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| author = Noam Cohem

| title = How Misplaced Pages Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation
== "Unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim" ==
| org = ]

| url = https://www.wired.com/story/how-wikipedia-prevents-spread-coronavirus-misinformation/
The sentence "Individual primary sources should not be cited or juxtaposed so as to "debunk" or contradict the conclusions of reliable secondary sources" is wonderfully clear, and I've been wondering whether to incorporate it in ] (on grounds that it's a logical consequence of existing policy, and hence applies to all articles). However, the final part of the sentence ("unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim") doesn't make sense to me. If a source debunks, contradicts, or otherwise comments on the conclusions of a secondary source then it isn't a primary source. It's a secondary (or tertiary) source. What is it intended to mean, and how can it be rephrased to better express that meaning? ] (]) 09:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
| date = March 15, 2020
:Agree we should get rid of it. --] (] · ] · ]) 10:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
| quote = Misplaced Pages shows, however, that extreme circumstances, especially when related to public health, require different, more stringent rules, not better application of existing rules. The stakes are simply too high.
(outdent) It means, if a primary source directly criticises a secondary source, for example, a primary source, may point out undeclared conflicts of interests or perceived flawed methodology used by reviewers or confounding variables etc. The primary source would basically be saying the review by such and such group of researchers is flawed because,,,,. The primary source would have to specifically mention a secondary source by name. It is NOT the same as using a primary source such as an individual study to debunk a review of studies. I don't think the line should be got rid of but perhaps it is possible to better word it?--]&nbsp;|&nbsp;] 23:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
::But many of these comments are not WP:DUE. For example we have this report by the AHRQ which was criticised by one of the leaders of the religious movement in question --] (] · ] · ]) 06:10, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
:Ah. As I see it, whether a source is primary or secondary depends on how it is used. If we cite a source for its criticism of another source, then we aren't using it as a primary source. We're using it as a secondary source. That's why I find it really confusing to see it described as a "primary" source. I think we've got used to thinking "primary source = anything in a primary research study, secondary source = anything in a review", which is often convenient, but it's an oversimplification. As Doc James points out, though, there are frequently undue weight issues associated with citing primary research studies.
:How about rephrasing: ''Individual primary sources should not be cited or juxtaposed so as to "debunk" or contradict the conclusions of reliable secondary sources. Explicit criticism of secondary sources, however, may be included if appropriate, but be sure to assess ].'' ] (]) 07:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
::I don't agree with the suggested "Explicit criticism of secondary sources, however, may be included if appropriate". We really should try to mostly not discuss the sources in article text at all. Sometimes it is useful to explicitly mention research studies and meta analyses and even literature reviews, in text, but generally we should be in the business of describing facts, not the means by which folk discovered or write about those facts. So I don't want to encourage editors to argue/prove a point in front of the readers.
::Note that the guideline text does not say the primary source debunks the text of the secondary source, or the methodology or even the moral character of the authors (that would, indeed, make it a secondary source on the review it was debunking. It says it explicitly debunks or contradicts the ''conclusions'' in the secondary source. I think what we're trying to avoid is something like this garbage: "A Cochrane review in 2006 concluded that drinking XXX fruit juice had no protective benefits on YYY cancer. However, recent research shows that XXX fruit juice contains aaa compound , which is protective against cancer . Neither primary research paper directly or explicitly contradicts the conclusions of the review. However, if somone did a long-term study of people who regularly drink XXX fruit juice and those who didn't, and found and stated that it did indeed appear to have protective benefits on YYY cancer.... That recent research could potentially be used to debunk the old review. It would be explicitly debunking/contradicting the conclusions, but doesn't even need to mention previous reviews, so doesn't become a secondary source. ]°] 12:04, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

:::When we talk about directly making the claim that it de-bunks older works, I think we are looking for a paper that says something like, "The received wisdom in the field (as seen in every textbook for the last 100 years) says that patients should not be permitted to eat anything for 24 hours after major surgery. However, as far as we can make out, this popular old idea is based on zero evidence, and we've actually done a proper randomized, controlled trial, which we outline here, and the data produced says that the old surgeons' ideas about low diet is a bunch of bunk."
:::Our approach to using them (the textbooks and the RCT paper) would then look something like "Keeping the patient on a low diet after major surgery has been widely recommended,<sup></sup> but newer research suggests that it may be unnecessary.<sup></sup>"
:::If, on the other hand, we had the same study, but the authors made no direct mention of how their study supersedes the older works, then we would probably ignore it (for now): "Keeping the patient on a low diet after major surgery has been widely recommended.<sup></sup>" ] (]) 13:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
::::I disagree. I don't think there is any requirement for the new source text to explicitly name the debunked sources or to imply them with a remark like "every textbook for the last 100 years". The "de-bunks older works" comment falls into the same trap of confusing source text/work with the facts it presents. Criticism of older "works" might happen in a field like history, say. But research in medicine would tend to overturn previous "facts" rather than "works". Also, there's nothing the research authors can say or not say that makes any difference to the ] we give to their findings. So the argument that, depending on what they say, we could ignore them or not, doesn't work. The guideline we are discussing is preventing original research based on primary sources. It is a separate issue to consider whether that primary research paper's conclusions have enough weight to warrant mention. ]°] 15:22, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
:::::I have to say, I'm not comfortable with citing primary sources in either situation.
:::::In the case that the authors assert that their study is more significant than the sum of previous work, their assessment is unlikely to be wholly objective. They may well be correct, but it wouldn't be surprising if their view of the importance of their work was a little out of proportion. We're all prone to thinking our work is more important than it really is. I would generally think it best to wait until a secondary source cites their paper and judges the significance of their work from a less biased perspective.
:::::In the case that they make no particular assertion, I'd be very concerned if editors were to make that assessment themselves. True, much of the time the decision will be rational and in accordance with principles of evidence-based medicine, but many controversial topics are subject to widespread POV pushing, and it would be best to avoid long-winded debates full of original research about the relative importance of various studies. Again, why not just wait until a secondary source becomes available? It's unlikely to be ''that'' urgent, after all... ] (]) 09:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

{{od}} I agree with those above who think that the phrase "Unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim" is more problematical than helpful. I think there is a consensus for its removal, so I'm going to test that by removing it. I understand that it is possible that a better worded qualification might be preferable, so feel free to revert me and continue discussion here if I've misjudged the opinions expressed so far. --] (]) 15:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

== MEDRS - too complex? ==

I think the guidelines has become too complicated for its own good, specifically about primary sources. For example this vital article http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/12.07/11-dairy.html would be valid in most places but not here, this really concerns me and shows the flaws of Misplaced Pages and the urgent need for revision of the guidelines in general of any field. Helios solaris 16:11, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

:It is complex because the problem is complex. The article you link is a newspaper/magazine type of article based on a talk someone gave in their lunch hour. Why do you think a serious encyclopaedia should base its articles on that kind of "I've got a radical new idea and have cherry-picked a bunch of studies that support it" kind of journalism. -- ]°] 16:36, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
::Because if not it will fall behind. Helios solaris 17:33, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

:::I don't mind "falling behind" speculation and cherry-picking. The researcher in your source says that her hypothesis is unproven and not ready for prime time.
:::That said, this source ''is'' usable, for certain limited purposes. You could use it, for example, to support a claim that research is being conducted on the relationship between dairy consumption and hormone-sensitive cancers. You can't use it for a claim that any such link has been proven, or that readers should change their diets. ] (]) 19:04, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
::::There is insufficient evidence of ]. We have much better sources discussing what research is ongoing. --] (] · ] · ]) 10:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
::::: When you realise how hard it is to find secondary sources in the way that pleases Misplaced Pages and add it, even then it's suppressed, it becomes obvious that they are suspiciously superfluous. They exist only to subdue true evidence and strenghten the corporate establishment, just remember the tobacco industry do I need to say more. Critical thinking is clearly not welcomed here. --Helios solaris 16:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
::::::There's nothing wrong with critical thinking, we just don't let it affect our edits. ] is long established policy for one very good reason: when "anyone can edit", some anonymous/pseudonymous editors will be incapable of critical thinking. If we allow it for you, we have to allow it for everyone, including those who can't think at all. Instead, we insist on ] and ] ]. It works, though we have to keep explaining why we do it. ] <small>]</small> 19:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
:::::::I agree with Helios solaris. I witnessed in how the rules were used in order to serve commercial interests. This is in particular against public interest, when it comes to adverse effects to the commercial products.
:::::::Important side effects of the absorbed radiation, of a dose that CT impose, were not accepted, because of bad interpretation of the rules. The side effects included the extent of the caused DNA damage, cataracts, circulatory problems, and cognitive impairments. --] (]) 15:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

== Section tagging ==

Various templates (such as {{tl|MEDCN}}, {{tl|MEDRS}}) are available to tag reliable source problems inline. Is there one to flag up a whole section, i.e. some "medical source" version of {{tl|Refimprove}}? If not, I think there should be. ] (]) 10:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:Sounds like a good idea. --] (] · ] · ]) 10:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

::Well, if there isn't one already, how about something like my draft at ]? As with {{tl|refimprove}}, on which it is based, using the 1st parameter <tt>|section</tt> will replace "article" by "section". ] (]) 11:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
::{{tl|refimproveMED}}, though I don't know whether it has a section parameter. ] (]) 13:30, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

:: {{t1|Medref}} (where did that refimprove come from and which do we prefer), but no section parameter. ] (]) 13:32, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

:::Neither of these have section parameters, although they could be added. {{tl|RefimproveMED}} doesn't do what I want, because it says that the article is a health or medicine one, whereas I want a template to be added to e.g. a plant article that has a section on its supposed health benefits. {{t1|Medref}}, too, suggests more to me that the whole article is a medical one; I'm not sure that WikiProject Medicine would really want to get involved in sorting out a few odd herbal medicine claims added to what is mainly a plant article.
:::But I don't want to create yet another template unnecessarily, so what do others think? Could {{t1|Medref}} be worded so as to be a bit more appropriate to a non-medical article? I do think it's worth including this quotation "Biomedical information in articles must be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge" especially in a warning meant for a non-medical article. Editors who add this kind of information to plant articles simply don't know about this requirement. ] (]) 14:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Medref now has a section parameter: <tt><nowiki>{{medref|date=May 2012|small=1}}</nowiki></tt>. Cheers, — ] (]) 16:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
* Medref should now be appropriate for use on non-medical articles, too. The wording settled on ("This article needs more medical references for verification.") and template doc I wrote ("This template is intended to be placed at the top of articles with medical or health content") should cover health sciences related content in an otherwise non medical article. Further tweaks can be made if necessary. It now has a reason parameter <tt>|reason=foo is bar</tt> for giving specific details. Thanks, --] (]) 18:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

::Actually {{t1|Medref}} ''doesn't'' have a section parameter. This line:
:::<tt><nowiki>| text = This article '''needs more [[Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources</nowiki><tt>
::needs <tt>article</tt> replaced by <tt><nowiki>{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1}}}|article}}</nowiki></tt>
::exactly as in {{tl|refimprove}}, {{tl|no footnotes}}, {{tl|more footnotes}}, {{tl|how}}, etc. In all of these, if you use <tt><nowiki>{{TEMPLATE-NAME|section}}</nowiki></tt> the message becomes "This section needs more ..." instead of "This article needs more ..." ] (]) 21:57, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
::: It does. Sort of. If you look at the ] (down the bottom), you can see it's different to those templates in that the small/section version doesn't say "This article" ''or'' "This section". --] (]) 22:10, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:::{{ec}} It's not a parameter ''called'' section that I meant, but a parameter you can use for the small version in sections, which is what I thought you guys were talking about. Right now the template uses this first unnamed parameter as the rationale, so you don't have to explicitly use {{para|reason}}. We can change this, although if you want to use the small version in a section, it's a moot point since that line won't be displayed. This would also mean any existing templates using the first unnamed parameter for their rationales would need to be updated to use {{para|reason}}. — ] (]) 22:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:::: Added it. Hmm. It replaces the word article with the reason value when all params are used. That's fixable of course. Did you want it to replace <tt>|small</tt>? Allow both? --] (]) 22:27, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

:::::I've added this test <tt><nowiki>{{#ifeq:{{{1|}}}|section|section|article}}</nowiki></tt> to {{tl|medref}}. If, and only if, the first parameter is exactly the word "section", then the template will display "This section ..." instead of "This article ...". This change does not affect cases where the first parameter is a reason. I've used this in an article (], as of now) and it works fine. ] (]) 08:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::Actually I had to make another change to stop the word "section" appearing as a reason as well as forcing "This section ..." when {{para|reason}} was absent. I've tested all the cases and it should be ok now. ] (]) 09:18, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::I've also added information about {{tl|Medref}} to the documentation for {{tl|Refimprove}}, which is where I went in the first instance and failed to find the more specific template. ] (]) 09:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

===Add to Multiple issues?===
I think it might be worth adding it to {{tl|Multiple issues}} in line with other standalone templates. Wording (]) needs to be agreed on.

Something like:<small>
: It needs additional ] for verification. ''or''
: It relies on ] which may not be reliable sources for ]. ''or''
: It includes attribution to ] which may not be reliable for ].</small>
Thoughts? --] (]) 18:45, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:Yeah, I was planning on getting it set up along with expert-subject, which is also missing, since I've already added medref to the multiple issues template on a couple articles. EDIT: Actually expert-subject ''is'' in there, just called "expert". Anyway, I'll go add an edit request for medref. — ] (]) 20:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Just an FYI, the request to add medref to multiple issues was denied. I removed it from the three instances of multiple issues that I was aware of. Cheers, — ] (]) 16:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

== The guideline should be changed ==

"Basic advice", subsection "Assess evidence quality", paragraph 4 includes this statement: '''"''' ''"Assessing evidence quality" means that editors should determine the quality of the type of study. Editors should not perform a detailed academic peer review. Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.'' '''"'''

Recently, was proposed as a reference for the article "]". Several editors (including, latterly, myself) were critical of the study and objected to the use of the study as a reference. See full details ].

] quoted the above text from ] as justification for inclusion of Morgan's paper as a reference. In my opinion, the text fails to take into account those rare secondary sources that are severely biased or flawed, such as Morgan's paper.

I see no reason why editors shouldn't perform detailed peer reviews if they so choose. Moreover, I believe that such reviews can be helpful in determining suitability as references for Misplaced Pages. ] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small></font>]]</small> 19:41, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:Are there other reviews that are more recent that contradict this paper from 2004? We do say evidence from the last 3-5 years. --] (] · ] · ]) 20:28, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:: I don't believe that there are any other reviews of this nature &ndash; because the whole premise of the review is flawed. ] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small></font>]]</small> 20:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

:For information: the disputed text was added by WhatAmIDoing. A ] at the time of the edit did not bring about any further discussion. However, the note refers to ] and the whole section was added by Eubulides along with ]. -- ]°] 20:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

:I think we should allow editors to exercise judgement in deciding whether a secondary source is actually suitable. There are loads of secondary sources that are of insufficient quality. In that sense, the "peer review" should assess the quality of the source. Disputes as to the suitability should be resolved by consensus. In this case, there was consensus that the source was ''not'' suitable. ]&nbsp;&#124;&nbsp;] 21:46, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
::Yes agree that consensus should be followed over the guideline. If the majority of editors do not see this ref as suitable than it should not be used. Does not necessitate a change in ] though. Many people still fell that ] says using primary sources is fine when high quality secondary sources are available which IMO is a more pressing issue.] (] · ] · ]) 21:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
:::As per ] and ] above. Of course secondary sources are vulnerable to bias (and original studies can contain high-quality 'secondary source' material). Metanalyses and other systematic reviews are genuine 'studies' in their own right. Since WP:MEDRS needs to be widely comprehensible and has to safeguard against real-world dangers such as POV pushing and poorly informed editing, it can only provide rather broad guidance. So well-informed talk page discussions can be key. —] (]) 11:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

:I share some of WhatAmIDoing's concerns (expressed elsewhere) that we have to come up with rules that work for the POV pusher and the undereducated. I'm one of the undereducated. My brain is much smaller than that of MastCell and Axl and WhatAmIDoing; I have no health training beyond a first aid badge when I was in the Scouts; I'm just someone's dad. Some of WP's rules are here purely because of the special situation with our authors: we don't really know who they are; we don't trust who they say they are; most of them are bonkers; some of them aren't geniuses. An editor who is an expert in the subject is likely to find some of these rules frustrating at times.

:The problem with the Chemotherapy paper raises two issues. The first is that academic papers, whether primary research or reviews, are written for a certain learned audience, and not for general consumption. That PubMed has made them (and particularly their abstracts) so accessible, is wonderful but at the same time very dangerous. As the article talk page shows, the abstract is over-simplified to the point of being misleading. And it takes someone quite knowledgeable to discover what the analysis actually looked at and is capable of saying. Combine this with the possibility that the paper is flawed/biased and we have a problem. Fortunately, it is not a common problem, and is less of a problem than editors trying to pick/review primary research papers.

:The second issue is the level of source we are using here. There's too much emphasis on review papers among WP:MED folk in my opinion. Yes, it is wonderful to be able to read all this material on your browser or PDF on the computer, and search it and collate it on your hard disk. I do so myself. But what about books, guys, books! Chemotherapy is a big subject. I just searched Amazon on it and turned up several suitable texts including ISBN 160831782X: "Handbook of Cancer Chemotherapy", edited by Roland T. Skeel, Samir Khleif, published 2011 (an earlier edition is actually used by the article for one point, but sadly the page number isn't given). This is 832 pages of wonderful readable and up-to-date-enough material. Approximately 300,000 words by a rough estimate. Now our ] article is about 4,000 words. Which means you could condense that book 75x to achieve the current text. That's about 5 words from every page.

:The ] article is crap. There are many medical articles on WP I'd recommend to a friend, but that one isn't. Not by a long way. Why are we wasting days discussing the merits or otherwise of some 8-year-old review paper. Visit your university library bookshelves, or order a book (second-hand) from Amazon/etc -- you can always sell it later.

:] is underused in sourcing disputes. Rather than wikilawering over PSTS or disecting the journal paper or whatever, just find out "What do experts generally say, in published reliable sources, when writing about this subject". We are used to using WEIGHT to judge research findings: we read and use reviews/etc to find that. Similarly, we should use WEIGHT to judge analysis reports/reviews, especially if editors dispute them. What do our serious weighty oncology textbooks have to say on the subject? Rather than fall out with each other over such things, find some expert person/body who has already thought hard about it, published their work, and use that. ] specifically warns against editors forming their own consensus about what issues/facts to include in an article, so I disagree with JFW/Doc James on that point -- however I suspect if you follow my advice, the review and its conclusions would be rejected anyway. ]°] 22:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

::I feel that, in this instance, the issue could be resolved by proper usage of existing guidelines. Colin suggested above several alternatives to giving infinite weight to a single source that is seemingly flawed. I briefly proposed another on ] that involves exercising judgment not on the quality of the source, but whether the wiki text correctly reflect the conclusions being drawn by Morgan et al. To wit, is the source saying what the article is saying? In my mind, the source was misused because it was made to support a statement that is too broad. Unless a more systemic problem with ] is identified, I do not support making drastic changes to guidelines serving a useful purpose. ] (]) 23:30, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I didn't intend to re-hash the debate about the (lack of) merit of Morgan's paper here. Rather I wish to consider the value of this statement from WP:MEDRS: '''"''' ''Editors should '''not''' perform a detailed academic peer review. Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.'' '''"'''

Why shouldn't editors perform a detailed academic peer review, if they so wish?

The second sentence is potentially misleading. With careful reading, it implies that only the ''type'' of study needs to be high-quality. As long as the source is a review article, it doesn't matter how poor its quality. It is inevitable that some secondary sources are better quality than others. The second sentence implies that we should give them equal weight, regardless of their quality. ] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small></font>]]</small> 12:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
:Most editors aren't qualified, or indeed competent, to perform a detailed academic peer review, and we've no mechanism in place to identify those who ''are'' competent and give their views more weight. Consequently, we've no way of allowing experts to reject papers that are truly dire without also allowing POV pushers and fringe theorists to reject papers that they dislike, on the grounds of nothing but their own (often ill-informed or irrational) opinion. It's a similar situation to allowing editors to directly insert OR into articles: an appealing option in some respects, but dangerous in others. ] (]) 12:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

:Does the fact that "most" editors aren't "qualified" constitute a justification for allowing lunacy to be perpetuated? If I see some kind of glaring flaw in a study or review, am I supposed to act like nothing's wrong? I always thought of Wiki articles as de facto reviews in some cases--balanced, dispassionate, factual surveys of whatever knowledge exists in a given area. Does the fact that my objection to a reviewer's statement that black is white has not yet resulted in a "comment" in a journal or an entry in a blog mean that, because I cannot quote an objection, that we have to pretend that black is white until we can document an alternative position? Here's an example: I discovered in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3569020 that Burzynski, in 1987, theorized that one of his panacea molecules, #A10, interacts with DNA (which it does) to compete with carcinogens and thereby keep tumors from growing. The problem is that once tumors are formed, the carcinogen has nothing to do with it, and his molecules competing with carcinogens would have no conceivable bearing on the treatment of tumors (although, if correct, it is conceivable that they might be chemopreventive.) I have seen all kinds of criticism of Dr. B, but I have not seen anyone make that particular observation (maybe I missed it). If I were to be doing some kind of Wiki editing of his stuff (that is probably just as joyless as commenting on chemotherapy itself; I'm not even going to look), would I have to refrain from commenting on that? To me, it indicates an intellectual error that undermines the entire basis of what he thought he was doing. How could it be against Misplaced Pages policy not to point out the obvious? I don't think of Misplaced Pages as having to play the "emperor's new clothes" game.

:Even the most prestigious institutions sometimes publish material that cannot be allowed to be unquestioned, and certainly, we all know that possessing even a Nobel Prize does not immunize the recipient to error or to lunacy. (Dare I suggest that it makes it more probable?) "Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions"--does that not strike you as insane? I wouldn't not mention it, but it is totally unconscionable to allow lunacy to be perpetuated. Despite what I just said, all other things being equal, I am going to give more weight to something out of a top-tier institution, but I'm going to examine each item on its own merit. Nobody gets a pass. Let me give another example of something I could not allow to pass, although it comes from a highly reputable institution: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20043074, from MD Anderson. (Fortunately, that "study" did result in a fairly instant quotable counter-argument, such as at http://scepticsbook.com/2010/02/14/a-giant-leap-in-logic-from-a-piece-of-bad-science/, which also has the pdf of the original paper.) If there were no quotable counter-arguments, would Misplaced Pages have to go into the business of letting people believe that a solution containing no molecules of active ingredients is somehow capable of killing breast cancer cells?

:I think we also need better definitions than "reputable" medical journals (what is disreputable, and to whom?), and "widely recognised" standard textbooks (widely recognized by whom), "disreputable" journals or "disreputable" fields or "respected" publisher. Maybe there is an explanation for those terms somewhere; my own feeling is like Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it." We do have to maintain the attitude the consensus might be wrong on something, as well as what I have found, that even the woo usually has some grain of truth to it.
] (]) 05:16, 3 May 2012 (UTC)GeorgeButel
| author2 = Jackson Ryan
:Because it isn't necessary. Because it is the same kind of argument that a POV pusher will use and you will fail to convince him just like he will fail to convince you. If you disagree with the conclusions of a source, then so will other people. If lots of people agree with your view, then it shouldn't be hard to prove that using a source-based argument rather trying to explain the merits or deficiencies of the source/study. If you can't find other experts writing about this issue in a way that agrees with you, then either the article should contain the alternative viewpoint, or perhaps the whole issue doesn't deserve the weight editors think it does.
| title2 = Inside Misplaced Pages's endless war over the coronavirus lab leak theory

| org2 = ]
:Selecting sources, in general, is only the start. Then you need to work out what the article is going to say. Sourcing debates, without context, are somewhat pointless. The discussion didn't focus on the real questions facing article writing: What exact facts or other point would someone wish to draw from that source, and how would we write it? Is that the best source we can find for those facts (we already know it is 8 years old, which counts against it)? What do other high-quality sources have to say about that fact? Even if the fact isn't disputed, what weight is given to it in high-quality sources that discuss the general topic surrounding the fact, or the article itself? As a quick-and-dirty exercise, I searched the textbook I linked above, using Amazon, to see if it cites that paper or its authors. It doesn't. If a 300,000-word treatise on the article topic fails to use that source, why should we in our 4,000-word piece? ]°] 12:46, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
| url2 = https://www.cnet.com/features/inside-wikipedias-endless-war-over-the-coronavirus-lab-leak-theory/
{{ec}}
| date2 = June 24, 2021
::The thing is not that expert editors shouldn't conduct such peer review. Indeed they are free to do so as a reviewer in the real academic publishing world, not on Misplaced Pages. Of course having done so, they should be cautious of a new COI ''on'' Misplaced Pages. That paper they reviewed off-wiki doesn't become any more (or less) reliable or relevant on-wiki. Leave its selection up to other editors. So perhaps the sentence should be: '''"''' ''Misplaced Pages is '''not''' the place to perform a detailed academic peer review. Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.'' '''"''' ] <small>]</small> 13:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
| quote2 = The exclusion of the ] from Misplaced Pages predominantly rests on established guidelines. Chief among them is one known by editors as WP:MEDRS. It refers to the referencing of "biomedical" information on Misplaced Pages, stating sources must be "reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." It's a guideline that has launched a thousand Talk page disputes.
:::That's a definite improvement. We should never try to dictate what editors can do outside of WP. ] (]) 15:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
}}
::::In general I find that incidents like this are best dealt with by finding sources that criticize the original source and either juxtaposing the two in text, or on the basis of the validity of the criticism, not opting to include the study (for instance, specific to Morgan, Ward & Burton, there is a post by on scienceblogs as well as a ). In this case, if I cited MW&B at all I'd phrase it as a minority point of view ("In 2004 WM&B said...") with an accompanying reference to the LTTE ("Mileshkin, Rischin, Prince & Zalcberg said in a LTTE that...") It's pretty rare that an article genuinely bucking the mainstream POV is unanswered. In my experience, situations like these that are unanswerable are the minority - actual experts are not stupid, they usually rebut the lunatic fringe stuff.
::::Regards this section of MEDRS, I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater - I've run into far more issues where I've referred to that line/idea as a way of keeping in mainstream views ("You don't get to say that review article can't be included because some of the funding came from Pfizer"). It might be worth refering to ] or ], since that's the nub of the issue in this case. The idea that chemotherapy is worthless is a fringe idea, most doctors clearly think there is merit to it. ] <small>] ] Misplaced Pages's rules:</small>]/] 17:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand WhatamIdoing's point (if I'm following correctly); sourcing is ''always'' a matter for consensus and discussion, and in any realm of editing (not just medical), editors can decide via consensus that a source is not appropriate. This guideline can't be excluding something that is general; we can always discuss, review, and come to consensus to not use a bad source. I must be missing something, because this discussion makes no sense to me. There are plenty of sources about Tourette's, for example, that even though high quality, are just wrong and shouldn't be used. For example, the ''New England Journal of Medicine'' published a review about 10 years ago that had the wrong basic definition of TS; editors can review that, see that, and decide not to use a source that is just wrong. Why are we saying editors can't come to consensus to not use a bad source on medical articles, when we can do that anywhere else? ] (]) 18:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
:The guideline refers to "study". I think "sourcing", "study" and "facts" are getting mixed up here. Discussing sourcing without context can only deal with generalities like the type of source or type of publication. Some of our best writers are experts in the subject. Some of our worst POV pushers are experts in the subject. Both can produce lengthy talk page discussions that don't actually focus on proposed article text. What facts/points do we want to say? Are current books and reviews on the topic mentioning it? If not, then let's move on. ]°] 20:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

::Sandy, the first objection to the source on the talk page was that if patients knew the facts about (cytotoxic) chemotherapy's limited contribution to cancer treatment (in most, but not all, solid tumors, surgery is far more important), then some of them would refuse treatment. Do you think that making patients make the "right" choice in the real world is a legitimate reason for entirely removing all information about efficacy from the article? I don't, but that's what's happened.
::The TS comparison is inapt, because in that case, you had dozens of sources that gave a different definition. You could compare it to other sources and choose the many rather than the one. Here, we have just one source (that anyone knows of) that provides the overall statistic. (The point behind the paper was to calculate the overall benefit of all cytotoxic chemotherapy regimens for all patients in all stages of all invasive solid tumors.) It's not like this paper says 2% of survival the five-year mark, and another paper says 5%; this is the only paper that seems to have tried this ambitious approach.
::There are good reasons to be careful about how it is presented: it applies only to invasive solid tumors, which means no leukemias (and so understates the benefit) and very little skin cancer (and so overstates the benefit). It considers only cytotoxic drugs, which excludes most of the newer stuff (hormones, monoclonal antibodies, radioactive drugs, etc.). It is looking for a population-wide number, so it includes even people who didn't need or didn't take chemotherapy (this is the difference between "pounds of beef eaten per American" and "pounds of beef eaten per beef-eating American").
::These qualifications seem to form the basis of the technical criticisms: they chose to exclude hematological malignancies and non-invasive cancers (both very typical exclusions, by the way), and I would have made a different choice (as a point of fact, I personally would have made a different choice), so it's an unreliable source. They chose to consider only cytotoxic drugs, and I would have made a different choice (actually, I wouldn't have), so it's an unreliable source. They chose to consider all patients rather than some patients, and I would have made a different choice (I would have, too), so it's an unreliable source. NB that every complaint here is not "they got these facts wrong", but "they made different choices than I would have made".
::Given that , sometimes to the point of seeking it out despite multiple oncologists telling them that it is not appropriate, I think it sad that we now have an article that doesn't even mention undisputed facts about efficacy, such as that chemotherapy is hugely important to some cancers (e.g., testicular cancer), but provides very little benefit for others (e.g., lung cancer), even though not one of the people who dislikes this particular source believes that chemotherapy provides identical benefits for all forms of cancer. ] (]) 22:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

::: The problem with "editors can decide via consensus that a source is not appropriate" is that sooner or later, you'll find yourself on the ] talk page where a group of editors have decided ''by consensus'' that a secondary, well-conducted review by the Guttmacher Institute is not appropriate "because the Institute is biased towards pro-choice". Or if not that page, then another where a group of SPAs have established their walled garden. I'm sorry, but we need MEDRS as a bulwark against POV-pushers, who would love the opportunity to disallow any reliable secondary source that didn't align with their own views. --] (]) 23:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

:::<small>(])</small> @WhatamIdoing: I think we solve that problem by ensuring that our articles on ], ], etc. each accurately reflect the role and efficacy of chemotherapy in those diseases. The parent article on chemotherapy should make clear that the efficacy of chemotherapy varies substantially by diagnosis and disease stage, and the details should be handled on a disease-by-disease basis. ''']'''&nbsp;<sup>]</sup> 23:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::That would be fine with me—I have repeatedly said that the 2% statistic is unimportant—but you actually removed every single sentence in the article that "mae clear that the efficacy of chemotherapy varies substantially by diagnosis and disease". ] (]) 16:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
:::: RexxS, ] is a policy. In general, it trumps WP:MEDRS. While there may be a cabal of SPAs who are trying to subvert an article, WP:MEDRS cannot be used to overrule them. Such a cabal can only be suppressed by drawing on a wider consensus with more good-faith editors. ] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small></font>]]</small> 23:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
:::::We already have a safeguard against that. Established consensus, in the form of policies and guidelines, trumps ]. ] (]) 07:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

:::: RexxS, welcome to the slippery slope that is all of Misplaced Pages (POV pushers gang up on good faith editors on talk pages-- try editing Venezuelan articles for a year or two). If you want to use MEDRS to trump CONSENSUS, pretty soon a carefully crafted and well applied guideline will fall into disfavor because it's used as a bludgeon and held to a standard higher than the policies it guides. AKA, shooting ourselves in the feet. MEDRS is a guideline, it enjoys consensus as such, it doesn't trump policy, and if folks start using it inappropriately, they're going to ruin a good thing. I guess I'm not understanding this argument, because whether one review is better, more recent, whatever is something that we can always discuss on talk and those discussions guide our decisions about which reviews to use. ] (]) 03:02, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
::::: I'm sorry you thought my contribution was "really stupid", per your {{diff2|490404057|edit summary}}, Sandy. I can assure you that I have the scars from defending NPOV on numerous articles over several years, and we don't need to engage in a pissing contest over who does the most defending – but thank you for the belated welcome anyway. Standing up for NPOV is not a card game, and there are no trumps, but you must recognise that the project-wide consensus enjoyed by MEDRS is not to be ignored lightly by a small group arguing a ]: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale" (and ''that'''s policy). If every good-faith editor decides it's better not to argue the merits of MEDRS for fear of it falling into disfavour, then we might as well hand over the encyclopaedia to the POV-pushers right now. The practices documented at MEDRS are exactly what we have to convince other editors to use when building a consensus for the neutral point of view, because they are inimical to the methods used to push POV. The problem is you want it both ways: you want to be able to use your expertise to discard a poor secondary source, while expecting others to defend good secondary sources that have been labelled "poor" by a self-proclaimed expert. Have the lessons of Essjay still not been learned here? --] (]) 12:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

:I'm disappointed by WhatamIdoing's response as she's falling into the same trap: using her expert knowledge to try to convince other editors, on a talk page, to include/exclude certain facts from the article. And to focus on the good/bad points in a study (or present counter-arguments against other editor's points) rather than discuss what we want to actually say and then present sources that support it. This is something Eubilides was great at: sourced-based discussion of actual or proposed article text.

:] is policy. It says
:{{Quotation|An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject....Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Misplaced Pages editors or the general public... Also, if you are able to prove something that few or none currently believe, Misplaced Pages is not the place to present such a proof. Once it has been presented and discussed in reliable sources, it may be appropriately included.}}
:I agree that it is very important how the facts in this case are presented, and that the disputed paper's abstract does an appalling job of that. The exclusions (particularly of modern drugs) are problematic and it will be hard to work out what should be said that is actually relevant to a modern reader in a general article on chemotherapy. But hey, I've got an idea. What do modern texts on chemotherapy say on the subject? It keeps coming back to this. Why on earth are our editors arguing over the merits of an 8-year-old study as a source for an article on chemotherapy in 2012. And since the benefits of chemotherapy seem to depend completely on what cancer is involved, the approach taken by the book I linked (where each type of cancer gets its own chapter) seems to be ideal for writing targeted text on each indication or otherwise for chemotherapy. ]°] 08:01, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
::Agree if there are better more recent secondary sources we should be using them. Our guideline recommends against sources older than 5 years when more recent sources are available which I am sure is the case for chemo.--] (] · ] · ]) 15:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
::{{edit conflict}} Agree that Colin's book suggestion could be a good starting point in this particular case (though as a general bibliographic point, perhaps it's worth pointing out that the quality of scientific medical books can vary from standard reference texts, like , to pot boilers with little or no peer review). Ideally, one would like to have a widely respected reference textbook which is periodically updated. Even so, working up a single, high-quality page on such an extensive topic as chemotherapy remains a major task. This is a genuine issue, imo, because in practice generic pages such as Chemotherapy can be and regard matters of considerable real-world interest. 2c only, —] (]) 11:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

:So what exactly should be changed and how?
:# Editors should not perform a detailed academic peer review.
:# Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.
:Sentence (1) can be left out, it has no practical consequences. Sentence (2) - if a study has inclusion criteria, methodology or factual errors leading to generally implausible results than apply ].

:Sometimes the results are not even generally faulty, but study design or data (in)availability make them useless for encylcopedic purposes. As an example, ] has a Cochrane Review of TCM as a reference. This kind of source is in my opinion fairly useless - even if TCM may somehow help endometriosis the design of the study is not good enough for anything except "a call for further research" which does not belong there. ] (]) 11:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::I'm not sure that removing the first sentence would be a good idea. As I interpret it, the current text states that editors shouldn't perform a detailed peer review and then lists '''as examples''' some personal objections that are invalid. If the first sentence were removed, then the resulting text would read as though these four types of objections were an exhaustive list of the only invalid grounds for exclusion. But they aren't: for example, editors shouldn't exclude papers on grounds that they disagree with methodology (except the general type of study), assumptions, statistical analysis, ethical problems, etc. This follows naturally from ], so it isn't strictly necessary to spell it out, but it's certainly useful to make it clear. ] (]) 11:46, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::Oppose Richiez change suggestion. We don't want editors cherry-picking studies, which means we don't want them filling talk pages with ''their'' analysis of a study's failures. Full stop. It doesn't matter if the study is primary research or secondary analsysis of existing research. We build our articles on the work of expert writing, not by choosing which studies ''we'' think are good/relevant. You cannot apply ] based on your own view of what is fringe or not or by deciding that since you think the study is flawed, then it must be a fringe conclusion. The "Assess evidence quality" section is more background information than a primary guide to what to include in an encyclopaedia article. Have a look at a NICE guidleline like . The difference between the "NICE guideline" and the "Full guideline" is that the latter contains all the evidence for their guidance and how they went about measuring and collecting this evidence. It is a job for experts. It is a difficult job. It is not our job. ]°] 12:41, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
:::If we are disallowed to judge ] than we can either stop altogether or have a very short list of allowed sources such es Encyclopedia Britanica - and of course we can expand this to all of wikipedia not just medical articles. ] (]) 12:54, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::::We identify fringe theories/conclusions by the fact that (a) most reliable sources tell us they are wrong/fringe or (b) most reliable sources ignore the theory/conclusion -- in other words it has no weight to warrant mention in our articles. We don't identify them based on our own understanding. I dare say parts of the US think evolution is a fringe idea... ]°] 18:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

::: I'm with Colin. We don't write a guideline around primary studies because we typically shouldn't be using them anyway-- we use secondary sources and reviews, and we do come to consensus about which reviews are the highest quality. All of this discussion seems to have resulted because folks want to use and do original research with primary sources. ] (]) 14:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


__TOC__
::::I did not follow the chemotherapy discussion closely but it was my impression that it was a secondary source in question with results that happened to fall into WP:FRINGE category. ] (]) 16:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::It's not really FRINGE. It's just a broader focus than other papers have taken, sort of like "how much has society benefitted frim vaccines" rather than the far more common "how much has society benefited from the polio vaccine". ] (]) 16:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
:::::::It appears to be very much against mainstream in some respects. In breast cancer we try to differentiate by age, receptor status, markers or more recently gene activation patterns, response to neoadjuvant therapy and I think everyone is aware that the benefit of chemotherapy is likely to be dramatically different comparing a 40 year old or 85 year old women. It was my impression that the mentioned paper did the exact opposite of this approach by using unusually broad undistinguished patient population.
:::::::Now hypothetically assume there is a review that meets all formal criteria of MEDRS and is so fringe that "mainstream" does not really notice, let alone review it. With many thousands (somewhere I recall 33K academic journals?) this might happen from time to time. Applying ] seems obvious? We have to use common sense. -- ] (]) 21:10, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::::Whether you regard it as fringe or something of no weight doesn't matter much. The issue for this guideline is that this must be judged with reference to our sources, not on the basis of our own opinions. This is the issue I had with "if a study has inclusion criteria, methodology or factual errors leading to generally implausible results than apply ]". ]°] 21:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
:::::::::Why exactly should ] be exempt from the fringe rules? The essence of fringe is that someone, preferably by consensus regards some material as such. ] (]) 21:39, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
::::::::::You're not getting the point, Richiez. ] is a valid guideline but if you read it you'll discover that determining what is fringe or not is done with reference to published work, not by WP editors using their own brains to discredit some theory/conclusion. My second point is that this particular point on Chemotherapy doesn't have to be as extremely wrong as a fringe idea in order for us to give it no space. If none of our contemporary sources choose to comment on chemotherapy in the way that 8-year-old paper did, then neither should we. No matter what ''you'' or ''WhatAmIDoing'' personally think of the study's merits or flaws. ]°] 09:29, 5 May 2012 (UTC)


== A small 'licence' query... ==
I support Richiez's recommendation.


...regarding NICE CKS sourcing in edit (self-reverted as a scruple), which I feel helps provide key introductory information to <nowiki>]</nowiki> succinctly and really quite conveniently. CKS was ] back in 2014 (I was actually the OP then), and I believe the consensus then that it was permissable to use CKS, even though it is not accessible outside the UK. Now, CKS comes with a scary , which states :
{{quote|'''"''' ''We don't write a guideline around primary studies because we typically shouldn't be using them anyway.'' '''"'''|SandyGeorgia}}


<blockquote>2.1 You agree that you are only allowed to Use the Topics if you:
That's a self-referential statement. We shouldn't use primary studies because our guideline doesn't recommend them? Anyway, this discussion is not about primary sources.
(i) Are an individual; in which case:
You are allowed to Use for personal and/or your own educational purposes only and not on behalf of or for the benefit of any company, ''organisation'', or business.
<br>...<br>
2.2 If you are not an individual or a clinician (as defined above), you must contact Us for a commercial licence. If you do not, you understand that by Using the Topics ''you or your organisation'' will be infringing Our intellectual property rights.
<br>2.3 For the avoidance of doubt, the following, without limitation, are not permitted to Use the Topics (but may do so by contacting Agilio and entering into a commercial licence):<br>...<br>
(iii) companies, businesses, and ''any other private enterprises'' that are not part of the National Health Service.</blockquote>


I'm not sure whether Misplaced Pages is affected by this. Hence the query. ] (]) 14:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
{{quote|'''"''' ''All of this discussion seems to have resulted because folks want to use and do original research with primary sources.'' '''"'''|SandyGeorgia}}


:I doubt that it's a problem. See 3.1(v): "You cannot Use the Topics to create other material, such as books, articles, or guidance. This does not prevent you from referring to appropriately referenced extracts of Topics." Citing it as a source behind text that you have written in your own words presumably counts as "appropriate referencing". ] (]) 17:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
That is entirely false. No-one has recommended the use of primary sources, nor is anyone recommending original material in an article.


::Thank you for that WAID. It would seem crazy to provide reliable medical information that can't even be cited, but hey what do I know? I'll restore the edit given that this is a really useful medrs, imo (I've sometimes found it tricky to find a good medrs that summarizes key basic info in a readily citable form). ] (]) 18:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
] includes the statement "We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field." Morgan's paper does indeed depart from the mainstream view, thus it fits this definition of "fringe". ] <font color="#3CB371">¤</font> <small></font>]]</small> 22:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
:::Axl: see my comment above. If his paper "does indeed depart from the mainstream view" then this should be evidence in the literature (either explicitly or because it is ignored) and therefore it is unnecessary for WP editors to attempt to prove this on a talk page with their own skill. When editors try to push other editors into accepting a viewpoint, without reference to contemporary high-quality sources, then that is POV pushing. Just because it is mainstream POV pushing, doesn't stop it from being something to discourage. ]°] 09:29, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
::::If you accept "beeing ingored" as evidence in literature than this would appear as reasonable - in theory. When you try to define this properly I expect it will turn out more difficult than a simple apply common sense rule. Eg how long after publication do you want to wait as evidence that something is ignored? We would be forced to publish something and wait 3-5 years for evidence it is ignored (and hope there is not a citation cartel at work)? ] (]) 12:20, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
: I've seen this problem before. The disputants will not agree on what is "mainstream" - one side says it's is; the other side insists it's not. If we let editors define mainstream, we never reach consensus. Where the editor's expertise comes in is to point others to how prevalent a view is in the quality literature (which is how we should be defining "mainstream"). If you're lucky, you find one review published in an in-house magazine and a blog, and the contradictory review published in the Lancet and the BMJ. Unfortunately it's often not so clear-cut. --] (]) 02:22, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
::I've found taking a 'vote count' from a sample of reviews on PubMed to be a reasonable solution to this problem. It has its own problems, of course, but to get a rough measure of mainstream thinking it works quite well, and is obviously less susceptible to bias than relying on an editor's expertise. ] (]) 07:21, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
::sure that does happen, but I think there are many cases left where there is no doubt about what is not mainstream. ] (]) 12:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)


== Notice about possibly relevant discussion ==
== Observational studies (and CAM) ==


]
Although this is written specifically in the ''context'' of CAM (not ''about'' it...), I suspect we could use this principle in this guideline:


TLDR; can a dermatologists' testimony about the spread of scabies in an Israeli prison, and the need for hygiene be used in ], or would that violate ]. ] (]) 06:50, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
: "Although observational studies cannot provide definitive evidence of safety, efficacy, or effectiveness, they can: 1) provide information on “real world” use and practice; 2) detect signals about the benefits and risks of complementary therapies use in the general population; 3) help formulate hypotheses to be tested in subsequent experiments; 4) provide part of the community-level data needed to design more informative pragmatic clinical trials; and 5) inform clinical practice."


== Discussion on Electronic Harassment ==
: '''Source''': June 25, 2012, Richard Nahin, Ph.D., M.P.H., Senior Advisor for Scientific Coordination and Outreach, ].
Hello, there is a discussion on ] about whether declaring a group 'delusional' falls under WP:MEDRS at ]. This could use some editors more familiar with Misplaced Pages's standards. ] (]) 13:39, 12 December 2024 (UTC)


== Discussion at RSN that may include a medical claim ==
This is a RS from the NIH.


Help with ] would be appreciated. -- <small>LCU</small> ''']''' <small>''«]» °]°''</small> 16:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
It clearly states that we wouldn't be able to use ] as RS to make statements of fact about "safety, efficacy, or effectiveness". This actually applies to far more than just CAM, and is very relevant for this guideline. How can this be incorporated here? -- ] (]) 01:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 06:02, 25 December 2024

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Ideal sources for Misplaced Pages's health content are defined in the guideline Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Identifying reliable sources (medicine).
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This is an explanatory essay about the Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) policy.
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Explanatory essay about the Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) policy

These are some Frequently Asked Questions about Misplaced Pages's guidelines on sourcing for medical content, manual of style for medicine-related articles, and how the guidelines and policies apply to biomedical content.

General Does Misplaced Pages have special rules for medical information?

Yes, but the guidelines for medical information follow the same broad principles as the rest of Misplaced Pages. Examples of this include the requirement for reliable sources and the preference for secondary sources over primary sources. These apply to both medical and non-medical information. However, there are differences in the details of the guidelines, such as which sources are considered reliable.

Why do you have special rules for medical information?

Different types of sources have different strengths and weaknesses. A type of source that is good for scientific information is not usually as reliable for political information, and vice versa. Since Misplaced Pages's readers may make medical decisions based on information found in our articles, we want to use high-quality sources when writing about biomedical information. Many sources that are acceptable for other types of information under Misplaced Pages's general sourcing guideline, such as the popular press, are not suitable sources for reliable medical information. (See also: WP:MEDPOP and WP:WHYMEDRS)

When do I need to follow MEDRS?

MEDRS-compliant sources are required for all biomedical information. Like the policy on the biographies of living people ("BLP"), MEDRS applies to statements and not to articles: biomedical statements in non-medical articles need to comply with MEDRS, while non-medical statements in medical articles do not need to follow MEDRS. Also like BLP, the spirit of MEDRS is to err on the side of caution when making biomedical statements. Content about human biochemistry or about medical research in animals is also subject to MEDRS if it is relevant to human health.

Sourcing I used a peer-reviewed source, but it was reverted, and the editor said I needed to use a review. I did, didn't I?

Probably not. Most peer-reviewed articles are not review articles. The very similar names are easily confused. For most (not all) purposes, the ideal source is a peer-reviewed review article.

Why can't I use primary sources?

Primary sources aren't completely banned, but they should only be used in rare situations. An individual primary source may be flawed, such as being a clinical trial that uses too few volunteers. There have been cases where primary sources have been outright fraudulent. Furthermore, a single primary source may produce a different result to what multiple other primary sources suggest, even if it is a high-quality clinical trial. Secondary sources serve two purposes: they combine the results of all relevant primary sources and they filter out primary sources that are unreliable. Secondary sources are not infallible, but they have less room for error than a primary source.

This follows a principle that guides the whole of Misplaced Pages. If a company announces a notable new product, Misplaced Pages would not cite a press release on the company's website (a primary source) but instead would cite a newspaper article that covers it (a secondary source). The difference with medical information is that the popular press are not suitable sources.

Whenever possible, you should cite a secondary source such as:

So if primary sources can be used in rare cases, what are those rare cases?

Primary sources might be useful in these common situations:

  • when writing about a rare disease, uncommon procedure, etc., for which no high-quality secondary literature is available, or for which the available secondary sources do not cover all of the information normally included in an encyclopedia article.
  • when mentioning a famous paper or clinical trial that made a recognized substantial impact, as part of a purely historical treatment of a topic.
  • when describing major research that has made a significant impact (i.e., continued and substantial coverage). While recent research results are normally omitted, it is sometimes necessary to include them for WP:DUE weight. In this case, it is usually preferable to read and cite the primary scientific literature in preference to WP:PRIMARYNEWS sources. Later, these primary sources can be replaced or supplemented with citations to high-quality secondary sources.
Why can't I use articles from the popular press?

The popular press includes many media outlets which are acceptable sources for factual information about current events, sometimes with significant caveats. It also includes media outlets which are discouraged in all cases because the quality of their journalism is inadequate. However, even high-quality media outlets have disadvantages in the context of medicine.

Firstly, news articles on medicine will frequently be reporting a new medical primary source, such as the results of a new study. This means that they are effectively acting as a primary source, which as explained above makes those articles generally unsuitable for medical information. These articles also tend to omit important information about the study. If a medical primary source is to be cited at all, the academic paper should be cited directly.

Secondly, media coverage of medical topics is often sensationalist. They tend to favor new, dramatic or interesting stories over predictable ones, even though studies that reflect the current scientific consensus tend to be predictable results. They tend to overemphasize the certainty of any result, such as reporting a study result as a conclusive "discovery" before it has been peer-reviewed or tested by other scientists. They may also exaggerate its significance; for instance, presenting a new and experimental treatment as "the cure" for a disease or an every-day substance as "the cause" of a disease. The sensationalism affects both which stories they choose to cover and the content of their coverage.

High-quality media outlets can be good sources of non-medical information in an article about a medical topic. Another acceptable use is using a popular press article to give a plain English summary of an academic paper (use the |laysummary= parameter of {{cite journal}} for this).

I have a source from PubMed, so that's reliable right?

Not necessarily. PubMed is merely a search engine and the majority of content it indexes is not WP:MEDRS. Searches on PUBMED may be narrowed to secondary sources (reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, etc.) so it is a useful tool for source hunting.

It is a common misconception that because a source appears in PubMed it is published by, or has the approval of, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), or the US government. These organisations support the search engine but lend no particular weight to the content it indexes.

Can I use websites like Quackwatch?

Quackwatch is a self-published website by an author who is an expert in problems with complementary and alternative medicine. Whenever possible, you should use a scholarly source instead of Quackwatch. However, if no scholarly sources are available, and the subject is still notable, then it might be reasonable to cite Quackwatch with WP:INTEXT attribution to the POV.

Can I cite Chinese studies about Traditional Chinese Medicine?

As of 2014, there are concerns regarding positive bias in publications from China on Traditional Chinese Medicine. Such sources should be used with caution. The problem also includes issues with the academic system in China.

Can I cite NCCAM (now NCCIH)?

Yes, but again only with WP:DUE weight. Unlike other branches of the National Institutes of Health, which are generally accepted as authoritative in their fields, NCCAM has been the focus of significant criticism from within the scientific community. Whenever possible, you should cite the established literature directly.

What if I can’t find any MEDRS-compliant sources on a subject?

MEDRS contains a section about finding sources which may be helpful. Alternatively, a more experienced editor may be able to help you find them (or to confirm that they do not exist).

Neutrality What is a fringe medical claim?

A fringe medical claim is one that differs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in the scientific medical community. This is similar to Misplaced Pages's general definition of a fringe claim. A claim can still be a fringe medical claim even if it has a large following in other areas of public life (such as politics and the popular press).

How should fringe medical claims be described?

When fringe claims have been widely reported in the press, have a large popular following, and/or have a long history, it may be appropriate to describe them in terms of that reporting, popularity, or history. However, weight should be determined by MEDRS-compliant sources, and the context (or lack thereof) should not make implications about medical statements that are not supported by such sources. Guidance on the additional considerations relevant to fringe subjects can be found at WP:FRINGE, as well as at other places such as WP:WEIGHT and WP:EXCEPTIONAL.

In the case of alternative medicine, medical statements are often derived from an underlying belief system, which will include many propositions that are not subject to MEDRS. These propositions are subject to the usual sourcing requirements and the usual requirements for determining fringe status.

If a treatment hasn't been shown to work, can we say it doesn't work?

There are three possible situations:

  • No evidence exists, either became no studies for the treatment have been published, or because the studies published are too small or weak to draw any conclusions.
  • Evidence exists, and it shows no effect.
  • Evidence exists, and it shows an effect.

In the first case, we cannot say that it does not work, but we can say that there is no evidence to determine whether it works. After multiple, high-quality independent studies have been published, the understanding may transition from "no evidence" to "some evidence" of either an effect or no effect. You should follow the lead of review articles and other secondary sources for determining when this threshold has been crossed.

Reports may conflict with each other. For example, a clinical trial may produce no evidence of an effect, but the treatment's manufacturer might produce testimonials claiming a positive effect. You should follow the lead of review articles and other secondary sources for determining how to balance these claims.

Should medical content be attributed?

In other words, is it necessary to say in the article's text the source which supports a medical statement (with attribution)? Or can it simply be stated as an unchallenged fact, with the source only mentioned in the citation (without attribution)? A statement without attribution will come across as being a stronger claim than one with attribution.

A result or statement from a reliable secondary source should be included without attribution if it is not disputed by any other recent secondary sources. You should do a search to check that the secondary source you are citing is the most up-to-date assessment of the topic.

If there have been two recent secondary sources that contradict each other, then you should attribute the disputed findings. On the other hand, if the findings of one or more recent secondary sources are disputed by one or more secondary sources from many years ago, but not by any recent ones, the recent findings can be stated without attribution. You should also take into account the relative weight secondary sources have. For example, Cochrane Collaboration reviews provide stronger evidence than a regular secondary source.

In the rare cases where primary sources can be used, they should be attributed.

Why not say there is a call for more research?

It is common for scientific publications to say something like this, either directly or indirectly. There are several reasons for this. It could be argued that more research is always a bonus, even if the topic has already been thoroughly researched. Sometimes, these statements may be made partly because authors need to convince readers that the topic is important in order to secure future funding sources. As such, saying this does not communicate much information, and it may also mislead readers into thinking that the existing information on a topic is less reliable than it really is.

How can Quackwatch be considered a reliable source?

As noted above, Quackwatch does not meet the usual standard as a reliable source, but it can be used (with attribution) for information on a topic of alternative and complementary medicine if there are no scholarly sources available for the same purpose. The guidelines on fringe theories includes the concept of parity: if a notable fringe theory is primarily described by self-published sources, then verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory does not need to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. It only needs to come from a better source.

Finding and using sources How can I find good sources using PubMed? National Library of Medicine (NLM), PubMed, NCBI, & MEDLINE help, tutorials, documentation, & support

Full, searchable list of all tutorials - training materials in HTML, PDF and Video formats

YouTube channel for the National Library of Medicine: Tutorial videos from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Includes presentations and tutorials about NCBI biomolecular and biomedical literature databases and tools.

PubMed FAQs

PubMed User Guide - FAQs

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog

NLM Catalog Help - This book contains information on the NLM Catalog, a database which provides access to NLM bibliographic data for journals, books, audiovisuals, computer software, electronic resources, and other materials via the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Entrez retrieval system. The NLM Catalog includes links to full text materials and the library's holdings in LocatorPlus, NLM's online public access catalog.

NLM Catalog (rev. December 19, 2019).

Overview

FAQs

Searching NLM Catalog

Finding journals that comply with WP:MEDRS standards

For full comprehensive instructions, go to: Searching for Journals in NLM Catalog

Determine if a specific journal is indexed in MEDLINE If you know the full or abbreviated name for a journal, and you want to see if it is indexed in MEDLINE, see the instructions at searching by journal title, which I will also reproduce here:

If you know the journal’s exact title, enter it in the NLM Catalog search box followed by the field qualifier .

Example:
The Journal of Supportive Oncology
Results = 1 record retrieved:
The Journal of Supportive Oncology

If you know the journal’s NLM Title Abbreviation, enter it in the NLM Catalog search box, followed by the field qualifier .

Example:
n engl j med
Results = 1 record retrieved:
The New England journal of medicine
Review the list of Abridged Index Medicus journals

Via a search of the NLM Catalog: List of Abridged Index Medicus journals, also known as "Core clinical journals".

Stand alone list: List of current Abridged Index Medicus (AIM) journals (118 journals as of 5 May 2020)

Create a list of all Index Medicus journals

Search the NLM Catalog using jsubsetim to find all Index Medicus journals (5021 journals as of 29 May 2020); or go directly to the search results for all Index Medicus journals. (Note that immediately above "Search Results" on that page, you can change the default "20 per page" to as many as 200 results per page, and you can change how the results are "sorted", e.g., if you are looking for a specific journal, you can sort by Title, instead of the default.)

====Create a list of all journals indexed in MEDLINE}} Search the NLM Catalog using currentlyindexed to find all journals indexed in MEDLINE (5266 journals as of 29 May 2020); or go directly to the search results for all journals indexed in MEDLINE. (Note that immediately above "Search Results" on that page, you can change the default "20 per page" to as many as 200 results per page, and you can change how the results are "sorted", e.g., if you are looking for a specific journal, you can sort by Title, instead of the default.)

MEDLINE, PubMed, and PMC (PubMed Central): How are they different?

MEDLINE, PubMed, and PMC (PubMed Central): How are they different?

Are there ways to find good sources other than PubMed? Besides being a secondary source, what else indicates a source is of high quality? I found what looks like a good source, but can't access the full text – what next?

Most scholarly journals are behind paywalls. Some options to access these articles include visiting a local university library, visiting The Misplaced Pages Library, and WikiProject Resource Requests.

Note that paywalled articles are frequently pirated and made available on the open web. When linking to a journal article, care must be taken not to link to such a pirate copy, as such a link would be a copyright violating link in contravention of Misplaced Pages's policy. In general if you find such a copy and it is not accompanied by text explicitly stating that it is made available with the permission of the copyright holder, assume that it is potentially infringing, and do not link to it. This holds for all edits in Misplaced Pages, not just in article space.

Google Scholar

Search for the title of the article on Google Scholar. On the results page, click on "All n versions" (where n = the number of available versions of that article) at the bottom of a listing. The resulting page might contain PDF or HTML versions of the article.

Unpaywall

Consult Unpaywall.org for journal articles available without a subscription. Install the UnPaywall extension for Chrome or Firefox to immediately identify articles with a free version. After you install the extension, look to the right side of the page (when you are on the website for an article) for either a grey locked symbol (no free version) or a green unlocked symbol (click on that symbol to access the full text version of the article).

Librarian's advice

An article by librarian John Mark Ockerbloom, titled, "Why Pay for What’s Free? Finding Open Access and Public Domain Articles" offers helpful suggestions.

How do I reference a medical article?

Almost all medical articles are indexed by the PubMed search engine and have a Digital object identifier (DOI) assigned to them. All articles included in PubMed are assigned an eight-digit PubMed identifier (PMID). These identifiers can be used to refer to articles, which is preferred to URLs as it makes a reliable link which is resilient to changes beyond our control – i.e. the publisher being acquired by another publisher and it's "normal" web URLs changing as a consequence.

Once you have the PMID, there are a number of tools such as this one which you can use to generate a full citation automatically.

In article references, the "doi" and "pmid" parameters are preferred to the "url" parameter for such reasons.

On Talk pages, when referring to journal articles, is it good practice to make any link using these types of identifier also:

  • Typing "]", where dddddddd is a PMID, will create a link to the indicated article.
  • Any DOI can be turned into a resolvable web address by prepending "https://doi.org/" to it (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c6801).
Conflict of interest Are there special considerations for conflicts of interest for health content?

See WP:MEDCOI.

What if I am being paid to edit medical content?

See WP:PAID.

References

References

  1. Laurent, MR; Vickers, TJ (2009). "Seeking health information online: does Misplaced Pages matter?". J Am Med Inform Assoc. 16 (4): 471–9. doi:10.1197/jamia.M3059. PMC 2705249. PMID 19390105.
  2. Schwitzer G (2008). "How do US journalists cover treatments, tests, products, and procedures? an evaluation of 500 stories". PLOS Med. 5 (5): e95. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050095. PMC 2689661. PMID 18507496.
  3. Goldacre, Ben (2008-06-21). "Why reading should not be believing". Guardian.
  4. Dentzer S (2009). "Communicating medical news—pitfalls of health care journalism". N Engl J Med. 360 (1): 1–3. doi:10.1056/NEJMp0805753. PMID 19118299.
  5. Li J, et al The quality of reports of randomized clinical trials on traditional Chinese medicine treatments: a systematic review of articles indexed in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database from 2005 to 2012. BMC Complement Altern Med. 2014 Sep 26;14:362. PMID 25256890
  6. Further information:
    • "Some countries publish unusually high proportions of positive results. Publication bias is a possible explanation. Researchers undertaking systematic reviews should consider carefully how to manage data from these countries." Vickers, Andrew (April 1, 1998), "Do certain countries produce only positive results? A systematic review of controlled trials.", Controlled Clinical Trials, 19 (2), Control Clin Trials: 159–66, doi:10.1016/s0197-2456(97)00150-5, PMID 9551280
    • Ernst, Edzard (2012). "Acupuncture: What Does the Most Reliable Evidence Tell Us? An Update". Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. 43 (2): e11–e13. doi:10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2011.11.001. ISSN 0885-3924. PMID 22248792.
  7. Qiu, Jane (January 12, 2010), "Publish or perish in China", Nature, 463 (7278): 142–143, doi:10.1038/463142a, PMID 20075887, S2CID 205052380
  8. Some examples:
    • Nature Reviews Cancer: "the subject of rancorous scientific and political debate over its mission and even continued existence"
    • Clinical Rheumatology: "The criticism repeatedly aimed at NCCAM seems justified, as far as their RCTs of chiropractic is concerned. It seems questionable whether such research is worthwhile."
    • Nature News: "still draws fire from traditional scientists", "Many US researchers still say such funding is a waste of time and money."
    • Science News: " is a political creation"; "This kind of science isn't worth any time or money" (quoting Wallace Sampson)
    • Science Policy Forum: " was created by pressure from a few advocates in Congress"; "NCCAM funds proposals of dubious merit; its research agenda is shaped more by politics than by science; and it is structured by its charter in a manner that precludes an independent review of its performance"; "NCCAM is unable to implement a research agenda that addresses legitimate scientific opportunities or health-care needs"
  9. Ockerbloom, John Mark. "Why Pay for What’s Free? Finding Open Access and Public Domain Articles." Everybody's Libraries (23 Oct 2018).
Other helpful resources
Misplaced Pages biomedical editing
This project page does not require a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
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WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine
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WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Pharmacology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Pharmacology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PharmacologyWikipedia:WikiProject PharmacologyTemplate:WikiProject Pharmacologypharmacology
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WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative medicine, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Alternative medicine related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Alternative medicineWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicineTemplate:WikiProject Alternative medicineAlternative medicine

Media mentionThis page has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:
  • Noam Cohem (March 15, 2020). "How Misplaced Pages Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation". Wired. Misplaced Pages shows, however, that extreme circumstances, especially when related to public health, require different, more stringent rules, not better application of existing rules. The stakes are simply too high.
  • Jackson Ryan (June 24, 2021). "Inside Misplaced Pages's endless war over the coronavirus lab leak theory". CNET. The exclusion of the lab leak theory from Misplaced Pages predominantly rests on established guidelines. Chief among them is one known by editors as WP:MEDRS. It refers to the referencing of "biomedical" information on Misplaced Pages, stating sources must be "reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." It's a guideline that has launched a thousand Talk page disputes.

A small 'licence' query...

...regarding NICE CKS sourcing in this edit (self-reverted as a scruple), which I feel helps provide key introductory information to ] succinctly and really quite conveniently. CKS was briefly discussed here back in 2014 (I was actually the OP then), and I believe the consensus then that it was permissable to use CKS, even though it is not accessible outside the UK. Now, CKS comes with a scary licence agreement, which states :

2.1 You agree that you are only allowed to Use the Topics if you:

(i) Are an individual; in which case: You are allowed to Use for personal and/or your own educational purposes only and not on behalf of or for the benefit of any company, organisation, or business.
...
2.2 If you are not an individual or a clinician (as defined above), you must contact Us for a commercial licence. If you do not, you understand that by Using the Topics you or your organisation will be infringing Our intellectual property rights.
2.3 For the avoidance of doubt, the following, without limitation, are not permitted to Use the Topics (but may do so by contacting Agilio and entering into a commercial licence):
...

(iii) companies, businesses, and any other private enterprises that are not part of the National Health Service.

I'm not sure whether Misplaced Pages is affected by this. Hence the query. 86.174.206.40 (talk) 14:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I doubt that it's a problem. See 3.1(v): "You cannot Use the Topics to create other material, such as books, articles, or guidance. This does not prevent you from referring to appropriately referenced extracts of Topics." Citing it as a source behind text that you have written in your own words presumably counts as "appropriate referencing". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for that WAID. It would seem crazy to provide reliable medical information that can't even be cited, but hey what do I know? I'll restore the edit given that this is a really useful medrs, imo (I've sometimes found it tricky to find a good medrs that summarizes key basic info in a readily citable form). 86.174.206.40 (talk) 18:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Notice about possibly relevant discussion

Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#WP:MEDRS_&_a_quote_from_a_dermatologist

TLDR; can a dermatologists' testimony about the spread of scabies in an Israeli prison, and the need for hygiene be used in Torture_during_the_Israel–Hamas_war#Other_reports, or would that violate WP:MEDRS. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 06:50, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on Electronic Harassment

Hello, there is a discussion on Talk:Electronic harassment about whether declaring a group 'delusional' falls under WP:MEDRS at Talk:Electronic harassment#Introduction Violates WP:MEDRS and WP:NPOV. This could use some editors more familiar with Misplaced Pages's standards. Amranu (talk) 13:39, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at RSN that may include a medical claim

Help with WP:RSN#Vice Media (again) would be appreciated. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

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