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List of archives

Merged Archive WikiProject Preclinical medicine: 1 Merged Archive WikiProject Clinical medicine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 WikiProject Medicine Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172

Belladelli et al. (2023)

As suggested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Belladelli et al. (2023): Reliable or unreliable?, I have reposted here. Please, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Belladelli et al. (2023): Reliable or unreliable? for further details:

Way6t has claimed Belladelli et al. (2023) is not a reliable source. I have claimed that Belladelli et al. (2023) apparently is a reliable source. WP:RS and WP:MEDRS have both been brought up in the discussion. Relevant discussion may be found at: Talk:Human penis size#Discussion on the inclusion of Belladelli 2023. I have shared some relevant, summarized details below. Please, feel free to take a closer look at the source and share your thoughts.

• "Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis":

"Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, authored by Federico Belladelli et al., and published in World Journal of Men's Health (from website: "Open Access, Peer-Reviewed", "Indexed in SCIE, SCOPUS, DOAJ, and More", "pISSN 2287-4208 eISSN 2287-4690") on Feb 15, 2023. Also, included in the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central and PubMed.

• Per Human penis size's "A note regarding sources" (editnotice), which links to WP:MEDRS:

"This is ultimately a medical/scientific article, and we should use medical/scientific sources that meet the de-facto standards here for sources in articles on medical topics. Given that we now have high-quality evidence in the form of several peer-reviewed studies on this topic published in reputable journals, including a systematic review of other studies, as sources for this article, we should not now be citing either crowdsourced user-generated data, or non-peer-reviewed analysis thereof, even if they been reported on in reliable sources such as the popular press."

Daniel Power of God (talk) 04:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

That would be:

• Belladelli F, Del Giudice F, Glover F, Mulloy E, Muncey W, Basran S, Fallara G, Pozzi E, Montorsi F, Salonia A, Eisenberg ML (October 2023). "Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis". World J Mens Health. 41 (4): 848–860. doi:10.5534/wjmh.220203. PMC 10523114. PMID 36792094.

which is a review in a weak (non-MEDLINE) journal, and which has gained some notoriety as a poster child for problematic peer-review and correction.[1]. I would avoid using it. Bon courage (talk) 06:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I mean theres a lot of different things to look at here. It does pass some checks (it's recent, peer reviwed, not a case study etc.) but theres also some red flags such as the journal it's in, and controvery surrounding it. Ultimately it comes down to "is this the best possible source we could be using here". If there are better sources out there then I wouldn't personally include it but I could maybe make an arguement for it if it truly was the best resource we have on the topic. IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

It may be a crazy idea but if there aren't great sources, maybe Wikipedia isn't absolutely obliged to say something about trends in penis length? Bon courage (talk) 14:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

While I do agree with this, the point I was trying to get across was "is there better sources?" as I'm a bit confused why this source specefically needs to be used. However I may not have gotten my point accross effectively. IntentionallyDense (talk) 22:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100943924 gives that journal a good rating.

PMID 38792302 (in an MDPI journal) is the only paper that appears to have cited it.

Since WP:RSCONTEXT matters, I think it's worth taking a look at the proposed text, which is this (three paragraphs, three different parts of the article):

----

More recently, the meta-analysis and systematic review by Belladelli et al. (2023) of 55,761 men from 75 studies, done between 1942 and 2021, and based on estimations of pooled mean length, indicated that the average erect penis length was 13.93 cm (5.48 in), average stretched penis length was 12.93 cm (5.09 in), and average flaccid penis length was 8.70 cm (3.43 in). Belladelli (2023) indicated that "all measurements showed variation by geographic region. Erect length increased significantly over time in several regions of the world and across all age groups, while no trends were identified in other penile size measurements. After adjusting for geographic region, subject age, and subject population; erect penile length increased 24% over the past 29 years." Belladelli (2023) also indicated that "importantly, when the current analyses were adjusted for the technique to achieve erection, the point estimates remained similar."

The meta-analysis and systematic review by Belladelli et al. (2023) of 55,761 men from 75 studies, done between 1942 and 2021, and based on estimations of pooled mean length, indicated that the average erect penis length was 13.93 cm (5.48 in), average stretched penis length was 12.93 cm (5.09 in), and average flaccid penis length was 8.70 cm (3.43 in). Belladelli (2023) indicated that "all measurements showed variation by geographic region. Erect length increased significantly over time in several regions of the world and across all age groups, while no trends were identified in other penile size measurements. After adjusting for geographic region, subject age, and subject population; erect penile length increased 24% over the past 29 years." Belladelli (2023) also indicated that "importantly, when the current analyses were adjusted for the technique to achieve erection, the point estimates remained similar."

The meta-analysis and systematic review by Belladelli et al. (2023) of 55,761 men from 75 studies, done between 1942 and 2021, and based on estimations of pooled mean length, indicated that the "current report identified a significant difference in penile measurements across different geographical regions." The average flaccid penile length was 8.09 cm (3.19 in) in Africa, 7.23 cm (2.85 in) in Asia, 9.44 cm (3.72 in) in Europe, 9.82 cm (3.87 in) in North America, and 11.00 cm (4.33 in) in South America. The average stretched penile length was 12.53 cm (4.93 in) in Africa, 11.60 cm (4.57 in) in Asia, 13.40 cm (5.28 in) in Europe, 13.75 cm (5.41 in) in North America, 15.60 cm (6.14 in) in South America, and 12.13 cm (4.78 in) in multiple regions. The average erect penile length was 14.88 cm (5.86 in) in Africa, 11.74 cm (4.62 in) in Asia, 14.12 cm (5.56 in) in Europe, 14.58 cm (5.74 in) in North America, 15.71 cm (6.19 in) in Oceania, 14.50 cm (5.71 in) in South America, and 15.33 cm (6.04 in) in multiple regions. Belladelli (2023) indicated that "importantly, when the current analyses were adjusted for the technique to achieve erection, the point estimates remained similar." Belladelli (2023) also found that "after adjusting for geographic region, subject age, and subject population; erect penile length increased 24% over the past 29 years."

----

This does not comply with the rule to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Cite sources, don't describe them. Compliant text for the first paragraph would sound approximately like this:

"The average erect penis length was 13.93 cm (5.48 in), average stretched penis length was 12.93 cm (5.09 in), and average flaccid penis length was 8.70 cm (3.43 in), with more recent studies showing longer erect penis length."

That's it.

Also, we probably shouldn't be reporting "the average" (Median? Geometric mean? Arithmetic mean? Weighted arithmetic mean?) down to a tenth of a millimeter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I want to add: Given how bad the rest of the article is, it would not be surprising if someone thought that the verbose version above was actually preferred. I've just cut bunch of text out from one section, and far more of that work needs to be done.

It's also in need of a lot of WP:MEDDATE. One of the sources cited was from 1988 – 36 years old, and 31 years older than what WP:MEDDATE recommends. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

References

Bon courage, IntentionallyDense, and WhatamIdoing, thanks for sharing your thoughts, findings, and observations.

Bon courage has pointed out that Belladelli et al. (2023) is a review in a non-MEDLINE journal (World Journal of Men's Health). Bon courage has also shared the source from PubPeer, which shows: Guillaume Cabanac shared two excerpts (accepted by PubPeer in August) from the Times Higher Education's "Peer review will only do its job if referees are named and rated", which was authored on August 14, 2024 by Randy Robertson. Per Susquehanna University, Randy Robertson is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Robertson does not appear to be a subject-matter expert in a relevant field, which seems to make the claims made in the article, including the cited excerpts from PubPeer, questionable in terms of weight as it relates to this present discussion.

WhatamIdoing has shared the source from Scopus and pointed out that Scopus gives the World Journal of Men's Health a good rating (CiteScore rank 2023: 7.6, #11/120, 91st percentile) as well as pointed out that Belladelli et al. (2023) has been cited by Bene et al. (2024) via Journal of Clinical Medicine (an MDPI journal). World Journal of Men's Health indicates that, via Crossref, Belladelli et al. (2023) is cited by Bene et al. (2024), Hanson et al. (2024) via Archives of Sexual Behavior (a Springer Science+Business Media journal), and Seranio et al. (2023) via International Journal of Impotence Research (a Springer Nature journal).

If the observation made about the cited excerpts from PubPeer being questionable is accepted and PubPeer, in this particular case, is accepted as not ultimately bearing weight in the discussion about Belladelli et al. (2023), then what has apparently been established is that the World Journal of Men's Health is a non-MEDLINE journal with a good rating from Scopus, and that Belladelli et al. (2023) – an article in the World Journal of Men's Health – is cited by three articles, one from an MDPI journal, one from a Springer journal, and one from a Springer Nature journal. What do you all think? Daniel Power of God (talk) 20:06, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Avoid. Bon courage (talk) 20:13, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel Power of God, I think that "is this reliable?" is not the question that needs to be asked right now. The article has much bigger problems.

Would you please read the Talk:Human penis size#WP:MEDSAY copyediting and try to implement that for a couple of sections? After you learn how to apply WP:MEDSAY to this subject, then I think you'll be in a better position for talking about this particular source.

@Ozzie10aaaa, if you have some time available in the next couple of weeks, would you mind dropping {{primary-source-inline}} and {{outdated source}} on that article? I think the contributors there are trying their best, but they seem to be creating a comprehensive bibliography instead of an encyclopedia article. I'm pretty lenient about the five-year recommendation in WP:MEDDATE, but about 20% of the cited sources are from the previous century, meaning that a whole generation has been born and finished university since they were published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

WAID. will do tomorrow, no problem, Ozzie--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:44, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

•  Done [2]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you! WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Requesting input at Teahouse on a draft

Please comment at Wikipedia:Teahouse#How should I move Draft:Childhood dementia to the mainspace?, not here. Moving the draft itself [over an existing redirect] when ready is trivial, so the main question I am seeking additional viewpoints to is if Draft:Childhood dementia is indeed ready for mainspace or suggestions for improvement. Thank you, Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 18:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

did a few edits[3]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:56, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Calculators

We at Wiki Med have been working on developing medical calculators which you can see here on EN WP User:Doc_James#Calculator or at mdwiki:Body mass index or mdwiki:CHA2DS2–VASc score. Not sure if there is interest here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:11, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

very useful[4] to add to some articles, IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:51, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Perspiration#Requested move 21 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Perspiration#Requested move 21 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 08:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Post herniorraphy pain syndrome

I have been asked to relay a request for an update to post herniorraphy pain syndrome; the cites are all more than a decade old, and it seems to be an area of active R&D, where expertise would be really useful. Many thanks in advance to anyone who takes this on, or recruits someone who does. HLHJ (talk) 01:28, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Looks like there isn’t a whole lot of literature on the topic but I’ll see what I can do! IntentionallyDense (talk) 02:41, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much, IntentionallyDense! HLHJ (talk) 19:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Improving + Translating APBD article

My name is Jeff Levenson and I am a volunteer co-president of the Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease Research Foundation (APBD RF). APBD is a genetic neurodegenerative, glycogen storage disease type IV which often mimics MS. Because of that, most of our patients are misdiagnosed and take on average seven years to be properly diagnosed. I have been working on the APBD Wiki page in hopes of improving awareness about this disease. There is an English and German versions of the APBD page, but we desperately need help on other translations. i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, etc.

Can someone tell me if there a red link index and if it is recommended to use Wikidata platform and/or Wiki Project: medicine to grapple with the challenges of spreading the word about APBD and allied diseases? BabaJuly1982 (talk) 15:49, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, @BabaJuly1982. Before you request translations, I suggest that you look for some more sources. The main goal is to have the facts be up to date, but also to make it easy for editors to see at a glance that the facts are probably up to date, just by looking at how old the cited sources are. The ideal is to get high-quality sources within the last five years; for rare diseases, it's often necessary to stretch that a bit. Here is a list of newer medical journal articles that might be useful, if you'd like to have a look.

When you feel like it's in good shape, then I suggest that you go to m:Talk:Wiki Project Med and click the "Add topic" button at the top of the page, and leave a note to ask if anyone is coordinating translations at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

User:BabaJuly1982 yes we at Wiki Project Med have an ongoing translation project. We generally are only translating the leads of articles and for a lead of an article to be deemed ready for translation every sentence must be referenced to a high quality secondary source. Our translation dashboard is here and we have had more than 3,500 translations created by volunteers as a result of this initiative since 2021. Reach out when the lead of this article is ready and we can discuss next steps. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Priority rating maintenance

We seem to have some creep in Category:High-importance medicine articles. Here are a few that I thought should be removed (presumably to Mid-importance, but let me know):

• Alteplase
• Aliskiren
• Amantadine
• Arachidonic acid
• Blue baby syndrome
• Benzodiazepine dependence
• Bifidobacterium
• Bifidobacterium longum
• Clostridium (the genus, not Clostridioides difficile infection)
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
• Economic impact of HIV/AIDS
• Error (not Medical error)
• Friedreich's ataxia
• GI cocktail
• Human T-lymphotropic virus 1
• ICD-10
• Innate resistance to HIV
• List of medicine contamination incidents

The rules are: You tell me what rating you want, and it's okay with me. I've picked these out by scrolling through the first half of the category, and it would actually be extremely helpful and desirable for you to tell me that I'm wrong about any of these that you think should be kept at this level. If you don't have a good feeling for how we usually rate things, then click on the category and scroll around for a few seconds (or read the documentation, but scrolling through the cat will be faster and may be more helpful).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The only ones I could even see an arguement for being high priority are benzo dependance and GI cocktail however I have no issues with these being rated mid importance. IntentionallyDense (talk) 13:49, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Oracle Cerner#Requested move 19 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Oracle Cerner#Requested move 19 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 ^{[𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺]} 03:18, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:21, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Marburg outbreak

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

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

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

References

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

Requested move at Talk:Sexual disorder#Requested move 30 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sexual disorder#Requested move 30 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Web-julio (talk) 03:26, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Second Opinion on the page Tumor necrosis factor

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

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

Supraventricular ectopy

We have no entry for Supraventricular ectopy. Should we, or should it be a redirect? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:20, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Is it the same as Ectopic Supraventricular Arrhythmias? I'm not sure that it has to be a page persay but I'm not sure where you would redirect it to either. Did you have any ideas? IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:38, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I have no medical knowledge; I was looking for the topic as I know someone who was recently diagnosed with SEV. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:32, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

It's possible that it could be redirected to Ectopic beat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Potentially innacurate/outdated sentence in Childhood Dementia

I raised some concerns over a sentence in Childhood dementia saying: "Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses, a group of lysosomal storage disorders, are thought to be its most common subtype."

Is anyone interested in joining the discussion?

My hope is that we can reach a consensus on whether the sentence is accurate or not. And if not, then what the best course of action is.

Thank you. Irina Rainbow (talk) 18:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

What's the consensus on MOS with regard to conventional vs "person first language" ?

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

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

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

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

@Graywalls, have you found WP:SUFFER?

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction and Hello

Hello everyone

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

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

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

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

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

Here you go:

Dorsal pancreatic agenesis

Artificial saliva

X-linked genetic disease

Dermatologic surgical procedure

Acquired hand deformity

Blue light spectrum

Sex and drugs

Face washing

Microneedles

Pregnancy hormones

Catatonic depression

Human chimera

Virus crystallisation

Tissue transplantation

Congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia

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

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

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

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

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

PRAL

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

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

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

@Julius Senegal, there is some information about how PRAL is calculated in this book (start on pg 136, second column, and continues to the next page) and this book might also be useful. PRAL correlates with Net acid excretion.[5] This book and this one describe it in terms of a dietary pattern (fruits and vegetables good; aged cheese bad) for kidney patients. There is a related concept of Dietary acid load (PRAL plus the acid actually in the food [6]).

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

Best Practices for Teaching Students to Write Effective Lead Sections

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

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

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

Hello everyone,

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

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

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

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

Given this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Briefly:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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