Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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This page has been mentioned by a media organization: Sarah Shamim, Dwayne Oxford (June 14, 2024). "Wikipedia war: Fierce row erupts over Israel's deadly Nuseirat assault". Al Jazeera English. Retrieved June 14, 2024. Wikipedia was able to address the issue of misinformation about the virus spreading on its platform, however, with projects like Wiki Project Medicine, a community of doctors and scientists,working to correct wrong information.

have started Rwanda Marburg disease outbreak , it should be noted this is the first time this occurs in Rwanda (and in recent years in other countries) please feel free to add/delete, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:32, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Added stuff on the socioeconomic/legal reasons that we don't have a vaccine in production yet. See also economics of vaccines.

I should like to see an analysis of whether the existence of legal monopolies in the biomedical field is a net benefit to taxpayers, because it clearly has enormous negative externalities. This is doubly important because, outside the chemical and pharma sector, patents seem not to be a net benefit even to their owners (in the US, as of 2008;^[1] from a Refdesk query). So the onus is rather on patents to show that they should exist. HLHJ (talk) 02:56, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will also add some material, thanks for starting it Noxoug1 (talk) 08:06, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also started Marburg vaccine, just by copy-pasting from existing articles, because we have Ebola vaccine and did before one was in production, and because organizationally, a central place for that information would be good. HLHJ (talk) 04:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've decided to officially ask for a second opinion on the Tumor necrosis factor GA review (page:Talk:Tumor necrosis factor/GA1 and nominator:@AdeptLearner123) I'm mostly looking for second opinions regarding prose, readability, and broadness. Feel free to jump in wherever and offer what suggestions you have! IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:46, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a disagreement over conventionally wording vs "person first language" phrasing regarding this edit. What's the general consensus on this and is there something in MOS that addresses this?

The long standing phrasing was: A needle and syringe programme (NSP), also known as needle exchange program (NEP), is a social service that allows injecting drug users (IDUs) to obtain clean and unused...

One user came along and keeps putting their preferred version: A needle and syringe programme (NSP), also known as needle exchange program (NEP), is a social service that allows people who inject drugs to obtain clean and unused...

I personally prefer the long-standing version, although I was wondering what the consensus of the project prefers. Graywalls (talk) 02:07, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Graywalls, have you found WP:SUFFER?

You could also address the problem in a different way, e.g., "...allows people to obtain clean and unused... This is intended to reduce the risks associated with injection of recreational drugs" (or something like that). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, and I see "Many patient groups, particularly those that have been stigmatised, prefer person-first terminology", but no definitive guidance on which should, or shall be used in Wikipedia articles. Graywalls (talk) 02:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-stigmatizing language is preferable, of course, as is a writing style that is clear, direct, and concise. It is not always possible to achieve all of these desirable things in the same sentence. As for which to prefer in a tradeoff, we have not found it necessary to have a hard and fast rule, and of course one of the fundamental policies is that there are WP:No firm rules anyway.

Personally, if I were going to try to improve that article, I think it would be more productive to focus on the outdated facts instead of the wording of the one sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing:, any objection to restoring the original phrasing alongside addressing outdated info? I think it's more concise and gets the point across. Graywalls (talk) 13:42, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone

I have been advised to come to this page and introduce myself. I am part of a team of instructors guiding undergrad students in creating articles on medical topics. These students are from the pharmacy and biomedical science disciplines at the faculty of medicine in our Uni. For various reasons, last semester I was involved in moving articles to the main space. Going forward this part will be handled by a more experienced editor in my location. How this space will be hugely beneficial is in helping us guide our students in writing quality articles.

To give you some background about our process, we begin by showing our students the requested medical article list. There are issues with this list and thanks to some helpful members of this community, I have already been given some suggestions on how to handle this list and ideas for modifying this element of our guidance. Any other suggestions regarding this list or suggestions on how to get our medical students started are welcome! The suggested ideas so far will require some substantial restructuring in our syllabus from assignment design to modification of the assessment rubric which may not be possible for the next cohort. Students go through a 3-month period from topic selection to drafting, peer reviewing to final submission before we move the articles to the main space. We make students submit a downloaded PDF version of their sandbox drafts to Turnitin for plagiarism checking. Their submissions come at the end of the semester, and students tend not to engage in continuous edits once they have completed the course with us despite us encouraging them to do so. We understand well that not all articles will be accepted and we tell students that the best ones will go through.

I have a lot of questions regarding general Wikipedia protocols as well as questions specific to medical articles. Now that I have found this space, I will use it to check our alignments when the course gets going in January and students submit drafts. Nice to meet you here and I look forward to engaging with you. G.J.ThomThom (talk) 02:14, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this note. But first I want you to show off some of the work done by your previous students. Nobody expects a perfect article from any new editor, but yours seem to have done pretty well so far, and you've done a good job of teaching them that material needs citations from the beginning.

If you've got a list of those still in Draft: space, that would also be useful to have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here you go:

Dorsal pancreatic agenesis

Artificial saliva

X-linked genetic disease

Dermatologic surgical procedure

Acquired hand deformity

Blue light spectrum

Sex and drugs

Face washing

Microneedles

Pregnancy hormones

Catatonic depression

Human chimera

Virus crystallisation

Tissue transplantation

Congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia

High-dose chemotherapy G.J.ThomThom (talk) 03:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments @WhatamIdoing G.J.ThomThom (talk) 04:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With the next cohort, I will share excerpts during the drafting phase for comments and suggestions if I need them (very likely!). G.J.ThomThom (talk) 04:19, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this list. I see a couple of them ended up getting merged and redirected to another article, which is fine. Some of these surprise me: How did we not have articles on face washing or high-dose chemotherapy until this year? In general, I think we're missing a lot of "intermediate" level articles: we have Chemotherapy and we have articles on individual drugs and regimens, but we don't have all the articles on general categories.

I know that you and IntentionallyDense are working on a list of possible articles for the next class, which should make things a little easier. Wikipedia:Requested articles/Medicine needs some clean up work. You might also think about topics that are unrequested but still appropriate. For example, we have the general article for Brain tumor, but no article specifically about brain tumors in children, and that's the second most common category of pediatric cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone. In Potential renal acid load (PRAL) it appears that this concept is somehow valid and is somehow contradicting: One the one hand the body produces acid which on the other hand does not affect pH of the blood (which is good, as otherwise the wrong food will kill you).

Is there more reliable information about this? Best --Julius Senegal (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an alternative medicine diet about acid-producing foods, and I think that having a good article here might be the best defense against pseudoscientific nonsense creeping in.

@Julius Senegal, there is some information about how PRAL is calculated in this book (start on pg 136, second column, and continues to the next page) and this book might also be useful. PRAL correlates with Net acid excretion.[1] This book and this one describe it in terms of a dietary pattern (fruits and vegetables good; aged cheese bad) for kidney patients. There is a related concept of Dietary acid load (PRAL plus the acid actually in the food [2]).

I'd love it if you'd have a go at expanding that article a bit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikipedia:Education noticeboard § Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections

The boxed content originally appeared at WP:ENB; please follow up below the box. Mathglot (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Copy of discussion originally at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard#Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections.

Hello everyone,

I am an instructor guiding students in composing medical articles for Wikipedia. Currently, I am focused on updating our guidelines and have several questions that I hope you can help with. My questions here are generic questions concerning the lead section.

In our academic setting, we emphasize the importance of supporting claims with citations, and our grading reflects this by marking down submissions that lack adequate citations. However, the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section suggests that while the lead should be well-sourced, citations are commonly found in the body of the article rather than the lead.

Q1: Are we being too stringent expecting our students to include citations in the lead section since this is not an expectation from Wikipedia? Is it a major problem if they do provide citations throughout the lead? What justification can we provide for not including citations in this section?

My second question is on structuring. We currently teach our students that the lead section should not only summarise the main content but also reflect the order of that content as presented in the body of the article. We use Wikipedia's "featured articles" as exemplars and models for this. However, we recognise that Wikipedia articles are subject to ongoing edits and updates that may shift the content and structure over time. This dynamic nature can lead to discrepancies between the lead and the body of an article, especially if the lead does not consistently mirror updates made to the article's main content.

Given this:

Q1: Are we guiding students correctly on the arrangement and order of information in the lead?

Q2: When significant changes are made to the body of an article, is it a common or recommended practice to revise the lead accordingly to ensure it remains an accurate and concise summary of the article and mirrors the order of the content?

Thank you in advance for your advice and suggestions! G.J.ThomThom (talk) 01:25, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@G.J.ThomThom I personally enjoy the essay Wikipedia:How to create and manage a good lead section, I highly suggest you take a look at it as it covers a lot of these smaller details. In general if content is sourced in the body of the article it does not need to be cited in the lead. The exeption to this is controversial material. However quite a few medical articles will have citations in the lead because pretty much anything in the feild of medicine can be considered controverial in a way. As far as order I do typically follow the order of the body of the article but I don't think that is a strict rule. If siginificant changes are made to the body the lead should reflect that as well. IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:15, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, thanks for the link! We've had disagreements as teachers about what we mark down re citations. We understand that citations are required if the points being made are controversial but alas it's not always easy to identify if the content is controversial. So far we have told them, if in doubt, cite! Secondly, I take on board your suggestion regarding stubs. This is something I will bring to the team G.J.ThomThom (talk) 02:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would generally agree that with medical content it's better to cite than not to cite. IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First, your course on medical topics is relevant to two boards, this one, and wP:MEDRS, but given that most of your questions are about citations, WP:MEDRS is the governing principle here and this discussion would have been much better placed at WT:MEDRS, and not here, in order to get definitive answers to your citation questions. I urge you to move it there (see {{Discussion moved to}}; if you agree to move it but need technical assistance to do so, just ask).

Briefly:

• Too stringent? – maybe, but they don't hurt, and no one will complain unless you pile up five at a time. There is no guideline saying you cannot place citations in the lead, so your are not violating anything by doing so.
• Order: the lead need not follow the same order as the body, though often it does. Editing order is: body first, lead second (because it is a summary of the most important points of the body).
• Discrepancies: Yes, revise the lead after altering the body if the changes there significantly alter the most important points of the body. A great many body edits will not be in this category, and require no changes to the lead. A typical newbie mistake is to head straight for the lead and start altering it (or worse, the lead sentence, with no consideration for the body. I have often thought it would be useful to programmatically prohibit lead changes from new users, but there is no general support for that view that I am aware of, though it would save many experienced editors lots of time undoing edits to the lead by new users.

Think about moving this. Mathglot (talk) 05:36, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot Happy to move this and yes to technical assistance please G.J.ThomThom (talk) 12:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine § Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections

Discussion moved here upon request. Please respond to User:G.J.ThomThom's questions about "guiding students in composing medical articles for Wikipedia" below. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You'll want to look over Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Content sections, if you haven't before. The lead for a well-developed article about a disease usually has four paragraphs, and they usually combine some of these elements:

• Definition, cause, and symptoms
• Diagnosis and treatment
• Screening, prevention, prognosis
• Epidemiology, history, cultural information

I've broken this list up to suggest four possible paragraphs, but ►you must use your judgment to pick the right elements. For example, some disease have no treatment and the diagnostic process is simple and boring (e.g., run a lab test), so diagnosis and treatment wouldn't make a good paragraph. Or the cause is unknown and it has no symptoms. In that case, merge, rearrange, or omit whatever doesn't seem important.

I don't think that medication articles follow the same pattern, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology/Style guide#Sections has a few specific details that they recommend including. As a general rule for a Wikipedia article, you can look down the Table of Contents for the article, and the lead ought to say something (sometimes only half a sentence) about most of the sections.

I helped with the recent updates to MOS:LEADLENGTH, and I think that your students could set a goal of having at least 100 words in the lead. That's usually feasible even for an article that isn't very long or well-developed yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you and all noted. A lot has been clarified for me now regarding the lead. G.J.ThomThom (talk) 23:37, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am posting this here instead of on the talk page of the article, because I'd like to get the opinion of a broader base of editors interested in this, rather than just the (likely zero) people who read the talk page of the article in question.

I was reading the article on nicotine and noticed that the "Adverse effects" section was looking very sparse considering the nature of the substance. Particularly the subsection on the effects on the cardiovascular system was suspiciously sparse, given that nicotine is widely known to have an effect on blood pressure and heart rate. I checked an older version of the page from 2019, and back then the "Adverse effects" section was much longer with many paragraphs of comprehensively cited text (did not evaluate the contents of the citations though), including on cardiovascular health. Sure, it wasn't perfect and was in obvious need of cleanup, but the difference to the current article is night and day.

What happened? Given the subject matter, my spidey sense detects a whiff of foul play. I am probably incapable of really doing anything about it myself (far from my field of expertise, and the article seems pretty controversial), but this bothered me enough that I wanted to ask for the opinions of editors with more experience on articles like this. —turdas^{talk - contribs} 19:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Turdas, it looks like there was a sock named User:Westwourd editing that article in 2020, but I thought all of that got reverted. That section had already been re-written by that point. I wonder if the changes you've noticed could be found in the list of edits from this user.

The best thing to do at this point would be to find a really great source and start over from scratch. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For a long while, this group has encouraged people to add a link to a DMOZ or its successor, Curlie. The advantage is that having a link to a Web directory means we had less on-wiki maintenance to do and could redirect any spammy promoters to those websites. However, the nearly moribund Curlie has finally shut down, and after a WP:TFD discussion, all of these links are being removed by bot.

If you want to add Wikipedia:External links to an article, please consider a web directory. You should pick the best site you can find, even if it's not an "official" webpage in any way. Alternatively, pick a small number of websites that do not substitute for article content. Finally, if you decide that the best result for that article is no links, then consider moving any bulky sister link templates up into the top of the previous section (whatever that is), and then remove the ==External links== section heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the update WAID. Any chance someone who isn't afraid of template syntax could remove Curlie support from {{Medical resources}}? It's template protected so you'll need to be a template editor or administrator (or setup an edit request, which should be fairly straightforward; I can sort the latter out, I just thought it might be smoother coming from someone who understands templates).

I think that's the only change needed in our guidance docs. I removed the Curlie recommendation at MEDMOS relatively recently. Ajpolino (talk) 17:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it'll be pretty easy to strip out. I've posted an edit request with the necessary details, as best as I can make out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that did make it look easy! Ajpolino (talk) 18:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on improving the Psychological and Neurodevelopmental Disorders section of the Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) article. Specifically, I need assistance with finding reliable resources and expanding the content related to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in NF1.

Both ASD and ADHD are highly prevalent in individuals with NF1, and they often exhibit distinct characteristics compared to idiopathic forms. I believe that enhancing this section will be especially useful for parents of affected children, as it could provide valuable insights into these unique challenges.

If anyone has access to relevant studies or publications, or if you have experience with this subject, I would greatly appreciate your guidance in improving this section.

I have found articles about ADHD in NF1, such as the one by Lion-François et al. (2020), which discusses the differences between ADHD and the syndromic ADHD in NF1. Honestly, I feel like this topic is a bit beyond my understanding, and I don't want to make mistakes when editing the article. If anyone has a good grasp of this issue, I would greatly appreciate your collaboration.

Thank you in advance for your support! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fechu93 (talk • contribs) 21:29, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

maybe this...Walsh, Karin S.; Vélez, Jorge I.; Kardel, Peter G.; Imas, Daniel M.; Muenke, Maximilian; Packer, Roger J.; Castellanos, Francisco X.; Acosta, Maria T. (February 2013). "Symptomatology of autism spectrum disorder in a population with neurofibromatosis type 1". Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. 55 (2): 131–138. doi:10.1111/dmcn.12038. ISSN 1469-8749. Retrieved 3 November 2024.--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:10, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I am currently working through this [3] category of articles which retractionbot has tagged as citing retracted articles. While doing so I noticed a substantial portion of these related to medicine come from Cochrane Library. Cochrane withdraws articles after a period of time - even before forthcoming updated medical reviews are published. [4]

I understand the risk of outdated medical articles, but many of them that I have seen cited are done for what I understand to be showing common treatment methods, rather than experimental treatment methods. This post here is seeking advice from those with more experience editing medical articles on how such withdrawn papers can or should be used. The following questions are especially helpful:

• Should withdrawn Chochrane reviews still be cited for basic information on common treatment methods and/or experimental methods, or should they be tagged with ^{[better source needed]}?
• Should withdrawn Cochrane reviews have their year cited in text if they have been withdrawn due to being outdated?

Relm (talk) 10:13, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good question! I remove a withdrawn review citation entirely. If the evidence shared is still accurately conveyed, I try to replace it with a high quality secondary source that shares the same evidence in background sections or by looking to see if a new review supersedes it (if not updated). JenOttawa (talk) 13:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again @Relmcheatham: when you fix or replace a citation in an article from the list [5] what do you do? Do you edit the list to let people know it has been verified/completed? Thanks.JenOttawa (talk) 14:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If they're only withdrawn out of precaution for being outdated, and are still the most up-to-date Cochrane review, then there's no real reliability issue save possibly for WP:MEDDATE. See also Tom Morris's 16:33, 9 June 2024 (UTC) comment in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Special report. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification! I think that fits with the examples I gave in the comment below of where I handled it. Please feel free to give those a look and see if there is perhaps a more preferable way to tag those. Relm (talk) 16:45, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do the following:

• I check the context (is it a medical claim, is it just one sentence or is it something integral to the page, is it the author's work, is the retraction mentioned on the page, etc)
• I check the retraction notice/reason
• If it is intentional cite, I tag it (you just insert '|intentional=yes' at the end of the reference) and mark the edit as minor (if that's all I do, otherwise I leave it as a major edit).
• If it is an unintentional citation that is specific to that one study, I remove the claim citing the reason in the retraction. (Data manipulation, fraud, etc)
• If it is an unintentional citation that seems likely to be backed up by other sources, then I tag it with ^{[unreliable source?]} and ^{[better source needed]} per the context.
• If it is any more complex than that to where I would need to pick apart the page or find replacement sources, I will either leave it alone for now (not tag it so it stays in the category) or I post on the page's talk section so someone more familiar with the subject can handle it.

On that last point I actually intended to narrow down the simple retracted citations until it was just the difficult ones that are too woven into the page or should be handled with care (around half of the retracted citations are medical in nature), and once that happened I would make a topic here with a list + summary of the more complex ones left. Examples of these complicated cases would be Weight Loss and Type A and Type B personality theory where both cases are cited many times throughout the body of the article, and would likely need the eyes of someone far more familiar with the subject. I am a historian, so I have been leaning on caution when choosing what to edit and what to leave alone.

I came here to ask this question since this particular source gave me trouble, and I know that there is a higher standard of scrutiny for editing medical articles and wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly. So far I have only edited three articles with a cochrane retraction.

1. One was for a routine treatment for tongue disease that had been retracted due to the dentists not being able to update the study years later. [6] This is the dif for that.
2. Another was [7] where I removed the source. In hindsight I believe given the context that this was a mistake, and so I have put it more in line with the previous example.
3. The third I would need to hunt down again, but I handled it like the first.

Hope this helps. Relm (talk) 16:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relm, I just want to say Thank you for dealing with that category. It's important work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No problem! A few months ago I saw a post on a noticeboard requesting people sort through it. I did a few of the notable anti-vax figures before I got carried away with other projects. I went back to it and thought it would be a nice project while I have some free time to try and reduce it from 260 to as low as I can get it before calling in the specialists. ^^ Relm (talk) 16:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Cochrane update bot is still working well. This flags reviews that are cited in articles when an updated version of the same review is published via MedLine, it updates the list monthly. It is up to date this month. This does not flag retracted reviews though.JenOttawa (talk) 21:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The seven-year itch#Requested move 16 October 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 15:44, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I recently created a stub for EviCore, a medical benefits management company. The company is the subject of a recent article by ProPublica titled “Not Medically Necessary”: Inside the Company Helping America’s Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage for Care. It may be of interest to members of this project. Thriley (talk) 22:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

interesting article, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:31, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, AdeptLearner123 is requesting feedback on Crohn's disease at Wikipedia:Peer review/Crohn's disease/archive2. Please have a look to help with their efforts to improve the article. Ajpolino (talk) 13:25, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given the choice we should be preferring the former I think as it is an International Standard not a proprietary one. I suppose there may be a risk that PMIDs stop working if the US govt has its resourcing pulled? Bon courage (talk) 06:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But they aren't equivalent. PMID 37111210 takes me to the PubMed website with its own copy of the abstract and author details and other links and information. doi:10.3390/nu15081991 takes me to the publisher website's copy of the article. Surely there's a similar risk that a publisher might go under or suffer a Crowdstrike-like systems failure. And if PubMed stops being funded, who's to say International DOI Foundation might have some big falling out or loss of funding too, meaning all our doi.org links stop working. I don't know why you are asking us to prefer one or the other. Let's have both. -- Colin°^Talk 09:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both sounds a safe option. I suppose I'm feeling jittery after seeing what problems the disappearance of the Internet Archive caused, which it was easy to assume was a permanent part of the Web, and because it's apparent the PUBMED infrastructure is subject to one government's ideals, which might change in odd ways.[8] Bon courage (talk) 11:18, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect if PubMed lost funding from US Gov then it would be important enough to the international community to keep alive elsewhere. We'd have to rewrite the URLs from pubmed.ncbi.nlm.gov to pubmed.org or something, but that's a problem for the templates. -- Colin°^Talk 16:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At least part of PubMed is already mirrored by Europe PubMed Central. If PubMed lost funding from the U.S. government, then we are in a real world of [hurt]. Boghog (talk) 16:49, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a reason to prefer DOI to PMID. DOI represents the publisher's intention. Bondegezou (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both are useful for different reasons. There is no reason to prefer one over the other. Boghog (talk) 17:11, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PubMed provides a lot of useful information that is often lacking in the publisher sites, such as related citations, cited by, indexing (MeSH, gene ID, etc.). Boghog (talk) 17:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention links from PubMed to PubMedCentral which contains full text that is sometimes missing from the publisher site. Boghog (talk) 17:26, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What makes PubMedCentral so valuable is the NIH Public Access Policy. In short, any publication resulting from research funded by the NIH must be freely available to the public through PubMedCentral. Boghog (talk) 17:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the event of an announcement that PubMed was closing (it surely wouldn't happen by surprise overnight) then one of our bot wizards could look up all the PMID links to extract the DOI on the PubMed page, and add any missing DOI parameters/link to our references. Maybe there's a bot doing that already? If I use the Cite Journal editing tool, and supply a PMID, it can fill in the citation fields and the DOI. But if I supply a DOI then it can't lookup the PMID. So arguably the PMID is more useful at the moment, as it unlocks information about the other IDs that a DOI can't. I remain puzzled why we are being asked to prefer one. -- Colin°^Talk 08:37, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, User:Citation bot already does this. If at least one of |pmid=, |pmc=, or |doi= is specified, it can usually fill in the missing ones if they exist. Boghog (talk) 09:49, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. An experienced Doctor recommended I ask for help with the Delirium article here, he says he isnt available and very busy.

Delirium, as most of you know, is a disorder / syndrome which occurs mostly in old / elderly people above age 70 or so. However, there is another type of Delirium caused by anticholinergic medications, and the Delirium article confuses readers by talking about mostly the elderly part of age over 70 people who have Delirium, not the other type caused by anticholinergic medications.

I came here to ask for help with improving the Delirium article for that. Are there any people who can possibly help me improve Delirium article? Doctors I prefer of course, but anyone with medical knowledge generally. Noam Atadgy (talk) 06:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to say. I've improved Delirium article myself by alot! But theres some work needs to be done. Noam Atadgy (talk) 06:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose there are many substances which can cause acute delirium.[9] These should be mentioned in context without giving undue weight among the many causes overall.[10] Bon courage (talk) 07:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the redirect Substance-induced delirium (also ICU delirium) should be turned into a separate article. G.J.ThomThom, the latter might be a good option for your students. Category:Redirects with possibilities might be an interesting place to find likely missing articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thats an amazing idea. I had no clue this redirect even exists. If a doctor can help write the basic info and start that new article it'd help alot. Although the current Delirium article talks about delirium caused by medication as well, it doesnt go into full details about it. Readers who read Delirium article, read about the one in old / elderly 70+ patients in hospitals. We need to separate the 2 types of Delirium.

Another thing is. In the past Delirium was also called "Acute confusional state"? What does that mean? Noam Atadgy (talk) 02:06, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Noam Atadgy, if we wait for one of the physicians to do this, it could be years. Why don't you try putting together a very short article in User:Noam Atadgy/sandbox, just to get us started? You can copy relevant text and sources out of the main article. You can make a list of substances from this book. This book has two long paragraphs specifically about anticholinergic delirium, which you could probably summarize in two or three simpler sentences. I think you could be successful in creating this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned about the content of canfosfamide. I noticed that the references for this article have broken DOIs. Upon investigation, I found that the titles of the references cannot be found by a Google search. This type of real-looking but fake references is characteristic of what is written by ChatGTP and other AI text generators. I suspect that this article was largely written by AI. Other medical articles started by Ashleythesciencenerd may have the same problem (example). 108.2.108.191 (talk) 16:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, this article contains AI-generated fake references. While the topic is legitimate, the entire article needs to be rewritten. It appears that ChatGPT was used to create this content, which is cannot be used for reliable sourcing. Perplexity is generally a much more reliable option for generating accurate references. Regardless, if an AI tool is used to create content, it must be carefully checked by editors before posting. Boghog (talk) 18:33, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rewritten sported by real citations. Boghog (talk) 21:24, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

This bot-tagging of Cochrane reviews when they are updated with newer ones is a helpful feature to keep wp up to date. However I have a situation where both the older review and the updated one are cited. Therefore, the bot's actions are unhelpful. I reverted one such bot edit already, but now it happened again.

Here is the section in question: Ventral_rectopexy#Controversy_regarding_use_of_mesh

This section of the article is a "background" or "history" of the development of the procedure. I thought the earlier Cochrane review was an important landmark publication to include in this section. The latest Cochrane review is cited in the next sentence. Thoughts? Thank you Moribundum (talk) 07:31, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Cochrane update tells you how to stop the bot repeating the tag. I think maybe the bot's edit comment should point this out. Thincat (talk) 12:06, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for answer. Moribundum (talk) 05:45, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also #How to use withdrawn Cochrane reviews, Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2024-06-08/Special_report, and this comment. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:58, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for flagging. Great to see these articles being improved. I do the following in these instances (shared on the bot project page) "If we wish to use the old review in an article (e.g.: in the historical context), the reference can be marked with <!-- No update needed: PMID -->, where PMID is the Pubmed ID for the reference, and the bot will ignore it." JenOttawa (talk) 17:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to be so late, I see that this was figured out. This edit looks good to me Moribundum! [[11]] If it get's re-flagged please let me know and I can get some help looking for another solution.JenOttawa (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AdeptLearner123 recently cut down Crohn's disease from 257 references to only 45. I didn't go through all 243 of their recent edits to that page, but it seems unlikely this is an improvement. Thoughts? They cut down Tumor necrosis factor as well. An IP also left a comment on the Crohn's disease talk page about this issue. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 00:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The majority of those references were from unreviewed webpages, or outdated papers. I have focused the references around a smaller number of articles from highly reputed journals, such as Nature and Mayo Clinic. AdeptLearner123 (talk) 00:57, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did not cut down the tumor necrosis factor article; the prose increased from 250 to 300 kB. My changes brought the TNF article to GA status. AdeptLearner123 (talk) 01:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I was just looking at the number of references (83 to 40). ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 01:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although I haven’t looked through the Crohn’s disease article it’s not uncommon to remove sources for various reasons. For example according to WP:MEDDATE articles over 5 years old should be replaced with newer sources. So perhaps maybe a couple older refs were replaced in favour of newer more comprehensive sources? It’s also not uncommon to have one comprehensive article replace several smaller less comprehensive sources. Pretty much what I’m trying to say is although it may look odd, removing sources isn’t always a bad thing especially with medical articles. IntentionallyDense (talk) 01:20, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@IntentionallyDense if there aren`t any newer sources, is it ok to keep the existing ones? what would be recommended? Noxoug1 (talk) 12:06, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no newer sources then use the most recent, reliable and comprehensive source you can find. IntentionallyDense (talk) 15:07, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with IntentionallyDense: Use the best sources you can, and remember that MEDDATE is trying to guide you to the best sources, rather than providing a hard and fast cut off date. Usually, in a heavily researched area (think Hypercholesterolemia), you can write a great article using only review articles from the top-ranked journals and the best med school textbooks, every source published in the last five years, and still have plenty of high-quality sources left over. In a less popular area, you may need to stretch that: maybe the sources need to be from mid-ranked journals. Maybe you need a couple of primary sources. Maybe you need sources that are 10 years old.

Our advice is to aim for the ideal, but to do what's practical. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I updated prostate cancer and brought it to featured article status, the number of references dropped from 355 to 128. Some of that was trimming material, but much of that loss was updating the sourcing to more recent, higher-quality references. When an article grows bit-by-bit you often get 100 facts with 100 references. When sections or whole articles are updated at once you might get 100 facts with 20 references. Neither is inherently better. I'd suggest picking a section of Crohn's disease (or any other article you're concerned about) and comparing the text/sources before and after to see if you feel it's improving or not. Hopefully you'll find it is (I haven't looked at it myself). If you find particular concerns, we'll have more to discuss here. Ajpolino (talk) 20:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, WikiProject Unreferenced articles is holding a backlog drive this month to further reduce the number of articles tagged as completely lacking sources. This number has fallen precipitously over the last several years: from 153180 (Nov 2021) to 135232 (Nov 2022) to 1169778 (Nov 2023) to 78548 today. Perhaps we can help them out by taking a look at the 138 articles currently tagged with our project's tag and {{unreferenced}}. A single reference to backup material in the article is sufficient to remove the tag. That list is at my sandbox, feel free to edit/comment that list directly or post here if you prefer. Ajpolino (talk) 21:40, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will put some time aside this month to look at these articles. Thanks for flagging @Ajpolino Noxoug1 (talk) 08:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you... I will try and help too. Whispyhistory (talk) 14:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If I make a list of promising new-ish editors who have recently edited medicine-related articles, is someone willing to invite them to help out? This seems like a good project for someone who would like to help but aren't sure where to start. Also, can we send out a new Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, I'm happy to help. Also I can put together a new newsletter this week. If anyone has thoughts/suggestions for newsletter topics or alternative formats that would make the newsletter more useful, please share them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter. Ajpolino (talk) 21:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello - as there does not seem to be an optometry WikiProject I am asking here instead in the hopes that someone has the necessary expertise. The article Subjective refraction, despite being (as far as I know) a fairly important topic in optometry, is in a rather unacceptable state. The vast majority of the article is written as a how-to guide and not a well-formatted one at that. Some content is probably salvageable, but everything else needs to be completely rewritten, so I think this will require some subject matter expertise. There seems to be a list of medical textbooks in the references. Thanks.  — RTao (talk • contribs) 01:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to popular belief you don’t need any medical expertise to edit medical articles on Wikipedia. I understand you may not be comfortable editing such a technical area but I encourage you to try! IntentionallyDense (talk) 01:34, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@IntentionallyDense Fair point. I have edited in areas I know little about before, and I should probably do some of the basic cleanup there if I have time. Nevertheless, I hope someone with topic knowledge will contribute to making the eventual article more comprehensive/balanced.  — RTao (talk • contribs) 02:56, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be helpful to have some more views on a proposal to merge Fentanyl crisis in San Francisco into California opioid crisis, the case being short text, context, and overlap. The discussion is at Talk:California opioid crisis#Fentanyl crisis in San Francisco. Klbrain (talk) 14:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]