Should this page be updated to unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information? -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Note to closer: The WP:MEDRS guideline has been substantively altered to discredit the views of some users commenting here. This discussion should probably be judged in line with the long-standing formulation of MEDRS as the editors commenting read it: see WP:MEDRS on 25 May 2021. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 16:43, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Survey

• Support. This falls under the same logic as "population data and epidemiology" (and is debatably already covered by it, but the long-running dispute over it for the past six months shows that we need to update the page to make it unambiguous either way, especially given that experienced editors on both sides have cited this page to support their position.) Claims about a disease's origins touch on medical aspects of what the disease is, how it should be approached, and how to confront or prevent similar outbreaks in the future, all of which fall squarely under both biomedical information and the core purpose of MEDRS. The existing exceptions will of course apply (the existence of beliefs about origins, even unsupported ones, can be covered as beliefs in contexts where those beliefs are due and relevant, and likewise the history of such beliefs can be covered as history in those contexts) but such claims must be treated with appropriate caution and should never be presented as factual in wikivoice without MEDRS sourcing. While this page is only an explanatory supplement and of course cannot decisively settle all recent arguments forever, the frequency with which it is cited by people on both sides shows that clarity here would be valuable. And while some people have raised concerns that this particular debate is only temporary, the reality is that it is likely to occur again whenever a similar issue arises; it is better for us to settle it decisively now so that by next time it can (hopefully) be firmly-established so we don't have to waste time repeatedly re-litigating it. -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. I didn't think this was necessary, but it apparently is. Any update should make clear that active pandemic/epidemics of diseases are covered, but historical pandemics (i.e. those that are completely over and have been for some indeterminate length of time) and ones where origins are clearly known and agreed upon by the large majority of science and medicine, are not covered. Any information about how to prevent future epidemics/pandemics is obviously covered as well. People are arguing that MEDRS is only intended to apply to information that can cause "direct harm" to patients - information about a disease's origin or the origin of a pandemic/epidemic that is ongoing can greatly impact peoples' response to the disease, as well as their willingness to partake in preventative actions and treatments - so obviously we should be extremely careful when discussing origins of diseases. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 20:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Apparently this is the controversy. I have found on wiki and elsewhere, that arguments tend to follow a universal pattern in matters like this. Disagreement begins in broad strokes, but funnels towards the most fundamental point, wherever a slight advantage can be eked out on either side. This, for the lab leak theory, is that point. If the fundamental processes of epidemiology and public health investigation (contact tracing, phylogenetics, causal inference, evolutionary genetics, etc.) are not biomedical information, then I truly wonder what is left in the field of "infectious disease epidemiology." This is what they do. They answer questions like this. Of viral origins, of pandemic origins. We should let those experts do their jobs. It could end up being a lab leak. The evidence says it is more likely to be a zoonotic spillover. But neither case will be solved to the satisfaction of anyone until some actual factual data is gathered. So maybe we should hold off on using wikipedia to wage this culture war, and stop falling prey to the opinion- and politics-driven currents that build faux controversy into manufactured consensus. If there is a conspiracy here, it is that political actors are using sensationalized headlines to pretend there is new evidence where there is not. Let's not let that invade wiki any more than it already has. TL;DR -- Yes, pandemic origins is BMI.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 21:18, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Certain types of claims about the origin of COVID need to subject to MEDRS, such as claims about virus mutation, due to their technical complexity. Other types of claims simply require regular sourcing standards. This seems to be intended to exclude everything other than WIV and wHO statements on the issue, which would be a travesty. Which views are presented becomes more political under this system, not less political. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  力, it's absolutely not designed to do that - peer reviewed primary studies are also acceptable (keeping in mind that they are not preferred), as are the plethora of review articles out there on this sort of topic. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 21:37, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  Except nobody else can do a primary study if they don't have access to the site. And the various silly complaints about "peer review" for the recent letter published in Science leaves me skeptical that review articles will be assessed fairly under this standard. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:42, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  We are discussing Wikipedia:Biomedical information. Since biomedicine is "medicine based on the application of the principles of the natural sciences and especially biology and biochemistry," [1] (Merriam-Webster) aka the medicine practiced by modern medical doctors, that excludes scientists outside medical science. MEDRS is about medical information not non-medical information. TFD ( talk) 21:54, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  This is not about one particular instance - this is about the general case. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 21:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  "Except nobody else can do a primary study if they don't have access to the site" That is absolutely not true, here are several of a bazillion examples of people doing primary studies into this question without access to the WIV. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]} There are plenty of ways to gather evidence on these two theories that do not include accessing the WIV. Would it be ideal if China opened itself up to this sort of thing? To have qualified independent unbiased investigators look into both the WIV's records, personnel blood samples etc., and then also rural caves in Yunan and elsewhere sampling animals for viruses? Yes, absolutely! But that is not the only way to skin this cat.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 22:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  Certainly there can be studies about whether genomic evidence suggests there was or was not a lab leak. However: 1) I'm not suggesting that genomic studies are not governed by MEDRS (the implications of risks of "variants" is enough for MEDRS, even under the narrow definition), 2) Many lab leak theories suggest that a person associated with the WIV contracted the virus from a sample they collected, I'm not sure how genomic evidence could possible disprove that. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 23:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  I can give you one way. Some of the early on genetic evidence suggests, from a parsimony perspective (using median end-joining), that the Wuhan strain of the virus may not have been the founder strain. If the earliest infections occurred far enough away, and are genetically distinct enough, then Wuhan may have just been a jumping off point, not the actual origin. ^[7] This isn't high enough quality or settled enough to merit inclusion imo, not under MEDRS. But I'm just saying, such studies absolutely are in the realm of possibility and would put serious cracks in the idea of the lab leak. Peter Forster at Cambridge did such an analysis early on and that is what it suggested. That the Wuhan strain may not be the origin strain. ^[8] We already know that the genetic diversity of cases found at the Wuhan market are not explainable by the market alone. There had to be a fair amount of pre-market spread in order to explain the diversity we've seen at that point in the sequence data. ^[9] In line with this, several well-regarded virologists (ones I know personally!) have stated in the past that locking onto the wet market (and even the city of Wuhan!) as the location of patient zero is premature. ^{[10] [11] [12]} There were also several dozen cases in other cities in the province (and nearby provinces) that occurred in December of 2019 that had no documented travel to the city of Wuhan. Most of the cases in those cities did have Wuhan travel, but a minority did not. ^{[13] [14] [15]} Overall, this is all based on sequences and epidemiological inference, and there would need to be a lot more sequences to make any of this data robust enough to draw true conclusions. And that's why I'm not out here putting this in any articles or saying it counts as MEDRS-supported. It isn't. What I want to communicate here is that it is absolutely not supported by the available data that the city of Wuhan is absolutely the origin. That's not an expert-driven consensus, even though the popular press have basically just run with that as an assumption. It is not a settled assumption in the virology community. At this point, I would say the wet market is almost definitely not the origin point, not among virologists.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 00:01, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  This is where MEDRS fails us. In 16 months, don't you think some of the many motivated actors would have found some evidence of an outbreak site outside of Wuhan before the initial Wuhan outbreak? It is on-its-face clear that the first serious outbreak occurred in Wuhan. We don't need MEDRS to prove that; the lack of massive deaths before December 2019 is proof enough. And that proof is sufficiently documented through our regular RS policy, MEDRS is not necessary. (I do agree that scientific inquiry suggests that the first human infection in Wuhan was likely not at the Huanan wet market, though there is no definitive proof of that.) User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:08, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  don't you think some of the many motivated actors would have found some evidence of an outbreak site outside of Wuhan before the initial Wuhan outbreak? BTW, not saying there were large scale outbreaks elsewhere. Just that there was likely initial spread before the cases we know about in Wuhan, and they may not have been in Wuhan, based on the very limited data we have. I (and other virologists) agree that, if it wasn't Wuhan, it was probably some outlying area in rural Hubei province, where there are many many documented cases of human-wildlife contact that could transmit the virus (such as traditional chinese medicinal uses of bat guano, for instance). I'm not saying it came from some wild out there place millions of miles away, just that the data we have does not show that Wuhan is 100% where it came from. It's just where a lot of early cases were. As they say, all roads lead to Rome. SO if it did cross over in rural Hubei, it would have shown up as a sentinel event in Wuhan. Because that's the largest city in the area, and a mostly-asymptomatic disease like this may not show up in any noticeable way until it gets into a concentrated city center. I am sorry that that data does not support the conclusions you wish to draw from it. As to why more data hasn't been uncovered about that...No I am not surprised. Not when China locked everybody out of the country. Not when they locked their own coronavirus experts away and didn't allow them to talk to the press until recently. Not when they are in "control the narrative" and "spread propaganda" mode. They said the US army planted the virus, for chrissake. I have no expectation of this being discovered or worked out for a while, not when it took 2 decades to truly nail down Ebola as coming from bats, and it took 3 years to get an inkling for SARS1, and 14 years to truly confirm it. But, if you are aware of any scientists who have been allowed in to do that kind of work, or are aware of anyone getting access to China's sequences that haven't been shared on Genbank or elsewhere, please let me know. I would love to meet them.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 00:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• 力, why should we only accept writings by medical doctors on the origins of the virus and ignore biologists, virologists, epidemiologists, etc., who may have greater knowledge on virus mutation and spread? And why should we weight until they have written peer reviewed papers and weight to see how they are treated in review studies, before reporting what they say? TFD ( talk) 21:38, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think we should privilege the opinions of people with a medical degree here, and I'm not sure why you think I think that. I don't see that in MEDRS. We do need to wait until sources are written before we can cite them. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 21:42, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  MEDRS absolutely would include the writings of the scientists you've listed. BMI includes things written about biomedical info by anyone qualified to write about it who has then published it in a peer-reviewed journal. That probably includes more written by non-physicians than it does physicians, as a vague estimation.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 22:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The clear purpose of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (MEDRS) is stated in the first sentence: "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." So in the current pandemic, we wanted to ensure that only the best medical advice was provided in how to avoid getting COVID19, what and how vaccines should be used and what treatements should be used. That's because there was a danger that readers could make decisions that harmed them, such as not taking precautions against the disease, using quack medicines or not getting vaccinated. How and why the virus originated and how public authorities managed or mismanaged the pandemic are not medical information and in fact are a matter of cross-disciplinary studies. Historians writing about the Black Death for example are capable of understanding the relevant medical information about how people can prevent getting the disease, what it does to them and how to treat it. A professor of medicine on the other hand might not be an expert on the social, political and economic background of the 14th century. If we ignore books written by experts and published in the academic press who happen not to be practicing medical doctors we will severely restrict coverage of these topics, which is a violation of weight. TFD ( talk) 21:28, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  If books are available about something it's by that point covered by the "historical information" exception - so that's not really a good argument to make. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 21:38, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  I assume you are referring to Wikipedia:Biomedical information#History. It's not in fact included as an exception (perhaps it should be) and the section cautions, "Subject matter is not considered "history" merely because it is in the past." TFD ( talk) 21:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

  If that is your only opposition to this, it may be better to support with the caveat (like I did and the person who opened this did) that obviously historical information about an origin (i.e. settled science) is not covered by this. Unfortunately, RfC's have limitations and it's not possible to include every exception in the RfC text. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 21:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The origin of the pandemic is a historical question, not medical advice, and is something that no reasonable person would construe as medical advice. There is no nexus between the origin of the pandemic (whether it was a lab escape or zoonotic transfer) and medical advice (such as vaccination, masking, social distancing). It is an exact analogue of item 2 under WP:MEDDEF as an example of something that is not biomedical information, The pills were invented by Dr Archibald Foster and released onto the market in 2015. This is not biomedical information, and it only requires ordinary RS. A hypothetical statement like COVID-19 originated in a lab escape would not be biomedical information, and one presented as attributed POV certainly would not Anonymous Sources told Foo Newspaper that COVID-19 originated in a lab escape. The intention of MEDRS is prevent harm from including dubious medical information that might encourage readers to disregard competent medical advice, or that might encourage them to take up alternative medicine. That is not what this is. Geogene ( talk) 21:49, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

That's a false analogy. Determining whether or not Dr. Foster invented pills and released them onto the market in 2015 requires no biomedical expertise. Determining the origin of a virus does require biomedical expertise. NightHeron ( talk) 10:05, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Of course, nothing in Wikipedia should ever be taken as medical advice. And the TOUs stipulate that there is no medical advice in Wikipedia. But since this RfC has triggered a moral panic on closely related pages about "less experienced editors" allegedly advocating for "giving medical advice," well let me just point out that it is widely understood that Wikipedia exists in the real world, and that Google search results like what does melonoma look like (sic) are likely to fetch Wikipedia content near the top of page 1. As I said above, no reasonable person would use an encyclopedia (this or any other), or any other Google crud, for professional advice, but the fear that unreasonable people might be negatively influenced by poorly sourced medical content, current or future, is an obvious motivating factor for MEDRS having enjoyed community consensus for all these years, which is what I was talking about above. Geogene ( talk) 17:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support In my opinion WP:BMI under "Attributes of a disease or condition - how it is caught or transmitted", would cover a disease origin or at least its initial transmission point. The origins of a disease can be used to create future guidance (ex. does distancing/masks need to be done when interacting with some species?) and it would be harmful to allow incorrect information to spread. Jumpytoo Talk 21:56, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
  • With due respect, how does the geographical location of a pandemic's origin have anything at all to do with distancing and mask guidance? The RFC question seems to be more about the where and tthwho and not so much about the how. Firejuggler86 ( talk) 21:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose TFD really hit the primary point. The reason why we have an exceptionally tight MEDRS standard is specifically because editors were worried that bad medical information would lead readers to harm. This really shouldn't make a huge impact on any article since WEIGHT is still going to favor peer reviewed studies over material published even in strong RSs like NYT, WSJ, NPR etc. The fringe crap is still going to be kept out when put against strong RSs and academic sources. Fringe anti-vax sources are not going to pass even the standard RS bar. Springee ( talk) 21:59, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

I can't be so sure about that, as WSJ has published news resources such as this one. If we were to write the article based on WSJ and other RS, we would have the impression that there is substantial disagreement about GBD, while in fact condemnation of GBD was near unanimous. If we tie it to the fact that WSJ has been a soapbox for authors and proponents of GBD, the impression is even stronger, even as the opposite was true. We at least should definitely not source to WP:RSOPINION, as these examples show; and I still would be wary of news coverage, which might be biased, and while reliable on the face (because every detail is truthfully reported), creating false impressions about the situation of the scientific community from the general tone of coverage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Szmenderowiecki ( talk • contribs) 00:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• • • I fail to see how that example is relevent: it is not within the category being discussed, and is a topic that clearly does fall under the scope of biomedical information. And will continue to regardless of the outcome of this RFC, and would therefore not be acceptable (as it already isnt). Firejuggler86 ( talk) 21:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I mean, look, we're talking about epidemiology, zoonosis, genetics and mutation, phylogenetics, etc. These are all biomedical issues. You literally cannot talk about a pandemic and its origins without discussing these things. And it needs to be understood that MEDRS is not in place out of concern for readers' health, because Wikipedia is not intended for medical advice. MEDRS exists because biomedical topics are incredibly difficult and complex, and it is well documented that popular press, even normally reliable sources like the Washington Post or NY Times, frequently get things wrong. It also exists because we cannot teach people to think like medical experts, but we can show people how experts evaluate evidence. Hyperion35 ( talk) 22:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Just within Epidemiology, we have Molecular epidemiology, Genetic epidemiology, Social epidemiology, Environmental epidemiology and Computational epidemiology. Like in all the applied sciences, there is significant interplay between different disciplines, and in this case, some which aren’t biomedical at all. There is also interplay between science and politics, which is now a major factor in tracing COVID-19 origins [2]. A more nuanced approach is required to account for this political interference and leave open possibilities that may be the subject of Censorship in China. I’m off now to make some additions to Politicization of science. CutePeach ( talk) 09:30, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with the above comments that the origins of the COVID-19 virus can in no way be construed to be medical advice, which is why the higher MEDRS standards exist. I also agree with the sentiments that at this point the origins of the virus, if it were in some way connected to a lab leak, would most likely only be discoverable by traditional investigative news sources. Rreagan007 ( talk) 23:29, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose I think we need to go back to the rationale behind MEDRS - that some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health. Even bad information on things like prognosis can cause significant distress. Bad information on the origins of a pandemic could influence public health - most likely through trust/distrust in our institutions and whatnot - but this is at best tangential and no more exceptional than other forms of conspiracy theories, or other forms of government incompetence in relation to public health. Whether, as a matter of fact, a disease originated in a lab, was engineered, or occurred naturally, is unlikely to directly cause readers to make bad choices regarding their health. MEDRS is the wrong requirement for the origins of a disease. We should require the WP:BESTSOURCES, the same as for any WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, which will often be MEDRS sources, but there is no need to require MEDRS, because this isn't what MEDRS is for. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 00:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support. The origins of a human disease seems like clear biomedical information to me. I also prefer a broad rather than narrow interpretation of WP:MEDRS, to help keep misinformation out of the encyclopedia. Whenever we have situations where academic journals are saying one thing, and the popular press is saying another, in my opinion the popular press version of events is likely to be some sort of misinformation, and WP:MEDRS is a very important defense against that. I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think, not what the Republican political machine and their billionaire financiers think. Finally, I agree with Shibbolethink above that epidemiology and public health investigation (contact tracing, phylogenetics, causal inference, evolutionary genetics, etc.) is clearly biomedical information. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 00:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think

. Shi Zhengli, the virologist, thinks it was not a leak from her lab. She published it in a review, which is MEDRS. Sorry, but that information is not hierarchically better than top RS, in my opinion. Forich ( talk) 04:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Forich, interesting example. Maybe we should discount her papers due to COI. Or maybe we shouldn't because peer review compensates for it. Anyway, I don't really think this invalidates my argument above. For biomedical issues, I prefer an academic consensus to a popular press consensus. If one of the academic voices has COI, there are many other academic voices that will balance it out. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 05:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@ Novem Linguae: peer review should compensate for it, but peer review isn't perfect, and apparently didn't in this case. <-- but that statement is WP:OR. We delegate such decision-making to the peer-reviewers, assuming, I suppose, that even if they aren't perfect, we aren't going to do better than them. But practically speaking, as you say, we can just try to avoid the COI paper. SSSheridan ( talk) 22:21, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support. The discussion made at WP:RSN (thanks for the OP's effort to place it on a wider discussion) made it clear that origins must be placed in either non-biomedical information or biomedical information for clarity. There are a few reasons for which I would like to support it. First, we should be lowering the plank for finding resources only if we are sure that RS will report the information in a scientifically literate way, and ordinary RS have a history of choosing wrong words to convey what was a true message but which becomes false exactly because of the wording (the best illustration of which is here, and that's not only about strictly biomed info). Investigative journalism is good in finding information that might lead to some conclusion, but is lousy at interpreting it, because journalists mostly lack that specialist knowledge. As for MEDRS, they will still publish the info somewhere (and still abundant enough to satisfy the needs of writing our articles), but what is needed is expert commentary to whether this information is credible, and this requires specialist knowledge. Secondly, any credible theory of the origins of the disease will require that scientists evaluate the probability of alternatives (i.e. if lab leak, why not natural origin?), and to discard the latter, knowledge of epidemiology and genetics is a must, and we can't trust this to ordinary RS; that is, corroborating evidence to one theory may still be not enough to outweigh the evidence for another, and I don't think we want WP to give undue weight to evidence (which is, in addition, circumstantial in the discussion that triggered the RfC), and we do want to diminish the temptation of prospective editors of making original research based on journalists' reports and investigations, or choosing such RS as to support their point, which might not reflect consensus.

EDIT: From WP:MEDPOP: The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care. I believe this should end the debate. In the worst case, use specialised non-academic health/medicine matters publications (Science-Based Medicine, Mayo Clinic etc.), so long as people with requisite medical/scientific knowledge write there. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 00:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That quote, The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care. is clearly referring to medical advice, because it mentions "costs," "risks versus benefits," and "health care". More textual evidence that MEDRS specifically applies to medical advice. Geogene ( talk) 17:11, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

"The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles." is clearly referring to scientific and medical information. I don't know how you're missing this. In either case, WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:MEDPOP are also clear that academic, peer reviewed literature is preferred, especially for topics of a scientific nature. The origin of a virus is a scientific topic, obviously. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 18:10, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per the opening paragraph of WP:MEDRS: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be . . . This clearly says that the reason for WP:MEDRS is to make sure that people won't get bad health information from Wikipedia. But the origin of our lovely pandemic is not going to affect anyone's decision about what to do if they get the virus. Furthermore, in the current case, it is the WP:MEDRS sources that are giving out misinformation by claiming it is highly unlikely that this pandemic was caused by a lab leak, while ignoring the behavioral evidence (behavior of the CCP, that is) that shows the opposite. Adoring nanny ( talk) 01:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That's not the opening paragraph of WP:MEDRS. The opening paragraph of WP:MEDRS is:

"Biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. This guideline supports the general sourcing policy with specific attention to what is appropriate for medical content in any Wikipedia article, including those on alternative medicine. Sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources." -- Guy Macon ( talk) 17:54, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Guy Macon, Adoring nanny was quoting it correctly at the time. The problem with that text was raised at the MEDRS talk page and I trimmed it. I notified the original author (MastCell), who approved in their comments on that page. The meme that MEDRS is entirely about protecting readers from bad medical advice and apparently therefore irrelevant to biomedical information that doesn't constitute medical advice seems to have taken off in this poll, but doesn't bear any scrutiny. (For anyone unsure, there is a rather good explanitory-supplement called Wikipedia:Biomedical information which I recommend reading). If editors are concerned about how MEDRS opening paragraph should be worded, please discuss at that guideline talk page. I suggest it isn't really worth debating further in this poll, which failed some time ago. -- Colin° ^Talk 18:39, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This page is an explanatory supplement to WP:MEDRS. We need to evaluate this in line with the phrasing currently present at WP:MEDRS. As I stated over at WP:RSN, it's not clear to me that origins of a particular virus actually fall under WP:MEDRS; this would lead to an odd situation where the origin of biological species that do not cause human disease (i.e. tobacco mosaic virus) would have different reliable sourcing requirements regarding its origins as a virus species than would E. Coli regarding its origins as a species of bacteria. The motivation for WP:MEDRS is described within the guideline, which says that Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. In this framework, it doesn't seem to me that origin is itself biomedical information; it certainly intersects with biology, but origin itself doesn't appear to be related to human health per se. The study of the origin of E. Coli as a unique species, for example, doesn't describe any information pertaining to human health, whereas the symptoms of and treatments for infections of E. Coli clearly do. The same logic should apply more generally; biomedical information is information that pertains to human health, not the information that pertains to the origin of a causative agent of disease per se. It's certainly better to use peer-reviewed journals and academic scholarship on the topic than secondary-source analyses published in reliable newspapers (and certainly more than primary-source pieces published in reliable newspapers), and weight should be given in a manner consistent with WP:SCHOLARSHIP. But, I don't think that applying WP:MEDRS here is warranted, as the origin of a disease-causing agent itself doesn't appear to fall within the relevant reliable source guideline's scope. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 02:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Mikehawk10, I disagree with this - the origin of a virus or species is not equivalent to the origin of a disease/pandemic as this RfC is asking. I think the RfC question was carefully crafted to be short but clearly state that it's only applicable to the origin of diseases/pandemics in humans - but maybe it's better to clarify it further, as that seems to be your only opposition. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 02:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    • @ Berchanhimez: Are you asking me to expand upon whether we should apply a different analysis to the origin of a disease than to the origin of the causative agent of a disease? — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 02:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

      Mikehawk10, yes, because that is the entire question here - your response is about the origin of causative agents, yet the question here is about the origin of disease/pandemic in humans. Not to mention that it's totally fine for you to say you agree with the origin of a pandemic being BMI but not the origin of a disease - that's a valid point - but your argument doesn't have anything to do with the discussion here as it's not about the origin of a disease-causing agent itself at all. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 02:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

      The notion that my rationale doesn't have anything to do with the discussion here seems a bit odd; the origins of the disease are linked to the origin of the causitive agent, just as the origins of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus are linked to its ability to infect Tobacco plants (and the same goes for human diseases and their causitive agents). In any case, it's clear that WP:MEDRS proceeds from the fact that, as stated above Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. Adding a MEDRS restriction on whether Tuberculosis first infected individuals in Africa or in China or in Tuvalu ultimately doesn't seem to be in line with the guidelines's defined scope, as it really isn't linked to health information that people might seek. I agree that it's wise to use peer-reviewed scholarship to describe disease origins; we should always use the highest quality sources available to describe a fact. However, I don't believe that secondary/tertiary medical sources are the only sources competent to describe disease origins or pandemic origins, especially for historical pandemics like the Black death. The RfC proposal is overly broad and, in my reading, doesn't faithfully follow from the rationale for the guidelines set down in WP:MEDRS. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 03:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose this is "playing politics under the guise of NOT playing politics". Wikiactivists are scrambling to hide away shifting mainstream consensus so they can keep their "conspiracy theory" label alive and well. 2601:602:9200:1310:4065:8EBB:AD8:41E6 ( talk) 02:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC) — 2601:602:9200:1310:4065:8EBB:AD8:41E6 ( talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Is there a concrete, policy-based reason that you've made this comment? It's a bit odd to position a !vote solely on the basis of the (perceived) motives of other editors. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 02:56, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose because the origin of a virus (i.e. if it had an intermediate host and which host, for example) is not a medical, but a biological question. Remember that the only reason for introducing WP:MEDRS is this: "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information...". The origin of a virus (like the exact population of bats) will not affects anyone's medical decisions. People vaccinate regardless to this. Remember that WP:MEDRS prohibits using original peer reviewed scientific publications. Not using such publications for pages on biology will adversely affect the quality of such pages. Let's simply follow WP:Verifiability. My very best wishes ( talk) 03:23, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The information is biomedical - we shouldn't exclude one part of it. And anyway - is there any indication that NYT/WSJ is better at communicating biology than medicine? I pretty much doubt it. Also, see WP:BIOHARD and WP:NOTRI - it explains pretty well why we shouldn't risk using sources other than MEDRS for medical (or biological) claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Szmenderowiecki ( talk • contribs)

I do agree that WP:BMI should be fixed, but in a different place. It tells: "Biomedical information is information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health." What? That would cover all biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, all technology that affects human health (such as car or building construction), etc. Fortunately, the guideline explains below that no, that is not what authors actually mean. My very best wishes ( talk) 15:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki - And BTW, thank you for the source [3]! Given that the Chinese program of biological weapons is very much active, I think COVID-19 indeed could be related to this program. Obviously, they would work with every version of SARS they could extract from bats. My very best wishes ( talk) 02:27, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's more complicated than lumping everything wrt a pandemic's "origins" under WP:BMI. Some aspects are; some aren't. Alexbrn ( talk) 04:01, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support This should have been done years back when we were dealing with the pseudoscience conspiracy nonsense regarding the Zika virus, which had similar stupid claims made about its origins. Pandemics and global disease oubreaks very clearly fall under this and general MEDRS requirements, including regarding origins of diseases under major outbreaks that are so often conspiritized. Anyone claiming otherwise without actual evidence that is properly sourced is pushing pseudoscience and WP:FRINGE nonsense. Silver seren ^C 04:34, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - that seems a false definition, although no specific is stated. Defining Biomedical as such simply is not matching the technical field or definitions used by the scientific community, and seems clearly outside the topic area and stated goals this article has long had. Keep it to what the scientific field says. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 05:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC) (edit conflict, reposted below)

  Some origin-related stuff is within the realm of the Biomedical sciences, some isn't. Alexbrn ( talk) 05:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  I can see your position that as proposed is too far, it’s more complicated than everything is in or out, mine is more that this is asking for redefining a technical area without any specific proposal or technical RS support. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 05:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - that seems a false definition, although nothing specific is stated. Defining Biomedical as such simply seems not matching to the technical field or definitions used by the scientific community, by not providing a medical textbook source. This also seems clearly outside the topic area and stated goals this article has long had. Keep it to what the scientific field says. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 05:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Initially I supported the idea of changing WP:BMI so that at least it covers origin unambiguously; I've changed my mind. Here is why: secondary reviews are important in treatment of diseases because primary sources are studies and RCTs with very narrow conditions (internal validity, is the technical term) that NEED extra assesment on their external validity. Meta analysis and systematic reviews fulfill that role. Primary sources on the origin of an epidemic, on the other hand, do not consist of RCT's plagued with external validity concerns. They do not require as much confirmation from independent researchers. This means that experts cited by top RS (e.g. New York Times, Reuters) commenting on primary sources about the origin of an epidemic should be good enough for Wikipedia. If experts disagree, we present both sides with attribution.

What is currently happening is that we have two low-level secondary sources (the 2020 review by the italians, poorly written really, and the 2021 review by Hakim, an obscure Singaporean Indonesian researcher) holding back an entire Hoover-Dam-like of sources giving credence to the lab leak hypothesis. Ah, we also have the WHO official statement which allegedly arrived at the "extremely unlikely" likelihood statement with unexplained criteria, under enormous political pressure from the Chinese counterpart of the Mission.

Imagine for a second what if the the next pandemic originates in the Subsaharan Africa with the local government obfsucating forensic research, and the WHO joint mission taking at face value the word of the African politicians and making it the MEDRS-level truth. Is that our ideal standard? Let's not be naive. Forich ( talk) 05:12, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

A good example of why we need the WP:PAGs, otherwise we'd have editors deciding to reject sources because although an article might be published in as reputable journal as Virology, the author is from Singapore so he's "obscure" and it's "low-level"! Alexbrn ( talk) 05:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I love how you go from "an entire Hoover-Dam-like of sources" referring to literally a bunch of sources presenting exactly zero evidence for the claim, but trying to use 3 people getting sick out of 300 as an argument and then you just casually dismiss the entire WHO report stating very strongly it being "extremely unlikely". I think the WHO knows more about the criteria and methodology behind the subject than a bunch of news sources trying to make controversy because they don't have actual evidence to write about. Silver seren ^C 05:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I am amused that you chose sub-Saharan Africa as a hypothetical. HIV and Ebola both originated in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet somehow we have excellent MEDRS sources regarding their origin. Do MEDRS sources take more time? Yes. Do they take more time in some countries for political or logistical reasons? Of course. But we are not on a deadline here. And I see no reason to use substandard sources based on the excuse that it is just too difficult and time consuming for proper research to be done. Hyperion35 ( talk) 13:25, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

And of course there were plenty of conspiracy theories in the earlier days of the HIV crisis about its origin. If Wikipedia has existed then no doubt there'd have been editors pushing the Fort Detrick origin story! (see Operation INFEKTION) They'd be sagely citing their newspaper sources and quoted scientists [4]. Alexbrn ( talk) 13:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This isn't a medical issue, and it doesn't affect treatment of the disease which is why we have MEDRS. Furthermore, evaluating the likelihood of a Chinese coverup, or lack thereof, is not a topic primarily for medical experts. This involves social science, statecraft, political science, historians (as time goes by), and so on. It also involves infectious disease experts, but in an interdisciplinary form. MEDRS should be kept for pure medical information: prognosis, symptoms, treatment, causes, and so on. For medical information that can affect readers' health, we need to be very careful. But as careful as we should be, we should not let MEDRS creep into political issues, which is what this US vs. China innuendo is. There may be good reasons to reject the leak hypothesis from Wikipedia, it certainly was considered highly WP:FRINGE in the past. Whether to reject this entirely or mention it in some form should be weighted with NPOV and FRINGE in mind, not MEDRS. MEDRS should be kept for what is purely medical.-- Eostrix  ( ^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 05:52, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Just as a note, an RfC that closed in early April found no consensus on whether the lab leak hypothesis was a "minority, but scientific viewpoint" or if it was a "conspiracy theory". — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 05:56, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Given that Dr. Anthony Fauci is now "no longer convinced the Covid-19 pandemic originated naturally", the position of this being fringe is becoming less tenable. It's also nearly impossible to disprove the lab leak hypothesis (how do you disprove a hypothetical coverup?), so this is unlikely to be resolved definitely any time soon.-- Eostrix  ( ^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 06:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

A lab origin can be disproved by finding an intermediate animal host reservoir infected with a near identical SARS-CoV-2 virus (>99% genome relation), which caused the zoonotic event, as required by the natural origin hypothesis, as was done in the case of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV in less than a year. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 07:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That would disprove it was "engineered" in the lab, which is not the hypothesis here as far as I understand it. It would not disprove the hypothesis that some members of the animal host reservoir were held in the lab and that the disease "leaked". It is unlikely to be debunked soon.-- Eostrix  ( ^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 07:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

According to CBS News' Senior White House Correspondent, Dr. Fauci tells me that his opinion about the origins of COVID-19 have not changed: He believes that it is “highly likely” that it first occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human. Since no one is 100% sure, he’s open to a thorough investigation. Dr. Fauci said that does not mean he believes the virus first emerged in a lab, as some have suggested. [5] XOR'easter ( talk) 16:02, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose As many above have quoted "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information...". This is the reason why there is the MEDRS sourcing requirements. The origin of pandemics and diseases is not a medical question; it's a multidisciplinary question. In a complex situation, it becomes an investigative process that requires scientists, biosafety experts, and in this case intelligence agencies when a country does not cooperate. The origin of the 1971 Aral smallpox incident, 1977 Russian flu, 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom, Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, and SARS laboratory accidents 2003–2004 are examples of such complex virus/bacteria origin events, which required a multidisciplinary field of investigators and researchers to solve the problem. What is most important is to use the best sources available, and the general reliable sourcing content guidelines tell us how to do that already. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 06:13, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak you mentioned was covered in this NYTimes piece, suggesting that investigative journalism can play a key role in uncovering the origin of a pandemic. Forich ( talk) 20:34, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Per TFD. WP:MEDRS clearly states the justification for a stricter policy, namely that people might seek medical advice on Wikipedia. Normal RS criteria should be applied to the origins of diseases. I don't find the arguments that this is too important or complicated to use the normal RS policy. There are plenty other no less complex and important areas of human knowledge where wrong information can cause harm (think of voting based on fake news), if the RS policy is good enough for them it's good enough here too. If it's not good enough, it should be discussed at WP:RS. Alaexis _¿question? 06:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as explained by others above. WP:BMI should be updated to clarify that not all aspects of origins requires WP:MEDRS so that other reliable sources on the investigations can be used Weburbia ( talk) 07:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• This should be done for this pandemic specifically, since so much pseudoscience is being published everywhere - including in ordinarily reputable newspapers. Scientific journal articles, by contrast, have been consistent and phenomenal on the origins of SARS-CoV-2. - Darouet ( talk) 07:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

We should override policy for this one pandemic? Why exactly? Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 18:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Historical sources are great when dealing with historical events. Here, we have a current event where almost all scientists say one thing, and major world governments and media say the opposite. In such a case as this, we should support the scientific (and scientifically supported) viewpoint, not the political viewpoint of governments or newspaper editorial boards.

The implication is that whenever there's a new and ongoing infectious disease outbreak, we should similarly rely upon scientific journal articles for our coverage of those outbreaks. That's not overriding policy: it's ensuring that the public is informed by scientific consensus, instead of conspiracy. - Darouet ( talk) 12:50, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading medical advice from being introduced in the project. It's not a means to its own end, or a "privilege" granted to medical articles and medical publications. It adresses a specific problem, i.e. that readers use Wikipedia as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis and prescription. This is made clear by reading the current version of § What is biomedical information?, which targets things that are related to these areas and exclude things like funding information. We should not expand the scope of MEDRS to subjects that do not raise the same issues. Reliable sources are reliable, and they can and should be used to source statements that are not likely to influence the choices and the decisions of patients. JBchrch talk 10:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. Just wanted to add that scholarly sources are of course better than news sources in pretty much every context. Opposition to this RfC is certainly not equivalent to approving the use of garbage sources in order to push conspiracy theories or fringe ideas. However, there are some cases where use of "mere" RSes in addition to scholarly sources is warranted in order to keep Wikipedia neutral and current, as is (in my understanding) currently the case with respect the origins of SARS-CoV-2. JBchrch talk 14:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Per many of those above who point out that WP:MEDRS is to keep anything that can be construed as medical advice sourced to the highest standards. Medical advice for how to treat or remain safe from a pandemic is the same whether that pandemic leaked from a lab, sprang to humans in a wet market, crossed species due to an animal bite, mutated on its own in the human population, or made the leap from livestock to farmers. There is no reason to hold investigations into the origin, which very well may be discovered by investigative journalism or a whistleblower, to the same standard as how a disease spreads or is treated, nor is that what WP:MEDRS is there to address. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 11:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Reiterating what many have said before, WP:MEDRS is about medical advice, the origin of this virus is a historical matter, no reasonable person would use this information to inform medical opinion. High Tinker ( talk) 12:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Over on the SARS-COV-2 page, we have an excellent demonstration of why MEDRS is essential. This diff from editor Darouet explains how other editors wanted to insert text from a Washington Post article about biosafety levels at the Wuhan lab. The Post is normally a reliable source, right? Except that Darouet did some actual due diligence, they checked the actual interview that the Post article summarizes, and found that the snippet quoted in the Post article dramatically misrepresents what the scientist actually said about biosafety levels and rules at the lab in the full interview, which turns out to be much more complex.

  And as I pointed out in my response, even the more complete text of the interview still leaves us with problems, because as you see, different editors have different interpretations of what the scientist meant in the interview, because even good MEDPOP interviews are still going to be vague and non-specific if they're intended for public reading. It forces us into issues of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, and even as someone who actually interprets between clinical and regulatory language professionally, I can't really be certain that my interpretation of the interview is correct. And if I can't be certain, I damned well can't imagine how Randy in Boise is going to be either.

  This is why we must use MEDRS in these situations, these are the very real pitfalls of relying on standard journalism or even MEDPOP sources. Hyperion35 ( talk) 14:00, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Would the usage of the Washington Post in that situation have given anyone poor information they could have taken as medical advice that put them at risk? ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 14:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

In the big picture, yes, because perception of the problem affects how we devote resources to addressing it. In a democracy, those resources are decided by the people, and when they all write to their legislators to demand better lab safety, and experts are then forced to focus on lab safety when the next zoonotic outbreak occurs, and it will occur, then we will be even less prepared than we were for this one. But leaving that aside, as XOREaster points out below, this is a very narrow view of MEDRS. If someone places unsources info on a BLP, we don't argue over whether it might actually be good for someone's career if we falsely claimed that they had committed a crime, we apply BLP policy and remove it. Hyperion35 ( talk) 16:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• If you don't like how the core RS policy works, you should get community-wide consensus to re-write it. Geogene ( talk) 14:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Leaving aside the fact that this is a discussion about how we should apply our RS policies (MEDRS is an RS policy), you appear to have fundamentally misunderstood my comment, as I was not suggesting rewriting our RS policies and I cannot fathom how you could interpret it that way. I am at a loss of words for how to describe this in a more simple fashion: MEDRS exists, here is an example of how it prevents incorrect information from entering our articles (as it did in that example). Hyperion35 ( talk) 16:03, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

You're complaining about how core RS policy (of which MEDRS is a limited, special case) is supposedly inadequate. Instead of misapplying MEDRS all over Wikipedia, perhaps you should rewrite the core policy instead. I'm not sure how I can make this any simpler so that you can understand it. Perhaps more simple, declarative sentences. Your argument isn't convincing because it seems to have been resolved without applying MEDRS. That shows that standard RS policy works. That makes your argument self-refuting. Geogene ( talk) 16:12, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That is not what Hyperion35 is doing. They are arguing that MEDRS provides a good framework for dealing with the poor coverage of biomedical science in the popular press. You're arguing that instead of using the MEDRS standard, we should use popular media sources that - for coverage of biomedical topics - have near-junk status. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 16:41, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@ Geogene:That is not what I am saying at all. I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT RS OR MEDRS STANDARDS. Lemme give you a tip: when someone says "you misunderstood what I said", your response should not be to immediately tell me what I said. I am giving you a chance to strike your bad faith, personal attack, trollish comment. Hyperion35 ( talk) 17:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I won't, because I'm not wrong. Learn to lose your arguments more gracefully. Geogene ( talk) 17:35, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose TFD spelled it out correctly, the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice, not as a blanket policy that covers everything that a disease touches. Let me offer a hypothetical. Lets say that there is a local disease outbreak and the government in charge of that locale issued a statement to the effect of 'We know this disease was caused by a tainted drinking source, which we have cleaned up.' If we did as the supporters propose, we would, what, exactly? Be forbidden from citing the government's statement because it was not issued from a MEDRS? Bonewah ( talk) 14:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I think Aquillion, bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez and others lay out the case pretty well. If it takes biomedical research to answer, it's a biomedical question. Really, the argument that MEDRS is only here to prevent bad medical advice is rather specious. Yes, that's the stated rationale at the beginning of the page, which makes sense because it's the obvious reason to have a stringent guideline, but that's not where the story ends. The fundamental issue is that misinformation about health and medicine is dangerous, and it's our responsibility to take precautions. The intro of WP:BLP doesn't list any specific kinds of harm that violating it would lead to; should we then conclude that the risks are all just hypothetical? The intro of WP:NORG says nothing at all about the harms that including articles on non-notable companies can lead to; should we conclude there is no motivation for WP:NORG at all? On top of all that, conspiratorial thinking about the origin of a disease can indeed affect health choices people make. Just look at the past couple decades of the antivax movement to see the psychology at work. Recently, there has been research suggesting that COVID conspiracy theories can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy. The risk is real, not hypothetical, and the matter of disease origin becomes one for MEDRS even under the strictest reading. XOR'easter ( talk) 15:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@ XOR'easter: Just a note, the nature article appears to be talking about conspiracy and conspiratorial leanings in general (not just the specific ones around COVID) effecting vaccination hesitancy. "Vaccine hesitance/resistance has also been associated with conspiratorial, religious, and paranoid beliefs, while mistrust of authoritative members of society, such as government officials, scientists, and health care professionals, has been linked to negative attitudes towards vaccinations, as has endorsement of authoritarian political views, societal disaffection, and intolerance of migrants. Taken together, the existing literature indicates that there are likely to be several psychological dispositions that traverse personality, cognitive styles, emotion, beliefs, trust, and socio-political attitudes that distinguish those who are hesitant or resistant to a COVID-19 vaccine from those who are accepting.” If someone is already conspiratorial, religious, paranoid, or mistrustful of authority there isn’t much Wikipedia can do about that. I would also ask you to strike and characterize the paper more accurately, "research suggesting that COVID conspiracy theories can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy” is simply not an accurate summary of the findings presented. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 16:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I respectfully decline. I believe that my phrasing about "suggesting" and "can feed into" is an adequately qualified summary, particularly in the light of other work in the area. Nor am I inclined to shrug and say that there's not much Wikipedia can do; we ought at least to be responsible enough not to contribute to a feedback loop. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The problem isn’t the qualification its the description of findings that simply don’t exist. "research suggesting that belief in conspiracy theories can feed into COVID vaccine refusal or hesitancy” would be accurate, but they don’t actually address the effects of specific conspiracy theories at all just the effect of being conspiracy minded on vaccine refusal or hesitancy. I’d also point out that the logical conclusion of your framing would be to remove all religious information as well as all information which calls into question government authority from Wikipedia under MEDRS as it demonstrably can feed into vaccine refusal or hesitancy, now are you cherry picking or are you actually presenting an argument based on the findings of that paper? Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 17:17, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I've presented two papers, the latter specifically about how exposure to online misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines affects intent to vaccinate to protect oneself or others. There's also older work indicating that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is inversely related to the (a) perceived threat of the pandemic, (b) taking of preventive actions, including wearing a face mask, (c) perceived safety of vaccination, and (d) intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19. XOR'easter ( talk) 17:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The statement under discussion here is only about the one paper. I do appreciate you providing additional sources which are more relevant to the discussion at hand but you are still making a demonstrably false claim about the conclusions of the first paper which I just cant abide by on the BI talk page. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 17:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Surely the discussion here is about whether to update the MEDRS guideline, no? I'm still not seeing what's "demonstrably false" about my remark about the first paper (which, to be clear, was not a carefully-polished turn of phrase). The fundamental issue is that, even under the limited "not meant to provide medical advice" justification for MEDRS, which as mentioned below neglects the concerns of WP:MEDPOP, questions of disease origin do intermingle with those of medical advice. As a Royal Society report on vaccine deployment from last October summarizes, Those with higher levels of endorsing COVID-19 conspiracy theories [are] reported to be less likely to adhere to government guidelines, be tested, or vaccinated. And yes, while it's quite possible that people will go ahead and misinform themselves whatever we do, we should still hold ourselves to a critical standard. XOR'easter ( talk) 17:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Why I didn't just link to both of those Nature articles in the first place, I'm actually not sure. I've too many open browser tabs for vaccine-hesitancy research, some of which are preprints or articles in journals I don't fully trust (though sifting through their bibliographies can be worthwhile). Editing before coffee, I suppose. XOR'easter ( talk) 18:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I've been seeing versions of the "history is not biomedical information" claim going around for months, and I've never been able to understand the relevance of the assertion. I mean, we're not talking about the death of Pericles or the Plague of Justinian here, but an ongoing event — a pandemic coupled with what the World Health Organization has called an infodemic. When the "history" isn't even historical, and there is an ongoing public-health hazard from misinformation, the "history is not biomedical information" line goes by the wayside. The past, one might say, isn't even past. XOR'easter ( talk) 22:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

@ XOR'easter: I agree with you that some claims about history get pretty wikilawyery. However -- with deference to your greater experience around here -- I think you're overreading what WP:MEDRS is for. It is definitely for protecting readers seeking medical advice. Your concerns about the other dangers of incorrect advice seem to me to be stepping more into concerns which, though valid, are not codified into policy. My instinct would normally be overwhelmingly to agree with you -- don't let people hear these conspiracy theories which will lower vaccination rates! This isn't just academic debate, lives literally depend on these vaccinations! However, I have an opposing concern. Consider the possibility that the pandemic of the century was made in a lab. In that unfortunate scenario, I foresee a huge crisis of trust in science, a lifetime's supply of ammunition for future conspiracy theorists, a seed of doubt in millions of minds about whether the establishment can be trusted. And Wikipedia would be best-served if it is not seen to have been "part of the coverup."

When I expressed that fear before, I was told to avoid trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. I think that's fair, mainly because it's pretty hard to objectively just these kinds of things. Which is more significant, your fear of misinformation, or my fear of future distrust? Well, that depends on...lots of things. The advantage of just dropping all that and sticking to the policies is that, as I've learned, they're actually quite wise!

If we just fairly represent the current state of things, which is that "lab leak is plausible" is a significant-minority opinion ( WP:MEDSCI, WP:FRINGE/ALT), with WP:DUE weight, then we're not going to be giving readers a lot of dangerous misinformation. We're not going to be saying "could be bats, could be mad scientists!" - the reliable sources currently lean heavily toward zoonosis, and Wikipedia should reflect that. However -- this is what I'm really fighting for -- lab leak should not be represented as just a baseless conspiracy theory, because (officially) that's not an accurate representation (see discussions elsewhere), and (unofficially) we owe a better explanation to those who are troubled by something they read and are coming here because they don't know what to think anymore. We owe them more than "only crazy people think this."

So that's my WP:RGW take on why we should treat lab leak as a significant-minority opinion. I respect your WP:RGW on the danger of vaccine refusal. I think the eventual outcome is just that we stick to the wisdom of existing policy, no? (And if I missed the part where WP:MEDRS is about more than the dangers of medical advice, I apologize; and if it doesn't include some dangers that you think it should, now is probably a good time to raise that as its own discussion.) SSSheridan ( talk) 23:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@ SSSheridan: What might seem like an innocent academic debate (some might say it's also a political proxy war) over the origins of a virus also, like other information, has real-life consequences, including the fuelling of online bullying, racism and bigotry, and of course a very real political and diplomatic divide between two global superpowers. In addition, and this is purely my 2 cents, the political controversy has likely completely sidelined actual more pressing issues, including on bio-medical matters. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 00:19, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@ RandomCanadian: I hope that my first two paragraphs in the above comment made clear that I respect the real-life consequences, and don't see it as a purely academic debate. I'll admit that I'm surprised to find myself arguing for greater representation of a dissenting view, a hypothesis which I deeply hope to be untrue. And I'm honestly disgusted (if not surprised) to read the article you linked.

But my motivation, again, is concern for real-world consequences. The grant proposals tell me that the research that was done at WIV could have created a virus like this one. (And I've asked peers to double-check my interpretation, to make sure I'm not being crazy.) Obviously, the evidence is lacking; the point is, I think it's plausible, and that's disturbing. My motivation now is essentially damage control: if lab-leak turns out to be the correct explanation, I don't want Wikipedia to have misled its readers.

Furthermore -- and in the present -- I don't want readers to feel jerked around after reading one thing in the NYT and something different here. That sort of uncertainty, I think, provides fertile ground for conspiracy thinking -- and the ugliness that follows.

But, again: both your concerns and mine are of the WP:RGW variety. Who knows how to weigh them against each other? Only time will tell. In the meantime, let's just hammer out some new wording according to the policies? I want zoonosis to get the great majority of the weight ( WP:DUE); I just want lab leak to be treated briefly but fairly (i.e. no longer as a crazy conspiracy theory). I believe that that is the correct implementation of the policies, and hopefully the best balance for our respective real-world worries as well. SSSheridan ( talk) 02:12, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, thats simply not what MEDRS is for. Expanding our concept of MEDRS is a drastic step and not one which should be undertaken without an overwhelming and pressing reason which nobody seems to be arguing is the case here. MEDRS is meant to prevent immediate harm from incorrect/malicious medical advice (for instance if our article on bleach said that injecting it into the body cured COVID) not speculative harm that could perhaps be caused by presenting due historical and policy analysis. While I respect immensely the work that many here have done in keeping COVID conspiracies off of wikipedia the idea that as a result of COVID we should expand MEDRS to anything that even broadly touches on human biology, health, or medicine just doesn’t hold water. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 16:24, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support: Do we want to use high-quality scientific sources, or do we want to use articles from the popular media, written by non-experts who (very likely) do not understand virology, biosafety, ecology, etc.? The origins of the pandemic is an extremely important subject, and I see no excuse for using low-quality sources, such as popular media. Right now, we have a very strange situation, in which popular media is wildly out of sync with scientific publications. We can all speculate about why this might be the case, but I'll just suggest that political bias may play a role, given the dramatic way in which the US-China relationship has deteriorated over the past few years, and the dramatic growth in anti-China sentiment in the West. This political situation will influence coverage of China in general, and of the lab-leak theory in particular. So I go back to my original question, posed a bit more polemically: do you want to use high-quality scientific sources, or do you want to listen to the people who told us that Iraq had WMD and was working with Al Qaeda? - Thucydides411 ( talk) 16:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

To think that "high-quality scientific sources" aren't influenced by political considerations, especially when so much of the funding for scientific research comes from the government, is dangerously naive. The CCP even restricted scientific research into the origins of the coronavirus. [6] And as far as your point about the WMD narrative perpetuated by mainstream news sources, have you heard about the replication crisis in peer-reviewed scientific studies? Rreagan007 ( talk) 17:30, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

MEDRS generally prohibits "research", and recommends instead secondary sourcing precisely because research is not necessary correct/reliable. The goal is to reflect accepted knowledge. Alexbrn ( talk) 17:34, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

And you don't think those secondary sources rely on scientific research to come to their "accepted knowledge"? Rreagan007 ( talk) 17:47, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, but a retrospective review of a field (particularly a systematic review) has no novel idea to pursue, but sifts out bad research, assesses quality and arrives at an overall measure of the state of knowledge in a field, as then peer-reviewed by relevant scientists. There are degrees of quality in knowledge (see WP:MEDASSESS). Wikipedias's purpose is merely to reflect that best quality accepted knowledge, then its job is done. Your argument seems to be a kind of relativistic "we can't know anything for sure, so anything can be admissible" - which is not useful for the purposes of building an WP:ENC. Alexbrn ( talk) 06:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Health is not the only reason why MEDRS is restrictive on sourcing. Please see WP:MEDPOP: The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality, costs, and risks versus benefits, and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care.. Please read the entire thing, this is a real problem that has been discussed and reached consensus in Wikiproject Medicine long ago: on these specific topics, normally reliable sources simply aren't reliable.

  Second, the definition of WP:BMI goes far beyond the limits of medical advice and safety. We already define biomedical information to include: Biomedical research Information about clinical trials or other types of biomedical research that address the above entries or allow conclusions to be made about them. We are clearly discussing biomedical research, unless editors are really asking us to believe that biosafety levels at a biological research lab are not a matter of biological research? I am really trying to AGF, but at some point this gets so absurd that I'm really not sure how to respond. This doesn't require expanding MEDRS or BMI, we're just calling a spade a spade and saying that yes, research into zoonosis and viruses and the origins of a pandemic is really biomedical information, which is biomedical information and thus clearly falls under MEDRS. Hyperion35 ( talk) 16:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I concur fully with this. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:39, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • What do we understand by the "origin of the virus"? If we are talking about evolitionary relations of a virus with othe viruses or established hosts (actually, they are not well established for COVID-19), then sure, we need scientific RS, although I think using peer reviewed original publications for describing such biological questions is fine (no need in MEDRS, just use WP:Verifiability). However, if we mean questions like what exactly Drs. X,Y,Z were doing in the lab (maybe drinking or getting sick of a virus), this is not a science, but rather something for a different type of investigation. My very best wishes ( talk) 17:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Identifying what virus these hypothetical Drs. X, Y, and Z were sick with would be a scientific question, requiring a scientific investigation to resolve. XOR'easter ( talk) 17:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Comment Probably requires more nuance and explanation, rather than a blanket mandate. Clarification around information that relates to (or could reasonably be perceived as relating to) human health would be a better course of action. I might perceive the prevalence and persistence of COVID conspiracies relating to the WIV affecting vaccine uptake (and Wikipedia being used to promote such misinformation) as 'relating to human health', others will perceive differently (whether about COVID or another disease), and both perspectives might be considered reasonable. Where does that impasse leave us? Some of the issue is just with interpretation of best sourcing guidance. Most (but not all) of the time, if we have a MEDRS source available making a certain claim, that claim should be given priority over a mainstream press ( WP:MEDPOP) source. This is primarily where I think the "we should favor MEDRS sources" preference derives from, particularly for the purposes of determining mainstream scientific perspective (and consequently, how we write about various possibilities regarding WP:GEVAL and WP:FRINGELEVEL). It's easier to keep our articles from becoming a mess of 'he-said/she-said' with opposing MEDPOP sources (often with one or both sides misrepresenting the science itself), but that's more of a "COVID-19 articles are contentious" decision than "BMI/MEDRS must be applied this way across WP". If we make any tweak, I'd suggest it be more around how we phrase these higher standards of scientific evidence defined in MEDRS, when applied beyond strictly BMI, as contentious topics may warrant. Bakkster Man ( talk) 16:42, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support usage of highest quality sources as a principle, but moot question/needless Wikilawyering [no change to MEDRS truly required, except to avoid the wikilaywering about it] - The origin of a human disease is a complex topic. While some might claim ambiguity about what exactly is a biomedical topic, WP:RS strongly suggests that academic peer-reviewed literature, when available, is the best source for all claims and not just biomedical ones. Per WP:SOURCETYPES, "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources." ( WP:NEWSORG goes in the same direction) The popular non-scientific press is also often unsuitable as a serious source for scientific topics, and WP:MEDPOP describes how non-scientific sources often promote false balance on controversial scientific topics. This is the case of multiple otherwise reliable newspapers in this case, which are making inaccurate statements about "mainstream science" and the like (for example, the WaPo timeline claims that this is an "influential paper". It's not - it's promoting a baseless claim (actual laboratory genetic manipulation), as attested by multiple other sources, for example this direct reply or plenty of excellent papers cited here (and this, which is the actual "influential paper" [cited more than 1000 times by other scientists], in Nature Medicine).

This naturally leads to the use of WP:MEDRS, and I don't see why this is controversial at all: MEDRS sources are talking about this - a lot (see WP:NOLABLEAK and also User:RandomCanadian/The origins of COVID-19: literature review for a work in progress annotated bibliography on that) - and using newspapers when we have access to high quality sources kinda defeats the point of it all, does it not? We can use newspapers for their usual expertise, which is recent events and global news (and, to some extent, they are sufficient to conclude that some mention of fringe theories is warranted, in the appropriate place). Not for FALSEBALANCE purposes on highly complex topics (virology, epidemiology, the origins of a disease) which require years of study and which are already covered in high quality sources. As a reminder, it took 14 years before definitive, direct evidence was found for the natural origin of SARS - ^[16] There's absolutely WP:NORUSH here, especially not to use poor sources for poor balance of fringe theories. Cheers, RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 17:20, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• Perhaps a simple summary is that, in most cases, the policy we refer to can be WP:SCHOLARSHIP instead of WP:MEDRS, and we'll get the same result. Bakkster Man ( talk) 17:57, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, curiously, there seems to be an idea from some editors that by "downgrading" to plain old RS, the door will be open to use any-old-source for SCI/MED content. Methinks they haven't read the guideline properly. Alexbrn ( talk) 18:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, this part of WP:SCHOLARSHIP is pretty definitive: "Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive and should be avoided. Secondary sources, such as meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred when available, so as to provide proper context." If, for whatever reason, the consensus is that pandemic origins are not BMI, the field is certainly still complex and abstruse enough to necessitate meta-analyses and reviews in a hierarchy over primary or non-scholarly sources. People absolutely get extremely long and drawn-out PhDs on this stuff.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 22:51, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Addendum One thing which I didn't note in my previous comment is how Wikipedia is supposed to not be breaking news, and not be a place for the promotion of fringe theories. What we are supposed to do is summarise the existing, top level reliable sources, and follow them, not lead in a new direction. Wikipedia is academically conservative, and that is entirely consistent with our policies on verifiability and no original research. To quote from the same essay, if we'd been around in Galileo's time, the view that the Earth goes round the sun would have been similarly dismissed. Again, we're supposed to follow, not lead. The only thing I see in support of the lab leak (which, like it or not, is the reason behind this discussion) is special pleading to accept poor sources, poorly hidden original research, and political controversy. Not making it blindingly clear that we're not a soapbox is only going to hurt us in the long-term when dealing with fanatic fringe advocates (many of them canvassed here from Twitter threads and the like). RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Sure, go into one side of the debate, but not the other side. Only a conspiracist could think that people who are hiding key information have something to hide! Adoring nanny ( talk) 17:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  @ RandomCanadian: I agree with your entire comment about being academically conservative, but that should be about erring on the side of omission; it doesn't mean we have to be slow to change statements which are no longer true. It was true that "lab leak" was pretty much only considered plausible by conspiracy theorists; the moment that Science publishes a letter saying "lab leak is plausible," then that former statement is invalidated, and sentences which imply as much should be edited. You're entirely correct that the Science letter does very little to shift the overall scientific position on "where did the virus come from?"; but the question "who has stated that lab leak is plausible enough to investigate?" is a different question. President Biden instructing the US intelligence agencies to look into the question is a prime example of a notable, non-scientific development. This is analogous to how regulatory status is not biomedical information, despite being very closely connected to such. SSSheridan ( talk) 23:08, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  @ SSSheridan: Entirely agree that it is a different question. Which is why we do report on it, see Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19#World_Health_Organization and Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19#Biden_administration. We just don't give it the same weight as scientific sources for purposes of saying what the scientific consensus is, because, you'll agree, politicians are not reliable sources for complex statements about complex scientific issues. Of course this is coupled with issues about article scope and summary style - not all information about one topic can go into one article, lest it be too long (too much information is just as good as too little). Hence why we make broad summaries in broader articles, and direct readers to more detailed ones where they can get more details. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 23:20, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  @ RandomCanadian: Agreed. I've written up some specific suggestions at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_COVID-19#Notability_and_acceptance of how much of what to include. I suggest keeping the current balance of word count in the SARS-CoV-2 article, and a section in the Investigations article. You may appreciate the bullet point "In accordance with WP:DUE, this section should be brief." ;) I'd appreciate your input on those suggestions, since you're obviously coming at this with different knowledge and background than me. SSSheridan ( talk) 02:54, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - As shown by the way China handling the origin of the current pandemic, and its attitude against countries like Australia when these countries call for independent investigation of their origin, origin of diseases and pandemic can be a political question. And given that organization and authorities, including research organizations, journal publishers, and academic institute in authoritarian countries similar to China are expected to follow the government's stance on matters being associated with national interest, journal and essay published from within these countries could turn out to be less neutral than external non-scientific sources. Also note that, not all disease/pandemic are like coronavirus and can trigger research interest from around the world, and thus many times for some less significant diseases the only available scientific source could be those that are supported by local government authority and thus lack neutrality, making them less reliable than general media source. C933103 ( talk) 17:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  The above is complete speculation. One could just as easily counter with the obvious political nature of comments from the US government and from US politicians. Additionally, one could ask (rethorically, because the answer is obvious): is Nature Medicine (and other reputable peer-reviewed journals) a mouthpiece of the Chinese government? Your argument falls flat on its face. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  First, US government making comments with political nature does not affect my comment in any way which didn't touch anything about the US. If you say essay published in the US could cover from same fault then that's all the more reason to have other sources. Second, my point is there are millions of disease and outbreaks around the world, not all of them can gather sufficient interest to be covered by high quality peer reviewed international journals completed with independent investigation of origin of such disease. With the lack of such sources the only source this project would accept would be official source spelling their party line. C933103 ( talk) 18:21, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support - per XOR'easter, and it somewhat helps to prevent Wikipedia articles being a WP:GEVAL reflection of the confused US media ( WP:NOTNEWS is also relevant). This is a controversial issue where people read into sources what they want and propose suboptimal or otherwise acceptable sources but that only keep repeating dubious claims including those of non-experts. Fortunately, MEDRS calls for the highest quality sources on the topic. As for the description of some narratives as conspiracy theories and misinformation, WP:PARITY applies as usual... And interestingly MEDRS sources do not currently deviate from the most plausible scenario and scientific consensus, that like previous epidemics, including of Coronavirus (SARS1, MERS), it's from nature, but that it may take a long time to fully discover the intermediate host(s) after bats. — Paleo Neonate – 19:37, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  The world have far more media than US media. People reading into source for what they want can be corrected by checking whether the source say what people say. As WP:PARITY applies as usual I don't see the list of extending this to cover them. Pandemic isn't the only form of disease outbreak that such proposed change would cover. C933103 ( talk) 18:26, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - There are a small number of editors who are hogging control of all covid lab leak related articles and shouting down anyone who disagrees, chanting MEDRS like it is some sort of magic incantation. It is plainly obvious at this point that the lab leak is a plausible origin. Nomatter how good the source -- MIT Technology review, Slate, Washington post, bulletin of atomic scientists, the journal Science, statements by the US intelligence community, statements by president Joe Biden -- this group of editors shouts it down. This is an embarassment to wikipedia. 24.18.126.43 ( talk) 20:14, 26 May 2021 (UTC) — 24.18.126.43 ( talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

  I'm not in the mood for entertaining misinformation (virulent promotion of a fringe theory IS misinformation), and I'll also ignore the blatant WP:ASPERSIONS. Would you mind telling me which of the above sources is: A) a secondary source (not an opinion statement, not a "letter to the editor") in B) a reputable peer-reviewed journal by C) a person with relevant expertise? RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 03:00, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support In what world are disease and pandemics not medical in nature? We don't need MEDRS to report that there is a wild-ass conspiracy theory, but we should need MEDRS to report on what the medical literature has determined is the actual or best consensus as to the origin of diseases. Unless and until reliable medical literature has determined something as likely or true, we should not be speculating in Wikipedia's voice on medical matters like the origin of diseases, we should only go as far as WP:FRINGE allows to note the existence of unsupported fringe claims where such claims are notable enough and where we clearly indicate the unsupported nature of them. -- Jayron 32 20:37, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
• oppose per Bonewah ..TFD spelled it out correctly, the purpose of MEDRS is to prevent Wikipedia from giving out bad medical advice, not as a blanket policy that covers everything that a disease touches.-- Ozzie10aaaa ( talk) 21:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC).
• Opppose why would we update a policy to override Wikipedia:Biomedical_information#What_is_not_biomedical_information?...History is not biomedical information. Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 22:20, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  Because some have been arguing for the inclusion of WP:FALSEBALANCE about fringe theories based on poor journalistic sources and on rules lawyering about what does and does not require academic peer-reviewed sources? As said, the origin of a disease is a complex topic, and the promotion of conspiracy theories can have a direct effect on other more concrete health matters. We ought to be more strict, if only to more accurately serve our purpose, which is that of an encyclopedia (which follows the existing consensus), not of a platform for "righting great wrongs" and pushing the narrative in "nes directions". If this has the added benefit of making the promotion of fringe theories more difficult, that's a feature, not a bug, no matter how many SPAs from Twitter come complaining about censorship. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:35, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

  If there's already a guideline within WP:RS that would reject these sorts of theories from being included on equal footing ( WP:SOURCETYPES comes to mind), then why is that a reason to keep WP:MEDRS? It seems that the ordinary WP:RS standards (when read in line with WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, and WP:ARBPS) would do a good enough job at ensuring that proper sources are used. The arbitration case, in particular, notes that [w]hat constitutes a reliable source varies with the topic of the article, but in the case of a scientific theory, there is a clear expectation that the sources for the theory itself are reputable textbooks or peer-reviewed journals. Scientific theories promulgated outside these media are not properly verifiable as scientific theories and should not be represented as such. If the origins of a disease/pandemic constitute a "scientific theory," then it really doesn't look like there is a need to further restrict it. If there's aspects to an origin that aren't encompasesed fully within the realms of scientific theory, but history (such as when a disease originated in classical Athens or how times the plague recurred), then it's clearly a history question. Would we really exclude history textbooks on those sorts of questions of origin? In any case, wouldn't there be a simple refutation to using news pieces to advance scientific theories that exist without requiring the use of WP:MEDRS? — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 03:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  It being mentioned directly here will avoid wikilawyering that it's not covered under MEDRS (even though SOURCETYPES/SCHOLARSHIP ultimately bring about the same result). Less wikilawyering = less time wasted. I agree that historical questions are not the same thing. That could be resolved by common sense, or a simple rewording which makes the precision that clearly historical matters should be treated as such (or, since people will always find ways to try to misrepresent something to their advantage [as evident even here, with some claiming this is history already!], a more strict temporal cut-off, say, 10-20 years [at least] or something). FWIW there are papers about the dreaded plague being published in peer-reviewed medical journal ( [7] [8], including also one which would meet the full MEDRS criteria: [9]) - mostly because that thing hasn't completely disappeared? Anyway, RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 03:27, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  RandomCanadian, Its useful that mention false balance and wikilawyering in the same breath, as you are seeking to tighten sourcing to exclude history (WL and FB), contrary to WHY MEDRS. Your WP:BLUDGEON on this subject is as bad as i have seen. Jtbobwaysf ( talk) 12:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Opppose history is not biomedical information. This goes against the spirit of WP:MEDRS per Wikipedia:Why MEDRS? -- {{u| Gtoffoletto}}   ^talk 00:25, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  How is this "history" when we have A) a still ongoing pandemic and B) still ongoing calls for further investigation (from the WHO report, from other scientists) and C) still ongoing spread of dis-/misinformation about the topic? RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 00:35, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  The origin of COVID is certainly not "history"; but the claim that a zoonotic origin is history also appears to certainly be untrue. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see such a claim. If anything, the zoonotic origin is being treated in articles with a full-on MEDRS-requirement, with multiple review articles to back it up. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 01:07, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation")[2] is the scientific study of the past.. The origin of the virus will need to be scientifically studied. It does not have current implications for human health and therefore does not require WP:MEDRS. We already have other policies that ensure we use WP:RS. Not applying MEDRS doesn't not mean we start including conspiracy theories into the articles and accepting any source (as some people in this discussion seem to believe). We have many other policies to prevent that. -- {{u| Gtoffoletto}}   ^talk 11:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I've been seeing variations of the claim that The origin of the virus [...] does not have current implications for human health for months now. It only grows less convincing each time. Actual scientific research [10] [11] [12] indicates that misinformation can have serious public-health consequences. The World Health Organization agrees [13]. How, exactly, are we serving the public if we shrug and say, "the past is the past"? XOR'easter ( talk) 19:09, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support The key line of MEDRS is " For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." (and not "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice." which is a leadup to that). Rationalizing this is about the COVID lab leak issue, I have seen enough "bad science" propagated by well-intentioned mainstream RSes on biomedical information that MEDRS should not be just about preventing bad advice but making sure any details related to human medicine is using the highest quality sources. To that end, clearly the origins (whether natural or synethetic) of a human-affecting virus absolutely fall into MEDRS. -- Masem ( t) 03:42, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose as this is a unique problem of Covid-19. The purpose of this RFC and, from what I can see, all the support votes, is to address the geo-politics of the unknown origin of Covid-19. None of the supporters have given examples of any other disease origin that is causing problems on wikipedia. Because there aren't any. This suggests therefore that the problem with covid-19 origins is the problem with covid-19 origins, and not a problem with disease origins at all. Previously, I wrote at ANI about this. I'll repeat it. In 1978 there was an outbreak of smallpox in the UK. In that case, the accepted version of events, after a public enquiry, was that the virus did leak out of the lab, through air ducts, and infected someone in the same building, who then died horribly. An alternative version, suggested by some, including Mark Pallen in the book The Last Days of Smallpox, is that this person visited the laboratory, possibly against the rules, and got infected while there. Scientifically, this and the lab leak hypothesis of covid are very similar. I don't see anyone edit warring about this on our smallpox articles. I note that Pallen's book is "independently published", an attribute I think would cause many people here fighting covid wars to snort their tea out of their noses. The book got glowing reviews in some infection-disease journals. In the smallpox case I think reasonable people come to different conclusions, can agree to disagree, and accept we may never know. Nobody, after all that time, is going to re-open the enquiry.

As Alexbrn notes above, the covid origin story is not just biomedical. It is mostly a political story and a current-affairs (news) story, partly a detective story and only in a small way something concerning science. Most of the story is not science. Was the lab working on this virus? Are people telling the truth. Is the Chinese government covering up things and reluctant to admit the truth. Or is this all nonsense story cooked up by US politicians. None of that is science, let alone biomedical science. -- Colin° ^Talk 08:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, and to add to that, it is really a bad idea to try and solve a running content dispute by altering the WP:PAGs. It would be a much better idea to review how/if the pandemic warrants such changes well after the heat has gone out of the topic (and I suspect the "lab leak" will by then only be the most minor of considerations in such a review; it may be a hot topic now in, mostly American, politics - but is really a nothingburger in the grand scheme of knowledge around COVID-19). Alexbrn ( talk) 09:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Every case in law comes out of controversy (and SCOTUS actually makes the law based on controversies), so I don't believe that Wikipedia's hivemind can't cope with it. We may delay the enforcement of RfC's decision, but then we have users who will be tempted to use current news articles on origins, so if we don't settle this dispute here, we will encounter it every time some people will interpret a story in the newspaper as corroborating the lab leak theory. It would be wonderful if we had hindsight now, but we aren't given the luxury. So let's resolve it now, and probably overturn the precedent in the next debate.

As for Colin's remarks that this mostly politics - I'd say the debate is happening on two planes: scientific and political, which run (mostly) parallel to each other. Scientists mostly work with the evidence they have and call for more (but don't engage in geopolitics in peer-reviewed articles because it just won't pass the publication stage without being criticised heavily, so it won't get cited on WP) - politicians want to seem more credible, try to appeal to voters and exert pressure on enemies in the areas they lobby others for. Using only MEDRS, in my opinion, eliminates that geopolitics factor you are afraid about, because it is anyway not recommended to cite letters/comments/quick responses in peer-reviewed journals, while scientists don't normally speculate on evidence they don't have if they want to be cited for further research and not for "10 worst papers of 202x".

As for smallpox epidemic: the thing is, you compare an outbreak during which 1 (one) person died and another person got ill (which did trigger a panic, but only because the disease was on the verge of eradication and WHO was afraid of uncontrolled spread) and a pandemic which took 3.5 million lives (officially) so far and triggered an economical and several political crises. That's a "slightly" different scale. Do we quarrel about the Spanish flu or the Black Death? No, because it's been a long time ago and the science is settled in the first case, while in the second one, it's a domain of historians and not really scientists. Is there much interest of the scientific community in the 1978 outbreak? No. If scientists stop caring about it, so do we. If there is a scientific debate or a large mass of articles published on the topic - then we discuss. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 11:15, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

If editors try to force non-MEDRS for biomedical claims, they are in breach not just of the WP:PAGs but of the general sanctions for COVID-19 and can expect a block or ban. For non-biomedical aspects of the origin (i.e. whether politician X made statement Y, or whether a lab has a good or bad safetyu record) newspapers, yes, may be an acceptable source. My concern is that we don't bugger up a perfectly functional area of Wikipedia policy, which has helped deliver some of the Project's most respected and successful content, to try and settle a troublesome local content dispute. MEDRS comes under frequent attack from advocates, marketeers, quacks and charlatans who are upset about how it curtails their problematic aims, and they accuse it of "over-reaching". It would be unwise to do something that would give actual legs to those arguments. Alexbrn ( talk) 11:36, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see... you're saying if we allow PAG changes in the heat of the moment here and now, we are opening ourselves up to such changes in the future, when it may not be in the benefit of the wiki. That is a fair argument, and the PAG already is quite good at this. Maybe we just need to call a RfC without a change to the policy, but a consensus on how it should be applied? Can we do that? Do RfCs really only apply to changes to the text as an editor said below? Because that's not my read of WP:RFC: a process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines or article content.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 12:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it helpful to make legal analogies (precedent, case law, etc). Our guidelines and policies are supposed to be generally applicable. If you want to update guidelines specifically on how to handle "disease and pandemic origins", then folk should start off with a bunch of different "disease and pandemic origins" and have a good think about them all. Instead, everyone is getting worked up about one case that is about as peculiar as it is possible to get. Nobody has given any evidence this is a general problem, so why should we have a general solution? What next? An RFC on how to write about the size of presidential inauguration crowds? -- Colin° ^Talk 14:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, per rationale provided above by Colin, Alexbrn, et al. Non-biomedical claims cannot fall under MEDRS guidelines. 86.140.161.136 ( talk) 11:57, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• Oppose – I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said. The origins of COVID simply do not constitute medical advice. The total dismissiveness of the lab leak theory by some of the editors here is really surprising to me. MEDRS-related objections come across more as a way to reinforce editors' preconceived beliefs than a genuine concern about policy. I have no doubt that Wikipedia will eventually portray the lab leak theory fairly, but that it is still labeled an "unfounded conspiracy theory" is really damaging Wikipedia's credibility in my eyes. — Will ^(B) 13:19, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think anybody here is dismissing the lab leak. It's just being treated fairly and accurately as a very FRINGE theory which is somewhere on the fence, being all of "possible, but extremely unlikely" (since it can't be disproven), "with no evidence to substantiate it" (per many scientists who have studied the topic), "a conspiracy theory and misinformation" (because of the people who promote it and who also claim there is a massive conspiracy to hide this, whether it be from governments or from scientists afraid to ruffle feathers [the classical conspiracy: the "establishment" is too afraid and so on so forth...]) AND "sufficiently notable that there are some places we need to mention it" (because of the large amount of coverage it is attracting in MEDPOP sources). We're basically faced with a Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat situation - I have personally encountered at least 8 of the 10 typical behaviours described there. When pressed for sources, we have A) an overwhelming academic literature, which basically says that the lab leak is unlikely (either by saying this directly, or, in more cases, since regular scientists don't deal with fringe ideas, simply by saying that zoonotic origin is "very likely") and inconsistent with existing prior examples (SARS, MERS, every other novel disease...) and B) reports in newsources which either put the lab leak in the context of politics or are entirely incompatible with the scientific sources (sometimes misquoting them, for example). Now we can harmonise these sources, and use the media for what it's reliable for (reporting on recent events and politics, ...) and the scientists for what they are reliable for (making assessments of complex topics based on their long experience with the subject). But not for the kind of blatant soapboxing from an armada of SPAs that this topic has created. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 13:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  To be clear, I do think it's more likely to be zoonotic. So do a large majority of experts and scientists. Certainly I think that the media tide is turning towards "lab leak!" a little too quickly. However, when many of these reputable scientists are agreeing that "lab leak is perhaps unlikely, but not extremely unlikely"—that's just not what I would call fringe, even if the peer-reviewed academic literature hasn't caught up yet. — Will ^(B) 14:28, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  @ Will-B: That's perfectly fine, but see Wikipedia's role as a reference work - we're supposed to follow the consensus of sources, not lead it. When (if) academic sources change their stance on this, we can update our articles. Until then, we need to stick with the existing high quality sources. After all, we are not news, and there's certainly WP:NORUSH here. Cheers, RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 19:06, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

  Agree that we should generally stick to predefined reliable sources regardless of whether we think it's "true". I guess we just disagree what constitutes "reliable" in this case. And I honestly do think there's a bit of a rush, since Wikipedia's stance is currently one of near-certainty—that this is a baseless conspiracy theory—whereas the rapidly shifting expert consensus is that there is a considerable amount of uncertainty (even if zoonotic origin is more likely). Erring on the side of uncertainty is the safer choice, in my view. Why wait for the academic literature when scientists are already going on record to say that the consensus is hazier than it initially seemed? (At the very least, I think it would make sense to redirect Lab leak to Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 instead of COVID-19 misinformation, but that's another discussion.) — Will ^(B) 20:32, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support Seems to be a more cautious approach especially in the current situation. It may potentially be sensible to clarify that it applies to "on-going" pandemics, because of the need for sensitivity. I think it is resonable to treat past pandemics in a different way. Dhawk790 ( talk) 14:01, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I'd have no objection in principle to qualified wording that makes clear that "history" needs to be treated carefully when an outbreak is ongoing, i.e., when the past isn't even past. XOR'easter ( talk) 14:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose MEDRS exists only to ensure quality medical advice. The origin of COVID-19, or any disease, has frankly nothing to do with that goal. Toa Nidhiki05 14:23, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
  • But ... it kind of does, though. One could argue that bad information about the origin of an ongoing pandemic might only be indirectly relevant to medical advice now, but "nothing to do with" it at all is not an empirically sustainable position. XOR'easter ( talk) 18:34, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
    • @ XOR'easter: How is this paper relevant to the issue at hand? Did you accidentally post the wrong link? jp× g 19:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As Toa noted directly above, there's a specific point that MEDRS exist for, which is the danger of giving bad or dangerous medical advice. That's not relevant here. Frankly this change seems to be primarily directed at preventing any updating to articles or acknowledging that in the last week or so ideas related to lab leaks are being treated much more seriously in the media and in general reliable sources than they were previously. Changing specific policies to deliberately raise the bar to discussion of that is counterproductive. Articles should reflect what reliable sources say, and we shouldn't be constructing new policies or guidelines simply to avoid including what the sources actually say. JoshuaZ ( talk) 15:23, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As many have stated before (and it appears we're at a substantial majority at this point), I worry that the argument/discussion is being intentionally redirected and complicated to fit a particular narrative via technicalities. As a healthcare professional myself, it is entirely evident that a minority are trying to push MEDRS requirements on areas where it is not required or where medical journals typically do not venture (being outside of their scope). Medical advice or say, discussions of furin cleavage site abnormalities WOULD be best left to those in the field (in my estimate)- otherwise the scope of investigations or exploring history, etc. does fall much more in the realm of geopolitics, diplomacy, communications, etc.....which would not require expertise from the scientific/medical community exclusively. I am glad to see the tide shift in this matter, I think we're finally beginning to make some progress here. Thank you to all for your contributions. CatDamon ( talk) 18:40, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose As other editors have stated, WP:MEDRS deals with medical advice - and the origin of a virus is not medical advice. Whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in a wet market or at the Wuhan Institute of Virology will probably not affect people's decisions regarding the virus. In addition, as CatDamon stated above, the origin of the virus is not just a medical topic - it also touches on subjects like history, diplomacy, and even politics. At this point, hardly any reliable sources are treating this as a baseless conspiracy theory. (Unless the WSJ, NBC, BBC, NPR, NYT, etc. are all conspiracist sources.) WP:MEDRS also states: "For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." At this point, the origin of the virus is not certain, but current knowledge (from newspapers as well as journals such as Science) increasingly lends credence to the lab leak theory. Lab leak and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis should redirect to Investigations into the origin of COVID-19. Crossover1370 ( talk | contribs) 01:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Others have made this point above, but the origin of a disease is not medical advice. It's that simple. -- Calidum 04:43, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose + partial Support. Differentiate definitive biomedical statements ("the virus originated from...") from non-biomedical, yet otherwise notable, information. An example of a non-biomedical, yet clearly notable, event relating to the pandemic origin: Biden assigning the question to the US intelligence community. This being "notable but not biomedical" is in line with "regulatory status", "history", etc. Now, a trickier question is: how about a Letter in Science titled Investigate the origins of COVID-19? According to WP:MEDSCI, this would be a significant-minority opinion (publication in Science surely elevates it above "tiny minority opinion", no?). So here's what WP:MEDSCI says: "Although significant-minority views are welcome in Wikipedia, such views must be presented in the context of their acceptance by experts in the field....make readers aware of controversies that are stated in reliable sources." In other words: cover it as a debate/controversy, not as biomedical information. SSSheridan ( talk) 21:19, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a very fair take. The evidence that exists should be presented as it is now following the biomedical rules and any new EFFORTS, CALLS, or QUESTIONS should be discussed in a controversy section. Dhawk790 ( talk) 11:00, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Any rule that narrows the range of reliable sources that we can use should be applied only as needed. I've had to explain MEDRS to several non-Wikipedians lately and they look at you like you just stepped off a UFO - we easily forget how much of a barrier to newbies it is to have to learn how MEDRS works. For medical treatments there is a long-understood need for MEDRS. For disease origins, I'm with TFD in not seeing a need. "Biomedical stuff is hard" is not reason enough -lots of things in science are hard. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 03:03, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose People mis understand WP:Medrs. We define WP:BIOMED here. The origin of the pandemic is history, not biomedical information. Its common sense. -- Almaty ^{✉ ✎} 16:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. ( Summoned by bot) The question seems to be targeted against content about COVID-19 without targeting COVID-19 specifically, but the proposed change would also apply to diseases and pandemics that are historical. While in some specific hypothetical scenarios material about the origins could be biomedical information, that does not apply to all scenarios. WP:BMI is a supplement to the MEDRS guideline. The purpose of the latter is to prevent adding content that could be construed as providing medical advice. This proposal is too broad. Politrukki ( talk) 18:06, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The issue of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis has been an item of political contention for quite some time. More or less the exact same argument has transpired in many places over the course of several months: here, at MfDs, at AfDs, at numerous talk pages, on the reliable sources noticeboard, the fringe theories noticeboard, and in about a half-dozen AN/I threads (if not more). And the argument is about who is right, or specifically, which politics guys are right: indeed, in this very discussion, a large number of comments explicitly mention Democrats or Republicans in their rationale. This guideline is supposed to be about biomedical information, that is to say, information that relates to medical conditions and treatments. Changes to it should be made on the basis of making the encyclopedia a better resource for those topics. This seems to have been largely forgotten here. The raison d'être of WP:MEDRS (to which this is a supplement) is to make a tradeoff between our ability to write an encyclopedia (as we prize for every other article) and the imminent risk of injury or death that results from people finding incomplete or misleading information about medical conditions, diseases, treatments, medications, et cetera. The precise city block in which some random person was infected by a virus almost two years ago is neither of those things. It is impossible for me to imagine a scenario in which somebody dies (or is injured) because they thought the virus came from a food market and it came from a laboratory, or vice versa. In fact, it is impossible for me to imagine a scenario in which somebody comes to harm from thinking that the virus was deliberately engineered by Kanye West, or stolen from Mount Olympus by the Rotary Club. Can you? To me, it seems like it is entirely a social/historical issue. WP:MEDRS is not a political cudgel, nor should it be made into one. Policies and guidelines are like structural beams and safety railings that support and protect the encyclopedia; disassembling them to knock around our political enemies falls somewhere between shortsighted and foolhardy. I've said basically the same thing in all of them, which I will say again here: there's no need to go this far in the name of pwning each other, and doing so seriously jeopardizes Wikipedia's ability to maintain a NPOV. jp× g 00:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  I fail to see this supposedly omnipresent "which politics guys are right". Most of the comments seem to be arguing about "using scientific sources" vs. "quoting politicians and the popular press", no matter which side of the spectrum politicians are on. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 15:27, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  To me, a comment like "I want to know what virologists and epidemiologists think, not what the Republican political machine and their billionaire financiers think" seems like it could, potentially, be made on political grounds. Perhaps I'm mistaken, and "the Republican political machine" doesn't refer to a political issue? jp× g 19:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  If anything, you will see that scrupulous editors are still giving short shrift to political statements about science, no matter the fact that the current US president is from the other party. See this for yet another take on the issue, maybe shorter and more easily comprehensible than the ones given here. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. I believe that a lot of editors unintentionally either miss or don't pay that much attention to the fact that there two aspects of law. Most of the editors opposing the application of WP:MEDRS restrictions to the origins of pathogens seem to concentrate very much on the letter of law ("origins of the virus are not medical advice", because a supplement to policy says that biomed info is only about giving health advice), however, there also exits the spirit of law. As WP:MEDPOP and WP:SOURCETYPES show, the general intent of those who were creating guidelines (much wiser people than me), was not to cite news reports from the general press when discussing scientific matters - instead, people stuck to the literal meaning of the words of something that even isn't proper policy, but only an explanatory supplement to the policy, which, as the disclaimer template says, has not been thoroughly vetted by the community (so it would be somewhere on the essay level). To apply legal terms, an act of Congress overrides an executive order of the President if they conflict each other. Also, if there exists an interpretation of an executive order that leads to a conclusion that goes counter to the spirit of law of acts of Congress and there exists an equally possible and plausible interpretation of an executive order which follows it, the latter should be adopted. If the latter doesn't, then simply there's a conflict, which again, should be resolved in favour of a more authoritative document (in our case, a policy or a guideline, in US's case, an act of Congress). Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 17:45, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  I am unaware of any policy or guideline which, in letter or spirit, implies that WP:RS doesn't apply to "scientific matters". jp× g 19:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  WP:RS/MC refers to a fragment of policy whose main article is WP:MEDRS, which means that while being part of general policy, it has rules that apply to specific situations that happen to have their separate policy page. Again, drawing from law concepts, special law ( WP:MEDRS) prevails over general law ( WP:RS), a common legal maxim in India for good reason. This is when it comes to biomedical information. So while technically it does apply in both, in practice it is superseded by MEDRS.

  As for scientific matters in general, there is as yet uncontested WP:SCIRS, which, while being an essay and not a guideline, is on equal footing with the contested WP:BMI regulation, and at least it very much copies or repeats the extant WP:MEDRS guideline in the intro to the essay.

  Compare: Wikipedia's science articles are not intended to provide formal instruction, but they are nonetheless an important and widely used resource.[1] Scientific information should be based on reliable published sources and should accurately reflect the current state of knowledge. Ideal sources for these articles include comprehensive reviews in independent, reliable published sources, such as reputable scientific journals, statements and reports from reputable expert bodies, widely recognized standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or standard handbooks and reference guides, and high-quality non-specialist publications. Although news reports are inappropriate as reliable sources for the technical aspects of scientific results or theories, they may be useful when discussing non-technical context or impact of science topics, particularly controversial ones. (SCIRS)

  Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. [...] Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. [...] Note that health-related content in the general news media should not normally be used to source biomedical content in Wikipedia articles. (News sources may be useful for non-biomedical content, such as information about "society and culture" – see WP:MEDPOP.) (MEDRS)

  Even if it is not a medical topic, it is very much a scientific one or at the very least related to science and of scientific interest. Therefore, the spirit of specific regulations is that we are strongly discouraged against citing popular press for topics requiring scientific knowledge, which I thought was obvious for a site like Wikipedia.

  PS. Also, see the WP:MEDFAQ, section "Why can't I use articles from the popular press?", that further explains authors' intent (even if you argue MEDRS does not apply). Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 20:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  Applying the same level of rigour to all scientific fields would be consistent. But then you need to open an RfC at WP:SCIRS to make it an official policy/guideline. Note that a lot of editors who supported the RfC argued the opposite position that medicine is special and should be treated specially. Alaexis _¿question? 15:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

  These are both good points, so I'll address each specifically.

  I am aware that WP:SCIRS is not ideal, but I only referred to that fragment, which did not cause significant controversy as read from discussions. More technical points, were strongly contested (or editors felt their explanation was not good enough) and that was the reason it failed promotion to a guideline, but the general spirit of the regulation (as I hope I have recounted more or less correctly) was largely sustained, which I believe is enough for the purposes of my argument. Unfortunately, that paragraph alone cannot constitute a guideline by itself, so we are with what we are.

  As for my colleagues' arguments who argue that medicine should be treated in priority, I speculate it has to do with four things: first, that MEDRS is a guideline while SCIRS is an essay (and obviously we refer more to guidelines and policies than essays); second, that indeed more is at jeopardy if we promote BS medical "advice" than misconstrue the meaning of some physical/chemical equation (that said, it doesn't mean that faulty science is not harmful); third, that there is way more BS medical "advice" than there is BS, say, chemistry advice (for the simple reason that there is not enough demand for the latter), fourth, that the discussion is about medicine, so people tend to stick to the medical aspect only. It is not to say that I don't agree with their arguments - I find a lot of them sensible enough and I placed my support !vote for a reason - it's that we miss the further perspective - even if we don't deal with medicine, we deal with science. So it might even be that we wouldn't need to write a disease's origins straight into this supplement but still conclude we need stricter selection of resources and heightened scrutiny. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 18:15, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose As far as i'm concerned, epidemiology is not a biomedical science which can be treated like any other: it is based on cooperation with authorities to provide data, without which a serious and concise epidemiological investigation can't be done. We need more oppenness to obtain truth, we need to report what reliable sources are saying and inform readers about what's happening and what happened without filters-- Francesco espo ( talk) 22:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC) — Francesco espo ( talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Comment It seems we've finally reached something resembling a consensus, I know it's not purely a numbers game but the significant majority of the responses and arguments seem to be in opposition to "unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information" (with the case being made that with that designation, MEDRS should be strongly preferred or required for citations). Can we make a firm, official decision for this? I'm growing increasingly concerned that this will backslide into another WP:SEALION situation- and I'm still seeing the "MEDRS required" argument being used to bludgeon users on other Talk pages. It would be good to get some closure on this particular issue so we can constructively move forward. @ JPxG: that was a beautiful argument, and I'm always amazed with what Kanye West and the Rotary Club are capable of. Thank you all. CatDamon ( talk) 22:18, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

  I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the RfC (simply because this doesn't formally require MEDRS doesn't mean we can just source it to John Doe with no scientific expertise writing in Random Newspaper - other policies still apply), and if I need to link to this post about the dubious SEALION claims ever again... RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:10, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Note to all claiming that "origins are not biomedical information and have no relevance to this", I beg to differ, strongly: "COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is associated with beliefs on the origin of the novel coronavirus in the UK and Turkey"; also here with a summary from the author. Of course, a single study, to be taken with a grain of salt, but claiming that simply because this doesn't pose an immediate threat to life, unlike some other biomedical information, is not reason to exclude it from very similar standards, at least for the time being. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 22:33, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
  • The study doesn't claim causality, and for good reason; there are ample third variable problem concerns with a study of that methodology owing to the lack of robust controls. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 03:40, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

    I agree with Mikehawk10 here.

    While the study's results have been replicated here, but here (p.8) the results show that people believing in man-made origin in general were more twice as willing to vaccinate themselves (but not if they believed the virus was released in order to force people to take vaccines). From a cursory analysis, it would mean that the correlation doesn't even hold for all countries, let alone a causal link. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 08:27, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

  @ RandomCanadian: There is still no relevance to WP:MEDRS. Whatever the way this knowledge (about the origin) is applied won't influence the human's health significantly. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:42, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as redundant. The origin of Covid-19 has nothing to do with human health or anything from WP:BMI. It's highly controversial topic that is mostly of the political origin rather than a medical one. We don't need more WP:PAGs that repeat what other policies like WP:SECONDARY say. -- AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per TFD, in that the origins of epidemics have little direct bearing on health treatment. feminist (+) 14:23, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support, mostly per Shibbolethink. If the lab leak was true, how would this be verified? By admission from lab employees? From private email chains? The CCP straight up confessing? No -- those might satisfy the question politically, but would not confirm the origin of the virus scientifically. If the US gained access to WIV records, who would be doing the analysis? Epidemiology and virology experts who could actually assess the information and fit it in to the known timeline and molecular clock models (etc.). Where would this be published? Most likely through a MEDRS-compliant statement issued by a scientific body. Same deal if the US acquired samples from WIV: the relevant scientists would conduct sequence analyses, do comparative genomics, reconstruct phylogenies, and so on, all of which would have to be reported in...MEDRS. The origin will not be settled until it makes sense biologically. Therefore, it is not appropriate to treat circumstantial evidence such as "proximity to the first major outbreak" or "WIV studied SARS viruses and also did GoF stuff!" as relevant to the question of the origin until it is addressed through the lens of peer-reviewed consensus. JoelleJay ( talk) 03:22, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi JoelleJay, the lab origins hypothesis can be broken.

Here are the relevant classes of evidence to make or break the lab origins hypothesis.

• Direct evidence
• Indirect evidence

Here are the two relevant classes of Direct evidence:

• Forensic data
• Phylogenetic data

Here is how we would class Indirect evidence:

• A confession of a first-hand witness.
• Some other form of testimony from a first-hand witness who is demonstrably not under any duress - friends and family included.

Since the Chinese government didn't take the opportunity in the Seventy-third WHA to confirm that it would cooperate with the WHO on Phase II of the WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2, as called for by the international community [14] [15] the WHO DG [16] and independent scientists [17], its improbable that we will ever get any direct evidence. China didn't provide any blood data for seroanalysis to the WHO team, which is not normal in a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, but you can make of it what you will [18]. They also haven't provided much data on RaTG13 and a related clade of viruses [19], claiming that they never had any live virus [20], and releasing only partial data [21], but you can make of that what you will too. Contrast this opacity with the live Spillcam we had during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and you'll understand why some people want to draw conclusions without any direct evidence. Some people think its China's best interest to be more open to prove natural origins, but that would reveal the extent of wildlife smuggling in China, and their shameful lack of enforcement, so perhaps that's why they'd much rather keep us all guessing. Either way, these ludicrous WP:CRYRACIST arguments [22] [23] won't work.

Of relevance, The US government claims to have a whistleblower, as reported in an article from The Times about a Zoom meeting between Matthew Pottinger and British MPs [24], and there is a more recent report in the Wall Street Journal citing a source describe the intelligence as being of "exquisite quality" and "very precise" [25], but we don't know much about it. The US government maintains the claim that the WIV was doing bioweapons research, which was perhaps for defensive purposes, but we can't know. Perhaps we will never know.

Since you and I have often disagreed, even on things as basic as the comprehension of an article [26], I don't think my explanation will persuade you to change your vote, but I do hope other editors here and the closer will factor it into their editorial and policy decisions. CutePeach ( talk) 05:40, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, I think the politicking is very much a factor in our perception of the "origin" and as such is much less trustworthy than peer-reviewed science. The Chinese government is an authoritarian regime responsible for some of the worst environmental and humanitarian crises of the last 30 years. I do not believe their narrative at all when it comes to topics even remotely tied to their nationalism. But as you say, there are numerous reasons why they would resist thorough investigation, and we cannot read into that. The US government has better transparency and accountability, but of course is also playing a political game where it is very much in their best interest to demonize China. Therefore, whispers on Twitter, newspaper articles, non-peer-reviewed magazine publications, opinion statements from biologists, and even intelligence reports can be reported (if DUE and RS), but any conclusions they make are entirely divorced from what is scientifically answerable. Like I said, an admission of guilt would likely settle things politically, but would not fill in the blanks of epidemiological and phylogenetic models. We can report on medical events that have been treated from a historical perspective (academic history books/papers, etc.) and we can report newsworthy medical topics (to the extent allowed by NOTNEWS), but neither of those is reliable for the origin story when it has not yet been determined scientifically. JoelleJay ( talk) 17:20, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - This proposal is a Trojan horse. What it will do is to prevent discussion of the lab leak hypothesis of the origin of covid, because, first, peer reviewing delays the publication of current thinking on the origin of the pandemic, and, second, further investigation is being actively suppressed by the Chinese government. We should be able to present up-to-date thinking on the origin of covid as it is being reported by journalistic reliable sources, not merely biomedical journals. Robert McClenon ( talk) 05:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per ProcSoc, ScottishFinnishRadish, Bonewah, Colin, and many others. The question of the origin of Covid-19 is one that can only be answered with mixture of biomedical, epidemiological (which is not exclusively biomedical), political and journalistic expertise because it is not a question exclusive to any one of those (or any other) discipline. Restricting our coverage to exclusively MEDRS would be to compel Wikipedia to tell only part of the story. Thryduulf ( talk) 13:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is definitely a case of "everything has been said but not everyone has said it", so I'll be brief. As argued persuasively above, the purpose of MEDRS is to ensure the safety of those "seeking medical information". There is no causal link between our information about virus's origins and the health of our readers, and so MEDRS doesn't apply. Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 18:38, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per my conversations and reflections on this issue half a year ago (see, for example, [27] and [28]). Little has changed since then that would make me believe otherwise. Normchou  ^💬 18:51, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose While there are many strong oppose votes, such as Eostrix, Robert McClenon and Almaty's, no one's articulated the single strongest reason to oppose this. So I won't be brief. Like my friend Novem Linguae Im usually keen to support our anti-fringe and pro-science editors. These editors are highly valued, typically right, and hopefully won't feel too bad that for once they've backed the wrong horse. I'd suggested they either ignore the box below, or sit down with a stiff drink before opening.

FeydHuxtable ( talk) 08:33, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

This seems to be just a WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS argument. Because you personally think the scientists are wrong or evil (lying with hidden agendas), then on this occasion we should ignore our normal sourcing standards and ignore the consensus of reliable sources (the herd, that your source fights against). Many "anti-fringe and pro-science editors" opposed this proposal, but for other reasons. -- Colin° ^Talk 09:06, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

It's not my view said scientists are evil Colin, though if linked to WP:RS is correct about death threats, it does suggest some of them could work on their self control. And it's pretty much a fact that there have been porky pies, not just my opinion. Unless one thinks the Fauci emails have been tampered with, of course. Anyway, the closer can discount my vote if they agree with your RGW argument. FWIW I agree with you this could benefit from an early No consensus close, as biomedical editors seem mostly to agree with that, and probably their view deserves weight on this somewhat specialised topic. FeydHuxtable ( talk) 09:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

• Hey, that is great news for every fringe POV pusher out there! You can now override every reliable source you disagree with. All you need to do is say this case is an exception, claim that the reliable sources have a COI and that there are "hundreds of reliable sources" confirming this, drop phrases like "undeniable", and you can use other sources further own on the reliability ladder. Fauci emails? Great, the same applies to the Climatic Research Unit email controversy - we can now ignore what climatologists say because some mails someone stole and leaked to journalists are stronger than scientific studies.

  Or we could, since there is no deadline, wait until the science self-correction mechanisms set in: as soon as scientific journals retract the articles saying that a lab leak is unlikely and start publishing articles which say the opposite, we change the Wikipedia articles accordingly. If that does not happen, we can either stay on the same side as the scientists or change the rules to fit our own opinion, Conservapedia style. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 09:09, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support: User:Masem got it right. MEDRS says "all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge". Yes, the same page says "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice" but nowhere does it say that the policy is limited to medical advice. MEDRS applies to all biomedical information. The origins of a virus clearly falls under MEDRS.

As a needed clarification, There are some who believe that Wikipedia has a policy against giving medical, legal, and professional advice, but no such policy or guideline exists.

Here is my medical advice: Don't do crystal meth. It will screw up your health. Don't bother asking a doctor if crystal meth is good for you. It isn't. ( medical disclaimer.)

Here is my legal advice: Don't do crystal meth. It is likely to get you arrested. Don't bother asking a lawyer if crystal meth is illegal. It is. ( legal disclaimer.)

Here is my professional advice: Don't do crystal meth. It will use up all of your money and is likely to get you fired. Don't bother asking a certified financial planner if becoming a meth addict is good for your finances. It isn't. ( general disclaimer.)

There. I just provided medical, legal, and professional advice, and while I did make a point, I did so without being disruptive.

Feel free to report my behavior at WP:ANI if you believe that I have violated any Wikipedia policy or guideline.

The actual rule is that context matters. If you are about to advise someone to drink bleach, that is medical advice that isn't allowed on Wikipedia. If you want to tell people not to drink bleach or to say that crystal meth is bad for your health, that is medical advice that is allowed on Wikipedia.

BTW, here is some more free advice: don't get your medical advice from an electronics engineer. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:50, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per FeydHuxtable. Happy to see this wasn't closed before that vote was recorded. There's abundant evidence that normally excellent MEDS sources aren't reliable on the COVID origin issue. Also, Chinese blocking the road to the bat cave isn't biomedical information. Scientists getting death threats after expressing counter-"consensus" opinions isn't biomedical information. Funding for gain-of-function research isn't biomedical information. Lacking sufficient biomedical information to conclusively determine the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 pandemic origin, we must rely on such non-biomedical information to describe the efforts to determine the origin, until more conclusive biomedical information emerges. wbm1058 ( talk) 03:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose updating WP:BMI to unambiguously define all aspects of disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical science, but I would Support a very minor update that clarifies the application of WP:MEDRS on topics which are part WP:BMI, such as the origins of COVID-19. As per Colin's archived exchange with Park3r [29] and his more recent explanation above [30] and numerous further explanations below, I think a better venue for this RFC would have been on SARS-CoV-2, with a better formulated statement, like the one I wrote below. CutePeach ( talk) 14:21, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. (1) The origins of a disease can in no way be construed to be medical advice, nor will if ever affect the health of anyone. (2) There are a wide, wide variety of issues other than virology that affect the likely origin of a disease. For example, did China censor, threaten, jail and disappear people? If so, why? Were there conflicts of interest among so called "experts". Didn't people have the disease who had no connection to the wet market? To make this just about one issue is a huge mistake. (3) MEDRS has only been applied to the position that lab leak is possible. It's already been totally ignored for the many conflict ridden, non-peer reviewed opinion pieces masquerading as "settled science." Consider Daszak's letter to the Lancet. Contrast this with the allegations that he bullied others to sign it, and attempted to hide his involvement in it. See https://thepostmillennial.com/dr-daszak-bullied-fellow-scientists-into-signing-letter-denouncing-coronavirus-lab-leak-theory among many others. Why is his non peer reviewed letter widely referenced as MEDRS when it has so many issues. 2601:5C4:4301:217C:50A8:1452:FBBC:C5C ( talk) 04:34, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose- As explained above by many who pointed out that WP:MEDRS helps to keep anything that can be taken as medical advice sourced to the highest standards. BristolTreeHouse ( talk) 09:52, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. High quality scholarly academic material should always be presented when relevant, and care should be made to differentiate the sources of information and not give any views undue weight, but non-medical issues from high quality, reliable, non-academic sources cannot be handwaved away. COVID-19 origins are no exception. Whether SARS-COV-2 emerged from zoonosis in a fish market or an infected lab member in Wuhan has no bearing on the health impacts of SARS-COV-2 on humans. --Animalparty! ( talk) 19:24, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

Discussion: RFC Part II and III

Talking as a biotechnology professional, I’d like to point out that epidemiology in specific and public health in the general does not draw only from biological sciences the way medicine does [31], so I'm not sure this page is the right venue for this RFC. It is clear from the votes above that the application of WP:MEDRS to COVID-19 origins in specific and disease outbreaks in the general require further clarification. I would suggest a part II and III, as follows.

II: Which aspects of COVID-19 etiology should fall under WP:MEDRS?

• Species of the reservoir and/or intermediary host of the etiological agent
• Evolutionary history of the virus
• Identity and provenance of virus’s most recent ancestor/s
• Place, time, and mechanism of the transmission of the first human infection/s
• Insert other etiological aspect
• All of the above

III: As per WP:MEDASSES and WP:BESTSOURCES, how should sources be assessed to put the claim in WP:WIKIVOICE of a scientific consensus on COVID-19 origins for any given spillover hypothesis?

• Only papers with supporting forensic or phylogenetic evidence are enough to make such a claim, as with most disease outbreaks.
• Any papers with expert opinions weighing the probabilities of different origin hypotheses are enough to make such a claim, and Source bias isn’t a thing.
• Any papers from the Vatican or the WHO, regardless of whether supporting evidence is provided or not, because they are exalted by the hand of God and unsullied by the petty politicking of men.

Please suggest any obvious and not-so-obvious amendments to the above text so that we can have a nice WP:RFCNEUTRAL statement. CutePeach ( talk) 15:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

• For a proper RfC request please suggest a specific change/improvement on WP:BMI page. This should be something general and do not mention COVID-19. My very best wishes ( talk) 16:36, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, I'd suggest adding behavioral evidence to your list. If someone hides evidence, is that fact evidence? Adoring nanny ( talk) 17:02, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

@ Adoring nanny: I tend to agree with Berchanhimez that historical information is a poor line of argumentation here. I also don’t think behavioral evidence is enough to put the claim of a scientific consensus for a given hypothesis in Wikivoice, though the behavioral issues with the Chinese government and the WIV staff are well documented and WP:DUE for inclusion in the Investigations page with WP:INTEXT attribution. I think this RFC was important, but we need a new RFC on the application of WP:MEDASSES to COVID-19 origins, to assure that only sources with supporting evidence are to be used to put claims of a consensus in Wikivoice, and that lacking any such sources, no claims of a consensus be made. CutePeach ( talk) 14:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

• • Any RfC about how COVID-19 should be treated should be at a topic-specific page (maybe the COVID-19 WikiProject). General WP:PAGs should not be altered for one particular circumstance. Alexbrn ( talk) 08:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion: History

• Related what do we think of the recent edit [32] by User:Alexbrn that narrows the definition of "historical"? See the discussion on "Historical content" above. Adoring nanny ( talk) 02:15, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I just reverted that, because the definition of historical seems to be contested in the current RfC, and that editor seems to have particularly strong views about it. Geogene ( talk) 04:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  Very few people are trying to argue that this is "historical" information. The primary argument against is that historical or not, MEDRS doesn't apply because of other reasons. Key word being historical or not - as such it can be non-historical information. There is no problem with Alexbrn's edit because it codifies what some people here seem to struggle to comprehend - something that is in the past is not necessarily historical information - especially if recent or still under active investigation. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 04:41, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, this had nothing do to with the current "lab leak" fuss, but was prompted by other problems we've had in the past (IIRC, somebody arguing that a newspaper source for COVID being rampant in California in 2019 was okay because it was "historical"). And recently an editor has thought an 1879 cocaine experiment was not historical. This was merely an exercise to nip that kind of misunderstanding in the bud, but of course the lab leak insanity means certain editors see it through that lens and suspect some dark conspiracy. Hey ho! I suggest when the circus has moved on this will need revisiting by the medical editors left sweeping up. Alexbrn ( talk)

  Alexbrn, you have mentioned this California thing twice. If you are thinking of our discussion from, I think, late last year, I will clarify that neither the editor who originally added the information (to the best of my recall as I no longer remember the specific article) nor myself said anything about "rampant" or even proven. Rather the content involved a study released around December of last year that found evidence that Red Cross blood samples collected in the Dec 2019-Jan 2020 time period contained antibodies identified as SARS-CoV-2 reactive. This peer reviewed study was widely covered in RS press (NPR, WSJ etc). Here it is on the Red Cross website[ [33]]. My concern at the time was similar to what others have discussed here, it felt like a few editors were using MEDRS to block any mention of what they felt was "fringe". Since it had been decided that COVID couldn't have been in the US at the time any study that showed evidence to the contrary could not be in Wikipedia. The actual study is here[ [34]]. The findings of this study would have to be treated carefully and could not be presented in a way that would suggest they were conclusive. However, that doesn't mean they should be kept or only allowed in as an example of FRINGE research. However, if you were thinking of something else my apologies for the confusion. Springee ( talk) 17:02, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• @ Springee: I'd suggest this is a good example where assessment as BMI/MEDRS would differ from the more general WP:PAG of WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:RS. It's not really about WP:FRINGE, it's about WP:MEDPRI. For a biomedical claim, wikipedia would be unlikely to repeat the claims of the single primary study. Or, at a minimum, would be highly aware of contextualizing that lack of replication. This is a significantly different threshold from mere notability of significant news coverage of a non-BMI study. In other words, if it's not BMI we can mention it cautiously, if it is BMI we should not include it in the article at all. Bakkster Man ( talk) 17:14, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

• historicity depends on the nature of the information. For information about medical conditions in the past ewquires historical as well as biomedical knowledge, and much of it invovles matters about which there is no consensus, though many contradictory views. As the contradictory views can appear in even the best sources, the profession that is qualified to deal with them is not medicine but history,, where it is a routine matter to deal with incompatible sources and opinions.. There is a relevant specialty, medical history, but not all matter that arise here will have been dealt with by modern medical history sources.. Equal nonsense can result from reliance on olde rmedical sources, of current medical sources written by those unskiled in history, or historians unprepared to deal properly with the medicine. DGG ( talk ) 15:52, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

  You see this with a lot of aspects of "big picture" public health. Healthcare policy or public health administration are their own specialties, distinct from their non-healthcare cousins. Even where a specific issue might not be clinical in nature, you still need someone who specializes in the healthcare version of that given specialty. Hyperion35 ( talk) 16:47, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Going back to user CutePeach approach of listing examples of information that is clearly not biomedical, this is a good starting point:

These next five examples are indisputable non-BMI:

From staunch-opposition editors:

1. the lab has a poor record for biosecurity
2. A claim that a researcher accidently dropped a flask
3. whether politician X made statement Y

From WP:BMI#What_is_not_biomedical_information?

1. Which company invented a medicine
2. How much money this disease cost society last year

From my own ideas:

1. Which organization or laboratory is investigating the virus' origin
2. What laws regulate related biosafety protocols of labs Forich ( talk) 05:38, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

What is MEDRS for?

I'm seeing disagreement on this question. There are many comments above along the lines of the reason for WP:MEDRS is to make sure that people won't get bad health information from Wikipedia. However, there are some that say the opposite:

• And it needs to be understood that MEDRS is not in place out of concern for readers' health, because Wikipedia is not intended for medical advice. MEDRS exists because biomedical topics are incredibly difficult and complex, and it is well documented that popular press, even normally reliable sources like the Washington Post or NY Times, frequently get things wrong. -- Hyperion35
• If it takes biomedical research to answer, it's a biomedical question. Really, the argument that MEDRS is only here to prevent bad medical advice is rather specious. Yes, that's the stated rationale at the beginning of the page, which makes sense because it's the obvious reason to have a stringent guideline, but that's not where the story ends. The fundamental issue is that misinformation about health and medicine is dangerous, and it's our responsibility to take precautions. -- XOR'easter
• The origins of a human disease seems like clear biomedical information to me. I also prefer a broad rather than narrow interpretation of WP:MEDRS, to help keep misinformation out of the encyclopedia. Novem Linguae

A couple more "it's about medical advice" comments:

• I think we need to go back to the rationale behind MEDRS - that some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health. -- ProcSock
• The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to prevent false and misleading medical advice from being introduced in the project. It's not a means to its own end, or a "privilege" granted to medical articles and medical publications. It adresses a specific problem, i.e. that readers use Wikipedia as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis and prescription. -- JBchrch

So, which is it? Both make compelling claims, but I'm none the wiser on what MEDRS is for, so I figured it would be helpful to stage that discussion here. Otherwise, Support and Oppose are operating off of different premises.

As it stands, the lede of WP:MEDRS does seem to support the "medical advice" version: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. (Emphasis mine.) If there are broader reasons (previously agreed upon), then the wording in the lede should be updated to reflect that; if there should be broader reasons but that has not yet been agreed upon, then that may merit its own discussion over there. (I've put a link at Wikipedia_talk:MEDRS to this discussion; although this is a question about MEDRS, the immediate application is to the ongoing survey on this page.) SSSheridan ( talk) 01:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I also have a bit of a subtler question on this point. I have argued above that there's an ontological difference between a minority viewpoint vs. the existence of a minority viewpoint. I don't know if there's a Wikipedia term or policy for this. As an example, the September 11 article mentions the conspiracy theories, not in the "Attacks" section, but in the "Cultural influence" section -- because they are indeed culturally significant. I have argued that "where did the virus come from?" may be biomedical, but "who's talking about lab leak?" is not. Whether or not the latter is notable is another question; the point is just that it falls outside the MEDRS bubble. Or so I've argued. Is there a policy (in MEDRS or otherwise) that the "no medical advice" doctrine also extends to suppressing mention of dissenting views/conspiracy theories in health-related articles? That is, is there a policy that the Vaccine article should try harder to avoid mention of dissenting views than, say, the Climate change article? Some of the arguments against mention of lab leak have given me that impression, and I don't know if there's policy on it.

tl;dr: are there broader "MEDRS-like protections" on health-related articles? Or is the non-biomedical information within a biomedical article subject only to the standard notability/due-weight/etc. guidelines? SSSheridan ( talk) 01:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is arguing against the inclusion of "calls for investigation" in articles. The only issue is WP:UNDUE and WP:WEIGHT, i.e. how much to describe them without spending too much details on it. This is of course a difficult thing when the calls for investigation seem to be ostensibly mainly focusing on what is demmed by scientific sources to be very unlikely, but is widely reported in the popular press nonetheless. As I've said, there are actual real-life impacts stemming from virus origin misinformation; and there are comments from others showing that belief in misinformation and conspiracy theories ("the scientific establishment wants to hide this from you" or the like, which is a frequent line of lab leak proponents on Twitter [hypothetical continued pseudo-reasoning: "why would you trust scientists for X if they're trying to hide Y from you"...]; at least from my limited experience in that domain) of all kinds has been shown to diminish confidence in experts in places where it actually matters in a biomedical perspective. This is a hard spot, but I think that maybe keeping the two branches on separate approaches (accurately dealing with the lab leak hypothesis proper as a FRINGE viewpoint in the scientific realm; while describing the political aspect and the calls for investigation a bit more broadly [while not losing the apparent disconnect between the political/popular and the scientific discourses]), as coherent with levels of coverage they receive in the specific sources which have relevant expertise in the respective areas, seems the appropriate solution. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 02:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@ SSSheridan: It's a common misconception that the scope of MEDRS is articles. It's not, it's certain kinds of content in any article (the situation is analogous to WP:BLP). To quote: "Biomedical information requires MEDRS sourcing that complies with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not." Alexbrn ( talk) 06:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

My reading of WP:MEDRS is that it defines its own purpose when it says that Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. ^[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. It seems to be giving a rationale that the policy is put in place because Wikipedia isn't meant to provide medical advice, that people use it for medical advice/health information anyway, and that we have an extra responsibility to be accurate on topics of health because, whether we like it or not, people use Wikipedia for health advice. I think the scope of the particular policy doesn't go beyond that; WP:SOURCETYPES describes the most reliable sorts of sources in other contexts. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 04:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not give medical advice, so the prevention of implying faulty advice is one important aspect of MEDRS. But so are many others, which is why the scope is WP:Biomedical information. To quote: "Biomedical information requires MEDRS sourcing that complies with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not." That is guideline text. We need to ensure Wikipedia carries accurate and well-sourced content on a wide variety of "health" topics (for which dodgy sourcing can exist), including: anatomy and physiology, cell biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics and molecular biology, immunology, and bioinformatics. The WP:SCIRS essay suggests a similar approach to all scientific content, and may be of interest ... Alexbrn ( talk) 04:58, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Stopping with the aspect of "faulty advice" feels like trying to do Constitutional law using only the Preamble. XOR'easter ( talk) 15:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for opening this debate. I just have one question for the colleagues who support the idea that MEDRS has a broader purpose than preventing bad medical advice. Do you support the extension of MEDRS standards to all science-related articles? Because to be frank, that's the only version of this argument that makes sense to me. If you think that ordinary WP:RSes are unable to cover scientific research accurately and that only MEDRS sources are accurate with respect to scientific matters, then surely you think this is applicable to all science, not only medicine? This is not a "gotcha" question. I am genuinely trying to understand why proponents of the Broader Purpose MEDRS school of thought would consider WP:RS to be insufficient only in the field on medical research. JBchrch talk 14:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Is anybody proposing that MEDRS be extended to all science topics (that is an incredibly broad field)? In practice WP:SCIRS is often invoked but this is probably a question extended to "all" other scientists from chemists to physicists to astronomers to geologists to computer scientists to (etc etc etc). It's a common misunderstanding that MEDRS is some kind of completely distinct sourcing standard from RS. All serious topics and especially exceptional claims require appropriate high-quality sourcing, and MEDRS is a codification of that in one field. Alexbrn ( talk) 14:41, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I genuinely don't see how "the extension of MEDRS standards to all science-related articles" might follow from the premise that MEDRS applies even when medical advice isn't explicitly being spelled out. As Alexbrn says above, MEDRS is a codification of what it means to be RS in the field of MED. XOR'easter ( talk) 15:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• It tells: Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge.... This is all great, except I would replace one word: biomedical -> medical. Accordingly, this page should be titled not "Wikipedia:Biomedical information", but Wikipedia:Medical information. If the intention was covering health information, then it should cover only medical subjects. Sure, all biology is important for medicine (just as technology, chemistry, psychology, etc.), but they should not be covered by WP:MEDRS. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:24, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Once again, I am concerned that there is a concerted effort by a few users to intentionally "not get" the arguments being made here (and fairly overwhelming so) in favor of separating the topics that do, in fact, require MEDRS (i.e. technical topics like viral genome, etc.) and those that do not (such as tracking communication, observing actions and statements by state actors, etc.). Saying that the lab leak hypothesis is FRINGE at this point is, in itself, a FRINGE position to hold. Both natural origin and lab leak remain viable hypotheses, and its shameful that we haven't acknowledged the consensus yet- and put the best available information out there. I've also been meaning to comment on WP:NOLABLEAK, as I've seen that being used as a crutch far too many times. To say that the fringe medical journals (with the exception of the outdated "Immunity" article from May 2020) listed are credible (while also claiming that the WSJ, WaPo, FT, Robert Redfield, etc. are not) is preposterous. Look at their impact factor, including something like "The Postgraduate Medical Journal" (IF 1.11) as a high quality, credible source to lean on is just....not how this medical journal world works. It's cherry-picking and you can find whatever you want in the world of low-prestige journals. I really am trying to take these arguments seriously but a few users seem to keep stalling and stonewalling, and its frustrating. Can we please wrap this up? I think we've reached sufficient consensus to take the lab leak hypothesis out of misinformation. Thank you all. CatDamon ( talk) 22:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC) — CatDamon ( talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. NightHeron ( talk) 22:45, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

  Hi CatDamon, I think you may be misunderstanding the lab leak theory landscape. This smells like a "no true scotsman" situation, because there are many multiple scenarios proposed by "lableakers." Including: Intentional leaks, accidental leaks by mad scientists who were "playing god" and also accidental leaks by people who were sampling viruses in the wild, acting as a vector like you might imagine a veterinarian or wet market salesman. I personally would characterize all of these but the last one as "misinformation," because they are all over based on unproven assumptions and conspiracy theories. Even the last one is based on the idea that the lab is covering it up. None of these theories are based on any proof. No new evidence of anything higher quality than "infowars" has appeared since last May. Seriously I would love to see such evidence if it exists. That's why we call it "misinformation." Because it's being amplified by groups using it for politics. Are there legitimate scientists calling for more investigations? Yes, and that's why we cover those in the correct articles. Where else would you have us cover it? And do you have WP:RS in the appropriate level of verifiability to back it up? And if you think I'm straw manning about the misinformation lab theories, check out this post I made on Reddit last year, ^[2] and all the people who came out of the woodwork to tell me I didn't understand basic viral biochemistry even though I have a PhD in the topic.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 00:29, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment, with a deep sigh MEDRS is a reliable source guideline, specifying how certain sources should be prioritized and used. That is all that it is. The actual MEDRS page says that it is to be used for biomedical topics, and those topics are expanded and explained on the BIOMED page. So MEDRS is about sources, BIOMED is about when MEDRS source rules are required. Quoting one sentence from the MEDRS page about health advice is utterly ridiculous, irrelevant, and bordering on bad faith, especially when used as a means of bypassing and ignoring what BIOMED says. The bludeoning here is when people keep quoting one sentence from MEDRS, again and again, instead of actually reading and understanding BIOMED and what it says about when we should be using MEDRS. This is not difficult, it is not complicated, and I am getting sick and tired of this pointless wikilawyering bullshit. Hyperion35 ( talk) 22:48, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
  • It's hard to remember the last time I saw so much focus on a single part of a single sentence. And I think I'm pretty accustomed to the usual level of rules-lawyering (I mean, I hang out at AfD). When the question is, "Should we change the phrasing of this thing?" and the responses are "we must adhere to the exact phrasing of this other thing", it seems like something important has been missed. There are plenty of medical topics that are so technical and obscure it is implausible that anyone would try to get amateur advice out of them, but MEDRS still applies to them. XOR'easter ( talk) 23:42, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
    • When the question is, "Should we change the phrasing of this thing?" and the responses are "we must adhere to the exact phrasing of this other thing" Well, the "thing" is an essay that interprets that "other thing" (a policy) so I'm not sure why this would confuse you. Geogene ( talk) 00:08, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
      • WP:MEDRS is not a WP:POLICY, and this is not an WP:ESSAY; rather they're a WP:GUIDELINE and WP:SUPPLEMENTAL respectively. Alexbrn ( talk) 04:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
        • Oh. Okay. I'll be sure to remember that, since it is of undeniable relevance to the point at hand. Geogene ( talk) 04:36, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
          • It is, since you were handing out a sarcastic edit summary about editors being confused about the details. Getting the details right is quite important when considering the text of the WP:PAGs. Alexbrn ( talk) 04:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
            • Did you notice that PAGs stands collectively for Policies and Guidelines? It's not always important distinction, as you know. You're just continuing an argument that you know serves no purpose. Geogene ( talk) 04:47, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
      • Perhaps I can clarify my comment. It seems to me that getting hung up on the exact phrasing of a guideline is a poor place to start an argument from when the question at hand is whether phrasing in that guideline or a supplement thereto should be modified. (All the more so when the phrasing on which the argument depends is reasonably taken to be a rhetorical preamble, or leadup to the important part as Masem said above.) When the foundation of an argument is exactly the kind of material that is currently up for debate, the whole exercise seems shaky. Not invalid, necessarily, but questionable. Usually, even when I disagree with the final result of a discussion, I can still say that the process was good — the evidence considered was all pertinent, etc. I'm less comfortable saying that now. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
        • What is the difference between "getting hung up on the exact phrasing" and "interpreting"? I'm not aware of any way to interpret a document that doesn't involve reading what it says. jp× g 19:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

  @ Hyperion35: The bludgeoning definition is clearly given by WP:BLUDGEONING essay. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 10:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

MEDRS says itself, here, that its purpose is not to cover everything associated with something medical. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 12:53, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

• Comment some editors here who voted to Oppose did so on the basis that MEDRS should apply mainly to matters of medical advice or history, but these reasons aren’t especially strong, in contrast to the reason I gave. The main reason I gave is that epidemiology is a very broad field, including elements of mathematics, statistics, demography, and biology, as well as medicine and history, and not all of these disciplines are biomedical sciences. The problem here - which is unique to COVID-19 origins - is that there is no raw serological data from the earliest patients, or verifiable phylogenetic data about the virus itself, and without those datas, one can’t do epidemiology. As we all know by now, some of the world’s top virologists and epidemiologists have written a letter in Science saying that the scientific community must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data [35]. This letter was directed at the scientific community and investigators to assure they stick to the scientific method and publish the data for their assessments, to ensure reproducibility (please click these links if they are blue for you). This letter better represents scientific consensus, as the WHO mainly works on the consensus of its member states, and its report has been influenced by politics [36] [37]. The WHO mission chief even admitted that their study was not an investigation, so their report does not settle the matter [38] [39]. There are other public health controversies where politics is a major factor in the paucity of data, such as the Dengvaxia controversy and the Ringworm affair, and applying WP:MEDRS and WP:BMI to those in the way it has been applied to COVID-19 origins would mean we wouldn’t even be able to have entries on those notable events. CutePeach ( talk) 14:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Suggest closure

I think this discussion should be closed (no consensus). While created in good faith, the proposal ("to unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information") is too broad and the intention ("to settle it decisively") misunderstands why this topic is a source of conflict on Wikipedia (clue: it isn't that our sourcing guidelines and policies are unclear). There's something dysfunctional about Covid19 editing where users spend more time arguing with each other and creating RFCs than they do writing an encyclopaedia.

Some interesting articles in The Guardian about this here and here. A culture war between those who generally trust authority, mainstream media and scientists and those who don't has spilled over to Wikipedia. It can't be solved by, for example, shouting at those who don't trust those things that they must use those very things they don't trust as sources. Without a lab-leak hypothesis, the origin of Covid would be of interest mainly to scientists and public health workers. But there's a lesson from history. Consider the origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic is widely and incorrectly believed to be Spain, despite no expert ever claiming that was the case. It has proven impossible to displace a solid misconception with "we don't really know". If the lab-leak hypothesis is correct, it makes authorities, mainstream media and a lot of scientists look really really stupid, gullible and dangerous, never to be trusted. It also has geo-political consequences. While a lab-leak could be proven (e.g. if the genetic code had shown evidence of engineering, or if some documents are leaked, or someone confesses) it probably cannot be disproven. And a natural source cannot be proven, just made increasingly likely vs the alternatives. I don't think this one is going to be resolved any quicker than we've managed to remove "Spanish" from "Spanish flu".

I appreciate the conflict on this peculiar issue has festered for months, but content guidelines solve content problems. This isn't a content problem. It is a people problem. And a hard one. -- Colin° ^Talk 13:08, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Colin than a close would be beneficial. Getting consensus to implement the original proposal at this point looks (to borrow a phrase) extremely unlikely, so this discussion is just becoming one of the many tar-pits on the "lab leak" topic already sucking up editor's time unproductively. Alexbrn ( talk) 13:14, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think a "no consensus" close is correct here. By just a quick numbers count there are ~40 oppose to ~15 support. Even if we assume some are meat/socks etc we are almost certainly over 2:1 opposing on various legitimate (and less than legitimate) grounds. I think closing this as "no consensus" tends to sweep many concerns away and ignores the large number of editors who voiced their opposition. Springee ( talk) 13:34, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Consensus is not the same thing as a vote count. However, I don't much mind whether an admin says "no consensus for the proposal" or "the proposal was rejected". -- Colin° ^Talk 14:37, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

You are correct, consensus isn't a vote but it should be given consideration given how many editors have voiced opinions on the subject. Springee ( talk) 14:54, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that there is no consensus to implement the given proposal. Many !votes (including some opposes) seem to agree that some elements of this are biomedical, while other aspects aren't (a position I share myself, as I've clearly delineated at a couple of different places). Others agree in principle that using the best sources is the preferred option, but that the question is too broad, or simply oppose on the basis that this would fall outside their perception of the intent of MEDRS and BMI guidelines. There's been lots of clarification from the RfC, I think, despite this apparent "no consensus", IMHO. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 19:16, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@ RandomCanadian: I think that "no consensus to implement the given proposal" isn't enough; there appears to be at least a rough consensus against the original proposal. The two are different and inform future edits differently. Consensus is not a vote count, granted, though there looks to be significant community support behind the policy/guideline-based arguments in opposition to it. Then again, this sort of disagreement is why we have outside closers. I'd prefer a three-admin close on this, given that this has been a widely-seen RfC and that this has been a contentious issue for a good period of time. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 05:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't get too hung up on the difference between "no consensus for the proposal" and "was opposed" or even "there was a consensus against the proposal". The problem with this kind of RFC is that the proposer gets to phrase and shape the terms of the argument, rather than there being a discussion about what people want and how best to get there. People here disagree both on what they want and how to get there. We can tell that people don't want one particular thing, but not a lot about what they do want. Quite a lot of the oppose votes are from people who generally go with the science and who helped write MEDRS. What I have learned is that there a lot of people with strange ideas of what MEDRS was created for, or is for, or is about.

Goodness me, this doesn't require three-admin close -- enough time has been wasted already. The most important thing I think is that rather than continue to agonise over what guideline or policy does or should say in order to sort out this particular Covid19 dispute, is to figure out why editors are wasting so much time trying to "write by RFC". We aren't arguing well, and polling is a crap way of finding consensus or of discovering the best approach to a hard problem. -- Colin° ^Talk 10:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Colin: The consensus here is clear opposition to changes. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 20:07, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with closure by any single editor who is uninvolved enough to assess this reasonably. I think the most likely outcome is not "consensus against" but "no consensus for" - which are different. It's clear that COVID itself has clouded this discussion because some editors refused to consider the general case - and that needs to be taken into account in the close. Whoever closes this should carefully read all !votes and realize that at least half, if not more, of the !votes in opposition are actually supportive of this, but don't think it's worded completely appropriately. A closure with consensus for something other than the original proposal (i.e. taking into consideration some of the "not-opposes" that are really supports and improving it) would also be appropriate. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez ( User/ say hi!) 20:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't know where you get the idea that "at least half, if not more, of the !votes in opposition are actually supportive of this". This isn't a case of imperfect wording or something that could be improved upon. It is more a case of having the brilliant idea to cut one's toenails with a scythe. -- Colin° ^Talk 21:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

"No consensus" seems like bit of an understatement for an RfC opposed by over 70% of 59 respondents, including the person who wrote MEDRS. jp× g 02:42, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Aquillion started the RFC. Editors who start RFCs are entitled to remove the RFC tags whenever whenever they feel that their question has been answered.

I don't think that you need a formal closing statement. If any of you are genuinely uncertain what the result was, then you can ping me if you'd like, and I'll write a summary for you. It might be faster to have me write it than to wait on the Wikipedia:Closure requests list. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:02, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing you are WP:INVOLVED. Please leave closure for an uninvolved admin, or two. Agree with Mikehawk10 that three would be best. CutePeach ( talk) 15:43, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@ CutePeach, I'm not an admin, and I didn't participate in this RFC, so you probably need to find a different page to invoke. RFCs are not normally closed by admins, because admins have no special rights in content disputes. The page I'd suggest that you invoke is the bit at Wikipedia:Requests for comment that says Written closing statements are not required. Editors are expected to be able to evaluate and agree upon the results of most RfCs without outside assistance. As I said, if you are genuinely uncertain what the result was, then please let me know. If you are confident that you know what the result was, then don't worry about the formalities.

Also, let me be the first to wish your current account a happy three-month "wikiversary", a few days early. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:56, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@ WhatamIdoing: as per WP:CLOSE and WP:ACD you are still an involved editor as you have a POV on the topic of this RFC, and it's not in line with the majority of votes here.

You recently claimed that there is significant evidence that the virus didn't leak from a lab [40], and when I pressed you to produce said evidence [41], you refused to answer and instead tried to shut me out the debate [42]. I can't presume to know which evidence you were referring to, but I guess it was the Lancet letter [43], or the Andersen et al letter [44], but neither of those letters provided any evidence for their claims and authors of both have since changed their positions [45] [46] [47]. Perhaps you were referring to the report from the study that the WHO convened with China, but that document also didn’t provide any evidence or raw data, which is not the norm in such circumstances [48].

As you noted, I’m a relatively new user here, so I could be wrong about this. Perhaps you can close this RFC even as the INVOLVED editor you are, with the WP:SUPERVOTE you proposed above, but I would caution you that doing so may bring our project into further disrepute [49]. CutePeach ( talk) 14:13, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Having a POV on a subject is not necessarily the same thing as being involved in a separate dispute.

@ CutePeach, what SUPERVOTE did I supposedly propose above? I'll give you a hint: the only edits I've made to this RFC discussion are to offer to write a closing summary, just in case anyone genuinely can't figure out that this (specific) proposal was rejected. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 14:49, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Colin. This RfC isn't about what this page or MEDRS says or should say: it's about how we cover the lab leak hypothesis. Let's move on from this RfC. Editors who feel the lab leak hypothesis is not appropriately covered should suggest edits on appropriate Talk pages. Once the pandemic is over, we can look back over how all our policies faired. Bondegezou ( talk) 07:04, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Conclusions :Reflections, open questions and MEDRS conform options.

I could not participate in the discussion because Topic Ban. After reading the comments, I see an classification problem.

Problem: There is no strict differentiation of medical (bioinformation) and non-medical information (no-bioinformation) (according to MEDRS) in COVID-19 related articles

First we have to differentiate between SARS-CoV 2 and COVID-19. The virus SARS-CoV 2 is the CAUSE for the disease COVID-19, so the CAUSE SARS-CoV 2 falls under biomedical information, but most of the research on SARS-oOV 2 is done by scientists. The massive error in all our discussions is that CAUSE is studied by many sciences. Just one example out of a hundred possible. Electricity can be deadly, for example, a lightning strike (CAUSE)-the weather itself, the physics of the atmosphere -the question of origin- is not a field of medicine. A virus can be deadly, but the science that studies the context of the virus - goes far beyond biomedical information. The transmission from animal (zoonotic diseases) or test tube to human (accident) - yes. But the "animal" or "the test tube" (or how to trade them safely) - certainly not. For Biosecurity see here my example.

Should the virus be of natural origin - this is a question for example of animal virology and other sciences, should the the virus artificial of biotechnology or physics and so on. As soon as it is about the ORIGIN of the VIRUS, it is no more a biomedical information. ORIGIN of COVID-19 - yes ! The whole laboratory hypothesis / possibility (concerning ORIGIN of the VIRUS) has only limited to do with biomedical information, there it is about biosafety and biosecurity. Whether investigations take place is a political decision - which has nothing to do with biomedical information. That have to differentiate surely still further, that are only first examples

The wrong practice here of the last months was, that neary all non-medical content was declared to biomedical content (biomedicial information), as well as the whole pandemic should fall under biomedical information. This is definitely a kind of wrong scientific classification which leds to wrong source selection/politics, even to censorship of the WP:NOLABLEAK Group (which know the truth, without evidence already !).There is currently no reliable evidence for any hypothesis, the question is open and we have to present it here openly and not closed - that is science and also medicine. Everything else is ideology also WP:NOLABLEAK especially to explain one of the hypothesis to a conspiracy theory (=ideology). That should has no place here. Of course, also to present the laboratory thesis as an evidenced truth (=ideology). This is the neutral point of view among all current information about it - now. Certainly, there is a lot of missinformation in the media, but we have to differentiate scientifically and to find a balanced neutral point of view.2021 there is a lot of reliable information here also very good inquiries from investigative journalists for example: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins from Katherine Eban.There is a lot of new and documented information about the background of the U.S. position (administration), which is not known.

One problem solution: Correct application of "including non-medical information (no-bioinformation) in medicine-articles" (MEDRS-Rule)

Crucially, both SARS-COV 2 and COVID-19 are complex multidisciplinary research areas involving many sciences outside medicine. Censoring the results here under MEDRS has been in violation of these fundamental MEDRS rules for months:

MEDRS-Rule (look there !): "Sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources.”

For example sentences about other types of COVID 19-content: Political decisions, biossecurity, biosaftey, etc., etc. - are not MEDRS !

The core question is: How do we apply the MEDRS Rule correctly in COVID-19 and SARS-CoV 2 related articles  ?

I would be happy if we could find a good solution here.-- Empiricus-sextus ( talk) 07:47, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

This talk page is for discussion of improving the WP:BMI supplement. Discussion about COVID-19 should take place elsewhere. There has already been enough off-topic discussion here. Alexbrn ( talk) 08:14, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

Of course this statement is only for improving the WP:BMI - the right application- specially in context of MDERS. My remarks are valid for all use cases, also outside the COVID-19 topic .A central problem of is that there is no clear demarcation from science in WP:BMI - that is objectively lacking. This is one central cause of the problem. This would still have to be discussed here.-- Empiricus-sextus ( talk) 08:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Alexbrn. This is off-topic and you are asking the wrong questions. -- Colin° ^Talk 09:44, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I made some clarifications. How to distinguish bioinformation from non-bioinformation and scientific information (this is not explained in WP:BMI and cause many problems !), medical from non-medical - that is the fundamental question here (in the perspective of philosophy of science and medicine). What is the central question for you?-- Empiricus-sextus ( talk) 09:53, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Why do I get the feeling that 99% of the people here have not actually read Wikipedia:Biomedical information. -- Colin° ^Talk 11:01, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I -agree, also only little editors read MEDRS exactly. In Wikipedia:Biomedical information their is this important sentence: "Nearly all encyclopedia articles ("about medicine") should contain some non-biomedical information. Here are some types of information that are not biomedical....:" and of course for this MEDRS-Rule: "Sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources" is valid and to be applied. These are our rules, but they have been so dogmatically and reductively understood by few editors (if read and understood at all, maybe missunderstanding !) - that many editors have found this to be censorship (rightly !) and as a result the article quality (neutrality) has suffered massively.-- Empiricus-sextus ( talk) 12:51, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Agree that non-medical is covered by the general guideline. Which says, and I quote: " When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources."; " Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a paper reviewing existing research, a review article, monograph, or textbook is often better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised. Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."; " Preprints are not reliable sources"; " Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics."...

So yes, it's entirely possible to use non-MEDRS for non-biomedical information (including for politics and information which does not get reported in scholarly journals). It's also much better to use sources which meet the above criteria, if available (and, well, because of COVID, yes, they are available). The difference between the above (peer-reviewed, secondary, scholarly publications, not preprints) and MEDRS is, IMHO, not particularly substantial. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 16:57, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

While I appreciate that some editors want to keep out conspiracy theories from the origins of COVID-19, it would also prevent us from keeping out actual information if the source is determined. For example, the origins of SARS was published in a paper in a virology journal. The most extensive book about its origins, which includes not only scientific information, but about the political and social environment as well as information about the various individuals and institutions involved, was written by someone who teaches journalism and was published in the academic press. Very few of the sources for SARS#Epidemiology meets MEDRS, although most were published by academic publishers. TFD ( talk) 20:32, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@ The Four Deuces: Well, if they're clearly academic in style (nature of the content, professionalism, methodology [cited sources, ...], ...), and the publisher has a good enough reputation, those would likely qualify as academic sources, at least per SOURCETYPES (cited above) and possibly [depending what exactly the reputation and the credentials of the writer are] also under MEDRS (emphasis mine: "Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers;"). Of course that's a far cry, and miles better than an opinion piece in some mainstream newspaper. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 00:40, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

My reading of experts in the relevant fields is fields within biomedicine. Otherwise there would be no need for MEDRS since WP:RS already exists. I've seen a lot of objections for example about articles about people who follow alternative medicine, when the sources are political science, sociology, or economics articles. I have even seen objections in organic food articles about using peer-reviewed articles in nutrition journals about the levels of nutrition in organic foods. We would need clarification in the MEDRS guidelines that these sources were acceptable. TFD ( talk) 02:35, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

"peer-reviewed articles in nutrition journals about the levels of nutrition in organic foods" - that would seem a dubious objection (unless you can provide a more complete example for me to investigate). As for alternative medicine (and fringe theories in general), yes, some aspects of it (like, in this instance, with the lab leak) are political or social (for ex. the incidents of anti-Asian bigotry amplified by COVID) and can be sourced to non-medical publications about this, if relevant to the topic at hand. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 03:33, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@ The Four Deuces and @ RandomCanadian: I believe that the key point is the difference between a peer-reviewed article and a review article. Peer-reviewed primary sources in nutrition research contradict themselves about as frequently as the Daily Mail. If you want an accurate article, you are better off using a source that sums up multiple primary studies, instead of letting editors pick which single research paper has the "right" answer. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:22, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that peer-reviewed studies may include conclusions that or not yet or may never be accepted. I was referring however to facts in academic literature that has undergone peer review, especially review studies and textbooks. I'll look for examples. TFD ( talk) 05:30, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@ The Four Deuces, the only edits I've seen you make to anything nutrition-related in the last four years were these two edits in 2019, in which you cited a 2014 National Geographic magazine article to contradict claims from a 2012 book published by Wiley-Blackwell (a technical/scientific publishing house). I believe it's not unusual for editors to prefer scholarly books over pop science magazines. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:12, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

The National Geographic article reported on a 2014 review study published by the British Journal of Nutrition [50] that according to them said that organic foods had higher levels of nutrients and taste, [51] while the last review study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2012) and cited in the article, said there were no differences. While I appreciate the review study would have been a better source, I thought it made sense to use the latest review study. I have also participated in discussions in this and related articles.

One of the cases I found strange was the extensive discussion about MEDRS in an article about G. Edward Griffin, including Talk:G. Edward Griffin/Archive 10#RfC on laetrile. Griffin has made a career out of promoting numerous conspiracy theories about JFK's murder, the origins of AIDS, chemtrails, the location of Noah's ark, the Federal Reserve Bank, etc. Some editors argued that because we mention that he said cancer was caused by a nutritional deficiency that we should devote a paragraph to medical reaction to his claims, even though none of the sources mentioned him. To me that was a clear violation of SYN. Since the article was not offering medical advice, I saw no reason for that detail. We should just summarize what reliable sources say about him.

TFD ( talk) 01:22, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Those seem like they are indeed review articles and not just peer-reviewed primary studies. My only concern would be whether there is something more recent (2014 is 7 years ago), but they should be fine as sources so any editor who objects to them would need to be politely pointed to MEDRS and how these papers actually are secondary sources (reviews), and if they continue objecting they can then be given a thorough bollocking. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 01:37, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Pop science magazine articles are often secondary sources, but mass media and other non-scholarly sources are not the kind of sources that MEDRS considers ideal (see the WP:MEDPOP section, and also the section on respecting secondary sources, whiich says "Findings are often touted in the popular press....such sources should generally be omitted").

Would you find it helpful if MEDRS specified "peer-reviewed review article in a scholarly journal" instead of just linking to Wikipedia articles such as literature review (which says it's a type of scholarly source, not just a summary written by a journalist)? I haven't generally found editors to be confused about whether pop science sources 'count' as review articles, but I'm happy to propose the change if you think it would clarify matters. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:42, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

RandomCanadian, while the review study is 7 years old (actually only 5 when I made the edit), the previous sources used were even older (2002 and 2012). TFD ( talk) 00:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Your sentence @ The_Four_Deuces "While I appreciate that some editors want to keep out conspiracy theories from the origins of COVID-19, it would also prevent us from keeping out actual information if the source is determined." is absolutley the core problem we have to finde solutions for, otherwise we can get an credibility problem.It is absurd to have discussions longer than Tolstoy's War and Peace, where many experienced editors participate - and in the end we only write a few lines in the articles.

Dear @ RC - I think it's good that we have consensus here, maybe you have learned. I have only made the experience with you that you do not accept this rules in the last months (it was about the French research study) - for this reason you intiated the Topic Ban. Our problem is nevertheless that we have only very few sentences (5 in the investgation..) for laboratory hypothesis and also zoonosis hypothesis, although there are here 3.6 million google findings ("origin of the coronavirus"), a very large public and scientific discussion and also many studies (over 10.000 in google scholar). Due to the dogmatic application of MEDRS and bioinformation we have really a "problematic content reduction problem" - because basically all serious sources were and are blocked.

This is absolutely unproductive and frustrating for very many editors and admins here. Of course we have to check very carefully what is missinformation, differentiate plausible from totally implausible hypotheses or nonsense. This is extremely difficult as long as there is only little scientific evidence. But we cannot play the COURT OF JUSTICE (which is basically done) with a POV " There was no lab leak"-hypothesis.Methodologically "Against a lab leak", this subjective cherry-picking is highly problematic.It would be much more helpful and neutral if Novem Linguae list here point by point pro and contra - but to verify one-sidedly (Cons) is scientifically questionable. We should be open....

To come to the actual topic of WP:BMI: From the sentence, only the word cause is relevant (for origin): "Attributes of a disease or condition: symptoms, causes, prognoses; how a disease progresses; how it is caught or transmitted; the molecular or cellular basis of a disease".

How the virus is constructed or manipulated, where it comes from, what the safety of laboratories looks like, whether the GoF was sponsored by states, whether the Chinese military is conducting preventive research here under the Biological Weapons Convention (which is permitted), whether there have been accidents here, what biosafety laws have been enacted, what discussions are being held publicly about the origin of the virus, etc. - this is content that is largely non-medical information. For this we have only poor content - due to a restrictive source policy - and that,already been said by other authors - is definitely a problem for the credibility of Wikipedia in the global public.

If we could find a solution together, that would be very good ! It would make sense to create here several articles to all hypotheses of the origin, etc. in order to represent pro and contra differentiated, the public opinion and so on. This could be a solution. Without solutions, there will be weeks of frustration and an unpleasant atmosphere.-- Empiricus ( talk) 08:28, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Google hits (and dubious papers which one can find on google scholar) are never a reason to make an article, nor are they an indicator of anything useful for NPOV. We prefer WP:BESTSOURCES, not pieces in dubious journals. If you don't like it that these sources are dramatically at odds with the political Zeitgeist and that scientists say one thing while the media says another, that's not something we can solve. I disagree with your narrow, "letter of the law" interpretation of BMI, but as I've said, that doesn't matter, because, per the general reliable sources guideline, scholarly sources are preferred anyway. Do we at least agree that, broadly construed, "the origin of a virus" is a scientific topic? RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 11:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Broadly construed, who exercises editorial control over "BESTSOURCES" is a "scientific topic". Death threats against scientists are a "scientific topic". Funding of scientific research is a "scientific topic". Government roadblocks preventing access to scientific research sites is a "scientific topic". Government confiscation of scientific research samples and data is a "scientific topic". And, one doesn't have to be an expert scientist to write about "scientific topics". – wbm1058 ( talk) 12:20, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

None of those things are "scientific". Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines are build by community consensus over many years. Alexbrn ( talk) 12:44, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Of course they're not, more narrowly construed. – wbm1058 ( talk) 13:21, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

This RFC and RandomCanadian's similar "Do we at least agree that, broadly construed, "the origin of a virus" is a scientific topic?" are the wrong question. They are an attempt to find a simple solution to a complex problem, and to require a proxy for "sources likely to agree with me" in order to win one argument. Let's try an analogy I made elsewhere. An 80-year-old grandpa dies in his bed and his GP comes out and says it looks like yet another heart-attack got him this time. We are happy that medical science, a qualified doctor, and a cursory investigation provides an answer, to which only his friends and relatives care much about. But consider instead there is a big knife sticking out of his chest and blood splattered all over the walls. Now we want a coroner/pathologist, we want forensics, we want detectives, and a court with a judge and jury, and the press are interested, and the case is national news.

As soon as you bring a human element into the story, then all sorts of human aspects (politics, deceit, forgetfulness, mistakes, shame, pride, money etc) enter into the mix. And just like how some deaths are uncomplicated and of little interest and no disagreement, most origin speculation will be too, but occasionally we get this bonfire. And just like the science or medicine sometimes is very clear, other times all one can do is expert speculation and hope there is agreement. Please stop trying to amend general content policy and guidelines to solve a very specific editor-behaviour problem. I'm afraid you guys are just going to have to thole this problem for a while.

Honestly, I wonder if Wikipedia would be better off putting up a banner on the "Origin of Covid" sections/articles saying We've wasted too much time arguing about this and can't find agreement. Come back to us in six months." -- Colin° ^Talk 13:29, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay, more general question: do we agree that, per WP:SOURCETYPES, academic literature is preferred, if available? RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 14:39, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Academic literature is preferred only for the more narrowly construed question of the "scientifically-provable origin of a virus". For more broadly-construed "human elements", skilled investigative reporters working for generally-reliable news sources are better, especially when some of the involved academics have conflicts of interest. – wbm1058 ( talk) 15:14, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Disagree broadly, because even these "human elements" are beholden to opinions from experts. Who do we ask if a laboratory has a poor safety condition? Experts on safety, who would publish such assessments in society statements. Who do we ask if laboratory workers had illnesses that would be considered "SARS-2-like?" Again, experts on respiratory illnesses. Investigative journalism is important, but in the early phases of a controversy, they often get things wrong. See On The Media's very excellent " Breaking News Consumer Handbook" and you'll find that recent investigative reports have broken basically every established rule of quality investigative journalism. They are using almost exclusively anonymous sources, citing other news reporting as evidence (thus creating a house of cards), and, in some cases, heavily overstating opinion and yellow interpretation as facts. This is particularly troublesome in pieces from the WSJ and Vanity Fair. Not exactly the quality of robust journalism we're looking for on Wikipedia. Wiki is meant to be slow. It is meant to be reliant on slow sources. That have lots of verification. This situation smells very similar to the Trump Moscow Dossier. In that it has imprimatur of reliability, and accoutrements of fact-based journalism, but it turns out later to be total B.S. cooked up from political motivations.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 15:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The desire to restrict the sources to academia or science or medicine is pretty obviously coming from a belief that this must be natural in origin and then of scientific concern and published in some academic work. If some lab worker holds their hands up and says "Yes, it was me, and here's all my lab documents that the government asked me to shred but I decided to hold on to" then it is not a matter for science but for police or politics, and the the people that report this are called journalists. The only thing academics or scientists will be doing then is repeating what they read in the newspapers. We can see, however, that both sides here deeply distrust each other. There are accusations of science cover up and accusations of journalistic incompetence. So frankly, this will remain a mess on Wikipedia as long as it remains a mess in the real world. -- Colin° ^Talk 15:48, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

You know what the difference is, though? Wikipedia, a long time ago, set down guidelines making clear that primary sources like "breaking news" pieces about such a lab employee are not to be used, except in extremely limited circumstances. Only secondary coverage of those events in more reliable formats. So such an article should not be included on wikipedia, except where covered elsewhere in a secondary way. The same goes for scientific articles, but you won't find anyone here arguing that primary scientific sources are particularly useful.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 17:57, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

We have a policy, Wikipedia is not a newspaper as well as policies for rs and weight. I don't see however that MEDRS offers anything beyond these policies. One important feature of MEDRS is that if someone adds misleading information that may lead some readers to rely on quack medicine that may harm them, we can remove that without fear of 3RR and have the editor banned. That's a lot faster than normal content dispute resolution. But I don't see how the origins of COVID19 is more sensitive than other current events, such as whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the safety of the XL pipeline or the chemical gas attacks in Syria. Note btw that all of these involve medical claims to some extent. TFD ( talk) 18:12, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Colin, I discussed this in my !vote but if the scenario you mention did arise and was discussed in high-quality secondary sources then of course we would include the existence of those reports in the article. But this would still need to be confirmed by consensus scientifically before we could say that that is the origin in wiki-voice. Non-MEDRS coverage of an admission wouldn't tell us anything about the origin and genetic profile of the progenitor strain, or where/how it picked up the mutations that made it so virulent and human-tropic; that information could only be validated through MEDRS. JoelleJay ( talk) 19:06, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The problem of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has scientific, medical, political, administrative and also technical dimensions - which are very, very complex (and all relevant !) - but we (which is incorrect) reduce it to a poor medical dimension, a one dimensional view -only ! That contradicts many guidelines here. In contrast to 2020, in 2021 (after Trump) the topic is discussed "very openly" without "political instrumentalization" - just not here. In the end, science will find out what the origin is, but around that there are many other phenomena (her some key articles), e.g. how the US administration has dealt with the question, how science und politics discusses it, but also the public. This is all - blocked by MEDRS and contradicts even MEDRS, as I have shown above in detail. The readers of Wikipedia expect more than just a few strictly selected lines here.-- Empiricus ( talk) 19:28, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The problem, as I've stated elsewhere, is that some conflate the political issues with the scientific issues, and use sources which are fine for politics but not for science to argue about the latter; and that the political and media mainstream (at least in the USA - I don't see too much about this, except for the occasional mention of important developments, in Canadian or European newspapers: compare with the plenty of op-eds in places like WSJ, WaPo, ... [this also brings about some concerns about WP:BIAS and also about WP:NOTNEWS]) is not quite the same as the scientific mainstream. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 21:57, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

But that's thge same with any developing story. As the expression says, "News is only the first rough draft of history." Take for example the 2021 United States Capitol attack. It will be a long time before the evidence is published, defendants are prosecuted and we have a more complete picture. Then experts will do further research and write papers and books. Already, some of what was reported turned out to be false. But do we wait five years before creating an article? No, we use the best sources available, clearly distinguish between fact and speculation and try to provide as accurate an account as major news media. TFD ( talk) 03:45, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

JoelleJay, I think you are making too much importance of science. This is similar to my analogy of grandpa with the knife sticking out of him. Science often plays a very important role in a criminal case, and sometimes a decisive one. And yes, even if gran admits that she killed the b*stard, there would likely still be a small role for science to play to confirm her confession. But it gets decided in a court, not a lab, and it gets published in mainstream media, not a journal of forensic medicine. And any lab leak guilty-admission would, as you say, get aspects confirmed if they can, but evidence may have been destroyed and perhaps all science can do is say "we don't have any evidence that would make this confession unlikely". There are too many possible scenarios to discuss here, but it is entirely possible that a lab leak may be "confirmed" and written about by political pen pushers, not by some grey haired boffin in Cambridge peering down a microscope. It is possible that a politically appointed committee, comprising a mix of specialities, would agree a conclusion. Folk seem to think scientists will have the last say, and publish their primary research finding in an academic journal. But, in the lab leak case, it is more likely to be some government report, and any commentary in academic journals will be head scratching and editorials about how we need to improve lab safety.

We all know this is an ongoing news story, and for that reason, not really something Wikipedia handles well. And it has proven a uniquely divisive story, to the point where I really do think we'd be better off agreeing to disagree and walk away from it. Pick a reputable newspaper and read that for the next few months. That's what I'm doing. And, I'm going to take my own advice and find something else to do on Wikipedia. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:58, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

As is almost always the case, Colin is spot on here. I'll also be taking his advise and trying to forget about our Covid Origin coverage until at least after the Biden report in August. It's just too annoying. But here goes with one last appeal to reason. @ Shibbolethink do you really think citing a 8 year old web page that's focussed on the immediate coverage of shootings, is a convincing way to discredit investigative journalism? (Please read the first two sentences of our article.)

No ones arguing that Wikipedia needs to reflect the coverage of the "lableak fringe" side's COI (though there is a small risk that will be needed if the Biden report turns out to be more pro lableak than expected) . As per my vote, we're allowed a reasonable bias towards science. Even if the RfC gets closed with a firm consensus against MEDS's applicability to Covid Origin, we can still use some MEDS sources; the change would be MEDS can no longer be used to block the use of more upto date & reliable RS. We can even still pick out the relatively few recent sources that still say things like most scientists "still agree that natural transmission is by far the most likely route".

All we need to do IMO opinion is reflect the close to universal worldwide RS coverage that lableak is now considered plausible by the mainstream media, by several goverments & scientists, including even the Director-General of the WHO. Plus stop calling lableak arguments fringe or conspiracy theory, and if we mention that was done back in 2020, use science friendly sources that say the idea has since gained credibility.

If MEDS editors continue to block such a partial pivot towards NPOV, we're not only hurting Wikipedia's credibility in the eyes of readers, we risk further energising those who are spreading stories about scientists lying, bullying & issuing death threats. Already it's quicker to mention the prominent mainstream media RSs that haven't published such coverage (e.g. AFAIK The Guaridan) For the love of science, please consider not continuing to set a few academics against the mainstream. Pro science editors are unlikely to like how that ends. FeydHuxtable ( talk) 08:51, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

@ FeydHuxtable: FYI please use reply templates if you want me to actually read and respond. I would not have seen this ping had JoelleJay not tagged me below. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was trying to "discredit investigative journalism." I have a huge respect for investigative journalists. I think their work is extremely important. I'm merely telling you what I have come to understand wikipedia to be: slow. It's intentionally slow, because that's how it remains more accurate, based on consensus of many sources. This is how the wiki, in many cases, remains more accurate than the individual RSes it cites. I love that about this site. The thing I cited is just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. It isn't a wiki guideline and I never said it was. The corollary wiki essay would be WP:BNS. Here are a few choice quotes that I think gets my point across: Wikipedia will be remembered for our mistakes far more than we will be remembered for 60-second delays in repeating breaking news. and wait for two or three independent reliable sources to source the material. If one source says that "the other reports...", the sources are not independent. Is this a guideline, meaning we should be following it until we are forced not to? No! But I think it's a very high quality reliable rule of thumb. It's an important lesson: if we change every time the wind changes, we will be wrong more often than we are right. If we change every time consensus changes, then we will be right more often than we are wrong. Both this and the WNYC article I cited are of the same vein. They come from the same school of journalistic standard. To wit, very little of the lab leak theory (and WSJ reporting) has been independently confirmed. Basically just "an intelligence dossier exists that says maybe 3 people at WIV were sick in November 2019". That's basically it. And luckily that's all we have in the relevant articles per my reading! That's all that should be there, until more is independently confirmed. I'm just trying to say, let's not defer to opinion pieces and re-hashed unconfirmed reports. We should be relying on WP:RSes that are independently confirming facts, not opinions. And actually confirming that consensus about a fact is shifting. A very important distinction.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 18:09, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

One last (i hope) point. I sincerely hope the oppose votes aren't interpreted as "a firm consensus against MEDS's applicability to Covid Origin". The proposal was that all aspects of disease and pandemic origins are entirely within the domain of MEDRS. And that has been rejected. The poll says nothing, absolutely nothing, about MEDRS applying to some or even many aspects of the pandemic origin. A biomedical claim about the origin (e.g., analysis of the genetic code or samples of bat poo from some cave) still requires a MEDRS source. I also sincerely hope that whoever closes this appreciates people were not asked a general question about what MEDRS is for, and the one thing in everyone's mind was the covid lab leak theory, rather than generally editing health and medicine articles. A lot of people in the poll claimed MEDRS is only about medical advice. It takes only a quick read of Wikipedia:Biomedical information (whose talk page we are voting on), or even a few of our featured medical articles, to realise that is very much not true. -- Colin° ^Talk 10:10, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Colin I think we agree more than we disagree on this. I agree that there are some instances where WP:RSes are fair to use in these articles. Like with the intelligence dossier about the 3 sick workers at WIV. Clearly, to me, it would be wrong to exclude this from these articles just because it hasn't been covered in a WP:MEDRS. Anything that is not strictly about scientific fact (like sequencing data, etc), is fair game for typical WP:RS usage, and is beholden to that standard of using independently verifying secondary WP:RSes. I'm definitely not saying only MEDRSes in these articles. That would be absurd! I really think that's a straw man argument, and I would be surprised to hear that any significant percentage of the "Support" votes here have that view. I agree that for matters of fact, like whether a person was sick, WP:RSes are fair. But as to whether it is "covid-like illness?" or whether the sequence of the virus that infected that sick person matches SARS-COV-2? That is a matter for WP:MEDRS. Same with "the scientific consensus." That is a matter for MEDRS. Because we cannot trust conventional journalists to accurately portray what the scientific consensus is. Journalists are extremely important, they do great work, I have great respect for their profession. But they have shown often that they are not content experts, and they often misunderstand content experts. That's why MEDRS exists. Multiple independent secondary RSes for nonscientific circumstantial matters of fact, MEDRSes for matters of science. Abortions for some, mini american flags for others!-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 18:20, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Colin, maybe this will clarify things. I think the issue is that to editors like me (getting a PhD in genetics) and Shibbolethink (has a PhD in virology) and the vast majority of scientists, the origin of the virus is strictly a scientific question. Scientists want to know how SARS-CoV-2 arose (as in, what was the natural source and how did it acquire the mutations that led to a pandemic), whereas the people who weigh the geopolitical facet more heavily seem to interpret "origin" as solely "what was the point source of SARS-CoV-2". The latter question would thus be answered with an admission of guilt or other evidence that could be reported by investigative journalists/non-MEDRS. The thing is, the latter question is only relevant if a lab leak occurred. For every other origin scenario the question is the biological one. This is not similar to someone accidentally releasing a known neurotoxin (or a stabbing). That scenario would not require scientific validation because the only question would be "how did this get out", not "what are the steps of the total synthesis of this compound". But even the most benign lab origin hypothesis (that a 100% natural virus was found and then stored at the WIV without any modifications or serial passage and was accidentally released) would require genomic and phylogenetic analysis of: a) the virus stored at the lab, and b) viruses at the natural site the lab virus was collected. However, this version of the lab leak still requires a zoonotic origin, which is what most proponents are arguing against, so we should instead consider the most popular version, which seems to be serial passage. In this case, we would need samples of the ur-virus strain collected from nature, (ideally) samples frozen during passage, and the final virus released from the lab. If those samples were destroyed and the collection site isn't divulged, we could probably still trust whatever sequencing the lab had done on each sample -- but this would of course also require expert analysis (not a simple BLAST query). If the sequences were also deleted, we could maybe get somewhere with in silico reconstruction using whatever sequences we do have and the specifics of the cells passaged (which would have to be provided by the lab). If the passage parameters are also unavailable then we're basically where we started with regards to the biological origin; if non-scientific evidence of the leak is sufficient, then criminally and politically there might be enough to conclude SARS-CoV-2 was released from the lab -- but we would still have no idea where it came from. Which is an extremely important question if we want to prevent this from happening in the future. JoelleJay ( talk) 17:12, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

User:JoelleJay I agree with you in principle - the origin question can be answered completely only by science, even if it is a technical accident. There is logical evidence for the two main hypotheses, but only very little empirical evidence. I agree with the nature article that it is factually a mystery, because basically the natural mutation would take decades and even a "technical mutation" (modification via GoF) is almost unexplainable. Because of the logical evidence and the assumptions connected with it, quite a lot of scientists come to believe for the strong verification of one hypotheses, i.e., to raise the hypothesis implicit to the status of a theory, a scientific fact.There is e.g. this interesting paper of Shibbolethink - who belived strong in a NO-LEAK Hyothesis (as he said !) - but there are also other big literature studies e.g. this one (in german) -why there are incidences that the laboratory hypothesis cloud be possible. Some colleagues here also have the problem of belive -it`s simply human. In 2021, the consensus (=belive) of natural origin is broken (as a fact !)- because there is much stronger logical and partly also empirical evidence - that the virus could be created artificially. I m very sure that our research will clarify this in the end - the question is just when. These are all highly complex issues as the two studies above show - if there were good articles on this, it would be very good.

What is missing here are simply solid and neutral presentation of these findings and evidence – for all hypothesis (special articles). All what we present here are little Stubs. To present balanced what has been discussed here scientifically would already be a progress. As said, the original questions has many other dimensions, up to the fact how the Administrationa and Goverments deals with it. These is also relevant and determine the global public discussion - but there is nothing about this - here. In order to objectify this also in the public, to avoid misinformation, etc. - I think herewould be helpful, if we had good articles for this. For the individual hypotheses, to differentiate them, also in the context of relevant others dimensions – goverment decisions.-- Empiricus ( talk) 09:10, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

I am a friend of hard scientific facts/episteme), not of faith ( doxa) - both core hypotheses have a certain plausibility - but to know "the truth" already is currently not possible. Therefore all faith and even edit wars are basically unnecessary.We can write good articles here only if we are open for alls posibilities, hyothesis, reliable sources according to our rules. WP:SOURCEBLOCKING for one or the other theory is unproductive - finally also unscientific. -- Empiricus ( talk) 09:10, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Empiricus-sextus, it doesn't really matter what I believe personally or what you believe. It matters what the consensus is among relevant studies published in the scientific literature in reliable relevant peer reviewed journals. And that consensus has not changed. Most virologists still believe the lab leak is unlikely.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 12:34, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

As an aside, by the way, most virologists have this view and have published on this view because it is what the current preponderance of hard, fact-based evidence supports. Could that change? Yes! It's an ever-shifting landscape. But for now, it's what the currently available evidence suggests. It's what the sequencing suggests, the genetic diversity of the viral quasispecies suggests, what the functional biochemistry of the glycoproteins suggests. The vast majority of available peer-reviewed studies support this assessment, because nothing about the biochemistry or genetics of the virus suggests it has a non-natural origin. And much of the epidemiology and sequencing data suggests the origin is indeed natural. This evidence does not rule out a lab leak, but it does not support it. It is only shoddy publications in non-virology journals or non-peer-reviewed journals who are publishing all this gobbldygook about the glycoprotein being "attuned to human cells." It is simply not true. No matter how many crackpots shout it from the heavens, what matters is that the largest share of the scientific literature on the topic supports the facts. Here is one relevant assessment of those crackpot studies. ^[1]-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 12:34, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Shibbolethink :In the natural sciences, the consensus theory of truth is not sufficient. There it needs causalities, proofs based on empirical facts - for the spillover - and these do not exist until now ! Of course we have logical evidence for a possible zoonotic origin (based on former reserach), but in this case - to answer the question - we need strong empirical evidence. Logical evidence can never subtitued empirical evidence. Of course for studies - there can be different interpretations, conclusions,but simply calling them "crackpot studies" (when you're not convinced by the results) is contrary to collegial scientific collaboration. Even if these studies are based on false premises, have measurement errors, or draw incorrect conclusions, they can raise important new questions. In the theory of science we have known for a long time that the dogmatism in the heads - often blocks new insights / paradigms. These phänomen we can observe here in the Wikipedia - too. Until now we have a lot of belive (like your paper) based on logial evidence - but no empirical evidence based "truth" of "false". In your paper are also some wrong premises.... -- Empiricus ( talk) 09:56, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Empiricus-sextus, are you suggesting that analysis of genomic data of the virus samples found early in the pandemic is not rooted in empiricism? That epidemiologic inference of contact tracing data is not empirical? That finding zoonotic reservoirs of similar viruses is not empirical? What are these things, then? If not empirical data helping to suggest a probable origin?-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 21:41, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Empiricus-sextus, in addition to the excellent points that Shibbolethink makes, I would like to add that in Medicine, we rarely have the sort of black-and-white answers that you seem to want. We know that certain conditions are caused by the immune system attacking certain tissues, but we don't know exactly why, for example. We can show that a given drug is effective in treating a symptom or disease, and we can understand its pharmacodynamics, but in many cases we cannot say for certain why it works. Even with COVID-19, we know that certain pre-existing conditions result in greater morbidity and mortality among those who become infected, and while in some cases (heart disease, COPD) the link is obvious, in others (diabetes, obesity) it is not entirely clear why this is so. As Shibbolethink points out, we do have quite a bit of empirical evidence, and we go off of that. It does not have to be complete, it will likely never be complete, but we can still work with empirical evidence that gives us an incomplete picture, so long as we account for all of the empirical evidence. So for example one needs to account for the empirical observation that two different initial variants of SARS-COV-2 were found in Wuhan, one at each of two "wet market" emporia where wild animals were brought in from rural areas by rural hunters/traders.

But I also want to go back to your initial statement that consensus is not sufficient. In the scientific method, consensus through reproducibility and peer review is an essential component. The consensus can be wrong, of course, but if so it will usually change in response to evidence. But it is far easier for someone to convince a couple of lay Wikipedia editors of something than it is to convince a large number of expert scientists, which is important to keep in mind. Hyperion35 ( talk) 21:38, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@ JoelleJay, would you please check the articles and consider whether we need a glossary? Look at the top of Addiction for an example. Maybe if the articles used specific, defined words like point source, we'd have less confusion. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:51, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Practical implication of this RFC

How should we apply the results of this RFC to, let's say, this comment made a while ago on Wuhan Institute of Virology's Talk page:

I'd like to make a very general point about this discussion: scientific sources are all that matter for determining the weight of scientific opinion. Regular news outlets are often not particularly good at reporting on scientific topics. The general standard that's been followed on Wikipedia for SARS-CoV-2-related material is WP:MEDRS. Arguing back and forth about what the Washington Post's editorial board thinks about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 or what a writer for The Times thinks about the illness that struck the Mojiang miners is not a productive use of anyone's time. Any discussion should focus on high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific literature.

If someone were to repeat this exaxt same argument, can we safely dismiss it by showing them the closure of this RFC? Forich ( talk) 22:36, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, that's my understanding of what RfCs are for. They determine consensus (or lack thereof). If that person objects to a specific article and there is a consensus that newspapers can be used for these purposes (which I personally also object to), that general consensus could be overridden locally, but absent such override, they should have better reasons to delete it (i.e. misreporting by the RS or text not summarising the article's points well). Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 00:22, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

JoelleJay, you act as if journalism and does not rely on experts and journalists conduct their own scientific research. In fact, reputable media ask experts their opinions and explain how accepted those opinions are. Suppose it turns out that the expert consensus is that the virus originated in a lab. Are we supposed to wait until peer reviewed papers have been published and review studies confirm this is the consensus? Suppose this leads to legislative changes and the relationship between China and the rest of the world. Are we supposed to wait until the review paper comes out to explain it? And will we be able to write about individual or collective responsibility if medical doctors don't weigh in on this?

As has been pointed out before, the purpose of MEDRS is to ensure that false information that readers may rely on for their medical treatment is not included. We are going beyond that.

In other news, the U.S. has a new rover on Mars that is searching for life. Should articles report what NASA says it finds, or are we supposed to wait for the medical review articles?

TFD ( talk) 22:38, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

In other news, the U.S. has a new rover on Mars that is searching for life. Should articles report what NASA says it finds, or are we supposed to wait for the medical review articles? NASA is a scientific body, and we expect them to refer the questions of biological significance to the appropriate experts and to have staff who write press releases accurately reflecting the general article's tone. So in this particular case, we needn't. On the other hand, Science or Nature does not release such statements, and while some reputable media do ask experts' opinions on the subject, there is no guarantee that these are consulted unless specifically mentioned in the article. Even then comes the question of distortion of consensus (they, say, ask 4 experts, two think one way, two the other, so it seems as if there's a 50/50 divide even if one of the opinions could be clearly in a minority, which is something that WSJ is using quite often). Therefore, to the question: Suppose it turns out that the expert consensus is that the virus originated in a lab. Are we supposed to wait until peer reviewed papers have been published and review studies confirm this is the consensus? the answer is a clear yes, at least when something is being disputed (though of course we can report intelligence findings, but only to the extent they show evidence and only to the extent that they have an impact on the scientific community). As for the second question, no, we needn't, because political implications are a separate matter and lawmakers have no obligation whatsoever to consult science before making laws, even when these laws/resolutions concern science. Political blaming and mutual accusations can be reported without resorting to MEDRS, as there are great political newspapers that cover it well. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 00:50, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Forich, this RFC is about whether or not to change this page in a specific way. It should be obvious to everyone that the result was that there is no consensus to make the proposed change. This RFC is not about how to edit any articles, or to determine the correct way to source something about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, or about anything else, and therefore the correct answer to "how should we apply this RFC" to anything other than whether to make the proposed change is "not at all". WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:17, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Forich, as WAID says the RfC proposal was rejected. Thus there is no change to the WP:PAGs. In parallel, and probably more relevant to your question is the likely [52] upcoming change to bring all COVID-19 topics under WP:Discretionary sanctions, meaning editors who consistently mis-apply policy can be reported to WP:AE. Alexbrn ( talk) 06:23, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Alexbrn:, after following your edits in many covid related pages I thought you were in favor of having all aspects of a pandemic origin to be sourced on MEDRS. Sure, you have said before that there are exceptions, but the "dropping of a flask", the "biosecurity records" and the "statements from politicians" are usually tiny parts of the articles on COVID, so you do in practice edit AS IF all aspects of the pandemic are ruled by MEDRS. We both voted "Oppose", which means that we don't want to change the guideline. I disagree with your opinion that having a discussion on a guideline has no effects on "how to edit any articles". There is one-to-one match between editing behavior and guideline adherence. On the one hand, logically, editors who wish to predominantly favor MEDRS in articles on pandemic origins would be happier to have a guideline that unambiguosly supports that line of editing. On the other hand, editors who wish to have RS in articles on pandemic origin would disagree on having a guideline that explicitely decrees enforcement of MEDRS. I fail to see the interpretation that this RFC has no scope on how to edit articles. Forich ( talk) 23:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I hope the "Practical implication of this RFC" are that the community stop trying to collectively write Covid articles by repeated creating RFCs to change PAG to suit this agenda or that. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:59, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

• Why would someone dismiss that comment? It is factually correct and fully in line with Wikipedia's PAGs to say that Arguing back and forth about what the Washington Post's editorial board thinks about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 or what a writer for The Times thinks about the illness that struck the Mojiang miners is not a productive use of anyone's time, this is pretty irrefutable, and regardless of whether you go by MEDRS or just regular RS, Any discussion should focus on high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific literature. I am really not sure what your objection is here. You are simply not going to dismiss that argument without fundamentally changing how Wikipedia (in theory) operates.

  Remove the COVID-specific parts and it becomes even more absurd: Arguing back and forth about what the Washington Post's editorial board thinks about the causes of Alzheimer's Disease are, or what a writer for The Times thinks about how to differentiate between Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias is not a productive use of anyone's time. Any discussion should focus on high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific literature. Hyperion35 ( talk) 21:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

This is honestly the most true thing I've read all day.-- Shibbolethink ^{( ♔ ♕)} 22:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Amen to that. The RfC says that this guideline doesn't need changing (maybe because the question was too broad?). It doesn't say anything about the reminder of our policies, which all, overwhelmingly, favour higher-quality sources in their topic of expertise if available. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 00:20, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

More precisely, the current consensus appears to be that this (non-guideline) page doesn't need to be changed in the exact way that was proposed. There is IMO plenty of room for improvement, and many of those opportunities have nothing to do with any pandemic-related disputes. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:19, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with most of what has been said (which I why I struck my comment), and the argument in the first paragraph is brilliant, but there's a small problem with the non-COVID comparison.

"Disease and pandemic origins" are not exactly "causes", since substition for "causes" immediately forces us into WP:BMI territory "Attributes of a disease or condition: Symptoms, causes, prognoses; how a disease progresses...", while whether origins are BMI is exactly subject of contention. I am on the side who says it is, but this argument does not help establish that. In fact, we can't really talk about "origins" of Alzheimer's because there doesn't exist such a thing (unless someone discovers a viral/bacterial/protozoan etc. agent that provokes Alzheimer's, which seems to be unlikely for now); but we very sure can talk about COVID-19 origins.

In any case, I'm not convinced about saying that origins = causes, even if I am among those who would support more stringent requirements for the origins. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I didn't intend for it to be an exact comparison. And I was thinking more along the lines of WP:MEDPOP and the reasons why that exists: even excellent and highly-reliable sources like the Washington Post and NY Times are simply not reliable for biomedical information. And my point is also that this is not unique to any one specific biomedical topic, it has been a chronic problem for many years. This goes beyond just "sometimes sources are incorrect", but the very real and observed problem that on these topics, these sources simply are not reliable at all. Even for non-controversial stuff that you would think they'd know better. I picked Alzheimer's because it was in the news recently but seemed relatively non-political and non-controversial, to make that point. We wouldn't care what the Washington Post editorial board writes about a disease, or what a New York Times journalist writes about a disease, because they will almost certainly get any biomedical aspects wrong. No RFC should ever change that.

If people want to claim that biosafety levels, biological research labs, how a virus spreads from other animals to humans (zoonosis), and the evolution of viral proteins that make if more infectious, that all of these things are "not biomedical", and thus given an exemption from how we should treat sources, they are welcome to do so on a case-by-case basis. But the original question was whether one could rebut an actual statement about how we treat these sources, and I am concerned that the question pointed to a misunderstanding about how and why we treat sources this way. Hyperion35 ( talk) 01:29, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I believe that both bacteria and prions have been blamed for Alzheimer's, so the comparison might be more apt than expected. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:24, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Closure?

I got lost reading the whole RFC (its become a bit wall of text), so excuse my two questions: i) A reasonable amount of time has passed, are we done discussing this RFC?; ii) Has anyone asked already for a closure at Wikipedia:Closure requests? If not, let's do it. Forich ( talk) 19:42, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Forich, I see a closure request at Wikipedia:Closure requests#Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information#RFC: Disease / pandemic origins. This RFC was to make a specific change to this page, and likely failed, so probably not too urgent. I don't think anything will change post-closure. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 20:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I mean, it sounded to me like there was a consensus that the RFC be closed as "no consensus", and that seemed to be literally the only thing anyone could agree on Hyperion35 ( talk) 20:08, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Hyperion35, I'm counting 16 support, 53 oppose. I think it'd be hard to argue for no consensus. Luckily it's not my job to read through all that :) – Novem Linguae ( talk) 20:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Novem for the link to the closure request. I looked at the survey section of the RFC and it does seem like it stopped receiving votes. We can expect an experienced editor to come and give us his independent closure. Forich ( talk) 23:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Novem Linguae, for a question phrased this way, the difference between "no consensus to make the proposed change" and "consensus against making the proposed change" is unimportant. Either way, it's not happening. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:18, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 02:33, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

More

• @ Forich: this RFC asked whether WP:BMI should be updated to unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information, which implied that its current definition is ambiguous. The reason for this seeming ambiguity is that epidemiology is only part biomedical science, and the circumstances in which we find ourselves IRT COVID-19 origins are unprecedented, necessitating this RFC and the clarification it brings. It's hardly surprising that some editors who voted to maintain the ambiguity are here advocating for a similarly ambiguous close to soften its implications and allow them to continue abusing the policy as a sourcing restriction. Like I said above, if we applied MEDRS to every political/medical controversy, we wouldn’t have articles like Dengvaxia controversy and Ringworm affair, CervicalCheck cancer scandal, etcetera. If it's necessary, we can formulate a new RFC with a clearer statement in a more suitable venue, but first we should have this one closed by an uninvolved party. CutePeach ( talk) 05:13, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

  If it's true that COVID-19 presents an "unprecedented" case, then that would be an argument for an RfC about how to treat COVID-19 (run at its WikiProject maybe), but not for a Project-wide change to the WP:PAGs. After the enormous waste of time this (rejected) proposal has led to, I'd expect any editor launching a similar RfC to be sanctioned for disruption, unless there was a very clear case for one established by a diligent WP:RFCBEFORE that, if it affected Project-wide policy, involved stakeholders across all relevant WikiProjects. Alexbrn ( talk) 05:21, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Alexbrn: the reason an RFC was posted here and has collected so many votes was to protest the behavior of senior editors misapplying the WP:MEDRS policy to an unprecedented medical/political event that is only part WP:BMI, affecting a sourcing restriction to censor a political controversy across numerous pages and bans of multiple dissenting editors. Since epidemiology doesn’t draw only from biomedical sciences, and since WP:BMI is very ambiguous in respect to these circumstances, Aquillion’s choice of venue was okay. I did reach out to him before to formulate a RFC [53] [54], and I would have posted it to the talk page of SARS-COV-2, but it was not to be.

Since the RFC was posted here following a mega discussion on WP:RS/N about COVID-19 origins [55], and since many of the responses here relate to COVID-19 origins, the closer should summarize them accordingly. The implications of this close would be obvious; WP:MEDRS should not be applied to the origins of a virus where the epidemiological investigation is being blocked by a WHO member state, in contravention of International Health Regulations. Same applies for WP:SCHOLARSHIP.

Furthermore, senior editors like you should learn where to draw the line on MEDRS. You tagged Dengvaxia controversy with Template:more medical citations needed as soon as you first noticed the article, showing how deeply flawed your approach is on these issues. How do you expect medical scientists to gain access to the minutes from those closed door meetings between former President Aquino and Sanofi Pasteur back in 2015? Presumably you’d also require scientists to gain access to the minutes of the more recent closed door meeting between our President Duterte and Sinovac Biotech in order for us to cover the soon to be reported oddities of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the Philippines. If such magic existed, these scientists would also be able to uncover the billions they have robbed from state coffers.

I sure do hope admins DGG and ToBeFree are watching this close very carefully. CutePeach ( talk) 14:54, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

"the reason an RFC was posted here and has collected so many votes was to protest ..." ← No. the reason why an RfC was posted was because the OP had a question to pose which they wanted an answer to. I and others answered it, with a precise focus on that question. The fact that the discussion has been distended by off-topic grumbling by others is just unfortunate. I think I "draw the line" with MEDRS with skill and judgement, but if you have a problem with my behaviour take it to WP:ANI with actual evidence; whining here just distends this page further. Alexbrn ( talk) 15:13, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, sure do hope you're not suggesting that we should ignore all of our policies and guidelines because they don't paint the lab leak in a favourable light. I also hope that you're astute enough to understand the difference between politics and recent news (which can usually be reported with newspapers, with care taken to avoid WP:NOTNEWS issues) and science (arguing the usual "vested interests"-conspiracy line is not a valid reason to ignore WP:RS and the WP:Academic bias that is entirely warranted in an encyclopedia). RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 14:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

• The most suitable venue for any proposed change to any page is that page's own talk page. Choice of venue is a concept much lovvd by (wiki)lawyers seeking an advantage for their side. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:22, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Actually the question of the RFC did not imply the current definition is ambiguous. It implied the poster of the question thought that "disease and pandemic origins" was a topic where only one kind of source was appropriate and expected the community to agree with them. Epidemiology is a biomedical science, I don't know why you think it might only partly be. If this was an argument where one group of scientists thought it came from bats and another group thought it came from birds, then for sure, we wouldn't care what the Washington Post or the BBC thought about it. We'd all be waiting for a review in the Lancet or whatever. But it isn't. It has been proposed that there is someone to blame, and importantly, that someone is not American and is in a country with which America is playing politics. Suddenly it is a huge human story, possibly criminal, and possibly one of the biggest "oops" in history. The entire idea that one could settle the dispute between "It probably came from bats" and "The Chinese caused it" by picking sources only of primary relevance to one side of the argument, was just trying to game the system. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:44, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

No Colin, a plain reading of the RFC statement and a majority of votes shows that the current version of WP:BMI is ambiguous for these unprecedented circumstances. I agree with you that WP:MEDRS and WP:BMI are the wrong venues for this RFC, but the OP was advised about to do so in the ANI here [56], and he finally did so after that post in WP:RS/N [57]. Are you proposing to invalidate this RFC based on this technicality? CutePeach ( talk) 14:45, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

The only thing this RFC shows is that the question it asked was too broad, and that BMI should not be changed at this time based on this. The RFC in no way affects anything else, because of all the arguments which there's no point repeating. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 14:54, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

ToBeFree if RandomCanadian is correct here, then perhaps you need to put the ban back on Empiricus-sextus and also ban me and everyone else who expresses a POV on COVID-19 origins he doesn't like. CutePeach ( talk) 15:16, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, stop digging. Policies on reliable sourcing already favour academic scholarship, MEDRS or not. Insisting that we need to cover the scientific aspect of this using reports in the popular press (why would we do that?) seems as misguided as your continuous accusations against me, which are nothing short of harassment. ToBeFree Sorry that you're also subject to this kind of annoyance. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 15:33, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm eagerly awaiting the closure of the RfC, and I hope that the closure will explicitly address its effects (if any) on conflicts about COVID-19 related content. ~ ToBeFree ( talk) 16:22, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

@ RandomCanadian, I don't think the question was too broad at all. The question in this RFC begins Should this page be updated to – a narrow question indeed. A broad question, and the one that some less experienced editors seem to think was being asked, would have started with something like How should the English Wikipedia handle non-scholarly sources about the lab leak hypothesis in all COVID-related articles? Anybody can look at the top of this RFC and see which question was actually asked. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 15:54, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I wonder if by "broad", RandomCanadian was referring to "disease and pandemic origins" in general rather than specifically "Covid-19 origins". And the approach of trying to modify general editing guidance rather than first reach consensus on one topic, and then see if that consensus is generally applicable. -- Colin° ^Talk 15:40, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

You are probably right. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 15:43, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, that the proposer wanted an "unambiguous[]" statement to settle a dispute they were frustrated with, that doesn't mean the current text is "ambiguous". The problems with the editing at Covid origins are behavioural issues with editors on both sides. The OP was advised against such an RFC, yet went ahead anyway. -- Colin° ^Talk 15:45, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Colin: putting aside the behavioral issues, which are not in the scope of this discussion, what would you suggest to the closer of this RFC and its participants? The OP was advised to post this RFC here by another editor [58], so they couldn't have known better. Ending with no consensus will just result in restarting the RFC in another venue. CutePeach ( talk) 14:39, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Well they could have known better, because several other editors disagreed with that question, adivsed it would be difficult to word or advised against it entirely. And because 20-years of Wikipedia wisdom says that you don't solve an intractable dispute by proposing something agreeable only to the more fundamentalist of one side and then opening a poll. Nor do we change content guidelines to settle behavioural issues in a tiny corner of Wikipedia. I don't know why you think an editor would restart "the RFC" in another venue. Anyone doing that is quite likely to find their editing privileges curtailed by an admin. I don't see any evidence of either side in this dispute demonstrating a willingness to work towards consensus, but if there is some then that would be nice. Polling just drives people further apart and makes them say silly things (like "MEDRS is only about medical advice"). It actively encourages minimal thought and minimal engagement and discourages consensus seeking.

Why has Covid editing developed this mindset where every disagreement ends up with an RFC? Perhaps some mediation could help parties, many of whom are inexperienced yet highly opinionated, to learn how to collaborate in good faith and work towards a consensus. I have no idea, though, who would volunteer for that. As I mentioned before, I'm actually quite keen on the idea of a Six Month Topic Ban for the Entire Wikipedia Community on anything related to the origins of Covid-19, broadly construed. -- Colin° ^Talk 15:40, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Two thoughts:

• I advise against having any more RFCs about the lab leak question.
• If you (any of you) do not take my advice, then please go to Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment and ask for help in writing a functional question.

The best-case scenario is that we stop trying to write pandemic-related articles by RFC, but if we're going to keep doing this, then let's have questions that get the answers we're looking for.

(Colin, editors got into this habit because they – and by "they", I mean "mostly one person" – wanted to settle some basic questions very quickly and apply the results consistently across all relevant articles. Most new editors have no idea how the RFC process worked for the previous 16 years, so they would have no reason to think the last year's activity is anything other than normal.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 15:54, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@ Colin: it's difficult to disagree with a 20-year veteran editor, but pandemics like these only happen once every 100 years or so, so we are all on equal footing here. It is unprecedented that a government would restrict an epidemiological investigation of a disease outbreak on its soil, and we have to figure out how to cover it here. If the WP:MEDRS policy continues to be used as a means to censor content, then it is inevitable that an RFC will be properly formulated in the right venue, and if Arbcom bans someone for doing that, they will be able to appeal to Jimmy [59]. To be clear, that’s not what I want, and I hope we can find an amicable way to close this RFC. CutePeach ( talk) 15:01, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Sounds a bit like "nice WP:PAGs you've got there Colin, would be a shame if ... something happened to them". It's an oft-repeated canard that WP:MEDRS is being used to "censor" ( good grief) lab leak content, for which many non- WP:MEDRS sources are, in reality, cited on Wikipedia; rather, what I mostly see is MEDRS being a necessary quality control measure to stop people using shitty sources to advance fringe theories, like essays by contrarians in fringe biomedical journals. If any editor is misapplying WP:MEDRS, well, the way is simple: take the evidence to WP:AE and that editor can expect to be in a lot of trouble. Alexbrn ( talk) 15:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, I can only repeat WAID's advice against you or anyone else creating another RFC to settle the lab leak question. Using polarising battleground language, such as repeatedly complaining your fellow editors are censoring your views, is certainly a good way to earn a permanent topic ban. -- Colin° ^Talk 17:23, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

> It is unprecedented that a government would restrict an epidemiological investigation of a disease outbreak on its soil,

/me concludes that CutePeach is about 30 years old. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:46, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Colin, I have made you aware that this RFC was filed by the OP following bad advice given to them in an ANI filed against me. I have also made you aware that I reached out to the OP of this RFC requesting help with formulating an RFC that would have better addressed this issue in the right venue, which I detailed above just one day after this RFC was posted. I hereby make you aware that if this RFC isn’t closed to the satisfaction of the majority of the participants here, I will file a new RFC to clarify the application of WP:MEDRS to COVID-19 origins, particularly in covering aspects of origins where we don’t have any MEDRSs, due in part - or in whole - to the censorship policies of the Chinese government. I fully agree with you that this RFC or a new RFC should not be necessary, but I just before saw a revert of an edit citing a RS [60], demonstrating that the application of MEDRS to this topic area remains ambiguous for some editors. If I somehow end up getting banned by Arbcom for seeking this clarification, then I will appeal it to Jimbo Wales, as per WP:JWAPPEAL. Again, I do not want to have to do this, and I am positive about the increase in collaborative editing that we are now seeing in this topic area.

WhatsamIdoing I will be 36 this July 28. Your point about the Soviet Union, on which I stand corrected, only strengthens the point I made to you, which you came to my talk page to receive [61] and should be noted to the closer of this RFC as follows: if a government were to restrict contact tracing from a WHO convened epidemiological investigation, then it would possibly be considered by RSs to be compromised, and we on Wikipedia wouldn’t apply the MEDRS standard for every aspect of our coverage of the controversy.

Alexbrn, I heard you the first two times. You will take me to WP:AE with "evidence" of me opposing your WP:OPINIONS and countering your WP:POVSOURCING and then I will be summarily banned and shamed. Whateves. 🙄 CutePeach ( talk) 11:34, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

You misunderstand. The way is open for you to take any editor who is mis-applying MEDRS to AE. This is a direct route for you to take to fix the "censorship" you say is happening: show them your evidence, and uninvolved administrators will act. Alexbrn ( talk) 12:02, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure why I'm getting some kind of legalistic "I hereby make you aware" lecture. I'm not an admin. I'm not sure how you'd determine if this is "closed to the satisfaction of the majority of the participants here" (An RFC on whether the RFC was closed correctly?) I suspect the sort of battleground language you are using is putting any sane editor off being the one to close it. The resolution of edits made to covid articles requires discussion towards agreement among editors proposing or opposing changes. Almost anything related to the origin of covid is a complex mix of plain news reporting, investigative journalism, politics, science, etc. It entirely depends on what you are saying what kind of source you need, and editors may need more than one source (on the talk page) to convince others about WP:WEIGHT. Simply asking the community or Jimbo what kind of source you need to edit an article about the origins of covid is wrongheaded. Please stop with the threats to escalate this and start working on how you can de-escalate things with your fell editors. -- Colin° ^Talk 13:43, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

• I was pinged to see if I was watching. I am, but I can not take admistrative action here. For my opinions on the issue, see my comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:China COVID-19 cover-up. . . DGG ( talk ) 00:26, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Please stop repeating this claim

"MEDRS is about medical information not non-medical information."

"The reason why we have an exceptionally tight MEDRS standard is specifically because editors were worried that bad medical information would lead readers to harm."

"Stop trying to push WP:MEDRS beyond its legitimate boundaries. Where the viruses/bacteria come from won't influence the ways humans are treated much."

"My understanding is that MEDRS exists due to the outsized risk of harm (i.e. actual, physical hazards to people's health) that arise from Wikipedia being used as a reference for treatment of disease."

"I think we need to go back to the rationale behind MEDRS - that some people get their medical information from Wikipedia, and giving bad information on things like symptoms, and more importantly bad information on treatments, can cause real harm to human health."`

If you have a problem with the current wording of MEDRS ("Biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge"), go to that policy's talk page and propose that it be changed to only apply to treatment of disease.

But first review Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)/Archive 21#RfC: What claims are governed by WP:MEDRS?. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 02:47, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I notice that someone removed the purpose of MEDRS. All policies, guidelines etc. have a purpose, otherwise they wouldn't be in place. If you don't think that Wikipedia should prevent people from getting false medical information in its articles, what is the purpose of MEDRS? Surely RS is adequate for the topic, just as it is with other natural sciences, social sciences, history, the humanities and current events.

The reason editor mentioned the wording was that your interpretation of MEDRS exceeds the scope that was envisioned when it was created.

TFD ( talk) 04:50, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

( edit conflict) The purpose of MEDRS is to identify reliable sources for biomedical information anywhere on Wikipedia.

What various Wikipedia policies and guidelines were when they were created is certainly interesting, but acting as if they never evolve or that we must follow the 2006 rules is a bit silly. The important thing is what the policy is now. If anyone doesn't like what the policy is now they should try to change it. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 08:50, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Nobody has removed "the purpose of MEDRS". To avoid forking the discussion, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#What is MEDRS for?. Wrt to the RFC Guy Macon links, MastCell noted how unlikely it was to have a serious discussion while in the middle of a fight. I would encourage all editors to stop trying expand, shrink or redefine the scope of MEDRS in order to get their way wrt the origin of covid. Nearly everyone doing that is oversimplifying things, and has covid blinkers on, so aren't really thinking through what it means for the rest of the project. -- Colin° ^Talk 08:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. But pretending that the scope of MEDRS has changed in order to get their way wrt the origin of covid is even worse that trying to change it. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 08:50, 27 June 2021 (UTC).