Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 19

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Looking for citations

I see on alexa.com that Wikipedia is ranked at #6. Are there any other references, perhaps from a scientific journal, etc., available that I can site relative rank of Wikipedia among other top websites? I would prefer to cite something other than alexa if possible. ---kilbad (talk) 15:18, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that it is necessary to use a scientific journal as it is not a scientific statement you are trying to make but more just a statistical fact. Any secondary source, perhaps one discussing web trends could be used? If not then Alexa I think would be ok, it is not really controversial what you are wanting to state.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, is stats.grok.se the best place to get page view statistics? Is there anywhere I can get some background information on what grok.se is all about? ---kilbad (talk) 16:01, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Yea, stats.grok.se tells you basically how many people have viewed an article page per day, week or month. I am not aware off the top of my head of any other tools for generating page view statistics. You can read more about it on their "about" page.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:37, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to find...

Is it possible to find the number of new pages created within a certain time frame which are within the scope of a particular project. Restated, and more specifically, if I wanted to know how many new dermatology-related articles had been created since Nov 08, how could I find that out? Could I use the derm assessment data somehow? ---kilbad (talk) 19:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

You probably need a query using the toolserver. User:Mzmcbride is the first name that springs to mind as someone who could tell you either if it's possible or where is best to request the information. --RexxS (talk) 19:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

You might also look into User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult. It might be the closest thing that we currently have to what you want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Google editors

I have made a number of suggestion to improving our collaboration with google Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project. Comments would be appreciated.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

One concern is that a number of google editors are recommending against journals that are not free access. I am not sure how to send a note out to all of them that none free access journals are acceptable.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Where are these discussions taking place? (Do they need an explanation of the "off-wiki consensus" rule?)

Fundamentally, I think that we need to use the best available sources, and use paywall issues only to choose between two equally ideal sources. If Google wants a pay-walled paper to be freely available to the world, then that can usually be arranged -- either by Google paying the publisher their open access fee, or by special arrangement with the author (who sometimes hold the copyrights and thus can reproduce the paper on their own websites). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

This is part of the google.org project linked above.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:49, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but how are we communicating with these editors? They're not posting to the Google project page, and they're not posting here. How exactly do you know that they are recommending against paywall journals? Where did they say this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is one comment which says this [1] and it has been stated in one other place. It is unfortunate that these reviews do not seem to be getting involved either here or the google project page.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Good point, WAID. I was wondering about where this project is occurring. I keep seeing references to it but no actual messages between WP editors and the Google folks (who, incidentally, mostly (or all?) seem to work for a journal article editing company in North Carolina called American Journal Experts. Isn't this a bit odd?Postpostmod (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is were the discussion is taking place [2] and [3] But some more background on this would be nice. Who are these people who have joined? Are they reimbursed by google? Etc Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's where we're talking... to no one but ourselves, as far as I can tell.

My guess is that the reviewers (whose efforts I sincerely and deeply appreciate) are only looking at their assigned articles. This means that we're likely to have to explain the same issues to each one, individually, at each and every article, instead of having a centralized communication point for them. In the meantime, I suspect that we need to get a few more people to watchlist some or all of the articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Good idea to get more people to watchlist the articles - but seems like a laborious way to check, for the long haul. Regarding transparency of communication, I posted at the project talk page [4] asking TimV how he's communicating with the editors. I'm not sure if that's the best way to contact him about it, though.Postpostmod (talk) 13:00, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Will someone merge histories

Initially, the list of cutaneous condition was found at a different location than it is now. Initially, the list was found at what is now called "cutaneous conditions." However, after various moves and renames, the list if now at "list of cutaneous conditions." However, the history of the list is fractured, and I wanted to know if someone could tidy up the histories somehow? If that is even possible? Basically, I would like to see the history of edits starting from here to here moved over to the beginning of the history of the list of cutaneous conditions. Is that possible? I just want to be able to track the history of the development of the list in one place. ---kilbad (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I dont this is doable, we tried to do it previously, and admins confirmed that it cannot be done MaenK.A._Talk 16:05, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Craniosacral therapy pseudoscience needs fixing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniosacral_therapy#The_primary_respiratory_mechanism

This has been tagged for some time and needs to be brought up to MEDRS standards. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you help me generate this data?

First, for pages within the scope of the Dermatology task force, I am looking to get a listing of articles that are either good or featured status, and the date at which they were given that status. Second, I am looking for some data stating how many derm-related pages have images, and how many do not. Could someone help me with this? Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

There are 10 GA, 1 FA and 1 FL [5] Here is the list of GA [6]. Do not know about images. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:11, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

If you give me a list of "derm-related pages", I can get the # of pages with images and pull the images for you. MastCell ^Talk 17:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

All the pages are list within the Category:Dermatology_task_force_articles. Can you use that? ---kilbad (talk) 17:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Or, here is a listing with 1000 results per page: [7] ---kilbad (talk) 17:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I can use the category - it should be straightforward to work up a script to pull all of the categorized articles, and then mine them for images. MastCell ^Talk 17:55, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Can we somehow compare the number of photos present now, as compared with October 2008, before the derm taskforce was started? ---kilbad (talk) 17:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It could be done, but would take a bit more work. Basically, you could use the API to pull the last page revision before October 1, 2008, and compare the number of images to the current page revision. It's a bit iffy since Wikipedia is sort of a moving target, and there are probably a lot of articles that weren't around back in 10/08... but if you're interested, it shouldn't require more than a bit of tinkering. MastCell ^Talk 23:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

• OK, I've trialed a script to collect the data you're interested in. The results are at User:MastCell/Dermatology Images. (Note that the page is very large, as there are ~2,000 articles tagged, so I don't recommend opening it on a mobile device or over a dialup connection unless you're very patient).

  The script I worked up is at User:MastCell/dermimages.py, if anyone cares. The tricky thing is that a lot of pages have non-content images - that is, images from stub templates, maintenance templates, navigation templates, etc. I figure you don't want to count those, so I wrote a set of "excludable" images into the script. The set isn't complete - so I need to go through the output, find the non-content images, and add them by hand to the global exclude list in the script. That will make the count more accurate.

  I realized halfway through that you're probably most interested in the raw number of pages without images, which isn't readily available from the output I created. I'll modify the script to total up the # of pages, # with zero images, # with 1 image, # with 2 images, etc... it will be easy, but I'll probably get to it tomorrow. In the meantime, the table of results can be sorted by # of images, but that's probably not a great workaround. MastCell ^Talk 03:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Virginia Livingston

Someone just created a page for Virginia Livingston, and is using it as a transparent and inappropriate soapbox for her therapies being unjustly maligned, using medically unreliable sources, including extensive use of "personal communication". Any interested editors, I'll be culling and rewriting for a while, but review and input is welcome. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:03, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Transcendental meditation(TM)

I have done some work on this topic which is now before arbcom. TM makes a number of health claims including improving BP, anxiety, and living forever. A member of Arbcom has concluded that the ongoing debates is "really about conflicting philosophies: on the one hand we have, for want of a better word, mysticism; on the other, rationalism." [8] Wondering if others could comment as this does pertain directly with our topic area. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

It is quite possible that ArbCom does not appreciate the higher standards of sourcing agreed for medical claims in WP:MEDRS. I'm not sure how best to raise the issue with them at this late stage, but I'll think about it and try to formulate another post to the Proposed decision talk page. If any other project members feel strongly about the sourcing issues – and how they may affect us – I'd recommend making your views known there. --RexxS (talk) 02:45, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Isoflurane

Could someone with experience in the area of anesthetics please have a look at the recent IP edits to isoflurane? They are presumably well-intentioned, but made by a someone whose native language is probably not English. Also, though this is not my area of expertise, I suspect there may be some over-interpretation of the cited references. ChemNerd (talk) 11:43, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I have no medical experience of anesthetics, as I am not an MD, but I have when reading through refs when working midazolam to GA status, found several references which discussed the neurotoxicity potential of general anesthetics. However, they were all talking about the neonate (and I think also pregnancy), causing apoptosis at doses equivalent to those used in humans. The FDA is currently investigating these issues. The two worst offenders were isoflurane and ketamine but all GABAergic and NMDA antagonist drugs seem implicated and combining anesthetic agents, eg giving a premed of midazolam or nitrous oxide with for example isoflurane appears to enhance the degree of apoptosis. With regard to the elderly, I did speak to a doctor who said that post-operative cogitive decline is fairly common and can be short-lasting or long-lasting. So it seems the very young and the elderly are more vulnerable to the effects of general anesthetics. I did do some rewriting and deleted and added some text. The sourcing for that section is not the best and if anyone wants to take the time to find recent reviews on post-operative decline it would be of value; I may do so when I get a chance.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 11:19, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look and thanks for your improvements to the article. ChemNerd (talk) 14:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Chagas disease review available

User:BSW-RMH has posted a great review at Talk:Chagas_disease#External_review_comments. This featured article (from 2005) is in pretty good shape, but this list of improvements will give it a good update and correct a small number of inaccurate statements. One of the things I particularly appreciate in the review is that the recommendations are concrete, specific, and actionable -- like, 'This uses the 2002 numbers, and the 2004 stats can be found here', or 'This newer source might replace that older one'.

If you're looking for a way to help out, please consider picking an open item from the review (at the moment, look under "Management", "Epidemiology", and "References"), and helping us take advantage of this opportunity to correct and update this featured article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I have updated the map. We created over a hundred with the first bunch based on 2002 data. Half way through we found a 2004 data set from the WHO. Not all the maps have yet been updated. The 2004 ones are here. [9] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

New article: Save the Children State of the World's Mothers report

I've begun an article on Save the Children's State of the World's Mothers report. This year's report seems of particular relevance to upcoming events at the 36th G8 summit. I've just proposed a rather provocative T:DYK hook for it, which unfortunately seems to be true however preposterous it might sound:

• ... that Save the Children's State of the World's Mothers report ranked the U.S. 28th, citing a lifetime risk of maternal death five times greater in the U.S. than in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

I would welcome your insights. Mike Serfas (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Data would look best turned into the form of maps. There is a guy over at Wikimedia who has help me generate alot of maps who would probably be willing to help. [10] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I thought about making the .svg map for the set of 57 countries with critical shortages of healthcare workers shown in the report. Also, I suppose some of the statistics (child mortality) might be bracketed and colorized. Is that what you mean? (I know how to do this, but thanks) Mike Serfas (talk) 02:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is an example of such a map [11] One could create on for mortality. It would give a quick world wide comparison of rates in different areas of the globe. Africa would of course light up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for prodding me in this direction. I hadn't expected the regional variation to be as apparent as it is. The article currently has nine such maps. Mike Serfas (talk) 23:20, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Image

Wondering if we have any artists here who would be interested in creating illustrations a la Frank Netter? We could use one for Cushings syndrome such as this one [12] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons

The WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLPs) aims to reduce the number of unreferenced biographical articles to under 30,000 by June 1, primarily by enabling WikiProjects to easily identify UBLP articles in their project's scope. There were over 52,000 unreferenced BLPs in January 2010 and this has been reduced to 32,665 as of May 16. A bot is now running daily to compile a list of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Unreferenced BLPs. As of May 17 you have approximately 23 articles to be referenced. The list of all other WikiProject UBLPs can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 16:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Simple wikipedia

I recently became involved in Simple English Wikipedia, and it has come to my attention that this Wikipedia has very few medical articles. Although I have written a few articles there, including hepatocellular carcinoma,this Wikipedia remains in great need of expanded medical coverage. I would encourage any editors involved in wikiproject medicine to help out there as well. Regards. Immunize (talk) 17:59, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

This Wikipedia also needs a great deal of work :-) I have been trying to decrease the number of different volunteer medical wikis and consolidate the input here without any luck. We have Wikidoc.org , Ganfyd.org , Askdrwiki.com, and Medpedia.com all duplicating the effort. Instead of one great source we have a multitude of okay sources.

A number of these projects have medical school contributing. This would be a good way forwards for us too I think. McMaster just started a Wikipedia club. I emailed them but never heard a response. Does anyone know who started it? Or how to contact them? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Docs come and go on Wikipedia. But many don't stay long. The usual problem with experts in general--- too frustrating having to deal with all the nonsense and abusive untrained editors on a mission from God. So there are not many physicians here at any one time. Too bad. Drjem3 (talk) 02:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

To tell you the truth my greatest troubles have not been with untrained lay people but that is another story :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Wondering if this should be merged to silicosis? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Wowwwww... That is a name...!!! I will not merge since we may loose the longest single-word article name... :-) --Garrondo (talk) 18:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

This is actually the longest word in the english language, so this is, more than likely, the only reason that it has its own article. Based on quality standards here on Wikipedia, it would be favorable to merge the two, but some will argue against this based on the notability of the word itself. Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I would say than since the term is the important thing (it says that it was specially invented to serve as the the longest word), and it has an specific history for the term the notable as said above is the word, much less than the meaning... What I would do is to eliminate any medice-related content, (the disease subsection) and only leave info on the word itself.--Garrondo (talk) 10:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that it has any significant possibility of expanding beyond a stub, so perhaps merging and redirecting to the section in Longest word in English that addresses it would be a good choice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Lupus erythematosus

Wondering if this page would best be served by merging it into Systemic lupus erythematosus or turning it into a disambig? I have never heard the term use on it own without systemic or discoid in from and am unable to find a ref pertaining to it.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not think this article should be merged with SLE. There are many different types of lupus, as is illustrated by the current types section. With regard to references, see chapter 8 of Andrews for a full discussion on this group of diseases. ---kilbad (talk) 16:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes I agree there are many types of lupus. But Lupus_erythematosus is described in fitzpatricks as a spectrum of diseases rather than a single disease. I have changed the page to reflect this thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Data

Anyway to generate how many hits the sum of all article pages in this project get? Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Heartburn

We are having a discussion on whether or not heartburn should be used as a symptoms of burning in the chest (as in emergency medicine) or as a disease synonymous with GERD a burning sensation in the chest due to reflux. (as in gastroenterology). Comments welcome [13] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I think there are reasons to go either way, but what matters to me is that Wikipedia have all the information somewhere. Consequently, this question needs some attention from someone who knows what other pages we have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Well we do not have a page on burning sensation in the chest which we would need if we decide that heartburn is strictly a burning sensation in the chest due to reflux.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

We do have an article Reflux which has nothing to do with the above. Hordaland (talk) 14:13, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a reminder that Talk:Heartburn#The_question is waiting for responses. This isn't a "right/wrong" issue; it's just something we have to decide before the article can be properly fixed up. If you've got an opinion, no matter what it is, please let them know what it is. (Grateful thanks to Scray, who is the only editor who has taken time to comment so far.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Basal ganglia image nominated for featured picture

This image of the circuits of the basal ganglia is again put at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates after some improvements. In the first nomination, it didn't get enough votes, so your opinion is very appreciated. See Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Basal ganglia circuits (2nd nomination). Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Our Impact

Total page views for all medical pages on Wikipedia.

Month	Hits
July 2009	142,598,369
August 2009	147,795,383
September 2009	155,748,923
October 2009	(Poor data )2,333,119
November 2009	156,086,120
December 2009	132,352,902
January 2010	127,366,430
February 2010	140,750,494
March 2010	162,087,808
April 2010	157,343,696

I have added our impact here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages. Wikipedia medicine is popular. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

THAT IS QUITE A LOT OF PEOPLE...Amazing...--Garrondo (talk) 07:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - interesting what people look up (cocaine & oxycodone above aspirin, paracetamol, asthma drugs, cardiac/lipid drugs). Top 20 only have 2 High importance topics and 10 are are low/mid-importance.

Some topics though I dispute are in our remit - incest is about the social aspects, the subtopic linked to of Consanguinity addresses the genetic/medical aspects - I've moved the project assessment across (and downgraded its generally importance in the practice of medicine to low).

Why is chlorine on the list - no talk-page assessment for us ?

Not sure as doctors, vs social anthropologists, we can work up the poorer rated items to at least GA status (Sex, Masturbtion, Vulva, Female ejaculation, Cocaine in the top 10 for a start). David Ruben ^Talk 16:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I have removed a number of these in the last few week such as chlorine and the page has not been updated which is why they still show up.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Keeping our banner off of non-medical articles requires constant effort. I think it is often added by people who aren't aware of more appropriate projects, like WikiProject Anatomy, WikiProject Health and fitness, WikiProject Alternative Medicine, and WikiProject Sexuality (you can find a reasonably complete list at WP:MEDA). We are pushing back against society's efforts to medicalize everyday life, but there may well be more people who want to classify sexual intercourse and eating as medical procedures than there are editors keeping an eye on the assessments. But sometimes it's appropriate; we'll tag an article that has a substantial medical section, even if it's not primarily or entirely a medical subject. (These usually end up with low priority ratings from us.) I really appreciate the efforts of editors to substitute more appropriate project banners whenever they encounter them.

Along those lines, we have a goal of listing more than 100 articles at Category:Top-importance medicine articles (currently about 75). These should mostly be fundamental, big-picture subjects, like Cancer, Pregnancy, or Heart disease. I'd like to invite any task force, specialist, or person with a particular area of interest to help me identify the one to three most important diseases or classes of treatment in your area of interest. If these articles aren't currently rated top-importance, please leave a note at WT:MEDA with your recommendation for an upgrade.

Additionally, if anyone would like to scroll through Category:High-importance medicine articles and weed out the obviously unimportant articles (and anatomy), I'd appreciate it. "Top" gets some vandalism, so I keep a pretty close eye on it, but "High" has been pretty much neglected. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Have added sepsis and anaphylaxis Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:10, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Types of psychological depression

Hi. On its Talk page, I'm suggesting this article be merged with Mood disorder or deleted. Your input would be welcome. Anthony (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

merging Category:Medical fiction to Category:Medicine and health in fiction

I'm not sure if the WikiProject covers this, well, FYI

the merging of the above has been proposed, see

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_May_22

70.29.210.155 (talk) 04:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I would consider this outside our scope. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:54, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Help tagging redirects automatically

Another user has generated a list of untagged derm-related redirects. I wanted to know if someone could help tag these redirect talk pages with

{{WPMED|class=redirect|importance=|dermatology=yes}}

? Perhaps there is an automated way to do this? Thanks in advance for your help! ---kilbad (talk) 02:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

We do not tag redirect do we? That would mess up the numbers for our article counts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

We have been tagging them at WP:DERM. They are reflected in assessment data as redirects (see WP:DERM:A) and, as a result, should not interfere with the remaining data. ---kilbad (talk) 03:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah fancy thanks for clearing that up.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

So can someone help do this in an automated fashion? ---kilbad (talk) 16:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

It would be relatively easy to code, but would require approval from the bot approval group, since it would entail using a script to make edits. I haven't navigated that process before - you might want to approach the folks there with your proposal, and I bet someone more experienced with that process could help you out. If not, let me know. MastCell ^Talk 16:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Betacommand has done similar things in the past, so the code exists/could be made pretty easily (this page may have part of it).

One decision that you'd need to make is whether you really want to tag 100% of redirects. It might be reasonable to tag synonyms, but do you want to tag alternate capitalizations, or spelling differences? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been asked by Calmer Waters if I can run this. Just letting you know my response is here. Unless there are any complaints, I should be running this task shortly. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 13:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Diseases Database

Members of this project might benefit from What is in the Diseases Database? Diseases Database. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:15, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Please look at the average medical article. There are usually links to the database in the infobox. JFW | T@lk 19:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diseasesdatabase.com%2Fcontent.asp, but apparently not http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diseasesdatabase.com%2F.

Wavelength (talk) 20:11, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Someone to have a look at move of gene synthesis

Could someone please have a look at the requested move of Gene synthesis → Synthetic DNA (see Talk:Gene synthesis#Requested move)? I'm thinking of making additional changes to the article once the location is determined, but can't move it myself. Mikael Häggström (talk) 11:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

If no one here is willing to do this move, you could try at WT:MCB. Those folks might be more familiar with the topic. Regards, P. D. Cook ^{Talk to me!} 12:08, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I should try there. Mikael Häggström (talk) 04:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Stefan H.E. Kaufmann

I added what appears to be a legitimate source so that this new article would not be subject to the BLP PROD, but it could still use a lot of TLC from someone who knows how to develop articles about academics. Thanks! Active Banana (talk) 20:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Quality assessment of "Bilateral cingulotomy"

Bilateral cingulotomy seems to need reassessment. Substantial content was added two years ago, yet it's still flagged as a stub.--Uanfala (talk) 10:26, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Changed to C.--Garrondo (talk) 10:40, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Maps of death rates

Lokal just finished some more maps looking at number of deaths rather than DALYs if people want to add any. [14] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:42, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move of banner template

See Template talk:WPMED#Requested move. –xeno^talk 18:04, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Wilson's syndrome - more eyes?

I'd like to request outside input at Wilson's syndrome (note: distinct from Wilson's disease). This is a medically unrecognized entity. The article seems to be watched by me and by a handful of IPs/single-purpose accounts. Rather than participate further in a back-and-forth, I'd like to solicit some outside eyes. Any input would be welcome. The dispute revolves (IMO at least) around the repeated removal of reliable sources by the IP/single-purpose editors. MastCell ^Talk 20:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

MHC restriction

Could someone here take a look at the latest edit to this article please? I can't tell whether it's another vandalism edit or a valid addition. Thank you. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 00:32, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

The whole article needs references.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Anti-psychiatry

There is a long anti-psychiatry rant in the Freedom of thought article under the section Canada. I think the article needs to be reworked and purged of the nonsense.

A small part of the section may be appropriate for the anti-psychiatry article; the idea that psychiatrists substantially limit freedom of thought is a point that could be discussed (and shown to be nonsense). Nephron  T|C 02:23, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes does appear that who ever wrote it is upset. Looks like original research.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:48, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

it might be off-topic, but: why do my psychiatrists say (e. g. in an expertise for a judge court even in writing (i think somebody helped him with that)), that it is a part of a "delusion-system", that i believe, that psychiatrists irreversibly hurt me in the past (i read that here and i still cant believe that long-term contact to mentally ill people is helpful (the MDs take a lot of money even for a few minutes... - in 1991 they even received "billing points" for saying "hello"...)...)? r they making fun of me (in 1991 their very special eeg device made my eye lids twitch and the nurse always screamed that i shall not twitch...)? --Homer Landskirty (talk) 08:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not understand the question above. There is an active discussion of whether or not outcomes are better for schizophrenia in the third world were psychiatric care is less [15] if that is what you mean? Discussion of these issues need to be based on reliable review articles.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:25, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

hm - ok - i just wondered how they know if something is delusive or not... --Homer Landskirty (talk) 08:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this editor is alledging that they suffered long-term damage from psychiatric drugs (tardive dyskinesia, I think) and his healthcare professional denies this. Nobody here can personally advise you, but when harm is done by a professional, it is sometimes easier for them to deny it to avoid a lawsuit or avoid accepting responsibilty etc. A lot of people benefit from psychiatric drugs, but unfortunately some people are harmed or even damaged by them, which is probably why there is controversy and sometimes drama on psychiatry related wikipedia articles and an antipsychiatry movement. Tardive dyskinesia, has quite characteristic features to it which aren't subjective, but are obvious to the outside observer so you either have it or you do not and can easily be diagnosed. I would imagine it is possible to delude that one has TD but really you need to talk to your doctor, or get a second opinion from another doctor if you don't trust your current one. If you read up at the top of this project page it will explain that this project is not able to give medical advice. Best of luck. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

oki doke --Homer Landskirty (talk) 10:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Boerhaave syndrome

Wondering if we should move this to esophageal rupture as this is the term used by the ICD10 as medicine attempts to move away from peoples names.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:37, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that makes sense. A redirect for the eponym would be fine. MastCell ^Talk 21:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

ENT images

I have spoken with Dr. T. Balasubramanian who has agree to release his images as CC BY SA. The atlas is here [16]. Do we have a page were we keep track of source of medical images which can be used on Wikipedia?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:00, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I have started a page to list source we can use. And misconceptions about ones we may not. Resources Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:00, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Have expanded it further here to include text sources aswell. I know some of this is already on the WP:MEDRS page. Wondering once it is polished if we should move this content to the WP:MED page?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:57, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Copyright

Also does anyone know the copyright status of the A.D.A.M. images? We use a bunch of them but they appear to be under copyright [17]. Images include [18], [19], [20], and ohers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I have started a discussion here.[21] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Cancer classification system

The TNM cancer classification has recently been updated in this 2010 text: Edge, SB, Byrd, DR, Compton, CC, et al (Eds). AJCC (American Joint Committee on Cancer) Cancer Staging Manual, 7th ed, Springer, New York, 2010.

If anyone feels inspired.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Page listing resources for editors

I have created a page here listing resources to help editors in this project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Resources. Wondering if we should list this at WP:MED and WP:MEDRS? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:23, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

No good deed goes unpunished

Heartened by the influx of outside eyes and helpful input at Wilson's syndrome, I have another such request. There is currently a rather active discussion at Talk:Abortion about how to best present the health risks associated with abortion. Actually, it's basically 3 editors (one of them me) going around in circles, so I think more input would be useful. I'm asking here since a lot of the issues turn on WP:MEDRS and the appropriate representation of procedural risks. I will say upfront that I personally think that the interpretation of WP:MEDRS being pushed on the talk page is extreme and divergent from the actual content of the guideline. As one might imagine, it's a controversial topic and prone to agenda-driven editing, but all the more reason to ask for more outside eyes. So if anyone feels brave, any additional input would be welcome. MastCell ^Talk 20:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry it's taken me several days to get round to doing it, but I've added my thoughts at the talk page on the nature of secondary sources and the issue of annotating a source as a particular POV. I strongly agree with Mastcell that more contributions from uninvolved editors would be helpful. --RexxS (talk) 01:07, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Request for help

I ran across John D. Lambris while new page patrolling. It was copied exactly from the subject's website and tagged by Corenbot. I have removed the copyrighted portion and tried to work on it, but I don't really know anything about science/medicine and would be very grateful for an expert on the subject to pick this up. A Google News archive search yields several results. Help? PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 19:45, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

You might have better luck at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Will do. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 19:58, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Tables as articles

An editor has created medical articles that consist solely of tables: Fibrous lesions and Polyp table. I don't know what to make of them, as they lack leads or any other context. Types of myxomas was already redirected. Fences&Windows 00:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that the present Fibrous lesions article looks like the basis for the Classification and Signs and symptoms sections of a potentially larger article of that name. I would guess that anyone who knows where to find the sources could write the Causes, Prognosis, etc. I would expect the lead to define what a fibrous lesion is and then briefly summarise the rest. It looks to my non-medic eye like a reasonable starting point.

It looks like James has made good use of the polyp table already (although I don't think the redirect left behind is of any use so I'll tag it for deletion). After looking a bit harder, Polyp table (even though a rather useless redirect) has a useful page history, so can't be deleted for reasons of attribution. --RexxS (talk) 01:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

James didn't make very good use of it. He pasted it into an article about the cnidarians, not the medical condition. Fences&Windows 02:06, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes my fault. Fixed it. Got called away in the middle of editing.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Hehe, I'm well embarrassed as well. Still, all's well that ends well. --RexxS (talk) 02:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Request: Radiation (pain)

Hello fellow medics! Radiation (pain) should be a far bigger article IMHO.

Unfortunately I do not know enough about this subject and have exams coming up so haven't got much time.

Any improvements would be a big improvement for such an important article, please contribute if you can. Best regards, Captain n00dle\^Talk 22:17, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

This is usually only discussed within the context of the condition in which it occurs sciatic, myocardial infarction etc.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

A section in Pain would not be out of place. If no one else does, I'll get round to it soon. (I've just bought a bunch of pain textbooks.) Anthony (talk) 05:26, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a synonym of referred pain. Should we just redirect? Anthony (talk) 07:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree redirect.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Probably redirect, however Radiation of pain is the characteristic of referred pain (radiation is the symptom that the patient feels due to referred pain). Thank you for your input, kind regards, Captain n00dle\^Talk 21:50, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I think both uses are so similar that even though there is a slight difference they are best dealt with together.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:07, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Croup

Have rewritten croup and put it up for GAN. If anyone would be so obliging to review it. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

• Hey Doc - per your request, I have taken the liberty of going through the entire article. I did a considerable amount of very minor (amateur) copy editing, without really doing much else. It was a good article, and I enjoyed reading and editing it. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about coding this stuff to do anything about the spacing issue in the classification section - hope I didn't cause it, and hope you can fix it. In any case, I do think it reads a bit better now. Nice job!

Very best regards: Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks and made a few further tweaks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I love and need this tool...

What is up with the diberri template filler? ---kilbad (talk) 14:43, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

You can find it at: [22]. We can not live without it :-) --Garrondo (talk) 14:46, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes I know greatest tool ever :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:13, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Study finds Wikipedia's cancer info extremely accurate

but not very readable. FYI. --Hordaland (talk) 22:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I've seen similar discussions before. I believe that SandyGeorgia(?) pointed out a new tool that examines the "readability" of articles. However my concern about "dumbing down" these medical articles is that the "comprehensiveness" of articles would fall. I don't believe that "there was no difference between the sites in depth of coverage" can possibly apply to our featured articles, "Acute myeloid leukemia", "Cholangiocarcinoma" and "Lung cancer". Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Increasing readability doesn't have to equal dumbing down. Take a few extra long sentences and break them into 2 (or 3) sentences which are at least as clear as the original one, and you may knock a year off the readability score (like 12th grade level to 11th grade level). And inevitably writing-by-committee will make for a mixture of styles.

Another reaction, however, to the above cited article, is about the point they make of providing patient information. We have, and should have, a wider audience than that, I think. --Hordaland (talk) 10:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with H well PDQ writes specifically for patients we write for the general population. It is not hard to make stuff more readable using link for difficult terms and easier grammer. This is important not only for those with less education but for those whose first language is not English. We are I presume a common resource for physicians in third world countries who do not have access to comprehensive medical libraries. Thus we need to be wider in scope and more indepth than say PDQ.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I am unconvinced that long sentences and awkward grammar are major problems in medical Wikipedia articles. In "Acute myeloid leukemia", massaging the text of the "Diagnosis", "Pathophysiology", "Treatment" & "Prognosis" sections is not going to make the text significantly easier to read. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:25, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Readability calculations don't account for the effect of wikilinks. If you use a "difficult" word, like osteoporosis, you get dinged for it, no exceptions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

OUTDENT - Just for fun I'm checking readablility of "Acute myeloid leukemia" using the SMOG site & noting here some results.

1. LEAD has 22 words/sentence and 15% complex words, grade level about 13 (1st year college, age 18-19).
2. DIAGNOSIS has 24 words/sentence, 23% complex words, grade level about 16.
3. PATHOPHYSIOLOGY has 25 words/sentence, 22% complex words, grade level about 16.
4. TREATMENT has 22 words/sentence, 25% complex words, grade level about 16.
5. PROGNOSIS (excluding the table & subtitles) has 18 words/sentence, 24% complex words, grade level about 14.

This was fun and a new experience. One gets a whole lot more info, and quickly, than I've picked out here; these are not the only parameters examined. A machine may not define a word or a complex word the way a person would. It gives just a rough idea. Readability, aside from typography etc, is a whole science. In the U.S., certain types of info to the public must be kept within certain grade levels, sometimes grade level 7. This paragraph tests at grade level 6! --Hordaland (talk) 12:11, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

That is a really cool site. I just ran gout and croup and they come back at reading level 7. Both I think give good overviews of the topic useful for both the general public and professionals. Reading AML we have sentences like "its incidence increases with age" which could be written "it becomes more common with age", "relapse rate varies" could be "reoccurs in" or even "comes back in". I do think it is a great article and had suggested a clinical English Wikipedia a while back ( I am not sure still if that was a good suggestion ) but would have addressed this aswell as other concerns. I guess the question is "should this be a priority for us?" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:27, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I know this is an evergreen debate, but I do want to encourage caution in attempts to reduce the reading level. For example, in the example above, "its incidence increases with age" is not quite equivalent with "it becomes more common with age", because there is an important distinction between incidence and prevalence. The use of longer words and more precise syntax is often not as gratuitous as it appears. --Arcadian (talk) 20:50, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes however in this case both the incidence and the prevalence increase with age [23]. So I think one could say that "it becomes more common with age" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:27, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that one must exercise caution! After writing the above I read, very carefully, the Diagnosis section of Acute myeloid leukemia, and I couldn't see a reasonable way to lower the grade level on that section. I don't doubt that this is an evergreen debate. I do believe one should keep the matter in mind while writing/editing. --Hordaland (talk) 23:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I will recuse myself from discussion of acute myeloid leukemia, since I had a hand in writing it to its current excessively hifalutin' level. :P I will say that in my line of work, I constantly struggle (usually in vain) for ways to clearly explain complex biological and medical phenomena to intelligent laypeople.

An interesting comparison point: consent forms for medical treatment are generally required to be written at approximately an 8th-grade level, at least in my experience. Obviously there are ethicolegal reasons for that, but I wonder where our benchmark/"target" should be.

As another aside, I think that Wikipedia is substantially more "readable" in ways that don't translate easily to existing automated tools. Think about it - to adequately explain graft-vs.-host disease in a traditional written form, you'd first have to explain how bone marrow transplantation works, what a T cell is, how MHC-based allorecognition works, etc. Here, you can wikilink those terms, allowing readers to explore them at their own level of interest/sophistication/etc. Although I think we probably get dinged on "readability" for that approach. MastCell ^Talk 23:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

"After writing the above I read, very carefully, the Diagnosis section of Acute myeloid leukemia, and I couldn't see a reasonable way to lower the grade level on that section."

— Hordaland

Exactly my point! Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The other major problem with these 'readability' numbers is that they treat the entire text as a single entity. We usually write in a different fashion: The lead is a simple summary. The first paragraph of a technical section often provides a simplified overview. But all that gets lumped together in the analysis: it doesn't say, "The first paragraph of Leukemia#Causes has a grade level of 11, and the rest has a grade level of 14." (The word leukemia, all by itself, produces a "grade level" of 17, i.e., graduate student.)

I think that we do best when we provide both simple summaries and technical descriptions, even though this won't produce "good" scores.

Overall, I'm happy with the general score of something in the range of about 18 year olds for most articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that's weird: The website gives wildly different answers for ODDD (one of my usual 'examples'), depending on whether I give it the URL (it produces a result of grade 8) or just give it the text (it produces a result of grade 14). I assume that the difference lies in the rest of the page, e.g., bits like "See Terms of Use for details."

We need to know what method they were using. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I just ran the bare text of ODDD through the checker and they explain how each index is calculated along with the results, but don't state how they weight the 6 indices to get an overall grade level. I've made a page User:RexxS/Readability with those results and the description of how the indices are calculated if anyone wants to see what it produces.

Putting in the url means it finds 227 sentences (16 for the bare text), 906 words (327), and 204 complex words (77). The calculated readability of the main article text is swamped by the References, page navigation, header and footer, toolbox, etc. As an aside, simply putting a full stop (period) at the end of each of the four headings in the article lowers the computed grade level to 13! It's a nice tool, but needs to be used with care. --RexxS (talk) 22:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thinking of changing the WP:MED page

Wondering what people think about removing the "Former featured articles" and "Did you know" section from the "Show case" section and replacing it with the total page views as found here Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages and a paragraph regarding the impact of health care information on Wikipedia? For example most medical student use us and nearly half of physicians in clinical practice. ( with refs of course ) This might make people more interested in participating. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:34, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Just the total might be good, I wouldn't suggest the full table though - it's too long. It might also be worth observing that search engine results often find the WP articles as their top-ranked results.LeadSongDog come howl! 21:41, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes I mean just that little table of a few months showing the sum total of all page views.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I consider the table with page views statistics much more interesting.. fascinating data. Richiez (talk) 14:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't be against putting that table directly on WPMED, but I don't think the "Former featured articles" and "Did you know" sections should be removed. Everything within the project should have a reason for being here, other than being interesting. The purpose of the "Showcase" section is to highlight the achievements and accomplishments of this project. The popularity of articles is a totally different thing. It indicates what readers are interested in. The biggest reason I see for having it within this project is to figure out which articles are important to work on - something more fit for the "How you can help" than the "Showcase" section. --Scott Alter (talk) 23:53, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

It partly that I am not sure how former FAs are a showcase. Current FA yes but former? The impact / popularity of WP:MED articles is something we should be proud of. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Cancer info on Wikipedia

This Washington Post article might be of some interest to editors over here. The short version: "Good news: Wikipedia's cancer information is generally accurate. Bad news: It's hard to read." WTF? (talk) 02:18, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is getting a fair bit of press from this. And it sounds like it is only a poster presentation at a conference.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected they are planning on getting it published and the abstract is here [24] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:13, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Continuing medical educations

It was asked if the editing of Wikipedia could count as a continuing medical education for health care providers. I have sent the CFPC the following question to determine interest. Should we develop proposals to send to other organizations? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a very very good idea, I hope it works out.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh and of course keep us updated with their response(s), please. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Whilst not a formal proof of quality, I have in past annual appraisals included a list of major-edit articles edited in Wikipedia as proof of breadth of topic reading (the wikipedia articles) and more formal literature reading (used as basis for editing input). Edit history processed in Excel and I set out summary as lists of articles edited once, articles edited repeatedly, articles for which my (hopefully longstanding edit) remained the most recent stable version. Previous appraisor impressed with listings several hundred deep, last appraisor was unimpressed (thought formally acredited evening meetings showed greater continuing personal development), so I'll await to see what this coming year's appraiser make of this :-) David Ruben ^Talk 01:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Good luck, David. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Have received a response from the College of Family Physicians of Canada which looks hopeful.

I am responding to your query regarding credits for writing content for a medical Wikipedia.

I had this discussion with a group in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Universiy of Toronto a couple of years ago. I am not certain of the current status of their project. Writing content for a medical wikipedia would qualify for M2 credits on an hourly basis. If a physician did a literature review for this they could earn Mainpro C credits as a PEARLS exercise.

If you wish to discuss this further you may contact me at the coordinates below

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

For those not familiar with the above CME process 250 hours are required every 5 years. 125 can be the easy to acquire M2. 125 must be Mainpro C which are the difficult ones to get as these activities must be certified as such. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Very encouraging, anymore updates? Are you going to persue this?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

They explained a number of different way that they would give CME credits for editing Wikipedia. Unfortunately all methods require a fair amount of paper work. If people are interested I could explain it more fully.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Does this just apply to Canada or USA? What countries does this apply to? I know some people who *might* be interested in this.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Behcet's Disease of the Optic Nerve

Whether this should be its own article I will leave up to someone else. However, how does the capitalization of the article's title look? ---kilbad (talk) 19:11, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Should be combined into the main article IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it is too long to be merged with the main article MaenK.A._Talk 19:49, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

It does need its references put inline as well. If we keep it there title should be change to Behcet's disease of the optic nerveDoc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:00, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

You are right about that MaenK.A._Talk 22:39, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't it have a cedilla, like "Behçet's disease"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I moved it to Behçet's disease of the optic nerve. ---kilbad (talk) 18:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Liver disease in pregnancy

Should we have a separate article about this subject ?? MaenK.A._Talk 22:39, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure, it seems like it's a notable topic - but a half decent article on Liver disease would be nice too. Fences&Windows 12:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

My instincts would be that it should be a section of the liver disease article, rather than a seperate article. Does liver disease in pregnancy have a seperate ICD code from liver disease? If it was added to the liver disease article and the section became too large, then it could be considered for splitting into a seperate article. :) I could be wrong in my thoughts though, so hopefully other people will chip in with their views.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 16:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with LG. I'm no expert on the subject, but is there something special that distinguishes it from just liver disease, or liver disease in old age, etc. if you see where I'm going? Or even coming from it from the opposite view, how about kidney disease in pregnancy, etc. It seems to be an intersection of two categories, and while there's no reason not to have separate articles for any such intersection, I'd recommend incubating it at first as a section within Liver disease. Diseases in pregnancy would be the eponymous article for the other category, but that doesn't seem to exist yet. --RexxS (talk) 16:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes one usually creates an In pregancy section in the main article. Once it gets to big it may be moved to a subpage. One can see examples of this at Low back pain and Obesity.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Gout

I am reviewing Gout for GA status at Talk:Gout/GA1. Can anyone see information left out which should be in there? Any other comments welcome. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding move

The condition Nevus Psiloliparus is not a proper noun. Perhaps someone would consider moving it back to Nevus psiloliparus? ---kilbad (talk) 21:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree if only we had more admins :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I (a non-admin) just moved it back. When there is only one edit that is a redirect to the page you wish to move, you don't need an admin. --Scott Alter (talk) 22:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

More admins needed

Would an admin please move Guinea Worm Disease to Guinea worm disease? We could also use some more medical admins? I would like to nominate User:Literaturegeek, User:Garrondo, User:RexxS, User:Mikael Häggström and User:Kilbad if they are interested... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:13, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

You don't need an admin for that just add the move speedy delete template and later move it yourself.--Nutriveg (talk) 15:34, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Tried it and get this warning "The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid." Oh I get it I need to wait for an admin to come along and delete the only redirect.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:44, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Done.--DO11.10 (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The underlying problem is that Ed Poor moved Dracunculiasis to "Guinea Worm Disease" on May 25th. More important than the capitalization is the violation of MEDMOS naming standards. I have moved it back to its original name. --Arcadian (talk) 20:52, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

And eventually the talk page will catch up with the article! --RexxS (talk) 21:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks it looks like we finally have it fixed.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:20, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Almost. I've just fixed the remaining double redirects and tagged as medical redirects. I assume the previous dermatology scope was accurate. Apart from the other 12 double redirects I just found - saves waiting for the bot anyway --RexxS (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) All those people are great (except for that literaturegeek person, hehe). Other people to consider for adminship are, User:Colin, User:Scray, User:WhatamIdoing.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:33, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh and another editor who may be worth nominating if they are interested is User:Leevanjackson.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:51, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Last but not least, what about User:LeadSongDog?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I've offered to nominate WhatamIdoing at least once and the offer was declined, although maybe she should be re-approached more convincingly. I'd support any of the above-named individuals. MastCell ^Talk 23:38, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah ok. :) Another name (I keep thinking of other people, sorry), what about User:WLU?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes most people already believe that Whatamidoing is an admin.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:01, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not sure about this: I've been busily failing to win friends and influence people over at WT:V for a week or so now, and that would doubtless reflect poorly in an RfA.

We have a problem with a couple of admins (e.g., SlimVirgin) making up their own definitions of WP:Self-published sources, e.g., that self-published sources can't be primary sources (yeah, well, what do you think your blog post about your birthday party is?), or that if you have enough lawyers involved, then it doesn't matter if the author and the publisher are the same. According this contingent, Coca-Cola's website wasn't written by the corporation and published by the corporation: It was apparently written by the corporation's lawyers, and published maybe by Martians.

After 179 KB of discussion(!), I'm reaching the conclusion that the Wikipedia community would rather have no definition (freeing these admins [and, yes, every single person with a silly, unverifiable definition in this discussion is an admin] to make up their own rules) than to have a verifiable one (like wikt:self-publishing, which, BTW, pretty well dispenses with the hysterical "But if the identity of the publisher and the author is all that matters, then newspapers are self-published!" claim [as if a reporter were the publisher anyway]).

Anyway, I think it'd be good to pick out a handful of WPMED folks to do an RfA -- it might be nicer for the candidates to have some company during the process, if nothing else -- but I'm not exactly sure that now's a good time for me to consider it.

Besides, if I were choosing between getting a definition of self-publication into the policy to stop this nonsense, or becoming an admin, I'd choose ending the nonsense, hands down. A drug company's website is written and published by and for the drug company, no matter how many lawyers were involved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Not to worry, perhaps when the dust settles, you can reconsider. I myself am not too eager to become an admin at this minute in time, never really have been.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:26, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

LiteratureGeek and WhatamIdoing I would happily support and think they would make excellent admins. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 00:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed an overly large delay in procedures requiring admin tools - or are the current admins being overworked? I've been content without the admin tools thus far, but if there is a need for more would consider helping out with the menial chores. I'm a fairly sporadic editor - sometimes get stuck right in - other times might go for weeks making only small edits, so it depends what areas you think need more support. I am assuming you mean pages moves ( as above ), maybe temporary page protection when a class is using the article!, are there any other areas you're thinking of ? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 12:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well flagged revisions is rolling out next week and that is going to increase admin work load. Mostly it is just the small thinks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

(Tension) pneumothorax

I am planning some work on pneumothorax. I notice that the complication of tension pneumothorax has had its own article for a while. I'm not sure what the point in that might be, because every form of pneumothorax can be complicated by tension (not just a sucking chest wound), and hence I have requested a move. I have listed a number of references on Talk:Pneumothorax. JFW | T@lk 10:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I would be happy to work on this as an alternative to banging my head against a brick wall at Talk:Abortion. :P MastCell ^Talk 22:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Flagged revisions

It appears they are going to appear on June 14th! They will be limited to 2000 and need to be applied by an admin. I think a lot of our currently semi protected pages would work well as flagged revisions and would be happy to keep an eye on suggested changes. Many of our articles related to sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and psychiatry which are often controversial I think would be well served. Any admins here thinking of applying this protection level? See here for more info [25] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

As soon as the button goes live (and I am confident that I understand the relevant policies and procedures, obviously). This has been a long time coming, and should do wonders for the scalability of Wikipedia. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Notability of various medical journals

I became aware of the edits of User:AlanAbery via an edit he made that dropped a page onto the Short Pages report. The user turned a redirect into a disambig, adding a link to a newly formed page on a medical journal. That page showed no obvious indications that the particular journal, Cytotherapy, was notable. Not being particularly knowledgeable about such journals, I dropped Notability and PrimarySources tags on it. As I often do, I glanced at the user's other contributions, and from there noticed that this user has created quite a few of these articles on medical journals. After similarly tagging several more, I realized that tagging dozens of such articles is likely not the best way to go about this.

So I'm here looking for assistance/advice as to what is the proper next step. It's quite possible that every one of these journals are notable by WP standards. But as the articles now stand, there's really no indication of such. If A7 applied to publications, they could conceivably be A7 deleted, given the lack of notability indications.

Are there specific notability criteria for publications and/or scientific journals? If so, where? - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

The edits of these redirects and disambig pages are for the abbreviations of the medical journals, so that if someone types in the abbreviation of the journal, they will be able to find it. For example, if you go onto the page on Audiological Medicine (SUAM), you will see on the infobox on the right that the abbreviated title is "AUM". And on the publisher's (Informa's) website, you can see that this IS the abbreviated title of this. journal. I hope that this helps. Let me know if there are still any problems. {talk} 16:58, 10 June 2010.

The redirects changes is just how I came across this situation. The actual issue is whether the journals meet the project's notability criteria. I have absolutely no problem with your converting redirects to disambigs, assuming that the added articles are on notable topic. It's that latter issue that I just do not have the expertise to answer, and thus I came here were we may find people who do have the expertise. - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:11, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Might want to take this to a broader forum since we should treat medical journals the same way we treat chemistry journals. SDY (talk) 16:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I've done this. The discussion can resume/continue at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Notability of various medical journals - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

You might want to also notify Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals, out of courtesy, as they will have an interest in the discussion. I would suggest that the project members there would also be a good resource for answering your original question. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 16:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I would find it useful if Wikipedia had a page on each and every journal. Provided some history on who publishes it. How it is ranked. Were it is listed ( pubmed, other ). If someone has a desire to add this I do not think we should stand in their way. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:46, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Discussion is continuing at WP:VPP#Notability of various medical journals. Please do not also continue it here.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

KIN 412 ACL injury

Obviously there's a problem with this article, but I'm not sure of the best way to handle it. Suggestions? --Arcadian (talk) 23:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

It will of course need merger into the main article. I have left a note. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be best to consider all of the relevant articles:

1. Cruciate ligament
2. Knee#Anterior cruciate ligament injury
3. Anterior cruciate ligament
4. Anterior cruciate ligament injury
5. Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction
6. KIN 412 ACL injury
7. Lachman test
8. Anterior drawer test

and then ponder on why we have so many articles with the same information? (I might have missed some, btw.) Having looked at the size of the articles, I would have thought that:

• 1 should contain the first part of 3 (and the other ligaments) but restrict itself to the anatomy, not the injuries
• 2 is ok
• 3 should be split between 1 and 4, and turned into a redirect to the section in 1
• 4 should be the definitive article on the injury, with any non-redundant info from 3 merged in, with subsections containing 7 and 8, and possibly 5 merged into it
• 5 possibly be stand-alone because of its size, or merged into 4
• 6 needs to be deleted as a duplicate of 4
• 7 & 8 should be subsections of 4; merge the info in and turn into redirects to the relevant subsection

In an ideal Wikipedia, each subtopic could have its own article. As it is, I can't see any point in having numerous small articles that have obvious parent articles, along with a fairly massive repetition of the same information in several places. Afterthought: a lot of these desperately need sources. OMG we have Drawer test as well!! Thoughts? --RexxS (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes I agree with your thinking. Many of the subject areas are like this. Without someone too apply some order to the group things often just spread out with content duplicated in many different articles. I would be happy to follow your efforts attempting to correct the situation :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with much of the above, but anterior cruciate ligament shouldn't be merged out of existence -- it's the primary article about the anatomic structure. Most of the content should be removed from it, but the article should remain. --Arcadian (talk) 05:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

If all of the discussion about injury and surgery at the Anterior cruciate ligament article is moved to Anterior cruciate ligament injury, you are left with 3 paragraphs and 5 images. In reality, wouldn't it be better to have a section in Cruciate ligament called Anterior cruciate ligament, to which Anterior cruciate ligament would be a redirect? Cruciate ligament is rather short (start-class) and purely anatomical in its scope, and I would have envisioned that expanding it to cover each cruciate ligament would make sense ... until it became so large that daughter articles would be needed. Indeed, I can see the amount of work needed would be large, and I do understand the argument against taking apart Anterior cruciate ligament (a C-class article), only to have to recreate it at a later date. I'm undecided what is best now! Any other takes on the issues? --RexxS (talk) 17:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I think your suggestion is good. Cruciate ligament should be the main article with section on each of the ligaments. Only when it becomes to big should it be split off into its own article. We need as few co tracts as possible as they end up just duplicating effort. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Per MEDMOS, we organize our articles around the internationally accepted names for the entities. Anterior cruciate ligament is in TA, "cruciate ligament" is not. If you open up any anatomy textbook, you'll find a section on the ACL, but you almost certainly won't find an entry for cruciate ligaments as a class. "Cruciate" just means "cross-shaped." It's a superficial similarity. Why would we put the ACL and PCL in a single article with the Cruciate ligament of atlas and cruciate crural ligament? We wouldn't put all the Bipennate muscles in a single article. --Arcadian (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes as always it seems I agree with Arcadian. Okay so I have merged the two tests into the diagnosis section of the ACL injury article. Have added a "main" template to the knee article. And left the ACL and Cruciate articles alone. Finally I have proposed KIN 412 ACL injury for deletion.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Things at Abortion getting out of hand

The discussion at abortion is getting no were. It deals with an editor attempting to use WP:MEDRS to discount references that disagree with his opinion. I have started a discussion here [26] Could use a couple more voices. Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

"References that disagree with (my) opinion" about what? About epidemiological studies? About taking advice as scientific fact? About WP:MEDRS? When asking for other people to join a discussion don't ask them to take other arguments that disagree with yours as biased.--Nutriveg (talk) 04:47, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

James, the Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) is really intended to be a place to discuss improvements to Wikipedia:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles), and I don't think you're asking for MEDRS to be changed. Unfortunately, we don't have our own noticeboard like WP:RSN where we can ask for outside opinions on the reliability of medical sources. I understand your frustration at seeing your commendable efforts to find reliable sources stonewalled, but I'd ask you to be patient. It is possible that Nutriveg will understand the spirit and letter of MEDRS eventually. If not, I am fully prepared to open an WP:RfC/U on Nutriveg on the grounds of edit-warring, tendentious editing, and disruption of the process of finding consensus at Abortion; and if necessary seek sanctions such as a topic ban, if he does not show progress in moving towards collaborative editing. At present, he is making suggestions in talk for article text. That is productive and a sign of progress. The medical expertise of yourself and Mastcell is needed in arriving at the best form of words, so I hope you'll both feel able to contribute to that. Personally, I'm not inclined to suspend AGF with Nutriveg yet, as I think he is sincere in his intentions, but lacks the experience of collaborative editing that would make the work at Abortion far less unpleasant than it currently is. --RexxS (talk) 15:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah I guess I misunderstood the use of WP:MEDRS. You are correct WP:RSN was what I was thinking of. Thanks as always Rexx Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Parkes Weber syndrome

Should this article title have a dash between the names? ---kilbad (talk) 05:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

No. From what I've read "Parkes" was his middle name, but he became generally known as "Parkes Weber". I can see no evidence that it was ever hyphenated. --RexxS (talk) 05:55, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok, great, thanks for looking into this issue! ---kilbad (talk) 06:26, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking for more help at WP:DERM:MA

Would someone be willing to take on letter "G" ? The section is fairly small, and I can send the login to anyone who might be interested. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 06:28, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Basic medical knowledge requested

I've written much of 1971 Iraq poison grain disaster. However, I know very little about the relevant medical terminology/understanding. Could someone (and no great knowledge is necessary) check I've got my facts right? I'm trying to avoid factual inaccuracies simply down to my lack of knowledge. Thanks. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments please on AFD for superficial charm

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Superficial charm --Penbat (talk) 13:36, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Gangrene

There is a dispute on the talk page of the gangrene article about the appropriateness of the images currently displayed in the article. Relevant discussion sections – older comments: Talk:Gangrene#Pictures..., Talk:Gangrene#Suggestion_for_pictures; current dispute: Talk:Gangrene#Image_hiding_dispute. Participants of the WikiProject are invited to contribute to the discussion. --JN466 18:37, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Commented. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Colic and Baby colic

Can someone please review the recent changes made to these two articles, thanks. Verbal chat 20:38, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a how to guide to me. The language is un encyclopedic. Many of the refs are primary research from the 1970s and are unformated. Requires significant work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:42, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary:WikiProject Medicine, a lexical companion.

Greetings! I am pleased to announce the launch of Wiktionary:WikiProject Medicine on the Wikimedia Project's dictionary component, Wiktionary. We are gearing up to incorporate a world-class medical dictionary into the larger framework of Wiktionary, and would welcome any assistance or advice on the best practices for integrating Wikipedia and Wiktionary content. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Guy from GSK

A guy from GlaxoSmithKline Maitri Shah, PharmD, GSK (talk · contribs) wants to help edit Wikipedia articles, I've shortly answered his concerns about a specific product in Talk:Cervarix#Propose new section in Cervarix Article for Important Safety Information but maybe someone can give him a better welcome.--Nutriveg (talk) 13:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I have responded on his talk page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Depression (mood)

A recent edit to this article restored content about a hypothesized etiology for depression, which I had deleted a few weeks back. It seems speculative and somewhat undue. But I'm no expert. Would anybody care to comment? Anthony (talk) 07:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The edit by you from weeks ago deleted and rearranged a lot of content so I could not tell what text you are talking about. Do you have a diff to the recent edit and what was the hypothesised etiology? I could not tell from reading the talk page.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:29, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. The section I'm referring to is entitled "Depression as a defense mechanism." Anthony (talk) 10:36, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Hemingway, bipolar

See RFC following the discussion here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes diagnosing people post mortum with mental disorders is a very popular hobby. The number of mental disorders characterized has increased tremendously over the last 50 years. Via the current DSM 4 TR 46 % of people qualify for at least one mental disorder at some point in their life. The more important question in my opinion is were we should draw the line between normal and diseased when it comes to continuous conditions such as feelings. The number of people with ADHD / hyperkinesis (DSM and ICD 10 respectively) is 3 to 4 fold different depending on which criteria you use.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

There's a BLP mess at List of people affected by bipolar disorder, that needs to be checked for WP:MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:34, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I am wondering if that article is worthy of deletion? We don't have lists like this for most other disorders.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:42, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

We actually have a number of pages like this such as here [27] for ADHD. I am not a big fan of them but as I do not really consider this medicine I just split them off and leave them alone. I would support someone however with the desire to clean them up.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:50, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

There's 14 such lists at Category:Lists of people with disabilities, might be worth a look at cleaning them up sometime, as James says. --RexxS (talk) 12:39, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Articles

For some reason, we seem to have two separate articles at the titles anterolateral sulcus and antero-lateral sulcus, describing the exact same thing. Could somebody who's familiar with the topic please clarify which one should actually be regarded as the correct spelling, so that the articles can be merged and redirected appropriately? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Template placement

I want to include the following template in the list of cutaneous conditions. However, where specifically within the document should I include the template? Feel free to add it if you know. ---kilbad (talk) 02:23, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the external links section of the obesity article here that is were I usually put stuff like this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Great. Thank you. I have added it. ---kilbad (talk) 03:30, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Binge drinking

I have been working on binge drinking for the past week or so but a number of issues remain. It would be nice if a volunteer or 2 could help and improve the article; the eyes and comments from medical professionals would be good just to make sure that I have not made any errors or left out important facts etc; it also needs work on layout, flow and other WP:MEDMOS issues need fixed. At a later date I might try and get it to GA but think I would need a helping hand or two to do that. I read through every review from 2000 - 2010 to build up the article, which previously only had an epidemiological section (which is still a mess), so health effects are well sourced and not much pubmed work needs doing. The article subject is considered a major public health issue, lots of adverse social and medical consequences, for example regular heavy binge drinking may induce brain damage more quickly than alcoholism (due to frequent repeated acute withdrawal/rebound states-via a kindling mechanism and excito-neurotoxicity), adolescents and young adults make up most binge drinkers and are more sensitive to alcohol related neurotoxicity, also strongly associated with violent crime and vandalism, suicide and quadruples risk of alcoholism etc etc. As it is a topic which affects so many people in most western countries especially parents of adolescents and professionals who work with adolescents the article should be in better shape. One idea I have is redundant paragraphs might be worth moving to alcohol abuse under a subsection of binge drinking, which needs a section on binge drinking.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:43, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Another issue that requires attention is that there are a couple of red links to medical cardiological terms which may need to be turned into redirects or new articles created. and the epidemiological section needs a lot of work. Any help appreciated.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:11, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Will take a look. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:44, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

The Lazarus Effect (film)

Hi there,

I'd be grateful for any help developing The Lazarus Effect (film) - it's a documentary, to raise awareness of AIDS in Africa. Lots of sources now (and more each day) gnews, etc. Help please?  Chzz  ►  05:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Dealing with vanity citations?

Hi, I am mildly annoyed by someone adding citations of a certain "Walid M.S." all over English as well as a few other language wikipedias. As far as I can tell at least 99% are added by IPs from Macon/GA, not surprisingly the place where one of the authors work.

As far as I can see it is not outright vandalism but undoubtedly in many cases there might be better sources and in the past there were a few edits that did fit badly into the structure of the article, in other cases the citations were just attached to halfway fitting text without touching the article at all.

For a few examples see Special:Contributions/70.184.4.10, however to get the whole picture it is necessary to search "Walid MS" in all subprojects.

I am wondering if anyone else noticed? What is the way to deal with it? Richiez (talk) 20:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

If the research is not a review article delete it based on WP:MEDRS Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:41, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

On basis of WP:COI anyone so systematically adding that author across multiple articles is probably linked to that person, and so if fail to restrain themselves to merely suggesting a link on talk pages... should be threatened with block. I think does amount to "outright vandalism" as in breach of our guidelines and disruptive to forming a reliable body of work.

Separately would be interesting to know if Walid MS contributed so far to anything but primary sources or is notable - if not, then one option is to threaten to black list the term (i.e. gets expunged from mention across wikipedia). David Ruben ^Talk 01:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

• Example previous version Buccal index the PMID 17619893 abstract makes no specific mention of "buccal", it was added by Mswalid (talk · contribs) of the same name [28] - so per WP:COI I've zapped it,[29] unless someone else cares to see fit to re-insert. I've posted a note to that named editor. David Ruben ^Talk 01:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
• See version of Pain scale that existed. Past edit 02:20, 26 May 2008 by 70.185.185.214, followed by 02:29, 26 May 2008 Mswalid and edit sequence ending 16:40, 26 May 2008 by 70.185.185.214. So the "Walid-Robinson Index (WRI)" gets references by Walid. This is complicated by a later editor inadvertently messing up the ref tag name paremter and using the wrong <ref name=> and so the first citation is displayed as a duplicate link of reference 15, per this edit - I've corrected thus. Now this just leaves "Walid-Robinson Index" which PubMed fails to give any other writer using. This is wishful thinking by a researcher, and not supported by secondary source... so I've deleted the index as a non-entity.
• The Walid-Robinson Opioid-Dependence (WROD) Questionnaire provides no secondary source to support notability - so tagged, replies please before I propose AfD. David Ruben ^Talk 02:26, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at it. I did not identify any substantial contribution in this edits although I did not care to search how all Walid MS citations were introduced. A few edits in the hysterectomy article were very annoying, it got better over time to the point of being almost helpful but for hysterectomy there are certainly tons of more suitable sources. Richiez (talk) 12:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Eczema

Hello there,
I have removed an edit here from Eczema as it appeared to me to breach guidelines on medical advice in that it decribed how to make, and use, an "Indian ayurvedic" Eczema treatment. It was also totally unsourced. I have advised the editor of my action and suggested that WikiBooks may be a better venue for this information. Hope this is the correct course to take. Regards, --220.101 (talk) ^\Contribs 18:57, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

JMIR Open Peer Review - Wikipedia as a global tool for public health promotion

The Journal of Medical Internet Research has recently started an Open Peer Review process in which any registered user can review articles which have been submitted for consideration for publication. Top of the List at http://www.jmir.org/reviewer/openReview/abstracts is a submitted manuscript "Wikipedia as a global tool for public health promotion". Those with expert knowledge of this area on wikipedia may wish to contribute.— Rod ^talk 13:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Since we wrote the paper I do not know if we are allowed to review it? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

3-phenylazoacetylacetone

I have no idea what this is, whether it is notable or even real, but I didn't want it to just slip between the cracks. Could someone check it is all okay? S.G.^(GH) _ping! 14:39, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I've just PRODded it. sems like a no-hoper. Physchim62 (talk) 14:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Osteopathy versus Osteopathic medicine?

Should the two categories "Osteopathy" and "Osteopathic medicine" be merged? Or should one of them be renamed? More eyes on this discussion would be appreciated. Gabbe (talk) 08:02, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Can you help me...

Can you all help me find another dermatologist to assist on Wikipedia? Does anyone have a dermatologist friend or colleague they can ask to help us? I am working to find someone here in Chicago, but it's been a tough sell, as most people want to pad the resume with other work instead. ---kilbad (talk) 00:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Could someone help me get some e-mail addresses?

I wanted to know if there is an automated way to do the following. I want to search high-yield dermatology-related keywords for review articles in pubmed, things like psoriasis/contact dermatitis/urticaria/etc, basically any terms in the list of cutaneous conditions, and then I want to extract any available author e-mail addresses from those pubmed entries. I will then use those e-mail addresses to solicit authors to help on Wikipedia. Would someone be willing to help me with this? ---kilbad (talk) 02:58, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

That is a great idea. We should do a pilot than depending on whether or not we get a good response expand it to general medicine topics aswell. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:25, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Is there someone who could help us generate this list of e-mails? ---kilbad (talk) 03:30, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I can probably do this, but it will take me a little time since my coding skillz are iffy at best. Since I'm a bit busy IRL, you might want to solicit help from people who do a lot of Web programming (you could try the bots group). If you don't turn up anyone willing to work on it, let me know and I'll take a shot. MastCell ^Talk 04:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This is certainly your prerogative, but (as an established corresponding author in the biomedical literature) I think you should be cognizant of some issues. First, prospective editors recruited from such sources will need some orientation on neutrality, because they almost certainly will have strongly-held views on the topics for which you recruit them. They should also try to avoid directly editing content that relates to (or cites) their own published work to avoid WP:COI - they should probably restrict themselves to making suggestions on the relevant Talk page. In addition, I get huge amounts of spam email regarding my publications already (due to bots trolling the literature), and some authors may not react positively to wikipedia recruiters, especially if they're automated. I think you actually do have a good idea here, but I suggest exercising some caution. Just a thought. -- Scray (talk) 04:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that any approach to these authors needs to be personalized. I actually try to bow out of being corresponding author if possible, solely because of the spam that ensues. I considered whether we would just be adding to that problem, but in the end I think that we're not selling anything - we just want to notify people of an opportunity to help contribute to freely available medical knowledge. So I'm OK with it, but I agree with Scray that we should not send these folks automated email (not that anyone has suggested it). I'm assuming we'd make some kind of personalized, handwritten appeal for them to donate their expertise.MastCell ^Talk 04:43, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not know if it is a good idea since it is too close to spam tactics. Even if our aim is a good one we cannot use such methods... Such a decision would have to be approved by the wikimedia foundation and the community. I agree that we have to get more experts to wikipedia but I do not believe that this is an ethical one. Emails on publications are not given to receive this kind of information. --Garrondo (talk) 07:46, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I have received email asking me to contribute to textbooks. This is not that different.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:42, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I think that this is a good idea. It is possible that some authors may be annoyed at being asked but I think most would view it as a compliment (depending on how the email is worded). I think that the worst that could happen is that the emails will be ignored or most that reply will say they are too busy but the bonus is that a few new wikipedians will join the project. Scray, yes many of the authors will have strongly held beliefs on the topics that they edit but does that not describe about half of wikipedian community? :) Dermatology I don't think is a controversial area of medicine, it is pretty routine laboratory testing of skin and treatments (a bit more complicated than that but you know what I mean) etc and being peer reviewed published and likely dermatologists they would presumably be pushing a mainstream POV. Any interested parties could be given via a follow-up email the 5 core policies of editing wikipedia and will likely also get a welcome template soon after joining like other newbies.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:07, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. I just read Garrondo's comment and now I am thinking maybe my post in support was premature. I had not thought of the need of contacting the foundation and the effort possibly being viewed as spamming. I struck my above comment. If the email is sent by an individual rather than an official wikipedia foundation effort and not a project effort, then perhaps it is outside the scope of the foundation, ie because the email will not be representing the foundation?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:15, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I do agree with the concerns expressed here however do not think we should discount this idea completely. If it is done in a personal individualized method from someone within your own field I do not think there would be hard felling (ie if Kilbad as a dermatologist approached other dermatologists ). Maybe Kilbad you could try 5 to 10 people to see what sort of response you get?

Other less aggressive way to promote participation would be via posters at Universities, the publication of papers on Wikipedia, and lecturing at conferences.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:53, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I think James has hit the nail on the head with the point about a collegial invitation. I can see it would be more work, but if Kilbad felt able to start by contacting a few other dermatologists with a personal email, explaining how important Wikipedia is, inviting them to collaborate, then we could see if a small-scale trial produced any results. My own experience in PR strongly suggests that a targeted and focussed approach is always better received than scatter-gun tactics. I collaborate regularly with Gene Hobbs, who has been trying for some time to persuade some of his colleagues at Duke to contribute, but I know progress is slow because people are so busy. Are there any other specialists, perhaps, who would feel able to make contact with experts in their field, with a view to them becoming Wikipedians? --RexxS (talk) 00:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Mel Herbert an ER doc, the producer of EMRAP, and the organizer of one of the largest ER conferences in the world is a big fan of Wikipedia. I will speak to him about publicity.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

If someone is willing to help me get a listing of e-mails, I will solicit help with individual and personalized e-mails, not with generic/spam notices. Perhaps if we could generate a three column list of (1) corresponding author name, (2) paper title, and (3) e-mail address, that would be most helpful for this type of mailing? Also, with regard to reception (and I realize this is anecdotal), I have already sent out a few e-mails to various corresponding authors, all of which have been well received thus far. ---kilbad (talk) 06:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

As another established corresponding author in the biomedical literature, I agree with Scray's first point, above. To quote Scray, "This is certainly your prerogative, but (as an established corresponding author in the biomedical literature) I think you should be cognizant of some issues. First, prospective editors recruited from such sources will need some orientation on neutrality, because they almost certainly will have strongly-held views on the topics for which you recruit them. They should also try to avoid directly editing content that relates to (or cites) their own published work to avoid WP:COI - they should probably restrict themselves to making suggestions on the relevant Talk page." Postpostmod (talk) 13:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Diasagree with above: experts should be able to write about their area of expertise if they write on non-controversial subjects and they try to maintain neutrality. The opposite would be a shame for wikipedia since we are forbidding those how can contribute more from doing it (and is probably a reason why most experts do not feel welcome in this environment).--Garrondo (talk) 15:30, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Garrondo if being a physician was to exclude people from writing about medicine than we would not get far. This does not reach levels of COI. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

medical hypotheses

Hi. I have a friend whose business is setting up RCTs who has developed a physiological hypotheses about the digestive system. Obviously not suitable for Wikipedia but I wondered if anybody knew of a website or blog where hypotheses can be published and discussed. I note the Medical Hypotheses Journal appears to be in the process of committing suicide so I wondered if there were any other forum? Fainites ^barleyscribs 20:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

It's hard to make progress solo these days. If your friend is affiliated with an academic institution, s/he could cast around for people who might be interested in collaborating to investigate the hypothesis. If s/he is in the private sector, then s/he might want to see if any academic institution would be interested in partnering to look into it. I don't know how the research funding situation works in your friend's country of residence, but generally one can look for governmental or private funding - the former involves a lot more ridiculous bureaucracy, and the latter typically requires some sort of commercial payoff, so it depends on the specifics. In terms of putting the hypothesis out there, it might be best to try to develop some sort of preliminary data which could at least be presented at a relevant scientific meeting - those are often geared more toward the airing of speculative hypotheses, while publishing in the peer-reviewed literature usually requires a bit more of a cohesive story. Just a few suggestions. MastCell ^Talk 16:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks MastCell. He's pretty much retired now and probably wouldn't be in a position to put any money into it. The preliminary data idea sounds the most promising. I was just wondering really if there was a sort of internet equivalent of the MHJ but which was at least reasonably respectable!Fainites ^barleyscribs 17:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Amateur science has a good track record, from antiquity to Patrick Moore, so there's good reason to encourage it. One of the great things about Web 2.0 is that just about anyone can self-publish; so if your friend spends some time collecting data and developing hypotheses, he could use WorldPress to make a blog site and let the world know about it. Who knows? he might have made a great discovery! --RexxS (talk) 18:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if the Wikimedia foundation would be interested in this sort of project. It could be called WikiHypothesis and deal with ideas that have not reached sufficient notability / verifiability to be included in Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes though I suppose it might suffer from the same problems MHJ suffered from - or maybe vigorous wiki style argument would help protect it from that, the internet being more immediate. I'll suggest it to him! Fainites ^barleyscribs 20:47, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

By the way - Patrick Moore is paid. It's just that rumour has it he's paid the same now as he was when they started The Sky At Night back in the '50s. If anybody asks for more it will be cut. Boo! Fainites ^barleyscribs 20:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Helminthic therapy

Does anyone else look at Helminthic therapy and think it's perhaps written a little too much like a cheerleader? I tried looking on pubmed for info and review articles, but couldn't find any (you get a lot of links to treatments for parasitic infections). Looks very much like it's written by true-believer patients, but there's enough science in it to make me wonder. Anyone interested? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 14:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, for starters, this doesn't look like a reliable source. Hmmm....Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:01, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Needs work. I'll put it on my to-do list - in the meantime, don't rush off and ingest any hookworm eggs just yet... MastCell ^Talk 16:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

There's loads of this kind of "seems promising", "maybe", "more research needed" kind of stuff around but it looks a great deal more experimental than the article currently suggests.Fainites ^barleyscribs 17:36, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The article does seem to overstate the factual results, and doesn't adequately reflect the usual caveats of "requiring further research/studies" found in the sources. IMHO, there's sufficient science hypothesised for it not to be dismissed as quackery, but one of the clearest expositions is Weinstock's (PMC1773927) and that was in 2004; the clinical trials "nearing completion" don't seem to have resulted in any further definitive conclusions being published. --RexxS (talk) 19:22, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

BBC cites definition from Hysteria

BBC quoted WP's definition of hysteria, in describing collective English belief that we can ever possibly win the football world cup. Might create a small flurry of hysterically depressed English readers wondering what they are suffering from. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8768122.stm David Ruben ^Talk 13:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Tooth enamel at FAR

I have nominated Tooth enamel for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.-- Cirt (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing

I have posted a bibliography of Intelligence Citations for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues, some of which I see are in the scope of this WikiProject on medicine. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research and to suggest new sources to me by comments on that page. I am especially eager to learn about up-to-date sources on human cognitive testing from a medical perspective. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:56, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Medroxyprogesterone versus medroxyprogesterone acetate

Can someone tell me the difference between Medroxyprogesterone and Medroxyprogesterone 17-acetate? One is a progestin, one is a pregnane, does that mean MPA is converted to progesterone in the body? Sources seem to use the two interchangeably as far as I can tell ([30]).

Cross-posted to WP:DRUGS talk page, feel free to shut this one down if the answer is better found over there. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 00:55, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

This page is a place to discuss issues related to Wikipedia's medical articles and related policies. Generic questions like this are better posed at the science reference desk. [I realise that you may be asking this question with the intention of using the answer to improve the articles.] Axl ¤ [Talk] 01:29, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

That is indeed why, but I'll cross-post to RDS as well (which...probably wasn't the thrust of your comment). I usually get quick answers here which help with further research. I'm mostly wondering if the pages can/should be merged. Editors may also be interested in a substantial expansion of the page, for which a review might be warranted. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 01:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Based on my answer at RD/S (let's see what others say), a merger may be in order if we can't find something more notable about medroxyprogesterone (sine acetate). -- Scray (talk) 03:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion copied to RD/S

(Original research alert) First, pregnanes and progestins are not mutually exclusive. Pregnane refers to the structure of the molecule, while progestin refers to its biological activity. Medroxyprogesterone is the active molecule. In order to stabilize medroxyprogesterone in a form that can be administered orally or intravenously, it's acetylated (see the final step in File:Medroxyprogesterone_acetate.png. In the body, the acetate residue is degraded and you get the active molecule back.

If you're talking about administering medroxyprogesterone as a pharmaceutical, then you're technically talking about MP acetate. If you're talking about steroid biochemistry in vivo, then it's more correct to refer to medroxyprogesterone, period. I'm not sure what implications this has for our article structure (and this is just me talking - it's been awhile since I took pharmacology, and I don't have a supporting source at my fingertips, so take it with a grain of salt because I have been known to be wrong). MastCell ^Talk 03:58, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

MastCell, thanks for correcting me (pending further corroboration/refs). That was my initial sense (see the RD/S history for my original comments if curious) but I couldn't quickly find anything reliable that supported me. I'll look again tomorrow if no one weighs in further. -- Scray (talk) 04:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I wish I had some refs handy to back me up. BTW, I saw your comment at the Ref Desk about MPA levels ([31]). Are you sure those are actually looking at levels of medroxyprogesterone acetate? I'm not familiar with measuring levels of it. On the other hand, there's an extensive literature on monitoring plasma levels of mycophenolic acid (also abbreviated MPA), which is the active metabolite of mycophenolate mofetil (MMF). Like most immunosuppressants, MMF pretty finicky and has a narrow therapeutic window, so a lot of work has been done on MPA pharmacokinetics (mycophenolic acid) in the organ transplantation literature. You've probably already looked into this, but is it possible that the "MPA" levels you saw were actually mycophenolic acid, rather than medroxyprogesterone acetate? MastCell ^Talk 04:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm very familiar with mycophenolate; the particular paper that made me doubt myself was this one, which led me to PMID 6457936, which is entitled "Medroxyprogesterone acetate in human serum". On re-reading the abstract, this may simply be sloppy terminology, since the RIA they're using might not distinguish medroxyprogesterone from the acetate. Clarity remains elusive, but I think you're probably right. -- Scray (talk) 05:01, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Hope you all (especially MastCell) don't mind that I copied the collapsed section above to RD/S, for the reasons given by Axl above. -- Scray (talk) 05:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help and comments, I'm compiling the responses at talk:MPA. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:42, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Link to that Talk page. -- Scray (talk) 00:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Within Scope?

While browsing I came across this article Dorb the Chemist, Inc., does this belong in your scope? If so, please do the necessary actions.--Iankap99 (talk) 04:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

No it is not in scope. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:33, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Osteosarcoma review

Hi,

a new article in J Am Med Inform Assoc. zooms in on the Osteosarcoma article:

PMID 20595302

Anyone with fulltext access able to comment?

Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I just read it and though I found it interesting I was not impressed with the methods or interpretation. The questionnaire was:

Table 1. Osteosarcoma questionnaire presenting the points for each answer for each of the three different websites: (1) the English version of Wikipedia on osteosarcoma; (2) the patient version of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) website; and (3) the health professional version of the NCI website (from Leithner et al. PMID 20595302)	No	Question	Wikipedia	NCI patient	NCI professional
1	What is the incidence of osteosarcoma per 100 inhabitants?	1	0	1
2	Should a biopsy be performed?	3	3	3
3	What is a biopsy?	3	3	3
4	Name three helpful chemotherapeutic agents	3	0	3
5	Should radiotherapy normally be applied?	0	0	3
6	What kind of surgery should be performed? (margins)	0	3	3
7	Are amputations necessary in a large number of cases?	3	3	3
8	What does staging imply?	0	2	3
9	Is a follow-up necessary? If yes, name 2 diagnostic procedures	0	0	1
10	What is the 5 or 10-y prognosis?	3	0	2
11	Prognosis depends on several factors, name 5	3	3	3
12	Which age group is most affected?	2	3	3
13	Might metastases occur? If yes, what are metastases?	3	3	3
14	Name three histological subtypes	0	0	3
15	What symptoms might indicate the presence of a bone tumor (name 2)	3	3	1
16	What is the main localization of osteosarcoma?	3	3	3
17	What late effects are possible after successful treatment? (name 3)	2	3	1
18	Do you find web-links to study centers (EURAMOS)?	0	2	2
19	What are clinical trials?	0	3	3
20	How can you find clinical trials in your area?	1	3	3
	Total	33	40	50

The paper does little to justify the equal weight given to all of these questions (many of which are off-topic, represent how-to, etc). JAMIA is generally excellent, but this one is not impressive from an informatics point of view. -- Scray (talk) 16:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

fuch's endothelial dystrophy page oddity

Hope this is the right place to ask this. The page on Fuch's endothelial dystrophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchs'_dystrophy contains this =

"Anecdotally, botulinum toxin type A given to the periocular tissues for a patient with blepharospasm and hemifacial spasm resulted in dramatic and immediate improvement in vision, lasting about 2–3 months after each quarterly treatment."

It is totally unclear to me why this is in this page. I have never heard of either spasm being associated with Fuch's and nowhere else on the page are they mentioned.

Trudyjh (talk) 21:01, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Good catch - looks like it should be removed. I'll have a look and comment at the relevant talk page. -- Scray (talk) 21:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

A very old merge

There is a merge tag on T1 relaxography and Spin-lattice relaxation time. First, I believe the subjects are in this project's realm. Second, I believe the merge should be done but it is beyond my expertise. Someone in this project should be able to do it. Best regards. --Muhandes (talk) 19:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

We seriously need a wiki-radiologist, but apparently they're indisposed. JFW | T@lk 19:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm free! - no PubMed mention of "T1 relaxography" and the one provided reference was for sampling from multiple sites for speed (vs multiple sampling of each site) - I've been bold and done the deed. David Ruben ^Talk 20:22, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Here is a radiologist to-be :-) T1 relaxography as described in the article is more commonly known as T1 mapping or T1 imaging and is different from a normal T1 weighted image. See the article's talk page for further discussion. --WS (talk) 14:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Medroxyprogesterone

There doesn't seem to be a WikiProject or Taskforce Gynaecology, so I'm posting this here. There is an edit-war bioidentical hormone replacement therapy vs. "synthetic" hormones at Talk:Medroxyprogesterone. Some eyes and hands would be really appreciated. Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 07:39, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a small group at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Reproductive medicine task force, but I believe that at least most of them watch this page, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:53, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes a number of us keep an eye on this topic. Not much data to support that bioidentical HRT is different than standard HRT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Medical software needs help

Hi. It has been brought to my attention that this page is in a rather poor state. I would have thought it would have included personal (home) medical software, GP knowledge-base software (such as SOPHIE (sp?)), a link at least and summary of the (disastrous) UK NHS IT program, etc. Lots of mainstream and medical press articles have been written about software and how it can improve (or not!) medical practice, and this should be covered here. I think this article is ripe for improvement from people with the knowledge and the correct references. Best, Verbal chat 09:44, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Ontario Canada also had a medical IT disaster. Wikipedia is still in its early stage. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

There is also the Computer Science cautionary tale of the scanners where the software had no delay built in, and once the operators got too fast at using the terminals they gave far higher than intended does of radiation. I'll have to look up the details. Verbal chat 11:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Online Sources That Discuss Reliable Sources for Medicine-Related Articles

I had a pleasant conversation with some more experienced editors than I on a user talk page about websites that guide readers on how to interpret primary research findings. One such site is the personal site of Google Director of Research Peter Norvig, including the article Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation. That article links to both primary and secondary sources that help Wikipedians distinguish reliable publications from unreliable publications for medicine-related articles. Another interesting site is Science-Based Medicine, a blog that today just happens to have an article on Reliability of Health Information on the Web, sure to be of interest to editors here. I try to link to sites like these in article talk pages so as to encourage Wikipedians to set high standards for sources as they edit medicine-related articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:46, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks WBB, that is interesting reading! (although I usually find it's easier to just ask MastCell) --RexxS (talk) 23:36, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring at Trichotillomania

In case anyone has time to look: Talk:Trichotillomania#Decoupling. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The edit warring appears to have died down now, and several concurring opinions have been added to the debate on the talk page. Consensus looks clear. --RexxS (talk) 23:31, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 July 12

Hi, everyone. I'm proposing to reorganise the categorisation of hormones, to account for the sheer number of them and so that the categories are more distinct from each other. Looking for input! - Richard Cavell (talk) 02:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Article needs renamed?

Acording to this source, atherosclerosis should be renamed to atherothrombosis, unless I misread the source. I stumbled across this issue when creating a redirect for atherothrombosis and trying to figure out what to redirect to.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

No. Atherosclerosis is the formation of the plaques. Thrombosis is when a plaque ruptures, forming a thrombus in the blood vessel. JFW | T@lk 12:24, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah ok, thank you. I changed the redirect of atherothrombosis to point to thrombosis, rather than pointing to atherosclerosis. I hope that this is correct.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

That works. Kallimachus (talk) 17:00, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to edit

Your thoughts on this proposal for encouraging readers to edit would be appreciated. I'd be particularly interested in suggestions regarding the mini-tutorial (how to edit a bio-med article). Anthony (talk) 22:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a really good idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:58, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, I think the syntax is a large barrier to editing. Linking to http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Formatting&stable=1 might be helpful. Kallimachus (talk) 17:11, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Kallimachus; I have incorporated it. Anthony (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Drug pricing reminder

Just a note to tell you what you already know: Encyclopedia articles don't normally include current retail prices for drugs. Someone kindly notified WPPHARM about this 2006 addition to an article about an antifungal medication, which is inappropriate. If you ever run across anything similar, please feel free to remove it.

(Other measures of price, like the average wholesale price or the AFRO Essential Medicines Price indicator, might be appropriate and encyclopedic information, if the cost is discussed by significant sources, but the retail price in a single country is not.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Medicine Collaborations: Revived, now monthly

Please consider participating in the Medicine Collaboration of the Month. Nominations and voting for the August 2010 collaboration are now underway. Craig Hicks (talk) 19:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Inflammation Diet

I saw a request to check Anti-Inflammation Diet at WT:WikiProject Health and fitness] which is a fairly moribund project/. It has lots of medical looking terms so posting it here as more likely to find someone competent to look at it. Dmcq (talk) 23:42, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes this is advertising. Not a single review article supporting it. Definitely not NPOV. Also appears to be a copyright violation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:22, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

The general subject seems to be the current dietary fad among cancer patients. There's probably an article to be written there -- although if that's a copyvio, then obviously that page isn't it.

The article was posted by a new user whose username is related to NF-κB; perhaps s/he could be turned into a good science editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

It looks like a copyvio, as the external page is dated June 29, 2010 and Anti-Inflammation Diet was created on 15 July 2010. I've added the url to the {{db-copyvio}} and notified the author, Nfbetakappa (talk · contribs), about the concerns. --RexxS (talk) 22:16, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding photos in articles from http://dermatology.cdlib.org/

I see at the bottom of the journal's main page that they are using a CC license. Does this mean I can use photos from their journal on Wikipedia? ---kilbad (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately no. They are using a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (BY-NC-ND) and that is incompatible with our licence, which allows others to modify and use for any purpose. You could use them yourself on a non-commercial website, as long as you didn't change them and you properly attributed their source. The best I can suggest is a series of annotated external links from relevant Wikipedia articles, since they are material which cannot be incorporated into the article because of copyright. --RexxS (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Are there any other resources out on the web where I can get derm photos to use on Wikipedia? ---kilbad (talk) 17:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Google gives 24,000 hits for "dermatology pictures", so there are a lot of pictures out there. Sadly, people seem to be very possessive about images, and I haven't found any free ones from that search yet. I also checked "dermatology pictures"+free on Google, but that's got a lot of chaff in with the wheat. If you can read arabic, then it's possible that http://arabdentist.netfirms.com/medical_pictures.htm might have free images, but I can't read the copyright terms. I think you'll have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince among all that lot – but never give up! --RexxS (talk) 19:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

You could try writing to the organization above and see if they would be willing to release images under a license compatible with Wikipedia. Radiopedia gave permission on an image by image basis when I emailed them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

So I saw this image, File:Chronic_skin_lesions_of_EPP.jpg, and that it was from http://www.biomedcentral.com. So my question is, can I use photos from http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcdermatol/ on Wikipedia? ---kilbad (talk) 22:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I created this page a while back looking at what sources can and cannot be used on Wikipedia. If you find / get permission for other sources please add them [32] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:37, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

It appears that some of the content is under the same license as Wikipedia and thus can be used. I see that some of the images their do come from Wikipedia already. The license is here [33] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Suggest some links please

Hi I'm trying to de-orphan this article Enterostatin while at the same time build up content from references (heaps of good references can be found on google). This is not my field of expertise, but I think it is about using a drug to help with weight loss. Any suggestions for articles that might be suitable to link to would be helpful. Thanks Blackash have a chat 12:35, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Obviously you'll need an article with the text 'enterostatin' in it to make a wikilink. A Google search on "site:en.wikipedia.org enterostatin" unfortunately only shows up Eating which already has an outgoing link to Enterostatin. It means you'll have to add relevant text to other articles (with references, of course) to be able to create those links. Apologies if you'd already realised that. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Obesity, Weight loss, and Procolipase – the last being a redlink at present. I'm sure other regulars here will be able to make suggestions, but in the meantime, you could repeat your request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which might have other experts able to offer suggestions as well. --RexxS (talk) 16:05, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks it was thinking of which articles it would useful or relevant to create the appropriate text link into for Enterostatin that I was having trouble with. Good idea about Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology Thanks. Blackash have a chat 11:41, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

It's got three incoming article links now (I sneaked in a See also link from Weight loss). Build the web! --RexxS (talk) 14:36, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Blackash have a chat 16:47, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

A research proposal

Hi everyone, I'm James, a soon-to-be fourth year medical student at Keele University in the UK. I've just finished doing an audit at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, and the project has got me thinking. Wikipedia is still treated as being the devil's spawn by most of the faculty at my medical school, and I'd like to prove them wrong. I was wondering if anyone would be interested to carrying out a research project, with the aim to publish a paper at the end of it, examining Wikipedia's articles for breadth and accuracy in comparison to more traditional sources? If anyone's interested, do please let me know! Colds7ream (talk) 09:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi James, I think a study like this has been done (I can't remember where i read it though). Have you done an initial literature search of the area?

Tom (soon to be 2nd year) Warwick Medical School/Paramedic Tannim101 (talk) 11:09, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

just had a quick search have a look at this; http://www.bivings.com/thelab/presentations/Wikipedia_Health_Information.pdf Tannim101 (talk) 11:10, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

See also this page's archive #19, this section: "Study finds Wikipedia's cancer info extremely accurate". Hordaland (talk) 13:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah! Fair enough - nope, I hadn't done a search; it was just an idle thought. Thanks! Colds7ream (talk) 15:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

You can also find some critical studies. If memory serves, there's a couple of "How Dare Wikipedia Not Be a Drug Dosing Guide" papers out there, and a "Can You Believe They Don't Dumb Their Prose Down to the Level of Average 12-Year-Olds?" paper. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

You might consider doing a review of the existing stuff. 'Twould be interesting to see it all lined up in the same place. Hordaland (talk) 23:24, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I would be interested in getting involved with further research. As I have mentioned below I am attempting to catalogue the literature on Wikipedia and medicine here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:00, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I would also be willing to participate.--Garrondo (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Pulmonology article

I am currently working to expand, improve, and clean up the pulmonology article. This article has been in disrepair for quite some time and I am working to make it more than a list of concepts. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:40, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

You might consider nominating this article for the next Medicine Collaboration of the Month. Craig Hicks (talk) 19:45, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Adding chapter reference to citation

I want to cite chapters 1 and 2 in the following citation. How do I best do that? See List_of_cutaneous_conditions#cite_note-isbn0-7817-7363-6-18. ---kilbad (talk) 17:31, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:Cite book has a |chapter= parameter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

A dozen for you

WP:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project has identified the next dozen in significant need of help:

• Constipation
• Asthma
• Vitiligo
• Depression (mood)
• Dizziness
• Tonsillitis
• Vitamin E
• Boil
• Triphala
• Withania Somnifera
• Asana (yoga), and
• Ayurveda.

If you're interested, please jump in. Even ten minutes' effort can help a lot, and this project multiplies your efforts out to several Wikipedias around the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Changing cerebrum cortex types navigation box

Hi, I tried to correct the cerebral cortex types nav box as it wasn't quite right (e.g. allocortex was redirecting to neocortex), but when I got into it it was more complicated than I thought. I've had a go, but does anyone have any thoughts on it?Keepstherainoff (talk) 15:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, that's a tough one, and well beyond my knowledge of what are the correct terms. However, what I can say is that a navigation template is exactly that – a place where readers could refer to, so that they can find closely related articles. The result of that is there shouldn't be any "Easter eggs"; for example, a reader shouldn't click on "True isocortex" and arrive at the Neocortex article; similarly, a reader ought to be able to see a direct link to the Neocortex article, in case that is a term they are looking for. In other words, piped links are generally a bad idea in nav templates (unless it is a link to a section of a parent article). Also, if there's no article on Mesocortex, for example, there's no point in having such a red link in a nav template, unless you expect that article to be created soon. The template serves a different purpose from a list, categorisation, or discussion of a topic (where red links may be much more appropriate), if you see what I mean. Anyway, I don't mean to be negative, and your efforts have improved Template:Cortex types by changing what seem to have been inaccuracies. Could I suggest you have another look at it and see if you can address any of the issues I raised? The key point is that a template doesn't have to be any more comprehensive than what Wikipedia has articles (or sections within articles) for. Would you be able to actually expand any of the Allocortex, Paleocortex, or Archicortex articles? – somewhere in those articles may be the place to explain the various categories of this part of the brain. --RexxS (talk) 02:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Low level laser therapy

There's actually a rather interesting point (involving a specific criticism of the Cochrane Collaboration) raised on talk:low level laser therapy. If anyone feels like venturing a viewpoint, it's actually somewhat intriguing.

There's also a much less interesting comment about MEDRS in general and two low-n primary sources in particular. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Hiya

I was asked to post here in regards to a DYK nom I submitted, DirectHit, it's currently in Prep. Two of the sources need checking and I was told to come here. Thanks in advance. Fridae'§Doom | Spare your time? 03:58, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I assume that the article in question is J. Woodland Hastings, but you need to tell us which two sources need to be checked, and what exactly needs to be checked about them. There are 30 footnotes in that article at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The literature on us

I would just like to point out some of the recognition that we get in the published literature:

• Medpedia writes in Oct. 2009 "for now it means that Wikipedia will continue to be the medical wiki of choice." [34]
• A 2010 nursing journal found "mean number of reputable sources of M = 29 per Wikipedia entry. The quality of the evidence taken obtained from the 2500 plus references from over 50 Wikipedia pages was of sufficiently sound quality to suggest that, for health related entries, Wikipedia is appropriate for use by nursing students." [35]

I am cataloging the literature on Wikipedia and medicine both good and bad here. If people wish to add anything I have missed feel free to join in. Once again congratulations to all involved! And remember what we do matters :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:40, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Should we make this a subpage of WP:MED? ---kilbad (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Sure were? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:37, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Idk, anyone have a preference. ---kilbad (talk) 23:58, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

also see Wikipedia:Academic studies of Wikipedia. Earlypsychosis (talk) 04:42, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Question

Saying a discussion is off-topic doesn't excuse it. WP is not a chat room. -- Scray (talk) 03:40, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This seems like a good community to ask this off-topic question. Have any of you seen a really good personal website for a doctor? I recently bought a domain name and would like to host my own personal dermatology page, and am trying to come up with a simple and good looking design. I have been looking around the web, but it seems that dermatologists are really bad at website design. Have any of you seen any really good personal physician websites? Would you post the link here? Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 22:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC) I hope nobody will take offence at the off-topic discussion, but I've been designing web sites/applications since the mid-1990s, and my advice nowadays is take a look at WordPress software. It's possibly the simplest way for the end-user to create and keep up-to-date a useful website; there's good documentation and numerous 'themes' to pick from (or modify as you gain experience). The other option is to pay a good graphics designer to produce a bespoke design and then a website designer to implement it, and that's expensive. Whatever you decide, you can always drop me a line – you have my email. --RexxS (talk) 01:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC) I am not concerned about the actual coding I can do that. I am more looking for design ideas, namely a nice, simply layout. ---kilbad (talk) 01:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Propose new section in Cervarix Article for Important Safety Information

Hi, my name is Maitri Shah, PharmD, and I work for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (GSK) in the United States as a Medical Information Scientist. My intent is to provide information to the editors of Wikipedia for their use in Cervarix related articles to help ensure that healthcare professionals in the United States receive accurate and balanced scientific information. I would like to propose that a new section be added to the Cervarix article that includes the important safety information for Cervarix. I have added my proposal to the Cervarix Talk Page. I have released the content under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (unported) and GNU Free Documentation License, this is evident on the talk page as well. I think that it is important to add important safety information to ensure that the reader receives a balanced view of Cervarix. All of the pharmaceutical product articles that I have read on Wikipedia with ratings of “B and GA” (e.g. Atorvastatin and Warfarin) in the WikiProject Medicine Quality scale include safety related information. Maitri Shah, PharmD, GSK (talk) 14:39, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Merge of tetanic contraction and tetanized state

Just to notify, I've merged the tetanized state to tetanic contraction. A merge warning was on since late 2009 and they were indeed the same thing. Rudolf Hellmuth (talk) 02:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Images

Would someone help me by putting the images from this open access article on Wikipedia/Commons? See http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/gen.php?file=103TODJ.pdf&PHPSESSID=8e86837496fa7fbd75b6251fa687634b. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 15:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help... but the link's not working :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Perhaps you could visit http://www.bentham.org/open/todj/openaccess2.htm. Basically, I want all good clinical images found within the journal, which I know is more that I initially asked for help with. However, any help is greatly appreciated! ---kilbad (talk) 23:45, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, OK. What's their licensing arrangement? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:31, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/copyrlght.php ---kilbad (talk) 00:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. That's going to be a problem. The Copyright page states

All articles are, for you to read, download, copy, distribute, deposit in digital repositories and use (with attribution) any way you wish. No permission is required for distribution, copying or commercial use of published articles.

But the articles state

This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

Wikipedia of course does not accept CC-BY-NC, so we technically can't use the content of any Open Dermatology Journal articles. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:52, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess we could try emailing them and ask... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:30, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would be a great idea. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 22:26, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Application of WP:MEDRS to EMDR

The EMDR article is rife with NPOV problems. Since early May I've tried get editors to apply WP:MEDRS to resolve these problems with no success. Anyone able to help with what may become a rewrite of much of the article? --Ronz (talk) 16:09, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Croup at GA

Croup was nominated for Good article status last month. It is a short article, but well-sourced and appears to me to meet the actual GA criteria. Other comments (and assistance in fixing the three problems I've identified) are welcome on its talk page.

Other Good article nominees related to WPMED are:

• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — after a bad experience, this article needs a reviewer who knows WP:What the Good article criteria are not
• Chlorpromazine — Casliber and MacDaid would welcome your help in wrapping up this review
• Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China — SilkTork nominated this a couple of weeks ago
• Decompression sickness — RexxS would love to find a reviewer without waiting as long as everyone else

The Good article folks seem to be having a bit of a backlog problem overall, but WPMED is within sight of being caught up. If you've never reviewed an article for WP:GA status before, it's not difficult. There are six straightforward criteria, and you don't have to bother with the kind of fiddly details (or endless discussions with overly picky editors) that can bedevil FA nominations. A good review is a bit like a focused peer review. I encourage you to give it a try. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Transcendental Meditation again

We are having a discussion about how to best summarize the research on TM. Wondering if people would be so kind as to weight in here Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#AHRQ_and_Transcendental_Meditation. It has to do with WP:MEDRS as well as the usage of studies done by people associated with the TM movement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:23, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

A request for comment has started here about how best to summarize the research on TM. [36] Would be great if all would come and comment. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:30, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

HHT

I've recently been doing some work on hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Now this is a condition that I don't normally treat personally, so I'd be delighted if you all could have a look at the result and leave comments on the talkpage before I submit this to WP:GAC. Thanks to User:Jmh649 and User:Kilbad for some recent advice. JFW | T@lk 20:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm just going to submit it to GAC actually. JFW | T@lk 10:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks great IMHO. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Denial of pregnancy

Denial of pregnancy is in the news this week (e.g., [37]. If anyone wants an easy task, expanding this four-sentence stub is probably a reasonable candidate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Is FA review department historical

Just noticed under Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine#Departments we have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Featured articles review department. Has this department been absorbed into the main FA system and is now historical ? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 11:01, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The last messages were 2006 on the page, and 2008 on the talk page. I'd say that process is definitely in the 'historical' range. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I was guessing that FA reviewers might be going through the mainstream pages now ... shall we remove link from department navigation and mark historical / inactive ? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 17:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Collection of creative common images

Superior vena cava syndrome in a person with bronchogenic carcinoma. Note the swelling of his face first thing in the morning (right) and its resolution after being upright all day (left).

I have come across a collection of creative commons images [38] that related to medicine. I think we can use them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:15, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I have also emailed the author to inquire about images of better quality. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

They could go direct to commons as they are CC-BY licensed. Great find! LeadSongDog come howl! 20:30, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Some of these images are great. Definitely keep me posted if they end up on commons and I will add them to articles here. ---kilbad (talk) 03:12, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(undent)They have released two high quality images from this collect to me under the CC2.0 license. Here is what they look like. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:45, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If people look through this collection and see ones that they wish at higher resolution drop me a note and I will request them.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Image needs editing

Resolved

 – Post-archiving note: I've replaced the image. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:07, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

User:Lb.at.wiki has noticed that the labelling in the image on the right is incorrect; see discussion at Talk:Kidney_transplantation#Erroneous picture. If anyone is willing to fix it that would be great, otherwise it will just go on the end of my ever-lengthening todo list. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the model had transposition of the great arteries? (Lame, I know—sorry, but I couldn't resist). Perhaps an even better image can be obtained from another NIH source, or even composited from SVGs available on Commons. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Internal link spamming

This is sort of odd. This user is spamming the link to the List of pharmaceutical companies into every article conceivable. I'm not sure if there is some sort of weird motive for this or if he's just confused. It's been reverted in a few cases and reinserted. Any suggestions on what to do? SDY (talk) 06:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I reverted dozens of edits he/she has made and warned twice on the talk page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

And this user continues adding this link to dozens of pages after I have reverted nearly a 100 edits. Please could someone comment.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:54, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I've left some advice on his talk page to try to explain where it may be appropriate to add such links – and where it isn't. I've requested he examine WP:BRD and justify edits where he's challenged, so at least he should slow down now. If he fails to do so after three editors have commented, then it may be worth requesting a preventive block to stop disruption at WP:ANI – but I'd recommend that only as a last resort. It's entirely possible that he can adjust to working collaboratively, although we may need to accommodate him to some extent, as some of his additions may be justifiable. I'll keep an eye on how this develops --RexxS (talk) 01:56, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Trans-umbilical breast augmentation

Can people please look at Trans-umbilical breast augmentation - it is new; I'm wondering if it could be knocked into shape a bit within the next few days, so we can submit a WP:DYK. Thanks in anticipation,  Chzz  ►  16:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Blood irradiation therapy

Greetings, friends,

This therapy is used very widely in China, Russia, and several other places; it's a mainstream therapy in these countries. For whatever reasons, it's not very well known in the US.

What we see with this article is that an editor keeps deleting the entire 'Further reading' section, which contains numerous valid peer-reviewed refs.

Here are these refs,

• Further reading*
• Li, X.; Cheng, G.; Huang, N.; Wang, L.; Liu, F.; Gu, Y. (2010). "Light distribution in intravascular low level laser therapy applying mathematical simulation: a comparative study". Journal of X-ray science and technology. 18 (1): 47–55. doi:10.3233/XST-2010-0239 (inactive 2015-11-06). PMID 20421704.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2015 (link)
• Zhao, S. D.; Liu, T. C. Y.; Wang, Y. F.; Liu, S. H. (2008). "Meta-analysis on intravascular low energy laser therapy": 728012. doi:10.1117/12.823336. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Mi, X.; Chen, J.; Zhou, L. (2006). "Effect of low power laser irradiation on disconnecting the membrane-attached hemoglobin from erythrocyte membrane". Journal of photochemistry and photobiology. B, Biology. 83 (2): 146–150. doi:10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2005.12.018. PMID 16481193.
• Mi, X.; Chen, J.; Cen, Y.; Liang, Z.; Zhou, L. (2004). "A comparative study of 632.8 and 532 nm laser irradiation on some rheological factors in human blood in vitro". Journal of photochemistry and photobiology. B, Biology. 74 (1): 7–12. doi:10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2004.01.003. PMID 15043841.
• Timofeyev, V.; Poryadin, G.; Goloviznin, M. (2001). "Laser irradiation as a potential pathogenetic method for immunocorrection in rheumatoid arthritis". Pathophysiology. 8 (1): 35–40. doi:10.1016/S0928-4680(00)00059-6. PMID 11476971.
• De Scheerder, I.; Wang, K.; Zhou, X.; Szilard, M.; Verbeken, E.; Ping, Q.; Yanming, H.; Jianhua, H.; Nikolaychik, V.; Moses, J. W.; Kipshidze, N.; Van De Werf, F. (2001). "Optimal dosing of intravascular low-power red laser light as an adjunct to coronary stent implantation: insights from a porcine coronary stent model". Journal of clinical laser medicine & surgery. 19 (5): 261–265. doi:10.1089/10445470152611991. PMID 11710621.
• Tunér, J; Hode, L (1998). "It's all in the parameters: a critical analysis of some well-known negative studies on low-level laser therapy". Journal of clinical laser medicine & surgery. 16 (5): 245–8. PMID 9893504.

There's no reason IMHO that these peer-reviewed articles cannot be used for Further reading. Especially this,

• Zhao, S. D.; Liu, T. C. Y.; Wang, Y. F.; Liu, S. H. (2008). "Meta-analysis on intravascular low energy laser therapy": 728012. doi:10.1117/12.823336. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

which is a recent meta-review. (The reason for deleting it, as given, seems rather specious.)

My next concern is about the apparent ethnocentrism that I believe is apparent in the behaviour of User:WLU.

Wikipedia does not belong to USA alone. This is an international encyclopedia. The fact is that this treatment is used by millions of people outside the US (often being a mainstream treatment, actually), and I believe Wikipedia should reflect this. What is the current Wikipedia policy in this area, I wonder?

The research in this area has been conducted primarily in non-English speaking countries, and there's a huge amount of published research in Chinese, for example. But WLU keeps deleting all that.

And, finally, at this time we have a new editor (User:Qudore) who actually knows something about this therapy (i.e. practical experience), and is trying to contribute to the article. But, by the looks of it, I'm afraid he won't be sticking around much longer, considering how he's being treated by WLU. Is it really to the advantage of Wikipedia to drive away knowledgeable and credentialed people from editing articles in their area of expertise? I wonder...

So I'm bringing these concerns here in the hope of receiving some good guidance in these areas.

Regards, --Dyuku (talk) 16:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Since the discussion began a couple of days ago on the article's talk page, please consider sharing your perspective at Talk:Blood irradiation therapy#Further_reading_section. I'm sure that Dyuku and WLU would love to hear from several editors there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting stuff. While "blood irradiation" as described in the article is most definitely not a part of mainstream medicine in the US (or in any Western country that I'm familiar with), it bears some resemblance to extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) - which is an accepted, if relatively obscure, treatment for various autoimmune and alloimmune conditions. ECP is definitely immunosuppressive, or more accurately immunomodulatory, in complex ways, so it would be interesting to see what overlap exists with blood irradiation. MastCell ^Talk 05:07, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The "best" article on the topic appears to be this one. Of interest, the summary of studies on pages 438-9 includes several RCT, but doesn't mention blinding. A vivid, dramatic, "sciencey" treatment is expected to have a fairly strong placebo effect, making blinding and adequate controls extremely important. Though it is possible there is something here, at this point I think it's pretty far from being conclusive. Further, the work seems to parallel acupuncture in a lot of ways (and indeed, at least one form appears to stimulate "acupuncture points" - though I'd ask which ones? Korean? Chinese? Japanese? An interesting question since each tradition identifies different points, and there's no known anatomical basis for the points). Like acupuncture, it's exotic (from Russia! And Asia!), it's dramatic (lasers!), it's "scientific" (LASERS!!!), it's hard to blind (because of the existence of visible light), and it's suggested as a panacea for many conditions. It also includes the hallmark of quackery - "strengthening the immune system" (making MastCell's comparison about ECP interesting to say the least - strengthening the immune system of someone with autoimmune conditions is a very bad thing).

My biggest beef with Dyuku's additions is the inclusion of a bucket of primary (animal and in vitro) research as further reading. My second-biggest beef in general is that most of medicine isn't even aware of this technique, making it very easy to cherry-pick the (incredibly low-impact, third, fourth, fifth and lower-string) journals to make all sorts of claims, which can not be juxtaposed with any skepticism because none exists - because most researchers aren't even aware of it. This is research still in its inception outside of Russia and China, and with the latter at least notorious for producing only positive studies (see Singh & Ernst, p. 71-2) versus the West where results are extremely mixed and generally negative for everything but pain and nausea. My third biggest beef is that Quackwatch sees at least one type (ultraviolet therapy) as quackery debunked 40 years ago.

So overall, I am quite concerned about the small number of extremely preliminary sources being used to grossly oversell BIT because, as of yet, the skeptical (and medical) community is not yet aware of it. I don't want the wikipedia page to turn into whale.to (and there is a spam blacklisted page - whale.to/a/ultraviolet_blood_irradiation) or Bob's House of We'll Treat Anything With A Laser! I prefer the current version, which essentially avoids claims, until skeptical sources turn up which balance claims against actual evidence. This is an issue requiring consensus and common sense rather than a strict parsing of the sources, because of the substantial imbalance between positive/credulous and negative/skeptical. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 07:45, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

In Germany there is yet another variant popularly called "UV Eigenblutbestrahlung". Only very remote similarity to Extracorporeal photopheresis, both the effects and procedure are significantly different. No idea if it even has an English name but it is somewhat popular among physicians. Richiez (talk) 12:47, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

(To clarify, what follows is my reply specifically to WLU's message above. --Dyuku) Most of this is just irrelevant chatter and guilt-by-association with a strong whiff of ethnocentrism. Yes, we all know that the Chinese just love acupuncture, and therefore why should we trust them about anything? I guess the Russians don't really care about acupuncture all that much, so there must be some other way to smear them. Why should Americans be so smug about their medical 'achievements', considering that for the amount of money USA spends on health services the results are so poor?

WLU says: Of interest, the summary of studies on pages 438-9 includes several RCT, but doesn't mention blinding. A vivid, dramatic, "sciencey" treatment is expected to have a fairly strong placebo effect, making blinding and adequate controls extremely important.

Clearly WLU doesn't know very much about the subject matter. His information is rather outdated, since there are now numerous double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trials that have been published re LLLT. For example, this, PMID 20001318

It's really not the fault of any serious researcher in this area that the American "Quackbusters" are so behind in their homework re LLLT. I don't know why are they goofing off lately, but this can hardly be used as any sort of evidence against the efficacy of LLLT.--Dyuku (talk) 22:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You are the one who brought this up here, and it sounds like you didn't like the answer you got. It's not ethnocentrism, it's the reality that many claims are made for laser therapy, yet it's only been tested in two countries and not adopted wholesale. Even from an undue weight perspective, it's undue weight to place emphasis on it as an intervention when it's not widely accepted, and trying to force it as "proven" onto wikipedia is inappropriate. The best article, PMID 15998818, is from 2005 and is a call to research. Clearly, it has not been answered. I'm not sure why LLLT is being brought up, since the original section topic was blood irradiation therapy. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:28, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(To clarify, what follows is my reply specifically to Richiez's message above. --Dyuku) Here they are,

Eigenbluttherapie (German WP)

This one mentions Ultraviolet

Autohemotherapy

No UV mentioned here. --Dyuku (talk) 22:17, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. UV-autohemotherapey seems to have a dedicated article in German WP, de:UV-bestrahltes Blut. Interesting historical background, unfortunately (and not quite unexpectedly) it is considered ineffective. Richiez (talk) 09:19, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Gerovital

I tried to start a bit of cleanup of the article Gerovital, but I'm not really that knowledgeable in this area. It is in real need of someone with medical knowledge. If anyone could lend a hand, that would be helpful. Thanks. Deli nk (talk) 11:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Images

Herbert L. Fred, MD and Hendrik A. van Dijk are considering donating a bunch of high quality images to Wikimedia. These are two that they have given me which I have added to Superior vena cava syndrome. I am wanting to put them side by side in the infobox. Anyway we can get double image to work here? I wish to show them how their content will be used.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I have just combined them with paint so should be good it there is not a better way. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

{{Double image}} is the easiest way, but I don't think it works in the infobox. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 12:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes I tried that first of all but it only half working in the infobox.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:27, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Are they donating any derm-related images. Again, keep me posted, and I would be happy to include them in the appropriate articles and lists. ---kilbad (talk) 17:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes a bunch. Do you know how to get .tif images to work at wikimedia commons? That is the format they are providing them in. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Convert them to .png if you want a lossless conversion, otherwise you can convert photos to .jpg which have greater compression (but are lossy) - I use a free program called IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.net/) to do batch conversions. Tip is to work on a copy of the files you have until you're confident with using the program. --RexxS (talk) 04:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Will look into it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I have been away for a week so I have just seen your comment on how to upload tiff images to commons... Just a comment: you can upload a high quality picture in tiff format (I am not sure of the advantages over png although I believe it may have some). However what you can not do is preview tiff images in commons but you can upload them in two versions: as jpg images (with an small amount of quality lost) and tiff images with top quality.

I forgot yesterday to sign.--Garrondo (talk) 16:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Looking for more images of lichenoid eruptions

There are a number of conditions in the family of lichen planus, a type of violaceous and itchy skin rash. A complete listing is available at List_of_cutaneous_conditions#Lichenoid_eruptions. With that being, I wanted to know if someone would help get more quality, high resolution images of some of these conditions? ---kilbad (talk) 14:17, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Did you look through the 150 cases I send you? This page has a bunch of images of Lichen Planus. The ones licensed to ADAM are not usable but it appears the rest are CC3.0. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I am mistaken they are copyrighted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Templates messed up

The medical navigation templates {{Psych navs}} and {{Central nervous system navs}} are totally messed up when displayed on my screen. Could somebody please look at these. Many thanks, HairyWombat 18:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you looking at them directly, or as part of e.g. {{Pervasive developmental disorders}} and {{CNS diseases of the nervous system}}, where they are transcluded? I have not been involved in the creation and maintenance of these templates, but it looks like they are intended to be displayed in articles only as part of larger navigation templates. - 2/0 (cont.) 05:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I first encountered them as part of {{SleepSeries2}} (at the bottom of the article Mattress). However, they always display screwed up to me, whether viewed there, as part of {{Pervasive developmental disorders}}, as part of {{CNS diseases of the nervous system}}, or on their own. HairyWombat 13:43, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment about Chiropractic

There's a discussion you might be interested in about how to incorporate and how (or if) to attribute a medical source which concluded that "the risks of spinal manipulation to the neck by far outweigh the benefits". It is currently the final sentence of the article's introduction. Familiarity with WP:NPOV, WP:ASF, WP:MEDRS, and WP:MEDASSESS would be helpful. Thanks! Ocaasi (talk) 09:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Glimepiride

This article is a mess. I intend to work on it in a couple of days, but if anyone feels like doing some rough cleanup work, it would certainly make things easier :) (will cross-post to WT:PHARM) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 21:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Two new articles

Two new articles that might need some assistance from editors with medical knowledge: Admittance and Conductance in cardiac performance and Pressure-Volume Loop Analysis in Cardiology. Deli nk (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, my brain. JFW | T@lk 19:14, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes beyond me. What we need to do is attract more sub specialists to edit the encyclopedia.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:16, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:MOS#Article titles, headings, and sections regarding capitalization.—Wavelength (talk) 22:30, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed article titles and section headings per MOS, but that's about all I can do. I've added {{technical}} to the articles, because if they are beyond anyone here, they are probably much too technical for a general encyclopedia. Deli nk (talk) 23:32, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I have added the medicine project template.--Garrondo (talk) 07:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Mastitis reorganisation

Currently there is mastitis which most people consider a synonym for puerperal mastitis. While puerperal mastitis was originally intended to be the main page for that editors were adding their stuff to mastitis instead so we now have essentially 2 pages dealing with puerperal mastitis and plenty of wasted effort if that continues. So another reorganisation seem unavoidable, I see this options:

• make mastitis a pure disambiguation page for all inflammatory breast disorders linking to already existing subpages
• merge puerperal and non-puerperal mastitis and possibly create inflamatory conditions of the breast. There is also breast disease which might be better than creating a new page for the inflammatory conditions

I have zero experience with merging and such stuff so I would welcome any opinions and help. Richiez (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I have now proposed the merger, disscussions should go here.

Richiez (talk) 16:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Does not seem to get much response.. I will start doing it soon. Richiez (talk) 23:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Pathway to depression-related articles

I'd like anyone searching Wikipedia for "depression" to find useful stuff by the most direct route. A while ago I stumbled across Depression (mood) when it consisted of a fairly unfocused discussion of some of the psychiatric disorders featuring depressive symptoms and some speculation about the adaptiveness of depressive symptoms.[39] So after discussion with Casliber [40] I cut it down to a list of signs and symptoms, with links to Mood disorder, Adjustment disorder and Borderline personality disorder. [41]

The article has recently been reviewed by BSW-RMH as part of the Google.org project, and I've incorporated some of their suggestions. [42]

Also recently 7mike5000 (talk) has created Depression (differential diagnoses), a page discussing "physical" illnesses that produce depressive symptoms.

Could some knowledgeable med editors please look at this pathway and see if there are any delays, misdirections or roadblocks for readers looking for information about depression? I guess it starts with Depression (the disambiguation page). Anthony (talk) 13:25, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

In re WP:PSTS and WP:MEDRS

(copypasted from User talk:SandyGeorgia)

I have to concur with your concern. I've argued in the past that we need to automate the process of checking pubmed records for "Publication Type" fields and reflecting their values in our citation templates. Right now, I think that it is simply too handraulic for the few editors on medical topics to keep up with. Perhaps user:Citation bot could be brought to bear on the problem of doing the checks, but we would need some agreement on how to indicate citations of primary sources. My recent pattern has been to simply insert "(primary source)" before the closing /ref tag, but that's rather a work-around instead of fixing the templates. How would you feel about adding a |pubtype= to {{cite journal}}? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

We do need a much better way of identifying overreliance on primary sources in medical articles, but I'm not sure it can be automated or added to templates, since not all reviews are identified as such in PubMed. Perhaps open a discussion thread at WT:MED? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:22, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

(continuing)

While not all reviews are so marked at PubMed, I believe it is still useful to be able to attach to a citation an indication of whether it is a "Review", an "Original paper", a "Comment", an "Author response", an "Editorial", etc. The few cases in which manual intervention would be required should not dissuade us from conveying this information to critical readers. Most scientific journals and abstracting services make it clear which is applicable, and in cases of uncertainty we always have article talkpages. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:39, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that many people who add content containing primary research do not use the template fillers. Patrolling new additions is something we all hate (especially on controversial topics like the Zamboni zone in the MS article) but it is crucial to maintain the integrity of the encyclopedia. JFW | T@lk 19:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

IMO the problem is too complex to solve with automation. Even if we assumed that every entry in the database were correct, the fact is that primary sources can be used on Wikipedia -- just within limits. A bot will never be able to differentiate between an appropriate citation to a historically important primary paper (e.g., PMID 13054692), a primary source being presented within the limits of our content policies, and a primary source being used to debunk secondary sources or to make inappropriately sweeping claims.

I have no objection to adding a |pubtype= field to the templates, or to begging Diberri to automatically fill it in (if that's possible), but the most important work is still going to have to be done by humans. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

A bot that fills in a field indicating what type of article the reference is would definitely be of some us. One could than create a tool that determines what percentage of articles are reviews versus other types of articles. This could be added to the FA tools we currently use and would be useful for GA as well. Pubmed will limit your search to only review article ( which I often do ) thus their categorization must be mostly correct.

In one of the current debates I am involved in I have been adding the direct quote from the source I am using which supports the text written. I been adding this to the quote parameter. It makes it easier for others to verify sources one must pay for. I think small bits of text directly quoted still false under fair use.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:45, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Note that many articles marked as review in pubmed are actually a case report on an exorbitantly rare phenomena and review of literature - see eg PMID 18846753. Hardly the kind of phenomena we want to automatically mark as proven. On the other hand I want to have the freedom to use primary sources where I see them fit, especially for conditions where literature is thin. No bot can judge that. Richiez (talk) 20:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone here would seriously advocate leaving the include/exclude decision for a reference up to a bot. There are far too many special cases. All the bot should do is the initial populating of the empty field in the template. A well-behaved bot would leave intact any parameter value entered by humans. But even modifying the template solely by hand would be a step forward, as it would make it clear to reviewers that WP:PSTS had been considered by the editors. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:13, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The final content will not be decided by a bot but by people. Yes there are exception but that does not mean that this information is not useful.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:55, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that having this info would be useful, and if it is automated would be even better: as any bot or automatic classification will have mistakes that we will have to fix but even so it would be of great help.--Garrondo (talk) 08:16, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Having seen Sandy's note below, I hereby nominate Schizophrenia as an important test case for the bot.  ;-)

Has anyone identified a bot that does something similar? If we want this, we'll need to actually ask for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Good news

Just a note to say that I've just passed Croup for WP:Good article status. (Congratulations to Doc James and other editors.)

It sometimes seems like we report lots of problems here, but not really anything good -- and yet, somehow, when I look at my watchlist, I see useful things being done all the time. For example, I saw some badly sourced information being removed earlier today, there are a couple of civil conversations at some of our most important articles that look like they're going to be productive, BSW-RMH is doing wonders with the reviews for the Google Project (which needs your help, of course, because a review on a talk page doesn't fix the article), I notice that Looie496 has taken on the oldest of the medicine-related GA nominations, and I see that JFW has yet another article nominated for GA that looks "practically perfect in every way". And there's doubtless a lot of good work being done that I haven't noticed, too.

So let me say that it's great to work with this low-drama, high-productivity, very experienced group of editors, and that if you see good work being done, or if you did something that you enjoyed, please feel free to post about that, even when it feels a bit like you're tooting your own horn or embarrassing your friends by calling attention to their normally excellent work. We need to hear about problems so we can help you solve them, but we also need to know about your successes, too, so we can help you rejoice with them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your wise words, WhatamIdoing, and thanks for the accolade. I've been a Wikipedian since 2004. For a while, particularly in 2005 and 2006, I found myself engaged in silly edit wars. I then discovered that focused content-related work on a single article is much more fulfilling. Once good content has been produced it is very uncommon for it to become degraded (although it might occasionally warrant some updating). I am willing to offer advice to anyone looking for good sources, because in most instances there is very good source material in the literature that just needs to be adapted to Wikipedia standards. JFW | T@lk 23:29, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I hate to get too effusive with my praise—always seems to come back and bite you where it hurts—but, from what I can gather about your process from the Talk page, HHT could be mentioned in some guideline as a textbook case of good Wikipedia:Article development and adherence to WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS. In fact, I am inclined to review it myself—as long as no one thinks I'll be biased, of course :) There's no need to make the massive GAC backlog even bigger with an article that clearly meets the criteria.

And, of course, let me join WhatamIdoing in congratulating Doc James. I hope this particular case of Croup develops not into respiratory arrest but into a Featured article :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 01:25, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I love the citations list at croup; when you see ten high-quality sources, you know the article is written to MEDRS. Try loading schizophrenia, with its 217 citations, many of which just have to be primary sources, but imagine checking all of them ! Nice work! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:38, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

It took me much too long to find HHT (I went to the GAN page instead of checking Jfw's contribs), and there's another great source list, reflecting MEDRS. JFW, you might consider reducing some of the blue links, though-- you really don't have to link common country names like France (French), or common body parts like legs, but this is your choice. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Well said WhatamIdoing, there's a lot of truly great going on behind the scenes - from subtle one liners gradually improving numbers of articles to complete reworks that one just stumbles across rather than hears about. To all those people - you are great ! :) Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 08:50, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Sources again

Reminded me of an older idea of me: each citation should have an own page, such as {{cite pmid|...}} already have.

The interesting part is we can be tremendously creative in what can be done with such thing. My idea was the page-top would have the filled out template as it has now and the rest could be used for many interesting things such as assessment of the source(mark known crap:), comments, citation web links, explanatory notes, short text citations where the source is not easily or freely available. Of course the pages also have "what links there", a talk page and similar already now. Richiez (talk) 08:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

While I was initially enamoured of {{cite doi}} etc, it soon became apparent that the template-space subpage model fails for sources that are used in multiple disciplines because it cannot adapt to the differing required citation styles for those disciplines. Consider the scenario where you transclude it into an article on rectocranial inversion syndrome that achieves FA status (hurrah!). Another editor then transcludes it into an article on neologisms. Unhappy with the citation style, that editor clicks on the handy "edit" button and "fixes" it. In the process he breaks the citation format consistency in the FA without even showing up in that article's edit history! This can be simply avoided by using {{cite journal}} or {{citation}} instead. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

In an ideal world I would say {{cite doi}} should simply take an additional parameter "displaystyle=" or even better inherit it from the page but no idea if that can be implemented. Richiez (talk) 16:32, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this would foul up cache management. OTOH we could potentially have style-specific templates e.g. {{vcite doi}} or {{vancite doi}}.LeadSongDog come howl! 17:35, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a big problem with citations being kept off page. This means you cannot at a glance identify the name and journal of the source, which can lead to terrible confusion if you need to cite several sources several times. I much support keeping the references close to the text.

What I would support is {{cite pmid}} that automatically expands (with the help of a bot) into a full reference. JFW | T@lk 16:14, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Might be an idea if the bot would fill the ref name= with something meaningful like name=Watson_2009 ? I find it unwieldy to edit articles that have lengthy references inline so I definitely like the pmid shortcut. Richiez (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a meaningful name for the reference is a big help; I'd always prefer <ref name="AuthorYear"> using the same logic that {{harvnb}} does. Combined with list-defined references which take the full reference out of the text, it makes find your way through the text in the edit box much easier. --RexxS (talk) 16:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, if only MediaWiki supported simultaneous edits to two sections of a page so we could see both the LDR and the text needing citation! Ah well, I think you'll find that {{citation}} and {{cite journal}} both, being based on cite/core, take the input |ref=harv in order to address this wish, though it diverges significantly from the Vancouver style. Re JFW's comment, what if citation bot were to subst the template some time after expanding it? That would (I think) avoid the reformatting problem and the problem of content buried on unwatched template-space subpages. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that the feature you want is easily available in your web browser, by using Tab (GUI) and Window (computing) features. I fairly often have multiple tabs open or change the size of windows to do just that. As long as I'm not changing the number of sections, it usually seems to work out all right. (Or perhaps I'm so inured to edit conflicts that I don't notice repairing them any longer.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Firefox also has the "split browser" extension. Splits a single window or tab in multiple. But the issue was how wikipedia server software deals when multiple sections are edited at once? I thought it handles that since age but may be mistaken. Richiez (talk) 19:32, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't recall ever having a problem with editing both a section and the References section with them open in different tabs (or tiled windows). Maybe I'm just lucky. --RexxS (talk) 22:10, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Claudication

I added some secondary review full-text sources to claudication, and did a bit or reorganization to help distinguish neurogenic and vascular. Some of the wording was pre-existing and uncited. Could one of the docs check and expand on my work? Some mention of the differential diagnosis when numbness vs. pain is present would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I also added several full-text secondary reviews to peripheral vascular disease‎ and did what I could there. Done now, if any medical folk can check and expand on my work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

How do I cite Cochrane reviews (is there a template)? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Which Cochrane review? I use the diberri tool [43] which gives me Bachoo P, Thorpe PA, Maxwell H, Welch K (2010). "Endovascular stents for intermittent claudication". Cochrane Database Syst Rev (1): CD003228. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003228.pub2. PMID 20091540.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) I do not think there is a specific template. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I'm stupid-- it didn't occur to me that I could find a PMID for a Cochrane review and feed that into Diberri. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:01, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

There's no specific template. I don't think there's a way to make one either, as there are no discrete identifiers (updates keep the CD number of the original review, for instance). Fvasconcellos (t·c) 02:08, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I was just being stupid :) I was searching the Cochrane database, and it didn't occur to me to go over to PubMed and find the PMID. Fv, there's a Brazilian or Portuguese article at FAC-- where 'ya been?! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:13, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Wrestling with overwork, sleepless nights and some health issues (hmm, may be a connection there...) Trust me, you don't really wanna know :) I'll have a look. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 05:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Get well soon matey and look after ya'self. JFW | T@lk 07:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course I want to know! Feel better, e-mail if you'd like. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, kind sir (and lady :) Nothing major actually. Over the past couple of months I've managed to catch pneumonia, sprain both feet (grade 2!), and get run over (by a bicycle no less, indignity of indignities). Finally one of these. Asked for I&D without anesthesia—in retrospect, perhaps not the wisest of decisions. Only once in my life have I come closer to losing consciousness from sheer pain. Enough of that now, WP:NOTFORUM! I'll have to block myself if I keep this up. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 21:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

This is guaranteed to cheer you up. It's funny because it's true. MastCell ^Talk 00:10, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Goodness, Fv, that's a genuine plague of locusts!!! It was well worth posting here, just so MC could make us all watch that lame video! May the rest of 2010 treat you better! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Jesus, that's hilarious. 2:47—absolutely priceless.

Ever heard the one about the orthopod and the elevator door? My building is about 90% doctors, so I can't tell you how many times I've heard that one. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 19:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

But what is pink and scares an orthopood? JFW | T@lk 19:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

What do you call two orthopods and a chest x-ray? Yobol (talk) 22:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Historical figures sometimes considered autistic

Could others please have a look? We've got uncited original research text being added, incorrect tags, and a likely IP sock violating 3RR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:08, 14 August 2010 (UTC

Well, if the edit warring/WP:3RR violations persist, I would suggest reporting the user to the administrators here, citing examples of edit warring in his contribution history. Tyrol5 [Talk] 13:27, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Why thank you, that's most helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I notice the use of "unreliable source" tags on Oliver Sacks publication in a peer reviewed journal and Glen Elliott in New Scientist. Not NEJM or JAMA, but certainly not unreliable. I'll try to comment. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Anismus

Hi. I rewrote Anismus a bit, adding new references (PMID's). Someone reverted all my work. Would someone here please review? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.167.43.31 (talk) 16:11, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I have asked the editor who did the reverting (Docboat) whether he/she has a good reason for the revert, and invited them to comment on the article's talk page. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:18, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

You are quite correct - I was in the middle of reverting typical vandalism, and the flag went up at the language used - embarassing especially as I am a medical doctor - apologies, and I will revert. docboat (talk) 13:19, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Merge Depression (differential diagnoses) into Depression (mood) - discuss at Talk:Depression_(mood)#Merge_discussion. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Autism therapies

If anyone is interested, there is a discussion about whether B6 is a meaningful treatment for autism at Talk:Autism therapies#Rimland review re vitamin B6. Two sources from 2002 are positive, while a Cochrane Review and an article from the Annals of clinical psychiatry (both 2009) are less enthusiastic. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 14:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

2009 vs. 2002-- gee, that's tough :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Cochrane reviews are methodologically much stronger than "standard" reviews and automatically trump everything. JFW | T@lk 18:16, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

You forgot to put "Cochrane review" in scare quotes. HTH. :P As an aside, Bernard Rimland made some seminal contributions to autism research in the first part of his career, but segued into blaming thiomersal and vaccines in his later career. That doesn't diminish the value of his work, but his opinions on the cause and treatment of autism, particularly in the 1990s/2000s, are clearly at odds with current medical understanding, so we should be congisant of that when interpreting this review. MastCell ^Talk 18:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is the choir being preached to. The Rimland comment is very interesting, particularly considering the source (some lab apparently?) and the previous section started with "Practitioners of orthomolecular psychiatry..." which is never auspicious. I'll refer the editor here. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Mixing medical, botanical, and herbal stuff

I was doing some work on Vitex agnus-castus when I realised that the article tries to cover 3 fairly distinct domains: Botanical description etc, traditional herbal use, and use in modern medicin.

The sources on modern medical usage are good enough that I am tempted to split the article and create something like Vitex medication. Does that sound like a good idea or should I keep stuffing everything into one article? Are there other examples?

In Germany it has the status of a prescription free "apothekenpflichtig" (available in pharmacies only) medication with standartised extracts manufactured by several companies. I have fairly good overview of clinical and research aspectss but little knowledge about classical herbal stuff.

What name would I choose for such an article? Richiez (talk) 14:27, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I would keep it in one article, unless you are going to add a lot of text. Although it covers three domains it is all about the same herb, so as long as it doesn't get too long there is no reason to split. --WS (talk) 15:43, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree: one article unless and until you encounter WP:SIZE problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

What about adding templates like dopaminergics and melatonergics to the article? At least the dopaminergic effects are well establishd but I have not such a good feeling about doing that because what does this template then apply to? A particular extract, a plant? Richiez (talk) 17:18, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd refrain from adding those, actually—strictly speaking, these effects are produced not by the plant but by its constituents (vitexin, for instance, has radical scavenger and antithyroid effects) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 17:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

So that would be a good reason to split away the article to botanical and medical articles? In the long term I would want to have normal templates apply to it. Richiez (talk) 18:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

No; splitting should happen when the article size merits it. Vitexin already has an article; for other compounds isolated from the plant create a redirect to the plant article and put the redirect in whatever categories that compound belongs in. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 01:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

A similar discussion would be in order for Medicinal mushrooms, which article freely mingles discussion of mushrooms used in traditional medicine with discussion of specific constituents extracted from them. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:50, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma

I think the redirect is wrong. Although this type of lymphoma is associated frequently with Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, these two pathological entities are not interchangeable. The term Waldenström's macroglobulinemia identifies a hyperviscosity syndrome due to secretion of large amounts of monoclonal IgM. Therefore, this syndrome identifies alteration of a blood parameter and its consequences, but not its origin, which can be manifold. Instead, the term lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma identifies pathological entity, characterized by a tumor mass with typical histological changes and not always results in a Waldenström's macroglobulinemia. Sorry for my bad English. Have a nice day! :D --Ceccomaster (talk) 16:59, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. You are free to turn it into a stub, and it will be expanded eventually. Not all LPL causes WM. JFW | T@lk 19:48, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Trichotillomania

I've never encountered this "focused" vs. "automatic" classification: if anyone has access to the full text of PMID 15121993 , could they verify this text just added?

Trichotillomania is also subdivided into "automatic" versus "focused" hair pulling. Trichotillomania is often not a focused act, but rather hair pulling occurs in a "trance-like" state. This "automatic" pulling occurs in approximately three-quarters of patients with trichotillomania. Environment is a large factor which affects hair pulling. Sedentary activities such as being in a relaxed environment are conducive to hair pulling. A common example of a sedentary activity promoting hair pulling is lying in a bed while trying to rest or fall asleep. An extreme example of automatic TTM is found when some patients have been observed to pull their hair out while asleep. Children are more often in the automatic, or subconscious, subtype and may not consciously remember pulling their hair. Other individuals may have focused, or conscious, rituals associated with hair pulling, including seeking specific types of hairs to pull, pulling until the hair feels "just right", or pulling in response to a specific sensation.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:00, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me like the full text of that article is freely available - am I wrong? MastCell ^Talk 21:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Ack. Thanks :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:12, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you create new pages?

I've been thinking about the RFA drought, and the negative effects that this has on our own work. (For example, I've got a list of pages that need to be moved to their correct titles.) Special:ListUsers shows me that several good editors here (e.g., Garrondo, LeadSongDog, RexxS, Leevanjackson) also don't have various editor privs (e.g., autopatroller, rollback, or reviewer) set. I suspect that the hassle of requesting these things is the biggest reason.

I know that some editors aren't interested in an RFA, so here's something easy and quick that any new-page-creating editor can do in less than five minutes. For those of us who create an occasional article, it's not so helpful, but if you fairly often create new articles (and if you've been around a while, you may not realize how many you've created), please consider this:

1. Click here.
2. Put your username in, and change the pop-up menu to "Exclude redirects".
3. If the result shows that you've created dozens or hundreds of non-redirect pages, then please click here to request the "autopatrolled" priv.

New pages normally end up in Special:NewPages, where volunteers attempt to look over each one of them. People who have a demonstrated track record of creating lots of pages (that don't end up getting deleted) can help reduce the New Page Patrol's workload by requesting this bit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I moved a few of the items on your list, a few others were already fixed. If you need more assistance, just let me know. --WS (talk) 09:45, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, WaId. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:43, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Should this article be moved?

Milia is plural for Milium. Given our current naming conventions, should the article be moved to something like Milium_(disease)? ----kilbad (talk) 20:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Think it should be moved to the singular form, not sure about the parenthesis. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 09:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Would someone consider moving this article? ---kilbad (talk) 00:59, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. As there is no page to which you wish to move it the little move button at the top should do the trick.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:59, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I want to decline moving it myself at this time. ---kilbad (talk) 00:54, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay moved it to the name you suggested.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:45, 20 August 2010 (UTC)