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Listing DSM and ICD diagnostic criteria

I'm currently trying to update an article and I wanted to add the ICD-11 and DSM-5 criteria and specifications for the disorder. I was wondering how to list the criteria without any copyright issues. I checked the discussion archives and wikipedia's manual of style and I can't seem to find a clear answer. Any advice would be appreciated. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 04:35, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Welcome, @CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath. Is this related to Talk:Somatic symptom disorder#Incorrect and potentially damaging description of the disorder? I'm not at all familiar with the changes to that disorder in recent years, and from the description on the talk page, it sounds like if a breast cancer patient is really upset about losing her hair to chemotherapy, then that's now "somatic symptom disorder" ...and that sounds unreasonable, so I suspect that I'm wrong and can't be much help to you with the content for the article.

What I can help you with is the copyright question. You shouldn't put the complete word-for-word criteria into the article. Firstly, it's likely illegal, and secondly, the DSM is not exactly a stellar example of the best, most encyclopedic writing style. So what you want to do is to completely re-write the description, from the ground up, in a way that never contradicts the DSM's criteria but which explains them more fully. So, for example, since things have changed, you might decide to emphasize that the DSM-5 criteria have substantially changed (=not in their criteria at all). To clarify the difference between people worried about having a heart attack for an hour or two last weekend and people with SSD, you might foreground that that it is normal for this to be a long-term, chronic condition (equivalent to their "typically more than 6 months" language). You can describe the criteria in your own words, trying to make them clear for the typical case. For example, instead of "A. One or more somatic symptoms that are distressing or result in significant disruption of daily life", I might write something like "People with somatic symptom disorder experience somatic (bodily) symptoms, such as pain or fatigue, that are distressing or disruptive enough to interfere with their everyday lives." You can also add an explanation of the old criteria (be sure to cite it!) and its connection to pain disorder. (I'd omit the severity ratings, as they're neither necessary to understand it nor core encyclopedic content.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

For context I stumbled upon SSD while looking through the All pages needing cleanup category and as i started researching i realized how outdated and inaccurate the wiki for SSD was. After gathering most of my info I checked the talk page and noticed others had some good points but there was a lot of misinformation on the talk page so I didn't pay too much attention to it. And yes someone being upset about the effects of a disorder is most definitely not SSD.

The reason why I felt like the DSM and ICD criteria is so relevant to SSD in particular is because of how vague it is and the controversial changes between the DSM-4 and the DSM-5. I would like to specifically highlight the differences between the ICD and DSM criteria as well as the changes made from the DSM-4 and DSM-5 criteria. My idea was to write something along the lines of "the DSM-4 required "a history of pain related to at least four different sites or functions" while the DSM-5 only requires "one or more somatic symptoms that are distressing or result in significant disruption of daily life." However that involves putting word-for-word criteria.

I also wanted to add the specifications for the DSM-5 criteria as the DSM-4 didn't have any specifications.

Another thing I wanted to write about is how different the ICD criteria is from the DSM. I'm less worried about copyright here because the ICD is creative commons, however I know that listing things word-for-word from non-copyright material is still frowned upon.

Usually I would just omit the criteria because I'm not very knowledgeable on the specifics of copyright and I don't want to risk anything with it, however I do feel that the ICD and DSM criteria is very relevant in this specific circumstance. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 00:01, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

@CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (I like your username),

When the specific wording matters, then it makes sense to quote that (little) bit. However, it's very unlikely that all of the exact wording will ever matter.

You can usually describe the differences without necessarily using the exact wording, too. Consider something like "the DSM-4 had restrictive criteria, including a requirement that the person be experiencing pain in at least four separate places or bodily functions, whereas the DSM-4 not only eliminates the requirement to have four separate pain points, it also accepts non-pain symptoms" (or whatever the actual facts are). The key thing to watch out for is that you're not doing the compare-and-contrast yourself, because if you do, someone will complain about WP:SYNTH. There should be review articles and similar sources that talk about the change (also about the DSM vs ICD conceptions), and you will want to cite at least one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much this is really helpful. I’ve found quite a few review articles on the criteria however those fit better in the controversy section however I’m going to look for some articles specifically highlighting the differences between ICD and DSM criteria. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 01:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Unbelievably persistent refspammer

I have been following for several years the actions of a Czech user who is a biomedical researcher. Every single time he publishes a new piece of primary research, he inserts a reference to it, often into multiple Wikipedia articles, usually in the form of confident statements that do not allow for the possibility that the research findings may be tentative. Every single reference to any paper co-authored by Marek Mraz, and virtually every one for Sarka Pospisilova, is added from an IP at the institution where he works, or geolocated close by. I tried for a long time to get some kind of engagement, but talk page messages were completely ignored. He is, by all accounts, a reputable researcher, but this is obvious WP:COI and self-promotion. He publishes an email address, but to contact him and ask him to suggest on Talk rather than continually adding his own primary research would almost certainly violate Wikipedia policy. I collected these before giving up on recording them.

• Europeanhematology (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 78.102.206.133 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 85.248.18.227 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 89.221.212.98 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 94.113.98.71 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 98.155.90.49 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 147.251.157.75 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 147.251.157.92 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 147.251.89.170 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 147.251.89.175 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 176.74.129.208 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 193.86.126.99 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 195.168.25.212 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 213.220.227.250 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

Guy (help! - typo?) 16:18, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

A quick search didn't find any of his papers still in the articles, and a spotcheck shows that some of these were reverted years ago (e.g., in 2016). Has there been an uptick in activity? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:22, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § module suite update 12–13 August 2023

 You are invited to join the discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § module suite update 12–13 August 2023. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:28, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Pandemic's over! (redux)

There's a RfC[1] about having Wikipedia say the COVID-19 pandemic is over and that it should be referred to in the past tense. Med editors may find this of interest. Bon courage (talk) 17:11, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

More precisely, it is about overturning an old "consensus item" from the talk page. According to the RfC's OP at least, the RfC is for "either a new standard first line or to allow for the editor liberty to later decide one". Even if the item is removed, it would still require a new consensus to change the text of the article to past tense. An odd technical point perhaps, but worth pointing out IMO. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:53, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Right - the gist is that Wikipedia should take a project-wide stand against the WHO (which it shall deem unreliable in the light of what many newspapers are saying), and make all references across the encyclopedia refer to the COVID-19 pandemic in the past tense. Bon courage (talk) 05:29, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

It's not about a stance against the WHO, but it is in part a question of 'if WHO officials refer to it as a pandemic and nobody else does, what is it?' Crossroads ^-talk- 23:42, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Your question would be better as "if relevant scientists call it a pandemic and newspapers don't, who do we follow?" A scientist like Hans Kluge (who we cite) has a position with the WHO because he is a prominent and experienced scientist (not just some 'official'). The view of the WHO are built on international committees of relevant scientists. This is why the WHO is a strong MEDRS and the whole anti-WHO vibe from editors who are aping a US far-right position, doesn't count. Bon courage (talk) 09:59, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

US far-right position is inaccurate and completely unnecessary politicization. The problem with characterizing these quotes as "view of the WHO" is that the WHO as a body simply does not have a mechanism for labeling something as a pandemic. It's an expert opinion, sure, and someone could try to make the case that it's more weighty than usual because he is a WHO official, but that's it. A position paper by the WHO put together by an "international committee" about whether the term applies would be of much interest, but such a thing has never and will never exist. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I tend to trust scientific experts more when they write systematic reviews than when they reply to talk show hosts on twitter, being employed by a public health body trying to ensure compliance with its recommendations is probably half-way between these two extremes. This is more a question of bias than expertise, scientists funded by pharmaceutical companies who plan to sell the drugs they research may well be very good scientists, and yet perhaps we would prefer someone else's opinions. This argument seems quite similar to the systematic review versus professional guideline argument which is not new. Regarding far-right positions, I'm not sure forming one's views based on the scientific views of extreme groups is a good approach. Nazis do occassionally believe things that are true - such as when they ran public health campaigns against smoking before the rest of the world - it just so happened that they also said that smoking could cause deterioration of the Aryan race... Talpedia 00:48, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

• It would probably be fair to say that we are beyond the "acute phase" of the COVID-19 pandemic. I notice today that Adam Kucharski[2] is quoted in the Guardian[3] as saying "the UK is no longer in the phase of pandemic where rapid actions are being taken" and the invocation of such phasing is in-line with what the WHO[4], EU CDC, etc say. But saying the pandemic is "over" seems like a political proclamation adrift of how epidemiologists view the matter. Bon courage (talk) 11:47, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Kucharski clearly doesn’t want to be associated with the conspiracy theorists who refuse to accept the reality that the pandemic is over. I note that one such nutter from WHO even proclaimed that this pandemic isn’t over until the next one starts. LOL! However, you misquote Kucharski. The Guardian paraphrased him, so we don’t know precisely what he said. 169.155.228.119 (talk) 15:00, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

This RfC doesn't seem to be listed; I'm not entirely sure which heading it should go under. XOR'easter (talk) 20:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Maths, science, and technology--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good; added. XOR'easter (talk) 21:07, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Or maybe it shouldn't be an RFC at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

That's also what I said over there. It was better not listed and as a de facto preliminary discussion. I'd much rather wait for more time since the end of the PHEIC to pass so we have a better source base, and for the question to be more clearly worded. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:28, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Articles about journals

Some of you might be interested in Wikipedia talk:Notability (academic journals)#RfC on notability criteria. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Tomotherapy

Not totally sure what's going on here, and I don't remember why it's on my watchlist. Someone more qualified than me may have to take a look. GMG^talk 15:41, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

That seems to be the "T" in CT scans. @Beevil, you just blanked more than half the article. Was there nothing in that that could have been WP:PRESERVED in a (much) shorter version? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Similar intended meaning but this is a radiotherapy modality, rather than tomography from CT.

Honestly I'm not convinced there was much worth saving compared to the previous version. ~9000 characters of the January edits was a collection of "Clinical Citations". Most of the rest of the changes were to promote specific commercial features. This article has had problems with neutrality/promotional language previously.

As mentioned on the Tomotherapy talk page the Cyberknife (device) article (manufactured by Accuray, who also make tomotherapy devices) suspiciously also underwent very similar edits recently. Beevil (talk) 08:05, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• If nothing else, the article is barely intelligible. It's all jargon right out of the gate. I don't know that it's useful for any reader who isn't already familiar. I would do it myself, but I don't have remotely a basic understanding of the subject required to bring it down the probably four grade levels that it needs to be informative. GMG^talk 10:52, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Osteopathic medicine in the United States

Osteopathic medicine in the United States has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Medical specialty for infobox

How is the medical specialty determined for the infobox? There is a query regarding specialty for oxygen toxicity. Please ping with replies. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:53, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, it's usually pretty obvious (e.g., heart failure = cardiology, broken tooth = dentistry). Ultimately, the decision is made by consensus. In complex cases, the consensus is often to leave it out. It's also okay to list more than one specialty. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, WhatamIdoing. Oxygen toxicity is FA, and I was not involved in the FAC, but have been doing maintenance. Currently it is listed as Emergency medicine, which seems relatively unlikely. It is definitely encountered in Hyperbaric and Diving medicine, in both forms, and in Neonatal medicine in the effects on eye development, all discussed in the article, but I would have thought most emergencies would not continue long enough for pulmonary oxygen toxicity to be a problem, and acute toxicity does not occur at normal atmospheric pressure. Doc James should be able to clarify on Emergency medicine, but if we have a Hyperbaric or Diving medicine specialist in the project, they have kept a low profile. An anesthetist may also have some useful input. My opinion is that Diving, Hyperbarics and Neonatal should be added, but have no useful opinion on whether Emergency should be kept, and whether there is a respiratory specialisation that should be considered regarding pulmonary toxicity in long term supplementary oxygen therapy.
Original discussion at Talk:Oxygen toxicity#Additional medical specialties involved in dealing with oxygen toxicity. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:49, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I suggest adding the relevant specialties you mentioned, but keep emergency medicine because "those on high concentrations of supplemental oxygen, and those undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy" (from the article) likely end up in the ED. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 17:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Consumer use of Wikipedia study: findings now published

Hi everyone! Some of you might be familiar with some of my research about Wikipedia as a health information resource for the general public. I am delighted to share with this community that the results of a research project I undertook in 2021-2022 to explore how/why folks engage with Wikipedia's health content has now been published in First Monday. Mcbrarian (talk) 17:28, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Class editing medical topics

There is an ongoing class editing medical topics that would benefit from the attention of editors here. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:07, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

What do others think about the "Cases" section at Gratification disorder? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I generally don't like cases or lists of people suffering from disorder X. Unless the case is, like, Phineas gage or of similar repute. Even if these are to be kept in some form there is currently way too much and too specific information. Draken Bowser (talk) 14:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that table contributes to an encyclopedic summary of the subject. Our generic advice is at WP:MEDCASE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I've been watching one group. The article is noticeably improved overall, and they've self-corrected some of their early missteps. Even though they're not perfect, they're better than most new editors (including me, back when I was a new editor). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Class has ended; time for cleanup and wikilinking (deficient in all I've checked). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:34, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Where experts and amateurs meet: the ideological hobby of medical volunteering on Wikipedia

Dear all - the article that many of you helped to bring into existence by participating in the survey and related discussions here is now published at wikiversity:WikiJournal of Medicine/Where experts and amateurs meet: the ideological hobby of medical volunteering on Wikipedia. If you haven't read the final version, enjoy! And once again, thank you for participating in this research. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:20, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Piotrus you did a fine job, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:38, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Autistic meltdown

A redirect was turned into an article with all manner of marginal sources and medical claims cited to advocacy sources; ongoing original research and synthesis need evaluation. Maintenance tags don't stick. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The same editor created Autistic shutdown with the same issues, that I haven't even had time to look at. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

That one had copyvio from the first versions = G12. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:47, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that having an article on that subject is reasonable, but I'd suggest that editors go into it with somewhat lowered expectations for what's possible. I'm not sure that the research has been done that would make an intellectually impressive article. We might like to treat it something like, say, chemotherapy side effects, and try to add things like a list of common manifestations, risk factors, the precise frequency of meltdowns for different subgroups (e.g., children vs adults, verbal vs non-verbal people, adults living independently vs at home vs in a congregate setting), the best ways to manage the side effects, etc. Instead, I suspect that what's available is at the level of undergraduate teacher training: potentially practical and usually accurate, but imprecise, sometimes vague, and often expressed through narrative stories instead of statistics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily against having an article there -- as long as it's not junk, which it was :) And it still struggles :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:17, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

And we've now got Autistic burnout as well.

How far this WP has fallen since the days when Eubulides had cleaned up the walled garden of the autism suite of article, resulting in two featured articles-- now defeatured, and the entire suite overtaken by advocacy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:56, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The article on autistic burnout is well-sourced with recent literature and the topic has been covered outside of the academic literature as well, eg by the NYT, seconding its notability. It can certainly be extended but I again fail to see how this topic/article is an example of "advocacy". I'm the main author of that article and I'm not editing Wikipedia to advocate for or against anything. (To be honest, I find such a suggestion quite offensive.)

Instead of complaining about the current state of articles, particularly the ones that might be "fashionable" terms in social media discourse or are the subject of media reports, let's work on improving them, just as WhatamIdoing is doing for Pathological demand avoidance and I've started to do for eg ARFID.--TempusTacet (talk) 20:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Are we allowed to state the DSM-5 criteria as in ARFID? I thought they were copyright protected. Draken Bowser (talk) 20:54, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a copyright expert but I don't think the criteria meet the threshold of originality required for copyright protection. DSM criteria are quoted often, eg, here for ARFID (or in various academic publications) and diagnostic criteria cannot be paraphrased without potentially changing their meaning, so a direct quotation is the only option to accurately describe the DSM-5 ARFID diagnosis. What cannot be copied are the accompanying texts, which make up the majority of the DSM.--TempusTacet (talk) 21:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I remember having this disussion before. I think the problem was more to do with *every* page containing the DSM criteria. Talpedia 21:47, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

From the perspective of the article, it makes sense to quote the diagnostic criteria, so I believe it's justified in this case. I can certainly see that simply quoting diagnostic criteria without embedding them in text could lead to copyright issues (and would also be relatively useless for the readers).--TempusTacet (talk) 21:52, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

From the perspective of the article, it makes sense to quote the diagnostic criteria

I don't really disagree. The issue is that in a kind of "tragedy of the commons" what makes sense for a single article because of fair use potentially ceases to be fair use when applied at scale. Talpedia 08:22, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

We most certainly cannot violate DSM's copyright, and the APA has taken us to task for it before. We had scores of articles shut down after they wrote to legal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Why are you demanding long quotations in autistic meltdown (that are certainly above a threshold of originality) but are demanding the deletion of quoted criteria phrased in a technical language? What guideline suggests that the former are OK but the latter are not?--TempusTacet (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I suggest that you understand those matters before you editwar a COPYVIO back into an article again. If you don't understand what several of us typed above, maybe you need a copyvio admin to do the honors. The APA has taken us to task before, and caused us to take down scores of articles. The single or two-sentence quotes I have asked your for at autistic meltdown, to assure you are accurately representing sources, are nothing of this nature, and if you don't understand that, or WP:MEDRS, please work to do so before editwarring. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:10, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I've never had any issues quoting DSM or ICD diagnostic criteria in publications. As long as a text is engaging with a quotation, it's fine at least under US law, and you will find plenty of examples on the internet and in print. Nobody has suggested that the quoted diagnostic criteria have to be deleted aside from you. People have just wondered whether the quote is fine and you have not even engaged with that question. Happy deleting!--TempusTacet (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, now you're on Wikipedia, so get used to real standards. Did You Read What I Typed Above? The APA wrote to legal and made us take down scores of articles. You are becoming tenditious; please read before responding. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:16, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

@MER-C, Moneytrees, and Diannaa: See the history at Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (editor reinstating direct text from DSM-5 after I removed it once). Must I really go back and search archives for the time that Moonriddengirl had to respond to removing DSM material from almost every condition on Wikipedia after the APA wrote to legal for takedown? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:21, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not interested in continuing discussions with you. You seem to be very convinced of your own position and expertise and I'm not interested in constantly being discredited and told by you that I have no clue or that my ability to read academic sources needs to be questioned, when I'm the one of us who actually has access to the source you're now constantly mentioning as the definitive reference on the topic. I'm not going to argue with you, I just know that you'll not be able to provide a single example where the APA has objected to a quotation such as the one in the ARFID article, as it would be unfounded and not enforceable under US copyright law. Let your and my editing speak for itself.--TempusTacet (talk) 22:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I have it bookmarked: Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2010 March 9#DSM Complaint (Ticket:2010030910040817) — Diannaa (talk) 22:36, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The DSM-5 criteria have been quoted in the article since 2014. I don't see why this is suddenly becoming a problem.--TempusTacet (talk) 22:37, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

That would be because you called our attention to the article, and Draken Bowser and Talpedia noticed it, so we thank you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:43, 27 July 2023 (UTC)#

This makes no sense, particularly your most recent revert. If quoting the DSM-5 is a problem, then all revisions since 2014 are a problem and virtually all longer quotes on Wikipedia are a problem, no?--TempusTacet (talk) 22:52, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry REVDEL doesn't make sense to you; copyvio admins will decide how far back to go, but they are always/often reluctant to go so far back in articlehistory that the entire article is wiped out. The most recent copy-paste is the most urgent. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:15, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Diannaa; perhaps we can get Tempus to read that :) Most appreciated, since I've been spinning my wheels all day on these issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see anything there that indicates that the specific quotation in ARFID, which has been there since 2014, is problematic. Neither is it the sole content, nor is it unnecessarily lengthy, nor does the text fail to engage with the quote. If the APA really believed that quoting criteria in this way is problematic, it had almost a decade to object.--TempusTacet (talk) 22:45, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

It's OK if you don't understand. It's not OK if you do it again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:16, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

TempusTacet, I'm coming a bit late to this discussion. Don't know if is resolved for you. I recall the issues way back with DSM. There is a link above. I think this explanation is best: "The problem for the WMF is that material that may be fair use in one article becomes a different issue in aggregate. If we replicate their diagnostic criteria in each article related to the disorders, it seems like we could wind up reproducing the entire book--or at least most of it--which is decidedly not fair use". Copyright is complex and not very rational at times and Wikipedia often has to err on the side of "if in doubt, leave it out". The community accepted the advice we got way back in 2010 and I don't think the matter is up for negotiation. -- Colin°^Talk 18:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Colin. There's certainly a difference between copying entire diagnostic criteria and accompanying texts, which is unfortunately done frequently on Wikipedia, and citing specific parts of diagnostic criteria within context, though. The former doesn't make sense from an encyclopedic perspective anyway, so the question whether this is allowed legally doesn't need to be raised, but the latter is definitely fine even without invoking fair use. I've checked with the plagiarism/copyright folks over here and there is no issue with quoting copyrighted works as long as one is engaging with the quote, ie it's not just done to reproduce an entire text/work. (Aside from that, the diagnostic criteria make up just a small part of the DSM, so the fear that the entire book would be reproduced on Wikipedia is unfounded, and it's questionable whether diagnostic criteria meet the threshold of originality.) Do you happen to know who Wikipedia's contact at the APA is/was? Might be worth clarifying what their current position is. They've either given up tracking down even reproductions of diagnostic criteria or changed their approach/focus, also considering that the DSM-5 is apparently available for free here and all DSM-5 criteria we're talking about here are part of this public domain publication by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (The WHO has been publishing the ICD-10 and ICD-11 freely accessible for a while now, which might also have an influence.)--TempusTacet (talk) 18:34, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

It is against privacy policy to reveal the names of correspondents, but it hardly matters as said employee may no longer be employed. If you want to get a release statement from them, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. This will have to be sent by an official address of the publisher. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:11, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

• I'm not clear what you mean by "citing specific parts of diagnostic criteria within context" but if that involves reproducing that copyright text, ...
• "fear that the entire book would be reproduced on Wikipedia is unfounded". That's not what the quote said. It clearly said "or at least most of it". Even "much of it" would be too much.
• "it's questionable whether diagnostic criteria meet the threshold of originality." Really? WMF legal council and a number of highly experienced editors wrt copyright issues for the last 15 years are all spectacularly wrong and you, TempusTacet, are the only person who has noticed this glaring error?
• I'm not seeing why you think the "public domain publication" you linked is actually public domain. Free is not the same thing as public domain. Nor why you think finding a DSM 5 document on the internet made it legally free or that this makes the text public domain. Even if DSM 5 were published at no cost, that doesn't make it public domain text. There are very good reasons why a body like that would insist on retaining full copyright control. For example, so nobody can publish text purporting to be DSM 5 but actually altered to say something different. TempusTacet, I'm not getting any "oh I'm interacting with a world expert on copyright" vibes. More just someone who's done some googling and thinks everyone else is wrong. I don't think arguing about this is productive. Copyright law is not rational and not entirely knowable. We just deal with it. -- Colin°^Talk 15:22, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Two of our most indisputably best copyright editors (Moonriddengirl and Diaanna) have already opined here. Perhaps the best real-world IP expert I know (Elcobbola) might review some of the statements made in this discussion.

Would anyone care if we refactor the entire copyright discussion to its own sub-section, as it's a detour to the main discussion topic here? If would be much easier on Elcobbola, for example, to not have to read the entire other discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

This is difficult to parse on its own, and I see a number of references to past actions, statements, etc. of which I am unaware or to which I do not have access. Notwithstanding that disadvantage, perhaps the following observations will be of some use (I've tried to present it in a digestible form, so forgive the tortured format--it is meant only to serve that goal}:

• I do not see the basis for the purport that this publication is in the public domain:

1. The fourth page includes: "This publication was developed for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ), by RTI International, a trade name of Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, under Contract No. HHSS283201000003C" (underlining added). While the SAMHSA is a public agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the RTI is an independent NPO to which 17 U.S.C. § 105 (which I assume is what was being implicitly invoked) would not be expected to apply.
2. At best page three implies joint-authorship; without a means of disentangling SAMHSA from RTI authorship, it should be assumed to have a copyright.
3. The public domain assertion has the appearance of being the "Government hosting" misconception referenced in the free images dispatch; we would need additional information (e.g., What are the terms of Contract No. HHSS283201000003C? Did the federal government receive, but then release copyright?) to assess this document.

• The specific work, or portion thereof, being discussed (text sought to be included) is unclear to me. If we are discussing "diagnostic criteria and accompanying texts," there may be a legitimate possibility that the former could be ineligible for copyright as facts of the world.

1. Originality is “the bedrock principle of copyright” and “the very premise of copyright law.” (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 347 (1991))
2. To quote the Copyright Office, lazily and verbatim: "'No one may claim originality as to facts ... because facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship.' Feist, 499 U.S. at 347 (internal citation omitted). A person who finds and records a particular fact does not create that fact; he or she merely discovers its existence. As a result, facts 'are never original' and Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act 'is universally understood to prohibit any copyright in facts.' Id. at 356. '[This] is true of all facts – scientific, historical, biographical, and news of the day.' Id. at 348")
3. Similarly, "Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act expressly excludes copyright protection for 'any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.'"
4. Again, I have no clue what the referenced diagnostic criteria are, and thus whether originally expressed. (If this were a news report, I would be reading the title, not the article--this is not the domain of the intellectually honest; I am entertaining a hypothetical to assist those with genuine relevant knowledge.) To me, as an uniformed layperson, "diagnostic criteria" reads as "indicators one may analyse and rely upon in the formation of a diagnosis". If, and only if that is correct, I suspect the medical community may consider these to be facts. This is perhaps in need of further discussion.

• I know nothing about the referenced DSM Complaint, and do not have access to the ticket (2010030910040817) or the content it presumably referenced. I make no secret about being skeptical of Godwin on copyright matters, and would give no weight to the comment above of "Really? WMF legal council and a number of highly experienced editors wrt copyright issues for the last 15 years are all spectacularly wrong." This is a fallacy, a particularly unnecessary one, with no place in serious discussion. What is the legal foundation for the opinions, rather than the persons expressing it? Were "WMF legal council and a number of highly experienced editors" referencing both "diagnostic criteria and accompanying texts" in the aggregate? Would "diagnostic criteria" alone, if different, change the assessment? That the exorbitant cost of litigation in the US is used as a bullying tactic is very, very well-known; acquiesce to a request should not necessarily be considered to have any relationship to the legitimacy of the request.
• Per WP:NFCC: "Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author (as described by the citation guideline), and specifically indicated as direct quotations via quotation marks, <blockquote>, {{Quote}}, or a similar method." To move forward, I might suggest that specific text proposed for inclusion should be articulated so it can be assessed against "real world" and proprietary criteria. Эlcobbola _talk 22:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Elcobbola, to give you a bit of an idea of what the referenced criteria look like, entries begin with a section called "Diagnostic criteria", which is typically in list form, followed by paragraphs of explanation on subjects like "Subtypes" and "Diagnostic features". (I assume that everything after the criteria section is what's being called "accompanying texts" above.)

Looking at the criteria alone, the entries are variable in size, but mostly they are on the longer side. Sometimes a whole diagnosis could get just a single paragraph (especially if it's basically a variation on the preceding item or a catch-all item like "Other specified mental disorder"), but the criteria for Bipolar I disorder take up almost four pages; ADHD is two pages; PTSD is three and a half pages – and that's just the list of diagnostic criteria alone. Other lists of diagnostic criteria (e.g., for Enuresis, Pica, Excoriation disorder) are half a page or less.

Even though the criteria are in list form, the list items themselves are usually sentence-length. The PTSD criteria for adults, for example, has criteria A through H, and five of those eight items have their own sub-lists. Most of the list items are not obviously simple facts (like "normal value is above 2 µg/mL"); for example, from the PTSD adult criteria, there is item E3, "Hypervigilance", which could be a simple fact, but there is also item E1, "Irritable behavior and angry outbursts (with little or no provocation) typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression toward people or objects" or from the criteria for young children, A2, "Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others, especially primary caregivers. Note: Witnessing does not include events that are witnessed only in electronic media, television, movies, or pictures", both of which I would assume were copyrightable content if I saw them in RecentChanges. (We could, after all, re-write those descriptions in other words with no significant loss in meaning.) Then there is the question of whether assembling and organizing multiple items, often amounting to hundreds of words, into a description could be considered "unoriginal".

From paging around in the book, these longer, descriptive items are more typical than single-word criteria, but it depends on the subject. More "biological" disorders, such as drug withdrawal symptoms ("hand tremor, insomnia, nausea, vomiting...") might tend to be more likely to have criteria that could be considered a list of simple facts. (On the other hand, we wouldn't prefer the DSM for that kind of content, which can be found in any textbook about emergency medicine.) Some of them also have very short lists of criteria (one of the entries on sleep apnea amounts to "The sleep clinic says they have sleep apnea" plus "symptoms of sleep apnea", though they use four times as many words to say that), but overall I'd feel very comfortable advising editors that they should assume that copying and pasting the entire list of diagnostic criteria for any DSM entry was a violation of our Wikipedia:Copyright violations policy unless and until proven otherwise. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm disappointed in Elcobbola's reply. Firstly a quick look at some diagnostic criteria (as noted, the text is findable on the internet with some googling) would confirm they are generally complex and more importantly, are the clever invention of DSM and the folk that feed into their work. An actual psychiatric disorder itself is a human invention that is essentially defined by its diagnostic criteria. In the next edition, two disorders could be merged into one, or one could be split into three. New ones added, disputed ones removed. These are not merely descriptions of eternal facts, like the height of a mountain, or what the symptoms of a cold are. DSM have authority to invent/modify/delete psychiatric and some neurological conditions, though there are other authorities who may disagree.

Secondly, I am criticised for making an argument from authority fallacy. This from someone summoned here on the basis of their esteemed authority. Why should you care to tell us that you think little of Godwin other than you feel their authority is undeserved: "an intellectual property expert Godwin is not" is not a legal argument but a dismissal of their authority as an "expert". Authority matters. Nobody would care to listen to random-editor's opinion of Godwin. Our problem on Wikipedia with legal issues is that anyone can turn up and start making claims. Look I found this on the internet! It must therefore be not only legally free but public domain. Some claims are straightforwardly clueless. But others we have to trust the explanation our apparent expert is making is taken on trust. Maybe Elcobbola doesn't find themselves needing to take anyone's explanation on trust, but all the rest of us do. The actual legal arguments only take us so far. -- Colin°^Talk 13:55, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Got to say, I am kind of wary of these articles - is this a topic that is commonly mentioned in books, reviews etc. about autism? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 21:37, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The short answer is: Yes. The main question seems to be the title of the article, "meltdown" is mostly used from a therapeutic/pedagogical perspective eg by parents or teachers, to describe a range of behaviors. It is not a medical or psychiatric term. (Similar to "stimming".)--TempusTacet (talk) 21:50, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The long answer is no; see Talk:Autistic meltdown for a full-day's work. The only good sources explain and put it in context as a colloquialism for other behaviors. And in the last few weeks to month, several just like this have popped up, usually with not a single MEDRS source. The autism walled garden has been growing in the ten or so years since Eubulides left, and Colin and I gave up on the entire suite. Stimming is quite a recognized and defined thing, covered in legions of secondary reviews; this is not. The article has had to resort to a marginal publishing house, Skyhorse Publishing to go beyond the colloquialism that Fred Volkmar (editor) publications place it at. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

As I already said: "The main question seems to be the title of the article".--TempusTacet (talk) 22:28, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I also see some questions about whether this is a topic distinct from similar behaviours in normal children. I mean, repetitive behaviours is a key ASD symptom so Stimming being a topic is plausible, but the sources don't make a strong claim that the topic under discussion here is distinct. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:32, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Stimming sample, secondary-source broad autism overview: PMID 36507695 (I would be interested to see similar for "autistic meltdown", "autistic shutdown" or "autistic burnout"). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Table 1 in the literature review of this paper has a couple of citations on meltdown and shutdown, though it mentions that what it considers to be the overall topic of "Burnout, Inertia, Meltdown, and Shutdown (BIMS)" has had little formal study. From a quick search on Google Scholar, there are a few other papers that are using the same BIMS acronym, so we might want to consider this as a single broader topic instead of three or four discrete ones when searching for secondary sources. Of course the paper I've just cited is a primary source, as it is another interview based one similar to those in the subsections below. What is useful here I think is the citations in the introduction section, and the terminology it uses, as a datapoint for trying to find any secondary sources. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:59, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Best I can tell, the sources they link are all primary, and not of the highest quality kind (generally, the methodology can be summed up as interviewing or surveying autistic people, sometimes online, hence highly biased).

But this is very helpful and does point to a possible solution until/unless some good sources become available -- merging all of them to one article on BIMS, to at least control the proliferation of poorly sourced content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th that paper is not a review, so I'm unsure where to go next with this whole mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia That's true, however the value of this paper is in the content and citations in the introduction section. I've not been able to find any sort of meta-analysis or systematic review on either the individual components of BIMS or BIMS as a whole, but I've not had a lot of time to check (been busy with life and other discussions on an unrelated guideline expansion/rewrite). All that I have been able to find are brief contextual literature reviews in the initial sections of papers such as the one I linked above.

While this specific paper is clearly nowhere near enough to write an article about this topic, the content that it provides can be used to inform our searches for trying to find if other sources that do fit our requirements exist. Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:37, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Have you looked for textbooks? "Do kids with autism sometimes have meltdowns?" is not really the kind of thing I'd expect to find a meta-analysis for. DSM-5 (p. 160) says "In addition, children with autism spectrum disorders frequently present with temper outbursts when, for example, their routines are disturbed", so it's possible that searching under alternative terms ("temper outbursts" is defined on p. 860) would help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I've not had a chance to look through textbooks yet, the guideline discussions have been taking up a lot of my attention. I'd be wary about conflating meltdowns with temper outbursts though. While they may look similar to outside observers, as autistic individuals and most support/advocacy organisations describe them they are distinct things. That might not be something that's been picked up on in academic literature yet however.

I might have to find a copy of the DSM-5 though. I've got the 5-TR, and while it does have the text you quoted, on page 182, unless I've missed it it doesn't seem to have a definition for "temper outbursts" later in it. The last time it appears in the text, outside the index, is on page 534 where it's an associated feature of conduct disorder. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:38, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Even then, the problem is where to put this content (meltdown shutdown burnout all the other misc things in the template that may or may not warrant separate articles) ... I'd start merge discussions, but, to where? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:12, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, it's page 830, as part of a Glossary of Technical Terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Autistic burnout

Re The article on autistic burnout is well-sourced with recent literature and the topic has been covered outside of the academic literature as well ... TempusTacet (talk) 20:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC) we have differing definitions of well-sourced; I haven't yet found a good one on that topic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Autistic burnout: every source but one, a book, is primary or advocacy, and most are based on surveys of people with autism.

• The first line of the article is plagiarized from a non-MEDRS source, here. (Because that exists from the first revision, the article may be a G12 candidate.)
• PMID 32851204 is a primary source (of the worst kind, based on an internet survey).
• PMID 36637293 is a primary source that reads like a Master's thesis at best.
• PMID 34088219 is a primary source.
• PMID 36637292 is a primary source.
• PMID 35416430 is a primary source.
• PMID 36605565 is a primary source analyzing online posts.
• PMID 37359683 is a primary source.
• autism.org is an advocacy website.

I cannot find a single secondary review mentioning the term in PubMed.

Google books turns up numerous entries of the self-help type. (At least one of them offers a different definition of the term than the one plagiarized from a magazine in the article now.[5] That 2023 book indicates no research on management, and yet the article has a Management section (we shouldn't be giving Management advice if there's no research.)

An article is plausible here, but this isn't that article. This is yet another sub-topic, not mentioned at Autism spectrum#Other features, because no secondary reviews cover it; that (main) article is not covering what the NYT article in External links summarizes as common comorbidities. The walled garden is growing again; this is what Eubulides and I cleaned up back in 2008, at the point that we had a featured suite of autism articles (now destroyed). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:52, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

It looks like "autistic burnout" is mentioned in seven articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yep, that list tipped me off to bigger and still depressing problems; removed a copyvio from the mess that is at Occupational burnout. I'm sure there are also all kinds of MEDRS issues there as well, and probably more copyvio, but how deep can one person dig. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Occupational burnout is going to remain a mess unless and until the real world decides what they want that condition to encompass. This will realistically require them determining how to differentiate between depression, which generally cannot be cured by getting a completely different job (or becoming independently wealthy), and unhappiness, which sometimes can be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but there are other problems in addition to those; the active disengagement of most WP:MED editors wrt MEDRS-needs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

That article, and several others around workplace stress, have been the site of a long-term war between an editor and a persistent sock, both of whom have real-world expertise in workplace psychology. While it's a mess, I don't think that the relative absence of WPMED folks is really the biggest problem. Also, it's not tagged for WPMED, but even if it were, it still wouldn't be one of our most-read articles, so WPMED folks who were looking for a project might not prioritize that one.

I do wish that the articles around autism, which are extremely popular, were in better shape, but I understand that the major change to the definition a while back prompted a dearth of high-quality up-to-date sources. Things are probably much better now on that front, but it is a really challenging environment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Autism therapies has more than doubled in size since Eubulides' reliably-sourced version, and there are likely copyvio, UNDUE and MEDRS issues there as well. (I believe most of the "autistic burnout" links were added by one editor, but have not yet checked all.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Autistic masking is making numerous statements about cause, etc without using WP:MEDRS sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:15, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Sample of general decline across autism suite (History of autism)

Autism spectrum is WP:MED's seventh-highest viewed article.

I offer History of autism, at an unmanageable, unreadable 13,000 words, including boatloads of trivia, uncited content, UNDUE content, excessively long quotes, off-topic material, failure to use WP:SS, marginal sourcing, and based on what I've seen elsewhere, probably plenty of copyvio and MEDRS breaches, too.

• Tools-authorship
• Autism history before damage
• History of Asperger before damage

This kind of editing is seen across all autism articles. Cleaning up the walled garden of advocacy would take the years-long effort that Eubulides once did, maintaining the suite at FA and B-class level; I wonder if anyone cares anymore to undertake such an effort on one of WP:MED's most visible articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:29, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Noting the irony of a 13,000-word "start class" article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I think you're using "walled garden" to mean something different from Wikipedia:Walled garden? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it appears so ... I am using it to mean articles that the broader community (specifically, WP:MED) has stopped engaging, and are being edited towards one POV by an exceedingly small and limited group of editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

But if you look at this recent (2023) spate of articles, there are both kinds of walled gardens (little broad community input, generally one editor, and a series of articles that basically link to each other). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:17, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

The last time I looked at any of the autism articles in depth was during a merge proposal between the autism, Asperger's syndrome, and autism spectrum articles between February and April 2022. While that did eventually lead to autism being merged into autism spectrum as the state of the literature didn't really consider those to be separate entities any longer, there's still a bunch of articles in the autism spectrum template that need updating, trimming, merging, and deleting as contextually appropriate.

Unfortunately the enormity of the task, along with more than a little distraction, has left me feeling overwhelmed at even contemplating tackling it. I wouldn't even know where to begin right now. I'm more than happy to help out, but I think we might need to plan this out because of how many articles are a problem here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:38, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th the task is doable if enough WP:MED-knowledgeable editors care. And the way to do it is just the way that Eubulides and I did it a decade ago, when we had two editors creating a walled garden of POV advocacy and non-notable topics. I put all the articles in to a chart (since moved to Eubulides' user space) to help us prioritize our work, as there was so much to do. Then we started chipping away at them, prioritizing the least important and least viewed 'til last.

You can look at almost any one of these articles and see that huge swatches can be simply removed (over quoting, copyvio, no MEDRS sources, failure to use WP:SS etc).

Your BIMS (Burnout, Inertia, Meltdown, Shutdown) post above is a good starting point re the walled garden, creating multiple articles on one as-yet-to-be-MEDRS-sourced concept. A huge part of the problem is that so many editors gave up on the suite years ago, and it has all deteriorated, in spite of autism being a highly viewed topic/page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I put all the articles in to a chart (since moved to Eubulides' user space) to help us prioritize our work, as there was so much to do That would be perfect. After being hit by the autism and ADHD double whammy, my working memory is awful, and when a task is this large it's super easy to get overwhelmed. Any sort of structure on this would be immensely helpful.

You can look at almost any one of these articles and see that huge swatches can be simply removed Yeah, I fully agree. There's also a fair amount of outdated content, and what could best be described as "legacy articles" that are out of sync with the current state of the literature as the terminology has moved on.

I'm happy to help out here, just really need some sort of structure for what our plan is. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:31, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I can do that if real life ever gives me a break, but between the very bad stuff (multiple family health matters) and the very good stuff (trying to invest millions in a surprise bequest for my church), I have been utterly swamped, and the end is yet in sight. But as you know, when I get going on a project, I go full on and make it happen :). Just don't want to start this until I can really dig in, and know I can't right now. Every time I think I see a light at the end of the tunnel, it's a train. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:34, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Sample 2 (Autism and memory)

Another example of the kind of editing spreading throughout the autism suite: Autism and memory.

The aticle relies on many primary sources, and extremely dated secondary reviews, and yet a recent review, PMID 37431322 states that "None of the studies found a significant association between WM and ASD symptoms" and several reviews indicate that results are mixed. So we have more than 3,000 dated words, that could probably be reduced to a 100 as part of the main article, if written correctly using recent reviews. What is happening across the suite is that people are using primary and dated sources to synthesize articles-- not understanding that what you may do in a research paper, you may not do on Wikipedia. Another article that should be gutted and re-written to recent secondary sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:59, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Costs of surgical procedures

I reverted this unsourced edit . There will be a cost associated with the procedure, but in the UK most people will benefit from the structure of social medicine. Should we be stating the costs of (any) surgical procedures, which will become quickly outdated anyway? - Thoughts please. CV9933 (talk) 12:40, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Agree that cost to the patient is not the same a cost to the facility. Just the other week, I boldly removed |costs= from {{infobox medical intervention}} following a merge of two variant infoboxes. Have now found the RfC I was recalling in my edit summary: WP:MEDMOS2020 Whilst I admittedly misremembered the RfC's scope (pharmaceuticals) and the certainty of the outcome ("generally opposed" for inclusion), it doesn't alter the point I was making about there being widely different procedure costs in a global healthcare economy. 13:57, 16 August 2023 (UTC) Little pob (talk) 13:57, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I think this sort of information should be covered in articles on the relevant country's healthcare system, and to the degree that sources feel appropriate when discussing the healthcare system. I don't think it belongs in articles on surgical procedures (or drugs, for which we had an RFC) as the information not only quickly dates as you say, but is extremely difficult to convey correctly to the reader. Look at the US paragraphs in that section of the article. What does it mean by "cost" or "charge"?

The first set of sentences are dealing with what appeared on the bill. That bill may have been paid by insurance, if they have it, who then negotiate their own discounts, and the amount the patient paid is not given. Thus the bill figure may sometimes be an entirely irrelevant number that no person or organisation actually paid. The $182,955 bill apparently came for a woman who also had cancer, though according to the source, their actual treatment was no more complex than the $1,529 bill to another patient at another hospital. Does the first really indicate that patients with cancer are hugely over-charged for routine surgery? We can't know. It seems perhaps that the bill is set by "what we think we can get away with" rather than by anything actually related to "appendicitis". The article gives a median but we don't say how these prices spread or why, and outliers are rarely informative other than to make one's eyes boggle. This is raw data, that doesn't IMO belong in a tertiary source like an encyclopaedia. And does this data from 2009 still apply today, several governments later. I don't think this serves our readers at all. Unlike a newspaper, where any figures given will at least be recent and relevant to their readers, here they are not.

The latter sentences, with the $7,800 and $12,800 figures, are an estimate of the cost to the hospital of doing the procedure, in 2010, but calculated by taking the charge (bill) and applying a hospital-wide cost-to-charge ratio. How good that estimate it is perhaps debatable. It seems the purpose of this estimate is to say "The total cost for perforated appendix discharges was more than 50 percent higher than all appendicitis discharges". That might be a reasonable comment in this article, and less likely to date, but the actual numbers, no. It may well be that after reading the article, the reader will already know that a perforated appendix is a big extra complication, and so could probably have guessed it costs more. -- Colin°^Talk 14:06, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

For surgical procedures, I think it is more relevant to say that it usually takes one hour, or a team of 4 people, or other "universal" facts that affect the cost, than to say that at one point in time, in one place, one person paid some amount. That won't point directly towards an amount of money, but we can all see that a one-hour, two-person procedure is going to cost less than one of those 18-hour, multi-team marathons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Some good points raised above and I noticed that there was an intention to add advice here on how to present costs . Perhaps a mention about medical procedure costs could be worked in to that proposal? Regards CV9933 (talk) 15:29, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Heads up

See PhilKnight talk, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:27, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Physiology, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 August 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Articles based on archaic sources needing review

Following is a list of topics derived entirely or almost entirely from archaic sources, requiring expert review. These may be making medical claims, particularly about the medicinal effects of certain substances, that are obsolete.

• Aurea Alexandrina
• Axungia
• Basilicon
• Cacochymy
• Cadmia
• Catagmatic
• Catholicon (electuary)
• Cerate
• Chalcanthum
• Cholagogue
• Clyssus
• Electuary
• Glass of antimony
• Gum anima
• Levant bole
• Mosaic gold
• Oil of brick

Cheers! BD2412 T 16:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:22, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Anaplastic oligodendroglioma to Oligodendroblastoma or glioblastoma

At the article Anaplastic oligodendroglioma is written "In the course of the disease, they can degenerate into WHO grade IV glioblastoma."

If you go to "International Classification of Diseases for Oncology" (https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/International_Classification_of_Diseases_for_Oncology#938%E2%80%93948_Gliomas) and then look at M9451/3 and M9460/3, it gives the impression that you get oligodendroblastoma instead of glioblastoma.

What is right now? Regards, Wname1 (talk) 09:28, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

After "XH9QF3 Oligodendroglioma, anaplastic, IDH mutant and 1p/19q co deleted" on [[6]], "ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics (Version : 01/2023)" is the next "XH7CX7 Oligodendroblastoma" to be viewed 1 time below. Via "XH7W59 Oligodendroglioma, NOS" there are then 5 times the "Glioblastoma" where above the "Glioblastoma" the topic "Astrocytoma, anaplastic" can be seen. Here it is "Glioblastoma" for "Astrocytoma, anaplastic" and for the "XH9QF3 Oligodendroglioma, anaplastic, IDH mutant and 1p/19q co deleted" then theoretically below currently the "XH7CX7 Oligodendroblastoma". Wname1 (talk) 08:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It's about whether the name "highly malignant oligodendroglioma, grade IV" on https://flexikon.doccheck.com/de/Anaplastics_Oligodendrogliom on the subject of anaplastic oligodendroglioma is correct or whether Wikipedia is correct with "glioblastoma" for anaplastic oligodendroglioma or whether the WHO "XH7CX7 oligodendroblastoma" on the subject of anaplastic oligodendroglioma is correct. Wname1 (talk) 18:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

"Highly malignant oligodendroglioma, grade IV" belongs to anaplastic oligodendroglioma. WHO "XH7CX7 Oligodendroblastoma" and "Glioblastoma" are not part of "Anaplastic Oligodendroglioma". Yours sincerely, Wname1 (talk) 17:02, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for figuring this out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

How to show this page: https://flexikon.doccheck.com/de/Oligodendrogliom as "references" on "Anaplastic oligodendroglioma"? Best regards, Wname1 (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The "Flexikon" appears to be Wikipedia:USERGENERATED so it's not usable on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

What is the opinion on https://www.onkopedia.com/de/onkopedia/guidelines/gliome-im-erwachsenenalter/@@guideline/html/index.html as "references" on "Anaplastic oligodendroglioma"? Best regards, Wname1 (talk) 21:56, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. I don't know enough about the website or the organization to know how to evaluate that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Prof. Dr. med. Judith Dierlamm is one of the authors at www.onkopedia.com. Prof. Dr. med. Judith Dierlamm has the opinion that "Highly malignant oligodendroglioma, grade IV" is correct. Best regards, Wname1 (talk) 05:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know Dr. med Judith Dierlamm. I tend to evaluate sources based on their structures (e.g., if they have peer review) instead of on the authors' identity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

On: https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/74412/74412.pdf?sequence=1 where today's version is supposed to be current, on page 47 it says the anaplastic oligodendroglioma and the highly malignant oligodendroglioma. Wname1 (talk) 13:01, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Articles needing expert help

Hi WikiProject Medicine,

I feel like these articles can be improved and expanded upon:

• Renal hypoplasia
• Irritation fibroma

Thanks, AxiumWiki (talk) 13:33, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

did a few edits on the first one[7]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:27, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Requesting help on Cervical spondylotic myelopathy

Hello, and hope you are well. In a month-long RM discussion I just closed, user SilverLocust said: Perhaps this one should just be sent back to draft-space. It has not been reviewed, and at parts it seems too close to medical advice. I don't know enough to determine for myself, so I came here to ask if the article should indeed be draftified. Thank you for your time and any thoughts offered, and enjoy your day. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:27, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

@Rotideypoc41352, the draft space is supposed to be for articles that would get deleted at AFD, not for articles that need some clean-up work. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions#Core purpose and statements elsewhere on that page, like "Article submissions that are likely to survive an AfD nomination should be accepted and moved to the mainspace." Articles about diseases basically never get deleted; therefore, they basically always belong in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Understood. Do you think at parts it seems too close to medical advice? Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 09:17, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Not really? There's a distinction between medical "advice" and medical "information". Advice is saying "You (you personally, not just some people, or people in general) should walk one hour every evening after dinner". Information is saying "People who have GERD often sleep better if they go for a long walk every evening after dinner".

Given that, I don't think that there is a problem with actual medical advice. However, I'm not wild about the style. Parts of it feel like a patient information leaflet instead of an encyclopedia article. I don't think it's exactly a {{how-to}} situation, but it might be close. A quick copyedit would probably improve things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Taurine

The Taurine article had heavy traffic back in June after American and British newspapers misrepresented some non-clinical studies making far-fetched headlines claiming that taurine has been shown to reduce aging in humans. However, the study that the media had cited actually took much of its data from mice studies [8], the paper is "Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging". This is clearly a primary source making biomedical claims, it is not a reliable secondary source. It is not a review paper. The data the paper cites does not cite clinical data from human trials. It says "Taurine supplementation improved life span in mice and health span in monkeys".

I believe the paper should be removed. Currently the line "taurine levels are inversely-associated with aging-related diseases in humans", has been inserted into the lead. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:31, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

A line was also previously added to the "Physiology and nutrition in non-human animals" section which reads "A study published in 2023 suggests that the blood concentration of taurine declines during the aging process, as measured in mice, monkeys, and humans". However, one of the paper also listed here is [9] which is not on humans, it discusses studies on mice and monkeys. There is not any good clinical data for humans, I believe the content about humans should be removed. We do not have enough human data on this topic so far to be making claims about aged-related diseases. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:36, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

To cite the abstract of "Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging", "taurine deficiency may be a driver of aging because its reversal increases health span in worms, rodents, and primates and life span in worms and rodents. Clinical trials in humans seem warranted to test whether taurine deficiency might drive aging in humans" [10]. Because of the lack of clinical data, I believe we should remove these papers from the article as they are being used incorrectly in regard to humans. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@Psychologist Guy, is there any chance that we have a news story about how the media got it wrong? If we do, then a short paragraph in ==Society and culture== would be appropriate (and might prevent future inappropriate additions). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The article has now be cleaned with the outdated and incorrect information removed. Interestingly, just yesterday the media have published new articles on taurine [11], this time the reporting is more accurate. I would not suggest including any news articles, I have not seen any that covered the misreporting. My understanding is that clinical trials are currently being done on taurine but we are in the early stages of research and it is going to be a long time until we have a good review of such trials. On the taurine talk-page you will see that one user still wants to include the paper "Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging". Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:02, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Sarcoma virus

We have articles like Rous sarcoma virus and Woolly monkey sarcoma virus and Walleye dermal sarcoma virus, which suggests that "Sarcoma virus" is some sort of class of viruses, but I don't know what that is. BD2412 T 19:27, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

No, there is no such class, but they are all retroviruses. Graham Beards (talk) 19:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Are these three (and a few others on the list of virus species) called sarcoma viruses because they are connected with cancer? BD2412 T 02:27, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but there are several other viruses that are associated with cancers that do not have sarcoma in their names such as HPV, human herpesvirus 8. There is more information here: Schiller JT, Lowy DR (2021). "An Introduction to Virus Infections and Human Cancer". Recent Results in Cancer Research. Fortschritte Der Krebsforschung. Progres Dans Les Recherches Sur Le Cancer. 217: 1–11. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-57362-1_1. PMC 8336782. PMID 33200359. Graham Beards (talk) 06:21, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Not exactly; if I am making sense, the term "sarcoma virus" is mostly meaningless as the compound is "Walleye dermal sarcoma"+"virus", not "Walleye dermal"+"sarcoma viruses". The common topic is actually oncovirus. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:19, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

another good read--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:10, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Collagen VI

Hello, there is some unattributed content in the Collagen VI page at the end of the sections Associated Disorders and Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy, Treatments, "and the potential novel therapy of drinking molecular hydrogen water everyday, to prevent muscle atrophy." I know enough to know that this is unproven and that there should be a proper reference to a scientific paper with such content and there isn't. I don't know how to add (says who) or the equivalent. Please would someone do so in both places. Thanks Dr Rick Nelms DrRickZTTwo (talk) 12:55, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@DrRickZTTwo, would you please Wikipedia:Be bold and remove the inappropriate content? It would be ideal if the good content had a source at the end (e.g., a medical textbook) but getting the inappropriate content out is more important.

Articles do sometimes have information about therapies that are being researched, but those should generally be in a separate section (usually called ==Research directions==) so that it's clear these are not current or accepted treatments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Thank you for suggesting that I edit the text to remove the unproven and unreferenced material which I have done. I have a good reference from a 2023 meta-analysis published as free access through PubMed for the current treatment but I am too tired to work out how to make the reference work (I live with motor neurone disease and can only work in short stretches). So the published page is now corrected, and the reference to treatments currently available will get added sometime in the next 24 hours. DrRickZTTwo (talk) 01:12, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I have now inserted the reference (using the cite dropdown in the edit toolbar) to physical therapy/surgery in the two places to which it refers (having worked out how to use reference name to avoid duplicating the reference), though I am unable to give a specific page number; in the pdf the information is on page 16 out of 22, but the PubMed online article there is no pagination. As a default I have given the published first page number, 5095. At least there is a good, relevant, freely available, up-to-date meta-analysis from a reputable peer-reviewed journal. I just went back in and added the PMC number in both places that gives the little green freely accessible padlock as I noticed it was missing from my first attempt. I also referred again to an existing reference which was relevant to the lack of therapeutics and added a reference to the Global Registry for COL6-related Dystrophies since it is registered with the International Trials system and therefore subject to ongoing peer evaluation, and aims to match up to 1000 people across the world with clinical trials. Thank you for your encouragement. DrRickZTTwo (talk) 15:00, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@DrRickZTTwo, you did great, thanks!

For journal articles, we usually follow the old-fashioned approach of listing the full page range, assuming that there actually are any pages at all, but the first page number is fine, too. If you ever encounter an unpaginated or online-only source, and you really want to point straight to a specific bit, then there is an optional |quote= parameter that you can use for a short quotation, and another called |at= that will let you put in things like section headings or descriptions like "Caption for Figure 3". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion about using |at=. Unfortunately |at= conflicts with |page=, one can use one or the other, but not both at the same time. I have been using |page=page range (page number) to handle this situation. Perhaps the simultaneous at/page use restriction should be removed. Boghog (talk) 17:36, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Insulin icodec

Hello! On behalf of Novo Nordisk via Burson Cohn & Wolfe, and as part of my work at Beutler Ink, I have posted a request at Talk:Insulin icodec seeking to remove mention of unsourced text which has been added to the entry multiple times recently. Are any project members willing to take a look and update the article? Thanks in advance for any help! Inkian Jason (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Inkian Jason, is this about the recent Wikipedia:Edit warring over the (alleged) trade name? It looks like it was added about a month ago by User:Retroneo and recently removed by User:StavrosN (who seems to have confused trademark law and copyright law).

The "tentative" brand name is mentioned in an advertisement on page 6 of the Hannover Area Merchandiser of 23 August 2023. https://biopharma.media/insulin-icodec-basal-insulin-once-a-week-5104/ from a year ago offers seven possible brand names. That this is one of many trademarks registered by the companies and is associated with some sort of diabetes medication is public knowledge; this turns up on all the trademark-scraping websites, such as https://uspto.report/TM/79337415.

I've removed the information and inquired about temporarily protecting the page so that none of the edit-warriors can edit it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Redirect discussion, input needed

https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2023_August_30#DHT_insensitivity_syndrome (t · c) buidhe 19:10, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Pharmacists can order Jynneos (Smallpox vaccine). NPOV issue.

I'm not sure how to edit Smallpox vaccine to say so but Pharmacists can order it (in US), but the article says it's Rx-only (in US) https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/pharmacists-staff-can-provide-monkeypox-vaccines-therapeutics#:~:text=Pharmacists%2C%20Staff%20Can%20Provide%20Monkeypox%20Vaccines%2C%20Therapeutics Can someone help?

Separately, I could use some input at Talk:Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine#Relevant? Vaccine injury claims are not covered by the US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). re. the article having a NPOV. RudolfoMD (talk) 08:16, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Replied there (after seeing the claims at WP:ANI). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:42, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sluggish cognitive tempo#Requested move 12 August 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sluggish cognitive tempo#Requested move 12 August 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. —usernamekiran (talk) 08:39, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

• commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:36, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

naloxone and issues from perspectives of administering personnel

Naloxone

I think this section is inappropriate, but I have a feeling that arguing about it will bad for my health. Posting here in the hope that someone else may feel motivated to ride in to the rescue. Prezbo (talk) 06:16, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Naloxone#Reaction_following_reversal_with_naloxone Graywalls (talk) 07:21, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Why would you change the section heading?[12]Prezbo (talk) 07:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I believe the new heading summarizes it better, because it is a content dispute. Do you find it disagreeable? Why not articulate your content concerns and why you believe it is undue rather than unhelpful comment like "it will be bad for my health" ? Graywalls (talk) 07:40, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

It’s rude to change text that someone else wrote on a talk page, and I’m pretty sure there’s a rule against it somewhere. But I guess it doesn’t really matter. Prezbo (talk) 07:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Changing your actual comment would be, but changing the heading as far as I know is not an issue. I restored the title you originally designated. I don't really care which title is used. Graywalls (talk) 07:43, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Changing POV section headings in centralized noticeboard discussions is not especially rare. Ideally it'd be by an uninvolved editor, but honestly, uninvolved editors don't tend to touch "posting here in the hope that someone else may feel motivated to ride in to the rescue" conversations on this page. (No comment on the merits.) Vaticidalprophet 07:48, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• I've had a poke and dealt with the usual problem of dubious biomedical stuff built entirely from primary sources. But this is only part of it: the article as a whole has a lot of poor sourcing (and there's plenty of decent stuff available). Bon courage (talk) 08:48, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Bon courage, Since I am not quite sure what claim constitutes "biomedical" and the threshold that relate to different types of claim, I asked RSN to clarify. Graywalls (talk) 09:22, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

    Simpler to refer to WP:BMI. Bon courage (talk) 09:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

    "it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community." Graywalls (talk) 09:48, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

    This warning is on the majority of the essay templates. That boilerplate in particular, however, can only be applied when there is a consensus to link directly to the explanatory essay from the policy/guideline page it is expanding upon. Little pob (talk) 11:51, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Overall, I think Bon courage is correct that we could improve the article with a couple of really high-quality sources. If anyone's got 10–20 minutes and would like to find and share a "MEDRS ideal" source, I think it would be appreciated.

  Naloxone distribution is in the news in the US, and next year is election season, so this article may see some politically motivated activity in a few months, if we don't get it cleaned up before then. Solid articles tend not to attract biased "help". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  O God, I might have guessed US politics was in the mix . Bon courage (talk) 17:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Good idea. I added something from the UK Practice Guideline which cover the 'aggression' angle.[13] See what you think. Bon courage (talk) 17:30, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• Was going to post a heads up here about a RSN thread relevant to this wikiproject, but it's the same subject. What I think could use some additional attention is the perspective that it is acceptable to include RS-but-not-MEDRS about medication side effects as long as the side effects are framed as merely descriptive of one professional's experience. i.e. if you frame it as the effects of naloxone then its MEDRS but if you were say framing it as the experiences of those administering naloxone ("X% of those administering naloxone experienced... ") then its no longer MEDRS. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:53, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Just another clever-clever attempt to try and do an end-run around MEDRS by adding a layer of indirection, reminiscent of the "if we just report what the quack doctor said, then it's reportage so not medical" ploy. However, WP:BMI is defined as (my emphasis) "information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health", so would catch this; perhaps more importantly NPOV would not be satisfied: why would any primary account of "the experiences of those administering naloxone" have any WP:WEIGHT if it was ignored by secondary sources? (and it if wasn't ignored, than those secondary sources could be used). Bon courage (talk) 04:38, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  I think the RSN point someone made about trying to come up with a "sociological" rather than "biomedical" angle was just your typical "trying to look clever on the internet but not actually helping" which was then swiftly rowed back on multiple timed when they realised that. When faced with someone pushing an agenda, that is not the time to have an intellectually nuanced argument about edge cases. And anyway, "sociological" is about things like the US election causing an increase in agenda pushers at Wikipedia, not about whether the emergency service staff experience violence from the patient immediately after administering one particular drug. It's a "bigger picture" subject. -- Colin°^Talk 08:19, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Reader research

The new article, "I’m comfortable with it: User stories of health information on Wikipedia" at https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/12897/11286 might be interesting to editors here.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Mediation @ Biological effects of high-energy visible light

Hey folks, can I get some mediation at Talk:Biological effects of high-energy visible light#Dermatology before I resort to WP:3RR? Cheers. Curran919 (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Saturated fat

This topic has been raised before on this board regarding a problematic source, so apologises for going over old ground but input from some experienced users would be useful. Unfortunately it is always the same fringe sources that are being cited from the low-carb community on this topic. See talk-page discussion on saturated fat article regarding a 2017 meta-analysis from Steven Hamley which argues against scientific consensus. The Hamley meta-analysis has been cited before on Wikipedia talk-pages related to red meat and saturated fat. It was agreed that it is an unreliable source in at least 2 places, (I have lost where that conversation is, but it must be in the archive somewhere), I will try and find it but some familiar users here may remember those conversations.

The Hamley meta-analysis [14] challenges the findings of the Hooper 2012 meta-analysis [15]. The 2012 Hooper meta-analysis found a small effect, the Hamley meta-analysis found no significant effect. We have more recent and reliable data on this topic, so there is no reason to cite either of these sources.

There is a more on topic meta-analysis from Hooper which also contains a meta-regression [16] from 2020, this source is high-quality and is cited on the saturated fat Wikipedia article. I suggest that we do not cite the Hamley meta-analysis, there are many reasons for this. See the talk-page discussion. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:55, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Psychologist Guy, are you looking for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 152#Saturated Fat, shifting consensus, Cardiovascular disease (CVD), and general health or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 164#Salim Yusuf ?

It can be difficult to explain WP:DUE weight to people who are convinced that they know The Truth™, but this is probably a question of due weight, rather than reliability per se. You might be able to pound on WP:MEDDATE if a short-term "win" is all you care about, but a WP:YESPOV approach might solve the problem long-term. That means saying that there is a current scientific consensus that saturated fat is harmful (to some degree), and that there is a significant minority viewpoint that saturated fat is likely neutral. The idea is that recognizing the existence of their POV, in a neutral manner, might make them less likely to try to change the mainstream POV to match theirs.

I suggest citing reputable medical textbooks rather than journal articles whenever possible in this article. Here are a few that might give you an idea of the options available: [17] [18] [19] [20] WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Persistent vandal

FYI, see here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:34, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

All I see is a capitalization change, which does not feel like "editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose" (per Wikipedia:Vandalism) to me. It feels a lot more like "When I was 10 years old, my teacher told me to use Title case for page titles, so I'm trying to help by correcting what I believe are capitalization errors". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Human placentophagy could use help

Stumbled on this article via two clicks from De agri cultura... who'd a thunk. Anyway, I noticed it was stuffed with citations to geneabirth.com and a book called "Placenta: The Forgotten Chakra", making some dubious claims with a lot of WP:SYNTH. I cut out a lot of it, but it could still use some attention. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:37, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Prediabetes

More eyes needed, thanks. See Talk:Prediabetes#Potential screening topics CV9933 (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:09, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

sudden unexpected postnatal collapse

I was just reading about the terrible case of Lucy Letby and was struck by a word that appears 44 times in that article with no definition: "collapses". It's not wikilinked to anything, either, so I googled it and found an awful lot of coverage of "sudden unexpected postnatal collapse". Thought about leaving a message on the talk page, but perhaps this is a better venue to solicit someone to start that article (or create an appropriate redirect). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:12, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

On the broader question of the word "collapse" in a medical context, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Collapse (medical). TompaDompa (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) seems to be the AU/NZ name for SIDS. Sudden unexpected postnatal collapse (SUPC) gets tagged with SIDS in PubMed's MeSH system, but SUPC doesn't seem to be quite the same thing. PMC 5728046 traces the definition to 2011 and suggests that it includes any sudden, unexpected death during the first week, including everything from accidental suffocation during skin-to-skin contact or breastfeeding to undiagnosed birth defects or infections. It appears to be a subtype of Early neonatal death (any death in the first week), which is another article (or at least {{Redirect to section}}) that we're missing.

There are several reviews available, e.g., PMID 27550975, PMID 27287353, PMID 30266307.

Because of the connection to breastfeeding, I'd normally suggest this to Sectionworker, but she hasn't been around for a few months. I don't know who else has a particular interest in this area. FloNight has also been off wiki all summer. Clovermoss, does this interest you, or do you have any ideas about who might be interested? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about why I was pinged here? I admire what you're trying to do but I'm not a medical expert or anything and I think I might mess something up if I tried. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 06:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I pinged you because you edited Breastfeeding a while ago, and suffocation during breastfeeding is one of the more common causes (of this thankfully unusual event). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It appears to be a subtype of Early neonatal death (any death in the first week), which is another article (or at least {{Redirect to section}}) that we're missing. Would Perinatal mortality#Neonatal mortality be a suitable redirect target? Little pob (talk) 12:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Perfect. I'll make the redirect now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Prolonged Field Care Draft

There is a draft on this medical topic. Here, if anyone has expertise in prolonged field care and wants to take a look to check for errors that would be ace! TMallinson (talk) 21:36, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@TMallinson, it's possible that Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history would also be interested in this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, yes, and I suspect they’d have a lot to add to the subject. Thanks for the heads up! TMallinson (talk) 11:59, 25 September 2023 (UTC) 11:58, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Hopefully this will summon some expert input from their team - @WP:MILHIST coordinators: TMallinson (talk) 12:03, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Chiropractic woo through the backdoor

Chiropractic spinal adjustment

If you go read the article chiropractic, it says it’s a crap pseudoscience (well, in a different tone and with sources, but you get the idea). I suppose there are thousands of hawk-eyed editors watching it and all is fine.

Could any of those divert some attention to the article veterinary chiropractic? The tone there is, let’s say, more positive. The lead features all the classic hits:

• Veterinary chiropractic is a fast-developing field that is complementary to the conventional approach (Yes, there is a source. No, it is not MEDRS-compliant.)
• a holistic medical approach that focuses on restoring homeostasis in the body and allows for the body to naturally heal itself (appeal to nature)
• It cannot be placebo, placebo does not work on animals. Yes it does. Many scholarly publications stopped using the term "placebo effect" and moved on to "caretaker effect", precisely because "placebo" implies a false belief of the patient about the nature of the cure received. There’s a couple of studies demonstrating a caretaker effect in humans when the physician tells them, explicitly and clearly, that they are getting a sugar pill - but they went through the doctor’s office, examination, trip to the pharmacy etc. so they had the "ritual of healing" that triggers the caretaker effect. Rant over.
• It is not pseudoscientific bullshit. It is a controversial method due to limited evidence. Yes, for a Wikipedia editor that is synonymous, but not for the average reader.

Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 13:51, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Well...

The first statement is about how humans classify medicine, which is not Wikipedia:Biomedical information, and therefore doesn't require a MEDRS "ideal" source. Ditto "holistic". You might find Wikipedia:Alternative medicine useful, if you haven't seen it before.

On the more general subject, the "theory" behind chiropractic is certainly non-scientific, but that doesn't mean that it is worthless in practice. I could give you a nice pseudoscientific story about how your cell phone works, and your cell phone wouldn't stop working as a result (nor would it gain any new powers my story attributes to it – healing rays, maybe?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

You are right about the first statement. The problem isn’t WP:MEDRS, it is WP:WTW/WP:NPOV. "Holistic" is a loaded term (= "it’s a more natural/good/non-invasive treatment compared to Big Pharma’s awful chemicals"). Even if it were not, it would still require a RS (which a scientific article in a shady journal by woo-peddlers isn’t).

As for the rest, yes, chiropractic "is worthless in practice". By the definition of your essay, it is "bad medicine" (scientifically proven to not work, with an unhealthy dose of side-effects). At the risk of being rude I will not debate this; if you have good sources to the contrary, the article chiropractic is waiting for your edits. I am not interested in handling the articles myself either, because I know pseudoscience articles are a pain to maintain and my willpower is weak. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I understand that whether chiropractic is worthless in practice depends on exactly what you're looking at (e.g., the woo-woo theory of vital forces vs spinal manipulation of the sort also practiced by non-chiropractors) and what you're comparing it against (e.g., chiropractic for chronic lower back pain is about as effective as opiods, and less risky to your overall health; if you wake up with a crick in your neck, chiropractic is faster but riskier [=stroke] than the conventional medical treatment of waiting for self-resolution and prescribing muscle relaxants if it doesn't sort itself out).

I expect that article to be a battleground for our anti-woo warriors. Chiropractic is popular in the US (the US has one chiropractor for every two internal medicine physicians), and it's an easy entry point for pushing the One True™ Scientific POV on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The claim that chiropractic is at all effective for lower back pain is fairly weak sauce from my reading. Controlled studies show there is essentially no intervention that shows efficacy for lower back pain beyond any other, so it is questionable as to why chiropractic should be favored over, say, vanilla physical therapy, an exercise regimen, or a whole host of placebos. Is chiropractic better than an opioid addiction? Almost certainly. But so is homeopathy. Or breathwork. Or yoga. Or faith healing. jps (talk) 15:44, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, I have heard that the evidence is stronger for acute lower back pain than for chronic back pain, but I think the overall thing we need to remember is that neither pseudoscience nor alternative are fancy ways of spelling ineffective.

Speaking of evidence-based medicine, Phenylephrine is in the news for being yet another piece of conventional medicine that doesn't actually work. The article was updated this week by five relatively new editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Though to be fair Phenylephrine has been long suspected of being useless, as Wikipedia already reported ("Its efficacy as an oral decongestant has been questioned, with several independent studies finding that it provided no more relief to sinus congestion than a placebo"). Bon courage (talk) 00:29, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The data is pretty equivocal for both chronic and acute: [21] I'm a bit curious about your argument that "pseudoscience nor alternative are [not] fancy ways of spelling ineffective". While not all ineffective treatments are pseudoscientific or alternative, I am pretty sure all pseudoscientific and alternative treatments are ineffective -- at least given the published metrics. Granted, new discoveries are made all the time, but there is a pretty strong argument to be made that once a treatment that is considered part of "alternative medicine" is convincingly shown to be effective, it is typically no longer classified as "alternative". jps (talk) 18:13, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

"Alternative" is a social classification, rather than a medical one. Home births are alternative in the US. They are conventional in the Netherlands. Do you think that home births are ineffective? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I see a difference between an alternative social classification and alternative medicine. As far as I can tell, no one calls home births "alternative medicine". jps (talk) 21:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Different authors have different definitions of altmed. If you look at it from the POV of what's an "alternative" to "normal", then we'd see that the US medical system doesn't train physicians in out-of-hospital births, that US health insurance plans don't voluntarily pay for them (even when that would be cheaper than paying for a hospital-based birth), and that most people don't consider it to be the usual, normal, "conventional" thing to do. If it's not "conventional medicine", it's "alternative medicine".

AltMed definitions are often challenging to get right. For example, the first detailed definition in the article says "Alternative medicine is defined loosely as a set of products, practices, and theories that are believed or perceived by their users to have the healing effects of medicine, but whose effectiveness has not been established using scientific methods", and it includes everything in FDA-approved clinical trials, even though nobody actually thinks that these are altmed products. Some common-sense health and safety measures, like using parachutes or like not swimming in lava, have not truly been established as effective through the scientific method, but we consider following those to be conventional.

On the other side, one can define altmed as "anything that doesn't work", but that means that arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis is altmed and Black salve isn't, because that knee surgery does nothing, but black salve permanently cures about 10% of superficial skin cancers. (The conventional medicine cure rate is above 98% and has much less scarring.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Seems to me that Ben Goldacre's and Edzard Ernst's approaches on the subject are more-or-less standard. I certainly don't think it's fair to define alternative medicine as "anything that doesn't work". Alternative medicine relies on defenders who intentionally oppose mainstream medicine. Additionally, conventional medicine does not become alternative medicine even when it is inefficacious or when it lacks study backing (which, as you rightly point out, are not the same thing). Finally, "alternative medicine" as a matter of definition runs counter to mainstream medicine judgement. Crucially, mainstream medical judgement is not the same thing as "what is done normally in medical practices". A lot of medical insurance, for example, actually pays for various forms of alternative medicine because the goal of medical insurance is insurance and not medicine. jps (talk) 03:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I think it's difficult to make sweeping generalizations. For example, usually disproven or less-effective or less-safe conventional medicine doesn't continue as altmed, but I can give you an example of exactly that happening in Black salve, which Ernst describes this way: "Black salve is said to originate from Native American tribes who used the paste as a treatment for a range of conditions.  It was adopted by conventional medicine about a century ago as a treatment for several skin problems.  When effective treatments became available, black salve became obsolete.  More recently, however, it has been re-discovered by SCAM-practitioners who recommend it as a natural treatment..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:17, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I did not mean to imply that conventional medicine when shown to be less-effective or problematic cannot continue as alternative medicine. I totally agree with your example that black salve is more-or-less only used in the context alternative medicine. I can think of other similar examples like syrup of ipecac. What I was trying to say when I wrote conventional medicine does not become alternative medicine even when it is inefficacious or when it lacks study backing was that there are conventional practices that are in common use right now which are objectively ineffective and lack study backing, but that hasn't been recognized yet by the conventional medicine researchers and practitioners. Even though such practices have a lot in common with alternative medicine in terms of efficacy and study-backing, they don't become alternative medicine until the conventional medicine moves on their backers continue to argue in favor of the treatment in spite of that. jps (talk) 15:10, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• "Veterinary chiropractic is a fast-developing field" is brochure language with a WP:RELTIME twist, and it's sourced to a predatory journal so not good. I suggest raising this at WP:FT/N. Bon courage (talk) 05:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

   Done Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:31, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oof. This led me to do a little looking around, and I found that one of the sites I regularly rely on for overviews of veterinary questions I have about my dog, the AKC, seems perfectly happy to peddle nonsense: acupuncture, acupuncture, chiropractic, and even reiki (which takes a J Evid Based Complementary Altern Med article written by an energy healer that exists in the NCBI database and interprets that as "the NCBI [finding] through studies...". Sigh. ... Nooooo not you, too, petmd! — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:19, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
  • It is definitely a thing. The credulity with which many veterinarians approach alternative medicine I often find very surprising. Purely anecdotally, I don't see a lot of alternative medicine promoted at my local doctor's office, but it seems that every local vet clinic is pushing alternative treatments of various sorts. jps (talk) 20:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Tonsil cancer

Is it correct that Tonsil cancer redirects to Oropharyngeal cancer instead of Tonsil carcinoma? If so, shouldn't then at least a corresponding hatnote be added in the former target article? Hildeoc (talk) 13:13, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I guess that the question is "Are there non-carcinoma forms of cancer affecting the tonsils?"

I don't know the answer to the question, but perhaps someone else does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Depending on who you ask, "non-carcinoma forms of cancer" would be an oxymoron (they might say that e.g. leukemias are malignancies but not cancers). In response to your question, surely lymphomas affect the tonsils. TompaDompa (talk) 15:32, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion of service provider names in harm reduction

I am arguing with Graywalls over whether or not it’s appropriate to link to OnPoint NYC in the article harm reduction. If anyone else would like to comment I would be grateful, since obviously consensus won’t be reached between the two of us. Further details at the harm reduction talk page. Prezbo (talk) 22:52, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

It is already in Harm reduction in the United States. I believe the inclusion of specific named organization into the higher level broader article covering the concept is undue when it is already in the one for United States where the existence is more reasonable. It is just creating a coat rack of service providers. The article does not need to name specific safe consumption site that is the first, the largest, or the biggest.. or whatever in each country to fulfill encyclopedic purpose. Prezbo inserted it, and continued re-inserting disputed contents even though consensus hasn't been established for its inclusion. Graywalls (talk) 23:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC) (discussion copied over to Talk:Harm Reduction)

It looks like the discussion is at Talk:Harm reduction#I have removed links to specific service providers, agencies, clinics.

Speaking generally, the English Wikipedia does not have a set pattern for this. Sometimes we name one or two organizations (e.g., Huntington's disease, which names two US organizations). A few articles, like Breast cancer awareness, (correctly) name many organizations. We are more likely to name notable organizations and organizations that are either major players (e.g., the American Heart Association) or had some special significance (e.g., the first charity for that disease, the first hospital where research was done). But there's no general requirement to name organizations. Editors really do have to use their best judgment and come to an agreement about whether and how to mention an organization. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

CALC and prevalences

In the "uber-rare chromosome disorders" sphere, there's one subject that I previously considered inappropriate for an article, because it was so rare that there was no real sourcing to build on. In the past year, two additional cases have been discovered and reviews of the literature done when reporting them, so I think there's enough now to build a worthwhile/informative/usable article.

One problem: both reports give a confident statement of "how many cases are known", but they don't seem aware the other exists, so their numbers don't fit (to be precise, they're both written assuming seven known cases, when CALCing their data gives eight). To make it stranger, the latter seems at least ambiguously aware of the former -- it states it's the "third known case in the 21st century" when their data would make it the second, so they're presumably aware there was another, but don't 'count' it even in the sense of mentioning "an unpublished case".

Does CALC permit taking these and adding together for their prevalence ("there are eight known cases of Ultrarare Syndrome")? The letter of CALC seems to me that it does, given it explicitly mentions things like "CALC can use relatively complex mathematics" (so not just the simple addition here) and "if necessary you can show your work in a footnote", so pretty much any simple addition seems...fine, then? But people draw weird rules around medicine, and it'd be useful to have something to point at. Vaticidalprophet 00:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd say go for it. Obviously we want our claims to be well-grounded in source material. But there's no need to reprint incorrect material just because it's what the source says. If you need to do a little math and gently contradict the source text, I think you're well within the spirit of CALC (and of course, IAR). Ajpolino (talk) 02:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a charity or other group that might be willing to publish the number (maybe even with an explanation) on their website? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

New Medical Editor

Hello here, I'm a medical student who has been actively editing on English Wikipedia, I have over 100 articles on topics ranging from cuisines, libraries and cultural heritage peculiar to Nigerians.I would like to learn and be a medical editor over here as well. I hope to create as many articles surrounding health as possible under the tutelage of experienced editors.

I'm ready to learn and contribute to free knowledge. Tesleemah (talk) 14:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi Tesleemah, welcome to WikiProject Medicine! If there's a particular article(s) you'd like to start working on, feel free to post it here and we're happy to help. As a medical student, you're in the unique position where you'll be reading and learning topics all across medicine. I'd encourage you as you learn new concepts/topics/diseases in school, to check our article on the topic and see if they're up-to-date and comprehensive. When you find articles that could use some updating (as you often will), feel free to find sources and update them yourself, or flag them here and folks will be happy to work with you to update them. Please keep in mind that since the biomedical literature is so vast and contains so much back-and-forth, we find medical textbooks and review articles to be more reliable sources for current medical info than primary research papers (summarized at WP:MEDRS). Getting involved in a new topic will always result in some barriers and friction; as you hit challenges, just reach out and we'll do our best to help. Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 17:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I will surely come here for help when necessary. Tesleemah (talk) 01:29, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi! First of all, making edits, please, refer to corresponding policies, guidelines or pages via wikilinks. I had to google WPWP abbreviation to see what does it mean. You can make a wikilink to a meta page using the m: prefix. See Help:Interwiki linking for details.

As for medicine, please, read the Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research policies and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine), Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles guideline.

Also, take a look at foundation:Policy:Terms of Use, Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Copyrights.
Being an editors requires from you to be competent in both copyright and medicine. For example you need to add a wikilink (using special:diff or special:redirect/revision) to the edit summary if you're copying content from one article into another. And you can't delete a piece of content in one edit and paste it within another edit without such an attribution in edit summary. D6194c-1cc (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Welcome, @Tesleemah. This group was founded by medical students, so I think you're in the right place. Do you have a favorite textbook that you're using at school this year? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm in my 5th year optometry and one of my best textbook is clinical refraction. Tesleemah (talk) 01:33, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, then you might know the answer to my question. I was looking the other day for sources for Cyclospasm. I never found a source to explain how to get a correct diagnosis for myopia vs pseudomyopia (which I'd never heard of before). Is there any chance you could confirm any of the information in Cyclospasm or Pseudomyopia in your textbook, and cite your textbook? And maybe write a ==Diagnosis== section for that article? (I'm not even 100% sure that cyclospasm and pseudomyopia aren't the same thing, but I got the impression that cyclospasm could have several causes.) Please remove incorrect information, especially if it's unsourced. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I will work on the listed articles sourcing my textbooks. Cyclospasm is different from pseudomyopia actually Tesleemah (talk) 16:13, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I have cited one of my textbooks for cytoplasm now. I'm still pretty new here so I guess I have a lot of time to edit and alrk on other articles. Tesleemah (talk) 16:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I can suggest you an idea to write an article about retinal laser injuries. I wanted to write it myself, but I probably will not have enough time for that in foreseeable future. D6194c-1cc (talk) 05:58, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I've been reading the policies and guidelines to editing medical contents for the past few days now, especially the whole concept of MEDRS, I Find them interesting already and they are all easy to understand. Tesleemah (talk) 01:35, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Also, I've forgotten to add Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy. For example, if the source says that the drug is efficient in adults, you cannot say that it is efficient only in adults (probably, it has been tested on adults only). And you cannot represent suggestions as facts unless some other reliable source (probably, more recent) says so. D6194c-1cc (talk) 05:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes I am familiar with the principle of neutrality of Wikipedia before now, I've written some articles on English Wikipedia already. Tesleemah (talk) 16:14, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Medical articles being too human focused?

I've noticed this before, but one this morning reminded me. Striae gravidarum (Stretch Marks) is written as if this *only* occurs in Humans. Is there anything appropriate to add to indicate that this is something that would be found across Placental Animals? (less obvious because hidden by fur?)Naraht (talk) 12:07, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Content sections suggests a section towards the end of articles that is called ==Other animals==. If you've got a source handy, please expand the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing Thank You.Naraht (talk) 20:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

You can also write an article about a disease in animals if you have appropriate sources. You can even write an article about a disease in concrete animals (dogs or cats, for example). Take a look at Canine influenza, for example. D6194c-1cc (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The new discussion at Talk:Sex#Is the gamete-based definition really sound and up-to-date? reminded me of this thread. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk:COVID-19 lab leak theory#Request_for_comment

An editor has started an RfC about whether the announcement by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Energy that they support the COVID-19 lab leak theory should be in the lede of the COVID-19 lab leak theory article. Editors are invited to contribute. TarnishedPath^talk 01:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:25, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Dorsal nexus

Does anyone here know a suitable place to link Dorsal nexus so as to de-orphan it? From a skim I'm guessing Prefrontal cortex would work, but I don't understand it well enough to attempt to insert anything myself, lest I mess up the article. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:27, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Prefrontal cortex, sounds good, IMO --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Turbo cancer

This is all over teh socials from the usual rag-bag of ANTIVA grifters so I made a start on turbo cancer. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:20, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• Ha, thanks. Yes, I saw that on Facebook a few days ago and thought it was just another dumb Dutch thing; I should have known better. Drmies (talk) 21:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  Everything dumb seems to originate in the fever swamps of Magastan these days. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:59, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced articles

Here's a list of articles with no sources. If you have 10 minutes (=my estimate), please consider picking out one or two and adding at least one citation to it.

1. Arthrodesis
2. Attending physician statement
3. Blind insertion airway device
4. Catagmatic (technically, there's a source, but it's from the 18th century)
5. Clinical cardiac electrophysiology
6. Clinistrip (might be a merge-and-redirect situation?)
7. Clinomorphism (medical linguistics)
8. Constant visual observation
9. Craterization (this one feels weird)
10. Cyclospasm
11. Cylinder manifold (equipment)
12. Days post coitum (embryology)
13. Dermatoxin
14. Dose verification system
15. Drip chamber
16. Ectopia (medicine) (might be a Wikipedia:Set index articles)
17. Emission computed tomography
18. Endoluminal capsule monitoring
19. Fibrinogen uptake test
20. Fresh gas flow Have also proposed merge into Anaesthetic machine with redirect.
21. Genioglossus advancement
22. Gravindex
23. Lowest published toxic dose
24. Medical direction (might also happen with airplanes)
25. Pneumonic device
26. Pre-registration house officer (UK)
27. Renal threshold
28. Scavenger system (more anesthesia)
29. Stabilization (medicine)
30. Staphyloma
31. Stop-loss insurance
32. Stripper (tool) (also moved to Tube stripper)
33. Test panel
34. Undervirilization
35. Walking-stalk skin flap (military history)

If you add any source, even if it doesn't cover 100% of the content in the article, please mark it off the list here, and take the big "no sources at all" tag off the article. Also, I did five articles in about 45 minutes, and if it would amuse anyone else to time themselves, I'd appreciate it if you'd post your speed here. We're talking at WP:VPIL about what it might take to get at least one source into every Wikipedia article, and knowing how long it takes for one article will help us figure out how long it will take to add a source to 119,000 articles (only 250 of which are under WPMED, because you all rock). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I've struck three of these. Clinistrip needed redirecting, yeah. So did Undervirilization, though its redirect target is also badly undercited...The latter was a more interesting case, because the full text of the article was Undervirilization is a medical term describing the state of a male whose body, especially the genitalia, shows evidence of below-normal prenatal (less commonly pubertal) androgen effects. See virilization for a more detailed description of the normal process and newborn status. A very optimistic split attempt, I guess. That subject could maintain a standalone, but the way the article suite is currently organized means it'd be better to focus efforts on the core article and split off as warranted. There are a few of these in the broad disorders-of-sex-development suite -- a lot of people are enthusiastic to create articles about specific subtopics for philosophical or sociological reasons, when that might not be the best way to cover that subject under the main topic.

Ectopia was in fact a SIA, and what's stranger is it was almost, but not quite, properly tagged as a SIA. I looked in the history and the unref tag was added by a bot. Vaticidalprophet 03:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Taken a look at another, which I didn't want to do too quickly because it's very sensitive (a psych intervention that's widely used but has little backing evidence). The article could be expanded, but it's still orphaned, so not high-priority for that. Vaticidalprophet 04:06, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Note: I had previously posted a list of medical articles based largely or entirely on archaic sources, but it seems to have been archived without action being taken on those articles. BD2412 T 04:02, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
• I PROD'd pneumonic device. Bon courage (talk) 07:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
• I soft-redirected Catagmatic to Wiktionary. The word is still used occasionally, but there's not enough to build an article. If we have an article about drugs to promote bone healing, it could be redirected to that article instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  I just want to add that about 1 in 238 articles tagged by WikiProject Medicine are tagged as being completely unsourced. For all of the English Wikipedia, it's 1 in 55 articles. We are doing better than most, and I really think that we could get a source into nearly all of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

  There are now 353 at https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?limit=500&offset=0&profile=default&search=articletopic%3Amedicine-and-health+incategory%3A%22All+articles+lacking+sources%22&title=Special:Search&ns0=1 Chidgk1 (talk) 06:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  I am usually active at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change and on our project page we have

  ;Automated list of articles with various clean-up tags *::* [https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Climate_change.html By category cleanup listing]

  which shows 14 of ours completely unsourced. I will maybe let you know when we get down to zero, to incentivize you :-) Chidgk1 (talk) 06:42, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Medicine2.html#Cites%20no%20sources gives us 241 last week, a net improvement of 14 compared to the week before. I think we have two more days to knock the number down before it runs the weekly update. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

• I couldn't find a source for Clinomorphism. If someone else has also taken a look and failed, we might want to {{subst:prod}} it. Please post if you couldn't find a source for any of the remaining articles. (We're well past the halfway point!) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 6 October 2023 (UTC)