Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 93

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Thoughts on a source

Here [1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Acceptance and commitment therapy could also use ce...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:25, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Medicine promotion

The WikiJournal of Medicine is a free, peer reviewed academic journal which aims to provide a new mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of Wikipedia's biomedical content. We started it as a way of bridging the Wikipedia-academia gap. It is also part of a WikiJournal User Group with other WikiJournals under development. The journal is still starting out and not yet well known, so we are advertising ourselves to WikiProjects that might be interested.

Engaging Wikipedians

• Original articles on topics that don't yet have a Wikipedia page, or only a stub/start
• Wikipedia articles that you are willing to see through external peer review (either solo or as in a group, process analogous to GA / FA review)
• Image articles, based around an important medical image or summary diagram

Engaging non-Wikipedians

We hope that an academic journal format may also encourage non-Wikipedians to contribute who would otherwise not. Therefore, please consider:

• Printing off the advertisement poster and distribute in tearooms & noticeboards at your place of work
• Emailing around the pdf through contact networks or mailing lists (suggested wording)

If you want to know more, we recently published an editorial describing how the journal developed. Alternatively, check out the journal's About or Discussion pages.

Additionally, the WikiJournal of Science is just starting up under a similar model and looking for contributors. Firstly it is seeking editors to guide submissions through external academic peer review and format accepted articles. It is also encouraging submission of articles in the same format as Wiki.J.Med. If you're interested, please come and discuss the project on the journal's talk page, or the general discussion page for the WikiJournal User group.
T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 10:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

very important opportunity for all of us, thank you(and have contacted other editors)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:44, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Official statement from the Chinese govt about our Acupuncture article

From the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council

• Press release (archived copy)
• Google translate

Gone are they days when teachers tell students not to use Wikipedia — now the Chinese government feels it needs to issue an official statement when they think we're wrong. Fascinating…
Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 12:54, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Google Translate suggests that this is really just a news piece about that "Acupuncture Now" guy's petition to have the word "pseudoscience" removed from Acupuncture. I didn't see anything in there that suggested the Chinese government was making an official statement about the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

The website which hosts this article is the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and has a .gov.cn domain name. Those aren't handed out willy-nilly. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 17:43, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I think what WAID is saying is this is just them writing a story about the "protest" of our content by a group of Chinese medicine practitioners in California.

I do not know what the current government's stance is on the field or even if they have one anymore. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:11, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

We'll see, I still find in interesting that they mentioned it. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 20:22, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

We are more important than we typically realize :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:39, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Karthikeya Sivasenapathy

Karthikeya Sivasenapathy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A new editor has created this article and has recently added a claim about A2 milk that isn't supported by the main article and even the references used seem to support a much stronger statement without the declaimers. Would appreciate some eyes and if needed some guidance given to the editor. Ravensfire (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Karthikeya_Sivasenapathy--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

HUPRA syndrome

Hello fellow physicians. I've started an article on HUPRA syndrome, but it's not my area of expertise. Expansion and collaboration on the article is welcome. —Hexafluoride ^{Ping me if you need help, or post on my talk} 20:52, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:31, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to add it to Template:Mitochondrial diseases under No primary system Chromosomal. —Hexafluoride ^{Ping me if you need help, or post on my talk} 23:02, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Copyright at the World Health Organization

Useful links: Online petition and Creative Commons license. (searching for CC-BY-SA-NC?)

Rumour has it that the WHO is moving in house publications to a CC BY SA NC license. IMO moving to a non free, non open license is a very big mistake with long term negative implications for global health. I am looking at starting a change.org petition to increase awareness about this issue. Wondering others thoughts and if people have experience around these petitions? Looking at many of the petitions and they are fairly long. Thinking about something beginning along the lines of:

We hear that the World Health Organization is moving to a CC BY SA-NC license, a non free non open license, for inhouse publications. We the undersigned believe that the World Health Organization should adopt an open license such as the CC BY or CC BY SA license.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't the current license "all rights reserved"? In that case, permitting free use for non-commercial purposes constitutes a significant improvement.
• CC-BY-SA-NC is not generally considered a non-free or non-open license (it's more commonly understood as "partly free"). The only practical difference between that license and the one we use at Wikipedia is that people wouldn't be allowed to sell copies (e.g., all of those books that compile Wikipedia's contents and try to sell them on Amazon). People could still use it, share it, and modify it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

A slight improvement maybe but not a clear improvement. NC is not well defined and thus it is a very poor license. They can and should do better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support speaking up Creative Commons says that NC is a non-free license. Open access as a concept was defined in 2001 and confirmed twice thereafter in the Budapest, Bethesda, and Belin statements. Those 3 B statements all agree that "open access" content must be available for remixing, and all exclude content with non-commercial restrictions as not open access.

If WHO wishes to use non-free, non-open, non-open access licensing, then that is their choice. However, if they choose a non-free license, then I object to them saying that it is free. There is no ambiguity about free and non-free. The Wikipedia community has standing as stewards of free content to inform them of the difference between free and non-free if they need that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

That page describes the CC licenses as ranging along a continuum from "more open" vs "less open" in the lead graphic, which I think is a reasonable approach. It may be convenient for certain purposes to draw a line between the "barely free enough to be 'free' (according to my values)" and "slightly too restricted to count as 'free' (according to my values)", but I think that there is value in remembering that it's a continuum rather than an all-or-nothing state.

Also, the concept for that particular page is based on one organization's definition of licenses. That page cites their wiki as its source. Even that organization agrees that other people might have different views on what constitutes the essential points for a free license. Their definition is aimed at "cultural works", e.g., artwork and software. I'm not convinced that the WHO's publications are cultural works; they're certainly not the kind of things mentioned in that org's examples. (I might be more inclined to wonder why the WHO is trying to restrict commercial use, but is willing to accept all derivatives – including derivatives that say exactly the opposite of the original, but still attribute WHO for the content – but that's a bit off-topic.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

• support speaking up as well per Blue Rasberry--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment Speaking strictly in my volunteer capacity (just in case that is not clear), I like the idea of a petition, but would STRONGLY encourage people NOT to use Change.org. There is a long history of privacy abuses from them, and many organizations I have worked with or for over the years have banned use of them by their staffs and consultants. There are other tools available from organizations like MoveOn.org that have a privacy stance more aligned with our movement's. Basically, Change.org is a for profit entity and they very much behave that way when it comes to you helping them collect thousands of emails. All of that said, I can offer from my own experience that petitions done well do help. That said, what are you going to do with all those signatures and all those emails becomes a reasonable question from people less familiar with this type of process. :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 02:58, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Varnent thanks. Happy to use MoveOn.org instead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:16, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

• @Doc James: I'd support petitioning the WHO to prevent this transition. Please ping me if this petition is created so that I can include myself as a signator - I haven't been actively following threads on WT:MED recently due to time constraints. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:13, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Moonriddengirl has expertise in copyrights. —Wavelength (talk) 05:20, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

• I'd be in support of speaking up. Not sure a petition — or what petition platform if any — would be best for that. Perhaps something like a well-crafted and well-publicized blog post could be more effective? Some years ago, I co-wrote a paper on the effects of -NC licenses on sharing biodiversity information (the central section is here), and while outdated in some respects (e.g. at the time, CC licenses 4.0 were still under discussion), I think the effects that -NC licenses have on sharing have not changed much since, and while we had focused on biodiversity, most of the arguments should hold in medical contexts as well. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 06:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
• I'm happy to be part of any petition or other effort to try and get them to reconsider. I've read your paper Daniel Mietchen — and I've recommended it to others because it encapsulates the issues well. It might be high time for a look into these issues on a more general basis. We could always try drafting a letter to the WHO bulletin, and maybe following that up with a paper on the effect of different CC-licences. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:39, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Talk:Diabetes_mellitus#Type_3c_.28Pancreatogenic.29_Diabetes -- Jytdog (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Diabetes mellitus could also use editor help(edits),thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Fulvestrant - help please

I need help at the above page - an edit warring newbie is demanding to include content based about clinical trial data based on primary sources, re-arranging in way that departs from MEDMOS, all caps edit notes, etc.

Thanks -- Jytdog (talk) 02:36, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Agree and commented. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Diploid triploid mosaic

Do these children have DTM?

I would be inclined to say that this article is a copyvio, but as it has been around for nearly three years I wonder if someone else could take a look. Thanks. CV9933 (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The material actually falls into the public domain because it is produced by the US-government. However it could do with some copyediting and formatting. It's quite late for me now, but unless someone else has fixed it by tomorrow I will put it on my to-do list. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 21:30, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

agree w/ CF--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:15, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

After a second look I've cleared out some copyvio and removed some unsourced content. The disease is rare enough to not exist on Orphanet, so I don't think we'll get much further as expanding the article. If someone is willing there may be some more information at GERD or on Pubmed.

However the image used at the article is questionable. I'm not able to verify it, or know anyone who could. I'm unsure whether to include it, even though we allow some degree of WP:OR in images. Linked here:

Best, Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 15:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Probably a parent of children with the condition. I am hesitant to start adding "cn" tags to images. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, WP:OI does indicate that a certain leeway is given to images, but it'd be better if the uploader had some documentation. I see that Doc James has asked for such on Commons. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:12, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Given their facies, I wouldn't be surprised if they had DTM. Keilana (talk) 00:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Agree we need to be careful though. If they are normal children we should not be stating they have a condition they do not. This is a tough one. They do not have email turned on so we cannot contact them that way. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:09, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

For encyclopedic purposes, what matters is that it "looks like" these are kids with this condition. A completely fake image that "looks like" someone with the condition would still be educational. But we care about privacy issues, too, and for that purpose, it'd be nice to have more information. Given the rarity of the condition, if there's a non-profit group for this specific condition, or even a support group on Facebook about this condition, then it might be possible to confirm this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Bioz

Have seen a few accounts adding links to this site. The links often do not support the content in question.

• 50.254.157.211 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

We have this draft User:Damianwa/sandbox

Something to keep a watch out for. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

will keep eye on--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:59, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Cochrane update needed- Faith Healing

I noticed from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Cochrane_update/June_2016#Articles page that a cochrane update is needed for the Faith Healing wiki article.

Article: Faith healing - old review PMID:17253449 new review PMID:19370557

I just wanted to post it here in case someone is interested in tackling it.

Thanks, JenOttawa (talk) 17:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

done[2]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Notable cases — Hyperthropic cardiomyopathy

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

I've just been advised about this language when CFCF removed (and then re-removed after being reverted) the entire list of notable cases from Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a sourced list that has been in the article for years. I find this particularly troubling in this case because the disease is known to the public at large mainly because of such notable cases, especially (though not exclusively) cases of sports figures whose lives, or careers, have been ended by the disease. Removing this sourced content substantially diminishes the encyclopedic value of the article for many readers. Alternatively, I could contemplate moving the sourced items in the list to a separate article as is suggested in the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Notable cases, but wholesale elimination would do no one a favor here. --Arxiloxos (talk) 18:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Moved here, ping Arxiloxos. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 18:45, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I have commented at the article talk page. Jytdog (talk) 01:33, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Suggested merge of Deep water blackout with Shallow water blackout (both tagged for WPMED). Possibly rename to Freediving blackout with various redirects. Discussion here. Comments and suggestions requested. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:34, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• more opinions please(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:33, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Muse (headband)

It would be helpful if someone could look and verify the claims in this article. A lot of the sources seem to be newspaper/techblog articles which have a low bar for fact checking. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 03:52, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

watchlisted. i have been working on the very simillar Consumer brain–computer interfaces article. Jytdog (talk) 05:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

merge?[3][4]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:42, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Doctors' mess

Wikipedia:Doctors' mess is an 11-year-old redirect to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine page that was soft-redirected here 10 years ago. It has been nominated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 January 23#Wikipedia:Doctors' mess - your comments are invited to the discussion there. Thryduulf (talk) 23:27, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:06, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Reliability in court

I'll link to http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bada3d00-b2a4-41fc-8e1d-fba9328926fe about the use of Wikipedia in court, with only 2 comments:

• a lot of it is about medical topics, and
• the courts seem very impressed that content could be 'here today, gone tomorrow' which leads me to suggest that they just look back, say 6-months, and see if the content was there then. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:15, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

There skeptacism is good to see :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:57, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I added this to Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a court source. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:10, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Images

Please see Talk:Deep_brain_stimulation#Do_these_images_bring_value.3F. thx Jytdog (talk) 17:12, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

commented(there are alternatives[5])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

• Deep_brain_stimulation needs editor help/edits, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:12, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

On horses and barn doors

I've been thinking about our article on Cancer. It's probably obvious that, if you got a melanoma diagnosis yesterday, that putting on sunscreen tomorrow isn't going to cure the cancer. But people in the field do see people try all sorts of similar things. Not only does the melanoma patient start using sunscreen and wearing hats (twenty years too late), but the people who blame their diagnosis on diet (a typical response among at least Americans, even for cancers that have little connection to diet) will go on unprocessed-organic-vegetable-juice-cleanse kind of diet. People decide that quitting tobacco will cure lung cancer, that removing mercury-containing dental fillings will cure colon cancer, and all of these other things.

Now, I get the motivation: People are trying to create a measure of control, and at the point of diagnosis, one of the few things that they have control over is what they put in their mouths (whether that be food, alcoholic beverages, or cigarettes). I assume that their oncologists are advising them about the things that actually matter (e.g., most breast cancer patients should stop taking estrogen-containing hormones).

But I think it would be educational and appropriate to call out this kind of irrational reaction and the fallacy of assuming that actions which are useful for preventing cancer are helpful for curing cancer.

My problem: How would you source that? I don't expect to be able to find a systematic review on the pointlessness of trying to use sunscreen to cure melanoma. Also, is it true in all cases? Maybe if your alcohol consumption triggered liver cancer (and if you correctly identified that as the cause), then laying off the sauce would prolong your life, even if removing alcohol from your diet doesn't directly kill the existing cancer cells.

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

On sources, there probably aren't systematic reviews on the subject, but I would imagine there are physcology related articles out there that comment at least in part on the topic of how people mentally process cancer diagnoses. If anyone has some aptitude in that field to ferret out such a source (my really quick lit search didn't shout anything obvious), it would be worth adding. Kingofaces43 (talk) 06:00, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

"People decide that quitting tobacco will cure lung cancer." In patients with lung cancer, smoking cessation does indeed improve outcome with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Axl ¤ [Talk] 14:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

You often end up with a field effect as well as those with the cancer often have a generic predisposition.

So if you have had a melanoma removed. Using sunscreen going forwards would likely be beneficial.

The question is being studied for the HPV vaccine and cervical cancer. I think the data for that is unclear right now. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Axl, that's why I'm asking this question here. Thanks for that link, which reports things like doubling survival time (e.g., from 14 months for smokers to 28 months for non-smokers).

James, using sunscreen going forwards is going to prevent new skin cancers. It's not going to cure the old one (which may not be removable). HPV's another interesting case, because the vaccine could be considered a form of anti-cancer immunotherapy. Thanks for thinking of that and sharing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

There is a large health psychology literature that is relevant here. As above, there's probably not many systematic reviews, but MEDRS allows us to go beyond systematic reviews in this context.

There are many lifestyle changes that do improve prognosis, like stopping smoking (as above), exercise (systematic reviews include: Lahart IM, Metsios GS, Nevill AM, Carmichael AR. Physical activity, risk of death and recurrence in breast cancer survivors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of epidemiological studies. Acta Oncol. 2015;54(5):635-654; Schmid D, Leitzmann MF. Association between physical activity and mortality among breast cancer and colorectal cancer survivors: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Oncology. 2014;25(7):1293-1311) and dietary changes.

But there are also many things cancer patients do that do not have any benefit (see here and here).

This is a useful review. This is also good, saying most diagnosed with breast cancer make dietary changes, but mostly those dietary changes are good. Bondegezou (talk) 10:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of COI

Follow up Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Investigating_COI_policy Further opinions from those here appreciated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:09, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

• more opinions(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:24, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposed move of Mammalian diving reflex

A rename to either Diving reflex or Diving response has been proposed. Discuss. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:26, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• direct link Talk:Mammalian diving reflex#Rename to Diving response..--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:28, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, picture "widely in use" is a reason to continue promoting incorrect material. Idiots. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Need a painter at hand to overwrite the inaccurate image. Otherwise you'll run afoul of WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP - enwiki thing but as far as I know, same philosophy applies there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:26, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Do we have any better picture that illustrates this? Preferably the same focus so we won't need to change captions... Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 11:13, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

If an article contains unsourced inaccuracies, we can delete them without deleting the article. But if an entire image is riddled with multiple inaccuracies...

The deletion discussion may be the most disappointing thing I've ever seen on a wiki. That three long-time Commons users, all with advanced permissions and one an administrator, could be so utterly unconcerned about the accuracy of a Featured Picture used in at least 26 wikis is extraordinary. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:59, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I opened a new deletion request. Please post here next time you nominate anything for deletion of commons Axl. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 11:16, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I made my first post to commons. Roxy the dog. bark 13:07, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Commented there, but one of you should suggest one or more accurate images that can be used as a replacement, as the first closer suggested. I expect we have some, but will leave it others to decide which. Johnbod (talk) 13:13, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone! At least I can rely on WPMED editors to take sensible action. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:38, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Gah image sucks agree. At least we have removed it from EN WP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:28, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

"At least we have removed it from EN WP." That's because I deleted those images whenever they appeared in en.wikipedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 16:35, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:Axl :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:13, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

If it matters, one could use MediaWiki:Bad image list to lock out problem images, although you'd need a consensus for this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh boy, I do not want to open any of the picture files on that list! Actually we may as well wait until the Wikimedia Commons deletion request (doesn't) resolve. Axl ¤ [Talk] 16:53, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Since the image in question is basically a traced copy of a diagram produced by the CDC (copying some of the CDC's inaccuracies, such as the wrong trachea:bronchi lengths, and adding a few inaccuracies that are both inapparent to non-healthcare folks and probably easy to correct, such as the right and left bronchial trees being exact mirror images), I think it's going to be hard to convince Commons to delete it. I think you have a much better chance of getting the image corrected, either by the original uploader or by Commons' graphics folks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you @Axl. We have a number of shoddy and inaccurate anatomy images and there is nothing we can do about them. For example, these two images are considered as "some of our finest" despite attempts at delisting [6].--Tom (LT) (talk) 01:26, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• 
  Back
• 
  Front

*sigh* Axl ¤ [Talk] 03:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

CFCF just a heads-up that I already replaced all uses of File:Diagrama de los pulmones.svg with File:Illu bronchi lungs numerical labels.jpg several days ago (41 replacements). The only remaining uses of the former are in Picture of the Day archives, user pages, and the like. I'm curious, though – how did you overwrite an svg with a jpg? I'd tried to do that but kept getting error messages, even after selecting "ignore warnings". Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I don't belong to this WikiProject but writing here to say thanks to Adrian J. Hunter for taking time to replace all appearances of the inaccurate image with the correct one, because images should be accurate first, and pretty (as in smooth or vectorized) comes second. However, CFCF's reverting of Commons admin decision and overwriting of the SVG with a raster were not something I would be willing to let pass, and I've reverted them. (Rather, first, talk directly to the admin who closed it to appeal the decision. Also, if the better version is a raster, then upload it independently as a raster, not as a bad SVG!) To answer your question, Adrian, SVG is a vector format. It's like trying to draw in PowerPoint, rather than painting in Photoshop. SVGs consist of multiple objects independent from each other, and the object can be a raster graphic if you want it to (though not recommended). CFCF's overwrite consisted of a SVG file that has a huge raster object that covers the whole canvas. That is a terrible way to make SVG (defeats the whole purpose) and also a terrible overwrite. 朝彦 | Asahiko (talk) 05:32, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

朝彦 — I'm so tired of the stupidity of commons. This image should have been deleted and there is no reason to keep it — yet a bizarre overturn of a nearly 20 to 1 consensus was made. I overwrote the image with the raster because it is damaging to keep this image on commons. There is a similar concept to WP:IAR on commons, and by reverting the overwritten file you are being disruptive. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 10:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

It is my understanding that my actions were well within project rules. If you need to raise a complaint, I ask that you also respect the rules in doing so, and refrain from actions such as reverting an admin DR closure or performing actions that violate guidelines. --朝彦 | Asahiko (talk) 11:33, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Policy is never an excuse to prohibit actions that help the encyclopedia. This is the very spirit of WP:IAR, and it trumps guidelines in being one of the 5 central pillars. Neither do we run a bureaucracy, and unless you had a reason beyond following policy to revert my actions it was incorrect. Policy is never to be applied for its own sake, only when it may result in helping the project — this is a clear case of misuse of policy. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 11:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The images were replaced with the more accurate JPEG, and since the image no longer appears in the main namespace i.e. the encyclopedia proper, the rules are not in the way of your improving the encyclopedia. This is not the right occasion to bring out IAR. 朝彦 | Asahiko (talk) 12:03, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

4th deletion nomination

• commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Diagrama_de_los_pulmones.svg#File:Diagrama_de_los_pulmones.svg_3

I have for a fourth time nominated this image for deletion. I implore all previous commenters to comment on the discussion page, pinging all those who commented here: LT910001, Doc James, Axl, Adrian J. Hunter, Roxy the dog, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Johnbod. If I missed anyone it was unintentional, and I appreciate if others ping them as well.

This image is dangerous because it is reused over and over again despite the clear notices of inaccuracy. The Commons administrators are in clear violation of their own commons:Commons:EDUSE policy. Putting it on the image-blacklist on en-wiki will do nothing to stop it from being used on other Wikipedias. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 10:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

+ping Bluerasberry. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it'd be a good idea to actually follow the commons:Commons:Deletion_requests#Appealing_decisions policy before filing another request. Doubly so if you are going to complain about admins ignoring policy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Have added it to this list[7] The best we can likely do is to keep it from being used due to its non educational nature. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:52, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Rather than endlessly debate this one image, I think it would be more productive to address the root of the problem, which is that the culture and policies at Commons are overly tolerant of inaccuracy. RexxS made a valiant attempt here to argue that policy supports the deletion of inaccurate images, but this is apparently not how Commons admins interpret policy. Perhaps we could start a proposal at c:Commons:Village pump/Proposals that c:Commons:Project scope#Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose should make it clear that that very inaccurate images cannot be useful for an educational purpose. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:13, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Adrian, I fixed (added a prefix) to two of your links to Commons so that it works. Also thanks for proposing a step in the constructive direction. 朝彦 | Asahiko (talk) 13:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I just don't think you all are understanding the EDUSE policy. Here's the most relevant section:

A media file that is in use on one of the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation is considered automatically to be useful for an educational purpose, as is a file in use for some operational reason such as within a template or the like. Such a file is not liable to deletion simply because it may be of poor quality: if it is in use, that is enough.

You're jumping up and down saying "it's poor quality! it's poor quality! it's poor quality!" And they keep telling you: Their policy directly says to completely ignore quality in these cases. As Adrian says, you would have to first get the policy changed, to say that inaccurate images aren't useful (except for all the times that they are, e.g., at photo manipulation and Wikiversity, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This isn't a viable interpretation of policy. The only current use is on archaic pages for the 2008 picture of the year competition. If we go by this reading any image can be kept as long as there is any use on any project, even userspace usage. This flies in the face of other policies, and opens for people uploading thousands of images of their genitals which won't be deleted as long as they're on a userpage somewhere. This is inane. This shouldn't demands a change in policy, just a sane interpretation of it. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 18:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Userspace usage is explicitly excluded as EDUSE at c:Commons:Project scope#File in use on Commons only.

I guess it comes down to what we mean by "poor quality". I can understand that images that are in use should not be deleted just because the focus is slightly out, or the lighting is not quite right, or the subject is looking away from the camera; such images aren't actively harmful. But to me, an inaccurate image should be a far greater concern in a project that aims to be educational. Commons policy needs to explicitly distinguish inaccurate images from those that are simply suboptimal. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 18:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Also, I don't know what Commons' usual policy is about "gaming" c:COM:INUSE by first blanking all the uses, and then declaring that it should be deleted because it's not used. It might be a problem; it might be standard and accepted behavior. I just don't know what their view is on that subject. Here, you'd probably have someone screaming at you (e.g., exactly what happens when someone does that for WP:TFD). I suppose that we're going to find out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

It's hardly gaming, and WhatamIdoing I suggest you read the previous very lengthy deletion discussion before casting aspersions. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 08:15, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

"Gaming" is exactly what we call this behavior here, when someone removes templates from use and then nominates the template for deletion on the grounds that it's not being used. As I said, I have no idea whether Commons feels the same about this behavior. They have very different goals and standards.

I have already read the (three) previous deletion discussions. You may have noticed, for example, that I've left three comments in the deletion discussions so far. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there was any deliberate gaming. I was the one who replaced the images, whereas it was CFCF (Carl Fredrik) who renominated the image for deletion, and he didn't mention that the image was no longer in use in his deletion nomination. I don't think he was even aware I'd replaced the images when he made the nomination, hence my ping to him near the end of the section above. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 02:10, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

It's old news now, but the file was ultimately deleted. The closing admin wrote, "Prior keeps were correct. File is not in use anymore, therefore deleted now for scope reasons." There's some discussion about the deletion at c:Commons_talk:Deletion_requests/File:Diagrama_de_los_pulmones.svg. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 11:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC) Posted 3 Feb, backdated a week so this doesn't stay unarchived for overly long. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)}

Merge proposal

Merge Seasickness into Motion sickness and redirect. Seasickness is a small start class article, and the subject is a subset of motion sickness. The target article is not so big that the small amount of additional content will be a problem. Discuss • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Support. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:03, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Seconded. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:07, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical serialization and Epedigree

It looks like Pharmaceutical serialization should link and summarise Epedigree. Could someone please take a look? ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 10:22, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical serialization seems to indicate each country while the latter article goes into specifics(a Wikipedia:Redirect could be used, but I think best to leave "as is", we'll need more opinions...)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:17, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Separate Brand Page

Do we create a separate brand page instead of merging it with Generic — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ravi Wildnet (talk • contribs) 06:30, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

No we 99.9% of the time redirect to the generic. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:27, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Except for vaccines and similar biologics, which are more complicated than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

For vaccines we tend to lump them all together aswell ala Measles vaccine Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Change the article, 'Psychologist', from B-class to C-class?

WikiProject Medicine currently classifies Psychologist as B-class. WikiProject Occupations classifies the article as C-class, and (as of yesterday) WikiProject Psychology also lists the article as C-class. (See: Multiple Issues - Improve Quality to Clearly Satisfy B-Class Criteria on the article's Talk page.) Would y'all take a gander at Psychologist and see if WP:MED might also want to assign a quality rating of C-class? Thanks! -   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 15:07, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Markworthen — feel free to change it yourself. Ranking is not rocket-surgery, the worst that will happen is that someone will change it back to B (though likely they wont). Classification is more or less used to keep track of which articles need work, and you're as good a judge of that as any of us. Probably far better than most of us seeing if you have a doctorate in psychology. (I'm not aware of any active psychiatrists here, and even if we had any the article is about psychology.) Best, Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 15:19, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, if I were to rate that article I would rate it at start class. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 15:20, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks Carl! I will do just that, and I'm glad we are on the same page (start class sounds about right to me as well, but I figure 'C' will at least give us consistency and hopefully get some of my colleagues' attention. ;-)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 15:25, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Only GA and FA have formally applied criteria. The rest are more suggestive. No concerns with changing it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:49, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

There are also formal criteria for A-class, which is why we don't use it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Template for deletion

Discussion here [8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

The template in question is {{human-centric}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

WEASEL phrasing? Alleged psuedoscience promoter?

There is currently an RfC and discussion at Talk:Mehmet_Oz#Pseudoscience_promoter.2C_or_alleged.3F that may interest members here. It concerns whether the TV-persona Mehmet Oz is an alleged pseudoscience promoter, or as the sources actually state — a psuedoscience promoter. He has been found by courts to have promoted pseudoscience and falsehoods. Please comment. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:10, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• more comments(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:59, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Let us know when the next RfC occurs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:55, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree that alleged is a wrong, but I still think it is a better idea to replace 'pseudoscience promoter' with a full sentence that is clearer. Something like 'He has been the subject of widespread criticism for promoting pseudoscience and making fraudulent health claims on his television program.' I feel like that's what he's known for - having bullshit on his tv show in particular. 45.72.157.254 (talk) 21:53, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

It may be another case of original research. QuackGuru (talk) 22:31, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

New proposal. See Talk:Mehmet_Oz#Proposal_2. QuackGuru (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

new article: Ariel Hollinshead, pioneering cancer vaccine researcher

started by copying the german article into WP then working it over. Jytdog (talk) 01:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

important bio--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Online self-harm

A new article has been written which could use input from this WikiProject. I have started a discussion with some of my thoughts at the article's talk page. Your input is appreciated. Primefac (talk) 18:25, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

commented[9]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:03, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Lipoic acid

Lipoic acid

Could use more eyes here. Editor is trying to add content based on older refs, "trumping" newer ones. thx Jytdog (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

will keep eye on--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:06, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Jordan frame?

The article Dominic Littlewood includes:

Littlewood broke his C5 vertebra in his neck in an accident in Australia, which required recovery in a Jordan frame in both Rockhampton, Queensland and Southend-on-Sea.

References

I added the "Clarify" note, because I'd never heard the term and there seems to be nothing in Wikipedia, but thought that someone on this project might be familiar with the term, perhaps able to redirect it to a synonym, etc. Googling produces images, and a few trade catalogues, but nothing much else (except the mathematical term). Any ideas? The source in the sentence seems to be a dead link. PamD 09:27, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussed here [10]

Here is a picture[11] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:12, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Now redirects from Jordan frame to Spinal board. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 10:28, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks from a patient - message from OTRS

At WP:OTRS ticket:2017020110014108 a reader writes, "The most helpful article was from wikimedia, after reading the diagnosis table I realised I had (medical condition). I went to the hospital, listed the symptoms and I was admitted on the spot..."

I cannot say that this is typical but these kinds of messages do come in to OTRS with some regularity. OTRS is a way to send messages to Wikipedia by email. A problem with it is that emails are copyrighted and OTRS is confidential by default, so many people who wish to share information with a group (like Wikipedia's medical editors, in this case) often do not get the message just because it is uncertain whether the message can be shared.

I wanted to share the fact of this here to raise the issue that people use Wikipedia in all kinds of ways, and they get all kinds of results (no idea about good or bad), and that many communication channels which seem to have messages for WikiProjects do not actually connect and sometimes drop the communication exchange without making the conversation connection. In this case, I just thanked the reader for their comment and told them I would pass the information along. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

always good to hear...another good reason to follow MEDMOS & MEDRS--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry can you say what OTRS list this is in? Thanks for the good news. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Doc James It went to "info-en". Anyone can write to "info@wikimedia.org" and have their language sorted, but individual languages are supposed to promote "info-en@wikimedia.org". Most people with OTRS access for a Wikipedia get this info queue for their language. In that queue volunteers may subdivide tasks by sorting letters. A letter without a request, like this one, may go into the "courtesy" queue. So the answer is either "info-en" or "courtesy", but I forgot which. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Bot glitch replaced descriptions at Wikidata

ProteinBoxBot has been providing a simple description ("Human disease") for many diseases on Wikidata. Unfortunately, due to an unintentional coding issue, it's been over-writing human-created descriptions. This was reported last week and immediately fixed. Please feel to replace any descriptions you've written there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

that is one destructive bot - same one that did the "drugs used to treat" fiasco. I gave up watching wikidata. Jytdog (talk) 09:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Who's in charge of running that bot? If it keeps breaking things we ought to get a group to vet all its actions before it is allowed to run any scripts. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 09:28, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

The owners are presumably listed on the bot's talk page.

(As I recall, the "drugs used to treat" information turned out to be both accurate and sourced – just not what we want [e.g., listing individual drugs used to manage symptoms rather than the main categories of curative treatments.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Your memory is both short and dead wrong. You already forgot all the shit from CHEMBL that was added both to drug article and to disease articles? There is no such things as "alternative facts" and a hit on a screen is not a "drug used to treat" in the real world. Jytdog (talk) 15:16, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

They were certainly sourced, but that's an interesting new use of the word "accurate" that I hadn't come across before (as Arthur Dent would put it). It included all sorts of results, including things like people taking statins long term to lower cholesterol had statistically slightly better outcomes if they developed pneumonia. That was sufficient for the source to conclude that statins are used to "treat" pneumonia. "Treat"? really? That's like Humpty Dumpty saying "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less." --RexxS (talk) 17:18, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

This is d:User:ProteinBoxBot or here, User:ProteinBoxBot. These are our friends from Gene Wiki. Most wiki edits in the health sciences to most wiki articles in the health sciences on English Wikipedia have been made by this group - 200k on enwp and 5 million in Wikidata. The future of Wikipedia might include an automated component. I agree that everything from bots has to be right.

I am sure the team would welcome any criticism, and also welcome better policy development to guide them on what is and is not appropriate. It is not tolerable to have bots make poor edits but I also am not ready to make calls against software development without some attempts at mutual understanding. The Gene Wiki people are easy enough to reach by phone, video chat, email, on-wiki, etc. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I have given up on engaging Wikidata for now. People can unilaterally change essential things like field definitions (see here for example -- there is no process involved, and no process to discuss.. and no sense of database design and thinking through how fields fit together in ways that facilitate useful queries. That is insane. Not to mention people running amok with bots.

Databases are not like articles; everything is much more binary - the database as a whole is valid and based on good design and careful processes, or it isn't. If it isn't, you cannot trust what comes out of it - it is "garbage out". The more work people do adding garbage mixed with valid information and changing field definitions willy-nilly, the multiple-more work people have to do later to find the garbage and remove it. The problem is getting worse every day. (I have dealt with building databases and the painstaking work of cleaning data. The cleaning is tedious and painstaking, and the more data there is, the longer it takes and the harder it is maintain focus and quality in the data-cleaning effort itself). I will probably resist any effort to integrate WD more with WP:MED content until that project is way more mature. Jytdog (talk) 15:50, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog I agree with your descriptions of the problems. What you say is correct. I understand why you would resist and I think that your opposition is useful. We can accept nothing but good contributions and bot contributions have to meet quality standards, which they often do not. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello folks, speaking for the ProteinBoxBot team here. Let me provide a bit of context and history. Since ~2007, our team has been keeping the infoboxes on pages for human genes/proteins up to date. For many years, we have been making those edits using our User:ProteinBoxBot account. Our bot synced data from many source databases, and populated infoboxes here on Wikipedia using {{GNF Protein box}}. When Wikidata transclusion became possible, we made plans to convert our bot so that gene/protein data would be written to wikidata, and the relevant content would be queried from there. This was not a trivial change. We spent months (or more) tweaking the data model on Wikidata so that our imported data would properly represented. Once we were confident in the result (and only then), we reimplemented our gene/protein template as {{Infobox gene}} -- same presentation, but using data drawn from wikidata. This conversion was done in stages (completed ~ May 2016), and everything was announced and coordinated with WP:MCB.

In addition to adding gene/protein data to Wikidata, we are also interested in adding content related to human diseases and drugs. (This data has value for us even outside of its potential use on WP.) We have been importing data from commonly used sources in the biomedical research community. This process is still ongoing, and as for gene/protein data, it's also not a trivial process. The data modeling and the bot coding are both continually getting better, and we always appreciate input from both the WD and WP community on how to improve things. However, we have never made any claims about being fully confident enough for them to appear in templates like {{Infobox medical condition}} or {{drugbox}}. If we ever did want to propose using wikidata as a resource, we would certain to coordinate with WP:MED and/or WP:CHEMS. Bottom line, we fully support the important oversight role that the wikiprojects play, and fully support applying a very critical eye to transcluding wikidata content. We take no offense if the verdict is that wikidata content is not mature enough yet, but we also ask not to be "blamed" anytime people outside of our team use wikidata content without consulting us or the relevant wikiproject. Cheers, Andrew Su (talk) 18:20, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew Su. I really appreciate that among all the teams and projects which have been invited to Wikipedia to collaborate, you and the Gene Wiki team have been among the few to actually try to learn the terms of the Wikipedia community, and make constructive contributions, and be available for conversation over the years, and thoughtfully and directly respond to criticism. Gene Wiki has been a model collaboration with Wikipedia dating back to 2008 when practically no one else had much faith in Wikipedia or what we are attempting here. I appreciate your continued interest, innovation, and will to be open to conversation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Andrew Su For major changes we at WPMED are happy to provide feedback, simple post here. This looks like a simple errors.

The prior issue with making treatment claims unsupported by the sources was a lot more serious. Sourced sure, accurate not a chance. This is even worse than no sources stuff and it has the allusion of being reliable.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:13, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that we should be blaming them for using raw data without talking to them about what it was useful for.

I deeply appreciate their responsiveness to problems that people have reported. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:26, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Just a question. If a WD data point (say treatment) is wrong and different from the enwiki local input, why cannot or did not Wikidata just read all input from the enwiki parameter? Answer: because it is not sourced in enwiki. -DePiep (talk) 09:48, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
• I sense a dismissive sound wrt the botmasters and Wikidata in this topic. I just want to remind us all that, as described above, User:ProteinBoxBot and Gene Wiki have delivered Wikipedia being a tremendously good database. And it took them ten years, six of them without the advantage of Wikidata. Yet over here no one is keeping that in mind. While Wikikdata can be intimidating difficult in various ways and for experienced editors, the core encyclopedic issue that should keep us bizzy is: "How come that we can get data OK locally, but not in Wikidata?" That quest is not just for the WD bothandlers to solve. -DePiep (talk) 10:00, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Med Foundation board

Shani Evenstein and James Hare, our two new board members, strike me as insightful, intelligent, quick, diligent and articulate. I'm thrilled they're on board.

WikiProject Med Foundation will soon apply to the Wikimedia Foundation for recognition as a thematic organisation. (Presently, we're a user group.) As a thematic organisation, WPMF gets an extra delegate at Wikimedia's annual conference, and more money.

This is our bank account, and our representation at the big table. You can use the money to improve our medical offering, and use the board to influence the WMF and the wider world. You don't have to be a member. (But please join within 10 months if you want to vote in the next board election.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:00, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole, thanks for the vote of confidence and for all the work you've done so far. I hope to see us all grow WPMED Foundation together, to a point where we can indeed become a thematic organization. We have a lot of work ahead of us. :) Shani. (talk) 17:25, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Sooner or later, then. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:56, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:Anthonyhcole. Hopefully we will apply for thematic org status in the next few months :-) Do not think it comes with more money though. Right now we have zero income but hopefully that will change and we can convince an organization like Gates that we are worth funding. We likely need to create more fancy promotional peices in addition to doing great work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:58, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Recognition as a thematic organisation entitles us (once we've demonstrated competence in handling project grants) to apply to the WMF for theoretically unlimited funding via annual plan grants. [12] While Gates, Wellcome and other foundations are definite potential sources of funding, too, I think our most important potential funding relationship at present is with WMF. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:14, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Eyes needed at Molecular_pathological_epidemiology

We seem to have an extraordinary number of sources from one research centre, and apparently-connected editors. @Bluerasberry: did you ever get any response on the COI inquiry?LeadSongDog come howl! 07:45, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I think you want Bluerasberry, LSD. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:04, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:49, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

That article definitely needs cleanup; has been on my to-do list for a few years now. Definitely some in-bubble inflation going on there. Jytdog (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

LeadSongDog Sorry - I checked the talk page of Molecular pathological epidemiology and I do not see an organization involved. What was the user or organization? I write to these regularly so not sure which one is being discussed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:39, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposed reorganisation of cerebral palsy management

Would it be possible to move Occupational therapy in the management of cerebral palsy to just plain Management of cerebral palsy (like Management of Parkinson's disease and Management of multiple sclerosis) and merge the bulk of the Cerebral_palsy#Management section into the retitled article? The only downside I can see is that it might be hard to tease out the therapies that work only for one kind of CP. Thoughts, please? @Ozzie10aaaa:, @Doc James:, all? --122.108.141.214 (talk) 11:42, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The Management section of the main article is probably too large currently so I agree with your proposal to merge to the subarticle and repurpose it as a more general management article. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 19:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

concur--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:15, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. Will do the first move. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:06, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Granular myringitis

En editor requested deletion under db-duplicate but the article Otitis media doesn't mention Granular myringitis and online search suggests that it may be a valid medical topic. Any thoughts? --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Not a common condition but seems to deserve its own article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:54, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, doctor. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:56, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Lots of textbooks here as sources[13] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:01, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

[14]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

CAM definition

Seeking input as to whether the definitions of CAM in Harrison's and the National Academy of Medicine (formerly IOM) are important enough to include in the lede. These sources conflict, in part, with current lede. Pls comment here: Talk:Alternative_medicine#Issues_with_definition_in_lede. Thx --Middle 8 (t • c | privacy • COI) 18:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

For the last couple of months, the first sentence of Alternative medicine has amounted to "AltMed is anything that's not truly scientific medicine". As Harrison's explicitly states, that definition includes an awful lot of conventional medical care. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Digoxin

Digoxin

"...as well as a higher acute sense of sensual activities" is listed as a side effect with a book reference. Also there is other strange, quasi-vandalism in the article. I removed the claim that the med produces breast enlargement. My editing time is very limited at the present time and I wish I could clean this up myself, the article could use another look by an editor. Best Regards,

  Bfpage  _{let's talk...}  00:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the gynecomastia claim has been partially restored, but with an elderly (1993) source. http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/18/8/2133.long is one of the few relatively recent reviews to discuss this, and it seems that gynecomastia is accepted as a known side effect (mind the gap between 'accepted' and 'actually has good evidence behind it'). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:29, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

[15] and maybe[16]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:10, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Chronic stress - what is it?

Is chronic stress a sort of quasi-condition, and we should treat it like that per MEDMOS and have signs/symptoms, pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, epidemiology, etc?

Or is it a physiological state - just an extension in time of stress (biology)?

Am asking b/c popular press discussing health definitely treats like it is a condition and there is a bunch of biomedical literature that comes darn close, but as far as I know this is not defined in DSM or ICD (which does have, however Stressful work schedule under occupational things)

It seems like it is becoming something, kind of like lipid levels themselves became something to manage. But with chronic stress there are no well defined biomarkers as far as I know.

Went through a bunch of crap in the fall with a class trying to edit Chronic stress and treating it like a disease, which has led me to ponder this.

What kind of beast is this? Jytdog (talk) 19:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

[17]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:56, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps it's more about long-term psychological stress than long-term biological stress.

I'm thinking about how people talk about this concept. You never hear someone describing a pleasant, voluntary activity that is hard on the body, such as dancing, as "chronic stress" – even though it's physically stressful to the point that some professional dancers end up with significant disabilities. But you do hear people talking about the "chronic stress" of caring for a disabled person, even when that care requires no extra physical effort. You could be a thousand miles away from Grandma and still experience chronic stress from trying to coordinate her care from a distance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

i think part of why people find the "chronic stress" paradigm so compelling is that it grounds consequences of long-term negative emotional stuff in the body in a very science-y way and makes psychological stress into physical "poison" that effects all kinds of body systems (overactive HPA axis and the harms and all that). The alt-med, the mindfulness people, and bodywork people talk about this all the time.

I've seen the [APA link that Ozzie provided and it discusses "chronic stress" like it is a condition: "Research has shown that chronic stress can be treated with appropriate interventions such as lifestyle and behavior change, therapy, and in some situations, medication" But again, no DSM or ICD code that i can find. hm Jytdog (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Chronic adjustment disorder, a type of adjustment disorder, is a response to chronic stress. It is in the DSM and ICD ontologies, although not without controversy. --Mark viking (talk) 22:14, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

oh that is so helpful! interestingly that article doesn't mention "chronic stress".. that is a lead for me to follow, however! Jytdog (talk) 23:19, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

New user seeks comment at Talk:Pregnancy

Talk:Pregnancy#Duration

This person wrote in by email ticket:2017020510008135 and I asked them to post to the talk page. They created a wiki account and made the post.

I have been thinking a bit lately about how many people write in by email with medical comments like this, and what happens to them. Probably hundreds of people every year write in with comments about medical topics. I am not sure what to think. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:25, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we need a special OTRS for medical comments? Than a few of us who are OTRS volunteers can watch them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:38, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Lane. Adjusted per feedback. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:45, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Liposomal vitamin c

Liposomal vitamin c, currently a redirect to Vitamin C but previously an article, has been nominated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 February 7#Liposomal vitamin c. Your input to the discussion is invited. Thryduulf (talk) 18:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Why delete? Standard practice is to redirect other formulations to the generic name which is what this is? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:58, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

WPMEDF report of activities of 2016

Is out here Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:20, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

great work/results--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:23, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Essential Medicines List at Featured List

Hey All. I and a number of others have worked over the last few years to improve the leads of articles on essential medicines. We are now more or less done and I have nominated the list for FL status. Thoughts welcome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:17, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Featured_list_criteria--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Still looking for further people to weight in. As a list it is a fairly simple review unlike that required for a full article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:37, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

PR Newswire

IMO it is time to simply remove all links to PR Newswire. They are a re-publisher of press releases and are a good marker of spam / paid editing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:48, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll step up and say that there are times when I use that source for content about the history of a drug or a company when I have good refs for some early step and some later step but none for an intermediate step in the story; in other words with good reason. a whole passage sourced solely to press releases is not acceptable under a bunch of policies and guidelines. Jytdog (talk) 02:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The content and distribution targets of PR Newswire are organized, composed and paid by the private sponsor, or in other words, the 'news' becomes a self-published advertisement. I'd agree with removing its links per WP:PROMO and WP:NOTNEWS, especially for WP medical topics. Should it also be abolished from Talk pages? I don't think this, for example, serves any useful purpose for the Hypertension article. --Zefr (talk) 03:12, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes they are WP:SPS and generally unreliable for statements about reality; they are reliable for statements about the source of the SPS (we hired X person; we did X deal). For publicly traded companies they are actually regulated speech; for private companies they are not. Jytdog (talk) 03:17, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I assume that you're using "reality" to mean "scientific facts". "We hired X person" is also reality – and a reality that will be very desirable news from the POV of X's landlord.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

No. We should not systematically remove these links. They're press releases; {{cite press release}} is perfectly valid for some statements. You should no more systematically remove press releases (written by a company's publicity department) than should should systematically remove websites (written by that same publicity department). Self-published sources are perfectly reliable sources for some (limited) purposes. Those purposes include factual statements about an organization's size, staff members, finances, and some types of legal and political actions (e.g., a quotation from the CEO about why they filed a lawsuit). If you'd accept the organization's own blog, website, SEC filings, annual report, or other publications for a given statement, then you should accept their press releases (and vice versa). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

This is the PR Newswire release that initiated this discussion and displays why such a source is not WP:RS, but rather is WP:PROMO, as it is just the beginning of a Phase II trial. The release contains misleading, early-stage information, such as its drug candidate can "repopulate the microbiome with ammonia oxidizing bacteria to lower blood pressure" and "anti-inflammatory properties of our bacterial platform" – results which have not been proven yet and are the objective of the trial series – so should be seen as promotional news only and non-compliant with MEDRS. --Zefr (talk) 22:55, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes that was a fine revert with the tools we already have - of course that should have been reverted! WAID, that is the kind of thing i (sloppily) referred to with "reality". :) You are right that deals and hiring people are real. Jytdog (talk) 23:53, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Zefr, that is a perfectly fine source for some very limited purposes, most significantly including statements like "In December 2016, the company announced that it would conduct a Phase 2 clinical trial of its live bacteria product (B244) for the treatment of hypertension" and "the company reported in December 2016 that it completed a two-week study of its live bacteria product for acne".

If it weren't for SYNTH, we could also use it as a source to say that the company is buzzword compliant.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

My concerns is just because someone has published a lot of press releases about themselves or their company does not make them notable. I guess I should say press releases including those published by Newswire cannot be used to show notability and if that is ALL the refs present the article should be deleted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree, which is why press releases are #1 in the list of stuff that doesn't count towards notability at WP:ORGIND. They are also called out, by name, as non-proof of notability in the WP:GNG.

Because of WP:ARTN, your test for deletion doesn't work. If some newbie cites press releases, advertisements, and the company's website, but could have cited The Wall Street Journal and The Times, then the business is still notable. But if regional news attention doesn't exist, then of course it's not notable. (Anyone working in this area will want to note that WP:CORP specifically limits the use of 'hometown' newspapers, because the biggest employers in any small town will always be discussed in the local newspaper.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_February_10#Template:PubMed

Please give your input here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:58, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata talk on Thursday

Asaf (who is very good) is giving a presentation on Wikidata from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. California time tomorrow (9 Feburary 2017), which is 19:00 to 22:00 UTC. You can watch it live at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrAx3AmUvA or any time after that.

This is a gentle, friendly introduction to Wikidata and why anyone should be interested in it. It's based on some highly rated in-person workshops that's he's done. If Wikidata is a source of stress or confusion for you (that's most of us, right?), then please try to find time to watch this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

good opportunity, thank you WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:45, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this WAID. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:06, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Phytochemical

Need more eyes, thanks. Jytdog (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

will do[18]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:38, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Laryngospasm notch‎: is this for real?

Laryngospasm notch - out of my pay grade. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:20, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

This (or something very much like this) certainly seems to have appeared in the medical literature: see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19928512 , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26426878 . The term "Larson's maneuver" seems to be used for this. This 2014 paper puts it under the heading "Anecdotal treatment options with limited evidence base". It would be good if this article could be reviewed by someone with relevant knowledge. -- The Anome (talk) 09:33, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Well I am aware of this as a treatment for laryngospasm, I have never heard of it refereed to be this term. Let me look. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Good number of book sources [19] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:15, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems to be pain stimulus (specifically mandibular pressure) combined with a jaw-thrust maneuver. Was not aware of this name. To me it is unclear whether this deserves its own article especially as the name appears to be somewhat informal. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 12:16, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

If it passes review, perhaps a better title for this article might be Larson's maneuver, as this seems to be the thing that makes this particular notch of interest. -- The Anome (talk) 13:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

[20]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I think this is just an informal term some anaesthetists use to refer to the site for pressure for a jaw thrust. I agree with Anome that it should probably be renamed if kept, but would it not be better to simply add a summary of the information in this article as a section in the jaw-thrust maneuver article? Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 12:17, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Merge into Laryngospasm or Jaw-thrust maneuver with redirect? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Advertisement tag

An article that I edited the other day Quantitative phase-contrast microscopy is tagged with reading like an advertisement. I’ve read it a couple of times over since then, but I’m struggling to see what the editor sees as promotional. I know that is possible to not see the wood for the trees sometimes so I wonder if anyone else cares to comment. Thanks.CV9933 (talk) 12:22, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I looked it over and the prose looks clean of explicitly promotional material. It is possible that the advert tag was placed due to references 11, 12, and 14 to company web sites at the end of the article. These company sources could be removed without harming the article. --Mark viking (talk) 20:06, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The tag was added in December by an IP from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who complained that it was "Written like an advertisement for PhiAB products". (PhiAB is Phase Holographic Imaging AB.) If you disagree with that opinion, then you can remove the tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah okay so the microscope image in the article must be what is causing the offence because it clearly displays a logo which presumably identifies that organisation. That really is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees on my part, but I’m not sure what we would do about that. CV9933 (talk) 10:00, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

That objection is a bit over the top if it is about the logo on the microscope. I doubt that one in a thousand readers would notice the logo and have any idea what organisation it represents. If it is the manufacturer's logo then it is quite normal for it to be there. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:42, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

agree w/ Peter--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:42, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Cycloidal vibration technology

I've declined the speedy on this article but the content and sources should be checked by experienced editors. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:28, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I would have to agree w/ [21]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up here, and I would appreciate some scientific/medical editors looking at this. Sorry if I got the procedure wrong. The citations I looked at seemed to be to either be unreachable by easy means, some were only tangentially connected to the subject, and some downright dubious (I deleted off a citation to a very questionable 1969 experiment on just one child, a 7 year child with severe learning disabilities in an orphanage). The whole page looks to me like a construction to justify a commercial enterprise (Niagara Therapy) selling vibrating chairs to the elderly, using scientific journals to justify the medical claims. (I added a relevant section on the Niagara Therapy page about an Advertising Standards Authority ruling, I'm not quite sure how to link directly to it on here) I understand how scientific research works but I have no useful knowledge of this field. Mramoeba (talk) 22:05, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

You have some very useful knowledge: you were able to turn the marketing gobbledegook into plain old English: they're "selling vibrating chairs to the elderly". A little more plainness like that would doubtless be helpful to the article.

It might also be interesting to count up the number of WP:Independent sources that are actually about the product (rather than justification for making the product), and seeing whether the number exceeds one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I've taken an axe to the claims that are not supported by MEDRS, and what's left has gone to AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cycloidal vibration technology. Mramoeba: you may want to comment there. Let's see how that turns out. --RexxS (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• It looks like it was written by someone close to the subject. QuackGuru (talk) 02:43, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry#Shortcuts,_revisited

There is currently and RFC on what do do with the shortcuts used for the chemistry-related projects. Please comment. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:17, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

MEDRS source?

User:Zefr and I disagree on whether this should be considered a MEDRS source for biomedical content about dietary supplements and nutrients. Thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 03:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks like these are review articles. I guess my question is, are they considered peer reviewed and "independent" as per MEDRS. Here is a quote pasted from the Oregonstate website: "For each article, Ph.D. nutrition scientists critically review and synthesize basic, clinical, and epidemiological studies in the peer-reviewed literature and provide references throughout. Each article is then additionally reviewed by an expert in the field; the names of the authors and reviewers are listed at the bottom of each article. This multiple review process minimizes bias and presents objective information." http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/about JenOttawa (talk) 03:45, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

On the garlic article, for example, I see that the PhD's are all from the same institute, and the expert from the field is a research director at https://www.niim.com.au/ I am not familiar enough with these institutes to contribute any more. Will follow with interest. Thanks. JenOttawa (talk) 03:50, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Is this the only source that presents this information? Do we have any reason to believe that other sources contradict it?

If there's no good reason to worry about the actual content, then arguing over the exact source that gets cited in the article may not be the best use of anyone's time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It is very hard to find consistently reliable sources about health effects for this kind of thing like nutrients, vitamins, etc. For pete's sake. Jytdog (talk) 18:19, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

The highest standard of MEDRS explained within WP:MEDORG pertaining to individual nutrients and dietary antioxidants is from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) which employs a multi-expert panel of US and Canadian academics to write the Dietary Reference Intakes, dietary antioxidants here. Of note concerning this discussion about phytochemicals vs. true dietary antioxidants (only vitamins A-C-E) and the role of the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) at Oregon State University, example systematic review on phytochemicals here, is that LPI faculty member and vitamin E expert, Dr. Maret Traber, is on the IOM panel. Rather than WP users having to navigate the comprehensive reviews on nutrients by IOM, the LPI reviews seem considerably more consumer-friendly, yet are sufficiently rigorous for MEDRS to me. --Zefr (talk) 18:48, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

My assessment is that these reviews are MEDRS-compatible but not all that authoritative. If information in published review papers contradicts them, it should trump them. It is particularly worth noting that Linus Pauling was notorious for fringe views concerning nutrition, so an institute named after him should be scrutinized closely. Looie496 (talk) 15:08, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

in my view the site (and you can compare LPI's Vitamin E article to UMD's Vitamin E article to see what i mean here)

• provides reviews of the literature on dietary supplements, phytochemicals, etc that are kept up to date (the IOM ref linked above is from 2000)
• has summaries that are generally science-based (little to no explicit woo) and usually assign WEIGHT as we would (e.g for essential nutrients, deficiencies are generally discussed first); organized like a WP article with LEAD and body
• is online/open access
• is well cited with in-line refs.
• is written in language that is a bit science heavy (managed with hyperlinks to definitions, however)
• however the summaries they write are pretty in-bubble (coming from the place: "there is something useful here and with more research we will find it!"), surprisingly downplay risks, and sometimes overemphasize core woo principles.. For instance in the LEAD of the LPI Vitamin E article
  • the 2nd bullet is about antioxidant-ness, and the 3rd bullet is deficiency, which is backwards and woo-oriented (the UMD site handles this better, actually, giving much more WEIGHT to deficiency)
  • the 5th bullet says "Randomized controlled trials investigating primary and/or secondary prevention of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cataracts, do not currently support a preventative effect of supplemental α-tocopherol" which fails to mention the two large prospective clinical trials that found Vitamin E supplementation increases the risk of cancer instead of preventing it. Those trials are discussed down in the body, but the lack of mention in the lead is very disappointing. The UMD article also doesn't discuss the risks, but is much more woo about the "possibility" of cancer prevention saying only "Antioxidants may provide protection against serious diseases including heart disease and cancer" -- not discussing the lack of good evidence for that to date much less the risks.
• both the LPI and UMD sites are more like edited books that a peer-reviewed journal. Neither are "major medical/scientific bodies" as we usually consider them. Not great with respect to our normal MEDRS analysis. A bit like Science-based Medicine in that regard, but tending over on the woo/quackademic medicine side (UMD farther than LPI)

for me the LPI is better, but not much better than UMD. Both are very "in-bubble" (saying that more rigorously, are invested in the hypothesis that there is "something" there in these natural products/alt med) , UMD moreso than LPI. Jytdog (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• User:Zefr, this was surprising, as this discussion is still ongoing. Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

If better reviews are found, any editor, including myself, can insert the replacement. --Zefr (talk) 22:52, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

This is not a great practice, Zefr. If you question a woo-pushing source and the other editor insists on keeping using it, what will you possibly be able to say to them that will not contradict the position you are taking here? Please be patient and let's get a sense of the WP:MED consensus on this. Jytdog (talk) 23:09, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

For those of us watching the phytochemical and nutrient literature for sourcing in WP articles, you summarized it yourself yesterday: "It is very hard to find consistently reliable sources about health effects for this kind of thing like nutrients, vitamins, etc." We are unlikely to find peer-assessed journal reviews or meta-analyses on individual non-nutrient phytochemicals (their organ and cellular fates in vivo cannot be defined). Likely for the same reason, government bodies like the IOM/FDA or EFSA do not publish guidance documents on phytochemicals except to regulate what cannot be stated on food labels. We are left with food science groups at universities like LPI, UMD or UC-Davis publishing discussions of nutrients and phytochemicals. Among them, LPI is the most extensive I know for covering relevant literature and maintaining neutrality within limits of interpretation we would see in any secondary review article. So far, we have 5 discussants in this thread, with no dissents against using the LPI sites. That is reasonable agreement per WP:CON. --Zefr (talk) 23:33, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

No one has explicitly endorsed this either. Again you are acting just like a woo-pushing editor would do. Please be patient. It will be a happy thing if we can get explicit consensus to use this widely (and if we don't, then we shouldn't) Jytdog (talk) 23:42, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I feel that it is better to air on the side of caution when inserting information into wikipedia. If there is a risk that the source may be biased, I feel it would be better to not insert this information until a more reliable source is found. I would not feel comfortable using this site in my edits, from what I have read so far and from Jytdog's observations re "invested in the hypothesis".JenOttawa (talk) 03:13, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, Linus Pauling was interested in the hypothesis that mega-dosing Vitamin C had health benefits, but he's been dead for more than 20 years. I don't know whether his POV has adherents among any of the current researchers there.

From the diff posted above, it appears that much of the material being inserted says things like there's no evidence that phytochemical supplements prevents cancer or do anything else useful. I kind of doubt that anybody's worried about that kind of content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:12, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The first thing I did was look at the site's coverage of vitamin C, and despite its connections to Pauling and his well known hypotheses, I found it agreeably neutral in its treatment of the many issues. In general, it seems to present issues rather baldly, but provides the sources it examines related to them. I can't say that the conclusions it reaches would stand the test of using MEDRS-sourcing, because it rather uncritically (IMHO) endorses conclusions of primary studies, without seeming to apply any critical analysis of those sources – which is what I would expect a good secondary source to do. Without the rationale for why it accepts particular studies, we are left with the authority of its contributors and its editorial policies to give us confidence in its conclusions, and I don't think that is going to be good enough in every case. My view would be that it's fine for uncontroversial statements (but then other MEDRS-sources are likely to be available), and especially for the "Further reading" section of articles, where it could serve as a tertiary source by giving editors leads to other relevant sources. Disclaimer: I take 500 mg of vitamin C as a daily supplement, so you may have to take my views with a pinch of salt (or at least with a pinch of calcium ascorbate) --RexxS (talk) 18:07, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I am with User:RexxS on this. Okay for non medical or non controversial content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:05, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Medical stats

Hey All Unfortunately User:West.andrew.g no longer has the band width to generate medical stats for us. He is happy to explain and hand over the code to someone else who is interested. Do we have anyone here with the interest and technical ability? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Is the problem that there are too many medical articles for his bandwidth to handle now? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

No the problem is he does not have the time to do what he did before. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:14, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

[22](and a couple of others)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:11, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

need opinions/draft

• Draft:Ventricular_dysphonia
• Draft:Ralph_Greco

they may need to be deleted, sourced or...(please give opinion at draft/talk)thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:11, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Fixed the above. the article about Greco that was linked was an abandoned duplicate. Jytdog (talk) 18:58, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Quick category opinion

Do you think that we need both a Category:Respiratory physiology and a Category:Respiratory system? I don't see a meaningful difference. Natureium (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

They are in fact quite distinct. Whether they have been applied correctly to articles is another issue... Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 04:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that they're distinct. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 05:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The "Respiratory physiology" category contains enough articles that it is worth keeping it separate, although I would not mind if it was made into a subcategory of "Respiratory system". Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:08, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Respiratory "system" is analogous to segmental "anatomy", and is the "theatre" where respiratory physiological events occur. We can borrow a phrase from Jean Fernel: "Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.” They are justified to be separate categories. --Zefr (talk) 19:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I had a go at clarifying the scope of the categories. There may be room for improvement. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania, Montreal, Aug 9th to 13th

Hey All. Have submitted a proposal for a talk to give an overview of our ongoing efforts.[23] Please attend if able. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Scholarship applications are due now. I understand that they're based on what you do for the movement, rather than your financial situation (think "merit" rather than "need", for those familiar with the American university systems). Please apply. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease BMJ review

A while ago, I asked BMJ to provide reviewers for Parkinson's disease, which they did. I've been waiting for the reviewers to get back to resolve some issues, but haven't heard from them for some time, so I've summarised the review and the reviewers' proposed changes and posted them in tables on the article's talk page.

There are some minor and some quite significant changes proposed. I invite all editors with the time and interest to take a look and do what you will with this. The reviewers have put in quite a bit of effort, and they are a well-qualified team. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:Anthonyhcole. Would be interesting to get this published in the BMJ :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a great idea, James. I was thinking about a short The BMJ op ed once the changes have been incorporated and the reviewers have signed off on it, but I'll definitely also suggest they find room for it in one of their journals. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole and Doc James: Agreed! It'd be great to some day be able to add it to Category:Wikipedia_articles_published_in_peer-reviewed_literature. Surprisingly, one of the main stumbling blocks that I've found when putting similar ideas to other journals is the CC-BY-SA license. It's often too open for pay-walled journals, and too closed for open-access journals! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Which journals are fine with the CC-BY-SA license to review and publish Wikipedia articles? QuackGuru (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be a journal by journal negotiation. And the other question is cost. Is the journal willing to cut us a deal on price or will it be the usual 1000 to 5000 USD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:18, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

This query lists many CC BY-SA journals in English. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Another possible approach is dual-licensing. While CC BY-SA does not permit remixers to use CC BY (without SA), that is a restriction placed on the remixer, not on the copyright holder. If contributors (the copyright holders) agree, then the article could be dual licensed as CC BY. This would permit most OA journals to publish it. See [24]. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I would be cool with that but how would we contact everyone who has ever contributed to the article? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The number of journals gets much smaller when narrowed by subject, but among those is WikiJournal of Medicine. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› 00:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Article class&importance rating

Hi,

I just noticed the large backlog of >1000 unrated medical articles. I realise that it's largely busywork (most of them will turn out to be low importance stub/start articles), however it is still pretty useful to have them categorised. I've started going through some of the genetics and biochem-related ones.

If you're able to devote 30 mins to rating a few, the combination of the following two tools makes it very rapid:

1. The list of unassessed articles
2. The "Rater" plugin by Kephir. Just go to your Special:MyPage/common.js and add the text importScript('User:Kephir/gadgets/rater.js'); // [[User:Kephir/gadgets/rater]]. It adds a tab that allows you to edit the class and importance of a page from the Article (without having to switch back and forth to the talk page), and auto-fills an edit summary

All the best, T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 06:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

will look(approx. first 120 on list)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:12, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It also helpt a lot if you enable "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header" under gadgets in the user preferences. --WS (talk) 19:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Nice tool User:Evolution and evolvability. Anyway to have it appear under the "more" drop down tab?

Also wondering if the orders of the top button can be switched around? The problem is that edit and history load first. And than when you are about to click edit the other stuff loads and moves it out from under your cursor. Really common on slow connections. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: I know exactly what you mean. Sadly I'm not familiar enough with Javascript to know how to edit it. Its original maker, Kephir, seems not to be active any longer. Maybe someone at WP:VPT has the expertise? It'd be good to have its tab location controlled by a setting menu. I sort of bodged together a variant that once you rate one page, it opens up another random unrated medical page, however it would be good to have that as an optional behaviour (add importScript('User:Evolution and evolvability/gadgets/rater.js'); // variant of [[User:Kephir/gadgets/rater]]).

Please remember to set |society=yes (just tick the box if you're using Kephir's script) and |importance=low for all articles about people and organizations (except hospitals, which aren't WPMED at all). If you are uncertain, then feel free to post here or ping me when you leave a note at WT:MEDA. I've rated many thousands of articles over the last ten years, and I'm happy to help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I really like the new tools. What I find is:

• Some article are not within WPMED but rather WP Hospitals or WP:MCB
• A few are spam in need of nominating for deletion.
• Nearly all the rest are of low importance.

Still good for us to review them all. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Also thinking that well medications that are or once were in medical us should be within the scope of WPMED, those that were never used clinically should not (they should be just WP PHARM). Others thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

yes, agree those articles would do better as WP PHARM(pharmacology)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

With respect to medical journals happy to have them just in Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals. Others thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

well, journals are (IMO) an important part of medicine(especially research) therefore I would think it best to be WP MED and Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals. --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Anatomy is an important part of medicine as are hospitals yet we simply have both of those in another WP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

in any event about 95% of "stubs"[25] (that is left) is either journals or the above mentioned medications, we'll either have to purge them or otherwise--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Anyway to force an update of the list[26] User:Evolution and evolvability so that the new changes are reflected? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Found it[27] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

great(I think we're making progress, stubs is almost finished)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:32, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Purging journals is a bad idea. Medical-editors are best equipped to deal with issues related to medical journals, and should clearly be notified if deletion discussions (or similar) are brought up. If you want to improve those to start or above level, we have a good guide at WP:JWG. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point User:Headbomb. Have adjusted here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Quick category opinion

Do you think that we need both a Category:Respiratory physiology and a Category:Respiratory system? I don't see a meaningful difference. Natureium (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

They are in fact quite distinct. Whether they have been applied correctly to articles is another issue... Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 04:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that they're distinct. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 05:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The "Respiratory physiology" category contains enough articles that it is worth keeping it separate, although I would not mind if it was made into a subcategory of "Respiratory system". Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:08, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Respiratory "system" is analogous to segmental "anatomy", and is the "theatre" where respiratory physiological events occur. We can borrow a phrase from Jean Fernel: "Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.” They are justified to be separate categories. --Zefr (talk) 19:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I had a go at clarifying the scope of the categories. There may be room for improvement. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania, Montreal, Aug 9th to 13th

Hey All. Have submitted a proposal for a talk to give an overview of our ongoing efforts.[28] Please attend if able. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Scholarship applications are due now. I understand that they're based on what you do for the movement, rather than your financial situation (think "merit" rather than "need", for those familiar with the American university systems). Please apply. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease BMJ review

A while ago, I asked BMJ to provide reviewers for Parkinson's disease, which they did. I've been waiting for the reviewers to get back to resolve some issues, but haven't heard from them for some time, so I've summarised the review and the reviewers' proposed changes and posted them in tables on the article's talk page.

There are some minor and some quite significant changes proposed. I invite all editors with the time and interest to take a look and do what you will with this. The reviewers have put in quite a bit of effort, and they are a well-qualified team. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:Anthonyhcole. Would be interesting to get this published in the BMJ :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a great idea, James. I was thinking about a short The BMJ op ed once the changes have been incorporated and the reviewers have signed off on it, but I'll definitely also suggest they find room for it in one of their journals. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole and Doc James: Agreed! It'd be great to some day be able to add it to Category:Wikipedia_articles_published_in_peer-reviewed_literature. Surprisingly, one of the main stumbling blocks that I've found when putting similar ideas to other journals is the CC-BY-SA license. It's often too open for pay-walled journals, and too closed for open-access journals! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Which journals are fine with the CC-BY-SA license to review and publish Wikipedia articles? QuackGuru (talk) 23:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be a journal by journal negotiation. And the other question is cost. Is the journal willing to cut us a deal on price or will it be the usual 1000 to 5000 USD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:18, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

This query lists many CC BY-SA journals in English. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Another possible approach is dual-licensing. While CC BY-SA does not permit remixers to use CC BY (without SA), that is a restriction placed on the remixer, not on the copyright holder. If contributors (the copyright holders) agree, then the article could be dual licensed as CC BY. This would permit most OA journals to publish it. See [29]. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I would be cool with that but how would we contact everyone who has ever contributed to the article? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The number of journals gets much smaller when narrowed by subject, but among those is WikiJournal of Medicine. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› 00:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Article class&importance rating

Hi,

I just noticed the large backlog of >1000 unrated medical articles. I realise that it's largely busywork (most of them will turn out to be low importance stub/start articles), however it is still pretty useful to have them categorised. I've started going through some of the genetics and biochem-related ones.

If you're able to devote 30 mins to rating a few, the combination of the following two tools makes it very rapid:

1. The list of unassessed articles
2. The "Rater" plugin by Kephir. Just go to your Special:MyPage/common.js and add the text importScript('User:Kephir/gadgets/rater.js'); // [[User:Kephir/gadgets/rater]]. It adds a tab that allows you to edit the class and importance of a page from the Article (without having to switch back and forth to the talk page), and auto-fills an edit summary

All the best, T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 06:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

will look(approx. first 120 on list)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:12, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It also helpt a lot if you enable "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header" under gadgets in the user preferences. --WS (talk) 19:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Nice tool User:Evolution and evolvability. Anyway to have it appear under the "more" drop down tab?

Also wondering if the orders of the top button can be switched around? The problem is that edit and history load first. And than when you are about to click edit the other stuff loads and moves it out from under your cursor. Really common on slow connections. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: I know exactly what you mean. Sadly I'm not familiar enough with Javascript to know how to edit it. Its original maker, Kephir, seems not to be active any longer. Maybe someone at WP:VPT has the expertise? It'd be good to have its tab location controlled by a setting menu. I sort of bodged together a variant that once you rate one page, it opens up another random unrated medical page, however it would be good to have that as an optional behaviour (add importScript('User:Evolution and evolvability/gadgets/rater.js'); // variant of [[User:Kephir/gadgets/rater]]).

Please remember to set |society=yes (just tick the box if you're using Kephir's script) and |importance=low for all articles about people and organizations (except hospitals, which aren't WPMED at all). If you are uncertain, then feel free to post here or ping me when you leave a note at WT:MEDA. I've rated many thousands of articles over the last ten years, and I'm happy to help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I really like the new tools. What I find is:

• Some article are not within WPMED but rather WP Hospitals or WP:MCB
• A few are spam in need of nominating for deletion.
• Nearly all the rest are of low importance.

Still good for us to review them all. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Also thinking that well medications that are or once were in medical us should be within the scope of WPMED, those that were never used clinically should not (they should be just WP PHARM). Others thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

yes, agree those articles would do better as WP PHARM(pharmacology)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

With respect to medical journals happy to have them just in Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals. Others thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

well, journals are (IMO) an important part of medicine(especially research) therefore I would think it best to be WP MED and Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals. --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Anatomy is an important part of medicine as are hospitals yet we simply have both of those in another WP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

in any event about 95% of "stubs"[30] (that is left) is either journals or the above mentioned medications, we'll either have to purge them or otherwise--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Anyway to force an update of the list[31] User:Evolution and evolvability so that the new changes are reflected? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Found it[32] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

great(I think we're making progress, stubs is almost finished)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:32, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Purging journals is a bad idea. Medical-editors are best equipped to deal with issues related to medical journals, and should clearly be notified if deletion discussions (or similar) are brought up. If you want to improve those to start or above level, we have a good guide at WP:JWG. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point User:Headbomb. Have adjusted here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Air embolism

I have just done a fairly extensive rehash of Air embolism to bring it more in line with MEDMOS section layout. Comments and suggestions for improvement invited. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:25, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Ozzie, you always do. Appreciated. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:19, 20 February 2017 (UTC)