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Idea: study of WPMED, from the social movement scholarship perspective

I am playing around with an idea for my next academic article: a study of WPMED (context: in addition of being a rather active volunteer around here, I am a sociologist studying Wikipedia, see my user page). Few days ago I've written up what I could about WPMED at WikiProject#WikiProject_Medicine (do let me know if I missed anything in my litrev), but I think your efforts deserve more of a spotlight, in the form of a dedicated article (in a peer reviewed journal, maybe with a side article in something for the masses). Per best practices, besides having an article padding my CV, I'd like it to be of interest/use to you, so I'd be happy to consider comments along the line of what you, WPMED members, would like to know about yourself. Here are my early ideas of what could be interesting to research:

• • Demographics (age, gender, education, are you a medical professional, type of professional; the latter is particularly interesting in the context of amateurs vs experts debates)
  • Why volunteer on Wikipedia at all (Wikipedia_community#Motivation)? --> are (motivations of) medical volunteers different from those of regular Wikipedians?
  • Did you volunteer before Wikipedia? and Did volunteering on Wikipedia encouraged you to volunteer somewhere else? --> about volunteering paths/ecosystem
  • Why volunteer on Wikipedia rather than somewhere else? --> about best practices in medical volunteering
  • What is the biggest hurdle to improving Wikipedia medical content?
    • Is there a voluntourism problem on Wikipedia? Are drive-by edits by a problem?
    • Is there a growing problem with fake news, COI, advertising in medical topics? Are we handling those issues or are they a growing danger?
  • Is volunteering on Wikipedia satisfying? Stressful? Would you recommend it to a colleague?
  • Do you edit anonymously, or not, and why? Are you afraid that if your peers would find out you edit Wikipeida, you'd lose reputation?
  • What are WPMED biggest strengths/successes/weaknesses/failures?
  • Why are so few people volunteering to help at WPMED? Lack of awareness? Not understanding Wikipedia? Lack of impact? Other?
  • How to make more people volunteer at WPMED?

If all goes well, based on your feedback, in a few months I would make a survey that WPMED volunteers could take. Cheers, _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:06, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

These seem like a good start for questions. The one thing else might add would be beliefs and attitudes about amateurs vs. professionals editing in this space: does it really help to have physicians, for example, and is Wikipedia a good use of their time? Jclemens (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

You should have more on the questions arising from the global nature of both our editors and our readers (and our subjects). Johnbod (talk) 16:58, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

We looked at some of these issues a few years ago in doi:10.2196/jmir.3569, although I think the community has evolved in its practices significantly since then. Bondegezou (talk) 20:00, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that one, a must read - will do soon! _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Interesting stuff. It's worth nothing that there is already some research (some of it more philosophical or ethnographic in nature) on wikipedia. There's a book on the ethnography of wikipedia. I'm mostly at the fringes of MEDRS, so take this with a pinch of salt, but from a "theoretic" basis, I'd might add some observations: Wikipedia is not part of the medical community, and has slightly different views and motivations, so volunteering might not be the correct motivation. If you find something wrong on the internet, and correct it by finding the best sources following a set of rules, you aren't necessarily "volunteering" as such, nor is wikipedia so much a social movement as a "civic process" like a freedom of information request, or a court case.

Another topic I would add is that wikipedia is quite famous for being quite hostile to new editors. The sample you get from editors might be rather unrepresented of the group of *potential*.

Walking into addressing you questions themselves... which I probably shouldn't, I think that one's capacity for impact for wikipedia is very high, but recognition within the medical community is rather lower. Talpedia (talk) 22:46, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

> Why are so few people volunteering to help at WPMED?

Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Medicine, I'm not so sure that we should begin with a premise that so few people are volunteering. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

New editor retention is a difficult, especially in a topic like medicine, where everyone wants to know stuff and the best sources are often hard to read. Disclaimer: I substantially re-wrote this essay, but WP:Encourage the newcomers. Being nice to editors doesn't really suffice, you have to help them actually contribute, or they tend to go away (example). HLHJ (talk) 16:25, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

RFC on wheelchair-related language

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RFC on wheelchair-based language, which is about whether to recommend against describing people as being "wheelchair-bound" or "confined to a wheelchair". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Sacral fracture

Pelvis

I hadn't started a medical article in ages, but a case I saw the other day prompted me to read about this stuff again and I noticed there wasn't an article so I had a go. Feel free to edit :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

well done--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:26, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

You know, we don't seem to have an article on broken toes, even under foot fracture. Granted that definitive treatment for most is taping them together, which makes them a bit boring to medics, they are pretty common.

This is a bit off-topic, but a while ago (pre-pandemic) I did a very informal haphazard survey of old people on medical information they thought everyone should be able to get from Wikipedia (like, chatting to people on transit and asking people I know). Preventative foot health was the most noticable favourite; a lot of older people seem to suffer a lot from painful feet, and feel that their foot conditions (bunions, overlapping toes, hammertoes, flat feet, pedal edema etc.) were preventable, if only they'd known information X. HLHJ (talk) 03:52, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ, you're right. Foot health is important for maintaining independence and preventing falls in older/frailer people. Not wearing bad shoes your whole life probably reduces your risk of the fall→hip fracture→death process. A solid ==Prevention== section should exist in all of those articles.

We usually put articles at the singular. Would you like to start Broken toe yourself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Go for it! :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 16:37, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I've just seen what you made. Wow. Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ, this is really incredible work. Thank you so much. Have you considered sending it to Wikipedia:Did you know to be put on the Main Page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both for your encouragement! Reportedly it accords with advice from British Columbian healthcare, too, which is reassuring (Quiddity has just had unfortunate occasion to learn about broken toes). I have a bit of a backlog of part-written articles, and I expect that most of the people who want to know about this topic will already know that they want to know, so I probably won't be sending this one to DYK. Would an article on shoe-fitting, to be linked to in Prevention sections, make sense? I think I have the sources. HLHJ (talk) 20:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. We have some information at Toe box#Fitting and an article on the Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, but Shoe fitting is a red link and Shoe barely mentions fitting at all. There should probably be a ==Section== on fitting, with a {{main|Shoe fitting}} link.

I also noticed that there is nothing at broken finger. I wonder how many other common subjects are missing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out WAID! I've created a stub and plagiarised HLHJ's article as a template. Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Did you know before? Both of these articles could go in the same nomination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:06, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

No idea how it works. And I'm aware that this is not an acceptable reply, I should go look ip up. Dr. Vogel (talk) 18:37, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Follow the directions at Template talk:Did you know#Manual instructions. It's not as difficult as it looks. Name Broken toe as the main article (because it's longer).

Think of a "hooky" (clickbait-y?) question, like "Did you know... that the main treatment for broken toes and broken fingers is the same?" or "Did you know... that the main treatment for broken toes is a piece of tape?" Make sure that whatever your question is that an almost word-for-word sentence is in the article, with a ref at the end of that exact sentence. (Doing this makes it easier for the reviewers to get through their reviewing checklists.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I should belatedly admit that I copied clavicle fracture as a template. Indeed, if you look at the first version of the article, I accidently left a bit of the clavicle content in for a minute! I should have credited it in the page-creation edit, as Dr. Vogel did. I've now template-credited it on the talk page. Thank you for making broken finger, that's one less article on my list! How to go about compiling a list of... iatroapathetic? iatroanaiac? medicotedious? topics... maybe some of the diagnostic code systems? Wikidata might be useful. HLHJ (talk) 00:54, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Right, so I've gone ahead and nominated HLHJ's article. I tried to make it clickbait-y through being humerus humorous. Never done this before, so hopefully I haven't made a mess of it. Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:28, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I also think iatroapathetic should be added to the OED. I'm going to start using that word in hospital as of tonight. It'll raise a few eyebrows, but who knows, may be it'll stick. Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:31, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Hallo. Late reply to HLHJ's comment, just in case of interest. I broke a toe last Monday. [Edit: Here's my experience!] I called the local 8-1-1 hotline on Tuesday, and whilst on hold for 45 mins - [Edit: Which was fine, as it was non-emergency! I just mention as stats are interesting. :> ] - I read the local BC Healthlink page, and grumbled to WAID [Edit: about my injury] who pointed me towards our new article! When I talked to the nurse, she gave me identical information to the website and our new page, but also offered to give me a virtual consult with a doctor - I was hesitant as I didn't want to waste anyone's time, but accepted the offer just in case they had unique tips. After saying hello, the doctor started off with "I'm sorry to say, but we just don't care!" which amused me greatly! She then went on to reiterate the standard advice, but also mentioned: (A) the importance of wearing a shoe with a stiff sole and square toebox, if I need to walk anywhere, and (B) that when she had broken her own toe in the past, she found buddy-taping to be more painful/uncomfortable than just leaving it alone, so she suggested it was very optional. -- That's it. Thanks again for this, and for all you all do! Quiddity (talk) 21:58, 7 November 2021 (UTC) [and then edited once] but after 1 comment below: Quiddity (talk) 04:50, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Quiddity! I mentioned you mostly because I thought some collegial commiseration and distraction might be in order; I didn't expect a reply! I've expanded broken toe with that information, (except for the structured toebox, haven't got a cite for that yet) citing BC Health. Interestingly, they say buddy taping is also not used if someone has diabetes or peripheral areterial disease; I'm guessing this is circulation problems, but it seems a bit general. Any views, anyone?

Thank you, Dr. Vogel! It's rare for people to nominate articles they haven't written, and I can't imagine you'll make a mess of it. I like WAID's idea of doing a two-in-one nom; I've expanded broken finger a bit, though it's still far from ready.

I also made List of fracture patterns; can anyone tell me if greenstick fractures belong and whether they are a splintery fracture only seen in children or any fracture that does not go all the way through the bone? An image of an impacted fractuer is also still lacking.

I have written Metal allergy; it needs more and more diverse sources, and a mechanisms section on the immunology, but it's a start. Checks and edits very welcome. We had nickel allergy, which may still have some concealed COI sources (bleah US laws letting people fund stuff anonymously, it has one looking skeptically at anyone putting up a decent page online with no visible means of support...), and we have MELISA, which really does seem a bit promotional.

Might we want an article on vaccines specifically developed to improve vaccine equity by being easier to administer (less cold chain, longer shelf life, administered as drops not an injection, administered all at once rather than over five precisely-spaced visits, etc.)? MSF calls these adapted vaccines, a term unfortunately also used for vaccines adapted to new variants of diseases and some live vaccines (see "The Right Shot: Extending the reach of affordable and adapted vaccines". Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International.). "Accessible vaccines"? are there any other terms? HLHJ (talk) 03:33, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• 
• 

These two images seem to me to show two different things; an avulsion fracture and a tendon tear, both causing mallet finger. But the tendon-tear one is catted on Commons as a Busch fracture, and the other one I made myself by modding the first. Can anyone tell me which is right? The tendon-tear image is currently on broken finger. Thanks! HLHJ (talk) 01:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Case study = Case report?

Just to confirm I'm not running into a jargon issue here... should journals like Clinical Case Studies be categorized in Category:Case report journals? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I think so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree. And case report is definitely the term we use in the UK. I don't know about other countries, but I'm glad that's the one used in the category :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 15:45, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Added, if anyone objects they can always revert. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:48, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Science

c:COM:Wiki Loves Science is back. If you have anything science-related within reach, please consider taking a photo and uploading it to Commons. I specifically encourage WPMED folks to consider taking a picture of anything medical-ish they might use in the course of a day, whether that's vitamin pills or test tubes or million-dollar machinery. Just like HLHJ only recently realized that we didn't have an article on broken toes, we need more, and more variety, of photos.

Please consider taking multiple photos. For example, if you decide that you want to improve the photos for syringes, then try: a syringe on a white background, on a black background, every different size or type of syringe separately, all the syringes you can get in one photo, a photo that zooms in on the business end, a photo with a needle attached, without a needle attached, with a tube attached, a photo showing it being held and filled, a photo showing it filled with a colored liquid, etc. We don't need just one photo for this common object; we need all the photos.

Also, Colin once recommended to me that I put small objects on a shiny white surface and take the pictures in natural light. Since then, nearly every photo I've uploaded to Commons has featured the same white dinner plate as the background. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Improving access to Wikipedia Library search results

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T294919

A new development at WMF should improve access to Wikipedia Library search results for a given query. If and when completed, this would make results instantly available from the "WP Library" link included among the "find-sources" links in Talk page headers (along with Google, JStor, NYT, etc.) so that clicking the WP Lib link would act more like all the others. The way it is now, you have to click through the WP lib link, from there to the search page, re-enter the article title or other query, and submit the query. The new feature would return search results directly from clicking the link. This is currently being tracked in T294919. Previous discussion of this feature can be found at Module talk:Find sources#Wikipedia library. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:45, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

continues below Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Automatic 'medical sources' links in Talk page headers is now live: your feedback is needed--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety

I have come across the journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety quite a few times and I wanted to ask if it is considered a reliable source or not. It is being cited on over 100 Wikipedia articles currently for many different foods and I have not seen it questioned before. I want to improve the avocado oil article and came across this paper in their journal [1]. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:41, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@Psychologist Guy, that is one of the best-ranked journals in the entire Food science field.[2] Assuming you use it in sensible ways (e.g., that you don't write that avocado oil cures cancer, or even that it "might be a promising cancer treatment"), then it should be fine. If you run into a dispute, please come back here to get help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:43, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, I am searching for other sources on the topic as well and will try and improve that article at some point. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Disease ontology databases

@Andrawaag removed some identifiers from about a thousand Wikidata entries yesterday (example). I don't think that Disease Ontology or the Monarch Disease Ontology numbers are currently linked in Template:Medical resources (although MeSH ids are). Is this removal likely to cause problems for anyone? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

unlikely(although wikidata isn't my strong suit)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:00, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Health effects of dairy

We have several Wikipedia articles dairy, dairy product and milk. Only dairy product has a section on health research but it is very small.

Other foods have entire articles dedicated to health effects including Health effects of chocolate, health effects of coffee, health effects of salt and health effects of tea. Is an article on the health effects of dairy justified? Wikipedia does not have much information on this topic but it is well documented in the medical literature, every year they still do studies on this topic for example, [3] although most studies have been observational not randomized controlled trials. Here are some recent reviews on this topic that discuss effects of dairy.

• Intake of dairy products and associations with major atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies (2021)
• Milk consumption and multiple health outcomes: umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in humans (2021)
• An umbrella review of the evidence associating diet and cancer risk at 11 anatomical sites (2021)
• Dairy foods and health: an umbrella review of observational studies (2020)
• Role of Diet in Colorectal Cancer Incidence Umbrella Review of Meta-analyses of Prospective Observational Studies (2021)
• Milk Consumption and Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review (2021)
• Role of diet in type 2 diabetes incidence: umbrella review of meta-analyses of prospective observational studies (2019)
• Dairy foods and health: an umbrella review of observational studies (2019)

Many older reviews exist [4], [5] etc. Obviously many other sources could be added such as what the dietary recommendations are and what health authorities say. Do you think it is worth me creating an article on this topic? I ask here first for advice otherwise I don't want to create an article and just have it re-directed to the dairy product article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:06, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I clicked on one source at random, pmid:32777868 and it wasn't MEDLINE indexed, which is a concern. Sourcing for this major topic would need to be impeccable. My inclination would be to expand the dairy product article and only split out a new article if the health content became unwieldy. Alexbrn (talk) 19:16, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes World J Mens Health seems to be a bogus journal good spot but from what I can see many of the other reviews are good quality. Also some of these reviews are on just milk and others dairy products and some combine them eg. [6] so now that I think about this more, it might not be a good idea to create a new article. The milk article does have a "Nutrition and health" section but no health effects are listed. An alternative is to just expand the dairy product article health section but also expand the milk article. The first umbrella review on milk consumption was published this year [7] in a journal called Nutrition & Metabolism (I searched for this journal on Wikipedia and it is cited over 80 times) but I would ask others here about what they think about some of these sources. BTW there has been a lot of nonsense publicity at least here in the UK about this topic in the last 2 months for example the BBC even picked up on it as did about 50 newspapers [8] they published some study in Sweden claiming full fat dairy reduces CVD risk [9] and the low-carb crowd have celebrated it as some kind of victory but the data was not from controlled trials and was from a biased population sample. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:44, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Call me cynical, but I think the topic of associations between common foodstuffs and disease is an irresistible lure to blowhard scientists seeking fame, and to lay press that will lap up their over-cooked conclusions. Which is why I say sourcing must be impeccable. I'd go so far as to say that any claim of substantive health impacts from (e.g.) drinking milk falls into the realm of the WP:EXCEPTIONAL and would need sourcing accordingly. Alexbrn (talk) 19:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with @Psychologist Guy. These are solid sources and should be cited in an article on the health effects of dairy. WP:NPOV is to present the scientific evidence on the association of dairy and health, whether positive or negative. A biased view would be to shy away from these sources just because they contradict the received wisdom of "Got Milk" commercials. --Isabela31 (talk) 00:28, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I think that dairy consumption is going to be a particularly complex subject, as the effects vary by population (primarily age and race) and depend on the alternatives. By "alternatives", I mean that it's obvious to everyone that if babies are getting half their calories and most of their protein and calcium from cow's milk, and you take that away because 'milk is bad', without substituting something that also provides enough calories, protein, and calcium, then the babies will die. (Soy milk, which is fairly similar, would require drinking ~15% more volume to get the same calories and ~30% more to get the same protein as cow's milk, but the soy milk definitely wins for iron and fiber and a few other things; rice milk, on the other hand, is nearly protein-free and a simple substitution could result in stunted growth.) So the question is not just "what happens when humans drink milk", but "what happens if a human with these social, economic, and demographic characteristics consumes _____ instead of dairy", and that's complicated. The answer is not the same for an 18-month-old European child with reliable access to refrigeration and pasteurized cow's milk as for a 60-year-old impoverished Asian adult with access to neither.

Because of these complexities, I encourage you all to look for graduate-level textbooks and other reference works, especially reference works produced by UNICEFand WHO, rather than journal articles. I think you'll find broader answers and explanations of the differences if you look beyond the journal articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:53, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

COVID-19 misinformation

COVID-19 misinformation currently lists Vitamin D and Ivermectin as misinformation. Let's think this through.

Any statement has a degree of confidence associated with it. If this degree of confidence is very high, so much so that it's supported by WP:MEDRS, we put it into medical articles as true. Using my arbitrary confidence units, let's say that the threshold for this is being 90%+ confident. If the degree of confidence is low, then promoting a statement is clear misinformation. Using my arbitrary confidence scale, let's say below 20%, it's misinformation. What about if the confidence is in between? What if the confidence is 80%? We don't claim that it works because it doesn't meet WP:MEDRS. But do we really claim that it's misinformation? A claim of misinformation is a positive assertion that needs to be supported by WP:MEDRS. There might be a situation where lots of scientists say that it might work, there is some evidence that it works, but we still list it as misinformation?

Example 1. Vitamin D. The evidence in favor of Vitamin D is so high, that it's listed in the article on COVID-19 as one way to prevent the disease. Using my arbitrary confidence scale, the confidence is clearly 90%+. Yet, it is still listed in COVID-19 misinformation.

Example 2. Ivermectin. At this point, there is no WP:MEDRS evidence to support its use, so it is not listed in COVID-19, which is correct. However, there is legitimate evidence in favor of ivermectin. PMID 34650951 is one recent example, and there are many others. COVID-19 misinformation claims that all evidence in favor of ivermectin has been debunked, which is simply false. Given where we are now, it shouldn't be listed in COVID-19 but it also should not be listed in COVID-19 misinformation. --Isabela31 (talk) 17:34, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Why do you expect people to engage with you when you give false statements? The Vitamin D article does not say it is a "way to prevent the disease". The COVID-19 misinformation article does not say "all evidence in favor of ivermectin has been debunked" (though much has, and this has fuelled the misinformation). Alexbrn (talk) 17:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

A meta-analysis, published online in October 2021, concluded that “Vitamin D supplementation in SARS-CoV-2 positive patients has the potential to positively impact patients with both mild and severe symptoms.”[212]

Is that describing prevention? Treatment? It doesn't matter for my point to stand. --Isabela31 (talk) 17:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Seeing "has the potential to positively impact patient with [COVID]" and thinking that means "prevent COVID" is quite a surprising leap. Alexbrn (talk) 17:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that there is a vitamin, it's very safe (within sane limits of intake), you agree that it has the potential to positively impact patients with COVID, yet you're saying that promoting its use for COVID is misinformation. Is that correct? --Isabela31 (talk) 17:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

It's what the reliable sources say that matter. They reference a campaign in Thailand saying Vitamin D could prevent COVID infection, and some fraudulent research. Kinds of misinformation, the sources say. Alexbrn (talk) 18:00, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Prevention and treatment are not the same. The misinformation article is primarily talking about preventing the initial infection ("claims that Vitamin D pills could help prevent COVID-19"). I've seen no good evidence that taking Vitamin D pills stops SARS-CoV-2 from getting inside people. I have seen claims that once the virus has already infected you, then people who have normal Vitamin D levels are more likely to survive than people with vitamin deficiencies. "Less likely to get it in the first place" is just not the same as "less likely to die if you do get it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Let me try to explain it a different way. Let's say someone makes the statement that "X is good for disease Y". We should only include this statement in Wikipedia if it meets the stringent requirements of WP:MEDRS. WP:MEDRS is a very appropriate standard for an encyclopedia.

People outside of Wikipedia, who make statements outside of an encyclopedia, do not necessarily follow the high standards of WP:MEDRS, nor would we expect them to. The statement could have enough evidence supporting it for a reasonable doctor to make it, and yet not enough evidence for it to be included in Wikipedia. Such a statement cannot be included in Wikipedia, but it is also not "misinformation".

Just because something does not meet the standards of WP:MEDRS does not make it misinformation. Can we, as a community, decide on what "misinformation" means? Something along the lines of: the statement would have to have so little evidence supporting it that no reasonable doctor would make it. Or it could be a completely different definition, it doesn't matter to me. Do we have a definition of medical "misinformation" and if not can we come up with one? --Isabela31 (talk) 00:38, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

At the misinformation article, there are sources presenting it as such. It was not a choice of Wikipedia editors to decide that it had to be in the misinformation article simply because there is no MEDRS supporting evidence of effectiveness (even if the latter also says a lot)... Without supporting sources, it would be WP:SYNTHESIS. —PaleoNeonate – 07:51, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Exactly, we take our cue from reliable sources. The idea that taking vitamin D makes you COVID-proof or, more typically, "you don't need a vaccine, you can just take vitamin D"[10] is just classic misinformation doing the rounds, and much commented on by reliable sources. It's reality; sources describe it; Wikipedia relays that. Alexbrn (talk) 07:57, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Someone is making an exaggerated claim about vitamin D. ("you don't need a vaccine, you can just take vitamin D") Based on this, you list D as "misinformation". At the same time, there is legitimate medical evidence in favor of D. One of many examples: PMID 34739473. The evidence probably is not WP:MEDRS, but outside of the encyclopedia, it could be reasonable for some legitimate doctors to follow it. Listing D as "misinformation" is highly misleading.

For example, let's say someone makes an exaggerated claim about vaccines, such as "once you get the vaccine, you don't need to do anything else: don't need to socially distance, wear masks". This claim is exaggerated and contrary to official recommendations. Based on this, would you list vaccines as "misinformation"? I hope not. It's the same with vitamin D. It has real scientific support. Listing it as "misinformation" is misleading. You're listing vitamin D in the same article as 5G mobile phones and cocaine. --Isabela31 (talk) 21:07, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Does it feel like including the subject means the whole subject is misinformation? Like if the table of contents lists "Breastfeeding infants" (which it does), then everything about breastfeeding infants and COVID is being maligned as misinformation? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes it does.

At a minimum, we should provide wider context. "The statement that X does A is misinformation, however, some bone fide doctors thought that there was good reason to believe that X might do B". But some editors could object to this, because the "X might do B" part might not meet WP:MEDRS. There must be a way of including this contextual information, and at the same time to be clear that we are not saying that it's met our encyclopedic standard as being true, but that we're saying that some reasonable doctors have enough evidence to think that it might be true.

Anyone can make a stupid or an exaggerated claim about anything. Does this mean that all the things belong in the "misinformation" article? What if someone is making exaggerated claims about vaccines? Will we put those claims in the article? --Isabela31 (talk) 04:24, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Depends what the sources say. The ideas that vitamin D can "prevent" infection, and/or that it's a useful alternative to vaccination, are misinformation per good RS, and that is what the article says. Lots of doctors are quacks, and have been spouting nonsense during the pandemic. Wikipedia isn't going to indulge that or second guess which of them might be "reasonable" and have a kind of "truth" that strict-old Wikipedia can't account for. Alexbrn (talk) 07:20, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Medical citation needed

I hope everyone has seen this mess, because it seems to affect us (I just added some mcns to an article, and got a mess-- since the template is under discussion, you get that mess within article text):

• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#Template:MCN

I can't make heads nor tails of that mess; just want to be sure I can use an {{mcn}}, so I hope someone will tell me how to !vote. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

So if I tag this sentence with {{mcn}} it will result in the following nonsense?. I agree that is a mess.CV9933 (talk) 11:41, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep :) But at least I know now that we can use {{MEDCN}} instead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Editathon to improve health knowledge

Hi! Starting from tomorrow Creative Commons and Wikimedia Venezuela are planning to organize an online editathon to create and improve articles about medicine and nutrition. I thought it would be a good idea to invite experienced editors from this Wikiproject, and I'm sure their feedback will be invaluable regarding possible suggestons for the pages as well as further articles that could be started. Please let me know if you have any questions. Best regards! --NoonIcarus (talk) 01:46, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@NoonIcarus, welcome to WikiProject Medicine. One of the most common mistakes people make when editing articles about nutrition is using weak sources. Is this something that your group has talked about? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I gave recommendations regarding sources about an article about nutrition, but not in general. That's definitely something we'll consider, thank you! Please also feel free to join if you want to. --NoonIcarus (talk) 08:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Being crazy specific, you might like to read through WP:MEDRS with your students maybe with a worked example in mind and maybe digging up some conversations regarding MEDRS. But don't think of that as something you *have* to do, I'm just some guy on the internet after all... (fixed typos in edit) Talpedia (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Talpedia: Awesome! No worries, that should be very helpful :) Once again, thank you very much! --NoonIcarus (talk) 21:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There's also the WP:UPSD script, which I feel organizers/reviewers should make use to quickly filter out the weakeast/crappiest of sources, because edithathons have a tendency to use google to find sources, and lots of seemingly-legit-but-actually-horrible sources get picked up that way. It doesn't pick everything up, but it catches a lot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

MEDMOS and suicide

There have been a couple of discussions recently about how we write about suicide. I'd like to put something in MEDMOS about suicide-related content. If you are interested in this subject, please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#New section on suicide and self-harm. I'm imagining something that says encyclopedia articles are for summarizing facts, not for indulging in sensationalism, only in slightly more detail. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Concerns about Multiple sclerosis editing

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with Multiple sclerosis.

• JCJC777, and Multiple sclerosis, and long-term concerns unheeded SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Caution using NIH bios

If you are ever tempted to source a biography to NIH bios, see these interesting claims about “novel treatments” relative to what these sources (PMID 30996598, PMID 29309797, PMID 31111754) say about antibiotic prophylaxis and immunomodulatory therapies. (There are dozens of reviews going back a decade saying same—they are unsupported by evidence, and carry risks.) Take care when using subject’s own bio to source a biography.

In fact, considering the controversy that has been visited upon children with Tourette syndrome and OCD for several decades now, why do we continue to preference the NIH in our sourcing at all? (Spectrum News deep dive on PANDAS) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

NIH and Orphanet absolutely need to be treated with caution -- there are cases where they're useful sources, but they can and do mirror us and do other questionable things. There's an article, Impossible syndrome, that I'm very skeptical about -- it seems to be a case report of a single subject whose pattern of malformations semi-jokingly referred to as an "impossible syndrome" in the article, spun into an entire syndrome by an enthusiastic editor. It has a partial mirror on NIH and formerly on Orphanet (archive of old Orphanet profile). There does seem to be some risk of esssentially reputation-laundering of rare or unconfirmed reports into syndromes. Vaticidalprophet 05:31, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

That article is absurd. One case and one source does not a condition make! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Aye, and the one source appears to be the only one. I've sent it to AFD. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:40, 24 November 2021 (UTC)