In a message dated 5/23/2009 9:02:12 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgoodmanny@gmail.com writes:
information on standard dosage, information that we have made the policy decision to omit. I think this a particularly stupid decision.>>
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Would you be willing to post here a direct link to where this is in policy? And also link to where you propose that we remove it. I agree with your opinion that standard dosage is not "advice".
Will J
************** An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221322948x1201367184/aol?redir=http...; bcd=MayExcfooterNO62)
The guideline is at:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:MED#Drugs] "Do not include dose and titration information except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion in the article. Wikipedia is not an instruction manual or textbook and should not include instructions, advice (legal, medical or otherwise) or "how-to"s; see WP:NOT#HOWTO."
as for proposing to remove it, we'd need to start another discussion. The most recent was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_10#... (with extensive comments by Kevin Clauson)
see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology/Archive...
Earlier discussions are at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-relate... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-relate....
there's a lot of reading. Personally, I call it IMNAP-paranoia
On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 12:45 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 5/23/2009 9:02:12 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgoodmanny@gmail.com writes:
information on standard dosage, information that we have made the policy decision to omit. I think this a particularly stupid decision.>>
Would you be willing to post here a direct link to where this is in policy? And also link to where you propose that we remove it. I agree with your opinion that standard dosage is not "advice".
Will J
An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221322948x1201367184/aol?redir=http...; bcd=MayExcfooterNO62) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/5/24 David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
The guideline is at:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:MED#Drugs] "Do not include dose and titration information except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion in the article. Wikipedia is not an instruction manual or textbook and should not include instructions, advice (legal, medical or otherwise) or "how-to"s; see WP:NOT#HOWTO."
Even if we aren't worried about the consequences of giving incorrect advice (which we should be), that guideline is still a good one for the reasons it gives - such information is not encyclopaedic. Someone using Wikipedia for its intended purpose should have no need for the dosage information.
On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/24 David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
The guideline is at:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:MED#Drugs] "Do not include dose and titration information except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion in the article. Wikipedia is not an instruction manual or textbook and should not include instructions, advice (legal, medical or otherwise) or "how-to"s; see WP:NOT#HOWTO."
Even if we aren't worried about the consequences of giving incorrect advice (which we should be), that guideline is still a good one for the reasons it gives - such information is not encyclopaedic. Someone using Wikipedia for its intended purpose should have no need for the dosage information.
Agreed. If doctors want a reliable wiki for them to consult for medical purposes, they should set up a separate wiki and require all editors to identify and verify their medical credentials. There are limits to what Wikipedia can and should do - it is not a universal panacea.
Carcharoth
It's a good guideline - there are few enough instances on Wikipedia where simple vandalism can lead directly to serious physical harm, and this is one. Statistics and reported numbers are vandalism targets throughout Wikipedia every day, and dosage information would be a particularly popular target. We could put the dosage information in templates, and protect the templates, but that doesn't allay the range of other problems associated with including such information. We have to ask ourselves why someone would use Wikipedia to look up this sort of information - are those needs we want to fulfill?
It's also important to note that there are many other sources for this sort of information for medical professionals. Institutional or office subscriptions to electronic/online references like Micromedex are not prohibitively expense, there are a number of free or cheap physical reference books, and I even have a free and comprehensive reference on my phone.
Nathan
1. There are hundreds of thousands of places where similar harm could be do--safe uses of a chemical, or the like. We could guard against it by using flagged revisions on these pages. 2. We need not give only the US dose. 3. Saying according to the official USDI, the usual does is " " is as safe as any quotation can possibly be. I am not aware of any litigation due to a mis=print in PubMedPlus or the similar. I recall one major correction in the print Merck a few editions back--they made it very prominent. An error in print is much more dangerous than online, because there is no way of ensuring that all copies get corrected. 4.Though we do not give medical advice, it is entirely appropriate to indicate where reliabler advice can be found. 5. How a substance is used is encyclopedic information. It's necessary to actually make use of our reference work. Example: A person will come across a newspaper article discussing an overdose & giving the amount. They will go to the encyclopedia article to put it in context.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
It's a good guideline - there are few enough instances on Wikipedia where simple vandalism can lead directly to serious physical harm, and this is one. Statistics and reported numbers are vandalism targets throughout Wikipedia every day, and dosage information would be a particularly popular target. We could put the dosage information in templates, and protect the templates, but that doesn't allay the range of other problems associated with including such information. We have to ask ourselves why someone would use Wikipedia to look up this sort of information - are those needs we want to fulfill?
It's also important to note that there are many other sources for this sort of information for medical professionals. Institutional or office subscriptions to electronic/online references like Micromedex are not prohibitively expense, there are a number of free or cheap physical reference books, and I even have a free and comprehensive reference on my phone.
Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Even if we aren't worried about the consequences of giving incorrect advice (which we should be), that guideline is still a good one for the reasons it gives - such information is not encyclopaedic. Someone using Wikipedia for its intended purpose should have no need for the dosage information.
I agree with the first part (serious consequences of incorrect information), but I don't see how why dosage information is unencyclopedic. Information on typical quantities used for any chemical compound with practical applications is a perfectly expected thing to include in an article. I certainly find it a conceptually interesting distinction whether some industrial acid is usually used in 10 mL or 100 L quantities, and similarly whether some drug is usually used in 10 mg or 100 g quantities; that's especially true if different quantities of a chemical have different applications.
-Mark
2009/5/24 Delirium delirium@hackish.org:
I agree with the first part (serious consequences of incorrect information), but I don't see how why dosage information is unencyclopedic. Information on typical quantities used for any chemical compound with practical applications is a perfectly expected thing to include in an article.
...especially given that we include it for all sorts of chemicals that you *don't* put in your mouth. Take a look at the article for a chemical element, for example - a handy table with Young's modulus, specific heat capacity, isotope half-lives, the whole lot; the infobox for its compounds is less detailed but still pretty comprehensive. Moving away from chemicals, take a look at, say, the article on an asteroid, with comprehensive details of its orbital parameters and composition, or a country, where the infobox gives details right down to the telephone code.
I think we're kidding ourselves a bit if we say that these numbers - the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a specialised reference work and of little or no immediate use to the casual reader - are vaguely encyclopedic, but comments like "is generally given in 10-50mg doses" are somehow definitely not.
2009/5/24 Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk:
comments like "is generally given in 10-50mg doses"
Something like that I wouldn't have a big problem with. It's comments like "the standard dose is 2mg/kg body mass" that I wouldn't like.
Why is giving it in terms of body mass when that is the official standard not correct?. For some drugs there is a range of usual dose, for some there is a single standard dose. We are on much firmer ground reporting a standard than reporting an empirical range based upon non-official secondary sources.
Or is it expecting readers to do multiplication and addition and the like? I think that's reasonable also, though we could always work it out for an example.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/24 Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk:
comments like "is generally given in 10-50mg doses"
Something like that I wouldn't have a big problem with. It's comments like "the standard dose is 2mg/kg body mass" that I wouldn't like.
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2009/5/25 David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
Why is giving it in terms of body mass when that is the official standard not correct?. For some drugs there is a range of usual dose, for some there is a single standard dose. We are on much firmer ground reporting a standard than reporting an empirical range based upon non-official secondary sources.
I didn't say it wasn't correct. It is just unwise. Specific dosage information can be used for administering treatment (and, therefore, can cause serious problems if it is incorrect), a range of typical doses can't be.