Template:Did you know nominations/In silico clinical trials

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 20:18, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

In silico clinical trials

edit
  • ... that in the future virtual pharmaceuticals may be tested on virtual patients in in silico clinical trials before the real drugs are tested on real people in real clinical trials?

Created by MattAtAvicenna (talk). Self nominated at 12:11, 30 March 2015 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: None required.

Overall: There isn't a specific sentence that can be pointed to for the hook - it is basically the entire idea of the article, but am inclined to let it pass... In addition to the above comment, try to avoid using language like "if we could..." - an article should not be written in the first person. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:40, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

  • @MattAtAvicenna: As long as some work is done to deal with these concerns in the next couple of days, this can still pass. Harrias talk 08:26, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
  • @Panyd: :*@ThaddeusB: :*@BlueMoonset: - Thank you all for your patience and direction! I have addressed the concerns brought up on this DYK page, adding sources, re-wording the sentence which was written in the first person, and attributing predictions to a legitimate source. I hope that I have been able to satisfy the criteria needed to make make the DYK request happen! Many thanks. MattAtAvicenna (talk) 13:56, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Some care still needs to be given along the lines of WP:CRYSTAL. This is a technology that is decades away from being feasible, so statements about what "will" happen should be avoided, even if sourced, and even saying something "may" or "could" happen is overly vague. And although this is possibly beyond the scope of DYK review, the article says little about the actual current state of research on the topic, or details of research concretely planned. These kinds of speculative technologies are hard to write about well for these reasons. I applaud the author for taking this on, and I hope it can be further improved to satisfy the requirement for neutrality. Antony–22 (talkcontribs) 02:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Please notice the nominating user's name and the name of the project promoted by the article ("the Avicenna support action that runs between October 2013 and September 2015."). See WP:COI. Also, see also WP:NPOV. I asked for help at WP:MED Dame Etna (talk) 08:51, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I came here in response to a post at WP:MED. This is a Wikipedia article about what was previously a science fiction concept but which is now being developed as practical research.
ThaddeusB I am happy with the hook - the Avicenna whitepaper probably backs the statement best, but this 2012 Springer paper is also sufficient and since the concept is new even the other cited papers addressing aspects of the concept give background on the full concept.
Dame Etna expressed concern about the submitter working for Avicenna, which is an organization in the business of developing this concept. In my opinion, the contribution here is the kind that Wikipedia should request of experts in a field. This person mostly talked about the theory behind their work and not their actual work, and I see nothing here promotional. I want more expert contributors talking about their field of expertise on Wikipedia, and this article is a great attempt at that. Considering that Avicenna is a consortium headed by the University of Sheffield I feel like this is a comparable situation to other academic projects promoting general education about science research.
Thaddeus and Antony both said that some of the information was speculative. I am pleased that the author did not say "Avicenna says, and in Avicenna's opinion" repeatedly in the article, but instead cited their papers and made conservative statements about trends in research. The claims being made here are at the state of the art in research but they are all feasible, and I am a little surprised that this Wikipedia article is just being made now. I copied a citation to the Avicenna paper to some of the uncited claims in those last two paragraphs because that papers backs those claims. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:43, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
I've done some copyediting to deal with my concerns about the language. I'd like to suggest a tweak to the hook so that its subject is current (the research) rather than speculative. Antony–22 (talkcontribs) 17:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
  • ALT1: ... that ongoing research on in silico clinical trials is intended to allow virtual pharmaceuticals to be tested on virtual patients before the real drugs are tested on real people in real clinical trials?
  • There is a bare URL ref, which must be fixed for the nomination to regain approval. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
  • The bare URL has been taken care of, but now there is a proposal to merge this article into the pre-existing In silico medicine article. This nomination will have await the results of the merge discussion, since if the merge does take place, the nomination will not survive. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:34, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Based on the previous reviews' approvals and preferring the ALT1 hook I'd say this is ready to go. Now if I'm transgressing by closing down the stale merge discussion and then approving the nom, you may smack my bum, but I'm not sorry and you won't make me say I am. Belle (talk) 13:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

  • I just ran this through Earwig's Copyvio Detector and found a large amount of close paraphrasing from a paper prepared by the Avicenna research consortium. Even if there is no conflict of interest in the fact that the Wikipedia article was written by an employee of Avicenna, the close paraphrasing must be fixed before this passes DYK. Yoninah (talk) 15:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: Why is this a problem? The paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and represents an authoritative take on the subject, surely an article that relates closely to this would be ideal? 143.167.49.232 (talk) 15:58, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
  • OK, I just learned something new! CC-by-SA is fine. Restoring tick based on Belle's review. Yoninah (talk) 18:51, 24 June 2015 (UTC)