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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, 173, 174, 175, 176

Help needed investigating the validity of a medical article

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Transcriptional addiction in cancer. The sourcing is way above what I can understand. Editors with a background in oncology and epigenetics would be particularly valuable in evaluating whether the content is correct or in error. Best.4meter4 (talk) 00:35, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi @4meter4. I can understand the skepticism but "Transcriptional addiction" is actually a valid scientific term. It's also called transcriptional dependency, or transcription factor dependency. It's a process where tumor cells become growth-dependent on an altered/abnormal protein arising from a mutation. I'm not fond of the use of "addiction" for describing this process but unfortunately it's commonly used. (Addiction is used as a slang term in this case, and I'm not fond of using a serious medical condition as slang. And scientifically, addiction is not what's going on in the cell, it's cell survival being dependent on the existence/presence of a specific molecule).

Anyway... the important part is that if you can identify a transcriptional dependency in certain types of tumors and then develop a way (a drug) to block the abnormal protein, you could potentially inhibit tumor growth, meaning you could potentially use as a cancer therapy.

I can add those synonyms to the first sentence. BetsyRogers (talk) 06:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

BetsyRogers Thank you.4meter4 (talk) 14:51, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

"Psychotic drugs" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Psychotic drugs has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 September 27 § Psychotic drugs until a consensus is reached. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 21:47, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

"Bipolar personality disorder" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Bipolar personality disorder has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 September 27 § Bipolar personality disorder until a consensus is reached. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 22:55, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

This editor has listed several other redirects recently that folks here might be able to help with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Notability, WP:MEDRS and Blue zones

A blue zone is, supposedly, a place that has an unusually high concentration of centenarians due to some environmental/diet/whatever factor. A famous preprint by a demographer rather persuasively argued that blue zones are actually an artifact of poor recordkeeping and pension fraud, and did a bunch of statistical correlations to prove his case. The preprint won an Ig Nobel and has been extensively covered in blue-chip reliable sources spanning both the medical and popular press, including the BMJ, New Scientist, The Atlantic, New York Times, etc.

However, numerous attempts to add the study to the Blue zone article have been reverted on the basis that because the original study remains a preprint, the study is not a MEDRS and cannot thus be mentioned in any shape or form, even if covered by secondary sources. To me, this seems patently illogical: the study is a) a criticism of a demographic claim, not a medical claim in itself, and b) its argument is entirely based on economic and social data, not medical data. This is even more bizarre when the term "blue zone" itself is a copyrighted corporate trademark and the article cites manifestly non-MEDRS sources like Fortune when talking about it. Could I get some second opinions on this? Asamboi (talk) 05:38, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that it's not clear whether that preprint has gained wide acceptance among medical or biological professionals. Crank theories and Some Guy's Opinion often get lots of mainstream coverage, that doesn't make them mention-worthy as it's difficult to discuss them neutrally when you don't have expert views too. OR I know, but I am not sure that the location of blue zones lines up very well with places where one would expect poor record-keeping, either. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:31, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

My question is really less about whether the preprint is accepted and more about whether it's notable, and additionally, whether this criticism even falls under WP:MEDRS (I asked the same question there, but was pointed here). Also, the "crank theory" here is not the preprint, but the Blue Zone idea itself.

FWIW, if we're comparing personal opinions, for me the most telling piece of evidence in the preprint that he's onto something is that The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. Asamboi (talk) 10:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

As I understand, in English Wikipedia notability of a fact is about it's weight in the context of a specific article (WP:WEIGHT). If a fact is covered by a secondary source, it may be notable. But its weight in an article may be undue. If its weight is undue in an article, it's almost the same as to say that the fact is not notable in the article (if it's about details).

If you want to add something from the preprint (WP:PREPRINT), the fact should be notable (covered by some other secondary source). But, actually, you can use the preprint only to clarify some details of the fact (WP:SELFSOURCE), keeping its weight due. The preprint itself is an unreliable primary source of information (WP:PRIMARY), unless its author is an expert in his research area (WP:RSSELF). D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:57, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

• This topic has been discussed multiple times[1] at WP:FT/N, really a more apt venue. Sure, the topic is notable; but the idea that this trademarked term really equates to regions of the planet where people live extraordinarily long lives is little more than a poorly-evidenced sales pitch. Bon courage (talk) 14:24, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

  We're on the same page, but please note that I'm not asking about blue zones in general, but the very specific case of mentioning a preprint that's very critical of them. Asamboi (talk) 19:52, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

  PREPRINTS were declared Bad™ Sources during the early parts of the COVID-19 pandemic (when they were causing us a lot of problems). As a matter of procedure, if you wanted to use this particular preprint to debunk blue zones, then I'd suggest that you ask Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard whether you could use it as a WP:PARITY source. FTN's usually the best place to find out whether the community would accept that particular argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the pointer to WP:PARITY, I'll dig around a bit more. Asamboi (talk) 21:14, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Effects of pornography at RSN

There is a question about Effects of pornography and WP:MEDRS sources on the reliable sources noticeboard. Anyone interested should see WP:RSN#Effects of pornography. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:45, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Biological sex at RFD

Please see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 September 23#Biological woman/man. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

new article fishbone diagrams

Hi all! I wrote an article on Draft:Fishbone diagram (medical), primarily to differentiate them from the other sort of fishbone diagrams( Ishikawa diagram). the article was declined I think primarily because it's relatively short and only a couple citations. I feel like fishbone diagrams in medicine are almost like an oral history, and I can't find a lot of published sources. Anyone able to help? Thanks! Kerowyn ^{Leave a note} 03:36, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Interesting! You see fishbone diagrams everywhere, but I never knew what they were called. I found these sources. I hope they may be of aid:

• Respiratory Care Clinical Competency Lab Manual
  • Physicians commonly utilize a diagram, called a fishbone diagram, to list the most common parts of the CBC and BMP.
• Office-Based Maxillofacial Surgical Procedures: A Step-by-step Approach
  • Many common labs are presented in a shorthand format called a fishbone diagram. There are multiple variations in these diagrams, but the two common examples are presented below for the sake of familiarity:
• Pharmacy Student Survival Guide, 3E
  • Fishbone mentioned in the index, but I don't have a preview of the pages where it is mentioned.
• Mechanical Ventilation in Critical Care Transport
  • A notation of chemistries, colloquially referred to as a “fishbone” diagram.

ເສລີພາບ (talk) 04:56, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that this source is enough to write a minimal article and to show that it's notable: [2]. Some common information can be found in the background section of this article: [3]. Also, some more information is available at Statperls: [4]. And some history along with the effectiveness and comparison of fishbobe diagrams and tables: [5]. Some useful data may be found here: [6], but I don't have access to this article. But these sources say that the fishbone diagram is the Ishikawa diagram. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:02, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

So I propose that the preamble of the new article should mention both those names and start with "In medicine, ..." D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:07, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

There are two different types of diagrams called "fishbone diagrams". Ishikawa diagram is about one type, and Fishbone diagram (medical) is about the other type. Sources 14, 16, 17 and 18 could be used in the Ishikawa diagram article, but are irrelevant to the Fishbone diagram (medical). 15 is also already used in Fishbone diagram (medical). ເສລີພາບ (talk) 23:31, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see the sources you provided. Googling the quote gives some preview form the books. Maybe the title should be "Shorthand fishbone diagram" ([7], [8])? Too much confusion would be if someone creates the "Fishbone diagram (medicine)" article (that's what I initially thought about) and describe fishbone diagrams related to medicine (why they are useful, how and in which cases they are used). Even I didn't get that one of the sources I provided is about another kind of a diagram. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@Kerowyn, why is an experienced editor like you using Wikipedia:Articles for creation in the first place? Anyone with more than ten (10) edits can create articles directly in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Introduction

Hi all,

User:CFCF recommended introducing myself here. I have some time on my hands at present and am planning on helping out where I can. Per CFCF’s recommendation, I’m going to start with some Start and C-classed articles. Feel free to reach out on my Talk page or reply here if you need an “intern” to help out with any pages. DataFocused (talk) 03:50, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Welcome, @DataFocused! What subject areas look most interesting to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Urethral dilatation

I have split the urethral sounding article into two, with the original article remaining about the sexual practice, but with the relevant material now in a new article, urethral dilatation. with urethral dilation linking to the latter. I've added appropriate navboxes, categories, and disambiguation headers. and also created a new Wikidata item to reflect this. If medically qualified editors could review it, I'd greatly appreciate it. — The Anome (talk) 13:53, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I've done a similar splitting-out at Dilator (medical instrument), since Dilator was in effect a disambiguation page in all but name. — The Anome (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Splinter

This article splinter has been written with the pov of a splinter in someone's skin, and the treatment of that. Which is a bit like if Tick had been written about finding one on your body and its removal and consequences of infection (tick-borne disease). We often think about ticks wrt getting one while walking in the countryside, particularly as they are parasites so "feeding on another animal" is part of their identity. But that doesn't mean that's how our article on them is entirely focused. While this use of the word "splinter" might be the one that comes to mind most often, Splinter (disambiguation) says "is a sharp fragment of material, usually wood, metal, or fibreglass" and clearly there are analogies to that used, such as splinter group. Dictionary definitions are universally (outside of medical dictionaries, of course) neutral about where the splinter is, though they often give this as a usage example. Maybe "splinter (medical)" is a perfectly fine WP article topic, but I don't think our article splinter's lead definition should claim this is the meaning of the word. What might be the best way of dealing with this? -- Colin°^Talk 09:36, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

What about the "Splinter injury" title ([9])? I think it is good enough. D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

A problem I have with a different name (and presumably then Splinter would become the dab content currently at Splinter (disambiguation)) is that nearly all the links to splinter are for that particular usage, so we've made those links less useful. I only found one link that wouldn't be relevant. Is there a way to keep the current article, but explain in the lead sentence that we are discussing the medical situation, vs the current text which implies the medical situation is exactly what the word "splinter" means, which it isn't. -- Colin°^Talk 12:45, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

As for me, Splinter is a rat from one of the movies of my childhood. I didn't even knew what this word means before, since I'm not a native English speaker. So wrong wikilinks are possible if edits are done from the source code editor.

I think that the disambiguation page should be used as the main page. If somebody makes a wrong wikilink, it would point to a page that already has an appropriate wikilink and a small description. D6194c-1cc (talk) 13:06, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, I should mention that the real problem of such a move is that those internet pages which borrowed the text from the Splinter article, if any exists, would have broken attribution within the CC BY-SA license. I used a dummy edit to fix legal problems after an article with similar problem had been moved (a redirect for attribution). Probably, an appropriate talk page template for such situations would be useful, too. D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Maybe something like this?

"A splinter (also known as a sliver) is a sharp fragment of a larger object, usually wood, metal, or fibreglass. or In a medical context, it is a foreign body that penetrates or is purposely has penetrated or been injected into a body. The foreign body must be and became lodged inside tissue to be considered a splinter." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Discussion that may be of interest

Editors here are invited to participate in a discussion at WT:NEURO#AI written event-driven pharmacology: Expert needed. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Final push on medical short descriptions

@YuniToumei has been making good progress on getting the number of medical articles without a short description down to zero. Using this search [10], there are currently 980 left. It would be really cool if we could get folks to annihilate this backlog like the unreferenced medical articles one. Toadspike [Talk] 09:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll just notice here that all the short descriptions in the disambiguation pages are not provided with the reliable sources. I've surprisingly discovered that the references are forbidden per WP:DABREF, while the WP:BURDEN policy requires them, so, before adding a short description to the disambiguation page, I should probably... add an appropriate source to the corresponding article if it doesn't have one. That's really odd. In another Wikipedia language project I participate in, the sources are required for the disambiguation pages too, and I think it's a good and less error-prone practice.

Since many medical articles have no sources in their preamble, and the disambiguation pages don't have them either, I can't say that such information is verifiable. D6194c-1cc (talk) 14:53, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Features used for navigation purposes, including disambiguation pages, categories, and short descriptions, are managed in terms of editorial judgment. The point is to get people to the page they're looking for, not to play the Mother, May I? over citations. That means, e.g., that sometimes an article is put in a category when the subject isn't exactly that thing (e.g., the belief that ____ is X is common misinformation; people looking in Category:X might be looking for _____; therefore, you put _____ in Cat:X, so that they can find the article and learn that _____ is not X. ____ not being X is still about X, and therefore relevant for Category:X).

I'm pretty sure that back in the day, ordinary lists (not just disambiguation pages) were also prohibited from listing sources.

BTW, we just created Template:Navigation list, and there's also a Template:List of lists. If you run across non-disambiguation lists (sourced or otherwise) that have basically no information except a list of articles, feel free to put one of these templates on them, so other people will know what's going on with them. List of diseases (A) was the first one tagged with the navlist template, and all the others in that group need to have it added. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, a list without descriptions meets both rules, as well as a short description like "a disease" does (trivial information), as I think. Thank you for the tip! D6194c-1cc (talk) 10:12, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Here on en-wiki, disambiguation pages which are properly formatted with TM:Disambiguation should automatically transclude the short description "Topics referred to by the same term", like at Pericardial for example. There is usually no need to override that with any other manual short description at all. YuniToumei (talk) 19:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Actually, it would be a good idea to automate the process of forming short descriptions. Wikidata already have short descriptions. A template could retrieve all the data from Wikidata and add it to the page, for example: {{Short description|{{Wikidata|description}}}}. To fix all the articles with the missing short description, a bot could do the job. If there is a need, Wikidata description could be replaced with a manually written one. I wonder why it isn't done this way yet.

And the same job could be done for the disambiguation pages. But since a policy is beyond any guideline, the policy, as I think, should be adjusted a little with its preamble to make it more clear, like by replacing "All content must be verifiable." with "In articles, all content must be verifiable." D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:33, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding your suggestion to use Wikidata's descriptions, this has actually been suggested and discussed plenty :) You can find out more at WP:SD-VS-WIKIDATA. In short, Wikipedia and Wikidata pursue slightly different goals and the transfer of SDs is not ideal.YuniToumei (talk) 12:13, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

A new Wikidata property for Wikipedia descriptions could solve that issue (and propertires allow to specify sources in qualifiers). I gave Wikidata item description just as a proof of concept. Anyway, thanks for the link. D6194c-1cc (talk) 13:11, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, I didn't get what you meant by giving Pericardial as example. It's just a manually written disambiguation page without any short descriptions. D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:57, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Some templates create automatically generated short descriptions. The one for disambiguations is such a case, as is noted on its doc page. These SDs cannot be seen in the article itself (unless you have Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper enabled), and neither in its wikitext. However, they do appear normally in the search box dropdown, on mobile devices and whereever else SDs are normally displayed. This is because they are automatically transcluded. Hope this helps clear up your questions! YuniToumei (talk) 13:17, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I've just realized the big point of conufsion here. When I, or the other commenters, were talking about "short descriptions", it was meant strictily in the en-wiki sense of the WP:Short description element used to annotate search results and articles on mobile devices generated by TM:Short description, which uses "Short description" as a proper name. When you said "short description" you meant the brief phrase annotating entries on DAB pages which are not from templates at all. Since "short description" is so strictly tied to the WP:Short description usage here on en-wiki, I didn't consider that you meant it in a literal sense. In this way your comments are not related to what Toadspike was originally talking about in this thread. YuniToumei (talk) 13:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, yes, the page short descriptions are not the same short descriptions as those given in the disambiguation page entries. I just noticed here that there is some medical content outside the articles that can be the same as in the articles, but not covered by MEDRS and can be different from that in the articles (being unattended by most of the editors). Centralization (through Wikidata, or by fetching a short description from the page somehow) is usually much easier and solves such problems. D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:21, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Changes to Wikipedia:Biomedical information

The Wikipedia:Biomedical information explanatory essay helps inform editors of what issues fall under WP:MEDRS. Some changes were recently made and I feel are contentious enough to warrant discussion before they go live. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information#Core basic science disciplines in the study of medicine. -- Colin°^Talk 18:27, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

It's worth to mention here that there was an attempt to make a very broad implicit definition, involving anatomy and physiology, which are not only about humans. D6194c-1cc (talk) 09:05, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Request for comment: Category:Autism spectrum disorders

Hello. There is a request to delete or merge Category:Autism spectrum disorders. Please comment on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2025_October_4#Category:Autism_spectrum_disorders. --TadejM ^{my talk} 10:59, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Use of the MDPI journal Nutrients

Per this discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard, it looks like Wikipedia's use of the journal Nutrients should be curtailed. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:50, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

MEDRS discussions at ArbCom

There's an ArbCom case wrapping up, and WP:MEDRS has been mentioned several times. I'm not sure that anything will change, but @Jclemens just posted this interesting suggestion:

"Use the yardstick appropriate to the type of source and the article text it's supporting; if the source type doesn't match the text it's supporting, it's not a valid reference in the first place."

One doesn't necessarily want a MEDRS ideal source if you're writing about, e.g., what Jehovah's Witnesses believe about blood transfusions. A book about their religion might be better.

But Jclemens, I'd like you to consider this set of claims and sources:

• Arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis doesn't work. Source: MEDRS ideal (recent systematic review in a decent medical journal).
• The Orthopedic Knee Surgeons' Association (OKSA; a serious medical organization) posts a statement on their website saying that they believe the recent research papers are wrong, and they know that these surgeries work because a couple of old studies with flawed designs had positive results and because all their patients tell them how much better they're feeling at the six-week follow-up appointments. They also say that the mainstream POV is that these surgeries are still the standard of care (their organization's POV is the mainstream POV, so that much is true), and besides, they are good people who wouldn't spend their lives doing useless surgeries.
• Americans Against Healthcare (an advocacy group strongly disliked by the OKSA) gets quoted in multiple newspapers saying that the OKSA is just trying to protect their paychecks and prestige, and calling on healthcare payers to stop funding this surgery.

Are these all the appropriate yardstick for the material being supported? How do we determine WP:DUE weight against these three very kinds of sources? Should I include them all? Or reject some? Which ones?

This is not a hypothetical scenario; although I've given made-up names here, this was a real debate 20 years ago. You can find out the real-world result at Arthroscopic knee surgery, but how would you handle this in principle?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Ok, as I understand the objection, the idea I presented is a DUE challenge: when covering a topic that has a medical aspect, a professional org weighing in, and another org with an opinion weighing in... how do you decide how much of which to cover? Absolutely valid critique.

My first observation is that the number of different RS'es is also going to vary by type of coverage: you may get 1-2 papers on a medical technique that will eventually make it into a systematic review or meta analysis, but in most cases, you're talking less than six total. Once something hits the popular press (like #2 or #3) you can literally have every single major paper in the world writing about it. So, that's a nuanced failure of DUE, assuming we want to keep all three perspectives in the same article. So my first thought would be the DUE should be evaluated in relation to the appropriate market share of relevant outlets, and I think that's all the further I've thought through this tonight. Your response? Jclemens (talk) 05:18, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I think the more likely scenario is that I don't want to keep all three POVs in the article. For most medical articles, we only include #1, and that's usually fine, because #1 can be expected to be true for decades, but the others are just passing events. It's in all the major papers this week (100% market share), but next year, it's in none of the papers, so we're averaging 2% market share over the space of two years. Market share doesn't work so well for a press release or a statement posted on the website, though. It's 100% of the "OKSA" market, but 0.00000000000001% of the internet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

And yet, we see unbalances like this in all sorts of BLPs where someone has done something to anger the minority press, and in a 50 year career 10% of their article is dedicated to the one controversy. Not to say that it's right, but to point out that it is not a medical-article unique problem. Jclemens (talk) 14:26, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

For a BLP, one controversial moment in a 50-year career might be 100% of the sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

There's another bullet, though I don't know how it fits the above example. Clinical guidelines either from a professional association or from a health body like NICE. Let's say the first line treatment for scaryitis is wonderpam, according to medical guidelines. A new systematic review is published that shows superpam is superior to wonderpam for patients with certain comorbidities. There will be a delay before that feeds into an updated clinical guideline. So for a while we'd still have to say wonderpam is first line treatment. We can't claim superpam is. And it might be superpam isn't yet licenced in the UK or its vastly higher cost means NICE still doesn't think the cost-benefit superiority is worth it even for patients with those comorbidities. Those aren't things a systematic review tends to examine. We have to handle the non-controversial cases as well as the above controversial cases. -- Colin°^Talk 14:37, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Not to say that clinical guidelines can differ between countries. A few years ago I wrote a non-English article about urinary tract infections. First of all, I found a source which reviewed different guidelines available in English. I used it to determine what guidelines to use, what information to cite and how to cite that information. And, of course, I wrote a note about the differences. From that review I found out that Spanish recommendations were good enough, so I used them as a source, even they were available in English only in internet archives by that time. So the review of guidelines gets old, the guidelines get old. But I doubt that something will change radically over time in this case. So it's mostly the question of proper wording in an article. D6194c-1cc (talk) 21:35, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

We should expect legitimate regional differences in practice based on (e.g.,) pathogen prevalence, and therefore for the practice guidelines to differ between countries, or even within them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

There are all sorts of reasons for regional differences. The likelihood of a fever being malaria would indicate an entirely different diagnostic pathway for Scotland vs Sierra Leone. But I'd also expect money to be a huge difference in what is recommended between those two countries. We tend to only document rich countries recommendations, unless the illness is only a feature of developing nations. But I imagine there are more complex reasons to do with tradition and cultural values and whether the country has a practice of suing doctors for under diagnosis and, as we saw with OxyContin, the promotional effect of the drug company. -- Colin°^Talk 07:31, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I've seen TCAs be used as decongestants for peds in Central America. Yikes. Appears to have been an availability/cost issues. Jclemens (talk) 19:45, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I forgot to add a link as an example, so here it is: [11].

For example, the Spanish guideline says that a single cauterization can be done without antibiotics while NICE GPG suggested a 3–4 days course. It's more about possible antibiotic resistance growth, health risks and money. But for example, voiding cystourethrography is usually done to check the presence of the vesicoureteral reflux, and it's very risky because of possible pyelonephritis in case of patients with such a condition, so possible treatment after the procedure could be more expensive than prophylaxis. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:18, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Simply, an article about the arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis (or somethink like this) could be written. I found a source that makes the topic notable: [12]. Many overgrown sections can be easily moved to separate articles. But there is still a gap in the possibility of adding information. Say, a fact isn't notable enough to be added to an article. But another possible article, that the fact could perfectly fit in, isn't notable enough to be created. So the fact couldn't be added anywhere. But those who think that the fact is very important would try to add it to the existing articles from time to time. D6194c-1cc (talk) 15:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I've thought about Wikipedia:Splitting that section off into its own article for a long time. If anyone's interested, you can put me down as a reliable supporter.

If we did have a separate article, there would be more room for the politics-and-money aspect of it. Because the knee surgery debate was 20 years ago, we wouldn't use the original primary sources for any of it. We'd probably look for a book that talks about how changing the standard of care requires either external pressure (in this case, insurers started refusing to pay for ineffective treatment) or waiting for a new generation of physicians to get through medical school (several examples, including heart disease), and cite that book to say that the surgeons resisted but eventually shifted to work they could get paid for.

But when we're in the middle of it, we see a pattern of editors looking for sources that feel compelling to them. For example, an editor who got this knee surgery and believed it to be helpful will say "This is a WP:MEDORG, and it's WP:DUE to use their WP:MEDPRI primary source to WP:GEVAL the other side. Let the reader make up their mind whether they want to trust one study over long-standing expert opinion!" And an editor who holds the other view will say "If you get to {{cite press release}} in this article, then I get to cite a newspaper article from the opponents, whose argument is obviously much stronger". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Facts aren't notable WP:NNC, facts are verifiable and should be handled per DUE. Jclemens (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I was talking about weight, not about article's notability. Notability of facts has been discussed a little earlier: special:diff/1313830976/1313844719. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:28, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Clarification needed on using "Expert needed" vs. "Category" tags

I'm new to WikiProjects, and I have a question on how to tag an article properly (without being redundant) so it will show up on the "cleanup" list.

I know the "Expert needed" tag adds a hatnote at the top of the article specifying the expertise & problem. And I understand that the "Category" template/tag gets used for automated grouping onto lists like this one. Once the cleanup is completed, I assumed that deleting the Category tag takes it off this list.

However, I'm seeing articles here that only have the Expert-needed tag, and *not* the Category tag. Were those added here manually? Or does the Expert-needed tag also automatically put the article on this list?

Does my question make sense? ;-) BetsyRogers (talk) 05:01, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Can you give us an example of an article or two where you're seeing this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:20, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Cardiopulmonary exercise test

Cardiopulmonary exercise test is relatively new as a page, and seems to overlap with Cardiac stress test. A recent merge proposal was closed with low input, and I think that the content on the articles is sufficiently important (and well-developed) that this warrants further consideration. Some views at Talk:Cardiac stress test#Proposed merge (September 2025) would be helpful. Klbrain (talk) 09:42, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I removed the misleading image from one of the two articles. The image was related to another one: special:diff/1315906180. D6194c-1cc (talk) 10:36, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Deletion help

We could use some help at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shock therapy (psychiatry).

Also, there's a Wikipedia:Proposed deletion at Emotional spectrum disorder. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, the "shock therapy" page is odd. It's not really an article per se. Maybe it was an attempt at a disambiguation? I think the intended purpose (or what I assume could be the intention) would be better served with redirects/disambiguation, and then deleting the article itself. BetsyRogers (talk) 19:32, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Oops. I just noticed the tag at the bottom saying it's a disambiguation page. I've never created one of those so I don't know the proper formatting, but I don't think this is it. Anyway I'm realizing this is outside my area of expertise on formatting pages. Is there a way to search for other disambiguation pages that might have the same purpose (i.e., items here could be moved elsewhere)? BetsyRogers (talk) 19:41, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

@BetsyRogers, that's not what it looked like earlier; someone's been trying to edit-war the slightly strange dab page into existence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

I found a similar "Affective spectrum" article and only one unreliable source that mentions them as the same disorder. I don't have any access to DSM-5, so I can't check whether those topics are related somehow. So I'm writing here, maybe someone here can check. D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

I find neither "affective" (anything) nor "emotional" (anything) in the index of the DSM-5. Neither "Affective spectrum" nor "Emotional spectrum" (exact quoted phrases) appear in the DSM-5. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Good catch(es), per refs the affective spectrum should actually be "affective spectrum disorder" aka affective disorder which redirects to mood disorder. Did the same with the article in question. --Treetear (talk) 19:53, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Request for review of Sudanese American Physicians Association draft

Hello,

I’ve prepared a sandbox draft for the Sudanese American Physicians Association , a U.S.-based nonprofit supporting healthcare and humanitarian work in Sudan. The draft uses independent, verifiable sources and follows Wikipedia’s neutrality standards.

Disclosure: I am affiliated with the organization, so I’m seeking a neutral editor to review and, if appropriate, move the article to mainspace.

Sandbox link: User:Moe.hasanien/sandbox

Your feedback or review would be appreciated. Improving this article helps document verified medical and humanitarian contributions relevant to Sudan’s humanitarian & health crisis .

Thank you. Reviewedo (talk) 23:35, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

@Moe.hasanien I tried to review this for you, but the first several links are broken, and when I search the article titles, they do not seem to exist. Was this created by generative AI? Innisfree987 (talk) 05:36, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The first three open for me. It looks like Moe has updated it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Reviewedo (talk) 20:32, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Discover (magazine)

At Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreak/archive1 I asked about the use of Discover (magazine) as a WP:RS. I would appreciate another opinion from somebody who is familiar with sourcing for FA-quality medicine articles (please leave your comments directly on the FAC review page). RoySmith (talk) 17:08, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Oxygen cocktail

Anyone care to have a look at oxygen cocktail, especially if anyone speaks Russian? I suspect it’s way outside MEDRS guidelines but I don’t speak Russian so I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Innisfree987 (talk) 05:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

A very strange set of sources and links to them. I checked one of them using whois: [13], the domain isn't even registered yet. And I can't find anything like "Эффективность энтеральной оксигенации в комплексной профилактике и лечении ранней плацентарной недостаточности при невынашивании" in the Вестник РГМУ journal using Google ([14]). But there is a similar article in РМЖ ([15]): [16] (the link is to a translation into English using Google Translate). Also I'll just mention the term used in this source in English: "enteral oxygenation". It looks like some kind of alternative medicine. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:51, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Finally, I found the "Эффективность энтеральной оксигенации в комплексной профилактике и лечении ранней плацентарной недостаточности при невынашивании" article in the Вестник РГМУ, but manually, searching in the index of the journal number: [17], it's on page 338. It's a primary research without any details on how the research was conducted, and without any calculations. It just says that there were 40 people, 25 of which were administered with the oxygen cocktail. And it just claims based on the doppler ultrasonography that the cocktail was effective in prevention of placental insufficiency. Using this source violates WP:MEDPRI. I removed it from the article. D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:42, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

As for the unregistered domain, according to the web.archive.org, it was used by a commercial company called Vikom Ltd: [18]. The source doesn't have any link or name of the research it describes. So it's an unreliable source of information (the company doesn't even deal with medicine) and the source can be safely removed. D6194c-1cc (talk) 13:04, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you so much much for going through these, I really appreciate it. At this point I’m wondering if it’s even a notable topic? Innisfree987 (talk) 22:06, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

This is the only reliable source in English I have found that mentions oxygen cocktails research: [19]. All others are either from unreliable Russian journals or outdated. Mongolians use some kind of oxygen cocktails, but I don't know whether these are the same oxygen cocktails: [20].

But I found some official sources in Russian (letters from Rospotrebnadzor): [21], [22].

Also, I found some outdated sources in Russian which date back to the USSR:

• Энтеральная оксигенотерапия. Научно-практическая конференция. 1968 г. Киев.
  • Сиротинин Н.Н. Влияние на организм перорального введения кислородной пены. Энтеральная оксигенотерапия. — Киев, 1968 (Google Scholar)
  • ...

These conference findings are uploaded to z-detstvo.ru as scans, but I doubt that they are uploaded legally in terms of author rights, so I won't provide a link.

Also, I found a review in the press: [23]. It describes the history of research and mentions some valuable data like research history and research from 2005 which is cited many times on the internet and which I didn't find on the internet. It might be helpful in finding reliable sources.

The topic might be notable if the USSR articles could be considered reliable. But those sources are outdated, so they are not appropriate sources to describe efficacy per WP:MEDDATE, as I think.

// To read online sources in Russian, you can use Google Translator. Just copy the link and paste it into the entry in the "Sites" tab. D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:31, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

I've tried to search for more broad topic "oxygenated drinks" and found some interesting articles:

• “Oxygenated” water and athletic performance,
• Health effects of alkaline, oxygenated, and demineralized water compared to mineral water among healthy population: a systematic review,
• Enhancing key broiler welfare indicators, meat quality, and gut microbiome composition using oxygen-enriched drinking water under commercially relevant housing conditions,
• Ingestion of oxygenated water enhances lactate clearance kinetics in trained runners (the Introduction section has some valuable data).

Also, there is an ongoing randomized trial: [24]. Some other sources that might have some useful information: [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33].

This source has some history about the cocktail: [34]. And some history on oxygenated drinks: [35], [36], [37].

So there are 3 possible articles: "Oxygenated drinks" (or "Oxygenated beverages"), "Oxygenated water" (including "Super-oxygenated water") and "Oxygen cocktail". They are highly overlapping. "Oxygenated drinks" can encompass the other two, but I didn't find review articles that review both topics. "Oxygenated water" is notable enough, as I think. "Oxygen cocktail" is more about USSR and Russia, since it's not just oxygenated water and might have different health effects that need to be checked by independent from Russia researchers. D6194c-1cc (talk) 10:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Anyway, the Русский медицинский журнал journal (not to be confused with the Российский медицинский журнал journal) is not a reliable source. Take a look at this article: [38], and search for "Witek". The authors claim that common cold symptoms are being developed after 24 hours from exposure to cold temperature (Google Translator translated "переохлаждение" as hypothermia, but the authors meant just cold temperature exposure). Probably, it's because many Russians believe that common cold can be due to exposure to cold temperatures (as a factor or as a reason). And also the article promotes some drugs that are used as a treatment in my country. Or another example: [39]. They claim that cramps is a term to describe a syndrome of painful muscle contractions (and they transliterated the English term to Russian as "крампи" despite the fact that Russian language has its own term "судороги" for that). I doubt that any article from that journal was peer-reviewed by competent experts. All the claims made by that journal can be removed.

@Headbomb: consider adding this journal to the predatory journals list. You can use Dissernet to check information about the journal reliability. D6194c-1cc (talk) 18:17, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with Dissernet, and since I don't speak russian, I can't really evaluate that journal either. I don't usually add a journal for a single bad paper, there needs to be a pattern of crappiness, or a consensus of editors that the journal's reliability isn't comparable to that of other journals. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:54, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I can find many more interesting articles like this one: [40]. It promotes a certain interferon rectal drug as an effective treatment for COVID-19, but the article is supposed to be a review one according to the title. A few years ago, I investigated the possibility of that rectal administration of interferon might be an effective delivery mechanism, but I didn't find any evidence in reliable sources. In my country, many drugs are used as a kind of tradition going back to the USSR, and it's just a big money business, as I think. And here are some articles promoting homeopathy: [41] (see [42] for explanation).

As for Dissernet, if a journal is marked as with serious violations ("с грубыми нарушениями"), it probably can't be considered as reliable: [43]. At least it's the only way to check a Russian journal I know about, and it's not ideal, because it doesn't deal with the content. D6194c-1cc (talk) 22:05, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, this journal is used two more times in English Wikipedia: [44] (for the history and for further reading). D6194c-1cc (talk) 12:52, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Is there any sort of rule/guideline that an article in English should only cite references that are in English (or available as a translation)? Citing a work that can't evaluated critically by most readers seems... odd. BetsyRogers (talk) 05:58, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

There's not such a rule, in fact the opposite - see WP:NONENGLISH: English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when they are available and of equal quality and relevance. As far as I know, there hasn't really been any serious discussion over changing this, as it'd greatly hamper our ability to cover topics outside the English world for which English language sources haven't taken a notice.

The general rule of thumb is that if whether a non-English source supports article content or not is in dispute, that the person who added the source should work with those disputing it to provide quotations (including translation) if at all possible. There's also WP:TRANSLATORS who can be approached on their talkpages if the user who added the content is unavailable or unable to provide a translation. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 06:17, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, readers are at least 300x as likely to read (part of) an article than to read any sources at all, so for at least 299 out of 300 readers, what really matters is getting the Wikipedia article's text correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I guess then it goes back to @D6194c-1cc's original question of whether the source(s) are reliable (and whether the Wikipedia article itself is reliable?). BetsyRogers (talk) 21:17, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

The main question is whether this one is reliable: [45], 2008 (it could be translated into English using Google Translator, the Document tab), it is used as a source titled "Применение кислородных коктейлей, при профилактике и лечении бронхолегочных заболеваний у детей. Пособие для врачей (Russian)". This manual was approved by Alexander Baranov ([46], [47]) who was the chief of the Union of Pediatricians of Russia (see [48] for what it is).

As for Alexander Baranov, I examined two books in which he participated. In one (2009), is was said that homeopathy ("гомеопатические ЛС") is used in Russia, and there were even some instructions about the doses and the length of the treatment (without any claims about efficiency), but the another book (2015) stated that there was no evidence that such a treatment is effective (in the context of Anaferon treatment), referring to the MEDLINE. D6194c-1cc (talk) 15:07, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, I should mention that this manual relies on three articles from the "Русский медицинский журнал", which can't be considered reliable (see above). D6194c-1cc (talk) 15:47, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Draft:neonatal uterine bleeding

Please I would like to know if this article is notable enough to deserve an article on Wikipedia. If yes, I would need help on the draft as I am not a medical expert. João^hola 14:37, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's a notable subject. Is that the same as "Neonatal vaginal haemorrhage", ICD-10 P54.6? Or ICD-11's KA83.9? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

They are related but that is a prolonged one. @WhatamIdoing: João^hola 07:22, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it would be a good idea to add a sentence differentiating the subject of the article from the prolonged one.

Have you looked for medical textbooks that cover this? Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library has some. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I've added a few sentences about this. D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:28, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I advise you to use this script: User:Headbomb/unreliable. The safe method is to copy it into your user namespace and use it like this: User:D6194c-1cc/common.js. It shows predatory sources which are forbidden to use by WP:MEDRS, one in your article is highlited as predatory: 10.5455/IJMRCR.172-1658107368. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:43, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I modified the definition and made it less scary for the lay people. As this condition is harmless, it is better to write such facts explicitly in the preamble. D6194c-1cc (talk) 18:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Good idea. Prognosis, especially for unfamiliar conditions, is one of the things that readers have historically told us they really want to find in a Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Nobel yearly articles

I invite users here to provide feedback in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It is to discuss if yearly articles for Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine are necessary. Recently, the 2025 article was removed. ReyHahn (talk) 20:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

BTW, anyone who's interested in how Wikipedia handles Nobels might want to keep an eye on User:Markus Pössel/Nobel Laureates and Wikipedia Pages. I update it when I remember to, but anyone can. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

What's the rationale for deleting? I looked on the relevant talk page(s) and couldn't find an explanation. Have all of the other articles listing laureates for a given year been nominated as well? I ran some searches and there are a LOT of articles like this (laureates for one specific year and one specific prize). There's also a lot of overlap between other articles (e.g. a list of all laureates for a specific year, a list of all laureates for a specific prize, etc). ... Just wondering, why this article specifically? BetsyRogers (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Chikungunya virus

Hi there, I think we need a page for this virus. Could someone please set it up? There's material in Chikungunya that could be moved across to start it going. Thanks! Bob (talk) 20:21, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I've set up the split proposal at Talk:Chikungunya#Split proposal. Please comment there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:56, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, will see if I can get to doing anything here. CFCF (talk) 10:18, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Two unsourced articles needing help

These two articles need a source added:

• Cardiac aberrancy – this might not have the correct article title
• Isochronic tones – used to be a source about Alzheimer's

Can someone look at them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:54, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I've just redirected Cardiac aberrancy to QRS complex#Clinical significance, which I think is the most relevant section. Some of the text is dubious, so I don't think that there's anything worth salvaging; branch block is already linked from that section, which is important. Klbrain (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Some sources that can be used for isochronic tones: [49], [50], [51]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 18:35, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I've added them to the article. This is  Done.

WikiProject Medicine is one of the few groups to keep all tagged articles out of Category:Articles lacking sources. It took us literally years to reach this state, and I'd like to maintain it. If you can help out with this, there are some hints for finding unref'd articles in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-07-18/WikiProject report#WikiProject Medicine reaches milestone of zero unreferenced articles. I like the PetScan query, though it takes a moment to load. Please consider adding a note to your calendar, to-do list, or other organization systems to check this and either let all of us know what needs doing, or find and source the articles yourself. It's usually just one or two articles a week, and many hands make light work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Network physiology

Network physiology is tagged for needing attention in various respects. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:14, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

That new article feels rather spammy (e.g., MOS:DOCTOR violations). It might well be a notable subject, despite needing a lot of clean up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if there's an actual subject underneath all the spam, or if it's just a few people finding a trendy way to say "body parts are interconnected". Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:27, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

The article impresses as a vanity project for the proponent of the network physiology concept, Plamen Ch Ivanov, professor, founder, and director of the Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology, Department of Physics, Boston University. Ivanov has coined the term physiolome used in this 2021 review in the journal founded in 2021, Frontiers of Network Physiology, for which he is the editor-in-chief. Frontiers of Network Physiology is not MEDLINE-indexed.

A draft page for the Frontiers journal has been submitted by AlexYP123, reviewed, and declined, as of 13 Oct. AlexYP123 is also the page creator for the Network physiology article. Seems a WP:COI declaration is in order. Zefr (talk) 17:28, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Also this where AlexYP123 is conamed with Plamen Ch Ivanov. Have left an autobiography notice on the user's talk page. Zefr (talk) 18:36, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I checked the page with Earwig and found copyvio all over the place. The article is now tagged accordingly. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 22:55, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

By the way, the term "Network Physiology" was introduced in a 2012 Nature Communication paper (Network physiology reveals relations between network topology and physiological function | Nature Communications) and the term Human Physiolome project was introduced in a February 2016 article Revealing the network within – Physics World — a comprehensive atlas of dynamic maps representing all the interactions between organs and systems in the human body. Investigations in the field of Network Physiology provide the building blocks of a first atlas of dynamic organ interactions (see 2016 paper: Focus on the emerging new fields of network physiology and network medicine - IOPscience) AlexYP123 (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

By the way, the journal Frontiers in Network Physiology is indexed by PubMed, PMC, Web of Science Core Collection Emerging Sources Citation Index with impact factor 3, and Scopus with cirescore 4.4 AlexYP123 (talk) 15:53, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

I am a young researcher who is interested and considering entering the field but have not published yet on Network Physiology. I am also not affiliated or connected with the journal, Frontiers in Network Physiology — I noticed such journal exists as other Frontiers journals in physics, biomedical engineering, physiology and medicine. I have no conflict of interests. I am just fascinated and interested in this relatively new field.

I am surprised that the Wikipedia webpage on Network Physiology has been taken down. There are multiple reasons why a Wikipedia page on Network Physiology should exist:

1. Network Physiology is an established field that exists for more than 15 years with specific focus, fundamental questions, and methodology that distinguish it from other scientific fields and research areas.
2. As any other scientific field and research area, Network Physiology deserves to have a wikipedia page
3. There are thousands of researchers working in this field; simple Google Scholar search on “Network Physiology”, gives > 3,700 articles and documents that mention the term Network Physiology
4. There were multiple international scientific meetings on Network Physiology and whole-body research in the past years:

• International Summer Institute on Network Physiology (ISINP) 2017, 2019, 2022, 2025
• The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) workshop in 2021 to explore methodological synergies for systemic health research
• EMPOWER 2024 workshop on multi-disciplinary pathways and opportunities for whole-body research
• The Physiological Society (UK) international Webinar Series on Network Physiology in 2025

5. There is a scientific journal publishing (with impact factor) in the field of Network Physiology - Frontiers in Network Physiology.

6. There is an NIH institute in the USA — National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH — which is devoted to fostering research/clinical funding programs in whole-body research and Network Physiology

I am happy to address any suggestions and editorial comments to improve the page, but the page on Network Physiology should be restored, as it presents information about an existing and actively developing field, with its own specific focus, fundamental questions and methodology, as also evidenced by >100 references to publications included in the page. By the way, all points above, containing factual information, were included on the Wikipedia page.

I'm sure, if the page is left on, many others working in the field would make edits and contribute content to the page. Please provide editorial guidelines to restore the page. AlexYP123 (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

There's plenty of space to expand physiology with well-written content on 'Systems Physiology' and its synonyms; or physiome. Klbrain (talk) 17:46, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

As I understand, the topic is notable: [52], [53], so the article can be created. The previous page was deleted because of copyright violations, not because it wasn't notable. D6194c-1cc (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, the problem with the first attempt was copy/pasting from other publications. Editors need to Wikipedia:Use our own words. Just like an assignment you would write for a university class, the wording must be 100% original to you: no copy/pasting from sources, no close paraphrasing, no plagiarism, no AI-generated paragraphs – just your own words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Neither of those specific sources should count towards notability. The latter is obviously WP:PRIMARY, since it's by the inventor of the term, and the former was edited by him and published in a journal for which he leads the editorial board. The article must be based upon medically reliable sources that are independent of Plamen Ch. Ivanov. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:01, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, NCCIH has been criticized for legitimizing quackery, and Frontiers Media is widely seen as a sub-par publisher ("Very much hit-and-miss" per Wikipedia CiteWatch). A case for notability should be built on more solid stuff than this. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

The NCCIH and Frontiers situations are about whether the claims about the subject are "true". Whether the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article is about how much coverage it gets in independent sources, not about things like whether those sources are "legitimizing quackery". Even outright snake oil can be notable – if it gets enough press. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

It's true that outright snake oil can be notable, but we can only build a notability case using reliable sources. Whether anything from NCCIH should be deemed "reliable" is a gray area at best; likewise journals such as Frontiers in Network Physiology (which also fails the independence requirement). Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

If somebody is still interested in the topic, here's a way to search for unaffiliated review articles: [54]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:38, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

But as for affiliation, journals sometimes publish editorials, which are the same as if someone who leads the editorial publishes an article in that journal. I sometimes use editorials, because they can have valuable information. And the editorial usually broadly explains the topic that is in focus of the journal. I don't see much difference between an editorial and an article that explains the field of the journal. In case of an article, it was still peer-reviewed. So, is is only the notability thought to be questionable in such affiliations? If the other source still covers the topic, then the affiliated article is acceptable for Wikipedia, am I right? D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:20, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't notice that such an article is already marked as editorial: [55]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Epigenetic clock Horvath errata

The article heavily relies on a paper by Horvath which has an errata. The errata is substantial, and it honestly too dense for my non-expert eyes to make any sense of it. If someone could review the errata and the article, make any updates, or simply add |checked=yes to the erratum template if things are all cool, that would be great. I'll also notify WP:MCB. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

For convenience: erratum and Retraction Watch article CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 23:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

The two editors who wrote much of that material have both been inactive for a few years, so I don't expect to get help that way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

You're right that it's a significant error. Thank you for catching that! That's really unfortunate the author(s) didn't catch this mistake sooner before publishing. This sort of thing can create such a mess, since it also "contaminates" articles/reviews that rely on the retracted data/conclusions.

Personally, I would eliminate that as a reference entirely. Others might disagree, but this is for a general audience, and the average reader won't be able to (and shouldn't have to) sort through the information in the paper and decide what to take as valid and what to ignore. The Wikipedia article can be fixed, but if you leave the reference there, you (we) are saying it's a reliable source of information, when unfortunately it's not really.

Are there other references that can be used in place of this? If there's anything (unrelated to the retraction) that's been repeated & confirmed by another group, perhaps those references could be used instead. I'm almost wondering if there should be a small section at the end for "retracted work" or something like that (the paper itself wasn't retracted but the errata did say they're "retracting" certain conclusions). That way the error can be pointed out clearly, so if it's cited within one of the other references, people will know there's an issue with the paper and proceed with caution. BetsyRogers (talk) 19:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@BetsyRogers, are you able to start the clean up work on that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I can give it a try. To be honest, the article needs a lot of work. My concern is that if I start editing it and can't finish in a timely manner (my time is limited these days) it could end up being more confusing. Then again, I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I might be overthinking it. :) BetsyRogers (talk) 02:05, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your work there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Stub Sorting

Hello - I'm trying to support the project by working through the Stub Sorting page. Should I limit the changes to the stubs on that page, or can I also use the wider Health stubs? TodaysFilter (talk) 12:29, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

@TodaysFilter The disease stubs are fairly well organized (at least last time i checked) but occasionally people will mess up the genetic diseases. As far as sorting uncategorized stubs, feel free to throw any disease into the disease stub category and i or someone else can further subcategorize them. the other important ones are the medical treatment stubs, pharmacology stubs, medical signs stubs, and psychology stubs. Take a browse through those and see if they are overcluttered. usually there’s enough context clues from even just a stub to categorize into a more specific category. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 20:09, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Quick question about this: The guidelines say "if article is no longer a stub, please remove the stub-related templates." Can anyone suggest a good way to decide if an article is no longer a stub? I found this page about content assessment but (as they acknowledge) it's pretty subjective. Any suggestions? BetsyRogers (talk) 19:50, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

The usual rules of thumb are: more than 250 words or more than 10 sentences or having multiple sections. It's much more important to get stub tags off of articles that are obviously not stubs than to worry about whether that's 240 or 260 words, or if 11 short sentences is as good as 10 short ones, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

What to do when you see an "unknown importance" category tag?

I came across an article that's tagged with a category for Molecular Biology articles of "unknown importance" ({{Category:Unknown-importance_Molecular_Biology_articles}}). I clicked on the link and apparently there are 32,334(!) articles in this category. I saw something on the list that I recognize, but I'm not sure what the guidelines are for adding or removing this category, or what it's even used for. If anyone knows more about this, any info would be appreciated. Is there a recommended/requested action to take if we see this tag? BetsyRogers (talk) 19:30, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment for our criteria. We have 2,000 such articles at the moment. A significant number of ours could be classified by bot, if we made a list of biographies, businesses, schools, laws, books, etc. (because those are all |importance=Low |society=yes for us). I should probably make the list and take it to Wikipedia:Bot requests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I need a volunteer to look through this list of about 1,500 articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox&oldid=1318981619

and remove anything that is not a person, a publication, an organization, or otherwise involves a single country. When in doubt, please boldly take it out. Once another pair of eyes has looked through the list, then I'll go to BOTREQ and ask then to tag them all as |importance=Low |society=yes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I can do some of this. BetsyRogers (talk) 08:09, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Just curious, how did you generate that list? Was it some sort of search/filter? BetsyRogers (talk) 08:14, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

The last time I did this, I ran a Wikipedia:PetScan search, to combine Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles with pages that are already tagged as being BLPs.

However, that misses a lot of articles, so this time I did it manually. I started with the entire list and removed articles that either I knew weren't low-importance or whose name might not have been a low-importance article. (Because getting the tags wrong is worse than leaving it untagged, I was generous with removal.)

Doing it manually is why I want a second pair of eyeballs on it: I'm pretty sure I overlooked some articles that should have been removed, and anyway, you should never try to proofread your own work. I really appreciate your help, and would be happy to have others take a look, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh wow, that's impressive. :)

I'm just now having some distraction-free time (its been a crazy day) so I'll take a closer look. One question: I noticed several items that are government legislation (e.g. "Access to Health Records Act 1990"). Do you want those left in? BetsyRogers (talk) 06:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Well... I think I might be doing this wrong. I just realized there's a longer list of importance/priority criteria listed on the assessment page (near the bottom) that I didn't see before. I had removed some things from your list that should in fact be low priority. I'll revert those. Just wanted to let you know what that was about. Sorry for any confusion. BetsyRogers (talk) 01:00, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I went through the list a few times, and I think it looks good! In the end I only removed a couple of things. BetsyRogers (talk) 03:46, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I really appreciate it. I'll take it to BOTREQ. (For this kind of action, I strongly prefer erring on the side of caution. When in doubt, take it out!) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Rectosigmoid sphincter

I've just created the article rectosigmoid sphincter (previously Sphincter of O'Beirne), based on a number of medical papers that mention it (see the many cites in the article for details).

However, I can't see it on any lists of standard anatomical terms; I'm wondering whether this should be merged into a new rectosigmoid junction article where the whole matter can be gone into in more detail (does it exist? - apparently yes - is is a true sphincter or a functional sphincter - and so on).

I'm not a medical professional, so can someone knowledgeable please review it (and check its citations)? Also, is it significant enough to add to the {{Gastrointestinal tract}} template?

— The Anome (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

It should be in the TA - Terminologia Anatomica if it's generally accepted, and I do agree that it should be merged if it is only a hypothesized structure. Also ping to @Tom (LT) who may want to introduce you to WP:ANATOMY. CFCF (talk) 11:01, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

(Unfortunately, Tom's most recent edit was a few months ago.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

The article name should be Rectosigmoid junction as that is a more acceptable and used terminology.

That being said, what is the purpose of the article? why do you think this particular junction of the colon deserves an article for itself? DrTheHistorian✎ 16:37, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

From my layman's perspective, was what caught my attention and made me think the topic might be notable was the controversy over what I would have thought was a relatively simple matter that would be easy to resolve through observation. I find it fascinating that we are still finding new things, centuries after the beginning of the science of anatomy. — The Anome (talk) 19:52, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Medical field is evolving rapidly and new things are being found and it is very fascinating, specially in the molecular level. Still don't see enough information for the need of a sole article other than this is a watershed area. Unless you find some ground breaking stuff that has been discovered.

Suggesting maybe add this on the Colon article and we can grow it there. DrTheHistorian✎ 22:49, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

The topic might be notable if a secondary source exists that reviews the topic. I found a primary study that probably fits this criteria, but in the context of research history: [56]. Even its Introduction section can be considered secondary for the information about the history of research, it's debatable whether it makes the topic notable because it's still a primary study. But another source probably makes the topic notable: [57]. Also, some useful information about the names and the definition of the sphincter problem: [58], [59], [60], [61]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:01, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. My approach would be that if a topic meets our notability guidelines, then it would deserve to be an article, noting that like in other areas there will certainly be some structures in anatomy that are not universally accepted as such - however, we're not the arbiter of truth but here to cover what is considered notable. I would also suggest to follow the general WP:SPLIT and WP:MERGE guidelines so, if this article is likely to be a couple of sentences, it may be better mentioned in the same article as something related, such as the rectosigmoid junction rather than piecemeal. Regarding the template, I don't think it would be appropriate to either mention it in the broad topical navbox nor put that navbox in the article; an appropriately granular navbox would be best, something mentioned in MEDMOS. Tom (LT) (talk) 06:30, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

@The Anome, if you are still interested in the article, you can try to write a more detailed article using the sources I provided.

But there is still a problem of defining the scope of animals. Currently (in the context of the sources), it is written about humans (in the sources). And also, WP:MEDDATE should be considered because the source I have found is really old and not actual. D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:36, 30 October 2025 (UTC) (updated at 14:59, 30 October 2025 (UTC))

Anti-inflamantory medications

Anti-inflamantory medications (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I think this is a new article, though there have been several page moves, making the history a bit confusing. Regardless, it is poorly-written (or re-written?), by someone with a poor grasp of English, and apparently no familiarity whatsoever with WP:MEDRS. I also suspect that a LLM may well have been involved in the writing. Could one of the regulars here perhaps take a look? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:15, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

We already have an article for NSAIDs, dont see why another one was made. It does seem that they took the information straight from Anti-inflamantory page and that page needs a lot of attention and work. Not familiar with deletions but don't see a reason why we need two of the same article. DrTheHistorian✎ 23:00, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

It would probably be pushing it a little, but there's a part of me that wants to see all usage of 'Anti-inflamantory' on Wikipedia REVDEl'ed, on the basis that there ain't no such word, nohow. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:39, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I did make a spelling mistake on the "inflammatory" in my cm above while tagging it.

Well some drugs do have anti-inflammatory purposes, NSAIDs being the most known one, some such as Glucocorticoids (eg: prednisone) can also have anti-inflammatory effects. So deleting all of them would'nt be wise :)

It is also a word, see: Merriam-Webster Dictionary. DrTheHistorian✎ 00:49, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Can you re-post the link to the article? I'm seeing a red link in your initial comment, and a search for "Anti-inflammatory medication" redirects to Anti-inflammatory (which does need some work but I don't think that's the article you were referring to). BetsyRogers (talk) 06:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

With all the page moves etc, I think the problematic version has now been deleted, and we are back to something acceptable. An admin should be able to figure out where it went an send you a copy if you need to see it. There was a lot more wrong with it that just the misspelled title. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:15, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Ok, I thought that might be what happened. Sounds like a good call. Thanks for flagging that! BetsyRogers (talk) 18:37, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that the article Anti-inflammatory should be moved to Anti-inflammatory drugs and describe the mechanism of action of steroid and non-steroid drugs. I don't have access to these sources: [62], [63], [64], but they might be making the topic notable. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:43, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Anti-inflammatory diet redirects there, and that is 'a thing' in medicine, even if it got blanked for saying things like "A 2022 meta study found that plant-based diets such as a vegan, vegetarian, or mediterranean diet or the DASH diet are associated with lower inflammation levels" ...which I'd have thought to be pretty unobjectionable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, Mediterranean-type diet is associated with longer life, it's not surprising that it is associated with anti-inflammatory effects ([65]) rather than any plant-based. Vegetarian and vegan diets have some problems like possible B12-deficiency and smaller amounts of essential amino acids in consumed food. But information like this should be in the Anti-inflammatory diet article. Anti-inflammatory is about the property, so there's not much to say about it, I doubt that it is even notable. D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:53, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Wow. Anti-inflammatory diet is definitely a mainstream medical thing that doctors (including mine!) are starting to recommend for patients (like me) with chronic pain. There's some solid data on certain types of foods being associated with higher levels of inflammatory markers as well. I could understand removing that section if the article was specifically about "anti inflammatory medications", because dietary modification isn't medication. Honestly I think it makes more sense to have an article that's just for anti-inflammatory drugs. "Anti-inflammatory" is a very broad term. (Also it's an adjective, not a noun). BetsyRogers (talk) 18:29, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Can I suggest a change in the title for the article to "Anti-inflammatory drugs"? I can't find an article with that title (or "Anti-inflammatory medicines" etc). It just redirects to this article. Also is there a way to figure out how many redirects are going to that page? BetsyRogers (talk) 18:33, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I guess i should put that "proposal" in the talk section for the article... BetsyRogers (talk) 18:59, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

The question is whether we want that page to be a Wikipedia:Broad-concept article ("multiple things called anti-inflammatory"), or if we want that page to be only about medications ("only drugs claimed to be anti-inflammatory"). I suppose it could also be a Wikipedia:Disambiguation page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I support having three pages:

- a broad concept article for "anti-inflammatory" that explains multiple things are considered anti-inflammatory (medications, foods, ice etc) and why (e.g. causes reductions in biomarkers, reduction in signs etc)

- "anti-inflammatory drugs" for medicines

- "anti-inflammatory diet" for discussion of foods/diets that have been proposed as anti-inflammatory. Daphne Morrow (talk) 01:56, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

@Daphne Morrow I posted on the talk page (see "Proposed title change to "Anti-inflammatory drugs" (or restore some of the deleted sections)" ) before I saw your reply here. That's a good suggestion to consider. Maybe you could re-reply on the article talk page? BetsyRogers (talk) 05:10, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

To have a page about anti-inflammatory as a broad topic, one have to find a source that reviews it in such a way, see Wikipedia:Notability. I tried to search a little, but didn't find anything. D6194c-1cc (talk) 05:51, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Technically, we shouldn't have a page titled "anti-inflammatory" at all, because it's an adjective, and article titles should be nouns. But it should be obvious that various efforts to reduce inflammation are discussed as a whole; "take some NSAIDS" is followed closely by "get some exercise" and "eat a healthful diet", because all of these things treat inflammation. The only real question in my mind is what to name the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm having trouble finding suitable recent secondary sources

a) an overall source discussing anti-inflammatories in general. I'm not sure if a immunology textbook might discuss interventions for chronic inflammation?

b) specific sources for diet, exercise, sleep, and ice interventions. (for NSAIDs, steroids and fibre I don't expect to have any trouble). A lot of these came from one trove of research on the topic:

I've got this 2022 review of omega-3

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1567576922005884

This 2019 review of the mediterranean diet that mentions the anti-inflammatory hypotheses and associations: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.118.313348

I've maybe got this from 2019 for tumeric:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043661818319236

and this from 2023:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043466623000224

I've got this finding exercise intensity did not affect chronic inflammation from 2021:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1440244020307830

Sleep from 2024:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09727531241275347 Daphne Morrow (talk) 23:58, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried turning it around, and instead of searching for "anti-inflammatory", searching for something like "treatments for inflammation" or "inflammation reduction"? The common lay-person word isn't necessarily the term that medical sources will use. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

That's a good point. I'll add it to my to-do list.

I'm also finding reviews of pro-inflammatory interventions, but I will add any info from those to the article on inflammation. Daphne Morrow (talk) 00:14, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Neurotherapy

I think this article (Neurotherapy) could do with some attention from project members. There are general areas I would feel confident editing, but I have no familiarity with the subject so feel unable to assess much of the actual content. At a quick glance some of it sounds like it could be pseudoscience to my untrained eye Beevil (talk) 19:19, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@Beevil, a quick trip to PubMed suggests that the word neurotherapy is used for a wide variety things, including being a synonym for Neurofeedback and any drug intended to affect nerves.

If @Tryptofish can find time to look it over, that might be best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. It looks to me like commercial jargon, rather than really being "a thing", more like an assortment of other stuff that was pulled together under a dubious name. There is probably stuff there that could be merged into other pages, but I don't think it should be a standalone page. In particular, the Medical uses and Types sections of the page make it sound to me like the real topic is Neuromodulation (medicine). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Maybe a Wikipedia:Disambiguation page? It could list

• Neuromodulation (medicine)
• Stroke rehabilitation
• Neurofeedback
• Neuropharmacology
• Category:Drugs acting on the nervous system

etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Personally, I see it more as a redirect. Pharmacol/drugs is really a stretch. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

All right. I've tagged the pages for a merge. Depending on how much the two articles overlap, then a Wikipedia:Blank and redirect might be the right option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Help needed: dated top-importance GAs and FAs

One of our project goals is to reach B-class in all 100 top-importance articles. After doing some minor reclassifying between high and top importance based on pageviews + the Global Burden of Disease studies, I ran my source age script on this set of articles. Where the median source age was 2011 or older and the article mostly had biomedical content, I changed B class into C class. I haven't looked yet at the articles with more mixed content that might also be overly dated. I would love to put in the preparations for a big push to get all of our core articles to B class or higher, and one step is to (1) find new maintainers for GA/FAs using their reassessment processes and (2) reclass in the absence of a maintainer.

Article	Share sources older than 2015	Median age source	Class
Abortion	0.71	2009	B
Addiction	0.53	2014	C
Alcoholism	0.7	2009	GA
Allergy	0.75	2007	C
Alzheimer's disease	0.49	2015	B
Anaphylaxis	0.74	2011	GA
Anemia	0.54	2013	B
Antimicrobial	0.44	2016	B
Antiseptic	0.73	2010	B
Anxiety disorder	0.49	2015	B
Asthma	0.71	2011	GA
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder	0.56	2013	GA
Autism	0.32	2019	C
Bipolar disorder	0.66	2013	C
Birth control	0.75	2011	GA
Bone fracture	0.48	2016	B
Breast cancer	0.47	2016	B
Breastfeeding	0.46	2015	B
Burn	0.81	2012	GA
Cancer	0.76	2010	C
Cardiovascular disease	0.58	2014	B
Cataract	0.71	2011	C
Cervical cancer	0.53	2014	B
Childbirth	0.58	2014	B
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	0.36	2017	GA
Chronic pain	0.48	2015	B
Cirrhosis	0.36	2018	B
Colorectal cancer	0.48	2015	B
Common cold	0.64	2013	GA
COVID-19	0.0	2024	B
COVID-19 vaccine	0.03	2021	C
Croup	0.78	2009	GA
Death	0.67	2010	B
Dementia	0.29	2018	B
Dengue fever	0.34	2019	FA
Diabetes	0.43	2016	B
Diarrhea	0.72	2011	B
Disease	0.74	2009	B
Enteritis	0.61	2013	C
Epilepsy	0.56	2013	GA
Fever	0.61	2012	B
Gastroenteritis	0.87	2010	GA
Gout	0.6	2013	GA
Health	0.62	2013	B
Health care	0.37	2017	B
Health effects of tobacco	0.79	2007	C
Hearing loss	0.44	2015	B
Hepatitis	0.55	2014	B
Hepatitis A	0.6	2012	B
Hepatitis B	0.67	2009	GA
Hepatitis C	0.68	2011	GA
Herpes	0.87	2006	GA
HIV/AIDS	0.8	2010	GA
Hypercholesterolemia	0.67	2011	B
Hypertension	0.5	2014	GA
Infection	0.56	2013	B
Influenza	0.38	2017	FA
International Classification of Diseases	0.3	2017	B
Kidney disease	0.7	2011	C
Liver cancer	0.57	2013	B
Low back pain	0.62	2012	GA
Lung cancer	0.15	2020	FA
Major depressive disorder	0.54	2013	FA
Major trauma	0.94	2009	B
Malaria	0.62	2012	GA
Malnutrition	0.65	2012	B
Medicine	0.71	2008	B
Meningitis	0.77	2008	FA
Mental disorder	0.7	2010	C
Migraine	0.57	2012	GA
Multiple sclerosis	0.43	2017	B
Myocardial infarction	0.61	2013	GA
Myopia	0.51	2014	B
Obesity	0.74	2008	GA
Osteoarthritis	0.53	2014	B
Pain	0.76	2007	B
Parkinson's disease	0.2	2020	B
Pneumonia	0.68	2011	GA
Polio	0.6	2009	B
Pregnancy	0.57	2013	B
Prostate cancer	0.17	2021	FA
Rheumatoid arthritis	0.63	2012	B
Sanitation	0.19	2017	B
SARS-CoV-2	0.0	2023	B
Schizophrenia	0.41	2016	FA
Sepsis	0.6	2014	B
Sexually transmitted infection	0.66	2013	B
Skin cancer	0.71	2012	B
Stomach cancer	0.68	2013	B
Stroke	0.71	2011	C
Suicide	0.68	2012	B
Surgery	0.65	2012	B
Tooth decay	0.74	2011	B
Tuberculosis	0.44	2016	GA
Type 2 diabetes	0.48	2015	GA
Urinary tract infection	0.61	2013	GA
Vaccination	0.5	2014	B
Vaccine	0.53	2014	B
Visual impairment	0.61	2013	B
Vitamin	0.78	2008	GA

Could people here help out with checking old GAs and FAs and putting notifications on the talk page and contacting the old nominator if they're still around? The articles likely in need of a notification:

1.  Done Herpes. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:28, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
2. Meningitis
3. Obesity
4. Vitamin
5. Alcoholism
6. Croup
7. Hepatitis B
8. Gastroenteritis
9. HIV/AIDS
10. Anaphylaxis
11.  Done Asthma. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:47, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
12. Birth control
13. Hepatitis C
14. Pneumonia
15. Bacteria.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:30, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this! I wonder if it would help to create a separate page somewhere for listing just the high-priority/class articles to help focus efforts and keep track of progress? (Unless there already is one. I looked around on the project page and didn't see one.) I'm new here and don't want to step on any toes, but if there were a list like that, I think it would be very useful. BetsyRogers (talk) 19:11, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea, @BetsyRogers. There's different ways to do the prioritization. Here, I've taken the articles in the Category:Top-importance_medicine_articles, with some tweaks removing odd entries and moving in a few bigger topics. But I imagine that the top-importance articles aren't quite the most important articles, and that if we go for multi-year pageviews, we can have more of an impact. What kind of articles would you include? I noticed that there's little relationship between pageviews and disease burden, if we want a third way of prioritizing. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't seen that list before. Does it say somewhere how the list is made? (i.e. specific criteria used?). BetsyRogers (talk) 21:49, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know the history of the list (also somewhat new at this WikiProject), but the criteria are listed at WP:MEDIMP. That describes pageviews as a key criterion, so we might be able to tweak the list further to align with reader interest. A study from 8 years ago suggested some changes I've been tempted to make, like downgrading the major trauma article (which has low pageviews), and possibly upgrading Crohn's disease. Using the mass pageviews for the category, you can find out which ones might need a downgrade. A similar search in the high-importance article gives us candidates for articles to switch in. Some articles might get low pageviews because they have cryptic names (like Hypercholesterolemia), so it's not the only criterion. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 22:08, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

We haven't thoroughly reviewed the articles in those categories for a long while. Just follow the directions, use some common sense, and don't worry too much about perfection on the borderline subjects. If you're really stuck and don't want to make a decision, you can list an article at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment#Requesting an assessment or re-assessment, where someone will eventually see it.

The general hope is to limit the Top- category to 100 articles, High- to about 1,000, and Mid- to about 10,000. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

There's probably not great way to do this but I've often wondered if there's a way to determine which medical/science articles are most frequently polluted with misinformation (i.e. using some quantitative parameters). Some are obvious like vaccines, covid-19, anything related to climate change, etc, but I suspect there are a lot that I haven't thought of. BetsyRogers (talk) 00:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Switched out a couple more. I tried to make pair-wise switches where both pageviews and disease burden were higher, which meant I'm keeping some low-pageview ones in there like chronic pain. I don't know how much pageviews change with the article title, but there's a few I hope will pick on numbers after a move (like myopia and high cholesterol). In terms of misinformation: conditions with less scientific understanding (like a lot of women-dominant conditions), are prone to promoting alternative medicine viewpoints. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I've put a few more suggestions on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment#Requesting an assessment or re-assessment page that I'm less sure about. Would be good if someone else can have a look as well to the entire list (compared to the High-importance most-read articles). When we're happy, I will create a subpage for a project to push all of them to B-class and above (including the outdated GAs etc). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:35, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried contacting the noms for the GAs and FAs? Or even the reviewers, as many of them are also good editors? For example, I'm pretty sure that @Doc James did the work that resulted in Obesity reaching GA. Given what I see in the news (about a proposed multi-factorial change to the what it's measured), that might require a little more work than just swapping in a more recent source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

That's what I'm asking help for now. Leaving a message on both the old GA/FA where appropriate, and the nominator's talk page if they're still around. Doc James wrote a fair bit of these GAs, so started a conversation, but others are still to follow. Good idea to also find the reviewer. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 06:55, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

US healthcare policy in New York

Greetings! I have grown exhausted with health policy and have collected my efforts in the healthcare in New York State article, and I wish to move on to other issues. Health policy is only part of the New York state government, and although important, there are other government and law topics that also cause distress to many and are woefully underdeveloped.

Most of my work has been in the state Department of Health, state Office of Mental Health, state Office of Addiction Services and Supports, and state Education Department articles where most technical details can be found.

I invite my betters to take over. I cannot see the forest for the trees at this point, given the breadth and depth that this topic contains. Much of this won't be found in one place anywhere else besides Wikipedia. Here. Us. (Certainly not Grokipedia.) Without such articles, I think articles only dealing with the United States or Earth will traffic in vagaries and generalizations, given that healthcare policy is reserved to the states and the People under our Constitution.

I think we are closest with New York, so I urge completion by people in the know. I think it's complicated enough that even politicians and journalists need this. Let's get this buttoned up and fold the information into US and other states' articles at a technical level. This is only the beginning. @Bluerasberry: @Nightscream: thank you, and thanks all. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 01:32, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

@Int21h: Hi, Int21h. Have we interacted on WP before? Nightscream (talk) 02:35, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Unsure. You created the New York State Office of Mental Health article. Minimal as though it may have been, 'twas important. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 02:58, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

By way of more detail, I feel like it took alot of sleuthing to figure out some random 1977–1978 uncodified state statute created this very important core department of government. Not sure that without your creation it would ever have led to this. It's one page in or so in all of the major government books that this "office" was in fact a de facto department of government. (The state is limited by their constitution from having too many departments, so they apparently just call them offices. An end run around the Constitution that causes much confusion.) int21h (talk · contribs · email) 03:16, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

And to fix my earlier comment where I said 1997 instead of 1977–1978, I note that the 1977–1978 law or laws are still not accessible. How crazy is that, we are required to known the law. No way I'd have seen it. Your weight mattered. The law itself is not accessible to anyone, yet because of you, we have breached the unknown. So hello and thank you. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 03:27, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

@Int21h: I still develop related content but I am not in this exact space.

I left most Wikipedia development of government agencies, but am trying to model Wikidata for this. For NY state check d:Wikidata:WikiProject Govdirectory/United States of America/New York and compare to the more developed d:Wikidata:WikiProject Govdirectory/United States of America/North Carolina. The goal is to do this for every government agency in the world. When we do that, then it becomes easier to compare agencies in a specific field, like all state level health agencies in the United States.

For policy, I have university research access to the https://www.overton.io/ policy database. With meta:Wikidata:WikiCite I am trying to do Wikimedia indexing of policies, but curation at scale of this is halted for about a year for technical development as the Wikimedia Foundation replaces Wikidata's backend with an entirely new database architecture.

For years the state of the art has been on cusp of providing easy public access to identification of all agencies, lists of all their outputs, and relating their documents and policies to their outputs, but not yet. I would be happy to talk with you about this if this kind of infrastructure interested you.

To promote the development you have done to healthcare in New York (state), I have cross-posted this conversation to the talk page at the Wikidata United States GovDirectory. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:03, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Psychodermatology NPOV

The short description for Psychodermatology says that psychodermatology is an "Unproven, pseudo-medicine treatment of skin disorders". The article itself does not give me any such impression; rather it seems to treat psychodermatology as a legitimate practice. This suggests to me that either the short description or the content of the article is biased. Surtsicna (talk) 17:27, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I've changed the short description to a more neutral one. Apparently, there is pseudoscientific misinformation around this (saying you can cure skin disorders with your mind), but PubMed gives a lot of legitimate search results as well. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:40, 1 November 2025 (UTC)