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Defining biomedical information
Per what was stated here by Seppi333 and me, this essay is lacking if people come away from it thinking that biomedical information only concerns diseases. The bullying example I gave in that aforementioned discussion is an example of a topic that is not a disease but has biomedical effects, such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, violence and suicide. While major depressive disorder can be considered a disease, there are a lot of experts that distinguish between mental disorder and disease, just like a lot of them distinguish between disease and infection, which is why there was that recent big sexually transmitted disease vs. sexually transmitted infection debate. General depression (the depression (mood) topic I linked to above), anxiety, low self-esteem, violence and suicide are not typically thought of as diseases. Flyer22 (talk) 12:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
- Obviously, we need to expand the page. I'd like to give some examples specific to alt med, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
- This is a good start to what I commented on above. I appreciate that edit. Flyer22 (talk) 04:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
Comments
Hi WhatamIdoing! This is a list of a few things from my notes that I’m still not sure of right now:
- Information that a particular person is diagnosed with a particular condition. I’d probably accept a primary statement by a doctor, but probably not a person’s self-identification, because of things like hypochondriasis. Of course, how the person chooses to identify in public would not be MEDRS.
- Regulatory information with medical implications, such as statements that a drug is approved to treat a particular condition, especially in the US and Europe. Approval by e.g. the US FDA is almost a gold standard for effectiveness, and I’m not sure if this can be separated. For example, I'd want to replace any news citation reporting FDA approval with a citation to the FDA itself (since it's primary for the fact of regulation but secondary or tertiary for information on effectiveness).
- Amount of productive work lost to a disease. It’s inherently an economic analysis, especially when taken at the level of the population, but as soon as it’s applied more specifically (e.g. average amount of productive work lost per person), that leads to conclusions about recovery times.
- Cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit analyses for a treatment. A bit less inherently economic, since it presumably includes analysis of things like side effects, but the acknowledgement of such an analysis existing directly implies that the treatment has some level of effectiveness. Similarly, an incorrect claim that a treatment is not cost-effective could cost lives.
--Sunrise (talk) 09:06, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
- I've numbered the items for convenience.
- If Paul Politician says that he has ____ disease, then that's not biomedical information. It doesn't matter whether he's right or not, because there's no "bio" in that. Depending upon what the sources say, and upon other context, one might choose to qualify the statement suitably: "After a trip to the local garden show, George Gullible believed that he had rose leaf blight" or "In Octember 2014, Paul Politician announced that he was not seeking re-election for health reasons. His press secretary ended months of speculation by disclosing that the politician had been diagnosed with Blank Disease". But it's still not "biomedical" information.
- The bare fact that an agency assigned a particular legal status is not biomedical. It implies efficacy (and safety and adequate characterization), but "This received marketing approval from the FDA on 17 Octember 2014 for the following indications" is legal information, not biomedical information. Actual efficacy would ideally be supported by something stronger (and broader, because drugs are often effective for more conditions than they are approved for) than a legal document. However, in saying that this is not biomedical information, there is still nothing that prohibits you from citing a better source.
- I can see what you mean. So first let me begin with pedantry: Cost-effectiveness analysis presumably implies only that someone believed that there might be efficacy, since "all cost, no benefit" is a possible outcome. Also, saying that something is "not biomedical" doesn't mean that you can use a lousy source. Plain old RS has a strong bias in favor of high-quality scholarly sources, too. And, this is all written from the perspective of the claim, rather than from the perspective of the source. If you're citing a study about cost-effectiveness to make biomedical claims (like "this one works for 90% of patients with Blank Disease" rather than "this one is more cost-effective than that one"), then you're writing biomedical information, even if your source is all about the money. But perhaps this is sufficiently complicated that it would be better moved to the "Special cases" section (which needs some attention). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
LD50s
In response to your question about LD50s, I’m going to go with a spectrum. I would say that e.g. the LD50 in rats for cigarette smoke is medical information, but not the LD50 in guppies of a chemical that’s only used for euthanizing diseased fish. An environmental pollutant, especially one that’s known or suspected to have human effects, would be somewhere in between. The questions I think I’d want to know about would be:
- Are humans exposed or claimed to be exposed to it? (e.g. through consuming it)
- How similar is the species to humans? (e.g. mammal LD50s are much more relevant than insect or plant LD50s)
- Why are we interested in this information? Was the research done because of claims of human toxicity, or was it done to help us save an endangered species of frog?
- Does MEDRS information about the effect in humans exist? I have two competing inclinations for this one. If it causes or is claimed to cause effects in humans, I’m inclined to ask for MEDRS. On the other hand, if the information about effects in humans is described neutrally in the same article, I’m inclined to think readers should be able to recognize that the human data takes precedence.
--Sunrise (talk) 09:06, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Beliefs
This (from the ;Beliefs item) is unclear:
MEDRS context is necessary if a belief is presented as factual (not just the fact that people hold it), or if it could otherwise have implications about biomedical information, such as by argumentum ad populum.
User:Sunrise, can you give me an example or two? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
"beliefs" in the lead
Lead currently says: "The English Misplaced Pages gives detailed advice on sources to support claims about biomedical information in Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) ("MEDRS"). The goal of this guideline is to help Misplaced Pages editors identify the current mainstream (conventional) medical beliefs, and to appropriately represent those beliefs as being the mainstream positions in articles."
That lead maybe described where you originally intended this document to do, but the revisions below describe (inmy view) what this document actually does...
Could this perhaps say: "The English Misplaced Pages gives detailed advice on sources to support claims content about biomedical information in Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) ("MEDRS"). The goal of this guideline is to help Misplaced Pages editors identify the current mainstream (conventional) medical beliefs differentiate biomedical content from other content, and to appropriately represent those beliefs as being find sources presenting the mainstream positions in articles on biomedial information.
thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 19:08, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
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