This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
New article that may be of interest, these are the people trying to derail the
All Trials initiative by launching a judicial review of new rules mandating increased transparency in clinical trials. What's the Wiki markup for evil? Guy (
Help!)
15:33, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
AllTrials calls for all past and present clinical trials to be registered and their full methods and summary results reported... The Declaration of Helsinki, which is the World Medical Association’s statement of principles for medical research involving people, states that every investigator running a clinical trial should register it and report its results[1] ...makes you wonder what Richmond Pharmacology might have in mind?? (BTW article is well sourced per WP RS)--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
15:46, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
Broadening scope of WikiProject Psychedelics, Dissociatives and Deliriants
Scope and name is 100% up to the bona fide participants in that group. Any group of volunteers, including a group that calls themselves a "WikiProject", gets to decide what articles they do or don't want to work on, without consulting any other group. See
WP:SCOPEWAR for more information.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
04:15, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, however the project is mostly inactive and so a suggestion was made to solicit participation from some related projects.
Sizeofint (
talk)
17:13, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
CFCF fwiw I am not a big fan of one-click archiving as it causes Watchlist clutter. There is a bot archiving this page, shall we quicken its cycle?
Jytdog (
talk)
12:51, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I've already quickened the cycle to 7 days. But unfortunately I think we'll have to live with archiving. Ozzie asked me if we should give editors more time to reply to questions, but I don't think that is going to help. We're getting few responses because we simply have too many discussions going at the same time. It's off-putting who don't know or want to look through every diff to see what discussion has been updated lately. That and it's increasingly tedious for experienced editors as well.
If I'm gone for just the few hours a night I need sleep (being in Europe my sleep coincides with some the most active hours of many American Wikipedians), I find myself falling behind and frankly ignoring too much of the discussion.
I realize there is no quick fix, but rather that we need a new forum system, but the easiest way to alleviate the situation is to archive discussions that have been resolved, that and posting fewer frivolous posts as well. With the current talk-page system I don't know what else we can be done. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
15:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Blue eye image and blue eye primacy for the image caption at the
Physical attractiveness article
I welcome academic collaborations involving this data (I'm on the computer science side). In particular, James and I plan to get into mobile viewership trends later this year. Thanks,
West.andrew.g (
talk)
18:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
I recently edited the article on
Heyde's syndrome and I would like to add an infobox to it, the problem is that it isn't a 'disease' with links in any online databases that I can add. It is a syndrome with an established pathophysiology that occurs in about 3% of folks with aortic stenosis. Is it appropriate to co opt the disease info box and just not include any links to online sources?
Michael Dacre (
talk -
contribs -
email)
19:48, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
This specific edit is quite poor and there is no explanation why these foods are good. I'm not totally adverse to using Mayo clinic as a source, but not here. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
10:38, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that an explanation of why these foods are good (Vitamins A and E plus Zinc is what I'm guessing from a quick look at the list) would be better. The source is technically reliable for the statement that is being made, but we can do better than that. I'd probably leave it until it could be replaced with something better.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
00:36, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Collaboration
Obviously this is a popular health practice and not science. Readers demand this sort of content. I wish that it could be included, but somehow sectioned to be labeled as folk medicine.
I met someone from Mayo Clinic's communication department at a conference. I proposed collaboration. They said write something up. I do not have any particular proposal handy - if someone has ideas then please post them.
We have discussed here previously that Google pays Mayo Clinic for their disease fact boxes, which are adapted into
Knowledge Graph. If left to my own, probably what I will propose is some collaboration between May Clinic's fact boxes and Wikidata / Wikipedia, since this is a major commitment by Mayo Clinic and something relevant to Wikipedia's future in automated translation. A presumption behind this collaboration would be that information from Mayo Clinic should go into Wikipedia while being sourced to Mayo Clinic's authority.
Blue Rasberry (talk)13:52, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Mayo clinic information is not very good. Thus I am not very keen to work with them. There are much better sources and organizations that are interested in working with us such as Cochrane and USPSTF. If people have extra energy would recommend improving those collaborations.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
18:15, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes its removal was discussed last Nov. I have seen some much poor quality stuff out of them. They more or less repeat unfounded urban legends without critical analysis.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
19:37, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
This is a note to follow up on a previous promise: the Content Translation tool is now available to translate from other Wikipedia into English. To turn it on, just go to
Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, scroll to the end, and tick the button. It seems like en.wp already has everything, but approximately half of the pages at the German Wikipedia have no counterpart here.
I'm having a problem with it giving me a blank screen when I start. It usually goes away if you reload the page. There have also been a couple of reports of it refusing to save, which is highly frustrating. I'm talking to someone on that team to see if we can sort out what's causing the blank-screen problem. So keep in mind that it's a beta feature and will have some bugs and limitations, but feel free to try it out.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
20:29, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
User:Ladsgroup, the programing wizard, has build us a bot that tags old Cochrane reviews on Wikipedia. His bot did this
[6]. Which made it way easier for me to update the pneumonia article in this edit
[7]. Also the issues are added to this list
[8]. We plan to next run 50 or so articles and than run them all followed by running them all on a monthly basis. Will be a bit of work to catch up initially.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
03:23, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
This seems really helpful, but maybe it should just place the articles in a hidden category instead of using a reader-facing inline tag. The "needs update" tag - and especially the fact that it links to
this - makes it sound like the information in the preceding sentence is actually, definitively out of date, rather than that the reference itself has a new version (which quite likely still supports the text).
Opabinia regalis (
talk)
00:04, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
It needs updating in that their is a newer systematic review by the same group on the same topic. We should notify our readers that a new review is available so they can at least look at it. Updating is not that hard. And most of the time the conclusions do not change.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
03:52, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today authorized use of the first prosthesis marketed in the U.S. for adults who have amputations above the knee and who have rehabilitation problems with, or cannot use, a conventional socket prosthesis
[11]--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
14:32, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
neurons/NIH
A study showed that scientists can wirelessly determine the path a mouse walks with a press of a button. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, created a remote controlled, next-generation tissue implant that allows neuroscientists to inject drugs and shine lights on neurons deep inside the brains of mice. The revolutionary device is described online in the journal Cell. Its development was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health[12]--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
10:52, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Offer anticoagulants instead of aspirin for stroke prevention...NICE’s latest quality standard, which sets out advice on the treatment and management of AF, recommends that people with AF who have a CHA2DS2-VASC stroke risk score of 2 or above are offered newer anticoagulants, such as apixaban, dabigatran etexilate, rivaroxaban or a vitamin K antagonist like warfarin[13]--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
10:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Medical meetup at Wikimania Mexico City
Wikimania 2015, Mexico City!
I was just about to create a medical meetup at Wikimania, but it turns out
Daniel Mietchen beat me to it. Please check out the page and if you're at Wikimania you're more than welcome to take part! The meet up is organized by WikiProject Med Foundation, which aims to bring together editors from several Wikipedias, not just the English Wikipedia!
A study showed that scientists can wirelessly determine the path a mouse walks with a press of a button. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, created a remote controlled, next-generation tissue implant that allows neuroscientists to inject drugs and shine lights on neurons deep inside the brains of mice. The revolutionary device is described online in the journal Cell. Its development was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health[15]--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
10:52, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Would an experienced editor like to review this article and how we are dealing with recent drug trials. Recent debates about COI, make me I think I am too close to this topic to make edits.
Jrfw51 (
talk)
18:46, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Not sure what I've started here. NASH is not the same as fatty liver. There is additional inflammation in NASH. NASH is thought to be a more severe form of NAFLD. There are drug trials in early phases for NASH and these needed careful balance. Consider putting good secondary reviews back!
Jrfw51 (
talk)
21:09, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
WRT "putting good secondary reviews back" were some removed? Could secondary sources can be used to discuss ongoing research in a "research" section.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
21:24, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes agree that NASH is a severe form of NAFLD. Thus it would make sense to discuss NASH on the NAFLD article.
This is like the situation were
blindness is a severe form of
vision impairment. We discuss both together at vision impairment.
Dear medical experts: This draft will soon be deleted as stale. Is there material here that should be added to another article, or, is this a notable topic on its own?—
Anne Delong (
talk)
22:52, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Note: The discussion has now shifted to whether or not there is health content in the article, whether or not
WP:MEDRS applies, and whether or not
domestic violence, including domestic violence against men, is a medical topic.
Flyer22 (
talk)
21:48, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Blindness
Doc James indicated above that
Blindness redirects to
Visual impairment, which surprises me. It makes sense to discuss blindness, of course, but in a summary style with a link to a main page, not to just lump it all in. There's a big difference between someone who develops cataracts in old age and someone with no light perception from birth. Was this discussed anywhere? I can only find a stale old discussion about merging in information about
low vision – but nothing about merging in "no vision". I've been sick for days, so it's probably obvious, but could someone find it and give me the link? Thanks.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
23:43, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
The two prior articles had a great amount of duplicate content. Basically all of blindness was discussed within visual impairment. And often visual impairment leads to blindness.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
04:24, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
More precisely, we have a pathetic seven-sentence stub at
Childhood blindness. I firmly disagree with the current state, in which
No light perception, i.e., total
Blindness, is treated as nothing more than a variant on "you need to have glasses" or even "you would benefit from cataract surgery".
I know that some blind people are offended to have their condition minimized as being merely an "impairment" of vision. The needs of a typical totally blind person are very different from the needs of a typical person with a vision impairment. If the two articles were largely duplicative, then that's only proof that we've done a poor job of writing them so far.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
18:07, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
While I would agree with you on the last point. The article on childhood blindness deserves to be much better. I have been planning on working on it.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
21:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Can someone get me this reference: Ultrasound evaluation of pelvic pain, Amirbekian S, Hooley RJ. doi: 10.1016/j.rcl.2014.07.008. It would be a great help since I can't pay for this article. Best Regards and thanks ahead of time,
I've gone through and fixed the lead, which had an incorrect definition, and the 1st section, which included globally uncontrolled substances and nonprescription controlled drug precursors. I haven't looked at the rest of it since I need to get off, but it's probably rife with errors/MEDRS issues too; anyone want to take a stab at helping fix it?
Seppi333 (
Insert 2¢)
18:43, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Effect of Taking Chicken Essence on Stress and Cognition of Human Volunteers
Yes, it's the wonders of the Articles for Creation torrent again. Some things that seem to be medical claims, for health supplements indeed, are in
User:JasmineJLM7/sandbox. Comments welcome.
Thank you, I have declined it mentioning these concerns. Declined Drafts normally get resubmitted, however, so watch out for it coming back...
Arthur goes shopping (
talk)
10:22, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
The external link at the bottom of the article to
http://www.cehjournal.org/resources/prevention-of-childhood-blindness-teaching-set-full-text/ contains a comprehensive overview, written in an accessible fashion, but dating from 1998, updated 2007. It does give good pointers to the structure that the article needs, though, and the areas that it ought to cover. Once you have a reasonable idea of the varied causes (such as vitamin A deficiency, measles, conjunctivitis, herpes simplex, retinopathy of prematurity and genetic abnormalities) and their relative prevalence in different regions, it seems you have a good starting point for gathering the latest reviews needed to discuss these in depth. I'm most familiar with retinopathy of prematurity and you could take a look at the references I used in
Oxygen toxicity, although they are probably getting dated now. --
RexxS (
talk)
06:17, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Peter.C •
talk •
contribs ...exactly (what RexxS said), to further expand the article of that link is good.This is a topic that, taken in-depth, could at least double the information (size) of this article...IMO--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
09:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
There's a lot of information missing. Education should mention
Special schools – there are quite a few in
Category:Schools for the blind, common modifications (e.g., not learning handwriting) and accommodations (e.g., reciting your homework rather than writing it out) of the curriculum, and the debate over whether blind children should learn to read with Braille or always use assistive technology like
screen readers (or trained human readers; a blind professional, for example, will hire an employee to read handwritten letters). ==Society== should talk about training and employment prospects. There's currently no information about co-morbidities, which also matters. It's one thing to have a student who is blind, and another thing to have a student who is blind, nearly deaf, autistic, and intellectually disabled. The decline of children whose only issue is deafness seems to be one of the factors that results in schools for the Deaf closing, and I would not be surprised to find sources saying that it has affected schools for the blind as well.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:47, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
I've done a copyedit, and want to add this: rather than accumulating a laundry list of "this rare disease could be treated that way" or "in this part of this country, the incidence was that", I think you need to leave PubMed's narrow reviews behind and go look for textbooks or WHO reports.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:59, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
you could be correct...I will "relook" at the reviews that your indicating,probably expand one of the sections (in the process).--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
16:05, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
I like it how "syndrome" implies there must be some cluster of symptoms that go together. So your head explodes, but a doctor can't make a definitive diagnosis without knowing accompanying symptoms.
Adrian J. Hunter(
talk•
contribs)14:16, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
The name does lack a certain subtlety; but it's named for the sensation it elicits, and apparently that's exactly how many patients describe it. I did a quick search, and there's more source material than I anticipated. Probably more common under age 50 than previously thought.
Dostoevsky may have had it.
DoctorJoeEreview transgressions/
talk to me!17:40, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
I made a laughable attempt to address the problems in this article using the neurotoxicity/neuroinflammatory refs that I've read up to now, though I don't really know anything about peripheral nervous-immune system interactions. If anyone with some familiarity with this topic wants to be bold and un-bork the article, that'd be great.
Otherwise, I'll probably get around to expanding the section I edited sometime after I'm finished rewriting the toxicity section in the meth article.
Seppi333 (
Insert 2¢)
22:08, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Yesterday I wrote an article about a
mouse oncovirus and put it in
Category:Infectious causes of cancer, which I discovered is currently hosting an odd mix of articles: some are actually about infectious causes of cancer (
human papillomavirus), some are more accurately described as "cancers at least sometimes caused by infectious agents" (
cervical cancer), some are semi-related topics that I certainly hope are not infectious causes of cancer (
cervical screening), and some are very general articles where the category only applies to some members of the group (
virus,
parasitism). The category page says it is intended to contain articles in which pathogens are "linked to increasing the risk of cancer in humans", which is not the same as an infectious cause, and is unnecessarily confined to humans when there are plenty of animal pathogens known to fit this description.
What's the intended scope of this category? At first glance I think the causes and the effects should be separated, moving the actual cancers to something like
Category:Cancers with infectious causes, but that's a problem because most of them are only sometimes caused by pathogens, and there are plausible biological mechanisms for lots of cancer types to occasionally be caused by a pathogen.
Opabinia regalis (
talk)
21:39, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
according to the history it was made on 14 April
[22], and I do share your concern (causes and effects should be separate)...as far as its intention, that is a question that we might need more editor opinions on(I think its intended scope needs to be clarified)...IMO--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
22:07, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't really mind the cat containing information about both pathogens that (sometimes) cause cancer and cancers that are (often) caused by pathogens. I don't even truly mind including
cervical screening, because probably 99% of cervical cancers are caused by viral infections, and the point behind it is very much about identifying cancers caused by said infectious agent. But the very general articles, e.g.,
Virus, don't seem like a good match. A person looking for information about infectious causes of cancer might also want information about cervical screening, but is probably not looking for general information about viruses.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
00:30, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I removed the worst offenders from the category and made the text less anthropocentric. I still think this is terrible organization, but honestly, the software (non-)features for viewing, searching, and sorting categories are so bad that I think they're rarely worth fussing about.
Opabinia regalis (
talk)
00:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
If I remember, I believe I was the one who created the category in question. It was not intended to cover cancers in animals. It was meant to simply connect the various causes, effects, links, associations, infections, symptoms, screenings, treatments, risks, diseases, organisms that can be linked to the category. An analogous category might be named: Environmental causes of cancer or Genetic causes of cancer if such information were contained in the article that is part of the category. The problem with a more accurate title of the category in question is that in some cases there is complete consensus that an infectious agent is the cause of cancer. In other articles, there is a strong link between the infectious agent and cancer. In other articles, there is an increased risk to develop cancer, In other articles, there is an association between the article topic and cancer. In other articles there is a synergistic association between one infectious agent and another, for example HPV and AIDS. Coming up with a better name for the category might be warranted but to include cancer in animals is not really helpful. That category probably needs to stand on its own.
Sounds like you're going for something more like
Category:Associations between infectious agents and human cancers? I entirely disagree that a category called "infectious causes of cancer" should only contain information about humans, which are not the only organisms to get cancer. A huge part of the history of oncovirus research involved animal models for obvious reasons, and species specificity in many of these agents is driven by cell-surface receptors, not by substantial differences in molecular mechanism.
Opabinia regalis (
talk)
08:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Could you two accept, as a compromise, a sub cat specifically dedicated to infectious causes of cancer in (non-human) animals, including research models?
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
17:59, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
The category we are discussing was intended to be anthropocentric. Animal cancers would be a better category for someone looking for information on the topic of cancers of animals. The purpose of creating this category was to tie together the very diverse articles that describe those cancers that are: 1. caused by infectious agents, 2. that are linked to infectious agents, 3. that are associated with infectious agents, 4. found consistently in cancerous growths, 5. found to have an increased risk of development when infectious agents are present. In addition this category should be including articles about the vaccines that protect against infections that prevent/reduce cancer by infectious agents. This category should also contain the history involved in the topic, which has been very controversial but has resulted in Nobel Prizes to at least three recipients who 'discovered' the link between certain infectious agents and cancer. I understand why other editors balk at the name of the category: Infectious causes of cancer, and I am certainly open to changing the name of the category, but change it to what? This is the shortest name I could come up with. Isn't Project Medicine anthropomorphic by definition? I am open to any and all suggestions. I am not sure what needs to be resolved, and have the tendency to only see individual trees rather than the forest. Nice discussion....Best Regards,
I originally noticed this category because I put an article in it and was
WP:ASTONISHed to find a category called "infectious causes of cancer" that did not contain the topics I expected from the name - e.g.
avian sarcoma leukosis virus (the first oncovirus discovered),
Rous sarcoma virus (which earned its discoverer a Nobel), or
SV40 (which was suspected of causing cancer in humans and caused a huge debate when polio vaccines were found contaminated with it). I mentioned it here in part because it looks like an example of over-focus on thinking of the reader as looking for patient-oriented information rather than documentation of the relevant biology. The latter type of reader is not well served by splitting up human and animal infectious agents, since the underlying molecular mechanism of carcinogenesis is generally very similar between agents of the same family (and is often better understood in the animal case) - and in any event, species specificity may not be absolute.
I don't think that will work under the category guidelines. It doesn't matter what name you put on it: "all the stuff that is associated with cancer, infection, and people, however vaguely or tangentially" isn't going to meet the category guidelines. I think this needs to be a list or an article.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
16:30, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
*Wow, there is a lot of strange stuff in here. I see Bfpage has made some headway but there's plenty left to muck out. I am usually against the 'banish all old/primary sources' meme but: 13 mostly mental illnesses 'associated with' Borrelia!
Having read the comments by Opabinia, I have changed my mind about including animal topics in the category since I am familiar with the work of Rous and have found a systematic review article that has clearly demonstrated the value of animal cancers and the application of those animal studies to the study of infectious causes of cancers in humans. How about Category:Infectious agents associated with cancer? And you are right about the connection between infection with Borrelia and mental illness!Best Regards,
Opabinia, I don't object to including information with a clear and obvious relationship. But I would omit all vague or unproven relationships (e.g., general articles about infection, or "one study said there might be a connection of unknown importance").
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:57, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
The general articles were already removed.
Bfpage, "Infectious agents associated with cancer" still sounds like it would contain only the agents, not the cancers. "Infectious agents and carcinogenesis"?
I disagree with many of the changes that are proposed, especially the AfD. I don't think that there would be any problem with categories such as Genetic causes of cancers or Environmental causes of cancer. Please remember that the assertions that there are associations, links, increased risk between infectious agents are largely supported by systematic reviews and meta-analyses and are not vague or unproven relationships, or based upon one study. I don't have a point of view on this topic. The assertion that there is a connection between an infectious agent and cancer are conclusions of researchers. I would be quite pleased with the renaming to "Infectious agents and carcinogenesis". As for POV-pushing by Morgellons, I have no idea what you are talking about. I was under the impression that I was the primary author and (I'm not sure due to a lazy memory).
Morgellons, LOL!
Opabinia regalis, you can't be suggesting, and I'm not a 'he', that this category is based have a "... delusional belief that they(me?) are infested with disease-causing agents described as things like insects, parasites, hairs or fibers," and that this category should be
WP:TNT. I will treat this comment with seriousness and with the idea that you might mean what you wrote as a comment. Firstly, I thought that editors were supposed to stay away from personal comments regarding the possible motivation (and mental status?) of other editors. Initiating an AfD based upon my mistaken identity {he?) might be a waste of time for those with an interest in this category. I can assure you that I am actually quite fascinated with all things 'creepy crawly", raise mealworms and flightless fruit flies as a hobby to help feed my son's frogs. I don't have a point of view about this mental disorder except that it is a sad thing that some people suffer from it and should be treated with compassion. Best Regards,
Well obviously it was indicated or I wouldn't have made the move. Whether the change is supported by the community is something else entirely. Anyway, infectious medicine is a valid synonym and I hate titles with brackets so I stand by my move. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
03:01, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
"Obviously indicated"? According to whom? In 34 years of practicing medicine I have never once heard the term "infectious medicine" used. There are no infectious medicines that I'm aware of, only infectious diseases. This will serve only to confuse readers. Move it back.
DoctorJoeEreview transgressions/
talk to me!03:30, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Not pedantic so much as unreasonable. The fact that a couple of labs in Finland and Sweden use it does not make it a "synonym" - just a non sequitur. The rest of the world refers to the specialty as "infectious disease", and so should we. Please move it back.
DoctorJoeEreview transgressions/
talk to me!05:05, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
No, I'm not being unreasonable, read what I said in my first post. I agree this may not be the best title, but neither do I think the old title is better. I'm glad this initiated debate, because then we can find a better title without brackets. To this can be added that the article had 0 views over the last 90 days before my edit, I think it needs a better title so that it can be more easily found through search. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
11:27, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Also the use is global including the United States, the reason you see the Swedish laboratories furthest up is because they are the most prominent ones to use the term. The exact search had 25000 hits. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
11:36, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that the overwhleming number of major medical sources use the phrase "infectious disease" or "infectious diseases" as the name for the subspecialty. You seem to be applying your dislike for parantheses and overriding what the overwhelming number of medical sources actually call the subspecialty. See the talk page for a brief listing of the major medical organizations that calls it "infectious disease" or "infectious diseases".
Yobol (
talk)
14:49, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Is this article supposed to be about the medical specialty (e.g., equivalent to "dermatology"), or about what you've got when you've been infected (e.g., equivalent to "skin disease")? If it's the specialty, then it might be reasonable to call it "infectious disease medicine", although in the US, the actual name of the subspecialty appears to be plain "infectious disease".
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
23:08, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Can we get some further input on the talk page from some other editors? We seemed to have hit an impasse and further outside input would be appreciated.
Yobol (
talk)
18:34, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't remember the last time we had a complaint about this that didn't involve a trans person who was trying to make articles about sex-specific medical conditions be gender-neutral. For a few conditions, it might be possible to resolve such disputes with greater specificity, e.g., pregnancy only happens in people who are genetically female. Typically, though, we write "women in their 20s and 30s" because it improves clarity for typical readers.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
16:49, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Would someone please move the last two paragraphs from the lede to the "Management" section for me? I'm editing on an iPad mini for the next few days and just can't manage copy and paste. --
Anthonyhcole (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
06:13, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Could someone knowledgeable run the copyvio bot on this article. The images are incorrectly licensed and I would like to see if anything else could be copyvio. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
01:50, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
2marlboro might be worth reaching out to? I don't think we need to delete anything then, just make sure the licenses are okay so that noone else does. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
01:58, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
I have removed certain posts from this page as it is not intended to be a news repository. If you wish to post a news item please make clear how it is relevant to improving an article, not just saying it is interesting or important. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
18:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Gentleman lets take this down a couple of notches. I have closed the 3RR report. We should have the discussion here. You both edit positively.
We should decide what scope of content we want on this page. When I see interesting bits of news or articles I post them to the talk page of the wiki article in question.
User:Jfdwolff does the same such as in this edit here
[26]. Think this is good practice.
CFCF,
Doc James,
Ozzie10aaaa Looking at the posts that were archived, I can understand what bothered CFCF. The post about the meetup was entirely appropriate, but I think that discussions about news articles are generally not suitable here unless they span a major breakthrough that needs to be covered on numerous pages (e.g. an effective HIV vaccine).
James pointed out my habit of posting high-quality secondary sources on talk pages. Of course this is not news but a way to flag up useful content for anyone intending expansion to an article in the future. Please let me know if this is felt to be annoying.
JFW |
T@lk12:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Its not the same thing. Posting a high quality source on the tlak page of a specific article is useful . I do this to leave myself notes when I know I will be returning to work on an article in the future. Posting medical news on this talk page with no suggestion as to how it is related to the wikiproject is a misuse of this page.
Matthew Ferguson (
talk)
17:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Thought about this the other day vaguely. Is there even a difference between the content in the EMS/Emergency Medicine task force and first aid? Looking at the articles they have listed on the bottom of their page, a lot of these already are under the purview of the EMSTF. Peter.C •
talk •
contribs13:14, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, appropriate for what? I'm not suggesting merging any articles, just whether we should have an overbearing article. Also I agree with LeadSongDog, Blood-borne disease isn't a clear enough name. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
15:43, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
It's possible that the title "Blood-borne disease" is appropriate for an article, I'm just suggesting that some scope clarification is needed: does it pertain to the relatively few diseases where the pathogen's life cycle depends on host-to-host transmission through blood (e.g. a
viral hemorrhagic fever), is it more general, admitting any of the pathogens which can exploit opportunites for host-to-host transmission through blood (e.g. HIV), or is it any disease which infects the blood?
LeadSongDogcome howl!15:57, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Blood-borne disease already exists, and it's about diseases transmitted through blood/body fluid contact, since that's what is expected by anyone who has been through
bloodborne pathogen training or knows what the point of
universal precautions is.
Yes, exactly. Those are specific conditions and don't cover the general topic. I'll try to think of something and bring it by here once I've created it. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
17:19, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
My overview issue with the article is the fact that it reads like a press release meant to entice people to try the diet. Is it just me or does anyone else get that vibe from the wording? Peter.C •
talk •
contribs19:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
your correct, however if we can mold it,,,1 appropriate references,,,2.non-advertisement (academic text ( or layman))...3.MOS...then we might have something useful "knowledge-wise".(we also might need consensus to keep the article,even after all the trimming)--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
19:10, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I believe I have followed the guidelines for requesting a FA review. I have done this on the talk page of the article. The major editor/contributor initially wrote that he would address my concerns regarding the references in the article. No progress has been done to address my concerns and I, with no malice, want to proceed with the process of a review of its FA status. The major problems are: the references are quite outdated. I have posted other references and left this information on the talk page. I would have edited and inserted the updated references myself but I do not feel as if I have the expertise or familiarity with the topic to do so or I would have fixed it myself. Another significant problem is that the references do not meet the requirements of
WP:MEDRS. The references in medical articles should be academic journal review articles, systematic review articles, governmental websites and policies and medical textbooks. I could find none of these as sources (there might one and I might have missed it). My review is not perfect but in good faith, I am optimistic that with the right sources, this article can retain its FA status. Best Regards,
I have found only one that links to web page of a non-governmental source but I haven't read all the sources yet. I only found one reference so far that used undue weight and did not use the information to the contrary contained in the review.
It's a rare treatment of an uncommon medical condition, so MEDDATE's provision for relaxing the date requirement applies.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
16:47, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Bfpage, you've posted this notice in various places but did not, as far as I can tell, notify the original FA nominator and primary author of the article. Your statement that you could find none of the typical preferred medical references as sources in this article made me think I was looking at the wrong tab, because it does not seem at all to be the case, and because you have already had the sourcing in this article explained to you in some detail on its talk page after you posted a similar thread there in May. What specific content are you concerned about and what newer sources have you read that led you to that concern?
Opabinia regalis (
talk)
23:58, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
I have contacted the editor who nominated the article for FA status.
I thought the original author was the major contributor and did not know that notifying the nominator was required. I am carefully going over the references and have found that many of them really ARE reviews though it is not always apparent in the text of the reference. I did locate more recent content and references that appear to be updates to those references that are older than five years. I left these links on the talk page. I also realize that some of the references support historical content so of course I don't have a problem with that. I had the sourcing explained to me as you have pointed out and yet the major contributor stated that he would look into my concerns. You understand that reviewing FA is a good thing and my assessment that a lot, if not most, of the content is older than the five yeas recommended by MEDRS. It was the dates of the references that caught my attention. Please assume good faith on my part. I thought identifying what I considered to be outdated references was a good thing and would benefit the encyclopedia. I detected some ownership, and it confused me. I would think that the existence of more up-to-date references would be helpful to those who maintain that article. If there is consensus that the sources are fine and don't need to be updated, I will withdraw my request for review. Why wouldn't we want the article updated? And much of the historical content is available in more recent review articles. I did not realize that this would be contentious. Best Regards and appreciative of all who have commented on this topic.
I wonder if it would be helpful to add |department=Review to those not-so-obvious review articles (especially since you've just gone to all the time and trouble of checking them).
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
23:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
This article has been a bad state for a while. I have recently tried to improve it but this has caused some dispute. More eyes would be welcome.
Alexbrn (
talk)
13:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Sorry,
Ozzie10aaaa, I guess I didn't see it soon enough. It was nominated for deletion by the HasteurBot. It's a long, detailed article with illustrations. If you or anyone else tdhink this is an appropriate topic and want to have a look at it, I can undelete it temporarily.—
Anne Delong (
talk)
09:02, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
I found that more literature has the name hypertrophic osteoarthropathy.
What do you guys think?
Does the name Pulmonary add much? Pulmonary problems are only seen with this disease in some types, not all. So I am not sure if it covers the disease correctly?
I would support the change if you added the alternative name in the heading. Normally this type of uncontroversial move can be done at discretion. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
20:01, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
If you guys decide that the content of
Hypertrophic pulmonary osteoarthropathy should be merged into
Hypertrophic osteoarthropathy, then according to Step 2 of
Wikipedia:Merging (This discussion is step one), you should advertise this by adding merge tags on the two pages to point to this discussion. I will be happy to close the discussion, since I have no opinion about this. If the merger is agreed upon, you can either move the material yourself, leaving the edit summaries as noted in the "How to merge" section, or you can ask me to do the merge and the attribution tags if you prefer. Then one of you can copyedit to arrange the two parts and remove any duplication. The other page becomes a redirect and is not deleted, so no admin action is needed there.—
Anne Delong (
talk)
23:47, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Ohw alright. Do you know where can I change the name? I am not familiair with the protocol.
The redirection is also incorrect I believe, it leads to a disease for dogs, that is called hypertrophic osteopathy, so without the 'arthro'. How do I change that?
EllenvanderVeen (
talk)
11:43, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Moved :) No merge was needed; I suspect that
Anne Delong didn't notice the 'Hypertrophic osteoarthropathy' redirect to 'Hypertrophic osteopathy', which confused me at first too!
Sam Walton (
talk)
09:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Hey All. Wondering what people think of an "FDA bot" that as soon as a new FDA "Drug Safety Communication" comes out the bot tags the medication article in question (side effect or adverse effect section if it exists) with {{Incomplete|section|reason=New FDA Drug Alert as of "Date" [url=X]}} if the url of the FDA alert is not already in the article?
I like the idea of reflecting the information, but given the low volume, a bot task seems a bit much. At least for starters manual edits may be more appropriate and carry less risk of community backlash. Also it's a bit US-centric to use just the FDA. The UK equivalent appears to be
here. We should, I think, tweak
WP:MEDMOS,
WP:PHARMMOS, and
template:Infobox drug to clarify how to show this information. Once that's worked out we can start to think about automation.
LeadSongDogcome howl!16:45, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Lead the bot is to notify both editors and readers (hopefully soon to be editors) to update the article in question. The problem is we have not done a good job keeping our content updated to the FDA releases per a previous study.
I would like to do the same with the UK list. That list however is more than just updates and thus not sure how to build a bot around it. For example what would one do with "Survey of medicines safety communications"? Additionally not sure if their is an API while the FDA has one. Will look into the technicalities of it. I hope that eventually this bot may also work on other sources like the EMA releases.
Makes sense to have a bot do this. High importance, low volume, repetitive work. Like airplane flying, except 'undo' is available. Good for a bot. There'll be pilot testing during the bot approval process. --
Elvey(
t•
c)05:33, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
Before this work happens, we need to have a greater percentage of the medications in wikipedia coded by ATC and then back ported into wikidata. Right now it seems like there not that many actually in wikidata
[29] At first glance, every medication that is listed in the WHO Essential list
WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines has an ATC code. I will probably start with just making a collection of medications that have missing ATC codes. This bot will be driven nearly entirely by ATC (in order to handle internationalization automatically) so thats my current thinking. I am going to work on this "real soon". I also like the idea of doing this as report, rather than a bot, since making automated changes to pages or even talk pages is more drama than I am up for at this time.
Ftrotter (
talk)
13:02, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
I can take care of the "allowing your bot to edit articles" bit. All we need is consensus here.
Healthy eating,
healthy diet etc. all redirect to
Human nutrition. That article is a travesty with over half of it lacking sources completely. I'm currently working on a number of other topics but plan to dive into it shortly. If anyone else would like to take a look I would be very happy.
Now that
Alirocumab is approved, I expanded this into a regular drug article from a stub. I'd appreciate it if folks would have a look and fix anything that needs it. While doing that, I also created this bit:
PCSK9#History. Pretty amazing story - from discovery of the gene to a drug on the market in 10 years.
Jytdog (
talk)
02:01, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I know we're all to busy to ever take a good look over at the main page, but I rewrote some of it today. It still needs a lot of work, and hopefully we will be able to upgrade it with
WikiProject X in a few months. I think it's important though that all the information is easy to read and up to date. If you're involved with the UCSF collaboration
Bluerasberry¿ or Wikiversity Journal of Medicine
Mikael Häggström¿ maybe you could update the sections on that? I think it's very important that potential new members get a good idea of what we're doing when they drop by.
I want to ask a question: Does anything think I should make this article? I intend to have the article organized by disease type such as communication disorders, genetic disorders, and have a "notes" section for each describing possible improvements to control and/or manage symptoms. Please respond on my talk page if you you respond to this.
Robert4565 (
talk)
15:24, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I fear that it would be a gigantic list that would never approach completion and would be only very sporadically maintained and updated. (I suspect it would actually be much easier and briefer to list curable diseases.)
You have to start with practically every genetic, degenerative, and chronic ailment in the book, and it gets worse from there. (And then there will be the quibbles and quarrels over what constitutes 'incurability'. We can cure HIV infection in some patients using a stem cell transplant from a suitable donor, but we don't really consider HIV infection 'curable' because the stem cell transplant has such a high risk of morbidity and mortality. Are various cancers 'curable' because they have a 5% 5-year survival rate? 50%? 90%? And so forth.)
TenOfAllTrades(
talk)
19:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I added a new field to Template:Infobox medical condition/sandbox that can be used on rare diseases to link to Orphanet. I also used it to link to the Swedish Rare disease db, but I'm not as sure about including that in the infobox, maybe EL is better (P.S. it's all in English). Anyway, I'm not really getting it to work properly, could someone pop over and take a look at the code?
Then if noone objects I'm moving it into the main infobox later today. I'll create and EL-template for the Rare disease db.--
CFCF🍌 (
email)
17:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
We have an IP that continues to add a bunch of primary sources here
[33] when the article already covers the content in question with recent secondary sources in the paragraph above.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
23:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
When I see someone adding primary sources to decent-quality articles, I find that I'm often safe assuming that the person is trying to do the right thing – according to academic journal standards, which often prohibit citing secondary sources. Thus I tend to explain that quirk of Wikipedia's sourcing rules and share the link to
Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
WikiProject Medicine Collaboration of the Month
Hello all,
I just wanted to announce my plan to relaunch the
WikiProject Medicine Collaboration of the Month. The collaboration
has contributed a lot to the Wikiproject - and in fact tomorrow, July 27th will mark the 10th year anniversary since the collaboration started. It really is a good project idea, but it needs more people to come together and help make it work. What I would like is for people to visit the collaboration page and vote on the current nominations (or make your own) for next months project. In addition, I hope people will dedicate some of their editing time to the future selected articles.
great idea...I think it should 1. be an article that needs a lot of attention not an article that's fine (articles that need expert attention page
[34])...2. there should be a list or award each month for the top 3 collaborations (to motivate editors)--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
18:54, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
1. I agree as long as it is not an article "too far in the weeds" (ie. very technical and niche) 2. In the past this has not been done because I believe the reward was to have another GA under your belt at the end of it. How would the "top three" be chosen? Edit count? - Also of note, depending on the amount of people we have editing, we might need to use IRC to communicate to prevent edit conflicts. Peter.C •
talk •
contribs19:22, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I think IRC could be a good idea, but not because we run risk of edit conflicts. If we make it a monthly collaboration it won't really be a problem unless everyone starts editing the first day and then doesn't do anything more. I don't really think we need motivators either, all we need is for someone to take the lead and organize it each month. I'm more than willing to help out. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
19:33, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
I think we should work on engaging users more throughout the month to try to motivate them to do work with the other community members. In the past few weeks Ozzie and I have started something like this where they will help me with something, in turn I help them, and this has led to a lot of great work on
myasthenia gravis over the course of a week, and various smaller articles for brief periods. This whole collaboration is meant to engage the entire wikiproject to work improve an article - how can we do so if everyone works independently? Perhaps we should make a to do list for each article in the first day or two and then people can sign up for tasks and ask for assistance from others? Any thoughts, questions or concerns about this or have any other specific ideas? Peter.C •
talk •
contribs01:09, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
So I often use Harrison's principles of internal medicine as a reference. But I can never seem to be able to add the ISBN number and get all the info about the book when I click the little magnifying glass.
I often use the 19th edition of this book.
These are the numbers, but they don't work.
As helpful as it is to suggest VisualEditor when someone is reporting a reproducible bug in existing tools, maybe we could try to solve the actual problem?
Looks like reftoolbar isn't indexing this particular book correctly, and it's not clear why. The
API call the backend does comes back totally empty. We tried several different formats of ISBN, to no effect.
Eventually I just wrote
the {{cite hpim}} template which will call {{cite book}} for you with the appropriate data, and takes the page=, pages=, and chapter= parameters.
If this is ever fixed, we can remove the template, but for now it's a handy shortcut to work around a bug in the software. I'll carry on to attempt to find a way to fix the bug upstream in the meantime. --
MarkTraceur (
talk)
13:53, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
The "little magnifying glass" is the icon that appears next to the ISBN field in the
reftoolbar cite/book graphical user interface. If one enters the ISBN in the box and then presses the magnifying glass icon, the rest of the fields should be autofilled from an on-line database. Very handy when it works.
Boghog (
talk)
19:21, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Metabolic disorder etc. -- poor quality articles about an important topic
I've re-merged the
metabolic disorders article into
metabolic disorder. During the process, I noticed that both articles were of very poor quality, and have laced the article with {{fact}} tags to make that clear. Given the prevalence of metabolic disorders, this article seems in great need of urgent attention from experts.
Metabolic disease (also redirected to by
metabolic diseases) is a mere stub, and should probably be redirected to the same article. --
The Anome (
talk)
11:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Just a heads-up, we decided to begin a new page on
mass deworming to split from
Helminthiasis and to keep
deworming for animals, as the existing editors there had expressed a preference for that. The whole topic is difficult as there is a lot of controversy about recent trials, data re-analysis and a Cochrane review. My view is that the page should be covered by
WP:MEDRS but it is likely to be edited by those who want to talk about particular trials (which were not included in the Cochrane review) and which give different results. I am not totally sure how to write the controversial parts of the page without giving weight to individual studies, which appears to be in violation of MEDRS, so would appreciate any other input from WP medics.
JMWt (
talk)
09:35, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Well it might be a while, but using Wikidata for searches instead of categories will come. The category system is severely outdated, and I would suggest not spending more time on in than is absolutely necessary. If you want to really improve access to articles work at Wikidata, we need more people there. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
07:41, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
I have opened an RfC regarding the appropriate title of the article discussing the specialty "infectious disease"
here. Input would be appreciated.
Yobol (
talk)
17:25, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I've been looking into the ledes of some of our major articles, and even the lede of a much read article such as
abortion has been very difficult. I managed to decrease the reading grade from 11.8 to 9.3 according to
https://readability-score.com , but I think this is something we need to look at generally. All of the edits I've done might not be perfect here but I've found a number of good guides on how to write health information for the general public.
I know this has been brought up before, but I think it's time to really try and do something about it. If anyone else has anything to add or maybe any suggestions on how to improve
WP:MEDMOS feel free to add it here.
Well yes, and I wouldn't go about following these slavishly, but they are good resources. Especially the third one from the CDC seems to be very useful. --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
Nevertheless, Wikipedia's biggest failing compared to other encyclopedias has been shown to be the relatively high level of reading comprehension needed for many articles. Any increase in the readability of our articles benefits not just younger readers but also readers whose first language is not English and who have no article available in their mother tongue. WPMED (James and CF in particular) have made great efforts in translations, but there will always exist a need for our articles to be understood by people who find reading English difficult. Perhaps the needs of that audience are even more pertinent to medical articles and MEDMOS might be updated to make that point? --
RexxS (
talk)
08:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
What do people think of this revert
[36]? Yes work to make our content simpler is important. Our MOS says "The leads of articles, if not the entire article, should be written as simply as possible without introducing errors."
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
09:25, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that we say what we want, but we don't explain how to do it. I'll try and read up on the sources and see if there are any general rules that could be useful for us. (
WP:MEDSIMPLE to be written once I have time) --
CFCF🍌 (
email)
12:12, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
Regarding Doc Jame's specific reversion, there are two issues. 1) An editor had changed the wording of cited quotations, and this needs to be reverted regardless of understandability. 2) While "pee", or "piss" may be more commonly used than "urine" or "urinate", "urine" is widely understood. "Voiding" is probably not understood much outside the medical community, and "void" also has other meanings, so it probably should be explained at first use.--
Wikimedes (
talk)
17:43, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
We should definitely encourage simplicity, but not at the cost of discouraging editors from writing at all. Writing simply is actually harder than writing technically. Also it frequently happens when unskilled writers try to write simply that they end up writing inaccurately -- that's worse than complexity. Wikipedia depends on encouraging editors to do as much as they are capable of doing -- not more.
Looie496 (
talk)
12:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
A few rules of simple include: use short sentences, try to have only one idea per sentence, use simpler words. Some rules of simplification make our content too "how to" and thus I do not follow them.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
01:41, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I find that using a subject-verb-object pattern, avoiding the passive voice, and using shorter, more common words makes for writing that is more pointful and powerful. More people fully grasp the meaning of a direct statement like "Most babies with Scary Genetic Disease die in less than one year" than from "The median patient with Scary Genetic Disease has a survival time of less than one year".
I've been reading a lot recently about oncologists being afraid to tell people that they're going to die, and I've noticed a parallel in Wikipedia's writing. We're not trying to be optimistic (or to postpone a long and probably tearful session until a more convenient time, because I've got another sick patient in the next room who also needs me right now), but we do mimic the detached, passive, emotion-avoiding style that these people use. One example of this is that we talk about survival times rather than death. We also tend to ignore questions of quality of life and practical prognosis. Another example: We tend not to mention the practical burden of chronic diseases or life-long treatment. Diabetics need to plan every meal and every drug for the rest of their lives. If dinner is served late at a party, or if your friends at work take too long to get out the door for a group lunch, then it can cause immediate problems. People with fatigue or pain issues often need part-time jobs. People with kidney or liver problems may not be able to take the most effective drugs for other conditions. I find that when I try to write in simple language, that I think more clearly about a condition; when I think more clearly about a condition, then these practical realities become more obvious to me.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
While it can take some skill and even artistry to write for a lay audience without losing accuracy, I think this is something to strive for. Wikipedia is, after all, an encyclopedia, not a journal for medical professionals. I occasionally try to make medical articles more understandable while maintaining the technical rigor and jargon. Sometimes this is as simple as including a synonym or short description for the technical terms (e.g. swelling for edema, or "swelling caused by edema"). Another technique is to have a lead paragraph or sentence in layman's terms to get the general idea across, and then have following paragraphs or sentences fill in the technical details. Sometimes the opposite order is useful, with the concept expressed succinctly in technical terms followed by a longer explanation in less technical terms. Other times things are more complicated and artistry comes into play.
I don't think we should discourage editors from writing in either technical or layman's terms, but should continually try to improve articles by adding the missing parts.
-
Wikimedes (
talk)
17:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Agree strongly with what is written above by several users - it's important for lay readers to be able to understand what we write, not just technically skilled ones. Some specific advice for anatomy articles which can cross over to medicine is provided in the essay
WP:ANATSIMPLIFY. I find the main problem is that whilst we are in agreement here, there are lot of users who lurk who disagree with this, and a gradual trend by IP users passing by to slowly reintroduce removed technical language. --
Tom (LT) (
talk)
00:00, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
I also agree with user CFCF that the difficult and complexity of articles on many topics is somewhat excessive. Could we address this within WikiProject Medicine somehow? Perhaps a targeted effort to simplify the "top-importance" articles, with a view to removing medical jargon and unnecessary detail, and relegating such content to the appropriate sub-pages. Many of the contributors are researchers and medical professionals, so I don't think we can avoid having many users writing in highly technical ways, but periodically revising articles with a view to simplifying them might be a step in the right direction.
Nren4237 (
talk)
10:19, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea
User:Nren4237. I have been working on simplifying for years. Am specifically concentrating my efforts on the leads of key articles. I do occationally get push back. But the more of us who feel this is important the more success we will have.
Doc James (
talk ·
contribs ·
email)
13:47, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
What is the context and relevance of this post to this project? Systematic analysis ≠ systemic review.
PMID26189696 is a primary source and therefore is clearly not MEDRS compliant. It is also outside the scope of
WP:MED therefore
WP:MEDRS does not apply.
Boghog (
talk)
13:09, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
CRISPR this article seems to have medical text were it could be useful specifically "Applications" section (therapeutics) subsection... (it did not say review) ...I hope that answers your question , thanks--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
13:29, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
The citation is to an experimental method, not an application and therefore not relevant to an applications section nor to this project.
Boghog (
talk)
13:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I really wish somebody who understands the topic would improve that article on a more basic level. This has become such an important technique that it really sucks for our article to be so unreadable. Unfortunately I don't understand the topic well enough to make improvements -- I only realized how poor our article is by trying to read it in order to learn how the technique works.
Looie496 (
talk)
13:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I would offer the prior answer given (if however for any reason you have a different opinion about this or any reference that's fine)...however I would point out the article in question
CRISPR does contain medical information (references) in the sections mentioned above and therefore all articles with medical information are subject to MEDRS...also as Looie496 has indicated the article could also benefit from simpler language for the average reader..IMO. thanks--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
14:03, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
MEDRS only applies if medical claims are being made. The citation that you mention makes no medical claims and is a primary source. One relatively small part of the CRISPR article (application/therapeutics section) is within the scope of MEDRS, the rest is not. And it is not true that if one section contains medical information, then MEDRS applies to the whole article. You need to be more discriminate in how you apply MEDRS. Finally I agree with Looie that the article needs improvement.
Boghog (
talk)
15:15, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
And it is not true that if one section contains medical information, then MEDRS applies to the whole article. this statement was not indicated, what was to be clear is the section (in this case Applications-subsection (therapeutics),.. logic dictates MEDRS would not apply to the whole article--
Ozzie10aaaa (
talk)
15:29, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
@
LeadSongDog: Agreed that
WP:PSTS applies to all articles and one of the things that I pointed out above is that source mentioned at the start of this thread is primary and not secondary. Concerning CRISPR, this article is more within the scope of
WP:MCB where
WP:SCIRS applies. I just get a little irritated when MEDRS is indiscriminately invoked.
Boghog (
talk)
22:47, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Tweaked the refs, but they're almost all too old per
wp:MEDDATE. The German WP article is even further out of date, though it's FA-class, and the French one looks like it might be helpful to compare too.
LeadSongDogcome howl!17:12, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me that if constructive editing is valued, you could go to Pubmed and quickly find many recent significant impact secondary reviews [
PMID26088074], [
PMID25015577], [
PMID26090645], [
PMID25786098] with some maybe even reaching the exalted
WP:MEDRS standard! I am too busy with other matters to help and too naive but I would hope others are not.
Jrfw51 (
talk) — Preceding
undated comment added
18:05, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Last year, an IP user left
this message on the page for our image of how the nervous system is affected in
Horner's syndrome. I have no idea whether the complaint is correct.
To be clear: I don't have medical training. I can't really parse the content in either the complaint or in the cited textbook. In fact, because of the IP user's weak grammar, I'm not sure if the complaint is (X should be portrayed as Y) or (X is portrayed as Y). You might say that I should just look at the image, but when I do, I can't follow the legend. I look at the page you've linked to, and I don't understand it very much. Is the image correct, or is the complaint valid? If the complaint is valid, is there anyone participating in the Medicine wikiproject who's able to edit .svg files? And if the complaint is not valid, is anyone here willing to remove it from the image?
DS (
talk)
12:52, 31 July 2015 (UTC)