besides that - we can't figure out how to make any money off of education. If we do ever figure out how to make money off of education, KA's experience will probably help us, and their material won't be able to directly compete with us because of the NC license." In short, the NC license makes sense for the funders and can't hurt them.
The other reason (mostly for the funders) is that there is some control - at least psychologically - over the material. Most nightmare scenarios can be ruled out, at least in a legal sense, e.g. a wacko doctor with a cancer cure-all can't mix his material in with theirs and charge $millions for snake-oil cures. Of course the wacko could still do that, but legally there is some deniability from the funders in that they could sue.
In short, I think there are some good reasons for some of the participants to go along with NC licenses, and little or no downsides for almost all participants, so all it takes is one participant to insist on NC.
We should probably learn to deal with NC licenses, otherwise we are going to be missing out on 99% of all educational videos. Perhaps we could have an NC Commons, with material we could use if no other equivalent material is available, and at least it would be saved when copyright runs out rather than simply lost in the haze of history. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Your "nightmare scenario" comes up often with woo-pushers reusing WP content in commercial derivative works (usually as advertising), and we are toothless to stop it because we refuse to use CC-BY-NC. WMF's well-meant but misplaced insistence on libre content is just us, shooting ourselves in the foot, one toe at a time. It motivates some of the non-RS garbage inserted by COI editors, often as anonIP socks. It gets mirrored (crap and all) from WP onto About.com, FreeDictionary, Ask.com, etc., then all too often recycled back into other WP articles despite wp:MIRROR. Somehow, this really needs to be fixed. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
There very definitely are problems in limiting what we can use to non-NC licenses (e.g. media starvation), but I think almost all of the "protection" folks get from the NC license is purely psychological. If you put anything on the internet almost anybody can use it and you'll never even know about it. Maybe if the snake-oil doctor was a really big well-known doc, you could find him, and sue him, and win - probably not any money but at least people would know that you aren't associated with him. But that's 1 out of 1000 cases. Maybe in 2 or 3 other cases in 1000, you can contact a not very serious offender and they'll say "Oh, I didn't know ... I won't do it in the future." And in 996 cases in 1000, you never even find out about it. But you can keep a lot of lawyers busy and well-paid. So I think people on both sides are just fooling themselves. Somewhere there should be a compromise here, both sides could just wake up and ask "What are we getting from this?" And the honest answer will be: "Just a bunch of problems." Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
This site released more or less all of its content to use under a CC BY SA license [45] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:54, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Looks interesting. Kudos. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I just noticed the nav template has gone from this page. Was there consensus for this? Lesion (talk) 10:35, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I am happy to see it returned. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I think it may have disappeared when this recent changes template has been added. Not sure if 2 templates would work, but I can try. Alternative is to have only one template on WTMED, either the nav or the recent changes. Lesion (talk) 06:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Student editors on dental articles

@Ian Furst:@Biosthmors:@Leighblackall:

There seems to be a group of students who will be working on the some dental pages as part of a class from La Trobe University. Here is their Wikiversity page [46], and I think this is the list of articles they will be working on:

Welcome to all and please feel free to ask here or on the talk pages of each article if you have any Qs. Lesion (talk) 06:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Welcome everyone, thank you for helping with Wikipedia.
Yes, welcome. Dental articles as a whole are so neglected that almost any change would be an improvement.
Speaking of which, I'd like to request that some of our most zealous editors keep in mind that we don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, especially if the article is a near-disaster. It's easy to remove hours' worth of work because someone didn't have exactly the right way of saying it or use one of the ideal sources, but really: these are general subjects that need a lot of work. If the edit is a net improvement, you ought to leave it alone (and then go request even further improvements, if you want). WP:PRESERVE is a policy, and WP:MEDRS is not. (Or, if you want to look at it another way, even though I've written more of MEDRS than of PRESERVE  ). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I hope you were not referring to me when you said "most zealous" ;-) indeed I was not specifically plotting to remove content, but I don't think it hurts to point them towards MEDRS and MEDMOS from the start. I have the first two pages watchlisted and I've done this on those talkpages. I was planning to expand dental emergency at some point anyway, so this is great news imo. Lesion (talk) 05:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
No, I'm not.
I'm personally fond of {{MedWelcome}} as a way to tell new users about MEDRS and MEDMOS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Apologies, I thought you were commenting on me placing MEDRS and MEDMOS links on those talkpages. Lesion (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Condom article for WP:FA status?

Comments are needed from this WikiProject with regard to this matter: Talk:Condom#Push for FA status. Flyer22 (talk) 05:22, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Lots of work needed. Does not really meet GA at this point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

A Wikipedia based textbook appears to be the primary textbook for a physics class

Per "Dr. Gavin Buffington, professor and chair of the Department of Physics at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. "I'm using a Boundless textbook this semester in my Engineering Physics I class, and I've been impressed by the quality of content""[47] with this page [48] borrowing heavily from kinematics Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:00, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Feedback request prior to my Amphetamine FA nom

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if any of you would be willing to help me with this before I nominate amphetamine for FA. Per Sasata's suggestion in Talk:Amphetamine/GA1, I'd like to get some feedback on the article's readability in the Pharmacodynamics and Detection in body fluids sections from anyone without a background or working knowledge of molecular neuropharmacology or chemistry respectively. Time permitting, reviewing the entire pharmacology section for readability would be a big help if anyone is willing to do more.
I just need to know what statements, if any, are unclear or a bit too technical for a layperson to understand.

Thanks,
Seppi333 (talk) 21:29, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

"Very high doses can a psychosis..." doesn't make sense. Hordaland (talk) 04:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)   Fixed thanks for catching that! Seppi333 (talk) 19:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm going to nominate this for FA now - I'm assuming no one thought it was unreadable. Also, I wanted to say   Thank you to everyone from this wikiproject who responded to any of my requests for comment or feedback, either in this article or in the History and culture of amphetamines split a few months back. I really appreciate the input. Seppi333 (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Paper: "Evaluation of gastroenterology and hepatology articles on Wikipedia: Are they suitable as learning resources for medical students?"

A new paper is out, with comments on the quality of a subset of medical Wikipedia entries:

Azer, S. A. (2014). "Evaluation of gastroenterology and hepatology articles on Wikipedia". European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology. 26 (2): 155–63. doi:10.1097/MEG.0000000000000003. PMID 24276492. S2CID 7760287.

I do not have access to it. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 10:29, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Do not have it either. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:36, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I have access to it. The study was performed by the author and their two research assistants, based on their own self-constructed appraisal forms based on DISCERN. DISCERN is about evaluating consumer health info, but the author was evaluating suitability of WP articles for use by med students. The oracles for comparison were five medical textbooks. With only three non-independent reviewers, one of them the author, I'm not sure how this paper got published as anything resembling a scientific study. --Mark viking (talk) 19:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Also have access, it seems to bring up a discussion, but in the conclusion states "Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information for medical students searching for gastroenterology and hepatology articles. Several limitations, deficiencies, and scientific errors have been identified in the articles examined." - which is a shame as it ins't very nuanced, although the article seems to discuss the limitations in depth. Shame that these reviewers haven't though to edit any of the articles with shortcomings.CFCF (talk) 20:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
On the bright side, if it goes into specifics, it is like a Peer Review....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Although the pathogenesis of disease was provided in most articles, the mechanisms were briefly described and did not show the pathological changes at body system, organ, cellular, and key molecular level. Significant gaps were noted in the mechanisms described for diseases such as cirrhosis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, portal hypertension, and ascites. A number of problems and errors were identified in several articles (Appendix II).

Now seeing if I can access Appendix II... Adrian J. Hunter(talkcontribs) 12:09, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the appendices aren't available yet. The article is currently "published ahead of print"; we may need to wait until the release of the print version to see all identified errors. Adrian J. Hunter(talkcontribs) 12:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
    • If the issues identified get addressed, this could be a nice opportunity for a Letter to the Editor, if someone were so inclined. It could also include an explanation of why images are not always readily available. Canada Hky (talk) 15:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes they must be pathologists. The pathophysiology of diseases is difficult to write about in simple language. IMO most of this detail should go on a subpage. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
It sounds to me like their question was actually, "Could med students use the English Wikipedia exclusively?" rather than "Could med students use the English Wikipedia as one learning resource among many?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:29, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Have a number of comments:

  1. Google is not really a resource but a search engine
  2. Wikipedia is not really a search engine but a resource
  3. Medscape does not require a fee
  4. Paper did not like our inconsistent citation style. Neither do I :-)
  5. The study did not use this newly invented assessment tool on any other source (like emedicine or uptodate). No real control group
  6. With respect to reading level, geared to college level. Yes. Lead should be simplier.
  7. We do not show pathological changes. While we would need a donation of images. However this article was in their study Cirrhosis and did show both back when the study was done?
  8. There conclusion is that medical students should be directed elsewhere. A great plan and hopefully they can convince all smokers to stop smoking at the same time. As both are highly unlikely to be effective may as well try to fix some of the issues with Wikipedia.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 17:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

(Wandering off topic) re your number 8, perhaps a twofer: Why shouldn't schools require all smoking med students to stop. If health professionals can't do so themselves they are not going to be as persuasive as they might to their future patients.[49][50] LeadSongDog come howl! 21:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Because half the faculty smoke. By the way, your first link is flagged by my browser as "not secure". Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:01, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


I've been looking around, and there are some great free resources out there with pathology images. I haven't got to uploading them, but these are under CC-BY-A 2:

This resource in under NC, but maybe could be persuaded for use on wikipedia:

CFCF (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Another fringe article with odd citations

I came across this article: Adaptogen, which relies heavily on pharamacological concepts, but doesn't adhere to WP:MEDRS. It could do with some work, perhaps removing references from books such as The tao of medicine. CFCF (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Sexual violence article

A class is working on Sexual violence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and of course that article deals with a lot of medical aspects. I have been fixing and/or tweaking the student edits there, but help with that article from other WP:MED members would be very beneficial to that article. For example, there is this and this matter with regard to the World Health Organization (WHO); by that, I mean the statistics and "The WHO’s World Report on Violence and Health[33] lists the following ways in which sexual violence against females can be committed" material (some of those ways surely apply to more than just females). But anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who helps out. Flyer22 (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata - medical condition and voluntary body modification

Hi, I have proposed a person property at Wikidata that I think members of this WikiProject should review, and probably can improve upon. It is a way to record notable medical conditions/procedures/causes. Please see d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Person#medical_condition. I am not convinced that 'medical condition' is the best term. Ideally this property would also cater for voluntary body modifications such as tattoos/piercings/cyborgs, if it is a notable attribute (and on Wikipedia there is usually always one article where the person is notable for anything). Is ICD10 L81.8 the code for a tattoo? Is there a code for horns? ;-) There is also the concern that in the future there will be voluntary amputations for athletic performance reasons[51], which we can add to the list of weird and wonderful reasons why people would do strange things to their body. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:14, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

d:Property:P1050 was created as 'medical condition'. More information on the talk page: d:Property talk:P1050. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Developmental regression

Developmental regression - A new article which has possible copy / paste issues could someone please have a look at it dolfrog (talk) 15:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom election

An interesting discussion is taking place here User_talk:MastCell#I_voted... which has had a significant effect on WPMED. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

? I'd say TLDR, but I did read. Maybe TLDU (too long didn't understand). Lesion (talk) 18:51, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
? Agree. Skimmed and somewhat confused. --LT910001 (talk) 14:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Hip pain

We all know that all the obvious articles have already been created, right?

Well, if someone would like an easy opportunity to try for a WP:DYK, it turns out that hip pain is still a red link. I think that these are the codes, if you want to set up an infobox: ICD-10 and ICD-9. Hip pain leads to things like hip replacement; it affects about one in seven older adults. There are plenty of review articles out there, but since it's a general symptom involved in a lot of separate conditions, you might be better off finding a good textbook.

And if this area interests you, then elbow pain and foot pain are also possible topics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Expanding those topics are excellent suggestions, but it would be best to do this under their respective articles and redirect those search terms to the main articles. Hip has nothing, while Elbow has a bit on injuries and diseases, not real info on pain, a bit too much focus on X-ray diagnostics. foot has a section on Medical aspects, but not really anything on pain. By large there is somewhat lacking info on orthopedic articles on Wikipedia (as far as I've seen), but these three cases could be rectified rather easily. (Not doing anything now, as I need to get some sleep). CFCF (talk) 23:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Some people like creating articles better than expanding existing ones. So long as we end up with a link (and ideally a summary) from the larger articles to the more specific ones, I really don't care which gets written first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ Olson, R.A., Huszti, H.C., Mason, P.J., & Seibert, J.M. (1989). Pediatric AIDS/HIV infection: An emerging challenge to pediatric psychology. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 14(1), 1-21.
  2. ^ a b Domek, G.J. (2009). Facing adolescence and adulthood: The importance of mental health care in the global pediatric AIDS epidemic. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 30, 147-150.
  3. ^ Benton, T.D. (2010). Treatment of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents with HIV/AIDS.Current Psychiatry Reports, 12, 104-110.
  4. ^ a b "Post-Impressionism, Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved January 4, 2013. Cite error: The named reference "smarth" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Flu Epidemiology". Stanford School of Medicine with Khan Academy. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  6. ^ "Fragonard's The Swing". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved January 21, 2013.