Sorry, folks, I know this is going to be a disappointment, but I can see no consensus for much of anything. Discussion is confused, and the structure of the RfC makes it difficult to follow what's being supported by whom and with what caveats—Cas Liber's analogy on the talk page of "a bunch of folks with megaphones talking past each other" is a good one. To me, the RfC appears to have jumped the gun, and so it conflates multiple questions, for example:

• Should we have a disclaimer on articles (medical or otherwise) at all?
• If we should, should it be at the the top, at the bottom, or somewhere else?
• What should the text be?
• What should it look like?

By attempting to answer all those questions at the same time, we've succeeded in answering none of them satisfactorily. There are some editors who oppose putting a disclaimer anywhere on articles; some who support oppose it only for articles of a certain quality; and some who will only support it with certain caveats. Many participants, for example, support one of the proposed templates but oppose or offer no opinion on others; does this mean they would object to putting a medical disclaimer on articles unless it was their preferred version(s)? That question is not answered anywhere in this RfC.

My suggestion, should the proposer wish to take this forward, would be to allow a grace period, after which a new RfC is started with the aim of answering the question on which all other questions depend: should a disclaimer be displayed on medical articles? If the answer to that question is "yes", further RfCs can be held to determine secondary concerns such as location, wording, and appearance.

As it is, I do not feel there is any way this RfC could be closed with a conclusive result, as disappointing as those who have put significant effort into the discussion will find that, and it would be grossly improper of me to force such a conclusion where there is not one to be had, especially on a matter which potentially has wide-reaching consequences and is likely to be controversial.

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:02, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

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Should Wikipedia provide a more prominent disclaimer template in general, or for medical and health-related content?

Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information, and its medical disclaimer is not linked directly on any article. Instead, it is reached by clicking on the small-print link to the general disclaimer, on the last line of all pages. Concerns that Wikipedia make readers aware of the "anyone can edit" nature of Wikipedia have been raised; background discussions are in Alanyst's sandbox and at the Medicine Project talk archive. 06:25, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

A 2013 review found that Wikipedia is a common source of online heath information (PMID 24103318) and a 2013 study found that Wikipedia is the most commonly accessed website for clinical pharmacy articles. (PMID 24259640)

The 2013 review found that :

The only longitudinal study conducted between 2005 and 2009 observed an increase in prevalence of Wikipedia use from 2% to 16% among undergraduate medical and biomedical students. Another study reported higher use among younger medical students (480/593, 81%) compared to older consultants (215/389, 55%). Studies on the use of Wikipedia by pharmacists report rates of use ranging between 35% using this site for work-related questions in 2009 to 72% using it mainly for personal reasons in 2011. For consumers, Wikipedia was ranked first when using search engines to find information about rare diseases and to find information on generic drugs. Wikipedia ranked as the second most consulted website both by a group of patients with Crohn’s disease as well as by students searching for biomedical information. ... A recurrent finding about the information in Wikipedia was that it is in large part accurate, free, and easy to access. However, even though Wikipedia does not recommend including medication doses due to concerns about errors, it is often incomplete and can lack appropriate referencing of medical information, thereby possibly indirectly causing patient harm.

From Scott Martin: This 2013 piece in the Boston Globe, by a medical student, underlines the importance of making our readers aware that our medical content is not authoritative.

That's the promise of Wikipedia in health care — a freely accessible and user-friendly platform through which to explore virtually any subject in medicine. But there's another side to consider. During our pulmonology block last year, two of my classmates saw an error in the site's entry for hyperventilation. They fixed the mistake and, as a joke, added "Kenny's syndrome" as a name for a particular condition. To their surprise, the edit stayed for weeks, and they even found other websites citing my friend as an acid-base disorder. Hence, the opportunity for anyone to edit Wikipedia with minimal regulation has a terrifying capacity to influence the environment for clinicians-in-training. In the worst-case scenario, these inaccuracies could adversely impact the care that patients eventually receive.

— Nathaniel P. Morris, New operating system: Wikipedia’s role in medical education brings awesome promise — and a few risks, Boston Globe, 18 November 2013

The error corrected by the medical student in February 2013 was inserted by an IP two months earlier. The false "Kenny's syndrome" inserted in February 2013 was removed three months later.

Other papers have negatively reviewed the quality of Wikipedia's information (PMID 24276492), and according to DocJames, an Indian pharmacy journal article scraped text from Wikipedia without attribution, setting up the possibility of undetected mirrors, where Wikipedia articles then cite Wikipedia's own content. A 2013 survey study (PMID 24243966) on the use of smartphones by medical interns in Ireland, found that of 108 respondents, about one-third claimed to use Wikipedia weekly on the job; in their conclusions, "although the information on Wikipedia was not complete, it was not found to be incorrect".

A report by IMS Health said:

...the public perception of Wikipedia being a legitimate source of information has increased dramatically in recent years. For healthcare in particular, patients are concerned about the validity and neutrality of the information they seek out, and Wikipedia increasingly meets this need ... nearly 50% of U.S. physicians who go online for professional purposes use Wikipedia for information...

Other disclaimers

Wikipedia allows some content disclaimers, like {{Current}} and {{Recent death}} at the top of articles.

Other language Wikipedias use medical disclaimers:

Wikipedia language	Template	Position in article
Chinese	zh:Template:Medical small	Top
Dutch	nl:Sjabloon:Disclaimer medisch lemma	Top
German	de:Wikipedia:Hinweis Gesundheitsthemen	Bottom
Hebrew	he:תבנית:הבהרה רפואית	Bottom
Indonesian	id:Templat:Penyangkalan-medis	Top
Norwegian (nynorsk and bokmål)	nn:Mal:Helsenotis no:Mal:Helsenotis	Bottom (Long text begins with: "You should never use information from the Internet, including Wikipedia, as your sole...")
Portuguese	pt:Predefinição:Aviso médico	Section: Treatment
Spanish	es:Wikipedia:Aviso médico	Linked from every medical infobox: es:Plantilla:Ficha de enfermedad, es:Plantilla:Ficha de medicamento, es:Plantilla:Ficha de intervención quirúrgica, etc.
Turkish	tr:Şablon:TıpUyarı	Top

Disclaimer views

The current disclaimer is rarely viewed by readers. Per WhatamIdoing, en.Wikipedia's medical disclaimer gets fewer than 100 views per day, while similar items on the same line (Wikipedia:About and Contact Wikipedia ) get about 12,000 page views per day.

Some sample problems

Errors in Wikipedia's content may stand for months to years.

• Cancer drug, Erlotinib
• Drug info based on one Ambien case report that stood uncited, for two years in aphasia
• Uncited, inaccurate drug information at Hallucination that stood for over a year.
• Medical cannabis 27 December compared to the version that stood for years
• Long-term effects of cannabis as it stood for years
• Adrian J. Hunter list
• In October 2007, an IP added a fictitious condition ("glucojasinogen") to Diabetic neuropathy; the hoax was not removed until February 2012. According to Edward Ockham's blog, the false information was replayed in journal articles (see PMID 23112395, PMID 21589767 and African Journals Online), and is now indexed on Google Scholar.
• As of January 2013, Autism has not been updated since 2007, and the current version contains general outdated information (see DSM5) and specific outdated information on causes (see talk.)

Article assessment

See talk for assessment table

Of the 1,010 articles and lists rated as Top or High Importance by the Medicine WikiProject:

• 25% are Start or Stub class
• 65% are B or C class
• 8% are GA or FA
• 2% are other lists.

If all articles and lists (regardless of rating on the "Importance" scale) are included, quality ratings are lower.

Version A

This version highlights the "anyone can edit" aspect, which distinguishes Wikipedia from other online sources of health information, and encourages edits:

Anyone can edit this article. Do not rely on it for medical advice. Please help improve Wikipedia's medical content using high-quality sources.

Modified Version A

Proposed 15 January by Pointillist and Adrian J. Hunter:

Anyone can edit Wikipedia. In case of health problems, seek the advice of a medical professional. Medical disclaimer

Version B

This version has wording similar to the disclaimer at the bottom of articles:

Wikipedia does not give medical advice The information provided here is no substitute for the advice of a medical professional.

Version C

Proposed by NeilN to be added to the top of all article pages:

General disclaimer – Content disclaimer – Legal disclaimer – Medical disclaimer – Risk disclaimer

Version D

Proposed by ϢereSpielChequers for all medical articles that are below C class (currently 20,000 articles)

This draft is not yet a Wikipedia article. You are welcome to help improve it but do not read it as if it was a Wikipedia article. Please help improve Wikipedia's medical content using high-quality sources.

Version Eedit

Proposed by TheDJ:

Please observe our medical disclaimer. In case of health problems you should seek the advice of a medical professional.

Version Fedit

Proposed by Collect:

Do not rely on Wikipedia articles for medical advice.

All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement of a view should be directed to this page's discussion page or the Discussion section at the end. Threaded discussion should not be added below; it should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's !vote, endorsement, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page, and may be moved there.

SandyGeorgia: support version Aedit

My support for a template in general, and Version A specifically, is based on my experience as a medical editor finding bad information in almost every medical article I touch, but more importantly, on the number of times I encounter people in real life who do not understand that Wikipedia articles are not necessarily "vetted" in any way by experts, and medical content on Wikipedia may be written by JoeBloe your next-door neighbor. In my experience, many consumers of health care information are not aware of the "anyone can edit" aspect of Wikipedia, and there are too few qualified medical editors trying to keep up with too much work.

Contrary to the claim that medical editors will be offended if we "template" their work, I would happily add a disclaimer to a featured article, written primarily by me—Tourette syndrome.

To those who say flagged revisions can address the problems, even several of our medical FAs are out of date; we don't always have a good version to flag.

To the argument that our "current" templates are only used in situations where recent events may make it hard for editors to keep up, I counter that the few experienced medical editors Wikipedia has cannot keep up with medical content, particularly since the advent of (poor) student edits as part of university courses.

To those who say that no real harm has ever come to anyone as a result of Wikipedia, why should we wait for an incident to happen (as in the Siegenthaler controversy that led to Wikipedia's BLP policy)? The best example of real harm and death that resulted from medical misinformation in the media and on the internet—one in which Wikipedia played a role—can be found at MMR vaccine controversy#Media role. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:17, 27 December 2013 (UTC)reply

Endorse

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/RFC_on_medical_disclaimer
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