Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:57, 6 April 2013

Oncolytic virus

Hi, I hope I am not giving you edit conflicts while you are working on the page Oncolytic virus. I will leave it alone for a while in case you are still working there. – Fayenatic London 19:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, there was no conflict, I am just trying to update the clinical research section mainly but will try to tidy up the rest of the page where I see a benefit. Good idea making the new section for combination with existing therapy, its a growing area of research and it was cluttering the possible applications section. Viraltonic (talk) 14:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your good work! The page Virotherapy does not seem to be distinguishable as a topic; I suggest it should be slightly merged into oncolytic virus, and mostly moved to RIGVIR; what do you think? – Fayenatic London 23:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, the Virotherapy page isn't very good. It could be mostly moved as you suggest and become a brief summary with references to oncolytic virus, viral gene therapy etc. Viraltonic (talk) 15:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Your recent edits about viral cancer therapies

Hi,

I noticed you've been adding a good deal of material on these newer therapeutics. Thank you.

Because these are medical topics, I wanted to call your attention to the sourcing guidelines for medical articles. I've noticed that some of your edits have lacked sources, or only used primary sources for reference, and this is something we try and avoid. One of the articles you have worked on, talimogene laherparepvec, seems particularly problematic, as the majority of references are from clinicaltrials.gov. This suggests that you may want to review the page on what Misplaced Pages is not, particularly the section about how WP is not a newspaper.

And although it may or may not be relevant for you, I feel it is a best practice, when working on subject areas that are of substantial recent commercial interest, to review conflict of interest guidelines, or at least check out the brief version of the same.

happy editing!

-- # _ 00:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi there, Thanks for the input, I am aware that some of the parts about clinical trials are poorly referenced, but as you'll understand there is very little published about clinical trials until they are complete, often clinicaltrials.gov is the only source and it is at least impartial in that it only describes the trial, and doesn't make any claims. Where possible I link to journal articles describing results. talimogene laherparepvec is admittedly a brief and poor quality article, but it is young and I will eventually fill in the more encyclopaedic details, I just happened to begin with the clinical trial section. I have created a few pages for therapies of this class but as the only person currently working on them it might take a while for them all to be up to standard. I created them as a spin-off from the oncolytic virus page where I began with the clinical development section, hence initial interest in clinical trials.

I am an independent researcher in this field, purely academic and careful to remain impartial in my editing. I can see how mention of Amgen may have made you feel it was promotional, but I don't think that deserves the removal of the entry in the Experimental cancer treatment and management of cancer pages. Cancer immunotherapy is in similar stages of development and that is there on the management of cancer page, and it mentions a specific product, with no references. Perhaps you would like to rephrase it if you'd rather not mention specific products/companies, I was just trying to illustrate that it is a significant field worthy of inclusion, I linked back to the main oncolytic virus page for the fully referenced article. I'm not sure what was wrong with the paragraph in experimental cancer treatment I could link to some reviews if you'd like, but with the link back to the full article that seems a little redundant.

Any further tips would be appreciated, perhaps you'd like to join me in enhancing these pages?

Viraltonic (talk) 01:54, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your offer, though I don't think I have enough time to join you, I already have a rather full plate of in-process wp projects that never seem to get done.

If clinicaltrials.gov is the only source for these materials, then my opinion (which I expect would be shared by a number of folks over at the talk page of WikiProject Medicine, where you might find it useful to post questions) is that it should simply not be written about. We have a strong preference for secondary sources, as noted in our reliable source guidelines for medicine, and so when there is insufficient secondary source coverage the appropriate action is not to use lots of primary sources (which would raise red flags for original research) but simply not to write about it. The sections I removed were unsourced. I apologize if any of my tone is in any way confrontational, I do not mean to bite the newbies but it is particularly important to me that medical content be properly sourced. -- # _ 02:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

You're also quite right about the Management of cancer and cancer immunotherapy pages, but rather than being examples to hold up, they are rather both in need of a good cleaning. I can certainly understand why you might think, looking at those pages, that your contributions were in keeping with prevailing norms. -- # _ 02:11, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I have posted over at WT:MED regarding management of cancer, so I appreciate your suggestions. Might you have an interest in working on this article over the next few weeks with me and perhaps others? -- # _ 02:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Well I could certainly write a well sourced summary of oncolytic viruses! I have knowledge in other areas of cancer treatment too, so I will keep an eye on the page and do what I can. Viraltonic (talk) 02:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Might you be able to comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#RIGVIR? Best wishes. Biosthmors (talk) 18:14, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Oncolytic virus

Great job. I do take a bit of issue putting the still kind of speculative clinical trial results language in the lead paragraph, and I also moved the stuff about Amgen to the clinical trials section, but that's the only really glaring thing i saw. thanks for all your work on this! -- # _ 00:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

thanks for all your work on the viral topics!

# _ 00:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)