Doctor Wikipedia

[Anthonyhcole]

Reinforcing the point I made earlier. Wikipedia is a piss poor source for any one in need of medical advice. The problem being that even if the content is accurate the writing style is completely crap. A cancer patient wants basic information presented in a simple form. they don't want to have to slug their way through a load of tl;dr medical jargon. They want to know can it be fixed, how ill am I gonna get, what is the best treatment, and what is the web crap I should ignore? But that isn't what wikipedia blog posts on cancer subjects tell them. They are written in jargonese, for medical students/practioners, and stuffed full of controversies. In effect the best of them have been fucked over in the same way that the maths posts have, so that they are no longer useful to the mass of the population.

I agree with you on the maths articles - and the owners of that category see no problem. The readability of our medical content is wildly variable, and most medical editors (oops!) agree most is too complicated. On that, would you care to offer an opinion on the readability of at least some of Cancer pain (T-H-L) for me?

And, since I'm scrounging for reviewers, Inflammatory myopathy (T-H-L) needs a damn good good looking at. The Medline Plus article looks clearer and more comprehensive. Other eyes would be appreciated. (I wrote it.)

[Cedric]

Reinforcing the point I made earlier. Wikipedia is a piss poor source for any one in need of medical advice. The problem being that even if the content is accurate the writing style is completely crap. A cancer patient wants basic information presented in a simple form. they don't want to have to slug their way through a load of tl;dr medical jargon. They want to know can it be fixed, how ill am I gonna get, what is the best treatment, and what is the web crap I should ignore? But that isn't what wikipedia blog posts on cancer subjects tell them. They are written in jargonese, for medical students/practioners, and stuffed full of controversies. In effect the best of them have been fucked over in the same way that the maths posts have, so that they are no longer useful to the mass of the population.

Hmmm--sounds a lot like Wikipedia's highway articles, but with one major exception. The roadsters who maintain control over them generally do not engage in the hypocritical pretense that they are somehow useful to the general public. The attitude has pretty much always been that Wikipedia exists for the benefit of Teh Communitah, not for the reading public. While many are rather hypocritical about this, others plainly glory in it.

[lilburne]

From cancer Pain.

Abdominal and urogenital hollow organs

Inflammation of artery walls and tissue adjacent to nerves is common in tumors of abdominal and urogenital hollow organs.[22] Infection or cancer may irritate the trigone of the urinary bladder, causing spasm of the detrusor urinae muscle (the muscle that squeezes urine from the urinary bladder), resulting in deep pain above the pubic bone, possibly referred to the tip of the penis, lasting from a few minutes to half an hour.[16]

Serous mucosa

Carcinosis of the peritoneum may cause pain through inflammation, disordered visceral motility, or pressure of the metastases on nerves. Once a tumor has penetrated or perforated hollow viscera, acute inflammation of the peritoneum appears, inducing severe abdominal pain. Pleural carcinomatosis is normally painless.[22]

This is stuff that your doctor might want to know. But I suspect that the data is more useful in the posts about the type of conditions, rather than clumping it all together as it is here. As of now the article is a smorgasbord of accumulated factoids whose only relationship is that they match 'pain' and 'cancer'.

Also for the general reader, the post is useless as they'll tend to only be concerned with a specific cancer. A clear example where even if everything on the page is correct it is useless to the reader. They'll quickly go elsewhere.

[Textnyymi]

"Information reported on this article should not be taken as medical advice, and could be inaccurate due to the nature of this wiki software. This article describes a medical topic but is not intented as a substitute for medical advice."

Why couldn't english articles have a boilerplate with similar text at the top?

[Anthonyhcole]

"Information reported on this article should not be taken as medical advice, and could be inaccurate due to the nature of this wiki software. This article describes a medical topic but is not intented as a substitute for medical advice."

Why couldn't english articles have a boilerplate with similar text at the top?

This.

[Anthonyhcole]

This is stuff that your doctor might want to know. But I suspect that the data is more useful in the posts about the type of conditions, rather than clumping it all together as it is here. As of now the article is a smorgasbord of accumulated factoids whose only relationship is that they match 'pain' and 'cancer'.

They all came out of a handful of specialist textbooks on cancer pain, actually.

Also for the general reader, the post is useless as they'll tend to only be concerned with a specific cancer. A clear example where even if everything on the page is correct it is useless to the reader. They'll quickly go elsewhere.

Very good points. I'll move most of the details related to specific regions and conditions to daughter articles and leave lists or brief summaries behind. Thank you. Awesome.

[Poetlister]

Boots the Pharmacy has link aimed at lay folk.

[thekohser]

And, since I'm scrounging for reviewers, Inflammatory myopathy (T-H-L) needs a damn good good looking at. The Medline Plus article looks clearer and more comprehensive. Other eyes would be appreciated. (I wrote it.)

How much are you paying?

[Mancunium]

Non è attendibile chi cita Wikipedia
In aumento nelle pubblicazioni scientifiche i riferimenti alla «fonte» online
Corriere della Sera, 27 April 2014 link

Google-translation from Italian link

Is not trusted who cites Wikipedia
Increase in scientific publications references to the "source" online

Be wary of scientific articles mentioning Wikipedia. The suggestion comes from a group of Canadian researchers who has just conducted an analysis of more than 1,400 publications, both in prominent journals such as the British Medical Journal, Nature and Science, and other, less authoritative, and found that only 4 percent of citations was appropriate, that made reference to primary sources - ie original documents and data - or secondary - for example books - listed at bottom of pages of Wikipedia. In more than 50 per cent of cases, however, the Wikipedia definitions were used directly or quotes taken from the contents (tertiary sources) developed by "Wikipedians", the anonymous authors of volunteers who continuously update the largest online encyclopedia in the world. The number of citations found is not very high (2049 out of a total of 1433 articles from 1008 journals), but it is growing.

The warning is echoed by Canadian scholars, in fact, a commentary, published in the British Medical Journal, Lane Rasberry, a "Wikipedian" who works for the American magazine Consumer Reports. Rasberry points out that, because of its inherent characteristics, Wikipedia should never be mentioned, in and of itself, nor in scientific articles or by other parties, but only needs help to find the correct primary or secondary sources. It is interesting that the Canadian authors have raised the issue of Wikipedia because it is today, according to the World Health Organization, the site most consulted to search for health information, not only by those who wrote a scientific work, but especially from the general public. The problem is its reliability. To enrich the content (and especially of certified data) and to make it more reliable information provided by Wikipedia idea might just be to encourage greater collaboration between the community and the academic world of the online encyclopaedia, and to encourage doctors to provide their input.

[Mancunium]

And, since I'm scrounging for reviewers, Inflammatory myopathy (T-H-L) needs a damn good good looking at. The Medline Plus article looks clearer and more comprehensive. Other eyes would be appreciated. (I wrote it.)

How much are you paying?

I used to think that Anthonyhcole was serious about making Wikipedia's medical articles safe for human consumption, but now I see him trying to get others involved-- to share the blame, no doubt, when WikiProject Medicine is finally proven to have killed someone.

Caution Prescribed When Researching Medical Conditions on Wikipedia
Study in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association Finds Wikipedia Articles Contradict Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature
PR Newswire, 2 May 2014 link

CHICAGO, May 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- It might be convenient to research medical conditions online but a study in the May issue of The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA) found nine out of 10 public-edited Wikipedia articles on common medical conditions contained factual errors when compared to peer-reviewed resources. Authors of the study, "Wikipedia vs. Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions," identified the 10 costliest medical conditions in the United States, like heart disease and diabetes, and the 10 Wikipedia articles most closely related to each of these conditions. After tracking each medical fact in the Wikipedia articles, they then compared those facts to peer-reviewed medical literature to determine whether the assertions made in Wikipedia were supported by evidence.

"While Wikipedia is a convenient tool for conducting research, from a public health standpoint patients should not use it as a primary resource because those articles do not go through the same peer-review process as medical journals," explains lead author Robert T. Hasty, DO, regional associate dean at the Campbell University Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine in Buies Creek, N.C. "The best resource when looking for a diagnosis is to speak with your physician, who can take into account your medical history and other factors to determine the best course of treatment." Dr. Hasty, who also serves as vice president of medical education at Southeastern Health in North Carolina, encourages physicians to engage in Wikipedia articles in their areas of expertise and become familiar with Wikipedia's editing guidelines. He also shares what patients can take away from the study's findings:

What Patients Need to Know

* If you think you are sick, consult with your physician who is in the best position to diagnose your condition and work with you on a course of treatment.

* When researching medical topics pull information from a number of resources to get multiple perspectives.

* Look for websites that have medical advisory boards and/or peer-reviewed content, as well as sites from public health authorities like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.

* Since Wikipedia articles are public-edited, the information might not be as reliable or accurate as other online resources.

* Be sure to consult with your physician about any prescription or over the counter medications or other medical treatments that come up during an online search.

To learn more about the JAOA study, check out this video with Dr. Hasty.
Read this news release at Osteopathic.org. link [...]

Speaking of peer-reviewed, a real Professor of Medicine has agreed to review this thread, and to tell me if it warrants this:

By focussing on petty libels and imperfections you're kicking up dust and obscuring the real problem with Wikipedia's medical content - and to some extent are just adding to the problem. By colonising this topic with your sleazy personal attacks and innuendo, you and Mancunium are ensuring those who could contribute to a serious debate won't touch this thread with a bargepole.

[lilburne]

Mancunium, those open-access journals you point to can't publish Wikipedia articles because Wikipedia's content is covered by a CC-BY-SA license and none of those journals will publish under that license (as the "SA" - "share alike" - demands).

What does the SA license have to do with anything? Publishing a SA article does not make anything other than the SA article and its derivatives SA. A SA article does not make the publication it appears in a derivative of the article. SA only infects the copyrightable thing it is applied to, unlike a virus it doesn't infect everything that comes into close proximity.

[Poetlister]

Mancunium, those open-access journals you point to can't publish Wikipedia articles because Wikipedia's content is covered by a CC-BY-SA license and none of those journals will publish under that license (as the "SA" - "share alike" - demands).

What does the SA license have to do with anything? Publishing a SA article does not make anything other than the SA article and its derivatives SA. A SA article does not make the publication it appears in a derivative of the article. SA only infects the copyrightable thing it is applied to, unlike a virus it doesn't infect everything that comes into close proximity.

It means that if they amend the article, the amendments are automatically CC and cannot be copyrighted more tightly.

[Anthonyhcole]

Mancunium, those open-access journals you point to can't publish Wikipedia articles because Wikipedia's content is covered by a CC-BY-SA license and none of those journals will publish under that license (as the "SA" - "share alike" - demands).

What does the SA license have to do with anything? Publishing a SA article does not make anything other than the SA article and its derivatives SA. A SA article does not make the publication it appears in a derivative of the article. SA only infects the copyrightable thing it is applied to, unlike a virus it doesn't infect everything that comes into close proximity.

It means that if they amend the article, the amendments are automatically CC and cannot be copyrighted more tightly.

What he said - and the publishers of the 2 or 3 significant medical journals whose editors were keen wouldn't allow our articles to be published under a different license than the others in the journal.

[lilburne]

Mancunium, those open-access journals you point to can't publish Wikipedia articles because Wikipedia's content is covered by a CC-BY-SA license and none of those journals will publish under that license (as the "SA" - "share alike" - demands).

What does the SA license have to do with anything? Publishing a SA article does not make anything other than the SA article and its derivatives SA. A SA article does not make the publication it appears in a derivative of the article. SA only infects the copyrightable thing it is applied to, unlike a virus it doesn't infect everything that comes into close proximity.

It means that if they amend the article, the amendments are automatically CC and cannot be copyrighted more tightly.

What he said - and the publishers of the 2 or 3 significant medical journals whose editors were keen wouldn't allow our articles to be published under a different license than the others in the journal.

I'm still not seeing any issue here. I can, however, see why some medical journals wouldn't want to have much to do with WP given the experience of the NPG along with MIT et al. Word gets around that WP around will most likely lead to some light fingered activity. But it won't be to do with the licenses.

[Anthonyhcole]

Mancunium, those open-access journals you point to can't publish Wikipedia articles because Wikipedia's content is covered by a CC-BY-SA license and none of those journals will publish under that license (as the "SA" - "share alike" - demands).

What does the SA license have to do with anything? Publishing a SA article does not make anything other than the SA article and its derivatives SA. A SA article does not make the publication it appears in a derivative of the article. SA only infects the copyrightable thing it is applied to, unlike a virus it doesn't infect everything that comes into close proximity.

It means that if they amend the article, the amendments are automatically CC and cannot be copyrighted more tightly.

What he said - and the publishers of the 2 or 3 significant medical journals whose editors were keen wouldn't allow our articles to be published under a different license than the others in the journal.

I'm still not seeing any issue here. I can, however, see why some medical journals wouldn't want to have much to do with WP given the experience of the NPG along with MIT et al. Word gets around that WP around will most likely lead to some light fingered activity. But it won't be to do with the licenses.

If you're wondering why the publishers wouldn't permit it, I don't know for sure, but I'm told the license was the sticking point.

(The grail is high-quality peer review of Wikipedia articles. The plan was to work up a Wikipedia article and nominate a version of it for review and publication by a journal with a reputation for rigor. Once that's achieved, we can put a clickable badge at the top of the article, linking the reader to the version that is reliable ... at least, as reliable as the best peer-reviewed sources we rely on. Basically, slowly, over time, creating two versions of Wikipedia: work-in-progress articles and reliable articles.)

NPG = National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute (T-H-L). Not sure about the MIT reference.

[Mancunium]

Tony, do you have something blocking your ears?

No. I use one of these in the shower.They're awesome

I can't believe you have the gall to ask such a question!

The first link, Medline Plus, has, I think, 900 articles. Rochester Uni encyclopedia lists 550. There's unlikely to be overlap. Then there's Mayo Clinic. Mmm. enWP has 30,000 articles tagged "of interest to WikiProject Medicine." But you've prompted me to examine some assumptions.
(I'll get back to you Mancunium, I feel like shit today.)

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Name - James Heilman
Registration Status - Active, Practising
Class of Registration - FULL General/Family Practice
CCFP - Family Medicine
Certification CCFP - Family Medicine
Degree -M.D. - 2003 - Saskatchewan (Canada)

[Anthonyhcole]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

[SB_Johnny]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

That's not libelous, though it might be assholish depending on your point of view.

(Don't use the report button like that again, please. Seriously.)

[Mancunium]

"Wikipedia vs. Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions"
The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, May 2014 link

Abstract

Context: Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has become the most popular general reference site on the Internet and a popular source of health care information. To evaluate the accuracy of this resource, the authors compared Wikipedia articles on the most costly medical conditions with standard, evidence-based, peer-reviewed sources.

Methods: The top 10 most costly conditions in terms of public and private expenditure in the United States were identified, and a Wikipedia article corresponding to each topic was chosen. In a blinded process, 2 randomly assigned investigators independently reviewed each article and identified all assertions (ie, implication or statement of fact) made in it. The reviewer then conducted a literature search to determine whether each assertion was supported by evidence. The assertions found by each reviewer were compared and analyzed to determine whether assertions made by Wikipedia for these conditions were supported by peer-reviewed sources.

Results: For commonly identified assertions, there was statistically significant discordance between 9 of the 10 selected Wikipedia articles (coronary artery disease, lung cancer, major depressive disorder, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, back pain, and hyperlipidemia) and their corresponding peer-reviewed sources (P<.05) and for all assertions made by Wikipedia for these medical conditions (P<.05 for all 9).

Conclusion: Most Wikipedia articles representing the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States contain many errors when checked against standard peer-reviewed sources. Caution should be used when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care. Since its 2001 launch, Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) has become the most popular general reference site on the Internet, ranking 6th globally based on Internet traffic.1 As of March 2014, it contained more than 31 million articles in 285 languages.2 Wikipedia's prominence has been made possible by its fundamental design as a wiki, or collaborative database, allowing all users the ability to add, delete, and edit information at will. However, it is this very feature that has raised concern in the medical community regarding the reliability of the information it contains. Despite these concerns, Wikipedia has become a popular source of health care information,3 with 47% to 70% of physicians and medical students admitting to using it as a reference.4-6 In actuality, these figures may be higher because some researchers suspect its use is underreported.7 Although the effect of Wikipedia's information on medical decision making is unclear, it almost certainly has an influence.

Wikipedia has several mechanisms in place to deal with unverifiable information and vandalism.8 Because of the frequency of editing and revisions, most instances of vandalism only exist for a few days after being identified, with half of the corrections being posted less than 3 minutes after being identified.9 One study found that some corrections were made almost instantaneously in 42% of cases.10 There is a push on Wikipedia to have statements backed by references and unverifiable statements being called out to readers.11 Haigh12 observed that, in general, medically related articles on Wikipedia are accompanied by a sufficient amount of reputable citations. To evaluate Wikipedia's accuracy, we compared Wikipedia articles on the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States with recognized peer-reviewed sources.

Methods: The 10 most costly conditions in the United States by public and private expenditure in 2008—the year that the most complete data were available for the present study—were identified from the publicly available database from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.13 We then identified 10 Wikipedia articles that we believed most closely related to each of those conditions. Because Wikipedia articles are dynamic and subject to frequent changes and updates, we printed the selected articles on April 25, 2012, for our research purposes. In a blinded process, we randomly selected 10 reviewers to examine 2 of the selected Wikipedia articles. Each reviewer was an internal medicine resident or rotating intern at the time of the assignment. This arrangement created redundancy, giving the study 2 independent reviewers for each article. Also, by using physicians as reviewers, we ensured a baseline competency in medical literature interpretation and research. We used a Web-based randomizer (http://www.random.org) to assign the selected Wikipedia articles to each reviewer. Reviewers were asked to identify every assertion (ie, implication or statement of fact) in the Wikipedia article and to fact-check each assertion against a peer-reviewed source that was published or updated within the past 5 years. Reviewers were sent an e-mail containing examples of assertions (eg, “diuretics are the initial drug of choice for essential hypertension without co-morbidities”).

The authors instructed the reviewers to use UpToDate (http://www.uptodate.com/) as the initial means by which to search for peer-reviewed sources. If UpToDate did not produce adequate results, then each reviewer was instructed to use PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed), Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/), or a search engine of their choice. Each reviewer then reported concordance or discordance between Wikipedia and the peer-reviewed sources. Two researchers who did not participate in the original review process then compared both reviews of each article for similar assertions as well as dissimilar assertions and tallied the concordance and discordance for each. The null hypothesis of the study was that there would be concordance between the Wikipedia article and the peer-reviewed sources (P>.05). The alternative hypothesis was that there would be discordance (ie, no concordance) between the Wikipedia article and the peer-reviewed sources (P<.05). A McNemar test for correlated proportions was conducted for the assertions that were similar, dissimilar, or both, as assessed by the blinded reviewers.14(pp171-178)

Results: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality13 listed the following 10 conditions as the costliest: heart disease, cancer, mental disorders, trauma-related disorders, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/asthma, hypertension, diabetes, back problems, and hyperlipidemia. The corresponding Wikipedia articles15-24 are listed in Table 1. Examples of the descriptive terms we used to categorize the findings of each reviewer are listed on Table 2. Reviewers found a statically significant discordance between Wikipedia and peer-reviewed sources for assertions that were similar (P<.05) in all but 1 of the conditions: trauma-related disorders (ie, concussions). The same was true for all assertions found by the blinded reviewers of the articles (P<.05 for all conditions except concussions). In 4 articles—major depressive disorder, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes mellitus—there was a statistically significant discordance between Wikipedia articles and peer-reviewed sources for dissimilar assertions. The interpretation of the P value is true for similar assertions between the 2 reviewers as well as for dissimilar assertions (Table 3).

Discussion: researchers28-30 have determined that Wikipedia is unsuitable as a reference for drugs. Except for psychiatric conditions,26 scientific research has never, to our knowledge, focused on Wikipedia's content on prevalent medical conditions. A recent study by Azer31 concluded that Wikipedia is not a reliable information source for medical students in gastroenterology and hepatology. The present study demonstrated that most Wikipedia articles on the 10 most costly conditions in the United States contained assertions that are inconsistent with peer-reviewed sources. Because our standard was the peer-reviewed published literature, it can be argued that these assertions on Wikipedia represent factual error. [...]

Conclusion: Most Wikipedia articles for the 10 costliest conditions in the United States contain errors compared with standard peer-reviewed sources. Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care. Our findings reinforce the idea that physicians and medical students who currently use Wikipedia as a medical reference should be discouraged from doing so because of the potential for errors.

[Anthonyhcole]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

That's not libelous, though it might be assholish depending on your point of view.

(Don't use the report button like that again, please. Seriously.)

It's libel. And if you're a moderator here, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mancunium is working within your boundaries.

[Vigilant]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

That's not libelous, though it might be assholish depending on your point of view.

(Don't use the report button like that again, please. Seriously.)

It's libel. And if you're a moderator here, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mancunium is working within your boundaries.

How, exactly, is it libel?

Lay out your case.

[HRIP7]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

That's not libelous, though it might be assholish depending on your point of view.

(Don't use the report button like that again, please. Seriously.)

It's libel. And if you're a moderator here, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mancunium is working within your boundaries.

How, exactly, is it libel?

Lay out your case.

I assume this is about James Heilman's qualifications?

He states on his user page,

James Heilman, MD, CCFP-EM, Clinical Faculty member of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia (Clinical Instructor)[2]

The [2] link is to the University of British Columbia's Vancouver Academic calendar 2014/2015 and its personnel list for the Department of Emergency Medicine, which includes the following entry:

J. Heilman, B.Sc., M.D. (Sask.), CCFP(EM)

As far as I can make out, CCFP(EM) means that Heilman has passed an Examination of Special Competence in Emergency Medicine. Any doctor who (1) has a certification in family medicine and (2) is a member of the The College of Family Physicians of Canada can take this exam, and is entitled to use the CCFP(EM) designation after their name.

Where exactly is the problem with what he says about his qualifications?

[Mancunium]

Try to get back to me before a report on "Doc James" is forwarded to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia: link

Still feeling like shit, Mancunium. So, if you want me to do anything but get angry and flame people, or idly dream about interesting stuff, you'll have to pay me money. If you have a query about James's status, have you thought about asking him before ladling libelous aspersions onto this thread?

That's not libelous, though it might be assholish depending on your point of view.

(Don't use the report button like that again, please. Seriously.)

It's libel. And if you're a moderator here, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mancunium is working within your boundaries.

How, exactly, is it libel?

Lay out your case.

I assume this is about James Heilman's qualifications?

He states on his user page,

James Heilman, MD, CCFP-EM, Clinical Faculty member of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia (Clinical Instructor)[2]

The [2] link is to the University of British Columbia's Vancouver Academic calendar 2014/2015 and its personnel list for the Department of Emergency Medicine, which includes the following entry:

J. Heilman, B.Sc., M.D. (Sask.), CCFP(EM)

As far as I can make out, CCFP(EM) means that Heilman has passed an Examination of Special Competence in Emergency Medicine. Any doctor who (1) has a certification in family medicine and (2) is a member of the The College of Family Physicians of Canada can take this exam, and is entitled to use the CCFP(EM) designation after their name.

Where exactly is the problem with what he says about his qualifications?

He claimed for years, on his User page, to be a Professor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan: link.

Caution Prescribed When Researching Medical Conditions on Wikipedia
Broadway World, 2 May 2014 link

It might be convenient to research medical conditions online but a study in the May issue of The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA) found nine out of 10 public-edited Wikipedia articles on common medical conditions contained factual errors when compared to peer-reviewed resources.

Wikipedia vs Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions
The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (PDF link)

[HRIP7]

Where exactly is the problem with what he says about his qualifications?

He claimed for years, on his User page, to be a Professor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan: link.

According to that diff, he claimed to be a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. That's not a particularly senior title. Now, is there any reason to believe that claim was false?

[Vigilant]

Where exactly is the problem with what he says about his qualifications?

He claimed for years, on his User page, to be a Professor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan: link.

According to that diff, he claimed to be a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. That's not a particularly senior title. Now, is there any reason to believe that claim was false?

For the record, that's a member of the faculty.
It's not particularly smiled upon when that false claim is made.

[Mancunium]

Where exactly is the problem with what he says about his qualifications?

He claimed for years, on his User page, to be a Professor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan: link.

According to that diff, he claimed to be a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. That's not a particularly senior title. Now, is there any reason to believe that claim was false?

For the sake of all the gullible people WikiProject Medicine is deliberately deceiving with the promise of accurate medical information, please

This is a "news" thread, started on 27 September 2013; there are 275 posts; most of them are curated from the mass media. It has always been about the WikiProject in the news, and only incidentally about the cast of characters creating the news. Heilman himself has been making news for years:

A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?
The New York Times, 28 July 2009 link

But this thread is not about Heilman:

As I noted above, a Professor of Medicine has agreed to read this thread -- all of it: the magazine and newspaper stories, the medical journal articles, the WikiProject Medicine Talk pages, everything -- and to share her comments.

It is when he learned this that Anthonyhcole started to claim "libel". The qualifications of James Heilman are a red herring. This thread is about a major public health hazard.

Please: read the thread!

[HRIP7]

I agree it's a major health hazard (and I think Anthony does too), but may I suggest we leave Heilman's qualifications out of it?

One thing the public needs to understand is that anyone – including your neighbour's twelve-year-old kid – can join WikiProject Medicine. Medical qualifications are not required, and there has been highly publicised precedent of qualifications claimed on Wikipedia being nothing but a figment of the claimant's imagination.

Given that much of the public still seems to think that Wikipedia's medical articles are written and curated by trustworthy medical experts, our priority should be to dispel that illusion. Your point about "medical editors" in this context was well taken: on Wikipedia, one becomes a "medical editor" simply by clicking the "Edit" tab of a medical article. Again, that includes your neighbour's twelve-year-old kid, activist cranks and peddlers of woo.

I applaud the efforts to make Wikipedia's articles better, organise some sort of peer review, etc., but the success of all these initiatives is quite uncertain. Meanwhile, getting the public and, above all, journalists, doctors and nursing staff to understand that anyone with a computer can change any medical article on Wikipedia at any time, remains the primary goal.

[Mancunium]

My first post on this thread, 27 September 2013:

UCSF First U.S. Medical School to Offer Credit For Wikipedia Articles
Course Aims to Teach Students to Increase Reliability of Medical Information
UCSF, 26 September 2013 link

UC San Francisco soon will be the first U.S. medical school at which medical students can earn academic credit for editing medical content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is one of the most widely used medical references in the world and the most consulted source for many health topics. But medical entries can lack reliable sources and have gaps in content.

“Wikipedia generates more than 53 million page views just for articles about medications each month, and is second to Google as the most frequently used source by junior physicians,” said Amin Azzam, MD, MA, an associate clinical professor at the UCSF School of Medicine and an instructor for the new class. “We’re recognizing the impact Wikipedia can have to educate patients and health care providers across the globe, and want users to receive the most accurate publicly available, sound medical information possible.”

[...]

“We know that nearly all medical students use Wikipedia. However, we want nearly all medical students to contribute to Wikipedia,” said James Heilman, MD, president of the not-for-profit Wiki Project Med Foundation, an organization dedicated to trying to improve Wikipedia's medical content by forming collaborations with like-minded institutions. “I see this collaboration as a very important first step in this direction, a step which will not only be beneficial for Wikipedia but will be exceedingly useful for the students themselves.”

The new class is available to fourth-year medical students and will focus on editing 80 key articles that are the most frequented but have lower quality levels on Wikipedia.

All articles on Wikipedia are given a grade ranging from Featured Article, which reflects a professional level of encyclopedic information based mostly on the factual completeness of the article, to “C” which is defined as a substantial article that would be useful to a casual reader, but lacks important content. Featured articles are displayed on the main page and frequently are written by experts

Currently, medicine-related articles make up 58 Featured Articles on Wikipedia, and 145 Good Articles, which is less than 1 percent of the total articles in those categories, according to Azzam. “So there is a clear need to bring medicine articles up to par,” he said.

The class, which begins in December, is part of an ongoing collaboration between the UCSF School of Medicine and the Wiki Project Med Foundation. For the launch of this partnership earlier this year, UCSF invited two “Wikipedians” to visit San Francisco to give lectures and run editing sessions on the significance of Wikipedia to medicine. The class has its own evolving Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/UCSF Elective 2013 link

My questions are:

If fewer than 1% of medicine-related Wikipedia articles are Good or Featured, why on earth would it be used as a reference by physicians?

Even if this project succeeds in bringing a few more articles up to Good Article standard, would they not then be obliged to stand eternally guard over these little puddles of excellence, against the "anyone can edit the free encyclopedia" mob?

Why not move WP's medicine-related articles to a separate medical wiki, editable only by licensed health care professionals, researchers, and medical students-- all using their own names and displaying their credentials?

The second post on this thread, Anthonyhcole's reply:

If fewer than 1% of medicine-related Wikipedia articles are Good or Featured, why on earth would it be used as a reference by physicians?

Even if this project succeeds in bringing a few more articles up to Good Article standard, would they not then be obliged to stand eternally guard over these little puddles of excellence, against the "anyone can edit the free encyclopedia" mob?

Medicine is one of the most heavily curated categories on the project. There is a quiet but very diligent group of gnomes in all time zones patrolling recent changes to medical content.

I used to do a lot of that and found that the category is better than you'd expect, in terms of reliability. But as the article you cite hints, there are massive gaps. I would guess that we need to expand our medical coverage at least twenty-fold before we can make any claims of completeness.

Why not move WP's medicine-related articles to a separate medical wiki, editable only by licensed health care professionals, researchers, and medical students-- all using their own names and displaying their credentials?

Take a look at

JMIR Wiki Medical Reviews

I have some hope for this initiative. There will be a link at the top of the current version of the article (next to the title, I hope) pointing to the scholar-reviewed version - something like a button reading "Read the version reviewed by (X)".

The bloody borders of our medical content are in the regions of alternative medicine. Andreas points out there are large remnants of promotional language in cosmetic surgery. I'm hoping to one day have the energy to take on psychoactive drugs - whose articles largely lack the most recent findings of deceptive publication bias.

Moderators: Should this be moved to the Wikimedia Medicine thread in General Discussion?

By 11 March I was regularly posting news like this article:

‘It’s against all principles of scientific reporting’: Thousands of medical papers cite Wikipedia, study says
The National Post, 12 March 2014 link

Universities ban students from citing Wikipedia in papers, and even the web site itself warns academics against referencing its articles, which any Internet user can alter at any time. But a new Canadian study has found that thousands of peer-reviewed papers in medical journals have cited Wikipedia in recent years — and the numbers of references are increasing fast. The trend – apparent even in some of the world’s most influential medical publications — raises the possibility of spreading misinformation and “could potentially affect care of patients,” researchers from the University of Ottawa say in a paper just published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Articles in the BMJ itself have had 13 references to Wikipedia in the last decade, they note. What struck the study authors most, though, is that the citations began to multiply in the last three years. “The biggest surprise was the trend,” said Dr. Sylvain Boet, an Ottawa Hospital anesthetist and health researcher who headed the study with Dr. Dylan Bould, another anesthetist. “It’s exponential … It goes against all the principles of scientific reporting and referencing.”

The problem is not only the accuracy of the information [...] but that Wikipedia articles are constantly changing, and tend to only summarize primary or secondary information sources, rather than containing original research themselves, the authors say. Some of the “high-impact,” or most influential, journals found to have had Wikipedia references could not be reached for reaction this week, or declined to comment on the findings. [...] Though each article can be edited by users, mistakes tend to be corrected by others relatively quickly, with one 2005 study rating a sample of Wikipedia entries similar in accuracy to Encyclopedia Britannica. What is more, health-related articles are overseen by an expert group, WikiProject Medicine .

Indeed, it is common for medical students and young doctors to turn to Wikipedia as an initial source, admitted Dr. Boet. The problem, though, is that there is no guarantee the information at any given time is, in fact, wholly accurate, and a Wikipedia entry cited by a journal paper one day may be quite different soon after, unlike a conventional article or book, he said. That makes it harder for expert readers to assess research or, potentially, try to duplicate it themselves, said Dr. Boet. Also, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors urges that journal authors reference original, primary research — like the results of a clinical trial — not someone else’s summary of it. In fact, Wikipedia articles often do provide those kind of primary references, yet some researchers ignore them and still cite the Wiki article instead, the study notes. Doing so is likely “quick and easy,” especially if a scientist has limited access to the original source, speculated Dr. Boet.

“The possibility for the spread of misinformation from an unverified source is at odds with the principles of robust scientific methodology and could potentially affect care of patients,” his paper concludes. In fact, Wikipedia makes much the same point itself, noting that “for many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source.” It reminds readers that “anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information.” [...] Dr. Boet and colleagues discovered more than 1,400 journal articles from 2001 to the beginning of 2012 that referenced Wikipedia. The numbers started to soar in 2011, and 1,600 or more Wikipedia-citing papers were published in each of 2012 and 2013. They appeared in some of the world’s foremost journals, including Nature, Science, The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Annals of Internal Medicine. [...]

The reference is to this, which I posted on 11 March 2014:

References that anyone can edit: review of Wikipedia citations in peer reviewed health science literature
British Medical Journal, 6 March 2014 link

Anthonyhcole does not respond to criticism in the mainstream press and in scholarly journals; I doubt he bothers to read them. He attributes the headlines to me, and calls them, "sleazy personal attacks and innuendo".

[Mancunium]

Remember Dr Amin Azzam? The wiki-doctor described in the very first post in this thread? The educator who got Wikipedia "ambassadors" to do all his students' medical essays?


San Francisco company aims to become the Wikipedia of medicine
San Jose Mercury News, 4 May 2014 link

SAN FRANCISCO -- If your doctor can't determine what's ailing you, can the collective wisdom of crowds? What Wikipedia has done for knowledge, a San Francisco company called CrowdMed is betting it can do for medicine. Send your symptoms and a nominal fee to http://www.crowdmed.com and dozens of medical professionals, students and average Joes will "crowdsource" -- that is, share their knowledge and expertise -- to help diagnose what's wrong with you. [...] "We're essentially trying to match up the patient with a group of detectives who can help solve their case," said CrowdMed CEO Jared Heyman, whose company is backed by $2.4 million in venture capital funding. "And the more diverse backgrounds they have, the better our chances." The concept, however, is not without its critics. [...] Asked about the company, a California Medical Association spokeswoman said their group's 40,000 members believe that doctors "with the appropriate education, training, access to medical records and a physician-patient relationship are in the best position to diagnose medical conditions."

Still, some doctors are open to the idea -- and others are downright enthusiastic. [...] At the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, Dr. Amin Azzam, director of the "problem-based learning" curriculum, wants to use CrowdMed "to push the boundaries of how we train medical students." Instead of teaching first- and second-year students with "pretend patients," as is done now, Azzam is proposing adding CrowdMed's cases to the curriculum. "They might even be more motivated to learn because it's a real patient, not a fake patient," he said. [...] Patients can post their cases on the site for free, but adding cash rewards motivates more detectives to work cases. Rewards average about $200; CrowdMed takes a 10 percent cut. [...] He acknowledges that the year-old company has yet to show a profit, but he believes the process can save consumers time and money spent on multiple doctor visits and testing. "Crowdsourcing" health problems isn't new. In its "Think Like a Doctor" column, The New York Times blog offers readers an opportunity to "solve a medical mystery" with Dr. Lisa Sanders, who was also a medical adviser to the popular TV show "House, M.D." [...]

Dr Amin Azzam, engaged in like medical research

[Mancunium]

Welcome to the Wikiversity School of Medicine!
Wikiversity: link

For more hilarity:

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#I_actually_hate_it_here_and_I'm_leaving (T-H-L)

WikiProject Med Foundation: link

[Anthonyhcole]

I agree it's a major health hazard (and I think Anthony does too)

I do.

...getting the public and, above all, journalists, doctors and nursing staff to understand that anyone with a computer can change any medical article on Wikipedia at any time, remains the primary goal.

Agreed. Ideas?

Mancunium, would you be interested in collaborating on a blog post about Wikipedia's medical content? I agree with most of your criticisms but I'm very lazy and self-indulgent, so when I don't respond it's slackness, nothing else. Some points that I think need to be made clear include:

Anyone can and does edit.

None (actually, maybe one very inactive editor) of our medical editors is a qualified medical editor.

Only about half of those regularly editing Wikipedia's medical content claim to have some healthcare training - students, nurses, doctors, etc. - and a lot of those claims are unverified.

We could include a link to the Recent changes:Medicine feed so readers can watch the vandalism, errors etc. being poured on and (some) scraped off in real time.

The community rejected the proposal to put a prominent disclaimer on our medical content.

What else?

(How do you do bulleted lists here?)

Anthonyhcole does not respond to criticism in the mainstream press and in scholarly journals; I doubt he bothers to read them.

What am I supposed to say about reports in mainstream press and scholarly journals? None of it is new to me. Most of it is shit, by the way. I haven't read that recent study by the osteopaths but will. As for being shit, most of the press reports are hopelessly anecdotal and full of fundamental errors of understanding, and all of the peer reviewed studies I've read (I haven't read them all) are useless due to tiny sample size and flawed or unpublished selection criteria.

Really, we need a review of the peer-reviewed literature on the reliability of Wikipedia's medical content. Somewhere above I compiled a list of what I could find at the time. If others were fired up enough to work through it with me, I would be happy to sign up to a collaboration on that. But it's just too daunting for me to take on on my own.

Speaking of peer-reviewed, a real Professor of Medicine has agreed to review this thread

Excellent. Really. If they're at all interested in doing (or collaborating in) a review of the peer-reviewed literature on Wikipedia's medical content, I'll be very happy to help, and will not require attribution.

[Poetlister]

SAN FRANCISCO -- If your doctor can't determine what's ailing you, can the collective wisdom of crowds? What Wikipedia has done for knowledge, a San Francisco company called CrowdMed is betting it can do for medicine. Send your symptoms and a nominal fee to http://www.crowdmed.com and dozens of medical professionals, students and average Joes will "crowdsource" -- that is, share their knowledge and expertise -- to help diagnose what's wrong with you.

This is pretty breathtaking. At least Wikipedia doesn't charge you for giving you the views of "average Joes".

[Hex]

We could include a link to the Recent changes:Medicine feed so readers can watch the vandalism, errors etc. being poured on and (some) scraped off in real time.

I always forget about Special:RecentChangesLinked. Using it on a WikiProject page like that is brilliant. Thanks for the toolkit addition.

[Mancunium]

SAN FRANCISCO -- If your doctor can't determine what's ailing you, can the collective wisdom of crowds? What Wikipedia has done for knowledge, a San Francisco company called CrowdMed is betting it can do for medicine. Send your symptoms and a nominal fee to http://www.crowdmed.com and dozens of medical professionals, students and average Joes will "crowdsource" -- that is, share their knowledge and expertise -- to help diagnose what's wrong with you.

This is pretty breathtaking. At least Wikipedia doesn't charge you for giving you the views of "average Joes".

New Website Aims To 'Crowdsource' Patients' Diagnoses, Conditions
iHealthBeat, 5 May 2014 link

[...] CrowdMed -- which works similar to Wikipedia -- aims to use the collective knowledge of medical professionals, medical students and other interested parties to provide patients with second opinions on their medical diagnoses or to help initially diagnose difficult-to-identify conditions. The site is backed by $2.4 million in venture capital funding. [...] To use the website, patients submit a description of their symptoms, along with a $50 deposit. Patients are not required to add any additional cash prizes, although financial rewards often motivate the medical detectives to take on cases [...] After 90 days, CrowdMed uses an algorithm to generate a list of the most probable diagnoses and accompanying explanations as submitted by the detectives.[...] Patients are reimbursed for their initial deposit after they return to the website and confirm whether any of the diagnoses were helpful.The detective who supplied the correct diagnosis then collects the cash reward -- usually about $200 -- of which CrowdMed takes 10%. [...]

Some critics of the website have raised concerns about the credibility of the information and those delivering the diagnoses. A spokesperson from the California Medical Association said that the group's members believe physicians "with the appropriate education, training, access to medical records and a physician-patient relationship are in the best position to diagnose medical conditions." [...]Amin Azzam -- director of the problem-based learning curriculum at UC-Berkeley-UC-San Francisco Joint Medical Program -- said the website could be a good training tool for first- and second-year medical students.

[Poetlister]

Could the site be liable for bad information, or is it covered by good old Section 230 immunity?

[Mancunium]

Can Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical Text?
The Atlantic, 7 May 2014 link

Every time I panic unreasonably over some minor bodily abnormality—which is often—I take to the Internet. I’m far from the only one—72 percent of Internet users have looked online for health information in the past year, according to Pew Research. And though as a responsible health editor, I should of course say that if you really think something’s wrong, you should go to the doctor, I know that even if you do go to the doctor, chances are you’ll Google whatever she tells you anyway. Wikipedia being the sixth-largest site on the whole wide Internet, these people searching for medical information online are often going to end up there. Whether or not they should be doing it, they are. I am. Patients are, and so are doctors. Which is why efforts to improve the quality of Wikipedia’s medical informati An are important—if you can’t lead people away from the fountain of crowd-sourced knowledge, you can at least try to unmuddy the waters.

A new study published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association says the waters are still pretty muddy. The researchers looked at the Wikipedia pages for the 10 most costly medical conditions (in terms of public and private expenditures) and compared them with peer-reviewed sources, finding them wanting. [...] Looking specifically at medical information, research published in BMJ found that many peer-reviewed health science studies themselves cite Wikipedia as a reference. Studies on specific areas of medicine have come down on different sides of the debate: One says that Wikipedia is “appropriate for use by nursing students,” another says the “depth of discussion” is not sufficient for it to be a “reliable source of information for medical students searching for gastroenterology and hepatology articles.” Good for information about kidneys and mental disorders, not great for ear, nose, and throat conditions in children. [...]

The doctors of Wikiproject Medicine, an effort within Wikipedia to improve the quality of medical information by getting physicians and health care experts to edit the articles, suggest a different gold standard source. "Just because a reference is peer-reviewed doesn't mean it's a high-quality reference."“We try to use secondary sources like reviews, meta-analyses, and major textbooks,” says Dr. James Heilman, a clinical instructor in the University of British Columbia’s department of emergency medicine, and one of the most active medical editors on Wikipedia. His reasoning is that, for these secondary sources, someone has typically taken the time to review all of the peer-reviewed literature, which is often contradictory, and come to a conclusion based on what’s out there. This study was not popular on the Wikiproject Medicine Talk page, with one commenter calling it “utterly meaningless and [not] worth the electrons it's printed on.” [...] Heilman, along with Dr. Samir Grover at the University of Toronto, is designing a study that he says would be a better way to test Wikipedia’s accuracy: have medical students take a standardized test using either medical textbooks or Wikipedia. Or, he says, you could look at whether an article’s statements are supported by the references it provides for those statements—not just any peer-reviewed source you find. Wikipedia has its own peer review process before articles can be classified as “good” or “featured.” Heilman, who has participated in that process before, says “less than 1 percent” of Wikipedia’s medical articles have passed. So both sides acknowledge: There are errors in Wikipedia’s health articles. And that’s a problem, because people use them. [...]

When I posted this information here a few days ago, "the doctors of WikiProject Medicine" accused me of libel.

[Kelly Martin]

I've steadfastly avoided using Wikipedia for medical information precisely because I know how unreliable it is. The thing is, when my son was recently diagnosed with a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (a fairly rare form of cancer), I was able to find a half dozen articles within an hour with enough information that I could evaluate the credibility of what the oncologist was telling me when I met with her. I don't recall offhand what sites I ended up using, but Wikipedia was definitely not one of them.

[Mancunium]

I've steadfastly avoided using Wikipedia for medical information precisely because I know how unreliable it is. The thing is, when my son was recently diagnosed with a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (a fairly rare form of cancer), I was able to find a half dozen articles within an hour with enough information that I could evaluate the credibility of what the oncologist was telling me when I met with her. I don't recall offhand what sites I ended up using, but Wikipedia was definitely not one of them.

I am so very sorry to learn of your son's condition.

"May the Lord bless you and take care of you;
May the Lord be kind and gracious to you;
May the Lord look on you with favor and give you peace."

[Kelly Martin]

I am so very sorry to learn of your son's condition.

We got the good news last week that the post-surgery PET scan indicates no unusual activity; it looks like we got it all surgically. So we'll just do enhanced monitoring for the next few years.

[Clipperton]

Can Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical Text?

No.

The most ethical thing that WP:MED editors can do is to let Wikipedia content on important subjects like health go to the dogs -- and then make it very clear as a P.R. matter that such has happened, 'we're no longer monitoring it' (which gets picked up online -- examiner.com does a piece reflecting your common voice), and ask 'would you trust your health to the random content of the recent changes made by people who could be 12 years old, below?'. As you make this known, you can brainstorm about better ways of accomplishing your mission. Health is a large enough subject area that a separate venture could work.

Medical Wikipedians, you are running a nursery for free. At first you helped a few friends with their kids. But word got around and you couldn't say no to taking care of more kids. Now you're juggling way more kids than you can handle in your house, and you don't know who's sick, who might be out back by the swimming pool, and who might be about to stick a fork into the electrical outlet that you didn't have time to put one of them plastic covers on, because you've taken on infinite responsibility out of some misguided sense of infinite helping and lack of ability to say no.

Most importantly at this point, you don't seem to recognize that the project you're continuing this misguided but good-faith effort with will not even support you. (E.g. request for medical disclaimer.)

Either get assertive with those extra kids' parents and say no I can't take care of more than the few kids I agreed to -- i.e. restrict editing heavily -- or acknowledge that this situation is bad for everyone's health and send all the kids home and go back to the drawing board.

To continue with the status quo, where you make yourself 'responsible' for this set of recent changes [500 edits to monitor per 13 hours, 0.6 edits per minute] -- is a FICTION. You are potentially damaging people by MAINTAINING AND SANCTIONING THE FICTION. Please, give it up, and then spread the word that you have given it up. All the while, you can be building the version of 'open medical knowledge' that will work. It's not like you don't have various ideas; but the community isn't interested, and the WMF isn't interested. As long as you're working under the rubric of 'anyone can edit', all the after-the-fact quality control stuff you try to implement is tantamount to painting a house while it's on fire.

And I really must emphasize here, how much more evidence do you need that the community and/or the WMF will never allow you to implement some of the measures that you believe would help the situation? Since you have plenty of evidence, you must ask yourself if you aren't just another person addicted to Wikipedia who happens to edit in the Health/Medicine area.

[Mancunium]

I am so very sorry to learn of your son's condition.

We got the good news last week that the post-surgery PET scan indicates no unusual activity; it looks like we got it all surgically. So we'll just do enhanced monitoring for the next few years.

Thank you for sharing the good news.

I am experiencing a polymyositis flare-up which makes typing difficult, so I will be cutting back on posting here for a few days until my medication is adjusted and takes effect.

[Anthonyhcole]

When I posted this information here a few days ago, "the doctors of WikiProject Medicine" accused me of libel.

I'm not a doctor. And it had nothing to with that Atlantic article - which, by the way, was a very balanced report. The study it reported on was of poor quality - but that's nothing new. The same can be said for all the studies that say Wikipedia's medical content is good.

I'm sorry to hear about your present trials. It's a shit of a thing. Take care.

[thekohser]

To continue with the status quo, where you make yourself 'responsible' for this set of recent changes [500 edits to monitor per 13 hours, 0.6 edits per minute] -- is a FICTION. You are potentially damaging people by MAINTAINING AND SANCTIONING THE FICTION. Please, give it up, and then spread the word that you have given it up.

Clipperton's post above is simply outstanding. I award it the "Post of the Day" prize.

The link he gave was awesome, too. It enables you to do some "fishing" for interesting edits that exemplify how medicine is mismanaged on Wikipedia. For example...

Here's an IP address from Time Warner Cable in New York, telling the world that contrary to what Wikipedia claims as a reliable source, the first reported case of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus did not occur in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It occurred in Amman, Jordan, two months before the Jeddah patient was documented.

On whose authority do we have this Amman, Jordan claim? Why, the unsourced authority of IP address 69.86.105.178 (T-C-L), of course. You can trust this, because it has been crowdsourced. Vetted by Wikipedia readers and editors for over 11 hours now.

You Wikipediot doctors will surely respond, "Oh, Kohs... that can be easily fixed, and you're just cherry-picking the worst example you could find out of 500 edits."

Sorry, but this article is likely being viewed about 7,000 times today. Eleven hours since that edit was inserted, with no source. That means about 3,200 readers have looked at the article, and they walk away believing that 69.86.105.178 knows more about the origin of this disease than does the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. In fact there is some reliable evidence that 69.86.105.178 may be quite wrong.

As for my cherry-picking, my sample was obtained by looking at the 500 edits that Clipperton linked to above, and I started at the bottom of the list (the oldest edits), and worked my way up through just the IP editors. This one was the ninth such edit I looked at, and it was the first IP edit I encountered out of the first nine that was not just a minor change such as adding degrees behind the name of a doctor, changing typography, or adding the word "fucked" to an article.

If you want to call that cherry-picking, it's simply that the VERY FIRST edit I encountered from an IP that added more than 50 bytes of text to a medical article, added dubious content. Even if it turns out that the IP address may be correct, his assertion is not sourced, and it appears that the medical literature is unsure whether the Amman, Jordan cases from April 2012 were a new infection in humans or one that has been occurring for some time. That IP 69.86.105.178 decided to do some "original research" and call the decision in favor of Amman as the "winner" here, is also a violation of Wikipedia policy.

One data point, I know.

But how instructive of the fact that you can basically throw a dart in the dark at these Wikipedia medicine articles, and you're bound to find some unaccountable mistakes just about anywhere you look, and there's no handy disclaimer to protect the reader.

Clipperton's drastic-sounding suggestion is actually the best advice that could be given to this dangerous WikiProject Medicine program.

[Kelly Martin]

I do occasionally look at Wikipedia after I finish doing my research, just to see what is there. In the case of Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (T-H-L), the article materially misstates the survivability rates by lumping together several different categories of tumor with very distinct presentations and characteristics. Articles written professionally for laypeople honestly state that survivability is highly variable and difficult to predict due to the very low incidence of this class of tumors. Articles written professionally for practitioners give much more specific information, identifying factors (e.g. tumor size, tumor location, whether the tumor is rhabdomyoblastomatous) that allow the practitioner to reasonably advise their patients and their families as to the likely prognosis. The Wikipedia article mentions that rhabdomyoblastomatous tumors have a different name, but does not note that this is the single most significant factor in predicting survivability. In addition, the Wikipedia article is inconsistent with generally accepted practice guidelines, as published in 2012, which reflects the fact that all but one of the sources to the Wikipedia article are at least seven years old. (No excuse, though; they're also inconsistent with this well-balanced article for practitioners, from 2006.) The article's statements about the use of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are inconsistent with current best practice; recent clinical evidence has indicated that chemotherapy is problematic in patients with neurofibromatosis as chemotherapy agents may exacerbate existing benign neurofibromas (a critical fact that the article only hints at).

I'm seriously glad I read the NIH material before I read this article; I would have been far less sanguine for the chances of my son living to see his next birthday had I read the Wikipedia article first. And I am even more glad that my son's doctors don't rely on Wikipedia for medical advice.

[Anthonyhcole]

Most importantly at this point, you don't seem to recognize that the project you're continuing this misguided but good-faith effort with will not even support you. (E.g. request for medical disclaimer.)

As you're addressing the Medical Wikipedians, just to clarify, the majority of them opposed a prominent disclaimer.

Either get assertive with those extra kids' parents and say no I can't take care of more than the few kids I agreed to -- i.e. restrict editing heavily -- or acknowledge that this situation is bad for everyone's health and send all the kids home and go back to the drawing board.

How bad is it? Is it as bad as MedlinePlus, which is sometimes wrong in serious ways?

All the while, you can be building the version of 'open medical knowledge' that will work.

You're sure this one isn't working as well as or better than, say, the Mayo Clinic site?

As long as you're working under the rubric of 'anyone can edit', all the after-the-fact quality control stuff you try to implement is tantamount to painting a house while it's on fire.

You're sure our medical content is that bad - that the undoubted good it does is outweighed by the bad? As opposed to, say, Merck's site, where I've seen some awful clangers?

I've steadfastly avoided using Wikipedia for medical information precisely because I know how unreliable it is. The thing is, when my son was recently diagnosed with a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (a fairly rare form of cancer), I was able to find a half dozen articles within an hour with enough information that I could evaluate the credibility of what the oncologist was telling me when I met with her. I don't recall offhand what sites I ended up using, but Wikipedia was definitely not one of them.

I am very sorry to hear your news. I hope all goes well. A couple of days ago I started a comparison of popular free medical sites.
Abdominal aortic aneurysm
Mayo
MedlinePlus
MedlinePlus
Society of Interventional Radiology
Healthfinder.gov
FamilyDoctor.org
URMC Rochester
Absence seizure
Mayo
MedlinePlus
Merck
Epilepsy.org
mydr.com.au
URMC
Acanthosis nigricans
Mayo
Skinsight.com
MedlinePlus
Achalasia
Mayo
MedlinePlus
Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Merck
mydr.com.au
URMC
Achilles tendinitis
Mayo
American Society of Orthopaedic Surgeons
MedlinePlus
Merck
MyDr.com.au
URMC
There's plenty of options in the low-hanging-fruit topics. It's the next rung of detail where Wikipedia is out on its own, I think. Anyway, it's blue sky research. I just want to get to know what's out there a bit better. I'll inform this forum if/when I draw any conclusions.

[Vigilant]

Kelly,

All my best wishes for your son's complete recovery.

[thekohser]

As you're addressing the Medical Wikipedians, just to clarify, the majority of them opposed a prominent disclaimer.

You say that like you're proud of it.

[Clipperton]

To continue with the status quo, where you make yourself 'responsible' for this set of recent changes [500 edits to monitor per 13 hours, 0.6 edits per minute]

Clipperton's post above is simply outstanding. I award it the "Post of the Day" prize.

Thank you!

During evening North American hours, the medical recent changes list is up to 0.83 edits per minute, from 0.6(5) in mid-day. Lots of work there for the gatekeepers, on a project that isn't supposed to have gatekeepers. But if it didn't, everything would be worse, apparently. That's a lot of pressure, especially as it involves finding a middle ground between two opposite propositions: 1) Anyone can edit. 2) No, they can't.

My previous message was not about criticizing WP:MED so much as it was a gut response to the awful, question-begging headline 'Can Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical Text?'.

[Anthonyhcole]

As you're addressing the Medical Wikipedians, just to clarify, the majority of them opposed a prominent disclaimer.

You say that like you're proud of it.

It's the reason I'm stepping down from the WikiProject Med Foundation board.

[Anthonyhcole]

To continue with the status quo, where you make yourself 'responsible' for this set of recent changes [500 edits to monitor per 13 hours, 0.6 edits per minute]

Clipperton's post above is simply outstanding. I award it the "Post of the Day" prize.

Thank you!

During evening North American hours, the medical recent changes list is up to 0.83 edits per minute, from 0.6(5) in mid-day. Lots of work there for the gatekeepers, on a project that isn't supposed to have gatekeepers. But if it didn't, everything would be worse, apparently. That's a lot of pressure, especially as it involves finding a middle ground between two opposite propositions: 1) Anyone can edit. 2) No, they can't.

My previous message was not about criticizing WP:MED so much as it was a gut response to the awful, question-begging headline 'Can Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical Text?'.

I confess I haven't patrolled that feed for quite a while - partly due to ill-health. But when I did, my perception was that the patrollers were keeping on top of it, but for the reasons we're all familiar with that's less than an ideal process.