User talk:Biologos

Welcome ;^)

SupaSoldier has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Welcome to Wikipedia! If you have any questions feel free to ask me or an admin! SupaSoldier 19:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Science_collaboration_of_the_week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Beer/WikiProject_Beer_collaboration

Anthocyanin

Category:Anthocyanins is a sub-category to Category:pH indicators. Hence, the article should not be in Category:pH indicators. Nirmos (talk) 06:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC) True. Sorry.--Biologos (talk) 16:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Human papillomavirus edit

Please have a look at this.Richiez (talk) 13:49, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Rollback

I have granted rollback rights to your account. After a review of some of your contributions, I believe you can be trusted to use rollback for its intended usage of reverting vandalism, and that you will not abuse it by reverting good-faith edits or to revert-war. For information on rollback, see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback and Wikipedia:Rollback feature. If you do not want rollback, just let me know and I will remove it. Good luck and thanks. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback deployment

Hey Biologos; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Your interest in 454 Life Sciences

Hi Biologos, do you plan on making the article notable now? If not, you should make your opinion known at at WP:Afd, IMO.--GrapedApe (talk) 11:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the note. I will try with what we have right now. By the way, there's even more to delete: Have you seen Roche Applied Science and Roche Diagnostics? ;o) --Biologos (talk) 16:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 re-enabled

Hey Biologos :). Just a note that the Article Feedback Tool, Version 5 has now been re-enabled. Let us know on the talkpage if you spot any bugs. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thalidomide

Biologos,

With regard to your edit to Thalidomide,

WP:MEDMOS says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MEDMOS#Drugs.2C_medications_and_devices Try to avoid cloning drug formularies such as the BNF and online resources like RxList and Drugs.com. Extract the pertinent information rather than just dumping low-level facts in a big list. For example, a long list of side effects is largely useless without some idea of which are common or serious. It can be illuminating to compare the drug with others in its class, or with older and newer drugs.

My reading of that is that Wikipedia should only list significant side effects that are pertinent because they are common or serious. For example, with doxorubicin the dose-limiting adverse effect is cardiomypathy. That's pertinent, because it shapes the appropriate use and limitations of the drug. For example, with thalidomide, painful neuropathy is pertinent because it's a dose-limiting adverse effect. Dry skin isn't a dose-limiting adverse effect. Stevens-Johnson syndrome is pertinent, even if it's rare, because it's life threatening. Pruritis isn't life-threatening.

Copying a big list side effects from the FDA labeling is dumping low-level facts.

For example, here's a selective list of adverse effects: http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/lookup.cfm?setid=2eda833b-1357-4ed4-a093-194524fcb061#nlm34084-4

Wikipedia is written for the average person, not the expert, and Wikipedia is not an instruction manual for the practice of medicine. There's no purpose to listing rare and very rare non-serious side effects. It obscures the significant adverse effects. You have a long list of rare and minor side effects, with Stevens-Johnson syndrome buried towards the end.

I can't even verify where you got the "Rare" and "Very rare" adverse effects. In the sources you linked to, they just give the number of cases in the treatment and control group -- but they don't give the statistical significance. As I recall from similar calculations, they would need several thousand randomized subjects to identify an adverse effect with an incidence of 1/1,000 at p≤.05. Those adverse effects aren't statistically significant.

I would limit the adverse effects to the nih.gov list above. That was written by a scientist who understands the significance of adverse effects. Those long lists of adverse effects in the treatment group are just copied mindlessly from the clinical reports.

Nobody should be using Wikipedia to find out whether they or their patients are getting rare side effects from thalidomide. That's the practice of medicine which Wikipedia doesn't do. They should go to the package insert and to medical professionals. We're educating people. We filter what's important. Common and serious adverse effects are important. --Nbauman (talk) 20:37, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nbauman, thank you for your message. I will write more later. Maybe we can work something out that doesn't delete all content and gives even more value than the present version.--Biologos (talk) 16:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Here we go, with quotes from your message in italics:

WP:MEDMOS says: 'Try to avoid cloning drug formularies such as the BNF and online resources like RxList and Drugs.com. Extract the pertinent information rather than just dumping low-level facts in a big list. For example, a long list of side effects is largely useless without some idea of which are common or serious. It can be illuminating to compare the drug with others in its class, or with older and newer drugs.' My reading of that is that Wikipedia should only list significant side effects that are pertinent because they are common or serious.

That’s not how I understand that passage. To me this says that when listing lots of information (like side effects) it makes sense to give an indication of which of those pieces of information are particularly important. It does not say that we should keep certain information from the reader.

Wikipedia is written for the average person, not the expert, and Wikipedia is not an instruction manual for the practice of medicine. There's no purpose to listing rare and very rare non-serious side effects. It obscures the significant adverse effects.

Wikipedia is not an instruction manual for the practice of medicine or anything else, but - importantly - Wikipedia is also not giving medical advice. It serves information purposes, so it should be our aim to give as much information as possible that might be useful for any particular audience. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it is directed at readers seeking information, not specifically at patients. Of course, the better this information is organized, the better the readability for the individual reader.

I can't even verify where you got the "Rare" and "Very rare" adverse effects. In the sources you linked to, they just give the number of cases in the treatment and control group -- but they don't give the statistical significance.

First, I did not link the sources, I just reverted your deletion because I was not convinced by your explanation. Second, the source for the Rare and Very rare effects seems to be reference no. 10, a Product Information from Celgene, Australia.

I would limit the adverse effects to the nih.gov list above. That was written by a scientist who understands the significance of adverse effects. Those long lists of adverse effects in the treatment group are just copied mindlessly from the clinical reports.

This list is not written by someone at the NIH, but actually also a Product Information from Celgene. The side effects listed at the start of the passage are the ones mentioned also elsewhere in the Product Information, mostly in the Warnings section. This is not necessarily identical with the most serious/important side effects! One indication for the most serious side effects is what side effects are listed first in the Patient Information Leaflet (PIL). At least the European regulations require the most serious side effects to be „listed prominently first“ in the PIL, e.g. here for Thalidomide: http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/EPAR_-_Product_Information/human/000823/WC500037050.pdf p. 34.

Nobody should be using Wikipedia to find out whether they or their patients are getting rare side effects from thalidomide. That's the practice of medicine which Wikipedia doesn't do. They should go to the package insert and to medical professionals. We're educating people. We filter what's important.

I don’t agree. Let’s try to judge what’s important and organize/write the content according to this. Let’s not try to do the jobs of medical professionals who decide what information the patients need and what information they do not need/should not receive.

So in conclusion I suggest to leave the adverse effects listing as it is now, but a section could be added listing the most serious side effects, for instance as mentioned in the PIL I linked to. Cheers, --Biologos (talk) 09:21, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Let me approach it this way.

You added "Confusion" to Thalidomide as a very rare side effect that may affect ≤1/10,000 people. What is your WP:MEDMOS reliable source for that addition? Are you using secondary sources or primary sources?

What is the confidence interval and P value of that ≤1/10,000 number? --Nbauman (talk) 23:27, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Please remember that I did not add any adverse effects; I reverted your deletion of adverse effects, because your explanation was not convincing. The "Adverse Effects" section is sourced with four references, currently # 7-10. "Confusion" is mentioned as a very rare side effect in reference #10 (Australian Product Information (PI), I already mentioned it above: https://www.ebs.tga.gov.au/ebs/picmi/picmirepository.nsf/pdf?OpenAgent&id=CP-2010-PI-03581-3 ). Product Information texts are secondary sources using information from primary sources (clinical trials, PSURs etc.). Frequency information of adverse effects is always estimated using the best data sources available, it is not required and/or customary to state confidence intervals and p values. A totally unrelated reason for not using p values and such here is that this is not the place for Original Research. Cheers,--Biologos (talk) 09:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Is that Thalomid product information text a secondary source? From what published primary sources did it get its information on confusion? --Nbauman (talk) 19:38, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Are you saying that Product Information texts (which have to be reviewed and approved by the regulatory authorities of the respective country) are not reliable sources as per WP:SOURCE and should not be used for articles on drugs?--Biologos (talk) 16:08, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. I am saying that they are not reliable sources as per WP:SOURCE. They are primary sources and not secondary sources. If you read further down on WP:SOURCE, you will see, "Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources." Product Information texts are primary sources. The rare adverse events you restored are tallies of adverse event reports, with no analysis or assessments. They're not even tested for statistical significance.

Primary sources like regulatory drug labels may be used for some purposes, if we have a consensus. But we don't have a consensus to use the detailed lists of adverse effects. --Nbauman (talk) 17:45, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

We should copy this to the Discussion page of the article and continue there and/or see what others think. This might also give a better idea of whether there is a consensus. Do you agree? Regarding the use of regulatory drug labels as reliable sources in general - we cannot be the first ones discussing this. How has this been dealt with before? --Biologos (talk) 08:41, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I had to leave this interesting conversation because of the demands of work. But you are right, this should be discussed in the MEDMOS talk pages, I think. Meanwhile, here's an editorial from The BMJ that authoritatively makes the point I was trying to make:

http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5153 Too much information
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g5153
Published 13 August 2014
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief, The BMJ

they list 20 symptoms most commonly reported in the previous seven days, such as back pain, fatigue, and headache. Nine of these are listed in more than half of the drug information documents they reviewed, and eight are listed as an adverse reaction to more than 90% of the drugs they looked at.

The authors fear that so many possible harms will deter patients from starting or continuing treatments, or might raise negative expectations and increase rates of reporting of adverse events (the nocebo effect). At the very least, they say, organisations providing information should document the levels of evidence that link the adverse effect with the drug, and where possible provide numerical estimates of risk. They also say that greater reliance should be placed on randomised rather than observational data, except where adverse events are serious or rare. This apparently uncontroversial suggestion will, I have no doubt, raise hackles among those who question the ability of randomised trials to properly report adverse events.

More controversially still, they suggest that clinicians should “contextualise” the information they provide to patients, toning down discussion of common non-specific symptoms to reduce the nocebo effect.

--Nbauman (talk) 05:37, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Nbauman, thank you for this. I also have not done anything in Wikipedia in the last few months because of work and just different priorities. I will try to keep an eye on this, though, and will not forget what you wrote. Cheers,--Biologos (talk) 16:18, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

cell disruption

Hello. It may interest you that someone called tenofalltrades seems determined to completely delete the "cell disruption" page, to which you previously contributed (you asked me for better refs). Over a 11 minute period in March they deleted ~22,500 words (virtually the entire page), and made no attempt to rebuild the page. Of course, the page was imperfect but I think it was still a useful compendium of information. Now it's pretty much gone.

I've tried to communicate with this person, and then reversed their changes, an effort that has now itself been reversed. I don't have the wiki experience (or the time) to deal with this anymore. So I'm writing to you and several other contributors in case others feel like preserving the page. Thanks a lot — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liamloftus (talk • contribs) 14:54, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Mitochondrial fusion

I might not be clear from the diff, but the citation wasn't deleted, it appears twice, so it's been consolidated to only appear one in the reference section. Before the chunk of text that was removed, you can see that <ref name=":0"> is now <ref name=":0"/> (note the / at the end of the ref tag). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:36, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks and sorry.--Biologos (talk) 13:46, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Biologos. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Biologos. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Biologos. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:33, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

"Powerhouse of the Cell" Origins

I believe you were the first person to attribute the saying "powerhouse of the cell" to Phillip Siekevitz on the Mitochondrion page. I've been looking into the origins of the phrase, and it far predates this. Did you have a source for this somewhere else online or did you realise this yourself? Thanks, (sorry for bad formatting this is my first post) -- Wooly Cow (talk) 02:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)