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[ { "answer_id": 529, "author": "Lucky", "author_id": 613, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/613", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this is the right place and that the moderators are the ones who can fix it. Alternatively you could go via \"contact us\" link (written in brownish letters near the bottom of the page, just above the list of other SE sites).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 530, "author": "michaelpri", "author_id": 26, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/status-completed\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-completed&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-completed</a></p>\n\n<p>The typos are now fixed. Thanks :)</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Now to answer your other questions:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>You have reported them correctly, here on Health Meta.</p></li>\n<li><p>You don't even have to give a screenshot. Just saying what the typos are and what they should be should suffice.</p></li>\n<li><p>The site moderators cannot edit that page of the help center, so we report to someone from the SE staff who can fix it.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2803/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 543, "author": "Dave Liu", "author_id": 140, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/140", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>No! :) On our site, I think it's good to encourage unanswered questions over bad answers!</strong> Bad as in no legitimate references or incorrect information. That's why our unanswered questions statistic is so high. Think of it as a treasure mine of questions for health experts! However, I agree that deleting too fast is unfair to the contributor who attempts to make an effort. We should guide posters to craft quality content instead of simply shooting them down.</p>\n\n<p><strong>There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics</strong> - Benjamin Disraeli</p>\n\n<p>Remember that people who tend to use stackexchange will probably be <strong>VERY</strong> different from people who conventionally search for medicines and health information! (As possible indication of this, look at the highest-rated question on Health. Spoiler: It's about <em>computer usage</em>.) </p>\n\n<p>What you don't understand is that the community isn't just for people from other stack-exchanges. It's for EVERYONE, which hasn't reached this site yet. If you look at exponential growth, it always seems surprisingly small at first and inconsequential. That's the beauty of virality.</p>\n\n<p>If you went to 20 U.S. Colleges, and introduced this site to the medical students, within a month, our site would probably explode with traffic but that's not the focus right now- or it shouldn't be. <strong>We need to set a precedence.</strong> When things take-off, we can't be loose with \"looks good\" information. Else, it'll set a trend that perpetuates, and moderators may not be able to catch everything. That's where <em>trend</em> comes into play. If most answers on the site are well-supported with facts, others will view this as a standard and continue the good pattern set! </p>\n\n<p><strong>It's ok</strong> if people get turned off to contributing or don't like the site. <strong>If they left that easily, you can imagine they'd probably fail to put quality-effort into their questions and answers anyways.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Look, Health.SE has areas that it needs work on, like slower deletions. I understand your frustration. Based on your previous questions and attempts to communicate, it's been difficult for you to contribute earnestly, but you've stuck it out, which has helped the site grow. However, bringing your personal feelings into this will make contributing very difficult. Your pre-edited question violated our \"Be Nice\" policy with your toxic sarcasm towards the community as a whole and your negativity doesn't help.</p>\n\n<p>I am, in contrast to you, extremely <strong><em>encouraged</em></strong> when my posts are deleted, down-voted, and flaws exposed! It's a tremendous help and one can learn so much to improve!</p>\n\n<p>Clearly you've made helpful contributions to the site, the only question that remains is whether you will continue to antagonize moderators, or try to adjust to meet the standards and needs of the community. I sincerely hope the latter.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 544, "author": "Count Iblis", "author_id": 856, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/856", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is indeed a problem, answers are not judged correctly here which leads to people not bothering to give answers. Also, it has to be noted that this also means that answers that are judged to be good answers, may not be all that good when judged based on the actual content instead of whether or not it satisfies certain formal criteria.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 711, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Yes, this is a problem</h2>\n\n<p>But I think it is only one visible aspect of a much wider problem.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>We don't have many active high-rep users. Lucky and Carey are the only ones I see around often.</p></li>\n<li><p>Many visitors to this site are newbies and never return - they don't actually accept answers. This is turning people down, presumably. Also, this means that there is no solid base of active users willing to provide good answers.</p></li>\n<li><p>Most questions are uninteresting.\nTo me it feels like every second question I face is about personal diagnosis, or at least comes very close. The other half is about dietary recommendations, and I'm not really into food science. Therefore, there are not many questions I'm willing to write an answer on. Additionally, only high-rep users can close a question or accept edits, and as there are not many of them, this also takes ages.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<h2>Solutions</h2>\n\n<p>Maybe it's time for <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/712/could-we-request-mods-to-step-down\">more active moderators?</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/538", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 541, "author": "Pobrecita", "author_id": 167, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/167", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong><em>It depends on how bad the answer really is.</em></strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If its link only or very, ridiculously small and not helpful then that may call for removal. The same thing for posts with bad advice. I would suggest a comment though first so that the user knows why and how to improve. </p></li>\n<li><p>If you consider a answer to be bad then I usually take it as my job as a concerned site member to triage it and find out whether it needs improvement or it can just go.</p></li>\n<li><p>If the post answers the questions and has some good research in it. Anything to be a saving grace, then it should be kept. A downvote and a comment explaining why and improvement should be dispensed.</p></li>\n<li><p>So yes, some bad answers can stay and are better than no answer at all. But only if they have potential. This site is trying to get sound advice, bad answers = bad site = less traffic = no site. So tough love has to be given and to even the solid users they need to be shown the ropes, as well. As a user that has just picked up more activity, I am learning the ropes as well. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong><em>In the Help Center I think it says that we make the site that we want. That said we have the option to crack down on them:</em></strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Downvote their answer and explain why. All of the downvotes I give I usually give a comment with it explaining improvement. Once the improvement is done I remove the downvote and move on. On other sites I have been on I quote the help center and scope at the offender to help them and show them the error. Downvotes just make some people angry and cause them to leave the site. That is why I usually leave a comment and downvote later if they haven't gotten the message.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 542, "author": "Dave Liu", "author_id": 140, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/140", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>\"Bad\" is very general. In this case though, I think it's important to address the fundamental problem, which is laziness. Repeating what others have said, this site is health- it's a serious topic. It's not for hand-wavy logic and guesses or mumbled rumors.</p>\n\n<p><strong>We generally should not accept laziness, but as a beta community, we should still be patient with posters.</strong></p>\n\n<p>If some people get discouraged from questions and answers being difficult, then it's fine. Easy questions have google. People should welcome adversity to their answers on this site, as in true science: theories, studies, and information constantly challenged and improved. There are tons of things that we just don't have enough studies to prove, and that's simply something people need to accept.</p>\n\n<p>If we're not sure, then we MUST have sources. We need to see legitimate proof of what is said. This is the part that troubles people. They want to post what seems to be an easy answer, but in fact, who knows how complex it could be? In health, there are often mysteries that we're continuing to unravel, and what seems to be may not be so. People need to realize that we just don't have all the answers, so the ones that do exist need to be substantiated with acceptable evidence.</p>\n\n<p><strong>If we think an answer is 100% correct... we STILL NEED SOURCES</strong>. \"Sounds good\" logic introduces bias. We should be wary of and try to fight against this consistently. Even in hospitals, (as much as you'd hate to hear this), doctors can and will make mistakes. Humans are fallible and require a system of accountability. E.g. - (<a href=\"http://qz.com/617173/childhood-obesity-is-linked-to-one-of-the-healthiest-foods-pregnant-women-can-eat/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://qz.com/617173/childhood-obesity-is-linked-to-one-of-the-healthiest-foods-pregnant-women-can-eat/</a>) which is about (<a href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2491661\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2491661</a>)</p>\n\n<p>Look, even WITH sources, answers might still be wrong! But sources provide a basis on which to evaluate them. </p>\n\n<p>Yes, yes, but who the hell has time for all of that? Our community should. Again, we are <strong>HEALTH</strong>.se. We need to hold ourselves to a strict standard if we genuinely want to help others and make a difference here.</p>\n\n<p>Now, with all that being said, I mostly agree with januarium's suggested policies. </p>\n\n<p>We're still in beta, so <strong>we need to be patient</strong> with all users. We should <strong>first leave comments, pointing out the problems with their answer</strong>, then come the down-votes if the OP fails to fix their post after some period of time. Finally comes flagging and deletion.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 545, "author": "Count Iblis", "author_id": 856, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/856", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The main problem as I see it is that the rules by which we judge answers isn't going to work well. When considering a scientific paper for publication it is justified to demand that every nontrivial statement be backed up rigorously and therefore it is necessary to have a rigorous peer review system to evaluate scientific papers. However, on this site, there is no peer review system before publication, there is only going to be review after an answer is posted. Also we won't do any research as rigorously as when writing for a scientific journals. This means that there should be far more tolerance toward having fundamental discussions about the content of answers posted here.</p>\n\n<p>Posting an answer here is analogous to having a well motivated argument in a scientific discussion, there likely will be some points in it that need to be ironed out before it becomes rigorous enough to include in a peer reviewed article. At least that's the case on all the other StackExchange sites except here, and that's why things are not working well here.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/539", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/169/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 556, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Nutrition questions that have a <em>direct</em> impact on a persons health or health situation can be on topic, much as nutrition questions on Fitness.SE are on topic if they are directly related to their impact on a fitness/weight management program.</p>\n\n<p>However, such questions as the above are not really health related in my opinion, as they are not really related to a health condition or problem being experienced, it's an academic food question.</p>\n\n<p>I would need to go through the questions tagged with nutrition, but I would suspect that at least a portion of them should be closed for that reason, and others are inappropriately tagged.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 557, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here are the top 10 tags:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Tag, No. of Questions, Unanswered %</strong></p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Nutrition 198, 30%</li>\n<li>Diet 110, 35%</li>\n<li>Dermatology, 83, 39%</li>\n<li>Medications, 82, 30%</li>\n<li>Sleep, 71, 32%</li>\n<li>Dentistry, 59, 37%</li>\n<li>Pain, 49, 22%</li>\n<li>Side-effects, 49, %18</li>\n<li>Eye, 46, 34%</li>\n<li>Cancer, 42, 31%</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As you can see, the Nutrition tag has the highest question count and Diet is a close second. They're largely synonyms so combining them yields 308, which is higher than the total of the next four tags combined. Surprisingly, the unanswered percentage doesn't change much among the top 10 (except Pain and Side-effects, which I suspect is because they are more often added to concrete questions with other tags).</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, that's the end of objective facts I can muster from the stats available to me. What I see subjectively is that a very large percentage of nutrition and diet questions are what I would label frivolous or even downright silly. I vote to close questions almost daily along the lines of \"Which is better: A or B?\" where A and B are largely irrelevant things, often based on superstition or cultural practices that amount to <em>old wive's tales</em>. In fact, the huge number of such questions has surprised me. I had no idea how many people think that drinking liquids before, during or after a meal will have profound effects on your health, or that such questions have even been studied extensively. Quite often no one has bothered studying them at all so scientific answers aren't possible. (If I could answer with what I consider to be common sense, the answered percentage would quickly approach 100%.)</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, I consider the OP's example to be a question where common sense is the answer. Vitamin C, for example, is water soluble so cooking potatoes in water is bound to remove vitamin C, and that effect will increase with cooking time (which the supporting article states). The problem is, can I find scientific support for that answer? No, probably not, or at least not directly. I can probably dig into chemistry or biology research to show the general effect, but boiling potatoes specifically? Not likely. I doubt that anyone has done a definitive study that would yield a cooking time/vitamin retention curve for boiled potatoes. They haven't done that study because the answer is unlikely to have an impact on culinary practices or contribute to future research.</p>\n\n<p>Those questions also attract alternative medicine trolls like flies to dead stuff. Asking nutrition questions is a sure-fire way to get long-winded diatribes from brand new users telling us how eating only this or that type of food will change our lives like winning the lotto, and failing to do so will put us in the grave by next week.</p>\n\n<p>And therein lies the problem with nutrition questions. The signal-to-noise ratio with such questions is very low. It's so low that I would consider dropping the tag entirely. In general, I agree with the requirements specified by JohnP in his answer. For example, the potato-vitamin question would be on-topic if it was asking if boiling potatoes directly affected a specific health concern rather than just the generality of vitamin retention of certain cooking methods. That's a cooking question, but it's not even welcome on cooking.SE for pretty much the same reasons.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 558, "author": "Count Iblis", "author_id": 856, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/856", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It should be on topic, there are high quality peer reviewed journals devoted to nutrition, e.g. <a href=\"http://ajcn.nutrition.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition</a>. Some questions may yet have to be answered by scientists, but you'll be surprised about the many questions that have already been answered using rigorous research. E.g. the fact that calcium in spinach is not going to be absorbed as well as calcium from kale (which had been theorized on the grounds that oxalates in spinach should interfere with calcium absorbtion) has been confirmed in experiments involving growing kale and spinach with different isotope ratios of calcium compared to the natural environment. By measuring the isotopes of calcium in the urine and blood of volunteers who eat that kale or spinach one can measure how much of the calcium they absorb.</p>\n\n<p>Now nutrition can be argued to not be directly health related. I believe that this attitude taken by the medical profession has led to the obesity epidemic. Not enough research has been done in the last century or so, nutrition was traditionally treated as something trivial, but it's a highly non-trivial subject. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/555", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 556, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Nutrition questions that have a <em>direct</em> impact on a persons health or health situation can be on topic, much as nutrition questions on Fitness.SE are on topic if they are directly related to their impact on a fitness/weight management program.</p>\n\n<p>However, such questions as the above are not really health related in my opinion, as they are not really related to a health condition or problem being experienced, it's an academic food question.</p>\n\n<p>I would need to go through the questions tagged with nutrition, but I would suspect that at least a portion of them should be closed for that reason, and others are inappropriately tagged.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 557, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here are the top 10 tags:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Tag, No. of Questions, Unanswered %</strong></p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Nutrition 198, 30%</li>\n<li>Diet 110, 35%</li>\n<li>Dermatology, 83, 39%</li>\n<li>Medications, 82, 30%</li>\n<li>Sleep, 71, 32%</li>\n<li>Dentistry, 59, 37%</li>\n<li>Pain, 49, 22%</li>\n<li>Side-effects, 49, %18</li>\n<li>Eye, 46, 34%</li>\n<li>Cancer, 42, 31%</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As you can see, the Nutrition tag has the highest question count and Diet is a close second. They're largely synonyms so combining them yields 308, which is higher than the total of the next four tags combined. Surprisingly, the unanswered percentage doesn't change much among the top 10 (except Pain and Side-effects, which I suspect is because they are more often added to concrete questions with other tags).</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, that's the end of objective facts I can muster from the stats available to me. What I see subjectively is that a very large percentage of nutrition and diet questions are what I would label frivolous or even downright silly. I vote to close questions almost daily along the lines of \"Which is better: A or B?\" where A and B are largely irrelevant things, often based on superstition or cultural practices that amount to <em>old wive's tales</em>. In fact, the huge number of such questions has surprised me. I had no idea how many people think that drinking liquids before, during or after a meal will have profound effects on your health, or that such questions have even been studied extensively. Quite often no one has bothered studying them at all so scientific answers aren't possible. (If I could answer with what I consider to be common sense, the answered percentage would quickly approach 100%.)</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, I consider the OP's example to be a question where common sense is the answer. Vitamin C, for example, is water soluble so cooking potatoes in water is bound to remove vitamin C, and that effect will increase with cooking time (which the supporting article states). The problem is, can I find scientific support for that answer? No, probably not, or at least not directly. I can probably dig into chemistry or biology research to show the general effect, but boiling potatoes specifically? Not likely. I doubt that anyone has done a definitive study that would yield a cooking time/vitamin retention curve for boiled potatoes. They haven't done that study because the answer is unlikely to have an impact on culinary practices or contribute to future research.</p>\n\n<p>Those questions also attract alternative medicine trolls like flies to dead stuff. Asking nutrition questions is a sure-fire way to get long-winded diatribes from brand new users telling us how eating only this or that type of food will change our lives like winning the lotto, and failing to do so will put us in the grave by next week.</p>\n\n<p>And therein lies the problem with nutrition questions. The signal-to-noise ratio with such questions is very low. It's so low that I would consider dropping the tag entirely. In general, I agree with the requirements specified by JohnP in his answer. For example, the potato-vitamin question would be on-topic if it was asking if boiling potatoes directly affected a specific health concern rather than just the generality of vitamin retention of certain cooking methods. That's a cooking question, but it's not even welcome on cooking.SE for pretty much the same reasons.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 558, "author": "Count Iblis", "author_id": 856, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/856", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It should be on topic, there are high quality peer reviewed journals devoted to nutrition, e.g. <a href=\"http://ajcn.nutrition.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition</a>. Some questions may yet have to be answered by scientists, but you'll be surprised about the many questions that have already been answered using rigorous research. E.g. the fact that calcium in spinach is not going to be absorbed as well as calcium from kale (which had been theorized on the grounds that oxalates in spinach should interfere with calcium absorbtion) has been confirmed in experiments involving growing kale and spinach with different isotope ratios of calcium compared to the natural environment. By measuring the isotopes of calcium in the urine and blood of volunteers who eat that kale or spinach one can measure how much of the calcium they absorb.</p>\n\n<p>Now nutrition can be argued to not be directly health related. I believe that this attitude taken by the medical profession has led to the obesity epidemic. Not enough research has been done in the last century or so, nutrition was traditionally treated as something trivial, but it's a highly non-trivial subject. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/566", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 882, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I believe the answer should be no. There are far too many poor quality questions being asked and it would create a huge burden on high reputation users to pan for gold from these questions.</p>\n\n<p>The questions are poor because the users are poorly educated in the health sciences. These are not the users we want to attract as we are looking to create a professional level site for Q&amp;A, and the questions they ask are not suited to this aim. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 884, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer should be: it depends. </p>\n\n<p>If a question is borderline off-topic or a trivial or easy edit might salvage it, then we should try this in most circumstances. As long as the general gist provided by the OP is preserved we should not exclude this possibility.</p>\n\n<p>But it is of course far more preferable to follow standard procedure and put every such question on hold, give the proper feedback to the OP and see if an edit by the OP improves the question sufficiently. This is in the current situation with too many bad questions and too few potential answers pretty much the only way possible. If a user struggles with honest effort to reframe and/or rephrase such a question and the effort is visible by factual improvements, then our motivation and willingness for an edit should also improve greatly along with our ability to do so.</p>\n\n<p>If questions are from the total beyond, then this approach cannot apply.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/579", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 584, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question claims that a high libido might be an addiction (disease), and is asking how that might affect someone's relationships. So, this might come under the on topic category</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The ways that diseases and injuries affect people</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Certainly there's marriage research to suggest mismatched libido is a cause of marital discord and breakup, but it might more properly come under health psychology. Certainly a GP might be asked something like this, and if mathematics is what mathematicians do, and health is what doctors concern themselves with, then it would be on topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 588, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think the question has fundamentally changed. The OP says he can't find any research on the subject and then asks if any exists. So, basically, it's a \"<em>do my research for me</em>\" question, which I consider off-topic on virtually all SE forums. </p>\n\n<p>The trouble with such questions is it's impossible to prove that no research on a subject exists, so the question can only be answered by actually doing a literature search and coming up with positive results. That's not a useful question; it's just a reassignment of work.</p>\n\n<p>I think such questions should be closed here for lack of research as they are on many other SE forums. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/583", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/165/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 595, "author": "Pobrecita", "author_id": 167, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/167", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First off arguing is not allowed probably because it's arguing. Arguing has negative connotations and usually involves some negative confrontation, things we don't want or need on this site. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment\">Help Center:</a> </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Criticisms which do not add anything constructive (\"-1, see previous\n comments you scallywag!\"); instead, down-vote (and provide or up-vote\n a better answer if appropriate); Secondary discussion or debating a\n controversial point; please use chat instead;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Second of all, the arguing depending on how heated would fill the comments blocking others and probably lack in usefulness after the first few rounds. Due to the \"I said, you said\" effect, just useless back and forth. </p>\n\n<p>However, would a discussion be useful? Maybe. I think some discussions are helpful for a site such as this, but the fact that a lot of arguments start from discussions is not encouraging. Or that discussions tend to stray from the point and fill the page. </p>\n\n<p>I think it would be better like mentioned in the comments to link the discussion to the comments or leave them for a short while if it is deemed important and their respectful and not argumentative. However, allowing arguments on other SE's doesn't mean we should allow them. Arguing isn't a positive behaviur and in other sites when it turns really negative and people get banned they get upset. Well, the no arguing rule was made to protect people from themselves. Just because other sites break them doesn't mean we should. This site has other issues beside arguing at the moment, let's not add them please. </p>\n\n<p>But going back to your point, deleted comments do actually hold a lot of info so deleting them sometimes isn't the best action. Maybe having the option to minimize a discussion with a message of why it was minimized would be helpful. But right now that is not possible so going to chat and linking the discussion to comments and maybe the comments for a bit would be helpul. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 600, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<ul>\n<li>Visit almost any web forum that allows unlimited debate and you'll see threads that live on for weeks, months, even years, and diverge so far from the original subject as to be unrecognizable. Typically, nobody actually even reads those threads other than the combatants, so they become nothing more than worthless noise. </li>\n<li>The comments here are simple, crude things. They're purely sequential with no threading, so even knowing who is responding to what is difficult if it becomes more than a few comments long.</li>\n<li>Above all, the model of StackExchange is question and answer, not discussion and debate. Good answers are voted up and rise to the top, poor answers are voted down and sink from view. It's a form of natural selection, and as flawed as it can be sometimes no system has ever been found that is superior to natural selection for producing the best results. Allowing arguments in comments would undermine and ultimately destroy that system. People would engage in endless debate and argument instead of voting, which means bad answers could remain on top being argued endlessly while good answers languish unseen.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Just downvote bad answers and post a comment explaining why. If the OP fixes their answer in response to your criticisms, great! Upvote them. If they choose to argue, either take the argument to chat or just ignore them and let your downvote do the talking.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 601, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 99, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/99", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Let's say that we all agree that believing the answer is bad is not enough to write a good answer, then the most important point in the question is: \"<strong>using the chat isn't so convenient for the future readers of the answer</strong>\". </p>\n\n<p>I don't think that \"nobody actually even reads those threads\". There will somebody read it, it's natural to read a couple comments after you finish reading an answer <strong>before</strong> deciding to continue reading them or not. If the answer has some hidden incorrect points in it, those first couple comments will be valuable to point out that. We want the future readers to have the best information, therefore we need to encourage anyone who can point out any incorrect points in that, and we also need to make those points as visible as possible. </p>\n\n<p>I think the solution has already existed by default. After several comments, the system will ask if we want to move to chat. This way, we save the first precious comments pointing out what is might not right in the answer, while removing the noise for someone who don't need to read it. It is different between throwing a link without any clue and throwing a link and explain <strong>why</strong> it is interesting.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 607, "author": "Lucky", "author_id": 613, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/613", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The pointlessness of endless debates in comments and alternative solutions have already been covered by other answers. In comments to your post you've also asked about short arguments, and you've actually picked a good example - the comment exchange was in fact short, but the mods had very good reason to delete it.</p>\n\n<p>In this particular case, I (the writer of the example answer) wrote a paragraph (just the last one) unsupported by references. To make things worse, this was in an area where professionals tend to disagree (not that there is a general lack of professional consensus, but if you ask 3 doctors about it you might end up with 4 different opinions). </p>\n\n<p>The comments:</p>\n\n<p>Another user used a comment to:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Point out that I shouldn't make unreferenced claims (fair enough)</li>\n<li>Make a refuting claim, which conveniently they didn't have to support by references, since the claim was in a comment</li>\n<li>Lash out by using somewhat harsh language (not cool)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, I edited out the disputed part, but used a comment to object to the tone of the previous comment and invite the other user to substantiate their claim. As far as I can remember, this is when the discussion was deleted, and it was a good call for the following reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>These things tend to spiral out of control - an argument isn't an exchange of constructive and well supported arguments anymore, but it takes the other sense of the word - a verbal fight. Deleting the thread of comments immediately puts a stop to it.</p></li>\n<li><p>There was in fact an unsubstantiated claim in the comments. Agree with it or not, but there is a strong policy on references here, and if answering in comments isn't allowed, then letting unsubstantiated claims stand in the comments refuting an answer would be a path to letting people answer in comments, just not comments to the OP but under other people's answers. This would be a terrible practice and ending it before it begins is the right thing to do.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/594", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 597, "author": "Pobrecita", "author_id": 167, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/167", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Stack Exchange doesn't have the PM option as of now and pinging them to enter chat doesn't work all the time if they've never visited chat. </p>\n\n<p>What you could do is comment your concerns on the post and ask them to join you in chat in the comment. Arguing isnt condoned anywhere, but if they join you you could have a conversation in chat about it. Then afterward comment the chat conversation to the post if it's appropriate to. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck on this, if you still think the post is incorrect you can downvote accordingly. Flagging would work, but only if the post fit the criteria.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 598, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>If you believe an answer is incorrect, your best options are:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Downvote the post. That's what the voting system is for.</li>\n<li>Possibly flag - If the answer is so wrong that it could potentially cause harm, flag it for a moderators attention.</li>\n<li>Post a correct answer - This, along with the voting system is the best way to combat incorrect/bad answers. A highly upvoted correct post puts the better information out there.</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 599, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should argue in the comments:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>There is no consensus that (respectfully and constructively) arguing in the comments isn't allowed. <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/594/43\">Why is arguing in comments not allowed?</a></li>\n<li>PM isn't a good option as other readers will not see your objections.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Echoing what Count Iblis said in the comments, we should consider that there is a large gray area between correct and wrong answers, so up or downvoting is going to be too crude a way to deal with problems with some answers.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/596", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3268/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 603, "author": "RockPaperLz- Mask it or Casket", "author_id": 453, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/453", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, make them consistent. Change the <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/probiotic\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;probiotic&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">probiotic</a> tag to <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/probiotics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;probiotics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">probiotics</a> so it is consistent with <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/antibiotics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;antibiotics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">antibiotics</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 604, "author": "Susan", "author_id": 165, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/165", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I created a tag <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/probiotics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;probiotics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">probiotics</a>, merged all of the current <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/probiotic\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;probiotic&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">probiotic</a> questions into it, and created a tag synonym to remap any future <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/probiotic\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;probiotic&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">probiotic</a> questions accordingly. Thank you for pointing this out.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/602", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/453/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 618, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Flag as cross posted, and the moderators will take care of it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 619, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question was different: it is not a cross-site question.</p>\n\n<p>Also, the question was closed (by you, amongst others) on one of the SE site before the other question was posted here. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/617", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5266/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 637, "author": "John", "author_id": 5266, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5266", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm pretty guilty of close-voting without explaining why by your description. I see a lot of the good \"standard responses\" pop up from power-users and occasionally moderators. </p>\n\n<p>I would add a comment if these standard responses could be recorded somewhere for ease of copy-paste. Maybe meta is the place for this?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 638, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I try to leave an explanation if I'm the first vote, but I'm not 100% on that. When I don't it's usually either because I think it's obvious, or it's just a crap question I don't think can be salvaged. And yeah, being in a hurry matters too.</p>\n\n<p>But if I had a couple of stock responses I could provide with those shortcuts you mentioned in comments then I would always leave one. Can those be created by mods?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/636", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/613/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 652, "author": "Atl LED", "author_id": 601, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I just came back to the site after a few month hiatus (which will always be true due to my schedule, and ID Week was hectic this year).</p>\n\n<p>One of the reasons I came back was to show the site to a colleague, who promptly said \"why would I want to jump into that mess\" after looking at the first few questions and the current featured questions.</p>\n\n<p>I think I made my concerns about research known, both in my question and awnser <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/515/revisiting-research-a-reason-to-close\">here</a>. </p>\n\n<p>I certainly can't speak for all physicians, but I can speak about myself and colleagues I have mentioned it to. I am a believer in the Stack Exchange model generically, but even I have a hard time wanting to be involved with this site. I think the biggest deterrent is the low quality question pool (which again I think could be raised by requiring a base level research).</p>\n\n<p>The SE model doesn't work without [health] professionals (way wider than physicians), and I truly haven't been able to argue (after trying) for their participation. I really think the community will have to make a decision between much harsher regulations on question quality and professional involvement.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 657, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here are some factors that I think do not encourage contributions, in no particular order:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>too many unexplained downvotes</li>\n<li>comments tend to be deleted <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/302/43\">too often</a>. It's especially annoying when one tries to discuss with the OP or some answerer to better comprehend something or discuss potential answers. As a result, I avoid writing comments. </li>\n<li>answers tend to be deleted as well. I am OK with that if the answer is obvious garbage, but otherwise I think leaving the users votes or have moderation add warnings (e.g., \"no reference\" warning) is preferable. I personally have all my answers but one deleted one day, even though most (all?) of them had references and had been upvoted, so I simply stopped writing answers.</li>\n<li>questions without any answer, upvote, few comments and less than one visit per day are automatically deleted after a while without any warning, regardless of the quality of the question. I find these automatic deletions to be <a href=\"https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2459/903\">nonsense</a> and a complete disregard to user content, and I understand users who don't want to put effort in writing questions that can disappear overnight.</li>\n<li>There is no way for the user to <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2645/178179\">see all of one's deleted question/answers/comments</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Related: <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/332/43\">Is Health.SE sick?</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 665, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 206, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/206", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I occasionally check in on the site, but to be honest, I'm not an active participant anymore. That I'm still safely one of the Top 20 users of the site is worrisome all its own.</p>\n\n<p>To me, what killed things for me was two-fold:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Extremely poor question pool. I think when I finally walked away for good there were multiple penis enlargement questions on the site. The site is populated with vague, poorly worded questions that don't feel like they're either interesting for me (an epidemiologist) to try to tackle, or likely to have that poster do anything other than go back to their usual community until they have another oddball question. There's no sense that answering grows the community.</li>\n<li><em>The burden of answering</em>. I got a downvote for using \"medical jargon\" like asymptomatic. I spent a bunch of time defending an answer that was \"If X was true, you would see Y, we don't see Y\" without a bunch of citations for not seeing Y (a low priority study if there ever was one). Combined with the poor question pool, and the simultaneous need for expert opinion but demanding said expert opinion doing a literature search for things that are honestly just known pushed it into the \"More trouble than it was worth\" category.</li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/651", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/140/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 652, "author": "Atl LED", "author_id": 601, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I just came back to the site after a few month hiatus (which will always be true due to my schedule, and ID Week was hectic this year).</p>\n\n<p>One of the reasons I came back was to show the site to a colleague, who promptly said \"why would I want to jump into that mess\" after looking at the first few questions and the current featured questions.</p>\n\n<p>I think I made my concerns about research known, both in my question and awnser <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/515/revisiting-research-a-reason-to-close\">here</a>. </p>\n\n<p>I certainly can't speak for all physicians, but I can speak about myself and colleagues I have mentioned it to. I am a believer in the Stack Exchange model generically, but even I have a hard time wanting to be involved with this site. I think the biggest deterrent is the low quality question pool (which again I think could be raised by requiring a base level research).</p>\n\n<p>The SE model doesn't work without [health] professionals (way wider than physicians), and I truly haven't been able to argue (after trying) for their participation. I really think the community will have to make a decision between much harsher regulations on question quality and professional involvement.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 657, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here are some factors that I think do not encourage contributions, in no particular order:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>too many unexplained downvotes</li>\n<li>comments tend to be deleted <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/302/43\">too often</a>. It's especially annoying when one tries to discuss with the OP or some answerer to better comprehend something or discuss potential answers. As a result, I avoid writing comments. </li>\n<li>answers tend to be deleted as well. I am OK with that if the answer is obvious garbage, but otherwise I think leaving the users votes or have moderation add warnings (e.g., \"no reference\" warning) is preferable. I personally have all my answers but one deleted one day, even though most (all?) of them had references and had been upvoted, so I simply stopped writing answers.</li>\n<li>questions without any answer, upvote, few comments and less than one visit per day are automatically deleted after a while without any warning, regardless of the quality of the question. I find these automatic deletions to be <a href=\"https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2459/903\">nonsense</a> and a complete disregard to user content, and I understand users who don't want to put effort in writing questions that can disappear overnight.</li>\n<li>There is no way for the user to <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2645/178179\">see all of one's deleted question/answers/comments</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Related: <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/332/43\">Is Health.SE sick?</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 665, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 206, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/206", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I occasionally check in on the site, but to be honest, I'm not an active participant anymore. That I'm still safely one of the Top 20 users of the site is worrisome all its own.</p>\n\n<p>To me, what killed things for me was two-fold:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Extremely poor question pool. I think when I finally walked away for good there were multiple penis enlargement questions on the site. The site is populated with vague, poorly worded questions that don't feel like they're either interesting for me (an epidemiologist) to try to tackle, or likely to have that poster do anything other than go back to their usual community until they have another oddball question. There's no sense that answering grows the community.</li>\n<li><em>The burden of answering</em>. I got a downvote for using \"medical jargon\" like asymptomatic. I spent a bunch of time defending an answer that was \"If X was true, you would see Y, we don't see Y\" without a bunch of citations for not seeing Y (a low priority study if there ever was one). Combined with the poor question pool, and the simultaneous need for expert opinion but demanding said expert opinion doing a literature search for things that are honestly just known pushed it into the \"More trouble than it was worth\" category.</li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/653", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 660, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think it depends on the ad and the circumstances. In this case, it was a link to a video that was purely an ad for a product. I don't think anybody needed to watch a video to get the idea. A simple description would have sufficed. So the end result is it makes your question seem rather spammy. </p>\n\n<p>It also means if that video is ever deleted, your question will make no sense. Instead of a link to the ad itself, a better link would be a text description of the product, or just your own description.</p>\n\n<p>So I think it's best to link to ads only when they're 1) necessary to understand the question (or answer), and 2) there isn't a better, non-commercial source available. In this case I think it failed test #1.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 662, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think adding the link is necessary, but it certainly doesn't hurt. It's up to the reader to decide whether to see the advertisement. Broken links are always an issue, but as long as the question is self-contained, there's nothing the OP can do about it (aside from mirroring somewhere else), and it's not specific to advertisements.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/659", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/99/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 664, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think that will help because most people don't bother reading anything before they post.</p>\n\n<p>The personal medical questions now completely dominate the group. Today I cast close votes on nearly a dozen of the newest questions, all of which were requests for personal medical advice. Worst of all, they're rarely even true medical problems. Most of them involve crises such as pimples on their ass, how to lose weight, and how much masturbation is too much. </p>\n\n<p>IMO, the real problem is:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Too few people with enough rep to cast close votes. There are very few of us, and we can rarely muster enough votes to close <strong><em>any</em></strong> question. If a mod doesn't step in, even the most egregious questions usually remain open forever, which just leads others to think those questions are perfectly okay, and so it just gets steadily worse. I think requiring 5 close votes no matter how small the group is a serious flaw in SE's model.</p></li>\n<li><p>A lack of attention from those who can cast close votes. It's pretty common for me to find that the question I just voted to close has an answer from someone who should know better.</p></li>\n<li><p>Too few mods with too little time. Flags that would get acted on within minutes in other groups sometimes take a day or more here.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Honestly, this problem has reached the stage where I think it's an existential threat to the group. I get very tired of finding nothing else here, and I'm sure others do too. Obviously, that doesn't foster participation. The people most likely to offer real value here will be the first ones to read a sampling of questions about pimples, weight loss and masturbation, and then just roll their eyes and walk away.</p>\n\n<p>If there's anything that should be aggressively policed here, it is those questions. Until they start getting closed promptly, it will just get worse until even the close voters leave.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 949, "author": "ahiijny", "author_id": 11958, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11958", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I disagree with the <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/664\">answer here</a> in thinking that changing the sidebar text won't help. I think that all of the FAQs and tutorials and guidelines here are hidden behind hyperlinks in non-obvious locations and walls of text, so you can't really blame new users for being misled by the name \"Health\". A user can go from front page to Ask Question to Post Your Question without anything jumping out at them saying that hey, <strong>no personal medical advice questions</strong>, or <strong>read these rules first</strong>.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><em>Tour</em> doesn't sound like something you're <em>required</em> to do. I don't know about you, but whenever I try out a new IDE or new web app and the tour comes up, I skip it, because if the designers did their job, the interface should be easy to pick up.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>How to Ask</em> doesn't sound like something you're <em>required</em> to read. It sounds like \"hey, if you're not sure about something you can check here, or not, no big deal\".</p></li>\n<li><p><em>FAQ</em> doesn't sound like something you're <em>required</em> to read. It sounds like \"hey, if you have a question about the site, it might already be answered here, so if you're curious, check it out, or not, no big deal\".</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, it would help a lot to make the salient pieces of information <strong>more visible</strong>. See <a href=\"https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-just-in-time-theory/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">The \"Just In Time\" Theory of User Behavior</a>. Users won't click on a super non-obvious \"asking help\" hyperlink tucked away in a corner, but I do think they're a lot more likely to read something that's <strong>right in their face</strong> as they're writing the question.</p>\n\n<p>I feel that a small change to the sidebar text could really do a lot towards preventing off-topic questions from appearing on this site. As it stands, the guidance in that box right now is awfully generic and possibly even misleading:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>How to Ask</strong></p>\n \n <p>Is your question about health?</p>\n \n <p>We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed.</p>\n \n <p>Provide details. Share your research.</p>\n \n <p>If your question is about this website, <strong><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/\">ask it on meta</a></strong> instead.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Instead, why not extract the most salient points from the How to Ask page and put it in the sidebar? For example, maybe something like this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>How to Ask</strong></p>\n \n <ol>\n <li><p>Read the full guidelines <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">here</a>.</p></li>\n <li><p><strong>Personal medical advice questions are off-topic here on Health.SE.</strong></p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>We care! And that is why Health.SE <em>cannot give individualized medical advice or diagnosis for <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor/748#748\">multiple important reasons</a></em>! Such questions will be <strong>downvoted</strong> and <strong>closed</strong>.</li>\n </ul></li>\n <li><p><strong>Focus in on a clear topic, be specific!</strong> Phrase it to address the health topic itself, rather than an individual situation. If your question is relevant to more people than just you, and more people will be interested in your question and willing to look into it.</p></li>\n <li><p>If your question is about this website, <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/\">ask it on meta</a> instead.</p></li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I mean, the Hardware Recommendations Stack Exchange has <a href=\"https://hardwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/should-we-edit-the-sidebar-text-on-the-ask-page\">gotten their sidebar text changed</a> in the past, so this ought to be doable...</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Side note: There's also a feature request on Meta SE advocating for <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/301363/make-whats-on-topic-of-this-site-visible\">making \"what's on topic for this site?\" more visible</a>, which I think could also be helpful here.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/663", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 672, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My question has been answered. It received only two close votes before a mod stepped in <strong>two days later</strong> and closed it. (I'm not complaining about slow moderators, just the lack of users willing and able to close OT questions.)</p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile, virtually every question posted now is a request for medical advice, they're getting upvotes and the prdictable crap answers, and none of them ever gets more than 1-2 close votes.</p>\n\n<p>Stick a fork in it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 673, "author": "HDE 226868", "author_id": 2192, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2192", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is something of an issue, not just on this question and not just on Health Stack Exchange. A lack of enough high-reputation users to close and reopen questions in any sane amount of time <em>on a regular basis</em> is a problem that most small beta sites face, and it's not an easy problem to solve.</p>\n<p>As I see it, there are two options. The first is to get more community members, so there are more people around to close these blatantly off-topic questions. Currently, about 50 people on Health have close/reopen privileges, including the three moderators. Not all 50 are regularly active - before today, I hadn't done anything since October, and not much else since July - and from what I can tell, only a fraction see all or even most of the questions that get asked each day.</p>\n<p>Improving this, though, is far from easy. <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/306/2192\">Community Promotion Ads</a> can help traffic and add new members - I don't know the exact statistics - but there's no guarantee these users will stick around long enough to gain enough moderation privileges. Conversely, you could turn internally and try to get current members more interested in the site itself and in moderation - getting them to ask new questions can help show others the scope, but <a href=\"https://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/1186/1210\">it can be difficult</a>. That said, you can't force people to care, or want to use the site.</p>\n<p>The second option is for moderators to be a bit more aggressive when it comes to closing. I moderate three sites, two of which have roughly the same community size as Health, and a bit less activity - although we get far fewer off-topic questions there. I still see problems in getting five community users to close some questions, though.</p>\n<p>What I've tried to do in some of those cases is get involved sooner - that is, mod-hammer <em>clearly off-topic</em> questions when there are only two or three other close votes. There's no sense in waiting for days and days and days. I can see waiting a day or two - in this case, I don't think michaelpri did anything particularly wrong - but quicker moderator action can stop some of these questions earlier. I, for one, am absolutely fine with moderators on this site acting unilaterally in such cases if it's needed to stop these questions. Others may agree or disagree; at any rate, I think that's the best possible solution in the short-term.</p>\n<p>I don't want to tell anybody here - moderators, normal users, or anyone else - what to do, especially as it's been a while since I was here. But from my time in Stack Exchange facing this issue, I can tell you that there are really just two classes of solutions. The community here can choose which of the two paths it wants (or some synthesis, or neither), and I fully support a new meta discussion explicitly addressing that.</p>\n<p>In the meantime, though, keep in mind that Health Stack Exchange is still helping people. I vote to make like <a href=\"http://www.winstonchurchill.org/the-life-of-churchill/life\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Winston Churchill</a> and Keep Buggering On.</p>\n<hr />\n<h3>Addendum</h3>\n<p>After a week of comments by Carey Gregory, Frank Dernoncourt, and Fomite, I think my mind has been changed a bit, and there's something else that needs saying. It's on the subject of answer moderation, and so strictly not as relevant here, but it's been brought up in comments, and I feel I should address it.</p>\n<p>If people are leaving a site, that's a problem. That statement is undeniable and irrefutable. If people who really know their stuff are leaving, that's an even bigger problem. So perhaps more active moderation is batting down some of the poor answers that pop up from time to time, but it's also discouraging some of the really good ones.</p>\n<p>Moderation like this is a battle of signal versus noise, where the signal is the high-quality contributions and the noise is the crap. The community has to decide how many poor answers it's willing to let slide in from time to time if that's going to keep good contributors here. I think - and here's the perspective as a moderator of other sites, who's gone through <em>part of this same discussion</em> - that we the community and we the moderators often choose to purge most of the noise early on in a site's life, and that can be achieved by being really tough on answers that don't meet a certain criteria - in this case, ones without sources. You get a high signal-to-noise ratio by lowering the signal (unintentionally) and the noise (intentionally) by equal amounts.</p>\n<p>I don't think that's always a good idea.</p>\n<p>Once you choose a path like that, you have to stick to it. I wasn't here early in the life of Health Stack Exchange, so I don't know what happened; I'm speculating. But it looks like folks decided to go with the hard-handed approach. And it makes sense, to a good degree. There's too much absolutely terrible advice out there on the Internet, which I think some of the medical professionals here may recognize. So you quell the bad stuff and try to raise the good stuff.</p>\n<p>Here's the argument against that - and not just because it seems like it could help retain community members: <strong>let the voting sort the wheat from the chaff</strong>. The more people who know the right stuff, the more people who can downvote the terrible ideas - and then <em>write the correct answers</em>. In other words, it's okay to let some could-be-better answers in if we trust each other as a community to correct them. Let the voting have the best answers rise to the top, and let the poor stuff be buried in a pile of downvotes.</p>\n<p>I'm normally one in favor of heavy-handed moderation because I've seen a <em>lot</em> of absolutely terrible posts on beta sites. A lot. But I think I've been convinced that that's not really working on Health Stack Exchange. Scratch that, it <em>isn't</em> working. I don't know all the ways in which things can be lightened - I trust the users who feel the moderation's too heavy to specify all of that. But if it's going to bring back a more knowledgeable userbase, then here, I'm all for it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 684, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm active on a couple of other stacks and thought that I'd help out here a little as I agree that there's relatively few high rep users here to perform basic moderation tasks.</p>\n\n<p>The problem I found is that the community isn't awfully welcoming to new responders (I'm leaving question quality aside here).</p>\n\n<p>I answered a basic question here that other users didn't wish to engage with where a user asked a few questions about healthy computer usage.</p>\n\n<p>I answered these questions with a few bits of advice that are entirely common to the vast majority of office-based computer users. I didn't supply any citations as the advice was pretty straight-forward and at least I helped where others refused to). The OP was happy, upvoted and responded positively.</p>\n\n<p>I then received a pretty harsh rebuke from one of the high-rep users that I didn't supply any citations and implying that my answer was worthless. I deleted my answer, and note this morning that the question has also been removed.</p>\n\n<p>This morning, I see the somewhat disturbing <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/11240/suicide-with-no-pain\">suicide with no pain</a> question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How to suicide with no pain?My rights are to live but I never asked to come to this world and to face all this.I am not happy and I can't feel happy the only I really want is to die not think not pain,no listening not problems.I bored I hate everything I hate all I haven't reason to live.I am failing I can't stand anymore.I want to give an end to this please guys I am suffer I don't want breath in not breath out.I want to finish is my right to end my life.How can someone dies at home what he can use?No one asks me to bring me here and no one can tell me that's wrong this is the most right thing I will ever done. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sadly, there's no answers yet. I would have been moved to suggest that the OP should seek professional help, but I'm afraid to answer because I know that any negative comments about my answer will transfer to the OP and add more fuel to their insecurities.</p>\n\n<p>The insistence on supplying citations is a multiple-edged sword. There's a heck of a lot of quackery out there, so up-voting an answer with links are implicitly validating those linked articles. For people sharing their personal knowledge, they're forced to hunt for articles from respectable sources to back up what they already know.</p>\n\n<p>Without some relaxation on the guidelines for answers, we're going to be left with many questions unanswered (but helpfully retagged anyway). And while reasonable, but sub-standard answers not being up-voted, more high-rep users are not being created.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/669", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 727, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h2><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/12695/8212\">Answer by Chris about the effects of laughing.</a></h2>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I personally thought the question was unanswerable. It seemed to difficult to include diabetes at all, and didn't expect anyone would do more than stating that <em>laughing won't cure diabetes</em>.<br>\n Yet Chris included a stunning amount of references and links to online copies of those references and wrote an extensive answer, which really will make all future questions regarding laughing duplicates, because every aspect has been included in this answer.<br>\n Furthermore, the answer inspired this Meta Thread!</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 728, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h2><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/361/8212\">Answer by michaelpri about vaccines and autism</a></h2>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question has been disputed so many times...<br>\n With overwhelming amounts of evidence and research, michaelpri's answer leaves no question open whether vaccines can cause autism or not.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 729, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<h2><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/8926/8212\">Answer by JasonC on multivitamin diets </a></h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The great part about this answer is that it actually doesn't support either side, but concludes that <em>there is no objectivity</em> in the research done so far.<br />\nAnd then it goes on to prove beyond doubt that no consensus can be reached regarding this matter, because the data collected is insufficient.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/726", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 738, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The problem is that such questions do not get closed fast enough. There are simply not enough high-rep users active in a short period of time. I can see two possible solutions:</p>\n\n<h1>Mod-Hammer</h1>\n\n<p>I know that this tool is not used very often, but in this case I think it would be okay if mods delete questions as soon as one other member of the community votes to close due to the question being off-topic and the mods agree. This way, visitors do not see the many off-topic-questions and don't get a false impression of the site.</p>\n\n<h1>Feature Request</h1>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Before being able to post a question, we could have the site disclaimer (personal diagnosis is off-topic) open with a \"read and accept\" button (much like <em>terms of services</em> and similar. This way, new users will be made aware of the site policy, as the banner can be overlooked</p></li>\n<li><p>Question containing too much \"I\" or too much text could be prevented from being posted, much like code-only answers on other SE sites. </p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 827, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 402, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/402", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I participate regularly on another Beta site, which is probably around the same size as yours. At any rate, it's pretty small! There are a couple of moderators there who close and delete questions unilaterally when they feel it necessary. So I checked what the rules are, to share the information here. Here's what I found:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75192/287826\">What special privileges do diamond moderators have?</a></p>\n<p>Their votes are binding. Any place that requires a consensus of multiple users — closing, reopening, deleting, undeleting, reviewing, marking as spam, etc — a single moderator's vote will reach the threshold and take effect immediately.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I'm a bit confused because I don't see these three names listed in the <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/737/are-the-questions-threating-the-health-se-community/738#comment4110_737\">comment</a> by @Narusan-sedated:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The problem is that there are only a limited amount of active high-rep users: You, L.B., Lucky, Carey, Kate, Mark, Doctor Who. I will be gone for the next 5 weeks or so (enjoying my vacation rather than voting to close questions here) so out of 5 out of 6 people who could vote to close will have to vote to close to get a control of the situation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And I do see diamonds next to the three moderator names at <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators\">https://health.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators</a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/737", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10932/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 740, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Regarding the numbers</h2>\n<p>In the last 30 days, the query <a href=\"https://stackexchange.com/users/5341434/erich?tab=accounts\">@Erich</a> created for me <a href=\"https://data.stackexchange.com/health/query/704472/low-quality-posts\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">returned 92 low quality post</a>. The <a href=\"https://data.stackexchange.com/health/query/704568/total-posts\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">total amount of posts in that timespan were 350</a>. That makes 26% of the posts - simply put - garbage.¹</p>\n<p>Imagine every fourth email in your inbox being spam. I would have a) activated or upgraded my spam-filter or b) throw my email away.</p>\n<p>This is why we <strong>need</strong> to take action.</p>\n<h2>What I would do</h2>\n<p>Being honest, I skipped through the tour. Someone posted the link to the tour in one answer or question I asked, I clicked on it, skipped everything and then just proceeded my way to the site.</p>\n<p>This is why <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/11277/8212\">one of my first posts </a> was something I wasn't supposed to do: I answered a question that's asking for personal medical advice.</p>\n<p>Now, if we had something different than the tour, mandatory to complete, I would still be able to skip everything, enter my initials / click to continue and that's it.</p>\n<p>I feel like this change would be a bit more pedantic but not much of an improvement.</p>\n<h2>Suggestion</h2>\n<p>Why not make this message pop up when a post is about to be posted?</p>\n<p>The pop up message could still be skipped, but users are reminded of site rules immediately before posting. Also, because there were some sort of misunderstandings what questions are off-topic, we could include the thumb-rule</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Welcome to Health.SE. We would like to inform you that if you have a question about <strong>you</strong> and <strong>your health</strong>, it is probably off-topic. You can try to rephrase the question to make it more general and apply to everyone.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Similarly, before answering this message could pop up:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Thank you for your effort! We would like to remind you that <strong>every answer must be backed up with references</strong>. See this list of reliable references.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>and additionally, if there are no links in the answer, simply prevent an answer from being posted. (If one has books as source, one would need to link to the ISBN then or something).</p>\n<p>These messages are so short that with a timer of somewhat 10s before being able to proceed, it is very difficult <strong>not</strong> to read them if they are printed in large letters on the screen.</p>\n<h2>When should the message pop up?</h2>\n<p>We should not make this based on reputation: Users with reputation of &gt;100 might just be trusted users from somewhere else who have not had much contact with the site.</p>\n<p>In fact, that should be the cutting edge: How much contact one had with the site. I would suggest this message to pop up if the user currently has &lt; 2 posts in this area (for questions: 2 questions; for answers 2 answers).</p>\n<p>As bad answers and question do get deleted, this means that the message will pop up until 2 quality posts in each category have been made. This seems fairly reasonable to me.</p>\n<h2>IANAPP</h2>\n<p>Now IANAPP (I am not a professional programmer) but this should be relatively easy to implement: an if-check for questions and answers, and the pop-up message itself.</p>\n<h2>Where to go from now?</h2>\n<p>I would strongly encourage us to do the following:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Agree whether we would like to have this feature implemented. (Let the mods have the final say)</li>\n<li>Be nice to SE so that this feature gets implemented.</li>\n<li>Starting a query a) how many first questions were deleted and closed and b) how many first answers were deleted and closed over the last month.</li>\n<li>Implementing the feature for a month as trial and compare the query at the end of the trial time to the query before.</li>\n<li>Either accept or reject the implemented feature</li>\n</ol>\n<hr />\n<p>¹: I simply defined a low quality post as either being deleted, closed or having a score of -2 or less. In my eyes, this seems quite reasonable.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 751, "author": "Fonebone", "author_id": 3561, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3561", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A pop-up does sound like a good idea, and other forms of repetition of the rules may help some of the issues regarding first checking for duplicates, researching a topic themselves before posting, etc. However, regarding people asking personal medical questions, I think it will mainly stifle posting of what otherwise could be made into quality questions. </p>\n\n<p>I have a suggestion. Instead of just saying that personal medical questions are prohibited, show people how to rephrase these types of questions in the \"right way\", and how to determine if their question is even appropriate to be reformatted this way.</p>\n\n<p>Here's my reasoning. Why do many people come to this and other SE sites in the first place? Because they have a question that needs answering. And why do they have the question in the first place? Because the question has relevance for themselves. Whether in Stack Overflow, Bicycles, or Chess, people primarily ask about something having to do with their own lives. We have a name for people who sit around and think up questions that probably have nothing to do with themselves: scientists. Most people are not scientists, so it will be difficult and perhaps misguided to suppress people from asking health questions that in some way impact their own lives. I understand that this SE site has an inherent restriction that most others do not, in that asking for and providing medical advice in this format is verboten, but that shouldn't stop us from helping to channel these relevant curiosities into a more general form. </p>\n\n<p>I suggest a separate help page under the \"Asking\" section titled something like: \"How to rephrase your personal medical question into one that has broader relevance.\" Link directly to it from the pop-up, if you like. As it currently stands, the only similar guideline I could find was the two sentence section \"Make it relevant to others\" on the page \"How do I ask a good question?\" At a minimum, adding a page like this should help cut down on the number of necessary edits of otherwise good questions that were just phrased in a self-referential manner. It should also help to weed out questions that conscientious people realize can't be generalized and therefore shouldn't be posted, like \"I've tried Bactrim and I.V. Vancomycin for my MRSA infection but it's still there. Which one(s) should I try next?\"</p>\n\n<p>Corresponding information could be inserted in the Answering section that instructs people first to make sure the question they would like to answer is phrased generally and even strongly encourages them to edit the question to the preferred format themselves before attempting to answer it. This would help create a \"second wave\" of question format checkers (after the original poster themselves) who in many cases would get to see the question before the site administrators have a chance to flag it or fix it.</p>\n\n<p>DoctorWhom, you seem to be quite good at reformatting personal health questions more generally. Could your method be put into algorithmic form? I would also be happy to contribute.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/739", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9632/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 744, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>These are my suggestions and pros/cons of proposed methods.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>A mandatory tutorial before being able to post any q or a. It could require more than just clicking \"I understand\" by forcing them to answer multiple choice questions or something.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I think this should absolutely happen, one way or another. Doing this prior to writing your question or answer helps you write a better one. This is similar to the pop-up, but pre-preemptive. I think it's valid for a site like this. It's almost too easy to submit a question here for a new user.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>A pop-up hard stop that happens AFTER writing the question but BEFORE submission is complete. It reminds the most important rules and links to more info.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Pro: I like this, and perhaps regardless of what we choose, this should still be implemented. It exists on numerous other Q&amp;A sites.</p></li>\n<li><p>Con: People have popup and click-for-confirmation fatigue. People usually click \"I agree\" on everything without even reading it. Then it's pointless and annoying.</p></li>\n<li><p>Solution/Ideas: adding a delay and/or multiple choice questions that they must answer about the guidelines in order to proceed. It could be something that only happens the first several times a user posts (including those who have 100 rep from another site!), or until a certain rep is attained.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Code built into the SE system that at time of question submission, identifies repeated use of trigger words like \"I\" \"my\" and others that are more likely to be medical advice requests. It then alerts or stops the user, provides rules/links, and recommends or requires revision.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If we implement the other two things, this could just be a hard stop popup with links, since those were mandatory training. On its own, it only addresses the medical advice one, but that's still improvement!</p></li>\n<li><p>Con: Requires programming that goes beyond popups and such; I'm unsure if this is an option. But it's worth considering.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Code built into the SE system that at time of question submission, identifies SHORT posts or posts without links, and recommends quality standards with links to references etc.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Same as above, requires programming. But very useful and straightforward!</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Hold new user posts and new user answers until approved by mods/high rep users</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>As mentioned, this is not in the spirit of SE. I don't like it from a poster's perspective, nor as someone who would have to approve and edit them. But it's an extreme measure that could be implemented if the site is at risk of failing.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Have the \"Similar Questions\" be a popup you have to click on to help reduce duplicates</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I like this for new users too. It could be a hard stop before they are able to click out of the box of the title or something. It adds another layer, yes. But it helps reduce the need to police. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Thoughts on all of them:</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes these make it harder to ask a question. We don't want to discourage questions. </p>\n\n<p>But we DO want to encourage GOOD questions/answers; sometimes this can only be done by discouraging BAD questions/answers.</p>\n\n<p>These measures discourage people from just shooting quick impulse questions without consideration of the guidelines. \n It's easy to just see \"Q&amp;A site\" and not put thought into the guidelines unless you're forced to.</p>\n\n<p>It's actually maybe too easy to post a question on this site - easier than some of the other Q&amp;A sites that don't have as many guidelines! This is evidenced by a quick look at the questions, and how many of them have to be reminded/edited/closed etc.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 745, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>A pop-up that happens AFTER writing the question but BEFORE submission is complete. It reminds of the most important rules and links to more info.</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>AGREEMENT</strong></p>\n\n<p>Absolutely a good idea. Pop-Ups can be automatically clicked away, but with a time penalty of 3s and a very short text like this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Welcome to Health.SE. We would like to inform you that if you have a question about <strong>you</strong> and <strong>your health</strong>, it is <strong>off-topic</strong>. You can try to rephrase the question to make it more general and apply to everyone.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>it is almost impossible <em>not</em> to read the short sentence. With my previous proposal of only making the pop-up show up before 3 posts with score > 0 have been posted by the user, it will not be too mundane for experienced users.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>A mandatory tutorial before being able to post any q or a. It could require more than just clicking \"I understand\" by forcing them to answer multiple choice questions or something.</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>OBJECTION</strong></p>\n\n<p>This seems more like user harassment to me. As I admitted before, I haven't fully read the tour, and making everyone read the tour and answer questions about it seems improper to me.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>Code built into the SE system that at time of question submission, identifies repeated use of trigger words like \"I\" \"my\" and others that are more likely to be medical advice requests. It then alerts or stops the user, provides rules/links, and recommends or requires revision.</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>TESTING NEEDED</strong></p>\n\n<p>If this is possible, it would be great if we could treat this feature to see whether it has the desired effect and whether it works at all.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>Code built into the SE system that at time of question submission, identifies SHORT posts or posts without links, and recommends quality standards with links to references etc.</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>AGREEMENT</strong></p>\n\n<p>Definitely. Answers without links should simply not be able to be published (like the code-only answers on other SE sites). This will immediately prevent new users from unintentionally abusing the system.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>Hold new user posts and new user answers until approved by mods/high rep users (not in the spirit of SE, though)</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>OBJECTION</strong></p>\n\n<p>The problem is that review processes are not completed quickly. If all new posts must be approved, the new-post-queue will quickly be filled with so many questions that high rep users can't cope with the amount anymore.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>Have the \"Similar Questions\" be a popup to help reduce duplicates</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>OBJECTION</strong></p>\n\n<p>I haven't seen many duplicate questions here. This also is more user harassment than actually helping us reduce the garbage posts.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>3 close votes needed to close a question, 3 re-open votes needed to reopen a question</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>AGREEMENT</strong></p>\n\n<p>Because there are only 7 high rep users active, it's difficult to get questions closed. This will make it easier to close them. Similarly, it makes it easier to reopen questions.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/743", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 748, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>SE is not going to start giving individual medical advice, for many reasons.</p>\n\n<p>I absolutely do understand why people want answers to what is going on with their health. That is part of why I chose my career, to understand my health and help other people understand their health. And that's why I'm on SE. </p>\n\n<p>I also understand why people don't understand why they can't just ask for advice; most underestimate everything that it takes for someone to give accurate, complete advice, and others don't understand that people have tried to blame the answerer for harm that has come from even well-intentioned advice.</p>\n\n<p>There <em>are</em> Q&amp;A sites that allow any questions and any answers, advice or otherwise.<br>\nThere <em>are</em> Q&amp;A sites where the people answering questions are physicians with validated credentials, and you have to provide a lot of your background to even ask a question. </p>\n\n<p>HealthSE is <em>neither</em> of those site types, for multiple reasons.</p>\n\n<p>Consider that on StackOverflow, if someone gave wrong advice, it could mess up a program and you'd have to troubleshoot. There are tons of programmers and it would be downvoted by other knowledgeable programmers. Time wasted but minimal harm done.</p>\n\n<p>But if someone gave you wrong health advice you could get sick, overlook something that was actually important, even die. Actual harm. And there aren't enough medical professionals here to recognize all wrong advice and downvote it.</p>\n\n<p>Note that I am going to use the term \"wrong advice\" rather than bad. I'll define wrong as: <strong>inaccurate/incorrect information and/or inadequate/incomplete information</strong> </p>\n\n<p>So consider these questions: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Would you want to risk getting wrong advice? Advice that could harm you if you followed it? </li>\n<li>Are you educated enough in health to be able to KNOW if the advice you received is wrong, whether you should follow it or not?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The internet is full of misinformation. Not out of intent to mislead (most of the time), just not evidence-based or well-educated.</p>\n\n<p>That's the first point I need to make:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>1. Adding a person's clinical background to a question CONVERTS a general health topic question into a request for personal medical advice.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You may think additional clinical context makes it easier to answer a question. But when you start to take clinical context into account, that's how individualized diagnosis and treatment works. It's individual advice then. </p>\n\n<p>If this isn't clear why, keep reading to understand better.</p>\n\n<p>Second:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>2. People underestimate just how much education and experience it takes to be able to <em>GIVE</em> accurate, complete medical advice.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Human physiology and pathophysiology are ridiculously complicated. To be a practicing doctor it takes 4 years of college, 4 years of med school, and at least 3-7 years of residency (in the USA and is similar around the world). That means <strong>11-15 years of intense education after high school</strong>. Plus it's said that healthcare professionals learn the most during the first few years out of training!</p>\n\n<p>Okay, so what about non-physician health professionals? Minimum post-high school education for a PA? 8+ years. Pharmacist? 8+ years. Nursing? 3-4+ years. EMT? 1-3 years. Physical therapist? 8+ years. Dietician? 6+ years. Okay, then what about specialists in scientific fields? Bachelor's degree, 4+ years. Master's, 6+ years. PhD, 8+ years...</p>\n\n<p>Yes, there are not enough doctors and other health professionals; this massive shortage is a failing of our education and health systems. It should be a priority when our governments decide how to allocate funding, but it isn't, so welcome to the consequences.</p>\n\n<p>But the solution isn't to seek advice from those who are not trained to give it!</p>\n\n<p>Which brings me to my third point:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>3. People don't understand what it takes to give accurate, complete advice - what makes it so hard?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Yes, first there's the massive amount of information - human physio/pathophys is exceedingly complex and must be understood to formulate a comprehensive understanding of how it all works together, since the body isn't just a collage of individual pieces.</p></li>\n<li><p>Because it's more than just pieces, there are lots of things that could impact your health, interacting and complicating the picture:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Current/past medical and surgical history</li>\n<li>Medications, supplements, smoking/drinking</li>\n<li>Family history and predisposing factors</li>\n<li>Environmental factors, occupational hazards\nAnd more</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>Because it's more than just pieces, there are a lot of factors that have to be drawn together to make a complete picture.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>So a healthcare provider needs to understand the full picture to be able to understand what's happening in a certain circumstance. That's why they ask you the above. That's why they measure your vital signs. That's why they examine you. That's why they do tests. <strong>It's to build a comprehensive picture and then identify what is going on.</strong></p>\n\n<p>And it takes <em>years</em> of education and practice to develop the <em>knowledge and discernment</em> to take this complete picture and work through the differential diagnosis process to land on an answer; then have the knowledge and wisdom to offer the right treatment.</p>\n\n<p><strong>I hope this makes sense. But to further illuminate, I'll give 2 examples using fatigue, a common complaint.</strong> </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><em>You feel fatigue and ask \"I'm fatigued all the time. What's wrong with me? What can I do about it?\"</em></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>A well-intentioned person without medical training, who wants to help you answer the question, could think \"Lack of exercise and dehydration are 2 causes of fatigue.\" Which is correct, but incomplete. So they answer \"Poor sleep and dehydration are causes of fatigue. So get 30 mins of vigorous exercise a day and drink lots of water and you'll feel better!\"</p>\n\n<p>Sounds good right? And it would work well for some people, sure. But I'll give you one circumstance where if you did that, you'd get very sick or die.</p>\n\n<p>You didn't tell her that you have Congestive Heart Failure after a Heart Attack and Chronic Kidney Disease stage 3; that you are on Beta Blockers and have a 2g sodium restriction, 1.5L fluid restriction, etc. So you drink 3L a day which fluid overloads you; meanwhile you exercise vigorously and become hypoxic from that; then with your history of cardiovascular ischemia the hypoxia exacerbates your ischemia and with increased metabolic demand while on the treadmill you have another heart attack.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe you didn't include that in your question because you didn't know you had CHF due to a silent MI. Maybe you didn't include it because you thought it was unimportant to the issue. You aren't a medical professional either. </p>\n\n<p>But she didn't know what she was missing, either. Maybe her answer was so good that you thought she was a medical professional.</p>\n\n<p>Did she intentionally harm you? No! But did you cause yourself harm inadvertently? Yes. Did her answer lead to harm? Yes. Why?</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Advice was given without having a complete picture to work from.\nYou didn't know what info to give; she didn't know what info to ask.</li>\n<li>Included only 2 of the possible causes of fatigue \nShe didn't know the other causes; you didn't either and acted upon the answer.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This harm was avoidable by not individualizing the question or the answer.</p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><em>You feel fatigue and ask \"I'm fatigued all the time.\" And you give a lot of current symptoms and clinical history.</em></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>A medical professional here answers based on what you give, and gives you advice, which you follow.</p>\n\n<p>But the picture was incomplete.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>You didn't know what's important to include, and thus you neglected to mention some key symptoms that would have pointed the diagnosis in a different direction.</li>\n<li>The person couldn't examine you and pick up on alarming features</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The advice turns out to be wrong due to misdiagnosis from incomplete information. You could end up being harmed by following this advice, even if it was from a medical professional.</p>\n\n<p>Medical professionals generally understand that under most circumstances, it's not a good idea to give individual medical advice online due to incomplete info and lack of physical exam, and don't do so here.\nBut people without training don't understand this, and may give advice, which may or may not be dangerous.</p>\n\n<p>We don't have a way of having ANSWERERS prove their credentials. We don't have a way for POSTERS to provide a sufficiently-complete history/meds/review of symptoms (or a video camera for exam). So the clinical picture is going to be incomplete for most situations. And thus insufficient for accurate, complete advice.</p>\n\n<p>Then, since most posters don't know enough to discern whether all advice is accurate/complete or not, harm can happen. Sometimes when harm happens, the well-intentioned answerer gets blamed.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Therefore it is better to just avoid medical advice, and instead provide evidence-based answers to questions that do not pertain to an individual case.</strong> Then readers can use that information to guide their own understanding, and seek medical assistance where needed.</p>\n\n<p>And if someone does need individual advice, beyond just understanding a concept, then they need to see a medical professional, or at minimum check out the site with credentialed physicians. Health is not really worth risking wrong advice.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 887, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As indicated in various parts of StackExchange the purpose of this site</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>to build a high quality repository of good questions and great answers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And it's <strong><em>not necessarily to provide help to the person asking the question</em></strong>. That's why you get points for asking a good question and lose points when asking a question which is poor or indicates a lack of research.</p>\n\n<p>So by their very nature, questions that ask for personal medical help are tightly focused and so are very poor questions as they lack generality. Almost all questions that are deemed off-topic on this account can be made general to a point that they become acceptable, but the person asking the question almost invariably fails to make the effort to do so. Sure, the community could do this for them, but this becomes old very quickly. And when the OP lacks the skills to do so, often they lack the skills to understand the answer when couched in medical terminology.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1070, "author": "user1258361", "author_id": 9695, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9695", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This site is not popular and won't ever be popular, since the totalitarian party line has already exiled or censored all the opposition. The only way to fix this is to break up the exchange for monopolistic conduct, which can be done in practice through proposing a new one via Area51 Stack Exchange.</p>\n\n<p>See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1068/break-up-medical-sciences-stack-exchange?noredirect=1#comment5451_1068\">Break up Medical Sciences Stack Exchange</a> for further reading.</p>\n\n<p>The moment this happens, I'm switching to the new exchange and never coming back. Viva la exodus!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1073, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here's yet another reason not to allow medical advice questions. Although this would only apply in the US state of Minnesota (so far), it could make physicians in that state liable for any advice they gave here. Are there other jurisdictions where this is true? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in the world it is.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>MN Supreme Court Rules Physician-Patient Relationship is Not Necessary to Sue Docs for Malpractice</strong></p>\n \n <p>4/18/2019<br>\n In a case that could have wide-reaching implications for\n medical practice in Minnesota, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a\n ruling on April 17 in the case of Warren v. Dinter holding that the\n existence of a physician-patient relationship is not a prerequisite\n for a medical malpractice action. Rather, a person may sue a physician\n for malpractice – even if that person was not a patient of the\n physician – if the harm suffered by the person was a “reasonably\n foreseeable consequence” of the physician’s actions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.mnmed.org/news-and-publications/News/MN-Supreme-Court-Rules-Physician-Patient-Relations\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.mnmed.org/news-and-publications/News/MN-Supreme-Court-Rules-Physician-Patient-Relations</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11087/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 756, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't want to go ahead and enforce some rules without prior agreement here:</p>\n\n<p>We have two options (I will just use <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/13338/8212\">DoctorWhom's answer</a> as an example)</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Leave the answer as it is and upvote it if it is good</li>\n<li>Encourage users to post comments instead. An example comment instead of this answer: \n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Abscesses <em>can</em> be very dangerous. However, no one online can diagnose its severity for you and say what treatment you need - OR whether it's an emergency (like go today) versus if it can wait. <strong>You must see a doctor - a dentist ideally, or primary care or emergency doctor - pretty soon</strong>. // You don't want to mess with abscesses because they are an infection by bacteria. They can grow deep and cause a spreading infection. // Often the tooth is actually salvageable by drainage of the abscess and antibiotics. Other times the tooth has to go.<br>\n <em>(56 characters left)</em></p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Which option should we follow in the future?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 759, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with the above that we need to decide on consistent approaches to these things, maintaining transparency. (This answer is not in opposition to, but in addition to Narusan's.)</p>\n\n<p><strong>But what about questions that have a good fundamental question buried in personal advice request etc?</strong> </p>\n\n<p><strong>Instead of closing <em>all</em> off-topic q's, experienced users can heavily edit those kinds of advice questions to remove the personal/clinical information that made it personal advice and clearly state the underlying question.</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>Then we can answer it.</strong></p>\n\n<p>And we (pointing my finger at myself largely) should of course give sufficient explanation of why we edit it - which was to remove personal advice material that would get the question closed otherwise.</p>\n\n<p>We would also tell them if they disagree they can revert it. (Or is there a way that I don't know about to edit a question and pend it for the OP to approve?)</p>\n\n<p>If done nicely with explanation rather than scoldingly, I think most people would receive an edit well. Better than just closing the question most of the time, I would wager.</p>\n\n<p>When I was a newb I was edited heavily on SuperUser SE and they gave me a good explanation why, and I appreciated it because I got the answer I really was looking for.</p>\n\n<p>We can help and teach this way - people don't always know how to ask the question for what they really want to know. Believe me, I see it all the time, it isn't unique to online health discussions. It's not all from ignoring site guidelines. A lot of concepts are complex and confusing to navigate.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 893, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/133552\"><strong>See this posting and answers on meta.stackexchange.</strong></a></p>\n\n<p>The problem with having bad questions answered is that relatively new users who have little idea on how this site works may provide answers when they shouldn't because the question is unclear and an answer could muddy the waters or it is asking for advice on a medical concern and a low rep member may (just to be helpful) inadvertently provide advice when it is not wise to.</p>\n\n<p>How we deal with this is difficult to some extent. We need more activity within the site.</p>\n\n<p><strong>If a question is closed or put on hold, it cannot be answered until edited and re-opened.</strong></p>\n\n<p>I have seen some sites within SE have a bad question posted which is put on hold within a couple of minutes because they have the activity there. We are lucky at times to have a question put on hold within the same day it is posted.</p>\n\n<p>I think what we should do is downvote answers by experienced users and put a comment on there saying why. With low experience (500 or less?) We could just comment.</p>\n\n<p>The person who answered should then delete the answer. If it doesn't get deleted it should be deleted by the community as the rules are there for a reason, especially with answers to questions asking for medical advice.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/753", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 770, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Stackexchange describes itself as:\n\"Expert communities.\nEach of our 170 communities is built by people passionate about a focused topic.\"</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expert\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Definition of expert</a></p>\n\n<p>1 obsolete :experienced\n2 :having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When \"Health\" was in Area51, I fought hard for 2 separate sites, one for professionals \n and one for non-experts, and lost. They said it was elitist, which is ridiculous since \n everyone is a layperson in most fields but their own.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Elitist is indeed a strange concept to bring up there.</p>\n\n<p>I found Health.SE just recently. It is overall sometimes interesting, fun, helpful and educating. But the impression is that volume is low and sometimes the quality is indeed lacking. Hey. It's in beta.</p>\n\n<p>The math sites quoted I have not analysed. It seems strange to me that you find so much cross pollination between them. If that is the case then it might be indeed a good idea to start another site with a narrower focus.</p>\n\n<p>While I agree that the site needs more of the experts SE claims for itself I do not agree about terming them \"professionals\". Not the least because of your own statement about ridiculousness. If that is needed to attract actually more them I hold that to be not entirely desirable.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>How should that be enforced here? Entrance exam? Paper of proof submitted?</li>\n<li>That might be deterring or encouraging to certain types of potential new users (me being unsure which is which and which is better or worse now)</li>\n<li>Might give undue credibility (see 1) and </li>\n<li>Which types of of professionals are included? Surgeons vs nutritionists, vs homeopathic faith healer and shamans? All could be called professional, somehow. And everyone of them is entitled to their own stupidity. While a surgeon may have his educated opinion on \"drinking 1l of coke a day is fine for you\" a professional shaman may have excellent advice on \"eating right\" (of course, not mentioning the spirit world and backing it up with proper references)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I see your points and I am unsure of how the problems I see might be tackled.</p>\n\n<p>It's especially interesting to watch a more or less scientific consensus arise in this kind of community. Trained experts of real medicine, researcher of chemistry, medicine, biology and other sciences, historians, dyed in the wool alternative medicine practitioners and highly interested lay persons coming together, discussing on (a) topic without the real life credentials visible, just based on pure reason and argument. Well, that's my ideal anyway.</p>\n\n<p>A comparatively low level participation of experts, a similarly low level of interesting questions and answers are the reasons given above. These are structural problems.</p>\n\n<p>Diagnosis requests and quack advice being the main problems on the content side.\nDiagnosis just has be forced out. It's unethical, dangerous on many levels and simply unsound. I don't trust Dr. Google and I wonder how anyone could. Quack on the other hand I thought was priced into the design of SE in general. Principle being that good content rises, bad falls out of site. That needs a critical mass to work and \"why users drift away\" then presents a hen and egg problem.</p>\n\n<p>One design problem of SE is of course that destructive, malicious, hating or crusading people might downvote good content and without reasons or explanations given this is a systematic weakness.</p>\n\n<p>Currently I feel the site mainly lacks visibility, no one I told about it has ever heard of it, lest seen it.\nThen of course they all might be not that intersted in such a site from the start. Why?\nWhat is the motivation to be active here?\nThere is no money in for the user, the gamification of rep and badges might not be enough.</p>\n\n<p>After all these random ramblings I think it a good idea to promote <em>this</em> site more, <em>especially</em> to \"professionals\": colleagues and even more especially students with the following benefits in sight:\nfostering skills on the interpersonal, the intersectional level, gaining and sharing experience, helping others. \nThat should go into the refinement. Another site might be a good idea, but that also further splits up the forces. Ending Health now would be sad.</p>\n\n<p>BTW: looks like I can follow Area51 and login there but can not login to the proposed site? Hanging in login loop there.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 771, "author": "anongoodnurse", "author_id": 169, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/169", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was directed to this question by a user and asked for input. I would not have volunteered this opinion otherwise.</p>\n\n<p>I believe this site is already dead in the water. At best, it was treading water in the beginning, but it has drowned under the burdensome <strong>but necessary</strong> expectations of such a site. It is a terrible fit for the SE model, and has been from the beginning. But as Skeptics not only survived but thrived with the same expectations, the same is not true (and never has been) of Health.SE.</p>\n\n<p>I only visit the site when a rep change shows up and I'm curious as to what I wrote (I've written enough answers that I sometimes forget what I said.)</p>\n\n<p>When I do, and I see the front page, I'm reminded of why I never come here anymore. The worst are questions about penis size, masturbation, 'can I be pregnant?', what do I have/why is this happening (asking personal medical questions) etc., ad nauseum. (The front page today doesn't actually look too bad, which is why I answered two questions.)</p>\n\n<p>What can be done to save it is a different answer. But the fact that I have remained the highest rep user while not being here at all for (? well over a year) should say something important (I love medicine, I love helping people, I'm active on a number of sites, I thought this would be a great adventure. It's not for lack of passion - or that I was asked to step down as a mod - that I'm gone.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 772, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Speaking as a personal contributor (as opposed to a moderator), I have been on the site since the initial days. I agree that the scope has lent itself to some of the worst dregs of misinformed questions out there on the internet. At its worst, the front page appears like a yahoo questions page.</p>\n<p>I do like the idea of making it more about the practice, rather then the topic. A doctor is not really going to want to come on to an answer site such as this to see &quot;If I rub garlic under my fingernails will my hair grow again?&quot; and similar.</p>\n<p>However, I would vote against completely scrubbing and starting over. That is a long haul, and would require the whole Area 51 proposal, approval, beta phase again and you will not get as many of the original starters to go through it again. See the quote from the Fitness SE during their scope debate about a year after they launched as Fitness &amp; Nutrition</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>While its the whole point of Area51 to only launch sites that have sufficient experts. The problem I've always had with Nutrition is that we lacked the required experts to answer these questions authoritatively.</p>\n<p>So a Nutrition site that would be cast off from Fitness, which in all honesty is not what's happening, would need to go back to Area51 and get sufficient followers to get back into beta again.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Physical Fitness did a fairly rename and major overhaul of their scope a year or two into their initial beta (It launched as Fitness &amp; Nutrition, and nutrition was dropped as it attracted many of the similar types of questions we are getting), and was successful. While it has not made it out of beta yet, it still remains a viable, active community with a solid core of contributors after 6 years. (And nutrition alone has failed at least once in Area 51).</p>\n<p>I would also want to ensure that it is not only doctors in the traditional sense that are included. PA's, NP's, nurses, EMT/Paramedics, etc. should be encouraged to stay in, and I would also include laypeople that can ask intelligent questions about things they have questions about (Selfishly, <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/91/fasting-blood-glucose-and-hemoglobin-a1c-not-valid-for-athletes\">as an example this question that I posed</a>).</p>\n<p>I would also revisit the necessity to have studies or other evidence to back things up. Obviously in many cases it would be necessary to discuss and provide article backup for cutting edge/theory medicine, but there are many things that medical professionals just &quot;know&quot;, and having to provide a reference for commonly known medical facts I believe becomes onerous and turns off potential contributors.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 773, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>How-StackExchange-Works^TM</h2>\n\n<p>Every successful StackExchange site has a solid base of users who are revisiting the site on a daily basis. </p>\n\n<p>Puzzling, PCG, they're in for the fun. SFF \nbecause they can talk about books/movies they really enjoyed with other people who really enjoyed them. SO because the site's just so helpful to programmers, on so many different occasions.</p>\n\n<p>Health is a one-time hit only. You've just visited your doctor and have a question about something she told you? You visit Health.SE. But that's not the case every second day. This is why we have a low rate of accepted answers: Most users never return. They sign up to ask a question and don't even log in to upvote the answer, but just read it as an anonymous user.</p>\n\n<p>Because of this, we will never be able to change the behaviour of a majority of the users. This is why Health.SE was doomed from the beginning.</p>\n\n<h2>The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.</h2>\n\n<p>Health.SE is failing. This is because of the target audience of the site (or the audience the site targets without willing to do so): inexperienced, \"newbies\", to medicine. </p>\n\n<p>But we are different. The people who answer are not newbies to medicine (well, a few might have outstanding Google skills). We chose that audience, so we are to blame. This is why the fault is in us. </p>\n\n<p>Yet, we can create a site targeted for <strong>us</strong>. For us, those who have fun talking about their job and explaining procedures to others, those who wish to broaden their horizon to other aspects of medicine, and those who want to learn about their subject of interest.</p>\n\n<p>I am <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/status-comatose\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-comatose&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-comatose</a> because I can't do all that on Health.SE. I don't have fun here. The mess is just way too huge. But I could, in principle, on a site targeted for <strong>me</strong>. </p>\n\n<p>We would need roughly 200 \"professionals\" joining and subscribing to get this new site running. This might be unrealistic, this might be idealistic. Maybe what I'm outlining here might be romanticised, based on lose assumptions.</p>\n\n<p>But I will give it a shot, if I can see just the dimmest light at the end of the tunnel. Because I like helping people, I like learning, and I like talking to you.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 775, "author": "Jon Ericson", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Regarding Expertise</h2>\n\n<p>I've been following the progress of this site from a distance, but I've gotten a strong sense of angst about whether this subject is even something that should be represented on the Stack Exchange network. It's not hard to see why; these could be questions of life and death. And yet, I'm optimistic that such a site could thrive. My (possibly misguided) hope comes from seeing amateurs build truly useful sites such as <a href=\"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/\">Philosophy</a>. </p>\n\n<p>In the private beta (long before I was hired) we discussed whether the site was <a href=\"https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89/not-ready-for-public-beta-what-is-this-site-about\">about or doing</a> philosophy. At the time, we were basically a bunch of programmers who had dabbled in philosophy. (Programmers tend to think they can learn anything and philosophy seemed trivially easy at the time.) A few years later, the quality of the site (as <a href=\"https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2841/lets-get-critical-apr-2015-site-self-evaluation\">evaluated by users</a>) was pretty good. Some users are working philosophers (if you can call it work), others are students of philosophy and still others are dabblers like me. So it's absolutely possible to build a site for all levels of expertise in a topic starting with rank amateurs.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding MedicalOverflow, I don't think it's necessary to attract experts. In fact, the <a href=\"https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/753/history-of-mathoverflow\">history of MathOverflow</a> suggests that experts saw the value of the format first and <a href=\"http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/186/whats-the-story-behind-mathoverflow-/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">literally begged</a> to have a site. <em>Separately</em>, Stack Overflow users with an interest in mathematics requested <a href=\"https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3355/mathematics\">a site on Area 51</a>. These two sites existed in totally separate spaces until MathOverflow joined the Stack Exchange network. While MathOverflow aims for <a href=\"https://meta.mathoverflow.net/a/272/36770\">research level questions</a>, the general math site has plenty of experts and doesn't need MathOverflow to attract them. </p>\n\n<p>That isn't to say there's no advantages to having a site for research math separate from broader mathematical questions. But you don't get there by fiat. Our experience creating communities with the hope that certain people will show up shows that hope is <em>invariably dashed</em>. For better or worse, the MedicalOverflow concept is only going to work if the experts are already clamoring for their own site. Meanwhile, having another site will not solve the problems on <em>this</em> site; Mathematics has had to deal with their own problems as if MathOverflow did not exist.</p>\n\n<h2>Categorizing Questions</h2>\n\n<p>Let's assume for a moment that Health is a topic that can be reasonably handled on Stack Exchange. What would such a site look like? My wife is a nurse and when I talk to her about work, it seems like there are three categories of activities:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Technical</strong>&mdash;Things like changing dressings, calculating dosages, IV starts and blood draws, monitoring vital signs, and so on.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Education</strong>&mdash;Since patients have health issues even after leaving the hospital, it's necessary to teach them (and often other family members) how to care for themselves.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Communication</strong>&mdash;Separate from instructing patients, healthcare professionals need to to exchange information in all sorts of ways. That includes taking patient medical histories, giving and receiving report at shift change, calling in specialists, charting everything, and that sort of thing. </p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I don't have as much understanding of what doctors do every day, but I gather they also <strong>diagnose and plan treatments</strong>. I expect these are the sort of questions lay people are most likely to ask and professionals the most reluctant to answer. They are also the least helpful questions for future readers since everyone's medical history is going to be different. So let's put this type of question aside for the moment.</p>\n\n<p>Clearly, this site could work very well for <strong>education</strong>-type questions. General questions, such managing diabetes or what it means to \"take with food\" or how to organize medications to avoid error, avoid the problems with diagnosis because they assume a diagnosis already exists. This type of information is common across the internet (often with \"consult your doctor\" warnings) so there's no reason these questions couldn't be answered here too. What's more, non-experts might answer just as well as experts. I'd rather hear from a diabetic than a brain surgeon about managing diabetes.</p>\n\n<p>In my non-expert opinion, <strong>technical and communication</strong> questions could be rephrased as education questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>\"Why can't I draw blood from this patient?\" => \"What are good techniques to draw blood under these conditions?\"</li>\n<li>\"Which specialist should I contact about my headaches?\" => \"Which specialists treat chronic headaches?\"</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>You don't even need the question itself to be rephrased. Answers can just sort of assume the question is more general than it represents itself as. It's not as if someone would consult Stack Exchange while they drawing blood. More likely, the questions would be asked later when thinking about the events of the day.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, I suspect there's a way to rephrase requests for a diagnosis into more general education questions. Most of these questions should probably be closed and eventually deleted, but I think there is room for people to describe symptoms and get educated on what might be causing them.</p>\n\n<h2>A Path Forward</h2>\n\n<p>I've rambled on long enough without really knowing what I'm talking about. In addition, this is the sort of conversation that works a lot better when everybody is looking at the same specific questions. So I'm starting a <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/774/self-evaluation-september-2017\">self-evaluation</a> using a random sample of 5 recent questions. I think that will be a good place to start understanding what isn't working and what can be done about it.</p>\n\n<p>It's easy to look at the front page of the site and assume that's what's random users see too. But if you look at <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/site-analytics/traffic-sources\">traffic statistics</a>, you see that most visitors arrive via search:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZIXWym.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZIXWym.png\" alt=\"Traffic Sources\"></a></p>\n\n<p>As a result, it's probably more representative to look at <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits\">questions that have a lot of views and anonymous feedback</a>. These are the questions people are actually using.</p>\n\n<p>Once we have more information about the site's current condition, I think we can start evaluating solutions. Maybe shutting it all down is the only thing to be done. But I suspect there are actions ordinary users can take (editing, voting to close, answering with references, etc.) to improve the quality of this site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 790, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 55, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/55", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this community has had problems from the get go. I think what is lacking are questions that are interesting to experts. When I look at the questions that were asked in the <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions?page=287&amp;sort=newest\">first days</a>, I see very few that I am compelled to read. While most are good questions and require experts to answer, the answers are of little interest to other experts. I would like to see more questions that address problems that experts would encounter (e.g., a grand rounds type case study) or questions that an expert might have to answer (e.g., bedside manner when dealing with <em>uninformed</em> sex/pregnancy questions).</p>\n\n<p>As an expert, and I use that term loosely as I am a mere PhD, I want to learn something when I read questions. I think the <em>homework</em> type medical advice questions are fine since seeing how an expert explains the answer is informative, but we are lacking questions from experts about problems experts face. I, and I believe a lot of SE veterans who have given up on the site, would be willing to sift through a lot of bad questions, if there were at least some good questions.</p>\n\n<p>I would suggest a push to get high rep users to ask expert level questions coupled with using bounties, and generous up votes, to get the experts who check in to become excited again.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 814, "author": "Atl LED", "author_id": 601, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Ok, I feel obligated to point out that when a pt is flatlining it's time to start punching out some CPR, not reaching for the paddles. And like @anongoodnurse and others, I've thought this site died a long time ago. </p>\n\n<p>There are plenty of question answer sites for MD's, the trick is that they are all subscription based and require for the user to actually spend money and be approved for registration (and actively discourage users broadcasting about them in public forums). Which is probably why MD's like them, it really holds out the public so high level conversations can be had. It's also why I doubt the current model will ever work as is.</p>\n\n<p>Quite frankly MD's have always enjoyed having more resources than PhD's from most other fields, which could easily explain why the paid market responded to having Q/A forums for MD's but not Math PhD's as an example. They're integrated into the medical systems we're already using in hospitals so it's not even a personal expense (at least at the last two institutions I worked for).</p>\n\n<p>I've long felt my participation in this site was for the public good, and that there was little I could ever get when asking questions (which I tried). And if that's going to be the motivation for medical professionals (which I understand is well beyond the category of MD's), then the quality of the questions would have to be particularly high (and we all know they're not).</p>\n\n<p>I'm quite curious to see if some passionate users can make a Frankenstein's Monster of the remains of this site, but I can't really find the motivation within myself to be a major part of that effort.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/768", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 791, "author": "Jon Ericson", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm going to go ahead and answer this as an outsider. As a preface, I'd like to ask you to read <a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users\">FAQ: Welcome to New Users</a> on the Skeptics site. As some of you might know, that site has very successfully navigated around the difficulties hosting a site that deals in a wide variety of topics that have dubious claims. In fact, their topic tag is <a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/medical-science\">[medical-claims]</a> which could be ontopic here too. It should be noted that the site does include users with specialized knowledge, but is structured in a way that does not require expertise. I think this is smart for a site which covers all sorts of topic, but might not be ideal for a site, like this one, with a somewhat narrower focus.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<h2>1. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13418\">Does fasting inhibit healing?</a> (61%; 0%; 33)</h2>\n\n<p>As is often the case, the problems with this question start from the question itself. The asker mentions \"in all my research\", but doesn't actually list any research or indicate where the idea came from in the first place. As a result, the extant answer is simultaneously broad and has to make guesses about the specific situation. There's a <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165006/what-are-these-notices-under-my-post\">\"citation needed\" post notice</a> under that answer, which is resonable. But since there are no other answers, this isn't a great page for people to land on. The <a href=\"http://data.stackexchange.com/health/query/725162/anonymous-feedback-on-a-question-and-its-answers?PostId=13418\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">one anonymous feedback vote</a> was negative, which reflects the unhelpfulness of the content.</p>\n\n<p>This is unfortunate because <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=fasting+inhibit+healing\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">a Google search on the topic</a> shows there's a lot of content available from sorta sketchy-looking websites. This would be a great opportunity for someone who is interested in reading the literature to find some research on the topic. (Google Scholar turns up <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=fasting+inhibit+healing\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">many results</a>, but you'd probably want to narrow it down by using the correct nedical jargon.) The silver lining is almost nobody has seen this content.</p>\n\n<p>If I were to attempt to fix the problem, I'd probably close the question and follow through on deleting the answer. Alternatively, I could see someone writing a comprehensive answer on the interactions of fasting and healing that would rescue the question. Again, this probably is a matter of finding, quoting, summarizing and referencing existing research. Probably this can be done by anyone with a familiarity with the technical language.</p>\n\n<h2>2. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13508\">I have painful/weak knees - which practitioner is best to see?</a> (74%; 51%; 1,055)</h2>\n\n<p>This is the only page seen by a significant number of people. The <a href=\"http://data.stackexchange.com/health/query/725162/anonymous-feedback-on-a-question-and-its-answers?PostId=13508\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">feedback</a> has been mostly positive other than an antidotal answer that's been downvoted. <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=runners+knee+specialist\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Looking around the internet</a>, there are a number of general articles about who someone with runner's knee might visit. So it's handy to have something more specific.</p>\n\n<p>I'd say the question is maybe a bit on the vague side, which is why the top answer needs to disclaim the second half of the answer. That portion also reads like it was copied from somewhere (\"normally the information below isn’t given to patients\"). That's fine as long as it's <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/referencing\">properly referenced</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The answers also haves some comments that aren't relevant anymore. I'd probably want to clean those up. But otherwise, this seems like a good question with useful answers.</p>\n\n<h2>3. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13223\">Should all the stuff be thrown away when moving out from a house with mold?</a> (61%; 21%; 50)</h2>\n\n<p>It's not hard to find definitive information about mold cleanup and this is a fairly general question. Both of the answers are useful. The top-voted one is a digest of a CDC page, which is probably the best sort of answer. The other answer is anecdotal, which can be unhelpful. In this case, I think it's useful prospective. Personally I find a lot news coverage of mold problems (typically after flooding events) to be overly dramatic. The two answers together make a great pairing of expert advice and practical experience. (But as always, the well-referenced answer is prefered.)</p>\n\n<h2>4. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13055\">Can I continue to eat a cereal my cat ate out of?</a> (70%; 21%; 75)</h2>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I'm typing this at my computer with my cereal behind me on a tall stool.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Um. Ok. This doesn't seem like a very helpful question at all. I downvoted it and I'd probably vote to close if I were a regular here. The answer is commonsensical enough. But the question is just specific in all the wrong ways. (It's also migrated from Pets, for some reason. That doesn't do it any favors.)</p>\n\n<h2>5. <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/12749\">What exactly is a diuretic and its relationship to dehydration</a> (51%; 34%; 29)</h2>\n\n<p>I like the question (except it forgot to actually link to the BBC article) and the answer. The one quibble I have is that the comment about whether drinking coffee, tea or alcohol increases dehydration somehow hasn't been addressed in the answer. </p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, this question is already well covered on the internet a <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=diuretic+dehydration\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Google search</a> turns up:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/XI4MY.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/XI4MY.png\" alt=\"Diuretic dehydration\"></a></p>\n\n<h2>Conclusion</h2>\n\n<p>I was on the lookout for dangerous answers or questions with the potential to attract them. And I didn't really find much. Granted, I didn't find a lot to recommend about 4 of the 5 questions and I had some concerns about the 5^th. All of my concerns are the fairly typical problems you might find in a site that <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/352/we-need-more-community-moderation\">could use more community moderation</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Still plenty of work to be done to make this an excellent site, but I agree with <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15/omg-a-site-about-health\">Robert's sentiment</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a site like this, folks are <em>allowed</em> to talk about this strange and mysterious world of \"medical health.\" Folks will be discussing how we can live longer, stay healthy, fix problems, and how all this stuff works. Our hope in creating a Stack Exchange site like this is that we can separate the <em>good</em> information from the <em>mis-</em>information. </p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 792, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>While the site evaluation is a good starting point, it omits a few problems because of the selection of posts.</p>\n\n<p>A data query returned that 25% of the posts posted in August were either deleted, closed or had a net score &lt; 0. That's like <strong>a quarter</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>Why is this the case?\nFrom my experience, roughly 60% of those bad posts are questions we can't answer. I think the site name plays a role there, one would expect questions about one's health to be on-topic on a site called \"Health\", but those questions are not on topic. There is a misconception about the site's purpose. I believe that simply renaming the site into something like \"MedicalSciences\" would solve this issue.</p>\n\n<p>The other 40% of posts are answers that are either wrong, based on experience, not facts, or without sources. Again, this is largely a misconception due to the site's name. Everybody has health, and everybody has experience regarding health. But we humans differ so much that experience isn't helpful. Furthermore, everybody believes to know something about health (which often turns out as fairytale). Again, a site name would help here as well.</p>\n\n<p>This core issue leads to other symptoms: Veteran users burn out (25% of bad posts is quite a task to moderate, both for the Community and the Moderation Team), and good posts suffocate in the mess of mediocre and bad posts.</p>\n\n<p>From the 5 example questions, I found the \"diuretic and dehydration\" question the only question I'd upvote, the \"which practitioner to see\" question valid, but with a bit of research by the OP unnecessary, and I have downvoted all other questions. </p>\n\n<p>Here again, we have a manifestation of a very few good questions (albeit being already covered), and a few questions tangential to the scope. </p>\n\n<p>And this list doesn't even include the 25% I was talking about above.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 794, "author": "anongoodnurse", "author_id": 169, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/169", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>OK, here goes. But please keep in mind I'm prickly when it comes to this site. And I've never done anything like this before, so I don't know if I'm doing it correctly.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13418/169\">Does fasting inhibit healing?</a> (61%; 0%; 33)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I like this question, and don't think the OP's lack of cited research is a problem (it would be on Skeptics.) I like it because of the popularity of fasting these days and the importance of nutrition in healing. I would do a tag edit to include diet, healing, and nutrition.</p>\n\n<p>The answer in comment should be removed because, well, the policy is no answers in comments, and there's no sources cited.</p>\n\n<p>The answer should have been removed not only because of the lack of sources, but it's also pseudo-y, meaning it really doesn't address the issue but throws out a lot of impressive sounding factoids.. like \"excessive protein consumption can drive cancerous processes in the body.\" Huh? How does this relate?</p>\n\n<p>The top Google hit sounds good, but it's a small study, wound healing was carried out while refeeding <em>after</em> four cycles of feeding. So, very, very 'meh'. No wonder it was cited all of 6 times since 2011.</p>\n\n<p>The second sciency-looking hit, <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2903966/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Factors Affecting Wound Healing</a>, is a really nice paper, and even answers the question. It's strange to find in a dental journal, but hey, they inflict a lot of wounds. But there's a lot of reading to do if you don't scroll down to the right section. The fact that it was cited 1423 times says <em>something</em>, but bad papers have been cited often, too.</p>\n\n<p>The rest are bloggy, <a href=\"http://drjockers.com/intermittent-fasting-is-a-powerful-healing-modality/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">wrong</a>, or don't support with the literature.</p>\n\n<p>The \"fix\" (?) is to tag correctly, remove comment and answer, and hope someone who can interpret the literature feels strongly enough to answer. I like this topic, so I would have when I was active.</p>\n\n<p>The best source on googling (looked for an easy, quick, etc. answer; no go.) is the paper I liked above.</p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13508/169\">I have painful/weak knees - which practitioner is best to see?</a> (74%; 51%; 1,055)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I like the question, even though knees are tricky for me. It's a good question.</p>\n\n<p>The upvoted answer is full of information but lacking in good answers (imo). The user assumes the most likely dx is Chondromalacia Patella, but, though it's an extremely common source of knee pain, it is not usually accompanied by weakness. It's really lacking in that it does not recommend anyone but a Physical therapist, playing down the orthopedist's role. In my state, a PT can't order an MRI, and with weakness/knee instability (people with instability often describe it as weakness because they're not sure the knee will hold in certain movements), this patient needs an MRI.</p>\n\n<p>The answer isn't copypasta, so needs no blockquote/does not need to be excised.</p>\n\n<p>Disclaimer/ethical disclosure: I'm a doctor, therefore rely a lot on tests to help confirm a diagnosis. However I'm not an internist (they order \"serum porcelain levels\", in other words, everything including the kitchen sink); in my specialty, we rely less on tests. If I order a test, it's because I think the proper diagnosis can't be made without one. </p>\n\n<p>Can a better answer be found on Googling? I liked my <a href=\"https://betterdoctor.com/health/what-type-of-doctor-should-you-see-for-knee-pain/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">first pick</a> among the first hits better. Disclaimer: my training was in primary care, and they agree an MRI is necessary. Heh.</p>\n\n<p>Also, a PCP will know the better orthopods in the area, so will avoid sending you to a money-hungry one.</p>\n\n<p>Dr.Whom's answer is <em>much</em> better than the fancy accepted answer.</p>\n\n<p>Why is the DV'ed answer still there even?</p>\n\n<p>The \"fix\": \n- ask for clarification in comments (where does it hurt? Do you feel weak/unstable? What's it like first thing in the am? etc. <em>But</em> that would make it more personal.<br>\n-DV and comment on the top-voted answer<br>\n-UV and comment on the far better answer<br>\n-remove the DV'ed answer.<br>\n-<strong>Have more experts on the site who can evaluate the answers for quality.</strong> and finally,<br>\n-<strong>Have more experts on the site who can evaluate the answers for quality.</strong></p>\n\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13223/169\">Should all the stuff be thrown away when moving out from house with mold?</a> (61%; 21%; 50)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Dr.Whom's answer excellent. Googling first hit that wasn't an Ad was CDC site. So great!</p>\n\n<p>Did anyone notice the tag: stachybotrys-black-mold? It matters, but only a little bit. Some people actually die from this particular mold. So remove the tag or address the problem.</p>\n\n<p>Fix: remove the answer without citations. </p>\n\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/13055/169\">Can I continue to eat a cereal my cat ate out of?</a> (70%; 21%; 75)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Umm... I don't know what to say here. Downvote and delete?</p>\n\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>What exactly is a diuretic and its relationship to dehydration (51%; 34%; 29)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The question makes two faulty assumptions (the last two box quotes) and should be edited to simply, what does a diuretic do? (And <strong>experts</strong> should know to do this.)</p>\n\n<p>It's a common question, and very commonly misunderstood. While @CareyGregory's answer was correct, it did not address the common misperception that alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, and other diuretics found in food really do not dehydrate you to any significant extent. (The body's regulation of water is one of the tightest and most efficient because of the dangers of fluctuations in serum sodium. If drinking five cups of coffee made you urinate more water than you drank/ate, there would be less of a population problem.)</p>\n\n<p>Googling? When I google off scholar and the Mayo Clinic comes up, that's my first choice. See @JonEricson's answer.</p>\n\n<p>The fix: Remove the two erroneous block quotes, and address not only what a diuretic does, but also what it doesn't do.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Are there any answers that can actively hurt someone on this site?</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/1887/169\"><strong>YES</strong></a></p>\n\n<p>This answer got six upvotes before I felt compelled to answer it myself and accept my own answer to undo the harm. How embarrassing.</p>\n\n<p>Even worse is that I brought it up to the mods. It only got 1 DV.</p>\n\n<p>Does that say something about mod participation here?</p>\n\n<p>That's just one off the top of my head.</p>\n\n<p>I hate to say this <em>for many reasons</em>, not the least of which is because I was asked to step down as a moderator from this site (which kinda questions the reliability of my observations), but:</p>\n\n<p>If this site doesn't get different moderators, nothing will change. </p>\n\n<p>I'm not saying I want the role. I couldn't distance myself then, and I don't want to try now.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/774", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 784, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<h2>Excellent Sources</h2>\n<p><strong>Sources that provide information based on validated clinical decision rules, meta-analysis of high-quality studies, etc.</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>International, national, state governmental health websites (e.g. <a href=\"http://www.who.int/topics/en/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">WHO</a>, <a href=\"https://www.nih.gov/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">NIH</a>, <a href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">CDC</a>, <a href=\"https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">USPSTF</a>)</li>\n<li>Professional organizations (e.g. <a href=\"http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AHA</a>, <a href=\"http://www.aafp.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AAFP</a>, <a href=\"https://www.acog.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ACOG</a>)</li>\n<li>Journals (indexed at <a href=\"http://pubmed.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">PubMed</a>, <a href=\"https://www.nice.org.uk/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)</a>, <a href=\"https://www.tripdatabase.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">TRIP database</a>; like <a href=\"http://www.amjmed.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AMJMED</a>)</li>\n<li>systematic review sites: <a href=\"http://www.cochranelibrary.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Cochrane Library</a>, <a href=\"https://www.campbellcollaboration.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Campbell Collaboration</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>More examples can be found in the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/113/7951\">reliable sources list</a></p>\n<h2>Appropriate Sources for Common Knowledge</h2>\n<p><strong>Sources that are trustworthy enough to use them as references for common knowledge:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://webmd.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">WebMD</a>, <a href=\"https://www.medscape.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Medscape</a>, <a href=\"http://mayoclinic.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Mayo Clinic</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://wikipedia.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wikipedia.org</a> (if it is directly pertinent and you've looked at the reference supporting the specific information as sometimes it is wrong; prefer to use the references cited in Wikipedia directly)</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>Good Sources but not easily accessible, so use alternatives when possible:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.uptodate.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">UpToDate</a>: (a clinical resource commonly used, peer reviewed and evidence-based with extensive high quality resources; however, much of its content requires a rather pricey subscription. If possible, link to the references they use.)</li>\n<li>Primary literature articles behind pay walls</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Poor Sources</h2>\n<p><strong>Sources that are not verifiable by other users:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>Individuals' blogs (<em>Note:</em> <em>if the site links to high quality resources, use those resources as your links instead of the blog</em>)</li>\n<li>Family members</li>\n<li><em>&quot;I know a doctor who...&quot;</em></li>\n<li><em>&quot;I am a doctor who...&quot;</em></li>\n<li><em>&quot;When this happened to me, I...&quot;</em></li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Notes</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Clinical/professional education and experience does offer insight; however, but no one here can be validated as a professional. Therefore other evidence is always preferred. However, under some circumstances a professional can refer to experience if (1) it's not the primary source of evidence and (2) if prefaced appropriately &quot;In my clinical experience, I have never seen this manifested...&quot;</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Concerning <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">junk science</a>; although it should be more common on the bottom of our list of quality sources than near the top, no journal or book or study represents the ultimate truth. Check the questions and aims, the methodology, the <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21765796\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">statistics</a>, results and conclusions of your sources. Do not trust <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28987077\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">blindly</a> <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26665023\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">everything</a> that turns up on PubMed. Quality comes even there in a <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1001%2Fjama.294.2.218\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">range</a> of colours.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Science is no belief system but a process. A single study is good but usually not enough to reach <em>conclusive evidence</em>. Check the age of these publications, look for contradictions, <a href=\"http://retractionwatch.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">retractions</a> or refutations, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_medicine\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">conflicting information</a> or <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest#Conflict_of_interest_in_the_health_care_industry\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">conflicts of interests</a>. Use more than one source if possible and weigh the facts available to you. Do likewise with the answers you read here. Check the reasoning, the sources and the conclusions for their soundness. Then comment and vote.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Some help for reading, understanding and interpreting scientific and medical papers:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=%7Ceresources%7C61896\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Trisha Greenhalgh: How to read a paper the basics of evidence-based medicine</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=%7Ceresources%7C373288\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Caroline De Brún &amp; Nicola Pearce-Smith: Searching skills toolkit : finding the evidence</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=%7Ccambrdgedb%7C306560\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Iain K. Crombie: The pocket guide to critical appraisal : a handbook for health care professionals</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=%7Ccambrdgedb%7C4355088\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Ben Yudkin: Critical reading : making sense of research papers in life sciences and medicine</a></p>\n<hr />\n<h2>How to document sources</h2>\n<p>(extract from @LangLangC's now deleted answer)</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>The internet never forgets!</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This is a myth. Links change, pages vanish, whole domains might evaporate or worse, change hands to owners doing the opposite of what was once there. Not all of them are archived at <a href=\"https://archive.org/web/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">archive.org</a>. sometimes nothing seems to have changed but the content of a page is changed in subtle ways. Wikipedia for example is an evolving project, pages are dynamic in their content. It is justified to call that source unstable.</p>\n<p><strong>Unless very basic things are referred to Wikipedia links should point to a specific version of the page.</strong></p>\n<p>But more importantly:</p>\n<p>Even if a &quot;Good Source&quot; is not easily accessible, and you are encouraged to use alternatives when possible, then there is one way to improve on that situation that should also apply to most other citations.</p>\n<p>Example being:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Primary literature articles behind pay walls</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If <strong>you</strong> have access, then retype or copy and paste <strong>quotes</strong> from your sources. It will be a legal challenge as well as unpractical to do that with whole articles or whole books.</p>\n<p>But the dosage makes the poison. Used sparingly this is used effectively. The core concepts or crucial statements from a primary source behind a paywall or from a printed book are even more conveniently to check then. That part quoted is more protected from link-rot and this kind of redundancy increases robustness all around.</p>\n<h2>Using short but crucial quotes improves every source.</h2>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1079, "author": "userJT", "author_id": 15631, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15631", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What if the references aged and are obsolete. Will we require numbred references. what style one should use? If you require references, where is the style guide?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/783", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 804, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>While I agree that this newbie restriction looks entirely stupid, I am trying the role of advocatus diaboli here.</p>\n\n<p>Once this feature request gets noticed by the network gurus there will be an answer containing the inevitable \"there is a reason for this\" (partly outlined <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/new-user\">here</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Like Narusan, I do not agree with that reasoning. Spam is not characterised by >2 link count. We had single link spam and pure text spam as well. If historical experience proves otherwise beneficial… I haven't seen this.</p>\n\n<p>So, while I agree that the current limit is impracticably low and would second a raise of this limit to at least 5 or 6, here whispers the serpents voice.</p>\n\n<p>Do I understand this correctly: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>association boni make this a non-issue if someone has 200 rep on any <em>one</em> site across the network?</li>\n<li>two uncontested upvotes on one question or one such upvote on a an answer <em>also</em> alleviate this restriction?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This leaves three problematic cases:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>anonymous users, just stopping by</li>\n<li>really freshly registered users on HealthSE</li>\n<li>users that haven't got >200 rep anywhere else</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Then this might actually serve us well. Anonymous users are allowed to post out of principle. This is considered \"a good thing\".\nThe biggest problem in recent times was called \"low level quality of questions\".\nUsers that a one-time hit wonder, never to return or accept an answer. Do they need more links in their questions?</p>\n\n<p>Answers with a reference or link count &lt;3 also came from higher rep users.</p>\n\n<p>Answers of highly motivated newbie users might have (and some have) suffered. That was the problem, that is the problem of this question.</p>\n\n<p>Can't we make this into our advantage?</p>\n\n<p>Explain the rules, then require old-fashioned references (like in footnotes) – at first / from newbies – guiding them to update and then edit their answers with (more) net links if enough upvotes followed? This would seem awfully restrictive and tiresome for many new users. But it may actually filter the one part and nudge the other into both: quality and staying around, for a while at least. </p>\n\n<p>Another major downside to it: This would of course increase the workload substantially.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from Skeptics this restriction should also go away on History.\nAnd the discussion on that at Skeptics lists many arguments:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2544/41728\">How should new users get started with Skeptics?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/367/41728\">Remove number of links restriction for new users</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1706/41728\">Too many links in a first timer's answer?</a> </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 805, "author": "dawg", "author_id": 11738, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11738", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've been a regular visitor at SO for years, and finally created an account 4 months ago so I could participate in the conversation. Eventually I realized that a huge part of what makes SO/SE such a unique &amp; valuable source of knowledge is how \"strict\" most of the members are in regards to how/when/what/where to post, staying on-topic, limiting sharing of speculation, etc.</p>\n\n<p>[IMHO some members go overboard with newbies, being rude or belittling them for not already knowing \"how\" to post, <em>where</em> to search for existing answers, etc, but that's a discussion for another thread.]</p>\n\n<p>I only recently discovered the wealth of Stack sub-sites, each packed with knowledge. The last couple weeks I've joined a new site every other day, <code>Health</code> being the most recent.</p>\n\n<p>Over a few months of daily visits to the site, I've worked my way up to 227 reputation (and a few dozen of my answers \"upped\"), and was finally starting to get some privileges, but the fact that this all \"resets\" on every site I visit is frustrating at the least. This is discouraging for potential new members, plus causes shoddy posts, like my first one on <code>Health</code>. I took a while carefully writing it because I wanted to make sure it was organized &amp; professional, and that every claim was cited from a reputable source. Then I click <code>Post</code> and am given the task of choosing which sources to <em>remove</em>, this making it like making my stats look made-up, causing confusion for others, and so on.</p>\n\n<p>If I had never used a Stack site before, I think the restriction would be more appropriate, but when it starts feeling like the restrictions never end, it's bound to make people either stop joining new sites, or stop putting effort into detailed answers.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, I realized afterwards that <strong>a simple workaround</strong> is to post my disallowed links as a separate, which is what I will do in the future (thus defeating the restriction and making it pointless anyway). Similarly, the only apparent reason that I can't up-vote questions or answers until I have 15-rep, is to make it very clear that my approval is <strong>worthless</strong> and <strong>unwanted</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>What is the worst thing that would happen if these restrictions were lifted? If I wanted to spam 100 links I can still do it now - just has to be an even-more-annoying 50 comments with 2 links each. Same goes for if I was just \"uninformed\" and posting un-reputable links. </p>\n\n<p>With <em>or</em> without the restrictions, other members are still able to remove or fix irrelevant my posts.</p>\n\n<p>@LangLangC mentioned \"<strong>explaining the rules to newbies</strong>\" and I (as someone finally getting past his newbie status and starting to feel like a member) <strong>strongly agree</strong> with that as well. Being completely unaware of SE's posting policies (ie., \"if asking for help always show what you've tried and where you've searched\"), of the varying policies of the individual sites (ie., on <code>Health</code>, \"only link to medically-reputable sources\"), and then topped off with new-member posting restrictions that are prohibitive and confusing, as I haphazardly discover each restriction only by stumbling onto them one at a time. As a frequent Wikipedia editor I'm a little anal about finding quality sources to site, but I don't recall seeing even that instruction posted anywhere (not counting scorn from other members).</p>\n\n<p>Heck, <em>I didn't even know there was a place where we can discuss THIS stuff</em> <strong>until today</strong> when I finally found a member kind enough to point me in the right direction (Thanks @ Narusan-in-coma!). [I had to put that space after that @ since I'm only allowed to talk about one-person-per-post, until reach some mysterious point-level.]</p>\n\n<p>Ahhh, forgive me if that came across as a rant; it feels good to finally have found a place where I'm allowed to share my non-cited point of view, and hopefully everyone realizes that an opinion from a newbie can be just as valuable as a seasoned member's... And now i have to visit a couple other meta sites to finally ask my off-topic/site-related questions &amp; maybe even share my feedback of a couple simple things that could make \"newbie-integration\" less painful for everyone involved!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/803", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 815, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>What do you think of the scope?</h2>\n\n<p>It's a mess. Personally, I'd exclude food sciences because the issue is so debatable and I haven't seen any good question about food sciences. It is important to remember that a SE site for every single topic is not mandated, we could cut out stuff that is irrelevant. </p>\n\n<p>Furthermore, <a href=\"https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2277/why-was-my-question-closed-as-not-framed-in-cognitive-sciences\">CogSci</a> has a close reason for \"not framed in cognitive sciences\". This basically allows any non-expert, hypothetical, badly researched question to be closed as off-topic. In my opinion, it would be good to have this on Health.SE (or whatever name we give it). I think that the following questions should not be considered as good questions here:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Is X healthy? </li>\n<li>What are cures for X? (where X is a symptom and not an illness)</li>\n<li>Recommendation of treatment options, diagnosis etc.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>What do you think of the site name?</h2>\n\n<p>It's a mess, and we can't even blame users who ask personalised questions because on a site called Health, one would expect such questions. I seriously think that the biggest improvement that could be made to the site is <strong>renaming it</strong>. I personally like MedicalSciences.SE a lot, but I'm open to other suggestions. </p>\n\n<p>While we're at it - We should rename our main chatroom as well. As I outlined below, low activity in chat is another problem we are facing, and The Waiting Room, despite being very fitting for the site, also invites patients to go there wait for a doctor to show up and ask all the \"diagnose me\" questions in comments.</p>\n\n<h2>What do you think of the site moderation?</h2>\n\n<p>I appreciate our moderators and I do think that they do a good job, but I fear that because of the current amount of bad questions, they are likely to be burned out pretty soon. </p>\n\n<h2>What do you think of how we handle the need of references?</h2>\n\n<p>On the one hand, the inclusion of references has lead to good quality of answers (but huge efforts of posting answers). I think that if we have enough health professionals and questions are high quality, references could become essentially obsolete because a lot of users could verify claims themselves. I'd personally drop it from \"required\" to \"encouraged\" if we do make my proposed transition.</p>\n\n<h2>Which aspects of Health.SE are working well?</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The quality of good answers!</strong><br>\nIf answers do follow site guidelines, we end up with a lot of really really great answers that could be turned into textbooks. To me, this is a sign that our measures do lead to an improvement of quality.</li>\n<li>That's about it, to be honest.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Which aspects of Health.SE should be improved, and how?</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>More Activity on Chat</strong><br>\nMost of us have busy schedules, but it would be great if chat could be more active. This benefits new users who just want to learn how to use our site and have small questions, and it benefits veteran users for questions/exchanges not suited for the Q&amp;A format.<br>\n<strong>Solution:</strong><br>\nWe could organise monthly events around a time when people are usually available. One event I'd personally be looking forward to a lot is discussing studies. Maybe someone could pick an interesting study and prepare a bit for the next month where we discuss the importance, limitations and implications of the study. At the end of the event, we'd agree on someone else who will prepare for the next month. This exchange could also be combined with stories and gossip from work and tips how to do things given some users huge experience.</li>\n<li><strong>More questions asked by professionals</strong><br>\nThere are questions asked by professionals, but they usually suffocate in the mess of bad questions.<br>\n<strong>Solution:</strong><br>\nAlter Scope, Rename Site</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h1>The 5 Step Plan Towards A Better Site</h1>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Define a new scope</li>\n<li>Create new close reasons according to the scope</li>\n<li>Update the help pages</li>\n<li>Rename the site</li>\n<li>Have a few weeks of super strong moderation</li>\n</ol>\n\n<h2>Optional Bonus</h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Create Monthly Chat Events</li>\n<li>Advertise the Site on other sites via Community Ads</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 816, "author": "Atl LED", "author_id": 601, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/601", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE are working well?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Honestly, none.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE should be improved, and how?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think you're already on track, but I'm concerned that any server side modifications are a pipe dream. I think the #1 need is the quick euthanization of bad questions, hopefully as automated as possible.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site name?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I love the idea of \"MedicalOverflow.\"</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site moderation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The current mods can't be expected to deal with the current deluge of vomit that is the majority of questions asked.</p>\n\n<p>I'm in ID so I'm prone to taking inspiration from viruses. We should accordion up the gene count in the genome until we find mutation that works. I would say increase the size/# of moderators by at least a log.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of how we handle the need of references?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I've written about this extensively in a previous meta answer, but briefly every single question should be required to have at least one link out or citation. Questions that are kept without proof of research should be the exception not the rule.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the scope?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm not really sure that the broad scope of all medical concerns is the problem. And I'm not willing to say that we can't handle homeopathic experts, or alternative medicine opinions.</p>\n\n<p>E.g.\nThere's probably some truth to the fact that additional cannabinoids have medicinal value, and those should be brought out and studied at a pharmacological level. I have an answer on the main site somewhere to that effect.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 817, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE are working well?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The team work results of different users coming with different backgrounds, expectations, opinions etc. That works quite well, when it's working, but is suffering from very low t-cell count – or how to put it?</p>\n\n<p>Lately it was really good to read 'competing' answers together!</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE should be improved, and how?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>We already put on the agenda:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>attracting new users, new regulars</li>\n<li>re-activating some of the veterans</li>\n<li>keeping new users around for long enough to vote (and accept, if applicable)<br>\nfor that we need more mandatory reading before posting, up-to-date help and tour (the unicorn-problem)</li>\n<li>problems with posts from new users should have a very friendly but firm guidance text attached to comments or banners. Encouraging to learn and improve.</li>\n<li>I know and usually am full of favour for SE guidelines accepting quasi-anon posts. For this site I see this as a major problem, for now at least, I have no solution for.</li>\n<li>I don't have the slightest idea how this would work for mobile site versions on small screens but the info-banners appearing above 'new post'-boxes need expansion and links?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>How to nudge those people into this direction?\nExpand the regular and active users base.\nWe just <em>need</em> more good answers.\nAfter achieving a diverse and \"interesting question\"-looking default page, perhaps land a few Hot Network Questions. (That is often not really wanted on many sites by quite a few people but seems to have done wonders to the knowledge of vaping.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site name?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>\"MedicalOverflow\" is a bit funny, Health was deemed too much of a pest attractor; MedicineMans or \"Sons of Hippokrates\" or something like that would be even worse? If the second site should be still kept alive as an idea, we shoud keep it? Problems with misconceptions and wrong, or better: unwanted, expectations are not derived from names alone. We should focus on users, behaviours, processes and content.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site moderation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Good job done. Too few, not geographically spread out enough. Global site has input coming at unpredictable hours. That alone is demanding unhealthy shift work now… and introduces an unwelcome delay sometimes.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of how we handle the need of references?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I wrote in <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/766/permissibility-of-non-medical-sources\">permissibility of non medical sources</a> about it. </p>\n\n<p>If we require sources in \"answers that are inspired to explain why and how, are long not short\" then some sources should be required. Maybe at least one link to reliable sources <em>required</em>, a few more encouraged? That should be ideally judged on the importance, gravity or centrality of the claim that's made. </p>\n\n<p>Knowledge ages, just referring to textbook X now almost mandates to also mention the edition or year of publication. An expert in the field with degrees to show might have an opinion or factoid memorised long ago that is simply not valid knowledge any longer. Without the links to sources it becomes quite terrible to judge the info given.</p>\n\n<p>And basic problems originating from link-outs to consider:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>mere appeals to authority (recently found a \"systematic review\" meta-analysis on a \"reliable sources\" site that was complete garbage [\"of 4436 studies meeting our search criteria, we chose to include 36 in our final analysis…\"])</li>\n<li>basic fact-checking and argument analysis in relation to the links given takes time and sometimes extraordinary effort</li>\n<li>this should not become a primitive link farm</li>\n<li>quantity and quality are not synonyms</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>For these basic problems just mentioned a <em>simple</em> guideline would be helpful, but alas, I have none; and I have difficulty imagining one.</p>\n\n<p>Aside from:<br>\nStrong claims require strong backup.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the scope?</p>\n \n <blockquote>\n <p>I'm not really sure that the broad scope of all medical concerns is\n the problem. And I'm not willing to say that we can't handle\n homeopathic experts, or alternative medicine opinions.</p>\n </blockquote>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Second that. \n\"Can you treat X with ayurveda/homeopathy?\" A: \"Naturally, of course, you can treat anything with that! But outcomes will differ… Often quite severely so. And here is why… and this a better solution…\" </p>\n\n<p>Currently, I think if the \"Diagnose-me\" questions stop from appearing then we have made a great step towards a cure for the site.</p>\n\n<p>There is still a certain need to reach a consensus on what does constitute \"a <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/67960/373864\">bad question</a>\" and how to effectively communicate that to people inclined to post a new question. A problem of principle here is that tour and help docs do not reflect much of the attempts in the recent past to salvage the site. I do not know how this works and what's involved to change that, but the lack of change there while we're stuck in all these metas feels like a very frustrating lack of progress. </p>\n\n<p>A closing word regarding quality of questions in regard to answers:</p>\n\n<h3>\"Bad <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/737/11231\">questions</a>\" <strong><em>that are on-topic</em></strong> should be allowed and answered in principle. Improvement encouraged or enforced.</h3>\n\n<p>A certain level of general ignorance is to be expected in <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/739/11231\">questions</a>. Cluelessness and bad knowledge or bad advice are abound on the net. This is imho only a problem if this appears in an answer with good standing (many upvotes). To address that we should really <em>encourage</em> sharing prior research in questions, but not necessarily enforce quoting \"reliable sources\" there.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 826, "author": "Lucky", "author_id": 613, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/613", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with most of the points made. So here are my thoughts,</p>\n\n<p><strong>Mostly on improvements</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>getting rid of unspecific, non-researched, not-thought-through questions</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I think that \"bad\" questions\" are plaguing the site and weeding them out would be a major improvement. My suggestion would be to introduce something like a \"no research\" close reason to the list and then close relentlessly questions lacking research (asker's attempt to answer). This would most likely mean that we would need to put the site into a coma before we can revive it. It is a gamble and we would need a strong base of committed users to see the site through this time.\nI am ambivalent about the mandatory references in questions (perhaps slightly more in favour than against), but if we would require those, I would accept any reference as a proof of research, not only the scientific ones. As an example, ELL community has discussed a similar problem on their Meta: <a href=\"https://ell.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/439/please-everyone-details-please\">Details please</a> and came up with a new close-vote reason as a solution. We would, of course, need to word ours differently, since a call for including details would bring a flood of (unwanted) personal medical history details in questions. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>bigger community of professionals &amp; advertising</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I fully support advertising on other SE sites (if we already aren't) - primarily Biology SE, Chemistry SE, and, if we can advertise on sites still in beta, Bioinformatics SE and Cognitive Sciences SE. Other than that I don't have ideas on increasing our community, aside from professionals personally inviting their colleagues, but I have tried this and so has Atl LED if I'm not mistaken, and this goes rather slowly and inefficiently.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>more questions from professionals</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Sure, but they need to be answered. Two of mine sit without a good answer (one with a removed spam and a personal experience/opinion the other one without even an attempt of an answer). </p>\n\n<p>P.S. The mods are doing an enormous job, they are doing it quite well and I feel for them. The community needs to chip in more, by flagging, reviewing and voting. The mod team could probably use more people to take some of the burden off of the current members, but I personally cannot commit to offer such help.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 835, "author": "M-Pixel", "author_id": 5304, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5304", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE are working well?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The fact that there is a Health SE at all is exciting to me. I've never participated in any SE Meta before, but I see a lot of potential in an objective resource that can help people overcome the challenges of the prevalence of \"snake-oil\", and highly complicated hard-to-navigate healthcare systems.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site moderation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Having a question voted for closing is a negative experience, especially for users who legitimately put time and effort into their questions. It feels like a slap in the face, even if it's not meant to be. Therefore, I think that the focus of moderation should be on <em>cures</em>, not <em>bandages</em>. Which brings me to...</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Which aspects of Health.SE should be improved, and how?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Take a look at the site from the perspective of the naive user.</p>\n\n<p>The front page says, in the middle of a sentence, <em>\"...is not intended as a substitute for individualized diagnosis...\"</em>, which might be inferred to mean that questions about oneself are not welcome, but to most people will sound like standard indemnification jargon.</p>\n\n<p>When I click \"Ask a Question\", I see <em>\"We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed. Provide details. Share your research.\"</em>, and that is the extent of the guidance I am given.</p>\n\n<p>In order to learn that <em>\"Personal medical advice questions are off-topic\"</em>, I need to go as far as to click on the \"How to ask\" link. This is easy to miss, and even if found, most people will not follow it because who doesn't know how to ask questions?</p>\n\n<p>In order to discover that the extent of what is considered on-topic is limited to</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Environmental or nutritional factors that affect health</li>\n<li>The ways that diseases and injuries affect people</li>\n<li>The health effects of processes such as pregnancy and aging</li>\n<li>Medications and other interventions that are used to treat diseases</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>... and does not actually include <strong>health</strong>care professionals, nor <strong>health</strong>care systems, I must peruse the Help Center until I find and read the page <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">What topics can I ask about here?</a>. The Help Center, by the way, is not directly linked to from the home page, except in small text in the footer.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, it could be a lot more obvious to new users that they should not ask the questions that you are having trouble with, and it is no wonder that they keep asking those questions.</p>\n\n<p>A small start could even be to encourage moderators to link to the list of acceptable topics in their close-request-comments.</p>\n\n<p><em>Edit: It looks like this exact thing is being discussed in <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/743/lets-open-a-discussion-on-building-in-quality-control-measures-that-encourage-h\">Let's open a discussion on building in quality control measures that encourage higher quality posts/answers</a></em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the site name?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the scope is to include questions about healthcare professionals and systems, it's perfect. If not, then I don't think the name is the biggest concern.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do you think of the scope?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I ended up mentioning this in a comment on <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/818/questions-on-health-business\">Questions on health business</a>, a Meta question specifically about whether or not the scope encompasses health business (I hope it's not annoying or inappropriate that I repeat myself to some extent here): I think that a strongly moderated, objective place like Stack Exchange is desperately needed for healthcare topics. Healthcare systems are difficult to navigate. Being systems, they have a lot of objective questions with objective answers.</p>\n\n<p>The topics of nutrition, aging, and disease, on the other hand, I think will more often than not will be impossible to answer objectively, or with significant evidence, unless it is very clear that we're talking about these things at the molecular biology level. Which leads me to ask this question: <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/834/who-is-the-target-user-of-health-se\">Who is the target user?</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/809", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 822, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Health</h2>\n\n<p><strong>Pro:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>it's all encompassing and shows our brought scope</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Cons:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>gives the impression of Quora or Yahoo Answers </li>\n<li>doesn't highlight our quality standards</li>\n<li>is misleading regarding the personal medical advice</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 823, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>MedicalOverflow</h2>\n\n<p><strong>Pro:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>it isn't as misleading regarding personal medical advice</li>\n<li>has a touch of professionalism, like MathOverflow</li>\n<li>represents site scope quite well</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Cons:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>not as poignant as Health or shorter names</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 824, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Medical Sciences</h2>\n\n<p><strong>Pro:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>it isn't misleading regarding personal medical advice</li>\n<li><s>consistency with our sister-site, CognitiveSciences</s> it is now renamed as <em>Psychology and Neuroscience</em></li>\n<li>represents site scope well</li>\n<li>is very professional</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Cons</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>there's already <a href=\"https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/113814/medical-sciences?tab=active#tab-top\">an Area51 proposal</a> with that name,\nso we would have to figure out what to do with that</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 833, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>HumanBiology which takes all those human biology questions from biology.se, avoids animal medical questions, and all the current off topic medical treatment questions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 864, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Medicine</strong></p>\n\n<p>To show the shift away from patient oriented ( and thus an endless pit of poor questions ) to a professional orientation.</p>\n\n<p>I don't like Medical Sciences as much of what we do is apply treatments which are a result of science. But we mostly don't engage in the practice of medical research.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/821", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 836, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My understanding is that the target audience is:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>People who want to be healthier</li>\n<li>People who are studying health academically</li>\n<li>People who are healthcare professionals</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 838, "author": "Dave Liu", "author_id": 140, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/140", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Any SE should address some specific subdomain, and in this case, I believe we address the desires of <strong>people who want an evidence-based approach to being healthier</strong>. Ideally, we translate academically rigorously accepted information into digestable formats for people without the knowledge, skill, or background to understand and interpret the context of research papers.</p>\n\n<p>This isn't really a place for academics to talk about new procedures, for people to get diagnoses, or for getting a quote on health insurance, but we address a very specific need: to be healthier- whether for yourself or for others (first aid / vaccination / etc.)</p>\n\n<p>The problem is that health.SE wants to be at a level of academic rigor that goes beyond Quora and yahoo answers, but is still vulnerable to bro-science quality Q&amp;A's.</p>\n\n<p>Ideally, I believe we want to focus on bridging the knowledge gap between people who are studying health academically and people who want to live healthier, not so much healthcare professionals (who, though we want to help, we really don't have many means of maintaining quality posts for them), such that anyone can live a healthier life, and find a place with credible responses of academic rigor.</p>\n\n<p>We kind of learned the hard way these past few years that we just won't have to resources to support high-level academics consistently- not enough of us are real professionals, but many of us know how to research, read papers, and understand the implications of scientifics studies (and where those limitations lie).</p>\n\n<p>In this age of fake/questionable/biased information and popular semi-logical but wrong science, we're trying to separate the wheat from the chaff for people. I think that health.SE evolved to try and bridge this gap, for those who don't have the time/energy/background to evaluate research and back up our answers with strong support.</p>\n\n<p>:) Making information not just accessible, but comprehensible and evidence-based.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/834", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5304/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 853, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This a suggestion I do not oppose.</p>\n\n<p>There is really quite an amount of problems addressed in that question.</p>\n\n<p>First of all, the wisdom of the crowd is not always reliable in the first place. We should know that. Sometimes the asker is a plain idiot. That happens. A lot? I have posts on other sites with the most extreme voting difference where I provided a very detailed answer, referenced my sources and even ended up with a negative score \"too long\", \"do not like what you wrote\" etc. Despite giving very plain and clearly the best answer. Bandwagon waltzed through town, this misalignment will probably never be corrected. OP apparently never read my final version of the answer and accepted a short but bogus answer. \nAn effect that worked twice in a similar way, though hopefully not with a bogus answer, in my favour, to be fair.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes the answers are bad. </p>\n\n<p>The accepted answer always relies on one person and her preferences alone. \"Correctness\" is to be established through voting, not alone, but primarily. There are badges for that, \"outperforming an accepted answer\". </p>\n\n<p>What is \"correct\"? This is in most cases not so obvious as this question makes it look like. Final verdicts are an enemy of knowledge acquisition. Just like an accept from a never returning user on a wrong or at least inferior answer is a thorn in the side of a Q&amp;A, such a requested marking might stifle progress of knowledge.</p>\n\n<p>Who is knowledgable? In principle this is not reliably addressable here. I will not disclose any real information or even credentials that I have, neither <em>should</em> anyone. And if anyone does it, were are the guarantees that this information is correct and not just an impostering appeal to authority of unknowable validity? Even experts can err, and I have seen my share of this kind in all fields and walks of life.</p>\n\n<p>Since voting is the correcting principle in this system of merits on SE, <em>we</em> are thrown back to not only our lack of real experts, medical professionals etc. We are thrown back on our sheer lack of core user base. And what is really compounding this small user base is the voting laziness within that small group. </p>\n\n<p>The answer that prompted this discussion can and should be seen from two different perspectives of correctness.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Does it confirm to our guidelines of format, reference providing etc?</li>\n<li>Is its content acceptable, correct or good?</li>\n<li>How do you, the voter, assess its up or downvote worthiness? </li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The OP (Graham) for this discussion only argues about 2 and 3, which are reasons not to be dismissed, but the answer already fails bullet point 1! That alone is reason to criticise the answer and if not improved: downvote it.</p>\n\n<p>We did not do that! Apparently not effectively enough, to say the least.</p>\n\n<p>It is precisely a design goal of any SE site that one question generates <em>more</em> than one answer. The theory is that one answer will be better than the other answer. The answer that prompted this is exactly one of the few cases where and when on our site this design goal that is <em>necessary</em> to graduate a site out of beta is fulfilled numerically (really >2.5 are needed?) and is showing the merits or demerits of the answers exactly like the theory envisions it.</p>\n\n<p>The theory is a bit flawed, like I pointed out in the introduction. But here it seems to work out even though the voter sample is n=small.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, we need more users with a healthy background, like medics, students, practitioners or theorists in a variety of fields. But we need more users overall, more active users, more questions, more answers, more votes. That does not sound greedy or overly ambitious. It is just a sign of severe deficiencies. The proposed marking for accepted but incorrect is then one supplement where we need much more healthy diet, that is life and style.</p>\n\n<p>Asking for special treatment in this situation seems like a futile begging trip to the developers or staff at SE. </p>\n\n<p>Your correcting comments are already in place and will hopefully stay there.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 854, "author": "Monica Cellio", "author_id": 290, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/290", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Moderators are not arbiters of correctness, and if you start down this path you're going to be forever arguing corner cases. If an answer is <em>completely, obviously wrong</em>, then you don't need a label; if it's more nuanced, you place too much of a burden on the moderators to decide whether <em>this</em> one needs a warning but not <em>that</em> one. I'm a moderator on Worldbuilding, where we have one tag (hard-science) that has special requirements, clearly spelled out, and sometimes it's still hard to decide whether a particular answer is on the wrong side of the line and gets a post notice. Your definition of \"wrong\" will probably be fuzzier than ours.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, work on the messaging about what the checkmark means, which is only that the person who asked the question liked that answer best. There are proposals on Meta Stack Exchange to always sort by votes (not pinning the accepted answer), to \"age out\" acceptances over time, and to remove the concept of acceptance entirely, probably among others. If you don't like the system (I'm personally in the \"sort by votes, don't pin\" camp), try to change it and in the mean time explain it clearly. But asking moderators to be judges of correctness will bring more heat than light.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/852", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 858, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Yes and No</h2>\n\n<p>I think the site <em>could</em> still be viable. As the site currently stands, it is a pool of dreck, constituting a lot of the worst beliefs and misconceptions about health. I think that is one of the things that drives away a lot of potential contributors, as they don't want to sit in their office all day fielding \"Dude, what is this pimple looking thing\" kind of questions, to come here and field the same things. So if we continue with the same model, no, I don't think health can survive under its own weight.</p>\n\n<p>If we change the scope of the site (Which has been discussed before), and align it more along the lines of the <a href=\"https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/113814/medical-sciences\">Medical Sciences propsal</a>, then it has a chance. It would take a <strong><em>lot</em></strong> of heavy lifting at the start, and would require both participation from the user base as well as the moderators (To include possibly replacing absentee/tired mods). It has been done before, Fitness carved off Nutrition as being off topic, also amid some calls for the site to be shut down.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://fitness.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/is-this-site-in-a-state-of-chaos\">https://fitness.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/is-this-site-in-a-state-of-chaos</a> </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://fitness.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/306/fitness-and-nutrition-is-now-physical-fitness\">https://fitness.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/306/fitness-and-nutrition-is-now-physical-fitness</a></p>\n\n<p>(Among others, search \"scope\" if you are interested)</p>\n\n<p>Also, on an established site Movies &amp; TV, there was a recent initiative to declare ID questions off topic. This required a coordinated heavy lift between CM team members as well as site members. It can be done.</p>\n\n<p>As Robert says in the fitness thread, it's not a silver bullet. However, given that the medical science proposal is 6 months in, still needing 19 followers and 36 10+ questions just to get to commitment phase. I don't think it is going to make it, but the interest shows that it <em>could</em> be viable. I would be in favor of shifting the focus, changing scope, etc. We would probably need to replace one mod, possibly more, depending on how they feel about the site change and the effort needed. There would be some heavy handed policing until we can attract more traffic of the kind that we want.</p>\n\n<p>Would it be 100% fix? No, but I think it would be the best chance for survival, and create a useful, professional oriented site, rather than a dead beta and a soon to be dead A51 proposal.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 859, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I\"d like to see if a last ditch measure can be made to save this site.</p>\n\n<p>To this end I've asked a couple of questions. If the others can do the same, then we can get some exemplars up to show what type of questions we're looking for. But that means all those interested need to rapidly downvote those questions that don't meet our new criteria so that they can disappear quickly.</p>\n\n<p><strong>PS:</strong> A surgical resident answered my question on PCP prophylaxis. So, there may be hope after all with this way of going forward.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 861, "author": "anongoodnurse", "author_id": 169, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/169", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm all for dying with dignity, and I want to be able to do that in my personal life as well. But not everyone feels that way, There are always those that cling to the small possibility that the dying patient will pull through, even if they've been in a coma for 5 months. In that case, you wonder what things will look like if they awaken... Ok, enough medical analogy.</p>\n\n<p>Back when the call went out <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/15/169\">39 moons ago</a>, I <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/101/169\">expressed my doubts</a>.</p>\n\n<p>A tiny bit of history maybe behind the scenes is that those most interested in such a site were most interested in getting their personal medical questions answered. I've never seen so many differently worded questions on lateral epichondylitis in my life!</p>\n\n<p>In any case, I was asked to be a mod, and I accepted with reservations. One of my requests was that I not be the only medical professional on the mod team. Two docs were selected (the other had already gotten the request email, so that was easy.) When faced with actual moderation, though, it was a rough and tumble fight between those who wanted a professional site and those who didn't (e.g. fought against sources, wanted to allow personal medical questions), and that mod quickly jumped ship. She even quit once. I don't quite understand why she reapplied for the position. But, suffice it to say, she believes to a destructive degree that the role of mods is to do as little as possible. On this site, that is not wise.</p>\n\n<p>I have expressed this elsewhere. SE is not a good fit for medical questions. People upvote answers that sound good, especially if there's the obligatory reference tossed in there somewhere. It's <em>not</em> good enough. People with T1DM die, not live a long life without knowing that they have the disease (an accepted answer.) <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/1887/169\">People who have odd encounters with bats</a> need prophyllaxis, no question about it. People do not get tired after a meal <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/1074/169\">because blood flow is diverted from the brain to the gut, or that insulin causes serotonin and melatonin secretion to increase</a>. (That last answer, initially submitted without sources, was from the site's main CM, who ignored all of the recommendations he approved of.)</p>\n\n<p>As a conscientious physician who was afraid of this from the very start, it was impossible for me to stand by and see this (often upvoted) misinformation fly freely. That means confrontations ensued: post notices, down votes, and a lot of comments pointing out that the sources weren't reliable, or worse, that the source didn't say what they claimed it said. Arguments in comments, <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/325/169\">complaints in meta</a> and even on <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/267094/262486\">Meta</a>.</p>\n\n<p>That was at the beginning. What hasn't changed: bad questions, bad answers, answers without references even from medical professionals <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/13249/169\">here</a> and <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/10611/169\">here</a> on the same question (note the reasoning in the deleted answer: \"as an MD, I rarely have the time to look for references though I know where exactly to find them. The American College of Cardiology (I'm a member), www.uptodate.com (I have a subscription) and several other serious medical sites have plenty of material to cover almost any question here but my problem is time. Therefore, I choose not to answer questions anymore.\") (That was <strong>not</strong> the first doc to react to a request for sources that way. My reasoning is if you know exactly where to find an answer in the literature, why not provide a quick link? It's an extra minute of your life.)</p>\n\n<p>Good questions won't happen because the community hopes they will. Docs won't stay who a) are too uppity to provide a link, or b) get tired of the poor-quality questions and stop coming to take a look.</p>\n\n<p>I was gone for a year and I remained the highest rep user. That should say something.</p>\n\n<p>I know many are fighting for the site. But the plain truth is that SE users, both those familiar and those unfamiliar with the SE model, don't like the 'rules' imposed on this site. I don't think making the rules plainer, or restricting the scope further will help the site. What will help the site is outside of the SE model, and therefor the CMs won't allow it.</p>\n\n<p>If I were a semi-comatose patient on a vent for two years, I would want the plug pulled. This site is very much like a semi-comatose patient on a vent. You can't pull off a miracle.</p>\n\n<p>Edited to add: As I'm not a regular here any more, the reason I posted an answer is the sense of responsibility I felt and the enormous amount of time I gave in trying to keep it alive. The re-incarnation of this site will require the same, but there are no interested medical professionals who have the time to commit to it that it will need. I don't know how many part-time medical pros it would need, but they will need to be of the same mind with regards to the site. If history repeats itself, nothing will have changed. I also want to commend the currently active mods who have stuck it out and devoted their energies to this difficult site. They have my respect.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 862, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>While we are trying to resuscitate this site can those who vote to close a question just tell them to see a doctor and not give a spiel about seeing their GPs, better management etc. Their questions are off topic, and the added information is just confusing to them as it looks as though we are conflicted.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit:</strong> Come on people, there must be more than 4 people who are active daily who can vote to close these off topic questions!!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 866, "author": "AliceD", "author_id": 209, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/209", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Just to add a perspective:</p>\n\n<p>Over at Psych &amp; Neurosci we have very similar issues. Your stats on Area51 are in fact pretty comparable; not enough questions (not enough users), a failing %answered ratio (not enough hi-rep users / many poor questions) and not enough answers per question (something that the SE network desperately wants to cling to their voting system). </p>\n\n<p>There we have 2.4 questions/day, you're at 5.\nThere we have 85% answered, you're at 62%\nThere we have 1.4 answer ratio, here you have 1.3. \nThere we have 370 avid users (a gross overestimate imo) and you have 226.\nThere we have been in beta for about 7 years, you're only at three years.</p>\n\n<p>All in all pretty similar and given that we are two times as old as you are, it's pretty much identical, and we are still standing over there! Instead we have been actively improving our site, by changing our site's name recently (slightly increasing #questions, perhaps...) and we have been adding a well-thought close-reason (slightly increasing %answered). This has put us in regular (but not frequent) contact with the SE team in terms of our site's name and so forth, making sure we are noticed at the top.</p>\n\n<p>Bottom line, you're only dead when you give up. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>bad questions --> close them</li>\n <li>bad answers --> comment and downvote</li>\n <li>not enough activity by experienced users --> try to encourage folks to do more by getting together folks in chat to reach common goals</li>\n <li>not enough experienced users --> try to lift the site's standards overall</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm not saying this will save your site, it's just to put things in perspective.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 889, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 99, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/99", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If the problem is <strong>users not following the rules</strong>, not because of the SE model, or the lack of qualified users, as @anongoodnurse says: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I know many are fighting for the site. But the plain truth is that SE users, both those familiar and those unfamiliar with the SE model, don't like the 'rules' imposed on this site. I don't think making the rules plainer, or restricting the scope further will help the site. What will help the site is outside of the SE model, and therefor the CMs won't allow it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>...then I don't think it's necessary to unplug it. Eventually some other new users who accept the model and the rules here will come and stay. <strong>Until then, bad answers with positive votes will survives, and we have to accept it as how we have to accept our unfair history.</strong> We can only do what we can.</p>\n\n<p>_{If you really want to see bad answers be downvoted harder, my proposal is to let the required rep to have that privilege much lower, so that qualified users can act immediately. Further discussion: <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/890/99\">Why should downvoting be a privilege?</a>}</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 863, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Hitherto we seem to have been the target for almost anything related to human biology. This has lead to a very unfocused Q&amp;A site with poor questions and answers.</p>\n\n<p>I think we should move to a Q&amp;A site suited to medical professionals, i.e. the questions are those that one professional from one speciality might ask another in a different speciality. I think this should keep the question quality high since the person asking the question should be able to find the answers easily enough to easy questions so these won't get asked.</p>\n\n<p>I've posted a few representative questions:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/15564/when-to-phlebotomize-in-eisenmenger-syndrome\">When to phlebotomize in Eisenmenger syndrome?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/15522/does-the-warburg-effect-have-any-relevance-to-the-effective-treatment-of-cancer\">Does the Warburg effect have any relevance to the effective treatment of cancer with diet?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/15519/is-a-drug-holiday-off-bisphosphonate-therapy-a-valid-strategy-in-the-management\">Is a drug holiday off bisphosphonate therapy a valid strategy in the management of osteoporosis?</a></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>to show where I think we need to be going.</p>\n\n<p>Since this site would be medico to medico I think we can accept requests for second opinions but only <strong>if</strong> it is framed in an entirely anonymous fashion with relevant medical history, examination and results. Anything short of that would be targetted for closure as being a poor question.</p>\n\n<p>Questions on human physiology should be off topic, and moved to biology.</p>\n\n<p>And nutrition should be excluded unless it's parenteral nutrition though even that is more the realm of nutritionists.</p>\n\n<p>So, since I'm advocating the move to the practice of medicine, we name it medicine.se. If we get surgical questions, they would go to surgery.se</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 865, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>We had this discussion last fall (when we created the Area51 site MedicalSciences as an effort to cultivate a parallel professional-level community and drum up participation on Health) and these were the consensus definitions at that time. We can continue refining from there.</em></p>\n\n<h2>Name</h2>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/821/rethinking-our-site-name\">This meta is discussing names.</a> </p>\n\n<h2>Definition</h2>\n\n<p>[NAME] is a site directed primarily at professionals in medical and allied health fields, students of those professions, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of healthcare-related sciences.</p>\n\n<h2>Scope</h2>\n\n<p>If your question is about...</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>clinical guidelines</li>\n<li>disease prevention and management</li>\n<li>human physiology and pathophysiology</li>\n<li>pharmacology</li>\n<li>diagnostic and prognostic methods</li>\n<li>public health</li>\n<li>research</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>... then this is the right place to ask.</p>\n\n<p>We exclude some often asked questions as <strong><em>off-topic</em></strong>, like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>medical advice</li>\n<li>diagnosis requests</li>\n<li>treatment recommendations</li>\n<li>second opinions</li>\n<li>fundamentals of biology or chemistry (see Biology.SE and Chemistry.SE)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Please see a healthcare provider for any individual health advice; such questions will be closed here.</p>\n\n<p>Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.</p>\n\n<p>If your question is not specifically on-topic for [NAME], it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 873, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As priorities go, here are mine, in order:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Really STEP 0, if markdown would allow for this: Continue with the current consensus model, name, scope, close reasons. Be friendly to new users, remind them of policy and guide them to the proper documentation on this.<br>\n<strong>No change in <em>our</em> behaviour towards any <em>new model</em> at this step!</strong><br>\nJust <em>strict</em> application of <em>current</em> rules! </li>\n<li>Flesh out name and scope issues. Have a moderator declare or proclaim this and the following steps as official, once our targets are reached </li>\n<li>Define three well thought custom close reasons to catch as many situations as possible</li>\n<li>Establish this new documentation (or updated old ones) as the current consensus, the FAQ, ideally also in our help-documents</li>\n<li>Make these changes official, they need to clearly written down somewhere and easy enough to find, at least for <em>us</em> when reminding users in comments</li>\n<li><strong>Now</strong> apply these new rules as the new current consensus. Always pointing any newbies to the reasons and rules we documented</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>We have a share of users coming to this site posting something, maybe horrible in our eyes, but in good faith and sometimes even according to those guidelines available to them. When these users come to meta or start to complain in comments \"but your help says…\" they are understandably confused and they are fundamentally <em>right</em> to complain and ask for clarification.</p>\n\n<p>_{As I wrote before, I would miss nutrition as a topic, for example. Health or even medicine without including nutrition seems wrong. But if it is the current consensus and clearly documented as well as easy to find, then OK, out of the window with it.}</p>\n\n<p>It would be a mistake to gallop into application of <em>new</em> rules before we thought this through <em>and</em> documented it. While we are all eager to improve things, before this is done properly, every user acting according to his own vision for this site's future is acting as though we are confused and conflicted about this. To be fair, currently we are conflicted about this. As anxious as we are for change, this will hopefully speed up the process without compromising anything vital for what I would call due process.</p>\n\n<p>I propose at least two different meta-meta posts \"FAQ new users\", pointing to the current consensus building meta posts; \"FAQ regular users\" pointing likewise o the current consensus on things like \"how to review\", \"how to comment\".</p>\n\n<p>Both of these might seem obvious, or not. Fact is that they are way easier to change – that is to update – than all those brick walls we have hit when updating e.g. help-center files. And while some posts already on meta are already the current consensus, they are not always easy to find, and therefor not easy to link to if to be used in comments. As examples on how to implement that I suggest to orient this target on how Skeptics did it: <a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2929/faq-what-are-theoretical-answers\">FAQ: What are theoretical answers?</a> </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/860", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 869, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Answer <em>from new user</em> without backup – Requests for Sources</h2>\n\n<p>Rendered:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE. We work differently than most SE sites in that we have a strict policy that all answers should be <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/should-we-require-references-to-back-up-all-answers\">backed up with reliable references</a> so that the answer can be independently verified regardless of the reader's background. <em>See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784\">this list of reliable sources</a></em>. If you still have trouble with this, feel free to visit the [help] or [meta]. Unreferenced claims can lead to answers being deleted.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain-text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE. We work differently than most SE sites in that we have a strict policy that all answers should be [backed up with reliable references](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/should-we-require-references-to-back-up-all-answers) so that the answer can be independently verified regardless of the reader's background. *See [this list of reliable sources](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784)*. If you still have trouble with this, feel free to visit the [help] or [meta]. Unreferenced claims can lead to answers being deleted.\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 870, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Question – Welcome to <em>new users</em> and reminder that \"Personal Medical Advice is off-topic\" + immediate closevote</h2>\n\n<p>Rendered:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor/748#748\">For a number of reasons outlined in this meta post</a>, we can not, and will not, give personal medical advice. If you have a question regarding your personal health, you should see a doctor. For further information on how this site is supposed to work, what is on-topic or not, you can take the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/tour\">tour</a>, visit the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">How To Ask</a> page and <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/\">MedicalSciences Meta</a>. I have voted to close this question and <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-on-hold-or-duplicate-question\">this post</a> explains question closure.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain-text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! [For a number of reasons outlined in this meta post](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748/8212), we can not, and will not, give personal medical advice. If you have a question regarding your personal health, you should see a doctor. For further information on how this site is supposed to work, what is on-topic or not, you can take the [tour], visit the [ask] page and [meta]. I have voted to close this question and [this post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-on-hold-or-duplicate-question) explains question closure.\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 871, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Answer: more a comment rather than an answer or<br>Answer requesting further information from the OP</h1>\n\n<p>Rendered:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This is really a comment and not an answer. Please register for an account. \n Once you earn sufficient reputation <a href=\"//medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment\">you will be able to\n post comments</a>.\n For the moment I've added this comment for you, and I'm flagging this\n post for deletion.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain-text</p>\n\n<pre><code>This is really a comment and not an answer. Please register for an account. Once you earn sufficient reputation, [you will be able to post comments](//medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). For the moment I've added this comment for you, and I'm flagging this post for deletion.\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 872, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Answer is basically nothing but a link/URL, but not SPAM</h1>\n\n<p>Rendered: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Your link might or might not answer the question. However, <a href=\"//meta.stackoverflow.com/q/8259\">it would\n be preferable</a> to include the\n essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for\n reference. Please edit your answer to improve its quality. Thanks!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain-text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>Your link might or might not answer the question. However [it would be preferable](//meta.stackoverflow.com/q/8259) to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. Please edit your answer to improve its quality. Thanks!\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 874, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question from an old user (who should know better): A minimum level of self research is required.</h1>\n\n<p>See this <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188049/why-arent-the-rules-for-minimum-research-effort-being-enforced-consistently\">meta</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We require some evidence demonstrating independent research of the problem domain has been conducted, and that you will also understand the answer.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>or</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What are the results of your own research so far?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Up for edit ...</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 875, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question – Far Fetched</h1>\n\n<p>This question postulates a biologically implausible situation which can not be answered, and shows a lack of research into the problem domain.</p>\n\n<p>up for edit.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 877, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question: <em>New user</em> posting question lacking prior research</h1>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! Please take the [tour] and read the [help]. For <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/411\">reasons mentioned in this post</a> and in [ask], we require prior research information when asking questions. <em>See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784\">this list of helpful resources</a></em>. Please help us to help you and [edit] your question to provide more information on what you have read on this subject, what made you ask this question, and any problems you are having understanding your research. If you found nothing, what did you Google?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<pre><code>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! Please take the [tour] and read the [help]. For [reasons mentioned in this post](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/411) and in [ask], we require prior research information when asking questions. *See [this list of helpful resources](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784)*. Please help us to help you and [edit] your question to provide more information on what you have read on this subject, what made you ask this question, and any problems you are having understanding your research. If you found nothing, what did you Google?\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 878, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question – Lack of prior research effort + dubious assertions</h1>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is not framed in the medical sciences. It is based on assumptions which are not made explicit, are not well-motivated (e.g., referenced), or are not held to be true within any of the research fields on-topic here. Please edit your question to provide more information on… (your research, why you are asking this question, what problems are you having understanding your research…)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>This question is not framed in the medical sciences. It is based on assumptions which are not made explicit, are not well-motivated (e.g., referenced), or are not held to be true within any of the research fields on-topic here. Please edit your question to provide more information on… (your research, why you are asking this question, what problems are you having understanding your research…)\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 881, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question is about to be closed as a duplicate</h1>\n\n<p>This is tricky: duplicates <em>might</em> be a sign of lacking prior research. </p>\n\n<p><em>Make it clear that duplicates are a good thing: cross-linking sign posts to quality content</em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question will probably be closed as a duplicate soon. In our model this <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates\"><em>not necessarily a bad thing.</em></a> If the answers from the duplicates don't fully address your question please edit it to include why and flag this for re-opening. Thanks!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>This question will probably be closed as a duplicate soon. In our model this [*not necessarily a bad thing.*](https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates) If the answers from the duplicates don't fully address your question please [edit] it to include why and flag this for re-opening. Thanks!\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 886, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>Question: medical advice question but potentially salvageable</h1>\n\n<p>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! As currently phrased your question is <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748/8212\">off-topic</a>, as it appears to be asking about personal health and will likely be closed. If you are able to rephrase it with the help of <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">How to Ask</a>, removing all personal references, it might then be considered a suitable question. For <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/411\">reasons mentioned here</a>, we also require prior research information when asking questions. <em>See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784\">this list of helpful resources</a></em>.</p>\n\n<pre><code>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! As currently phrased your question is [off-topic](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748/8212), as it appears to be asking about personal health and will likely be closed. If you are able to rephrase it with the help of [ask], removing all personal references, it might then be considered a suitable question. For [reasons mentioned here](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/411), we also require prior research information when asking questions. *See [this list of helpful resources](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/784)*.\n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 922, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>Question: Medical Advice for others</h2>\n\n<p>Rendered:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748\">For a number of reasons outlined in this meta post</a>, we can not, and will not, give medical advice for any individual. Anyone who has a question regarding personal health, should see a doctor. For further information on how this site is supposed to work, what is on-topic or not, you can take the <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/tour\">tour</a>, visit the <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">How To Ask</a> page and <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com\">Health Meta</a>. I have voted to close this question and <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-on-hold-or-duplicate-question\">this post</a> explains question closure.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Plain-text:</p>\n\n<pre><code>Welcome to MedicalSciences.SE! [For a number of reasons outlined in this meta post](https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748), we can not, and will not, give medical advice for any individual. Anyone who has a question regarding personal health, should see a doctor. For further information on how this site is supposed to work, what is on-topic or not, you can take the [tour], visit the [ask] page and [meta]. I have voted to close this question and [this post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-on-hold-or-duplicate-question) explains question closure.\n</code></pre>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/868", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 880, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Similar to what was set up on Psychology.SE (previously CogSci) this close reason I suggest would be for an</p>\n\n<p><strong>Unreferenced Question</strong></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is based on assumptions which are not made explicit, are not well-motivated (e.g., referenced), or are not held to be true within any of the research fields on-topic here. For more information, see [Why was my question closed as “not framed in the sciences of medicine”?](link to a new meta question with wiki answer)</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1049, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Lack of prior research has been added as a standard off-topic close reason. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/879", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 885, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my personal view on this I would say that <em>requiring</em> this format is going too far. Some answers might benefit from simpler references and simple links that will not fit into this scheme.</p>\n\n<p>But this is a good idea nevertheless. In some aspects at least.</p>\n\n<p>A reference should be meaningful, and should be meaningful in the future. Giving the year seems most important to evaluate at glance its relevance concerning up-to-dateness. Giving the title is important to make this reference re-searchable, if a link should go blind or change otherwise. These names are less important to find that article again, especially since not all journals seem to agree on how to format titles and christian names. If a direct link is provided, then a DOI <em>and</em> a on top of that is of course extra service but a bit redundant.</p>\n\n<p>These reservations expressed: if <em>we</em> adopt this model <em>informally</em>, that is lead by example in using this or a variant, then this might serve as an example of the format of references expected, compared to a barren and primitive hyperlink. It would also <em>better</em> indicate future visitors the quality level of the content that is generally well received here.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on our future scope I doubt that this is even really enforceable in all cases. </p>\n\n<p>Most important would be to provide a link to an accepted, reliable source, ideally via a permalink, state title, year. Preferably liberate some content, especially if locked behind a paywall, that is not found in the openly accessible abstract. Some essential quotes should be strongly encouraged.</p>\n\n<p>To exercise those points most important to me on your example: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">No effects of gluten in patients with self-reported non-celiac gluten sensitivity after dietary reduction of fermentable, poorly absorbed, short-chain carbohydrate (2013):</a><br>\n <strong>Results:</strong>\n In all participants, gastrointestinal symptoms consistently and significantly improved during reduced FODMAP intake, but significantly worsened to a similar degree when their diets included gluten or whey protein. Gluten-specific effects were observed in only 8% of participants. There were no diet-specific changes in any biomarker. During the 3-day rechallenge, participants' symptoms increased by similar levels among groups. Gluten-specific gastrointestinal effects were not reproduced. An order effect was observed.<br>\n <strong>Conclusions:</strong>\n In a placebo-controlled, cross-over rechallenge study, we found no evidence of specific or dose-dependent effects of gluten in patients with NCGS placed diets low in FODMAPs. – – – –<br>\n […] In conclusion, these consecutive double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over rechallenge studies showed no evidence of specific or dose-dependent effects of gluten in patients with NCGS placed on a low FODMAP diet. A high nocebo response was found regardless of known background dietary triggers being controlled and reproducibility of symptom induction to a specific protein was poor. These data suggest that NCGS, as currently defined, might not be a discrete entity or that this entity might be confounded by FODMAP restriction, and that, at least in this highly selected cohort, <strong>gluten might be not be a specific trigger of functional gut symptoms once dietary FODMAPs are reduced.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 897, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;The story so far:\nIn the beginning the Universe was created.\nThis has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.&quot;</p>\n<p>^{Source: Douglas Adams, <strong>The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide</strong>. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Chapter 1, p. 150.}</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In my view, this is the most desirable citation format.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>When reading a post, references don't matter that much, hence they're in <code>&lt;sup&gt;</code>.</li>\n<li>I need them and might want to check on them later for specific claims, hence they are provided below the extract (endnotes aren't really handy because I'd have to check back and forth.</li>\n<li>Links might rot, hence you need to provide a definite &quot;address&quot; consisting out of author, name, publisher etc. This also provides the opportunity of quickly evaluating the trustworthiness of the reference without reading the whole paper.</li>\n<li>If possible, a link to a free version of the text could help users who are interested into the source.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>As an example <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/a/15668/8212\">from a post of mine</a> (yes, I'm shamelessly self-advertising my way of providing reference, because, obviously, I consider that to be best. Otherwise I'd not follow that way):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The proportion of patients judged to have experienced distress at the time of the AAGA increased with Michigan score (Figure 7.5): distress was most common when pain and paralysis were experienced together, with 17 of 22 patients reporting distress (77%).</p>\n<p>^{<em>Source:</em> <em>5th National Audit Project of The Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland</em>: <a href=\"http://www.nationalauditprojects.org.uk/NAP5report\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Accidental Awareness during General Anaesthesia in the United Kingdom and Ireland.</a> <strong>Report and findings of the 5th National Audit Project</strong>, Chapter 7, p. 51. 2014}</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So, that's it. It's easy to read, not blocking the important bits and helping anyone backtrack the source even if the link disappears sometime in the future.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/883", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 895, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Any question can be potentially re-opened in this fashion, but this becomes very old very quickly.</p>\n\n<p>Sure I can think of a bazillion questions that people might ask that might be useful but what's the point? I'm not seeking to turn this site into a dump for my 40+ years of medical knowledge here.</p>\n\n<p>We're looking for good questions from good users, and we're more interested in the latter than the former since we can easily do that ourselves. And once we have the users the hope is that the good questions follow on from there. Many hands make light work.</p>\n\n<p>So, my vote is close and forget.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 896, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I saw that edit pop up in the Review queue and actually opened a tab to rollback the edit, but since JohnP has commented on it aware of the edit I thought a discussion would be better. I haven’t found this meta post until know, though. Might be worth posting a link underneath the post in the future.</p>\n\n<p>The problem is (in my opinion) that the edit significantly alters the question: The part of coming in contact with water and speeding up the healing processes have been removed, and parts that actually feel like an answer („Considered cosmetic [...]“) have been included. </p>\n\n<p>Don’t get me wrong, the edit definitely improved the post by a great extend, but maybe we should leave this post closed, rollback and anongoodnurse or anyone can just ask the edit as a question. That doesn’t tamper with OP‘s intentions but provides them a good answer of they should ever come back this site.</p>\n\n<p>Here is a Meta Discussion regarding a similar fashioned edit:\n<a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157827/353950\">Should I edit or comment to an answer to make it more elaborate?</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/894", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/169/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 895, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Any question can be potentially re-opened in this fashion, but this becomes very old very quickly.</p>\n\n<p>Sure I can think of a bazillion questions that people might ask that might be useful but what's the point? I'm not seeking to turn this site into a dump for my 40+ years of medical knowledge here.</p>\n\n<p>We're looking for good questions from good users, and we're more interested in the latter than the former since we can easily do that ourselves. And once we have the users the hope is that the good questions follow on from there. Many hands make light work.</p>\n\n<p>So, my vote is close and forget.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 896, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I saw that edit pop up in the Review queue and actually opened a tab to rollback the edit, but since JohnP has commented on it aware of the edit I thought a discussion would be better. I haven’t found this meta post until know, though. Might be worth posting a link underneath the post in the future.</p>\n\n<p>The problem is (in my opinion) that the edit significantly alters the question: The part of coming in contact with water and speeding up the healing processes have been removed, and parts that actually feel like an answer („Considered cosmetic [...]“) have been included. </p>\n\n<p>Don’t get me wrong, the edit definitely improved the post by a great extend, but maybe we should leave this post closed, rollback and anongoodnurse or anyone can just ask the edit as a question. That doesn’t tamper with OP‘s intentions but provides them a good answer of they should ever come back this site.</p>\n\n<p>Here is a Meta Discussion regarding a similar fashioned edit:\n<a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157827/353950\">Should I edit or comment to an answer to make it more elaborate?</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/901", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 907, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>For convenience, I'm quoting the Area 51 proposal as suggested by Narusan in comments.</em></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/27306/definition-and-scope-of-medical-sciences\">https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/27306/definition-and-scope-of-medical-sciences</a></p>\n\n<p><strong>Definition</strong></p>\n\n<p>MedicalSciences is a site primarily directed at professionals in medical and allied health fields, students of those professions, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of medicine and healthcare-related sciences.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Scope</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>If your question is about...</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>clinical guidelines</li>\n<li>disease prevention and management</li>\n<li>human physiology and pathophysiology</li>\n<li>pharmacology</li>\n<li>diagnostic and prognostic methods</li>\n<li>public health</li>\n<li>research</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>… then this is the right place to ask.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Often asked off-topic questions include</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>medical advice <strong>for yourself or others</strong></li>\n<li>any other personal advice</li>\n<li>diagnosis requests</li>\n<li>treatment recommendations</li>\n<li>second opinions</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Questions which <em>could</em> be seen to be on-topic but is best suited elsewhere</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>questions regarding psychology, psychiatry or neurology<br>(see Psychology.SE for that)</li>\n<li>fundamentals of biology or chemistry<br>(see Biology.SE and\nChemistry.SE for that)</li>\n<li>questions about cooking, nutrition and diets that are not directly connected to medical treatments<br>(see cooking.SE (Seasoned Advice) for that)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Please see a healthcare provider for any individual health advice; such questions will be closed here.</p>\n\n<p>Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.</p>\n\n<p>If your question is not specifically on-topic for MedicalSciences.SE, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 928, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 55, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/55", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Stealing from the a <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/907/55\">different answer</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>MedicalSciences is a site directed at professionals in medical and allied health fields, students of those professions, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of healthcare-related sciences.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This sounds great in principle, but are there enough people to actually support such a site. How are we (and I only loosely include myself in this group) going to reach out and find new members. I think it is important for the scope to not only include what we want, but also to result in a viable, lively, fun, and informative community. The whole proposal seems very narrow.</p>\n\n<p>As a member (and mod) of the academia.se community, I would think that expanding the community to include potential students (e.g., questions about med school prerequisites) might help expand the potential user base.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, there is nothing listed about medical devices and I am not sure pharmacology includes drug development.</p>\n\n<p>None of these suggests might be the best way to expand the scope, but I think a much wider scope is helpful. A site with 10 active users is not really viable in my opinion and would not provide the critical mass that I would want to join.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 955, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;pagesize=50&amp;q=is%3A\">Look at the existing content here</a>. Would the idea of posting alongside it appeal to professionals? I don't see why. </p>\n\n<p>Nuke the site from the orbit. If there is a large number of health professionals eager to participate on Stack Exchange, Area 51 will demonstrate that.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/906", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 909, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We welcome all contributions. We cannot ascertain your professional credentials in any way anyway. </p>\n\n<p>If the answer is good, then that is all that counts. You seem to have read the relevant parts of the help center and here on meta about reliable resources and what we think would make for a nice, good or great answer (or in fact bad ones as well). </p>\n\n<p>If you meet the quality standards we aim for here then this is a most desirable addition. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 948, "author": "public wireless", "author_id": 1954, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1954", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer has to be a resounding YES, as I find in my case a personal experience with a particular medical condition has caused me to become more knowledgeable about the symptoms, causes, and effective medicines and home remedies than your typical pediatrician. Furthermore, not everyone has access to high quality medical care in all instances, and for some depending on the condition, the internet is the only viable option. </p>\n\n<p>I'm sure others out there who've been dealing with their own health issues have become their own experts, and it is this community of experience that creates value. Yes, I and 99 other users may only be experts in combined 100 different diseases, but when you add it all up it creates a valuable knowledgebase that can complement professional medical diagnosis or even supplant depending on the severity of the condition and access to health care.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/908", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 911, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I don't think HIPAA questions would be on-topic here. Although HIPAA is certainly a daily concern for medical providers in the US, HIPAA and similar privacy laws in other countries aren't health questions. They're legal questions, and that's why medical providers rely on lawyers to advise them on such matters. So asking here would produce sub-optimal answers at best. I'm not sure what the Law exchange considers on-topic, but that's probably your best bet for HIPAA questions. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 912, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Mmm...I would have to see how the question is worded. </p>\n\n<p>If it is something like \"I think my doctor broke hipaa, what do I do?\", it would be off topic. </p>\n\n<p>However, HIPAA and its sister acts such as HITECH have a huge impact on the professional side, so with the new direction coming I could see something like \"How has HIPAA and HITECH impacted the decisions to become a sole practitioner or member of an HMO?\" or similar being on topic, and of interest to medical professionals. </p>\n\n<p>Also, considering GDPR, something like \"I am a US based doctor, but I have a traveling resident of Germany as a patient. What are the pertinent portions of GDPR that might apply to releasing medical records?\" etc.</p>\n\n<p>It would very much depend on how it was worded. Again, most layperson questions would be off topic, but I could see many peer to peer questions being on topic.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/910", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3396/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 921, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yup. I also noticed a pattern. A pattern that might need improvement. At least it can be improved, I think.</p>\n\n<p>We suffer from quite some issues here. Generally:<br>\nto varying degrees from \"not enough\": regular users, high-rep users, moderators/community moderation, questions in general, good questions in particular, answers, (multiple) good answers to questions, new users that stay or at least come back.</p>\n\n<p>From that list the antonyms and opposites should be inferable.</p>\n\n<p>We identified two problems at once in the past as awful questions that linger on. That identification I think was correct. Our solution was to be much more aggressive with closevotes and downvotes. We even rationalised this as \"if they are posting these kind of bad questions, then these aren't even the users we want or need here.\" While the solution is still a valid one and the results of it are certainly a good sign – of progress in the community and for the site – the rationalisation and our behavioural results seem to go a little too far at times.</p>\n\n<p>That is indeed a dilemma. \"Queue emptying\" should not scale back one inch, for example. Reviews need to at least keep that level of activity and productivity. We have to keep the baby in the bath tub until it's clean, then separate it from the water in a less damaging way than commonly phrased in this metaphor.</p>\n\n<p>What we do not need is immediate upvotes/downvotes, both observable for questions especially (and for me these vote-patterns are somehow quite hard to follow in their logic, both but differently), of low-quality content. </p>\n\n<p>We should continue to show a certain level of actual aggression. <strong><em>Towards the quality of the post–––Not the writer!</em></strong> And this should come with double emphasis for new users. If they are genuinely interested and not rogue players, like spammers or pushers and the like.</p>\n\n<p>I suggest a certain leniency towards new users posting new content. More welcoming attitude, explanations, nudging into the [edit] to get right understanding <em>and feel</em> for how this site and good questions and answers should work. The feel for \"downvote is the first feedback\" is certainly <del>expletive deleted</del>.</p>\n\n<p>There are certain problems associated with that. The ideal approach for problematic content from good-willed newbies should look like </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Review for Late Answer, First Post, contents:</li>\n<li>welcome message </li>\n<li>invitation to tour and help </li>\n<li>explanation of problems </li>\n<li>invitation to [edit]</li>\n<li>(very ideally: possibly edit easy to fix posts by reviewer or other regular user; but)</li>\n<li>___ if the user shows compliance in visiting tour (earning the informed badge, only one visible to us, makes it likely s/he read also some more help…)\n<strong><em>or</em></strong> (and especially if) <strong><em>and</em></strong> tries to improve the post with a timely edit (personal guess: 24 hours should be reasonable) then the helping edit should becoming more likely. If no informed-badge is earned, no edit attempted <strong><em>then</em></strong> a closevote might follow. Most of these conditionals listed above make it very unlikely in my eyes that we will get help from them to improve a problematic post.</li>\n<li>closevotes might be commented on early, but this is less important since the [on hold] message already has a comment.</li>\n<li>downvotes <em>should</em> come with an explanatory comment, especially for posts from newbies, and only immediately for realy, really, really, bad content</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Once reviewed a post might drown out of sight of the reviewer. We do not have a an easy to-do list of \"watch-that/does it improve\" posts. At least not that I know of. This is a list of judgement calls. Opinions on individual posts will differ. Delaying downvotes for newbies is in direct contradiction to our streamlined usage of the site and SE policy of \"vote early\"/\"vote often\". </p>\n\n<p>We will make more mistakes. But for us and the new users, when bad content arrives, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, to improve this site.</p>\n\n<p>Additional thoughts welcome!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 934, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I read the <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/\">StackOverflow Blog article</a> a while ago when I noticed it somewhere in the right hand panel. I can't remember where and it has gone now.</p>\n\n<p>I have been at the receiving end of the \"elitist feel\" in some groups, and although I have felt there is less of one here and in others, I have noticed the same patterns here that @Narusan and @LangLangC have pointed out. I also believe I have been folllowing to the best of my ability, @LangLangC's suggestions even before they were put up.</p>\n\n<p>One big issue I have is as pointed out in <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/932\">Yet again, we have personal advice questions answered</a> where I am not perplexed about a newcomer asking a personal advice question as that can happen when they are not necessarily aware of the problem. What I do have issue with is when we get a question such as <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/16659/what-methods-are-there-for-individuals-to-help-them-remember-if-they-have-taken\">What methods are there for individuals to help them remember if they have taken their medicine?</a> I put a comment on the question stating the fact that it was a personal question (<a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/posts/16659/timeline\">see edit 1 in the timeline</a>), after which it was edited to make it less personal. That's fine. I have no problem with that and I have actually voted to re-open now.</p>\n\n<p>What I do have a problem with is when you have a member who has been here a while, and should know that personal advice should not be given, has actually given advice. When you have a question with details such as</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As I take some pills in the morning and it became a part of my morning routine, sometimes I do this almost automatically and later I am not really sure whether I took them or not.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a potentially serious problem which needs an answer tailored to their specific needs. Someone answered by suggesting getting a pill box, to which I commented on, asking what they would suggest if they have problems remembering to go to the pill box in the first place. The comment and others have been deleted since with another comment about being nice. I was being nice. I just pointed this out as my wife has that problem herself at times. You can get a pill box but if you are not yet in the habit of going to it at a certain time, or don't heed alarms as you are in the middle of something, you <strong>can</strong> forget to go to it. This sort of problem can lead to further problems and when people are relying on acurate advice from us, where does that lead to?</p>\n\n<p>This is just one example and issues such as these need sorting out, and aside to this, I totally agree that some need to be a bit thoughtful towards those who are new to Health.SE, and especially those new to StackExchange as a whole. There are other sites which are less strict and we need to bear that in mind.</p>\n\n<p>With regard to problem posts lingering, this is a problem with a few sites, not just Health.SE and the only way this can be sorted is to ramp up the review queue visits by everyone. There can be a good few hours before a question gets closed here, yet there are other sites where questions can be put on hold or closed within a couple of minutes, as I pointed out in <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/893/7951\">my answer</a> to <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/753/please-dont-answer-questions-that-are-off-topic\">Please don&#39;t answer questions that are off-topic</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The problem with having bad questions answered is that relatively new users who have little idea on how this site works may provide answers when they shouldn't because the question is unclear and an answer could muddy the waters or it is asking for advice on a medical concern and a low rep member may (just to be helpful) inadvertently provide advice when it is not wise to.</p>\n \n <p>How we deal with this is difficult to some extent. We need more activity within the site <strong>[...]</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I will get off my soap-box now and just say that because in the past I have been at the receiving end of what the StackOverflow Blog is talking about, I am in total agreement that we need to be mindful of the \"be nice policy\". Let's not have elitism here. It hasn't been exactly elitism here yet, but there have been questionable actions by some as pointed out (e.g. downvoting when not necessary - especially excessive downvoting) and it needs to be kerbed a little.</p>\n\n<p>As a suggestion, <strong>I only downvote when a question or answer is particularly bad and hasn't been edited after comment to edit for improvement.</strong> (I give it a few hours to give a chance to see the comment and edit). <strong>If the comment is only a matter of opinion, I leave no vote (Not upvote or downvote) and leave the voting to the rest of the SE community</strong></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 930, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 55, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/55", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Strongbad: <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/users/55/strongbad\">https://health.stackexchange.com/users/55/strongbad</a></p>\n\n<pre><code>Votes Cast (71)\nall time by type month \n65 up 45 question 3 \n6 down 26 answer \n</code></pre>\n" }, { "answer_id": 931, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I concur with @LangLangC as my vote count states that I cast 40 votes within the last month and none this week but I check the review queues very regularly.</p>\n\n<p>In fact I checked this morning and apart from a couple of tag edits which I voted on, <strong>and they haven’t been added to my vote count either</strong>, my review queue is empty.</p>\n\n<p>I still have 0 votes this week yet I have been voting this week.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/929", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/55/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 940, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is not entirely clear to me what the actual content and quality of these deleted posts is. That <em>you</em> think that they \"are of good quality and on-topic (almost all of them have some references, and there is no personal medical question)\" is one thing. That the community decision was something different is another thing. As far as I can see, your questions are usually quite well constructed, phrase and researched on the positive side, and very often revolving around \"tendinopathy\". [Given the amount of time you have spent also on high quality content around that topic I wonder why you are not an expert on that by now that might (self-)answer one or the question on that theme?] </p>\n\n<p>But it looks as if the community decision was mostly: \"something is not quite right with the question as is\" and therefore the question was </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>put on hold</li>\n<li>closed</li>\n<li>deleted by the bot with \"abandoned closed\"?</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>That means primarily two things:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>A rift in judging the quality of the questions between your perception and that of a number of community members, the actual close voters. (I honestly do not remember if I might have been part of none, any or all of those votes.)</li>\n<li>This is a multi step process that takes some time. At any stage –– and even now –– someone, including you yourself, might edit these questions to address the small or big grievances or problems that were (hopefully) voiced in comments. </li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I do not exclude the possibility that we/the community might have closed one, some or all of the questions prematurely, unjustly or without adequate guidance on how to rectify the situation (which in principle should be the case in most of the instances?). 39 deleted questions is a frustratingly high number to be sure.</p>\n\n<p>My guess is that \"thing 1\" would have to be addressed on an individual basis looking at each question separately.</p>\n\n<p>For \"thing 2\" there are again two sub-problems: first, the community did not help enough by directly editing the question it deemed problematic into shape; but second, <em>you</em> did not enough during the hold-close-delete chain to ensure the survival of the question!</p>\n\n<p>Since I might have the wrong perspective on this situation: as I currently understand the second part of the headline here, I might say that I –– as one of the potential voters on that –– expect a question that was marked as having problems with [on hold] to be edited, voted for re-opening or un-deletion. Once it was delete-abandoned it really vanishes out of any potential focus and help from the community.</p>\n\n<p>One thing to keep in mind is that the delete-roomba operates with a fixed timeframe. That might explain why there is no warning for the OP, as it is always around the same time passed that deletion kicks in. Further you might look with any reputation level at your own \"recently deleted\" questions. That link for you should be <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/43\">https://health.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/43</a> or to be found at the bottom of your userpage, tab: questions?</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I would like to encourage strongly that this meta question gets at least another answer addressing those aspects I did not understand correctly, left out or overlooked.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 941, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>All of the automatic deletion criteria are <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006\">listed in this meta post</a>. Since yours appear to fall into the second category, I will list those criteria here:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...</strong></p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>has a score of 0 or less, or a score of 1 or less in case the owner's account is deleted</li>\n <li>has no answers</li>\n <li>is not locked</li>\n <li>has view count &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5</li>\n <li>has 1 or 0 comments</li>\n <li><p>isn't on a meta site</p>\n \n <p>... it will be automatically deleted. These are \"abandoned\" questions\n (RemoveAbandonedQuestions).</p></li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So basically it looks like while they were well written questions, they were niche specific enough that they did not receive enough notice to stay around and/or be upvoted.</p>\n\n<p>What you could do, since the traffic and user group has changed significantly over that time, is post one or two as new questions again and see if they get more notice the second time around.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1090, "author": "Ilmari Karonen", "author_id": 11944, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11944", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Since you mentioned this meta question <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331708/congratulations-to-our-29-oldest-beta-sites-theyre-now-no-longer-beta#comment1082134_331710\">elsewhere</a> and I just happened to notice it, let me offer a somewhat belated remark:</p>\n\n<p>Insofar as this is an actual issue, <strong>it only takes one or two active users to fix it.</strong></p>\n\n<p>How? It's simple: whenever you see a good question that you think should stay on the site, <strong>upvote it!</strong></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/941\">As JohnP correctly notes</a>, unanswered questions are never* automatically deleted if they have a positive score. So as long as all new questions get viewed by at least one user other than their asker, and as long as these users remember to upvote any questions which they consider good and useful, automatic deletion due to lack of attention should not be a common problem.</p>\n\n<p>Conversely, if you see a lot of questions that you consider good being automatically deleted, that suggests one of two things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If it's a site-wide issue that happens to many askers, that suggests that the voting culture on the site is too stingy and out of alignment with how SE expects people to vote. In that case, bringing the issue up on meta and encouraging other regular users to upvote more may be a good idea.</p>\n\n<p>Also note that, even if you can't immediately change how everyone else on the site votes, just changing how <em>you</em> vote on questions can be enough to make a big difference. This really is something where the action of even just a single user can bring about a major change!</p>\n\n<p>(In fact, why not go take a look at some <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/search?q=score%3A0+closed%3A0+is%3Aquestion+answers%3A0\">zero-score unanswered questions</a> right now? I'm sure there are some there that could use an upvote. Or, for that matter, a downvote — those are an important and useful quality signal, too!)</p></li>\n<li><p>On the other hand, if it really seems to be happening <em>only (or mostly) to you</em>, it may be worth considering the possibility that your questions may not seem as useful and valuable to others as they do to you. After all, your perspective on your own questions is unavoidably biased, as is everyone else's on theirs. You may feel that the question you asked is important and something that humanity definitely needs an answer to — and you probably do, at least a little, or you wouldn't have bothered asking it here to begin with. But to others, who don't see things from your particular perspective, it may just seem like an uninteresting piece of trivia.</p>\n\n<p>That doesn't necessarily mean that you're wrong and others are right, of course. But since Stack Exchange is a collaborative site, and since it generally requires the shared interest and effort of at least two users — the asker and the answerer — for a question to get answered, it does mean that, if your interests don't align sufficiently well with the rest of community, you may have to consider finding another place for your questions or at least limiting your participation here only to issues that do enjoy broader interest among the local community.</p>\n\n<p>(Or, alternatively, it may just mean that you need to work a little more on how you express and motivate your questions, so that others can more easily tell <em>why</em> the question matters and why it deserves the chance to be answered, even if no easy answer is immediately available.)</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I won't presume to actually make any claims about which of these two possibilities may apply to your particular case here, as I'm not an active participant on this site and as this answer is in any case written for a general audience, not just for you personally. In general, though, it's a good idea to at least consider both possibilities, and to keep in mind that they are not mutually exclusive, either.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{*) Unless the user account that asked them has been deleted for some reason, in which case the threshold is increased by one vote. This is pretty rare, since user accounts with questions are also not automatically deleted; typically it only happens if a user is caught somehow abusing the site, or rage-quits and asks for their account to be deleted.}</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/939", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 946, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This answer should provide a short cut list to the relevant meta threads on \"the next steps\" that are dealing with our complaints, self-diagnosis, improvement ideas and requests as well. This includes major problems identified, minor changes made, a range of ideas discussed, and opinions voiced regarding site name, scope and desired changes. </p>\n\n<p>It is almost a given that the list will be incomplete. So please, help me edit it to comprehensiveness. The number of plusses should indicate how well those sub projects went. Improving How-to-ask is considered accomplished with +++. That is even more incomplete than the rest. I do not feel competent enough to determine that for all below.<br>\nAgain: please edit what I missed here. Please also add comments, maybe blow, maybe as edits below the posts link? </p>\n\n<p>If any of those posts do not belong on this list, comment again. Mor important: if any of those links below <em>do</em> belong here, but do not have plusses besides them, i.e. are not satisfactorily answered, maybe re-visit the corresponding post again?</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/774/self-evaluation-september-2017\">Self-evaluation: September 2017</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/766/permissibility-of-non-medical-sources\">Permissibility of non-medical sources</a> Sep 8 '17 +</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/739/we-need-a-crystal-clear-rules-for-asking-questions-agree-or-no\">We Need a Crystal Clear “Rules for Asking Questions” - Agree or no?</a> Aug 1 '17 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/783/quality-of-references\">Quality of References</a> Sep 17 '17 ++</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/737/are-the-questions-threating-the-health-se-community\">Are the questions threating the Health.Se Community?</a> Jul 31 '17 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/761/improving-our-how-to-ask-page\">Improving our How To Ask page</a> Aug 22 '17 +++</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/821/rethinking-our-site-name\">Rethinking our Site Name</a> Nov 17 '17 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/768/defibrillating-health-se\">Defibrillating Health.SE</a> Sep 14 '17 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/799/re-evaluating-site-moderation\">Re-Evaluating Site Moderation</a> Sep 30 '17</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/803/feature-request-remove-link-restriction\">Feature Request: Remove Link Restriction</a> Oct 21 '17 +++</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/753/please-dont-answer-questions-that-are-off-topic\">Please don't answer questions that are off-topic</a> Aug 16 '17 +</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153/moderation-on-health-se-do-we-need-a-different-model\">Moderation on Health.SE - do we need a different model?</a> Apr 10 '15 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/860/what-would-you-want-name-and-scope-to-be-i-e-next-steps\">What would you want name and scope to be? (i.e. next steps)</a> Mar 7 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/842/where-do-we-draw-the-line-between-personal-diagnosis-request-and-made-generic\">Where do we draw the line between personal diagnosis request and “made generic” “differential diagnosis”</a> Feb 16 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/834/who-is-the-target-user-of-health-se\">Who is the target user of Health.SE?</a> Jan 23 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/796/please-only-upvote-if-the-question-is-good-quality-and-on-topic\">Please ONLY upvote if the question is good quality and on-topic.</a> Sep 22 '17</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://Canonical%20question%20about%20how%20to%20evaluate%20health%20benefits\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Canonical question about how to evaluate health benefits</a> Sep 20 '17</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/452/tour-example-questions-copied-from-gardening-landscaping\">Tour example questions copied from Gardening &amp; Landscaping</a> Oct 15 '15<br>\n(I know we discussed this multiple times, also in chat. Yet, this is the latest meta I found on this pesk problem.)</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/809/your-input-regarding-the-future-of-health-se\">Your Input regarding the Future of Health.SE</a> Nov 3 '17 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/868/standard-comment-situations-suggestions-for-close-votes-and-down-votes\">Standard comment situations: suggestions for close votes and down votes</a> Mar 12 18 ++</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/we-need-to-change-our-attitude-towards-new-users\">We need to change our attitude towards new users!</a> May 29 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/906/refocusing-from-health-to-medical-sciences\">Refocusing from Health to Medical Sciences</a> May 4 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/should-we-initiate-assisted-dying\">Should we initiate assisted dying?</a> Mar 6 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/579/should-apparent-requests-for-treatment-be-closed-or-turned-into-generic-question\">Should apparent requests for treatment be closed or turned into generic questions?</a> Apr 18 '16 </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor\">How long can this site be popular if everybody is asked to see a doctor?</a> Aug 13 '17</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/q/763/8212\">Linking Personal Close Reason to DoctorWhom&#39;s answer</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/879/new-off-topic-close-reasons\">New ''Off-topic\" close reasons</a> Mar 14 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/883/common-format-for-references\">Common format for references</a> Mar 17 a 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/902/preliminary-update-on-transition\">Preliminary update on transition</a> May 1 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/908/am-i-allowed-to-answer-questions-if-im-not-a-medical-professional\">Am I allowed to answer questions if I'm not a medical professional?</a> May 9 18</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Unsure whether this should be sorted by date. I am sure this list is not finished, but I am for now. Please complete this list.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 947, "author": "public wireless", "author_id": 1954, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1954", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For starters, you can stop closing questions while people are in the process of answering them. I was attempting to respond to a question where the user was suggesting symptoms of Candidiasis of the skin and was going to suggest some steps to diagnose further when the question was closed before I could post my answer.</p>\n\n<p>Second, I have what I believe to be a solution to my question which has received over 20,000 views and for some stupid reason I cannot post the answer because my reputation is too low. I don't care how low a user's reputation is, they should NEVER be locked out of their own question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/945", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 957, "author": "Juan M", "author_id": 773, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/773", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have pinged the mod team twice and have not heard from them yet. I will wait until the end of day and update here. I'm thinking that the next step will be to change the site name. If there are no other views, let's go with:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Medical Sciences</strong></p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>\n\n<p>This is now live!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 961, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Presuming \"Medical Sciences\" will be the new name, I propose \"Med\" as a shorthand for the icon to replace the \"H\" rather than \"MS.\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 962, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Other changes that will eventually need to be made along with the name change (please add and update):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/ask\">Fixing How-to-Ask</a> again</p></li>\n<li><p><del><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/66048?phase=beta\">Change the word Health to Medical Sciences on Area 51, and update the description</a> to match new site definition (<a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=newest&amp;page=2\">http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=newest&amp;page=2</a>)</del> is fixed</p></li>\n<li><p><del><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/965/11231\">Change the name</a> of the main chatroom. <a href=\"https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/22477/the-waiting-room\">\"The Waiting Room\"</a> is begging for people in line to get their personal medical advice answered…</del> is fixed</p></li>\n<li><p>update the scope and fix <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic</a> </p></li>\n<li><p>update the tour: with everything running smoothly and another mod on our hands, it might be a good idea to revisit the tour. AFAIK the current unicorn question is a placeholder because our other posts don’t qualify. Maybe the qualifications can be revisited by the SE staff if there are the resources present? I.e. not being able to include hyperlinks makes it difficult for any well-researched answer from us being up there, since they all include hyperlink references.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 964, "author": "Monica Cellio", "author_id": 290, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/290", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/bug\" class=\"post-tag required-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;bug&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">bug</a> <a href=\"/questions/tagged/status-completed\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-completed&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-completed</a></p>\n\n<p>Days after the other icon disruptions (wrong icons for sites in HNQ and other places) were resolved, I'm still seeing a blue icon for this meta site:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/CIMTe.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/CIMTe.png\" alt=\"screenshot\"></a></p>\n\n<p>It also appears in the inbox (I just got a comment ping here). This is with the full site in both Firefox and Chrome; another user <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/956/site-name-change-scope-redefinition/961?noredirect=1#comment5113_961\">reports</a> it happens on an iPhone too. It seems to be the same behavior we were seeing Friday, but it's just this one meta site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1016, "author": "Monica Cellio", "author_id": 290, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/290", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I just visited the site for the first time in several weeks and <em>wow</em>, the front page looks <em>much</em> better now. Good job everybody!</p>\n\n<p>(I know; this isn't really an answer to this question. But this seemed like the least-incorrect place to put this.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/956", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/773/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 959, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I appreciate the extensive explanation. And welcome back. Same to anyone else who returns to HealthSE and wonders \"wtf is happening here?\" We would love to have more active users.</p>\n\n<p>Those of us who <em>stuck around to keep this site afloat</em> have tried multiple ways to fix the near-fatal problems we've struggled with for the past 2+ years. The fact that we're in agreement on what the problems are and how to try to solve it should indicate that you're missing a piece of the puzzle to understand why the site name/scope must change. Also, why we want to try this rather than just closing it.</p>\n\n<p>It would help to read some of the meta posts by our most active users to learn more about the reasons we have decided the need to change name/scope, like <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/768/defibrillating-health-se\">this</a> or <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/a/907/6776\">this</a>. And the <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor\">reasons why we can't give medical advice</a> (which also helps illuminate why many questions that don't seem like medical advice really still are). And the attempt to foster a separate community of medical experts to contribute to answering/voting on this site (which didn't work).</p>\n\n<p>Medical professionals know not to give individual medical advice or diagnosis outside of a clinical relationship or specific other situations. When the vast majority of HealthSE questions have become medical advice &amp; diagnosis requests, or questions without the effort to even google it, or \"is this wild claim right?\" questions... medical professionals tend to not stick around due to frustration.</p>\n\n<p>I understand you want to learn. I did too, that's why I studied it, and why I like to teach. But on HealthSE there are guidelines, and there are ways to ask your question to get close to the answer that you want. </p>\n\n<p>Your question gives a rather specific scenario and asks for the names of the possible causes. It's not \"what are the non-cardiac etiologies of chest pain?\" but instead is a set of specific circumstances and symptoms asking what could it be. That <em>is</em> diagnosis - without the full picture of HPI ROS PMH PSH FH SH M/A... (history of present illness, review of systems, past medical history, past surgical history, family history, social history, medications, allergies...)</p>\n\n<p>Even the \"answers\" you gave above as examples are very diagnosis-like. I understand that it might not be crystal clear why, but read <a href=\"https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor\">the meta on why we don't give medical advice</a> and it may clarify some of it.</p>\n\n<p>I understand that you also wonder why didn't we just edit your question, or reshape it, or teach you how to ask it in a way that doesn't violate our guidelines? That would be ideal! We'd like to - in fact, for hundreds and hundreds of questions we did just that. </p>\n\n<p>Yes, some of us who stayed here DID spend countless hours trying to teach, edit, guide, and help people whose questions were problematic - in the hopes they would learn, edit, join in and contribute. The vast majority of the time, it was to no avail, and the repeated futility of it has largely burned us out. Many of our experts quit. We decided we no longer have the manpower to edit all questions, so we are closing off-topic questions rather than editing them most of the time now. You're experiencing the result of that.</p>\n\n<p>Right now, we're just trying to keep it afloat until we can change the scope and try to see if we can breathe new life into it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 960, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'll give you a different example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>During a large festival, a patient's face turns pale, they start to sweat a lot, they have a difficulty breathing, and they don't feel so well. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What could this be?</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>any acute coronary syndrome (heart attack or myocardial infarct)</li>\n<li>potentially stroke</li>\n<li>foreign body aspiration</li>\n<li>asthma or COPD exacerbation</li>\n<li>pulmonary embolism</li>\n<li>food or other poisoning</li>\n<li>CHF exacerbation</li>\n<li>heat exhaustion/ heat stroke</li>\n<li>hypoglycemia or DKA/HHS</li>\n<li>panic attack/hyperventilation</li>\n<li>vaso-vagal reaction</li>\n<li>mild circulatory issues</li>\n<li>exsiccosis/dehydration</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>By reading this, I can't tell you which of these it is. I doubt that DoctorWhom could, or any other veteran user here. Some of these are more likely, some are less likely, but likelihood doesn't help you, you need the diagnosis. And no, I'm not going to write a huge post laying out all these potential problems, explaining them and so on, because if I do, I might have overlooked something.</p>\n\n<p>But being there, you could probably get a good gist of how severe the condition is. An infarct can only be diagnosed in the hospital, same with a stroke, and needs immediate care, a mild circulatory issue can be resolved by monitoring, laying down, and more or less waiting while eventually administering fluids etc. if blood pressure was too low.</p>\n\n<p>This is one example, but because of this we don't give a medical diagnosis in general. <strong>There never is only one likely cause given a bunch of symptoms.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 977, "author": "De Novo", "author_id": 14173, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14173", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Good answers here. Interesting to see a rehash of this discussion on hot meta questions. The <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor/748#748\">@DoctorWhom answer</a> to the related question is excellent, but I thought I'd add my understanding of the disconnect between the OPs expectations and the way medicine is actually practiced.</p>\n\n<p>The OP expects the following: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To identify some likely cause given the described symptoms.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As illustrated by the hypothetical:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Your described symptoms match Condition A, Condition B and Condition C.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The idea that we could do this is the primary misunderstanding here. <strong>Diagnosis is not a symptom matching algorithm.</strong> Even when we don't do a proper physical exam, we look at the patient, listen to their voice, and integrate a good deal of additional information. Then we're left with process A-G, not condition A-C, which we narrow down with follow up questions, and an option for further testing.</p>\n\n<p>You'll see this on medical dramas where there's some montage of a resident digging through textbooks trying to figure out what might cause a rash, bloody nose, and no fever, but this is not how it works. We don't sit around trying to match up a list of symptoms to a list of conditions. We integrate other types of data, clarify specific aspects about the quality and time course of the spontaneously reported symptoms, and then run through a whole series of important follow up questions that often can seem like we weren't listening (why are you asking me about urination and sexual history... the pain is in my shoulder?). We can usually do this pretty quickly, but it involves much more back and forth than occurs in a SE post. The end result here is usually a provisional diagnosis, many other possible but less likely diagnoses, and a prudent course of action to narrow it down further (often accompanied by treatment recommendations in the meantime). </p>\n\n<p>None of this matches the expectation that a brief paragraph containing the spontaneous symptom report (even including a description of a visit to a doctor) of an internet person could be responded to with any certainty by another internet person using an answer: \"these symptoms match A, B, and C\". This isn't (just) a legal or license issue. We just can't make a diagnosis from that information.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/958", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/94/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 966, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In keeping with the new direction - Grand Rounds.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_rounds\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wikipedia: Grand rounds</a><br>\n Grand rounds are methodology of medical education and inpatient care, consisting of presenting the medical problems and treatment of a particular patient to an audience consisting of doctors, residents, and medical students. It was first conceived by clinicians as a way for junior colleagues to round on patients.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 967, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The new direction and a pun working within SE communities?</p>\n\n<p>I suggest: </p>\n\n<p>\"The ICU.\"</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_care_unit\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wikipedia: Intensive care unit</a></p>\n\n<p>It is not entirely free of the patients seeking diagnosis connotation, but indicates a different level. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/965", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 966, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In keeping with the new direction - Grand Rounds.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_rounds\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wikipedia: Grand rounds</a><br>\n Grand rounds are methodology of medical education and inpatient care, consisting of presenting the medical problems and treatment of a particular patient to an audience consisting of doctors, residents, and medical students. It was first conceived by clinicians as a way for junior colleagues to round on patients.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 967, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The new direction and a pun working within SE communities?</p>\n\n<p>I suggest: </p>\n\n<p>\"The ICU.\"</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_care_unit\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wikipedia: Intensive care unit</a></p>\n\n<p>It is not entirely free of the patients seeking diagnosis connotation, but indicates a different level. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/974", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 986, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>If one doesn’t know all the circumstances, under which someone else decided to take action, or/and if one can’t ask the person why the action was taken, one is in no position to judge.</h2>\n\n<p>This is true for any profession, be it medically or otherwise. Therefore, I think those types of questions should not be on-topic. Talking to the physician is impossible due to the medical confidentiality, and why we can’t know all the circumstances has been established in the threads regarding personal medical diagnoses.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 988, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this type of question is actually worse than requests for medical advice. It asks us to judge the words and actions of a doctor based solely on hearsay from a stranger of unknown reliability, medical understanding, mental status, and truthfulness. With medical advice you can screw up only one way: by giving bad advice. With a question like this you can screw up that way AND by unfairly criticizing someone. I think these questions should be closed aggressively.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/985", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14173/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 986, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h2>If one doesn’t know all the circumstances, under which someone else decided to take action, or/and if one can’t ask the person why the action was taken, one is in no position to judge.</h2>\n\n<p>This is true for any profession, be it medically or otherwise. Therefore, I think those types of questions should not be on-topic. Talking to the physician is impossible due to the medical confidentiality, and why we can’t know all the circumstances has been established in the threads regarding personal medical diagnoses.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 988, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this type of question is actually worse than requests for medical advice. It asks us to judge the words and actions of a doctor based solely on hearsay from a stranger of unknown reliability, medical understanding, mental status, and truthfulness. With medical advice you can screw up only one way: by giving bad advice. With a question like this you can screw up that way AND by unfairly criticizing someone. I think these questions should be closed aggressively.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/989", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/94/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 995, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is always a notification box and link on the main page. There was a week for self nomination, another week for candidate questioning.</p>\n\n<p>If there had been more than one candidate there would have been a week for voting. However since this is a pro tempore election with only one candidate it ends as soon as voting is opened. (in this case it actually took abt 20-30 minutes as it is still manual) </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 996, "author": "Jon Ericson", "author_id": 3, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This was my fault and something I need to fix our process. In a perfect world, the election would automatically be ended if there aren't enough candidates. Unfortunately, that bit is still a manual process. In the future, I plan to push back the start of the voting portion a few minutes before it's supposed to start if it looks as if it won't be necessary. Then, if there aren't enough candidates, I can end the election so there won't be a notification. (I'd also need to remove the community event in the sidebar at that time.)</p>\n\n<p>I'm sorry for the confusion.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/993", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11807/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1004, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Great discussion. I don't have a firm answer but some thoughts on it. </p>\n\n<p>I do think some of those types of questions could potentially be on topic, but likely most would not be, and it could be difficult to concisely explain what is/isn't on topic. I voted that one as off-topic for a few reasons.</p>\n\n<p><strong>One, there is an entire \"Interpersonal Skills\" SE dedicated to communication.</strong> In the case of the question linked, I think it would be better suited there.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Two, it can easily cross over into \"medical advice\" or \"second opinion\" territory.</strong> In this case, to answer the question requires addressing the fact that the patient doubled the prescribed dose despite the clinician stating not to, addressing the max recommended dosing for the medication, and potentially addressing side effects of exceeding max dosage - otherwise it could be perceived as condoning the decision.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Three, we can never know the clinician's side of the situation.</strong> It's even possible that she/he did explain why and the patient doesn't remember. There is research showing that patients retain only a small percentage of what the physician tells them after going home. This makes answering it potentially very difficult.</p>\n\n<p>I think the answer to that question by one of our participant scholars was well handled, using theory and remaining objective. But it isn't easily done, and invites non-experts to answer it with opinion. The volume of participation on InterpersonalSkills.SE is much more equipped to handle voting up/down non-expert contributions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1006, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I wouldn’t focus too much on the type of question and more on the type of answer:</p>\n\n<p>Although there have been quite a few well-researched well-motivated questions regarding personal medical advice, we as a Community advocated to close them because we don’t want the type of answer those questions attract. </p>\n\n<p>Are answers like the one I gave for the question regarding patient-doctor interaction answers you want to see on this site, or are they not specific enough to medicine so that it would be reasonable that they stay here?</p>\n\n<p>I personally think that patient-doctor interactions differ from other communication in how the expertise is shifted to one side, and how the patient has a high dependency. I would also like to point out that in the medical education, communication and psychology has gained a lot of value and emphasis in the past few years.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1008, "author": "De Novo", "author_id": 14173, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14173", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is a great question about the scope of MedicalSciences.SE. These questions are definitely tricky, and may require more tight moderation of answers than others, but I could see some good arguments for including them in the scope here. As @DoctorWhom says, we do have InterpersonalSkills.SE. For the linked question, if it is about how the OP should deal with his/her sister, I would say it probably belongs on IPS (though IPS may disagree). If it is about how to communicate with a doctor, then I think it may be helpful to keep it here. I believe doctor patient communication is a medical science, though some would prefer to call it an art. There is a literature, and I did try to teach it as a science when I taught a clinical skills course. This is of course, a double edged sword. If patient-doctor communication is a medical science, one could make an argument that advice about how to communicate would be medical science. I don't think this is as much of an issue though, because it includes a necessary visit to the doctor. I.e., if the crux of an answer is \"when you see your doctor, don't be afraid to tell them about X\", it includes \"go see your doctor\".</p>\n\n<p>I expect questions about how to communicate with a medical professional would benefit more from the perspective of our more specialized user base, vs. the general user base at IPS. Again, though, I agree that answers to these questions should be closely moderated so they limit their advice to how to communicate with medical professionals rather than how to diagnose or treat a medical condition. As I understand it, this is a bit of a departure from how answers tend to be moderated. Usually, a question would be closed for asking for medical advice rather than an answer deleted for providing medical advice.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1001", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1003, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I want to throw out some thoughts that need to be considered when discussing this. </p>\n\n<p>A number of those Qs have evidence-based answers already, such as \"does X work for a cold?\" and the studied non-pharmacological remedies are listed with solid evidence for efficacy (honey, zinc, etc). But in general MANY things that could be grouped in \"home remedies\" haven't been scientifically studied, including a plethora of off-the-wall speculation \"do pickles cure cancer?\" type questions, so there is not going to be a good evidence-based answer for some of these questions. </p>\n\n<p>Ideally that should be the defining factor: is there a sufficient evidence base to answer it. But there are several difficulties to that requirement.</p>\n\n<p>One is that most askers won't know the difference between a ridiculous claim from someone's blog and a truly evidence-based home remedy ahead of time. That's basically <em>exactly</em> why they're asking.</p>\n\n<p>Two, part of the deficit is in OUR OWN knowledge - the \"evidence\" is not universally known by everyone for everything. Naturopaths have journals that review evidence that isn't in standard medical journals, and some of what I HAVE read stands up very well to scrutiny. Same with functional medicine, which is often still considered fringe by mainstream allopathy despite the varying degrees of evidence for their tenets. This could become a minefield depending on who participates here. There is always a lag between new research and adoption into clinical guidelines. That's part of why clinicians learn how to appraise literature themselves. </p>\n\n<p>Three, we have a fairly small expert participant base at this time. For example, we have 200+ well-written-but-very-niche questions on tendonopathies but no orthopedist with specialized knowledge in that area. So they sit unanswered and pile up. So what is answerable and what is not isn't always clear.</p>\n\n<p>I look forward to seeing other thoughts on how to approach this.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1005, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Does anything need to be done about them? I went through a bunch of them and they range from bad questions that should have been closed the day they were asked to some pretty good ones with good answers. We could close the bad ones, but that wouldn't put much of a dent in the inventory of old, bad questions so I don't know if it's worth it.</p>\n\n<p>Going forward, I expect most questions with that tag will end up closed as requests for advice, for lack of prior research, or for being ungrounded in sound science. (We need to revisit our close reasons and that last one needs to be added, IMO). </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1002", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/773/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1009, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Such edits are clearly conflicting with OP‘s interest. I would have rejected such an edit if it came up anonymously in an edit queue.</p>\n\n<p>I think the appropriate solution would be to ask the 90% redacted question yourself, or comment and explain to the OP how it can be salvaged.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1010, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Excellent question and I now think the answer is a resounding no. We should not try to edit requests for medical advice into something they're not. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1011, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Q</strong> Should we edit Personal Medical Advice questions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Is a general question and less about the concrete examples prompting this meta discussion. As such we should make the distinction between fixable questions and unsalvageable. It seems quite self evident that plainly unfixable questions are not the real topic here.</p>\n<p>It seems quite clear that we should <em>not</em> just shoot down all questions that appear as personal advice/medical advice. They should be <em>put on hold</em> quickly and we should try to help OP to get the question into on-topic area.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/746/11231\">As one of our residents put it:</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think this is another way we need to approach the floods of &quot;diagnose me&quot; &quot;advise me&quot; questions. If we only downvote, it doesn't help the dilution of good questions. This way we pull out the good in their question and increase the % of good questions. Also, sometimes the answers to downvoted questions are great and deserve a good question stem!!</p>\n<p>Please, those who have downvoted, look at questions that have been revised and see if it deserves an upvote instead! If not, consider revising it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/894/11231\">another professional had this say</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To edit or not to edit?</p>\n<p>I happened to look at the front page and saw an interesting (to me) question which was appropriately closed as seeking personal medical advice. I edited the post to remove that aspect.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>To which <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/895/11231\">yet another pro added</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Any question can be potentially re-opened in this fashion, but this becomes very old very quickly.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>While it was a &quot;total rewrite&quot; it really fixed the post. Consequently the post in question became: &quot;Post Reopened by Graham Chiu, DoctorWhom, LangLangC, Chris Rogers, bertieb&quot;</p>\n<p>Of course this should be accompanied ideally by the OP further editing the question to comply with guidelines. But if OP cannot or simply will not edit then I see no reason for any of us not to edit the question. If anyone feels like she is up to it, I'd say &quot;go ahead&quot;. I thought we only abstained from these edits as they were too strenuous on our time budgets. If that's the case, just do not edit. But if you see value in the de-personalised core of the question, you have the time, do edit. It then may need further edits by the OP. But we should not take pride in closing questions. We do that in desperation, I hope, at least.</p>\n<p>Removing the personal/diagnosis/advice aspects is a first start to help users, we should try to do that. If that leaves the question in a poor state it is at least not as bad as before. The example was personal and lacking research. Now it's still lacking research and not personal. That is an improvement <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/906/11231\">according to our standards</a>.</p>\n<p>We cannot fix them all, as they are so many. We cannot fix them all as some are really beyond fixing. This post is not about an encouragement to edit every post into admission. This answer merely suggests that we are a better site if we try to keep fixing posts. We even have a canned comment for that <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/886/11231\">Question: medical advice question but potentially salvageable</a>.</p>\n<p>The home page is now full of &quot;holds&quot; and &quot;closed&quot; signs. Considering the transition that <em>is</em> a good sign. But it will not be a good sign in the future. It will remain a judgement call. But if you think you can fix it, then edit.</p>\n<p>Very sadly I ended up being the top close voter on this site. That really makes <em>not</em> for a nice statistic. It is nothing to be proud about. Although I strictly distinguish between &quot;put on-hold&quot; and &quot;close&quot;. Ideally in &quot;on-hold&quot; the OP continues to work with us to improve the Q.</p>\n<p>This is just to emphasise that we should not shoot down everything &quot;and forget about it&quot;. For the example, Carey's edit was a good start, not &quot;a mistake&quot;. Well, in my opinion.</p>\n<p>As canbe found on several meta-meta posts:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;Please note that <strong>once you post a question or answer to this site, those posts become part of the <em>collective efforts</em> of others</strong> who have also contributed to that content. Posts that are potentially useful to others should not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And a reminder from <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">our own How to ask page:</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Personal medical advice questions are off-topic here on Medical Sciences.</p>\n<p><strong>We care!</strong> And that is why Medical Sciences cannot give individualized medical advice or diagnosis for multiple important reasons! <strong>Such questions <em>will</em> be <em>revised</em> or closed.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If we don't manage to do that for resource reasons then that's one thing. But we should not give up this goal. If we declare shooting down to be our principle then <em>that</em> is a mistake. &quot;Be nice&quot; would be fixing more questions and get them re-opened.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1012, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>I'm going to start my reply and add more later when I have more time.</em></p>\n\n<p>I have been struggling to find a clear rule for whether a question that starts as personal advice could be salvageable or not. </p>\n\n<p>I'll use a couple of recent questions to illustrate why one I rewrote/answered, and one I VTC'd without any intention to reopen:</p>\n\n<p>With a question like \"<a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/17897/is-the-sexual-dysfunction-from-psychiatric-medications-such-as-ssris-and-lithium\">is the anorgasmia side effect of lithium permanent?</a>\" I see it as a common general complaint, and because there is high risk to an individual if they discontinue medications due to side effects that are likely treatable, I felt it was straightforward and worthwhile to rewrite and answer it. Of course, including \"talk to your doctor\" since there may be something additional going on.</p>\n\n<p>However, with a question like \"<a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/17903/thyroid-issue-what-is-the-name-of-tsh-low-and-t4-high-issue\">what can I eat for this raging hyperthyroidism?</a>\" I would not even want to try to generalize it, because something like Grave's ds can be a potentially sight-or-life-threatening situation if not <em>properly and promptly</em> treated by a medical professional. Giving any information that suggests it's self-treatable would be potentially harmful, so I voted to close right off the bat.</p>\n\n<p>What I'm working on is an algorithmic approach to differentiating between these sort of situations. I hope to find some way to summarize it in a clear way!</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this always depends on whether we have the time/energy/stamina to take the initiative to revise questions ourselves, or to hand-hold guide the OP to do so. I do not think we should <em>expect</em> each other to do so. But if one of us manages to generate a spark of energy about a topic of interest and wants to revise a question, then I think there should be a way to make it a little more straightforward...</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1007", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1014, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with the comments that almost every nutrition question asked here should not be accepted here (and most are quickly closed). However, for the sake of argument, I can think of a few situations (not all-inclusive) that probably should be on-topic.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Questions involving nutritional deficiencies that cause disease</li>\n<li>Questions involving epidemiology/population health as associated with nutrition</li>\n<li>Scientific questions (i.e., not medical advice) involving nutritional/environmental management of disease</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>However, I also feel like these points all fit under at least one of the other on-topic bullet points. I can't think of an on-topic type of question that would fit under <em>Environmental or nutritional factors that affect health</em> but not one of the others.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1015, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My 2 cents: as much as I love nutrition as a topic, I don't think our community can handle fielding nutrition topics without a MUCH larger expert base, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.</p>\n\n<p>I have a relatively large amount of lifestyle medicine training and clinical experience, but still feel an aversion to answering 99% of the nutrition questions that pop up here. I have put some thought into why that is, and think there are several themes:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Many questions have no evidence-based answers because they are too limited in scope to have ever been studied. In person I could discuss speculative risks-benefits based on what <em>is</em> known, but this site isn't well-suited to that at all. Speculation just doesn't fit here. </p></li>\n<li><p>I can't cite the specific reference for all nutrition advice that I use in clinical practice off the top of my head. It's a synthesis of years of study, practice, watching clinical results, and learning from mentors. It would be one thing if it were a simple fact or clinical guideline, but nutrition is far more complex because there isn't a central set of professional standards - it's a synthesis of MANY sources, so it can be extremely time consuming and difficult to retrace those steps. For example, 1/3 of the pages of the lifestyle medicine book \"How Not to Die\" is just a list of reference sources. Some docs I know can do that but my brain doesn't have that kind of bibliography section. :)</p></li>\n<li><p>I'm eternally learning, and there's a lot more I still need to know to be able to stand in a debate on nutrition against the waves of pseudomedicine in the supplement world. Some is legit, some is straight-up harmful. But scouring references for evidence to pick apart hype from solid is tedious work, and we just don't have that kind of manpower.</p></li>\n<li><p>There is a lot that remains controversial even within the medical field on nutrition. People debate the clinical application of studies all the time - even those who have the same fundamental philosophy on nutrition debate the fine points of it. The ACLM has only recently put together a standardized curriculum, and that took them a great deal of discussion to decide what to include and what not to. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>We have no obligation to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of all health topics. And we need to accept that some people WILL get upset about the fact that there's not a good place to ask their question, but we can't solve the entire worldwide shortage of health information dissemination on our own. We just don't (and won't) have the capacity to field everything out there. So being selective is a survival mechanism. Eliminating nutrition will reduce the controversial questions that no one feels like touching with a 10-foot pole, and that will reduce the burnout of the experts who we're trying to retain.</p>\n\n<p><em>It may help to specify in the guidelines that a question has to be answerable with evidence-based information, and if a topic is too controversial to have a clear clinical consensus, it might be closed as off topic.</em></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1013", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1028, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The prohibition is on all medical advice even if it would be useful to others. If you read <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56/are-personal-medical-advice-questions-on-topic-here\">the meta thread</a> linked to in the close notice on your question, you would understand the reasoning. The word \"personal\" is often added simply to avoid misleading people into thinking they can't ask medical questions. </p>\n\n<p>In this particular case, I think the best way to get an answer is to call the manufacturer and ask them. After all, it's their product and we don't necessarily know how it's best used.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1029, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't see anything personal in the question. Instead, it asks how to perform an medical treatment, which sounds totally on-topic to me.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding the argument that Carey Gregory makes in his answer (<a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181213044638/https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/why-is-my-question-personal/1029\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">mirror</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I think the best way to get an answer is to call the manufacturer and ask them. After all, it's their product and we don't necessarily know how it's best used.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don't see why that would make the question off-topic, since other users may have already called the manufacturer and subsequently know the answer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1030, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your question is as below (Emphasis mine):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The instructions say it's best to apply them before bed and before washing with warm water and drying the area, but doesn't mention if they should stay on only for the night or for 24 hours. <strong>Shouldn't I also manually peel the burned layers of the skin or should they come off by themselves? In case of the former how do I know it's a good time to peel them?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In addition to asking how to use a product, you are also asking if <strong><em>I</em></strong> should do X and Y, which is personal advice. The base question <em>might</em> be on topic, but even that is a stretch. It's like saying \"My doctor prescribed X at Y dosage, but my wife at Z dosage. Shouldn't I do Z dosage as well?\"</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1027", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14069/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1041, "author": "Jan", "author_id": 3002, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3002", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>OK, there is one question about liver function that could stay as a separate question, but I don't want start with this issue.</p>\n\n<p>It's this. You ask, for example \"Did Gary Taubes publish an article claiming these things?\" You are a skillful searcher, so you have probably searched for this by yourself. We here usually have only online sources at hand and do not often go to physical libraries to answer someone's question. I mean, I do not feel like a better searcher than you. Additional thing is: Let's say that someone actually finds what you asked about Taubes. How can this help to improve my, your or anyone's health? One of the expectations for the answers here is that they provide something practically helpful for health.</p>\n\n<p>About high vitamin C doses, which is a separate question. I've searched for this once thoroughly and I found nothing useful, as I remember. But the question itself is valid.</p>\n\n<p>Questions about the skepticism of vaccines are so repetitive that everyone is getting tired of them. I don't know. It's a separate question, again, anyway. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1042, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your questions need to be posted to Skeptics. They are squarely on topic there but not here. The fact that they got no answers there doesn't justify moving them here.</p>\n\n<p>The way you make these questions appropriate for this site is to boil the claims down to their scientific basis and ask about the science, not about the veracity of the authors or how they arrived at their claims.</p>\n\n<p>And questions about theories such as massive vitamin C doses and vaccine skepticism aren't likely to meet a warm welcome here unless they're very carefully crafted and show a lot of prior research. Vaccine skepticism in particular will likely meet a rapid demise since vaccines are accepted science as far as most members of this community are concerned.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1043, "author": "LаngLаngС", "author_id": 11231, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Being late to the party of four questions in short cadence: the Vitamin C and vaccine questions were never spelled out (by you?) so I can't comment on those. (But I guess Skeptics might indeed be better for them, probably?)</p>\n\n<p>What I find problematic about your approach is something entirely different form the other answers here, despite @Carey already commenting on it: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The difference is the context in which you've asked the questions. They're posed as questions asking us to judge the author and how he arrived at his conclusions, not about the conclusions alone. Asking solely about cholesterol reference ranges is fine. Just leave Taubes out of it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Obviously, I found the question OK and answered it. But I would add to Carey's comment that giving the \"quack-book\" as background is not per se bad, although we likely do not have the capacity to deconstruct every claim of the entire book here in a short amount of time.</p>\n\n<p>The way the questions are asked and what their aim seems to be directs them more to Skeptics than here. </p>\n\n<p>For example, the \"in order to allow\" question that you yourself saw as fitting better on the other site <em>will</em> have problems there as well, since it asks for hidden motivations, a conspiracy of sorts. That may well be the case, or not, but remains very probably – or even of course – difficult to prove.</p>\n\n<p>The other questions <em>may</em> be fine here, in my opinion, if the following conditions are met:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>We probably do not want to refute a best-selling quack. We want to look at the claims presented and the evidence cited, then evaluate that. Even if the claims are mostly outrageous and the evidence presented shaky almost all the time, the quack in question may have found the occasional nugget or sometimes only slightly misunderstood an issue, the literature, or re-presents it badly. If you know it's bull, we all know it's bull, then what's the point in wasting our time with it?</p></li>\n<li><p>Coming from the claims in the book is OKish, but going from the claims one step further would be really great. This is resembling what @Jan wrote here: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[about the Taubes question:] You are a skillful searcher, …</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And I believe that as well. The Taubes/cholesterol question is a bit on the bad side, as \"did T. write that?\" is really too easy to answer. I put that into a search engine and the article came up first. (I really thought: \"Are you kidding me?\") But then I read that article and found the answer to be worthwhile nonetheless, as Taubes is a nice writer who mostly gets it right in the basics and then takes the occasional wrong turn (from what I read by him or about him). –– So, what's really the question here: Is that \"10 pages article proof?\" And now we're getting there.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>That leads me to the conclusion</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>that downplaying your personal context (refuting the quack) would have made the question better.</li>\n<li>including a link to the real article in question should have been the main frame of reference</li>\n<li>more prior research of your own would have been helpful (taking one or two other scientific articles – neither from the quack nor from Taubes – into consideration and evaluating them)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And finally: do not post all of your questions at once!</p>\n\n<p>Space them out. If one's got problems we <em>can try</em> to work that out. If we <em>can</em> work that out, you will probably post a better second question, as you learned what was criticised about the first. If that one question gets an answer, you might also learn from that answer something. That not only better informs your next question by what you already learned from that but also gives you more time to do more research on your own.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1040", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6604/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1046, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, and for all the same reasons they're off topic virtually everywhere else. They're almost always little more than an opinion poll and rarely have value to anyone other than the OP. Although DoctorWhom gave a great answer to the example question, I think that's actually a rarity. Most get no answers at all, or they draw spam and low-quality answers that end up being deleted. And, ultimately, how do you even write a recommendation that meets site requirements for factual, referenced answers? By definition a recommendation is largely just opinion. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1047, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, echoing everything in Carey's answer above. I agree that 99% of recommendation questions are just not well suited for this type of site. </p>\n\n<p>But, and I apologize if it perhaps added confusion to our redefinition stage, I made an exception for that question and answered it for several reasons. I felt there was a root question there about how to approach trying to understand a complex medical topic by a layperson in a situation where (1) they have a great deal of motivation, time, and (self-reported) confidence in their ability to study, given the right material and (2) are in a situation where a beloved family member has the disease in a medical system with limited access to care, in which case someone with the knowledge to better understand discussions on treatment risks/benefits, survival rates, and progression of the disease could significantly help that person. I also wanted to provide some realistic limitations on what they should expect to gain from reading.</p>\n\n<p>I just edited the Q to be a liiiiiitle closer to what we might consider on topic, and to better reflect the root question the OP had.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1045", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1061, "author": "Andrew T.", "author_id": 144, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/144", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Moderators can change the example question on the tour, so, <strong>yes, there is a way.</strong> Unfortunately, the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/17546\">sample Q&amp;A</a> you proposed is ineligible.</p>\n\n<p>From <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/163947/241919\">What determines the questions available for selection in the tour page?</a>, these are the criteria for questions to be eligible:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apparently the posts have to be short, with at least two short answers (&lt;=400 chars). They also shouldn't have any crazy formatting.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and <a href=\"https://data.stackexchange.com/health/query/92078/possible-about-questions\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the SE Data Explorer query</a> to find it. Unfortunately (again), as of current writing, looks like none are eligible.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Apart from that, I'm not sure what else can be done. It's possible for mods to change some sections on the Help Center, perhaps by providing a meta link to \"exemplary Q&amp;A\" post. However, this needs to be discussed more with the regulars and mods.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1063, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Could we not have a wiki meta post (Example Question: What questions are good questions for this site which also have good answers?) which we could link to in our tour and help pages, listing exemplary Q&amp;As as examples?</p>\n\n<p>Surely that would overcome the problem with the character and formatting restrictions we have along with Skeptics. The only thing is that it would need to be regularly monitored for updates which may give the wrong impression.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1060", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1066, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As with all SE sites, we get fewer closed questions when users read the help section and understand site requirements before posting. In particular, the section entitled <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">What topics can I ask about here</a> should be read and understood. </p>\n\n<p>The community does close questions fairly regularly. Since a single moderator vote will close a question while it takes 5 non-moderator votes, it's natural that many questions end up being closed by mods. I actually let many questions I think probably need to be closed to remain open so I can see what the community thinks. The exception to that is questions requesting medical advice. I close those instantly because the community has long agreed that such questions shouldn't be allowed (and shouldn't be answered either). </p>\n\n<p>We already have a disclaimer. Nonetheless, allowing medical advice questions isn't going to happen. That's an old debate that goes back to the founding of the site and it has always been widely agreed upon by the community. <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/748/8212\">Please read this meta thread</a>. If you want to get medical advice from anonymous strangers with unknown or non-existent qualifications, there is no shortage of sites on the internet where that can be found, but the community here has long agreed this isn't going to be one of them.</p>\n\n<p>I'm not quite sure why you added the link in your question. It's from the very early days of the site when the scope was less rigorous, but even then it clearly stated that medical advice questions were off topic. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1067, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Closing a question is not a bad thing</strong> if it is a bad question.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Closing a question is not permanent</strong>: closed questions can be reopened if they are improved.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Closing a question is to prevent answers</strong> before a question is improved.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Not closing a question requesting personal medical advice is dangerous</strong>, because that allows it to be answered, and may require the moderators to then delete answers that are inappropriately providing medical advice. Even worse, those answers are most likely to come from people who are not regulars on this stack (because they do not understand the prohibition against personal advice) which makes them even more likely to be dangerous.</p>\n\n<p>Some relevant posts about close-voting on the main meta that discuss the purpose of closing questions and recommend immediate rather than patient use of the close vote:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98022/how-soon-should-i-vote-to-close\">How soon should I &quot;vote to close&quot;?</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-on-hold-or-duplicate-question\">What is a &quot;closed&quot;, “on hold”, or &quot;duplicate&quot; question?</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213382/what-is-the-purpose-of-closing-a-question\">What is the purpose of closing a question?</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1065", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2408/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1069, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm sorry that you have been disappointed by moderator actions and the development of this site. We have heard before that we are user-unfriendly, and if you have any tips as to how improve the experience of new users, I would strongly encourage you to post them here. Something dire needs to be done about that.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your other point of criticism: This isn't supposed to be <strong>Medical Freedom Stack Exchange</strong>. We <strong>strongly embody censorship</strong>, if that's what you want to call it. This is not a platform where everybody can share their opinion. On MedSci.SE, your answers need to be backed up with facts (studies, books etc.), and you're questions can't be requesting personal medical advice.</p>\n\n<p>This is a platform hosted by a community. <strong><em>As such, the community can freely delete any posts they like.</em></strong> We can't forbid medical bulls*it to be said, but we can delete it here, and that's what we are doing. </p>\n\n<p>Health is too important an issue for every unsophisticated user to share their opinion. Your contributions are highly valued if they are within bounds, and backed up by reputable sources. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bR07d.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bR07d.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a>\n^{<a href=\"https://xkcd.com/1357/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">XKCD</a>}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1072, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I understand your frustration. I am all for disseminating medical knowledge. That's why I studied medicine and why I choose to come here. </p>\n\n<p>I too was frustrated with the lack of being able to ask/give medical advice on SE - at first. Quickly I came to understand why that is, and now 110% support the decision not to do so. </p>\n\n<p><strong>There is REAL HARM TO HUMAN LIFE</strong> that can come from giving/taking medical advice - especially when it's from people not qualified to give it, or outside of a patient-physician relationship. Check it out in bioethics literature.</p>\n\n<p>SE's greatest obstacle is and always will be: who's qualified and who's not? </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The SE model allows a high school kid's vote to be equal to a practicing board-certified physician. Which is right in many settings, <em>but not in medical advice.</em></li>\n<li>Secondly, on SE, there's no way to prove you're a qualified physician certified to practice evidence-based medicine. Anyone could claim to be a doctor and spread misinformation. It's happened in other online communities. We won't let it here.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Instead of programming something in for clinicians to prove their training/certifications and have a badge or whatever, SE decided that's a no go, and so even MDs and DOs etc have to post references here - they can't just wave their license or boards certifications to back up what they say.</p>\n\n<p>Look at <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor\">this post</a> for more of what I've written on this subject.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1068", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9695/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1069, "author": "Narusan", "author_id": 8212, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8212", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm sorry that you have been disappointed by moderator actions and the development of this site. We have heard before that we are user-unfriendly, and if you have any tips as to how improve the experience of new users, I would strongly encourage you to post them here. Something dire needs to be done about that.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your other point of criticism: This isn't supposed to be <strong>Medical Freedom Stack Exchange</strong>. We <strong>strongly embody censorship</strong>, if that's what you want to call it. This is not a platform where everybody can share their opinion. On MedSci.SE, your answers need to be backed up with facts (studies, books etc.), and you're questions can't be requesting personal medical advice.</p>\n\n<p>This is a platform hosted by a community. <strong><em>As such, the community can freely delete any posts they like.</em></strong> We can't forbid medical bulls*it to be said, but we can delete it here, and that's what we are doing. </p>\n\n<p>Health is too important an issue for every unsophisticated user to share their opinion. Your contributions are highly valued if they are within bounds, and backed up by reputable sources. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bR07d.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bR07d.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a>\n^{<a href=\"https://xkcd.com/1357/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">XKCD</a>}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1072, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I understand your frustration. I am all for disseminating medical knowledge. That's why I studied medicine and why I choose to come here. </p>\n\n<p>I too was frustrated with the lack of being able to ask/give medical advice on SE - at first. Quickly I came to understand why that is, and now 110% support the decision not to do so. </p>\n\n<p><strong>There is REAL HARM TO HUMAN LIFE</strong> that can come from giving/taking medical advice - especially when it's from people not qualified to give it, or outside of a patient-physician relationship. Check it out in bioethics literature.</p>\n\n<p>SE's greatest obstacle is and always will be: who's qualified and who's not? </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The SE model allows a high school kid's vote to be equal to a practicing board-certified physician. Which is right in many settings, <em>but not in medical advice.</em></li>\n<li>Secondly, on SE, there's no way to prove you're a qualified physician certified to practice evidence-based medicine. Anyone could claim to be a doctor and spread misinformation. It's happened in other online communities. We won't let it here.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Instead of programming something in for clinicians to prove their training/certifications and have a badge or whatever, SE decided that's a no go, and so even MDs and DOs etc have to post references here - they can't just wave their license or boards certifications to back up what they say.</p>\n\n<p>Look at <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor\">this post</a> for more of what I've written on this subject.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1080", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8418/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1084, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd prefer blatant versions of these questions not be on-topic, although I also probably wouldn't apply a blanket ban on them: <strong>if a well-researched question is asked and the asker happens to be a writer rather than, say, a medical student, I don't think we should discriminate</strong>. However, these sorts of questions <em>rarely</em> have such prior research.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>These sorts of questions are often very lazy. They are effectively trying to substitute a StackExchange answer for doing their own background research, or hiring a consultant if they are aiming for true realism. The Q&amp;A is unlikely to be useful to anyone else.</p></li>\n<li><p>Hypothetical questions are often unrealistic and therefore the answer is not particularly interesting to someone interested in medicine. Writers are often coming with a answer in search of a question: they have an outcome in mind and want to cause it.</p></li>\n<li><p>The actual biological, medical answers are often \"it depends\" which makes these sorts of questions too broad to really be specific and useful.</p></li>\n<li><p>I think a version of such a question could be used in some cases to circumvent the restrictions on personal medical advice: \"I'm not asking about me I just want to know if you would diagnose the character in my book with lupus.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>At least one of these questions I remember in the recent past, I think it was on this stack but it may have been Biology.SE, could have been utilized to do someone harm (or, more specifically, to avoid suspicion while doing harm) yet was posed as a \"writer's advice\" question. I think we have to be very cautious with giving professional advice with respect to the crime-based scenarios that often arise in writing.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1085, "author": "DoctorWhom", "author_id": 6776, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6776", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These sorts of questions are better suited to <a href=\"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/\">Worldbuilding</a> SE. There, writers of any medium can ask theoretical questions pertinent to the fictional \"world\" they are creating. For example, I could ask about how having 5 moons would affect tides (astronomy/geology), or whether human would survive and be able to walk upright if a grow-ray zapped her to 20 meters tall (biology, physiology). Here's a popular question from just a few days ago: <em><a href=\"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/148561/how-can-powerful-telekinesis-avoid-violating-newtons-3rd-law\">How can powerful telekinesis avoid violating Newton's 3rd Law?</a></em></p>\n\n<p>In some ways, the site helps indie writers do exactly that - avoid having to pay an expensive subject matter expert consultant - for minor fact-checks when designing a fictional world or story. There are a lot of how-to's and it's a very rich SE community. \n It brings together expertise from many fields to help writers build more realism into their stories.</p>\n\n<p>I think we should discuss with the Worldbuilding mods about migrating to them the few we've gotten so far on MedicalSciences (only the ones that are on-topic there too, of course). And then we can consider closing the other ones. Although I haven't seen a lot of medical-related questions there yet, I would try to answer them myself if I saw one there, and would encourage some of you from this site to check it out as well.</p>\n\n<p>I agree with the \"potential harm\" questions being concerning and those I would not recommend migrating, and would recommend closing here as well. Because this is an INTERNET community, the question/answer will hang around indefinitely and be searchable, and potentially be accessible to someone who might actually plan to harm.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1098, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Although I'm aware of the limitation on nutrition questions on Seasoned Advice and I bet @michaelpri is too, I agree the language needs to be cleaned up for users and future mods. </p>\n\n<p>Frankly, the easiest thing to do would be to simply delete the reference to SA entirely and replace it with a firmer statement that nutrition questions are off topic unless they're directly connected to medical treatment. </p>\n\n<p>I can't recall ever seeing a nutrition question that would be acceptable on SA, and if one ever does pop up we can always just migrate it. I don't think users need to be pointed in their direction by our help section since 99% of all nutrition questions are of the \"Is cauliflower healthy?\" variety, which neither site finds acceptable. </p>\n\n<p>I could also readily go along with prohibiting nutrition and diet questions entirely, but that's another thread.</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> </p>\n\n<p>It's been 10 days and this answer has a pretty solid upvote so I implemented the changes I suggested. The reference to Seasoned Advice has been removed entirely and this has been added (emphasis added here only):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Often asked questions that are off-topic include:</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>medical advice for yourself or others</li>\n <li><strong>questions about nutrition and diet that aren't directly connected to medical treatment</strong></li>\n <li>any other personal advice</li>\n <li>interpretation of test results</li>\n <li>treatment recommendations</li>\n <li>second opinions.</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1099, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In lieu of perfect language, maybe something like:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>questions about cooking, nutrition and diets that are not directly connected to medical treatments (rarely such questions may fit Cooking.SE (Seasoned Advice), check the on-topic guidelines there)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>would at least remove the suggestion that everything not belonging here fits there. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1097", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16540/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1114, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your post was deleted because it didn't answer the question and it lacked supporting references. Please read the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help\">help center</a> and take <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/tour\">the tour</a> to learn how the site works and what's expected of questions and answers.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1115, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I flagged your answer as low-quality, which is probably what drew moderator attention to it though they likely would have made the decision themselves.</p>\n\n<p>Your answer was not an answer according to the standards of this site. See some relevant meta posts:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/should-we-require-references-to-back-up-all-answers\">Should we require references to back up all answers?</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/283/should-answers-without-references-be-immediately-deleted\">Should answers without references be immediately deleted?</a></p>\n\n<p>Your answer was not referenced and based on anecdote and pseudoscience. It was poorly formatted and makes many claims not held to be true by medical science. This is not a site for you to opine about the motives of shampoo manufacturers, it is a site about medical science for professionals, students, and others interested in health-related sciences.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1113", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17223/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1125, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One of the topics <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">listed as on-topic</a> here is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>diagnostic and prognostic methods</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So I'd say that's a yes, technical questions about medical testing are on topic. Do I think questions like that will ever get a useful answer? Nope, sure don't. Anybody who really knows how to answer the question is probably working for private industry and under an NDA. But I can't think of any reason why the question itself should be off topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1126, "author": "JohnP", "author_id": 64, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think that it is really on topic. Using the MRI as a diagnostic tool is definitely on topic as Carey Gregory shows in his links from the on topic reasons, but how to program the MRI to produce imaging I don't think should be on topic.</p>\n\n<p>The site is intended for clinicians, allied health, students of the same. None of them are interested in programming the MRI machine, just that it works.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1124", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1133, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think we should close questions like this when they have no medical or research purpose, and especially when the information could be harmful.</p>\n\n<p>An example of similar past questions (I forget now if this was here, or perhaps at Biology.SE) have been questions by writers involving date rape drugs; the author may truly want the answer for a story, but A) it's not really possible to verify that is indeed their motivation, B) the information could be easily abused by others, and C) it doesn't even matter anyways: you can write whatever you want in your book or design whatever world you want as a DM. Call it \"juice of the ____ tree\" if you want.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1134, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm not sure where to draw the line as a site policy, but I am pretty sure that we should never help anyone engage in non-consensual activities. So I'm closing the question but I think this discussion needs to continue.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1131", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1140, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My thinking exactly. I've been giving a lot of latitude to quality answers that lack hard data on these questions for exactly this reason. (I believe I did that with one of your answers today.) People need information now, not next year, so for us to strictly enforce the policy on such answers would be pedantic and unhelpful, in my opinion. </p>\n\n<p>My view right now is if the answer appears knowledgeable and medically sound, and particularly if it comes from a high-rep user, I'm allowing it to remain. I'll only flag it if I know supporting references are available and they were just being lazy.</p>\n\n<p>I haven't discussed this with the other mods, so I don't know what their thinking is, but I'm guessing they would be of a similar mind.</p>\n\n<p>Oh, and welcome back. :-) I thought maybe you'd vanished on us and your input is valued. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1141, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We are seeing a lot of new users on this site now asking questions. We don't really have time to <em>train</em> them to ask questions in the format needed for this site. I suggest giving people some latitude and if there is potential merit in a question, then editing it yourself or flag it for editing by a senior user.</p>\n\n<p>In particular I'm talking about this question</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/21411/how-does-a-sanding-mask-compare-with-a-disposable-medical-mask\">How does a sanding mask compare with a disposable medical mask?</a></p>\n\n<p>when I found this</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/us/coronavirus-protective-equipment-trnd/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/us/coronavirus-protective-equipment-trnd/index.html</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Niran Al-Agba, a pediatrician in Silverdale, Washington, tweeted on Tuesday that someone left two boxes of respirator masks on her doorstep. She had mentioned the demand for protective equipment in an op-ed she wrote for her local paper.\n The masks came from a hardware store and are designed to protect workers from construction dust, but Al-Agba told CNN they do what she needs.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1142, "author": "Fizz", "author_id": 10980, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10980", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think we can still give people factual information without over-representing it. I haven't been active much on MED.SE properly, but on Skeptics (and Bio SE) I've answered such questions, e.g.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46069/can-heat-cure-covid-19-the-common-flu-and-the-common-cold/\">Question</a> on Skeptics about a \"heat cure\" for Covid-19; my answer included the cure methods that <em>are</em> being seriously looked at, mostly in clinical trials (which of course doesn't include heating people to 56C--the topic of the question.)</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90922/if-the-covid-19-appeared-once-could-it-reappear-anytime\">Question</a> on Bio SE if Covid-19 can \"reappear any number of times\" even if it \"dies out\". Of course, we don't know the ultimate answer to this, but I discussed what we know, including the stated objectives of the current social distancing (etc.) measures, and a brief mention that more generally other coronaviruses are expected to jump cross-species in the future.</p></li>\n<li><p>Another <a href=\"https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90883/why-are-victims-of-covid19-being-wrapped-in-plastic\">question</a> there about plastic-sheet burial practices for Covid-19. Again I answered with what we know (it is WHO-recommended for VHF) and what we don't yet know (if it's warranted for Covid-19).</p></li>\n<li><p>A couple of questions (<a href=\"https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90793/whats-the-evidence-against-sars-cov-2-being-engineered-by-humans\">Bio</a>, Skeptics) whether Covid-19 is \"made in a lab\" or an intentionally released bioweapon. Answers to these, of course, can't be 100% certain, but there is a decent amount of scientific, peer-review literature on the topic already.</p></li>\n<li><p>A more general <a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46016/does-a-surgical-mask-help-prevent-catching-covid-19\">question</a> on Skeptics about mask use an respiratory illness transmission. (It had click-bait Covid-19 in its title, but the question was more general) This was quite hard for me to answer properly (so my answer was quite verbose) given the controversies in the field stemming from \"effectiveness depends on other measures too\", RCT (vs nothing) sparseness, low power in the more common mask X vs mask Y RCTs etc. I'd welcome more answers/comments on that question/answer actually.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1143, "author": "Todd D", "author_id": 570, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/570", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have felt that the requirement for a citation does not always assure a high quality or accurate response, while no citation is also dubious.</p>\n\n<p>The COVID-19 citations are of dubious quality even in major medical journals while imparting some useful information. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1146, "author": "Martin Schröder", "author_id": 11278, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11278", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It would probably help <em>very</em> much if the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/covid-19\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;covid-19&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">covid-19</a> tag had some content in its wiki.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1147, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/21733/caution-with-old-person\">Caution with old person</a></p>\n\n<p>This closed question can be easily generalised and I think should be tackled.\nThere's a lot of science that can be applied to answering this</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1139", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1151, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Where there is moving data depending various factors, then maybe create a community wiki with an answer and keep updating that?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1152, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>These should simply be closed as a duplicate of: <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/20970/does-covid-19-have-a-mortality-rate-of-41\">Does COVID-19 have a mortality rate of 41%?</a></p>\n\n<p>If that question does not seem sufficiently catch-all, we could edit it to be more general and cover the answers given.</p>\n\n<p>I don't feel like it's worth any more effort on this line of questioning: it's misguided and as suggested here has a smell of conspiracy theory that isn't grounded in any sort of truth.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1150", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10980/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1158, "author": "I likeThatMeow", "author_id": 17725, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17725", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Should this site be a free-for-all for COVID-19 questions? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><em>Yes</em> for most cases. (I'd say 90% yes 10% no)</p>\n\n<p>Yes because some people really don't know what to do, where to ask for help, they don't wanna go to the hospital because currently it's risky, etc.\nSome others, as a non medical people, don't know how to search properly and hence don't find the answers, whence end up asking here. </p>\n\n<p><em>No</em> for exceptional cases, for example yesterday there was a question about \"how to be more productive in this time of quarantine due COVID-19, I'm addicted to blah blah..\"</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>And if so, how does it recover?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>When things become stabilized or normal or at least not that bad, as it's currently, simply Close them as they would normally be.</p>\n\n<p>For example: </p>\n\n<p>-no previous research, close</p>\n\n<p>-seeking personal advice, close</p>\n\n<p>etc.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1159, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think COVID-19 questions should be treated the same way as non-COVID-19 questions, because COVID-19 is just one disease amongst many others. There exist other deadly diseases too, such as cancers, aging, diabetes, or Alzheimer's disease, so it is unclear to me why singling out COVID-19.</p>\n\n<p>However, I think that the moderation on questions posted here tend to close questions too harshly. E.g., \"no previous research\" shouldn't necessarily result in closing a question. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1160, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The previous meta post primarily focused on <em>answers</em> even though \"questions\" was in the title, and only one of the answers there has a pattern of voting that seems like community agreement: <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1140/8728\">https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1140/8728</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>People need information now, not next year, so for us to strictly enforce the policy on such answers would be pedantic and unhelpful, in my opinion.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It seems reasonable in the near term to continue to be a bit flexible on answers: to allow answers based on prior experiences, biological knowledge of other coronaviruses (in particular SARS and MERS), and other respiratory pandemics (in particular influenza). These sources can provide reasonable \"best-guesses\" while we deal with an ever-shifting situation.</p>\n\n<p>I think we can also be slightly more flexible on medical advice questions <strong>if they can be interpreted and answered in terms of public health advice</strong>. There are medical guidelines for the general public released by authoritative figures and designed for consumption by the general public. I think it's reasonable to direct people to those guidelines even while we refuse (as we always have and should have) to answer individual questions directly. That is, we should not and cannot say \"you should do X\" or \"you have/do not have covid-19 symptoms\", but we can continue to say \"the WHO says ________\", \"the CDC guidelines are _______\", etc - this is the same sort of advice provided by reputable news sources, and doesn't involve anything like a doctor-patient relationship.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps the best thing to do would be to catch these under a single community wiki canonical answer.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I don't have much patience for the \"is this a cure\"-type speculation questions without prior research. I do think it's reasonable for questions to be asked about the progress of clinical research into therapies as long as the asker has put some effort into it as well (at a minimum, citing some popular press literature about a treatment, for example; not just \"hey I wonder if lazzer beems would solve Corona\").</p>\n\n<p>I'd also be in favor of closing most of the \"prognostication\"-type questions (when will this end, how many will die, can this be stopped, etc) as primarily opinion-based. Questions about <em>how these estimates are derived</em> may be useful, if they contain some prior research and/or citations to scientific estimates and models.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1162, "author": "Fizz", "author_id": 10980, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10980", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Since this would probably get lost in the numerous comments under the question, I'll note as an answer that Bio SE now has <a href=\"https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4035/information-about-coronaviruses-how-to-ask-and-external-resources\">a Covid-19 FAQ</a>, which starts with:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Stack Exchange Biology receives many questions about the outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19) that has spread worldwide. This is understandable. However, in many cases these posts are either closed as off-topic for various reasons (e.g. asking for health advice, speculation on number of deaths, suggestions of means to combat the virus), or may not receive a satisfactory answer. In either case, posters may not obtain the information they are seeking.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>There are two answers, nearly equally upvoted. The first says:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Personal medical questions (including &quot;what should I do&quot;) are as always <strong>off topic</strong> on every SE site.</p>\n<p><strong>On topic questions include:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>general questions about biological concepts</li>\n<li>questions about the biological mechanisms behind medical conditions</li>\n<li>questions about techniques in a biological or biochemical laboratory</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Any question that fits the above bullet points is on topic, whether or not it is about coronavirus. A number of our users with various backgrounds have sufficient expertise in virology to answer coronavirus questions that are about concepts, mechanisms, or techniques.</p>\n<p><strong>News reports of an epidemic have provoked many medical questions that we are not able to answer:</strong></p>\n<p>We are able to answer some questions, provided they meet the standards for this site. Speculative questions are not a good fit for the SE model.</p>\n<p>Users with speculative questions in mind should use outside resources (like reputable news reports) to motivate their questions, and then form <em>questions based on the underlying biology</em>: ask about <strong>mechanisms and approaches</strong>, rather than outcomes or &quot;expert opinions&quot;.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I think that can be adapted with a few (obvious) changes for Med SE.</p>\n<p>The latter/2nd answer is a more extensive list of resources, which probably makes less sense to adapt, but the last section of that has mostly medical resources, albeit they are few and obvious (WHO, NIH etc.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1157", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1166, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>\"Opinion-based\" is a network-wide close reason; Skeptics has it, too.</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, sites can have a limited number of site-specific close reasons to cover common categories of questions that the community has decided are not on-topic. The \"under current investigation\" reason is one of theirs.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes close reasons overlap; I think that yes, sometimes we use the \"opinion-based\" close reason to close questions that are speculative and therefore cannot be answered. On Skeptics the same sort of question might be closed as \"under current investigation\". </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1177, "author": "Fizz", "author_id": 10980, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10980", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a point of order, the globally available (i.e. not side-dependent) reason used to say \"<strong>primarily</strong> opinion based\" not so long (days) ago. The global close page reasons have been \"touched up\" the company quite a few times. There's an <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/346638/question-close-updates/347045#347045\">answer on the big meta</a> complaining about the recent change that dropped \"primarily\".</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>And there are a bunch of Skeptics pages where they motivate their custom close reason, <a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4430/skeptics-news-and-politics\">e.g.</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should issues from today's newspaper headlines be left open?\n This is a separate issue.</p>\n \n <p>Where there is an unsubstantiated allegation in the media, and the journalists are rushing to find the answer and be the first to report it, there is nothing that Skeptics.SE can do. We don't have an army of investigative journalists that can interview people. We don't have an army of detectives with badges that can search premises. We don't have an army of prosecutors that can compel people to answer questions at risk of perjury. We don't have an impartial jury to decide on issues of fact.</p>\n \n <p>Such questions are closed until they can be answered by referring to other sources (by which time the OP will probably find the answers have already appeared in the media).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And <a href=\"https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2868/handling-news-questions-about-current-events/2870\">older discussion</a> where that was apparently decided, which has more votes.</p>\n\n<p>Now since in some of your other comments you referred to (presently unanswerable [for certain]) Covid-19 questions... alas the relaxation of the rules has taken place in that respect on Skeptics too. These are not all medical questions, but arguably may contravene their \"under investigation\"/recent-events rule</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47476/has-florida-left-75-of-its-lettuce-crop-unharvested-due-to-the-coronavirus-lock\">Has Florida left 75% of its lettuce crop unharvested due to the coronavirus lockdowns?\n</a> </p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47475/in-response-to-covid-19-as-of-20-april-2020-has-china-provided-the-us-with-ove\">In response to COVID-19, as of 20 April 2020, has China provided the US with over 2.46 billion masks?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47462/is-hydroxychloroquine-proven-to-reduce-the-need-for-hospitalization-for-covid-19\">Is hydroxychloroquine proven to reduce the need for hospitalization for Covid-19?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47449/is-the-us-government-seizing-ppe-supplies-to-resell-them-with-a-markup\">Is the US government seizing PPE supplies to resell them with a markup?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47448/does-a-high-bmi-increase-covid-19-s-severity\">Does a high BMI increase COVID-19’s severity?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47227/is-wearing-facemasks-the-reason-south-korea-japan-singapore-and-hong-kong-have\">Is wearing facemasks the reason South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have more control of Covid-19?</a> </p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47224/are-chinese-wet-markets-selling-bat-again\">Are Chinese wet markets selling bat again?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/was-the-wuhan-center-for-disease-control-prevention-hosting-coronavirus-infect\">Was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control &amp; Prevention hosting coronavirus-infected bats near the COVID-19 initial outbreak?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47339/is-it-true-that-everyone-that-currently-needs-a-ventilator-can-get-a-ventilator\">Is it true that everyone that currently needs a ventilator can get a ventilator as of April 2020?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47500/to-what-degree-do-facemasks-protect-against-covid-19\">To what degree do facemasks protect against COVID-19?</a></p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Most of these don't have good, definitive answers and they aren't even about medical science... just related to the Covid-19 crisis. So yeah, what the Skeptics rule book says and how they enforce it in re \"under investigation\" stuff is quite far apart. The mod who had pushed (hard) for that rule has resigned in the meantime.</p>\n\n<p>I've only found one Covid-19 q closed as \"under investigation\" (there might have been more but this one has positive score, it was't quickly deleted.)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46033/are-deaths-due-to-covid-19-in-germany-accurate\">Are deaths due to covid-19 in Germany accurate? [closed]</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Some similar ones about discrepancies on uncertainty datasets were not closed though. And some (eventually) even got some good answers. E.g.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47265/has-the-number-of-pneumonia-deaths-in-the-us-dramatically-dropped-in-2020\">Has the number of pneumonia deaths in the US dramatically dropped in 2020?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47176/is-it-probable-that-the-uk-covid-19-death-count-will-eclipse-chinas\">Is it probable that the UK COVID-19 death count will eclipse China's?</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46129/was-there-excess-mortality-in-italy-due-to-covid-19-in-march-2020\">Was there “excess mortality” in Italy due to COVID-19 in March 2020?</a></p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So it's not always obvious when such (Skeptics) questions should be closed. I'd grant you that the more proper medical (science) questions of that kind probably aren't so easy to clinch. </p>\n\n<p>And I found another closed q, from way back in Jan. This was closed twice (so reopened once). The (Jan) answer starts with \"It is too early to tell.\"</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/45808/was-the-virus-which-causes-covid-19-made-in-a-chinese-lab\">Was the virus which causes COVID-19 made in a Chinese lab? [closed]</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There's one more q that was not reopened [probably] for this reason (\"under investigation\") </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47444/is-limited-hospital-capacity-a-proven-contributor-to-covid-19-mortality\">Is limited hospital capacity a proven contributor to COVID-19 mortality? [closed]</a> </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This was closed as \"not notable\" (including by me), which means the question lacked a quote (usually needed for a Skeptics q). A quote was later added, but the mod did not reopen the q and commented \"Finally, this is probably too early. Come back in a few months when the analysis of the Italy situation is complete.\"</p>\n\n<p>So there are some Covid-19 questions on Skeptics that were indeed closed clearly or probably with that \"under investigation\" reason (as a contributing factor)... but they are frankly dwarfed in number by similar Covid-19 questions that were not closed.</p>\n\n<p>And to exemplify for contrast a q that was (properly) closed as [primarily] opinion-based:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47465/is-the-american-handling-of-the-covid-19-situation-as-bad-as-it-appears-to-non-a\">Is the American handling of the COVID-19 situation as bad as it appears to non-Americans? [closed]</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>If you want me to theorize what should be closed with one reason and what with the other...</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>\"under investigation\": the q could potentially have a fact-based answer, but those facts haven't been yet established, yet are likely to be so at some point (in our lifetimes).</p></li>\n<li><p>\"(primarily) opinion based\": the q revolves around some value judgements that even if they involve [even well established] facts, we know is likely to still receive different answers e.g. based on how one weighs certain criteria/objectives against each other.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1165", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3414/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1170, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Questions that people suspect currently have no answer in the medical litterature should be left open because:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Maybe people missed some existing papers given that there exists over 25 million of medical research papers, and many are behind paywalls.</li>\n<li>We don't know when a new research paper will be published that may answer the question. Closing the question prevents users from answering the question, especially if the closure caused / was followed by a deletion.</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1171, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If we simply suspect it currently has no answer then no, it should not be closed. </p>\n\n<p>If we know with certainty that it can't possibly have an answer then yes, it should be closed.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1169", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1175, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's my understanding that the definitions of these stats are as follows:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>questions</em> = The total number of questions posted.</li>\n<li><em>answers</em> = The total number of answers posted.</li>\n<li><em>answered</em> = The total number of questions with at least one answer.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Remember, there can be (and often are) multiple answers on a single question. So to clarify, let's do a simple example. Let's suppose this is day 1 of the site and nothing has been posted. It would go like this:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Starting values:</strong> <em>questions</em> = 0, <em>answers</em> = 0, <em>answered</em> = 0%.</li>\n<li><strong>The first question is posted:</strong> <em>questions</em> = 1, <em>answers</em> = 0, <em>answered</em> = 0%.</li>\n<li><strong>An answer is posted:</strong> <em>questions</em> = 1, <em>answers</em> = 1, <em>answered</em> = 100%.</li>\n<li><strong>Another answer is posted:</strong> <em>questions</em> = 1, <em>answers</em> = 2, <em>answered</em> = 100%.</li>\n<li><strong>The OP accepts one of the answers:</strong> [No change]</li>\n<li><strong>A second question is posted:</strong> <em>questions</em> = 2, <em>answers</em> = 2, <em>answered</em> = 50%.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I believe these stats work the same on all SE sites, so if you doubt my answer I would recommend asking on meta.stackexchange.com (search first; it's probably been asked).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1176, "author": "Thomas", "author_id": 19070, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19070", "pm_score": 1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Best answer to my question so far is, as suggested by Carey Gregory on Meta: </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/254161/area-51-answered-can-we-have-decimals/289684#289684\">Area 51 %Answered: can we have decimals?</a></p>\n\n<p>Apparently not the most accessible formula: \nAnswered = AcceptedNotClosed + PositiveScoreNotAcceptedNotClosed + Closed\n%Answered = 100 * Answered / Asked</p>\n\n<p>So it does include to some extent a measurement of community involvement in the answering process.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1178, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'll add a significant detail in the definition:</p>\n\n<p>Questions = The total number of questions posted and <strong>not deleted</strong>. It's important as a fair amount of questions here are getting deleted by the self-deletion script (e.g. <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/346725/178179\">>50% of questions got closed the Medical Sciences Stack Exchange in 2019</a>).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1174", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19070/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1183, "author": "Ray Butterworth", "author_id": 17364, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17364", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>How can \"disgusting\" be defined objectively? What's disgusting to you might be normal to me, and vice versa</p>\n\n<p>For instance, I'd consider a detailed image of someone being slowly tortured to death while suffering excruciating agony to be disgusting, but it's a common image among many Christian groups, who often flagrantly display it for the general public, including small children, to see.</p>\n\n<p>It would be reasonable for me to ask that it be banned, but it would also be <em>un</em>reasonable of me to expect that it would be.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1184, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Sure, we could make such a policy, but we already have a very strong policy prohibiting medical advice questions. It's so strong that it's spelled out in bold in the very first sentence of the disclaimer box on the site's main page, and also in bold again in the help section. And yet we close several such questions every single day. Some days it can be a half dozen or more. The problem is that people often land here from web searches, and they don't read anything before they ask, even if it's in bold text. So I give the odds of such a policy having any effect as close to zero.</p>\n\n<p>Also, keep in mind that this is a medical forum, so it's entirely possible -- even likely -- that some people may encounter pictures they find objectionable even in perfectly valid questions. It would be nice if the OP used the hide feature, but I don't believe that should be enforced. You won't find such a policy in medical journals or college-level classrooms because sometimes medicine is just plain gross and it needs to be shown to be understood. That's the level of discourse we're trying to achieve here.</p>\n\n<p>If a valid question contains a photo that some might find objectionable, the criteria I'll apply are: 1) Is it inappropriate to be seen by teens as young as 13? 2) Is it unnecessary to understand the question? 3) Is it overtly prurient? 4) Is it so emotionally disturbing that even medical professionals will recoil? If the answer is yes to any of those, I'll edit to hide the photo, redact the photo, or delete the question, whichever seems more appropriate.</p>\n\n<p>But redacting something from a post requires at least one other mod to approve it, so it's not something that can happen instantly. It could easily take 24 hours or more, during which time you might see it. The only thing a mod can do that will be instant is deleting the question, and that's something we rarely do. There's a good reason for that: the OP needs to see why their question was rejected, and if we delete it they won't.</p>\n\n<p>All that said, that was not a valid question and I closed it 3 minutes after it was posted. I understand that you can still see closed questions, but for the reasons explained above, there's not much we can do about that. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1185, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If a question asks \"what is this STD?\" there's a pretty good hint that you could encounter a picture involving genitalia if you click on it.</p>\n\n<p>Medicine deals with the urogenital tract like any other organ system, as well as all manner of skin lesions, blood, internal growths like tumors, fat-encased organs, traumatic injuries, necrotic tissue, etc, and first-responders, medical examiners, etc are going to encounter bodies in all stages of decay from all causes.</p>\n\n<p>We're on a medical site here, so visitors should be aware of where they are.</p>\n\n<p>I think it's reasonable for moderators to consider removing such images from posts they close (and other users from closed posts), and considering deleting rather than closing posts that seem intended to show off an image rather than being a true misguided attempt for information. I don't think it is reasonable for users to consider that part of mods' or other users' job, however.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1182", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17725/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1242, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you look up <a href=\"https://www.drugs.com/sfx/docetaxel-side-effects.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">docetaxel</a> on a reputable drug info site, you'll see that blistering, peeling and loosening of the skin are common side effects of the drug (it's the third side effect listed). So there's really no need to ask here. It's already known to be a common side effect, and the answer you would get would likely be the same link I just gave you.</p>\n<p>I don't think there is an SE site where the question would be welcome. You could always ask on Quora or Reddit, but again, I think you'll just get linked to the site I gave you or another one like it.</p>\n<p>I closed your question because it appeared you were asking about someone you know who's experiencing this, and that makes it a request for personal medical advice. If I misunderstood and your question is actually &quot;What is the pathopharmacological cause of the blistering?&quot; then that's a very different question and would be allowed. If so, you can edit your question to clarify and it may be reopened, but my guess would be it's not fully understood so you won't get a good answer, and if it is understood the answer is going to be complex and not readily understood by someone without advanced training in pharmacology and medicine.</p>\n<p>Oh, and welcome to the site and thank you for reading enough to figure out this is the correct place to ask about your question, and for doing so in a polite, mature fashion.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1243, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Personal medical advice are on-topic on <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/</a>, so you can ask your question there.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1241", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14830/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1242, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you look up <a href=\"https://www.drugs.com/sfx/docetaxel-side-effects.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">docetaxel</a> on a reputable drug info site, you'll see that blistering, peeling and loosening of the skin are common side effects of the drug (it's the third side effect listed). So there's really no need to ask here. It's already known to be a common side effect, and the answer you would get would likely be the same link I just gave you.</p>\n<p>I don't think there is an SE site where the question would be welcome. You could always ask on Quora or Reddit, but again, I think you'll just get linked to the site I gave you or another one like it.</p>\n<p>I closed your question because it appeared you were asking about someone you know who's experiencing this, and that makes it a request for personal medical advice. If I misunderstood and your question is actually &quot;What is the pathopharmacological cause of the blistering?&quot; then that's a very different question and would be allowed. If so, you can edit your question to clarify and it may be reopened, but my guess would be it's not fully understood so you won't get a good answer, and if it is understood the answer is going to be complex and not readily understood by someone without advanced training in pharmacology and medicine.</p>\n<p>Oh, and welcome to the site and thank you for reading enough to figure out this is the correct place to ask about your question, and for doing so in a polite, mature fashion.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1243, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Personal medical advice are on-topic on <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/</a>, so you can ask your question there.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1252", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19070/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1259, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'm not sure how to answer this question, but my perception is this site has two major problems:</p>\n<p>The first and most serious problem is a lack of high-rep, knowledgeable users who can answer questions at the level we're aiming for. Over the course of the last two years, a half-dozen high-rep users have wandered off and are apparently no longer active. That's really a shame because we went to a lot of effort to revamp the scope of the group in the way that all those users agreed should be done. In my view, the result is the reworking of the site has had no positive effect. Now, that's not to say those users left only this group. I've checked and in many cases they haven't been seen in any group they previously followed. This is normal and to be expected for any group, but when you can count the high-rep users on one hand, losing just one or two hurts.</p>\n<p>The second problem is the daily bombardment of -- quite frankly -- utterly crap questions posted by new users (people with 1 rep or 101 rep) who don't bother reading the guidelines first. Even putting the &quot;no medical advice&quot; rule in bold on the main page didn't help deter those questions. Too many people simply don't read anything before posting.</p>\n<p>But the most annoying to me personally are the &quot;almost good&quot; questions that demonstrate absolutely zero prior research posted by people who have high rep in other groups (the 101 rep users) and so obviously aren't stupid and know how SE works. I close a ridiculous number of such questions every day despite having set the bar very low for what qualifies as &quot;prior research.&quot;</p>\n<p><em>@JohnP wrote in a comment:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Honestly, this site has been a struggle since day one and I am just\nnot sure it's a viable topic for this kind of a QA format.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Two years ago I went along with the others who felt we needed to change the scope of the group and make it more in line with the other science and academic sites such as Biology, Chemistry, History, and so forth. We changed the name and made the rules more academically rigorous in the hopes it would attract a more enlightened following. Unfortunately, after spending two years enforcing those new rules, I'm prone to agree with JohnP that medicine just isn't a viable topic for the stackexchange model. Too many web surfers land here via web searches, don't bother reading the guidelines, and have no intention of remaining and contributing value once they get their question answered about how much masturbation is too much or whether it's harmful to drink cold water.</p>\n<p>So, all in all, I'm not sure this group is viable and I doubt it will ever graduate from beta. The good answerers won't come until there are mostly competent, interesting questions, and achieving that seems impossible. A medical site is just too enticing to every web surfer in the world, and attracting medical professionals is hard enough without them taking one look at the list of questions and deciding to move on because, quite frankly, most of them are crap.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No significant change.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1260, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p>What is the status of Medical Sciences (Dec '20)?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Very bad.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No, it is declining. See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics\">https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics</a> if you have enough reputation points (the temporary spike in 2020 is due to covid):</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Do old folks still come around regularly?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Only 1 mod is still active. On <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year</a> you see that only 6 users have gained over 1,000 reputation points this year, which means they are very few regular contributors.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What problems that are still unresolved? What problems that have been resolved?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Lack of users with enough medical knowledge and research experience.</li>\n<li>Too many valid questions get <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/355097/178179\">automatically removed</a>. E.g., see <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/939/43\">39 questions of mine deleted, and counting. How do you expect users to write well written questions?</a>. (currently <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A43+deleted%3A1+closed%3A0+is%3Aquestion+migrated%3Ano+duplicate%3Ano\"><code>user:43 deleted:1 closed:0 is:question migrated:no duplicate:no</code></a> yields 64 questions deleted! This means that 64 questions of mine were deleted even though they had score = 0 and weren't closed).</li>\n<li>It is a pain to ask questions: if you don't have enough references, you get close votes for lack of references. If you have too many references, you get close votes / down votes for too difficult to answer, or at best the question will have a score of 0, receives no answer, and subsequently be automatically removed after a while.</li>\n<li>Also, sometimes questions <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1256/43\">incorrectly get closed as “personal medical advice”</a>.</li>\n<li>From times to times, <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1161/43\">valid answers also get removed</a>.</li>\n<li>I feel that amongst the few regular users, some people are focusing too much on removing/downvoting content, and not enough on writing questions and answers. Just like in a playground, some kids prefer to construct new things, and some kids prefer to destroy other people's things.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I have asked over 4000 questions on over 50 Stack Exchange websites and <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com</a> is definitely the worst Stack Exchange website. For background, I work in research and have published in medical venues, so I know what constitutes a good medical question and answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1258", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/99/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1259, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'm not sure how to answer this question, but my perception is this site has two major problems:</p>\n<p>The first and most serious problem is a lack of high-rep, knowledgeable users who can answer questions at the level we're aiming for. Over the course of the last two years, a half-dozen high-rep users have wandered off and are apparently no longer active. That's really a shame because we went to a lot of effort to revamp the scope of the group in the way that all those users agreed should be done. In my view, the result is the reworking of the site has had no positive effect. Now, that's not to say those users left only this group. I've checked and in many cases they haven't been seen in any group they previously followed. This is normal and to be expected for any group, but when you can count the high-rep users on one hand, losing just one or two hurts.</p>\n<p>The second problem is the daily bombardment of -- quite frankly -- utterly crap questions posted by new users (people with 1 rep or 101 rep) who don't bother reading the guidelines first. Even putting the &quot;no medical advice&quot; rule in bold on the main page didn't help deter those questions. Too many people simply don't read anything before posting.</p>\n<p>But the most annoying to me personally are the &quot;almost good&quot; questions that demonstrate absolutely zero prior research posted by people who have high rep in other groups (the 101 rep users) and so obviously aren't stupid and know how SE works. I close a ridiculous number of such questions every day despite having set the bar very low for what qualifies as &quot;prior research.&quot;</p>\n<p><em>@JohnP wrote in a comment:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Honestly, this site has been a struggle since day one and I am just\nnot sure it's a viable topic for this kind of a QA format.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Two years ago I went along with the others who felt we needed to change the scope of the group and make it more in line with the other science and academic sites such as Biology, Chemistry, History, and so forth. We changed the name and made the rules more academically rigorous in the hopes it would attract a more enlightened following. Unfortunately, after spending two years enforcing those new rules, I'm prone to agree with JohnP that medicine just isn't a viable topic for the stackexchange model. Too many web surfers land here via web searches, don't bother reading the guidelines, and have no intention of remaining and contributing value once they get their question answered about how much masturbation is too much or whether it's harmful to drink cold water.</p>\n<p>So, all in all, I'm not sure this group is viable and I doubt it will ever graduate from beta. The good answerers won't come until there are mostly competent, interesting questions, and achieving that seems impossible. A medical site is just too enticing to every web surfer in the world, and attracting medical professionals is hard enough without them taking one look at the list of questions and deciding to move on because, quite frankly, most of them are crap.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No significant change.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1260, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p>What is the status of Medical Sciences (Dec '20)?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Very bad.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No, it is declining. See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics\">https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics</a> if you have enough reputation points (the temporary spike in 2020 is due to covid):</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Do old folks still come around regularly?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Only 1 mod is still active. On <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year</a> you see that only 6 users have gained over 1,000 reputation points this year, which means they are very few regular contributors.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What problems that are still unresolved? What problems that have been resolved?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Lack of users with enough medical knowledge and research experience.</li>\n<li>Too many valid questions get <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/355097/178179\">automatically removed</a>. E.g., see <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/939/43\">39 questions of mine deleted, and counting. How do you expect users to write well written questions?</a>. (currently <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A43+deleted%3A1+closed%3A0+is%3Aquestion+migrated%3Ano+duplicate%3Ano\"><code>user:43 deleted:1 closed:0 is:question migrated:no duplicate:no</code></a> yields 64 questions deleted! This means that 64 questions of mine were deleted even though they had score = 0 and weren't closed).</li>\n<li>It is a pain to ask questions: if you don't have enough references, you get close votes for lack of references. If you have too many references, you get close votes / down votes for too difficult to answer, or at best the question will have a score of 0, receives no answer, and subsequently be automatically removed after a while.</li>\n<li>Also, sometimes questions <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1256/43\">incorrectly get closed as “personal medical advice”</a>.</li>\n<li>From times to times, <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1161/43\">valid answers also get removed</a>.</li>\n<li>I feel that amongst the few regular users, some people are focusing too much on removing/downvoting content, and not enough on writing questions and answers. Just like in a playground, some kids prefer to construct new things, and some kids prefer to destroy other people's things.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I have asked over 4000 questions on over 50 Stack Exchange websites and <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com</a> is definitely the worst Stack Exchange website. For background, I work in research and have published in medical venues, so I know what constitutes a good medical question and answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1270", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8861/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1259, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'm not sure how to answer this question, but my perception is this site has two major problems:</p>\n<p>The first and most serious problem is a lack of high-rep, knowledgeable users who can answer questions at the level we're aiming for. Over the course of the last two years, a half-dozen high-rep users have wandered off and are apparently no longer active. That's really a shame because we went to a lot of effort to revamp the scope of the group in the way that all those users agreed should be done. In my view, the result is the reworking of the site has had no positive effect. Now, that's not to say those users left only this group. I've checked and in many cases they haven't been seen in any group they previously followed. This is normal and to be expected for any group, but when you can count the high-rep users on one hand, losing just one or two hurts.</p>\n<p>The second problem is the daily bombardment of -- quite frankly -- utterly crap questions posted by new users (people with 1 rep or 101 rep) who don't bother reading the guidelines first. Even putting the &quot;no medical advice&quot; rule in bold on the main page didn't help deter those questions. Too many people simply don't read anything before posting.</p>\n<p>But the most annoying to me personally are the &quot;almost good&quot; questions that demonstrate absolutely zero prior research posted by people who have high rep in other groups (the 101 rep users) and so obviously aren't stupid and know how SE works. I close a ridiculous number of such questions every day despite having set the bar very low for what qualifies as &quot;prior research.&quot;</p>\n<p><em>@JohnP wrote in a comment:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Honestly, this site has been a struggle since day one and I am just\nnot sure it's a viable topic for this kind of a QA format.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Two years ago I went along with the others who felt we needed to change the scope of the group and make it more in line with the other science and academic sites such as Biology, Chemistry, History, and so forth. We changed the name and made the rules more academically rigorous in the hopes it would attract a more enlightened following. Unfortunately, after spending two years enforcing those new rules, I'm prone to agree with JohnP that medicine just isn't a viable topic for the stackexchange model. Too many web surfers land here via web searches, don't bother reading the guidelines, and have no intention of remaining and contributing value once they get their question answered about how much masturbation is too much or whether it's harmful to drink cold water.</p>\n<p>So, all in all, I'm not sure this group is viable and I doubt it will ever graduate from beta. The good answerers won't come until there are mostly competent, interesting questions, and achieving that seems impossible. A medical site is just too enticing to every web surfer in the world, and attracting medical professionals is hard enough without them taking one look at the list of questions and deciding to move on because, quite frankly, most of them are crap.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No significant change.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1260, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n<p>What is the status of Medical Sciences (Dec '20)?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Very bad.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is its activity better than the last years?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No, it is declining. See <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics\">https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/site-analytics</a> if you have enough reputation points (the temporary spike in 2020 is due to covid):</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FoC1.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Do old folks still come around regularly?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Only 1 mod is still active. On <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=year</a> you see that only 6 users have gained over 1,000 reputation points this year, which means they are very few regular contributors.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What problems that are still unresolved? What problems that have been resolved?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Lack of users with enough medical knowledge and research experience.</li>\n<li>Too many valid questions get <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/355097/178179\">automatically removed</a>. E.g., see <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/939/43\">39 questions of mine deleted, and counting. How do you expect users to write well written questions?</a>. (currently <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A43+deleted%3A1+closed%3A0+is%3Aquestion+migrated%3Ano+duplicate%3Ano\"><code>user:43 deleted:1 closed:0 is:question migrated:no duplicate:no</code></a> yields 64 questions deleted! This means that 64 questions of mine were deleted even though they had score = 0 and weren't closed).</li>\n<li>It is a pain to ask questions: if you don't have enough references, you get close votes for lack of references. If you have too many references, you get close votes / down votes for too difficult to answer, or at best the question will have a score of 0, receives no answer, and subsequently be automatically removed after a while.</li>\n<li>Also, sometimes questions <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1256/43\">incorrectly get closed as “personal medical advice”</a>.</li>\n<li>From times to times, <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1161/43\">valid answers also get removed</a>.</li>\n<li>I feel that amongst the few regular users, some people are focusing too much on removing/downvoting content, and not enough on writing questions and answers. Just like in a playground, some kids prefer to construct new things, and some kids prefer to destroy other people's things.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I have asked over 4000 questions on over 50 Stack Exchange websites and <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com\">https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com</a> is definitely the worst Stack Exchange website. For background, I work in research and have published in medical venues, so I know what constitutes a good medical question and answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1294", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1300, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Did you look at the questions to see why they were closed? The closures of MRI questions follow the same approximate closure rate for all questions on MedSci, with the two leading reasons being 1) the question is a request for personal medical advice, and 2) the question lacks prior research. There is no bias against MRI questions, there are no laws or rules that restrict them, and HIPAA simply doesn't apply here. Nobody is (or should be) afraid to ask or answer a question just because it involves MRIs.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This seems disproportionate, given that the US alone runs ~40 million\nscan per year. I feel like we're in the dark ages of MRI medicine and\nmany doctors are still practicing medicine blind.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>That makes no sense. On the one hand you say the US runs a ton of MRI scans every year, but then you say we're in the dark ages of MRI medicine. If that's so, why are so many doctors running so many MRI scans? What is it you think they're in the dark about?</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What is blocking questions and how do we start to change this?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Nothing is blocking questions other than people's ability to read the guidelines and write good questions. Posting your MRI scan and asking for an interpretation will always be closed because it's asking for personal medical advice. Asking a question that is answered by the first few hits in google will also be closed because you didn't bother googling before posting.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1301, "author": "djk", "author_id": 23648, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23648", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To draw on the 1990's growth of the internet analogy - The reason the internet grew so fast at this time was primarily due to regulatory laissez faire. That is, the government did not regulate and/or tax the internet in the early 90s, and this directly enabled its growth.</p>\n<p>If we can vote to pre-empt the &quot;medical advice&quot; takedown rule (say, with a simple disclaimer), it will become harder to conflate useful medical questions with &quot;personal medical advice,&quot; then more people will ask and answer medical questions.</p>\n<p>(This is an answer to &quot;<em>why</em> don't more people ask and answer medical questions?&quot; My original question is a <em>how</em> question.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1299", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23648/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1313, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, it's not. The moderators were informed of this earlier today by the Community Moderation team. The requirements for graduating from beta are 1) the site must have existed six months or more, 2) it must have at least 1000 open questions, and 3) at least 70% of the open questions must have at least one upvoted answer.</p>\n<p>A site has to meet all 3 criteria but we failed on #3.</p>\n<p>This site has always suffered from two major problems. The first is too many poor questions. We close a large number of questions every week, almost all of them due to lack of prior research or asking for personal medical advice. The second problem is too few people qualified to provide good answers. There are hundreds of good questions here with no answers, and that's why the site remains in beta. It's worth noting that we lost a number of high-rep users in 2020 because they were medical professionals and 2020 wasn't a good year for medical pros having a lot of free time on their hands.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1316, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": -1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It's no surprise to me that this Stack Exchange website was not chosen to graduated from beta, even though the requirements to do so are very low. This website has been falling into dereliction over the past several years.</p>\n<p>Some ideas on why this website is failing:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1260/43\">What is the status of Medical Sciences (Dec '20)?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1268/43\">Change in my moderation practices</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805/carey-gregory\">Carey Gregory</a>'s <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1313/43\">answer</a> is blaming COVID for causing the loss of a number of high-rep users in his answer, but the retention of experts has always been an issue, and I'd argue that COVID should instead have helped revive this website due to the high interest of the public in the many COVID-related medical questions.</p>\n<p>Even the two moderators themselves barely write any questions or answers on this website: over the past 2 years, the first one has posted ~20 answers and 0 questions, and the second one hasn't posted any answers or questions. The third moderator, who resigned a few weeks ago, hadn't posted any answers or questions for the past 5 years.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1312", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16670/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1320, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think we should accept individualized medical advice in answers. Qualified physicians and other medical professionals are unlikely to provide such advice because it would be against the ethical codes of their profession.</p>\n<p>I think very generic suggestions to, for example, see a physician are fine. Most questions where that advice applies should be closed, anyways, but if an answerer wants to hedge in favor of making sure a reader considers that option I don't see the harm.</p>\n<p>I think regurgitations of guidelines issued by public health authorities are not really medical advice, though (and certainly not individualized), and that's how I'd interpret the specific example identified in this meta question. I'm sure I've included such advice in some of my own answers, though I'd likely write it as a direct referenced quote from a public health org/official. I don't think we need to get strict on policy about that, though.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1321, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As you noted in your question, the definition of medical advice that we use here is this:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Medical advice is any question that asks for a personal advice,\ndiagnosis, prognosis, second opinion, or interpretation of lab\nresults/medical notes/etc. Or more broadly, any question that would\nrequire a health professional to know personal details about you (or\nsomeone else) to give a proper answer</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The example you cite is not medical advice as defined by this site. It was not personalized, it was not a diagnosis, prognosis, second opinion, or interpretation of results. Nor is it advice that would require a healthcare professional to know personal details about you. All it requires is having visited cdc.gov or its equivalent in virtually any country on earth.</p>\n<p>Repeating the advice of public health authorities in particular is not giving medical advice. By that reasoning, telling people they shouldn't smoke would be considered medical advice, which would be a ridiculously pedantic policy.</p>\n<p>What probably isn't apparent to most users is that we do delete answers and comments for providing medical advice. I'd say I average about one per week.</p>\n<p>And just so you know, we also delete answers and comments that contain unfounded claims, such as your comment regarding injuries and deaths attributed to the COVID vaccines. If you're going to make claims like that, you need to come prepared to defend them with data from credible sources.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1384, "author": "Dsm", "author_id": 25708, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/25708", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>by the code of medical ethics, individual medical advice on public platforms is prohibited. individual medical information is normally confidential. advice on health problems, without a careful assessment of the patient, an anamnesis is a physical examination, can result in advice that can cause damage to health, since medicine is not an exact science..and must be individualized..</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1319", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16670/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1328, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, we should. The reasons for this change include:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Vanishingly few questions here are closed by the community gathering 5 votes without a moderator being involved, as can be seen in the latest statistics: <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1327/2021-a-year-in-moderation\">2021: a year in moderation</a></li>\n<li>Low-quality or off-topic questions will hopefully be closed faster. This will decrease the effort the community spends on such questions or encourage the question author to revise the question while they are most likely to remain invested in it.</li>\n<li>With 5 votes to close, votes tend to <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/250223/349643\">age away</a> (invalidate themselves) making their voting useless, leading to voter apathy. Lowering the vote threshold will reduce the number of votes aging away.</li>\n<li>Lowering the vote threshold will hopefully encourage more users who have earned the privilege to actually use it. This in turn will show new question authors that their question closure is the product of community consensus rather than the unilateral action of a community ♦️ moderator.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1329, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 8728, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8728", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, we shouldn't. The reasons for this include:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Carey Gregory has said it himself: &quot;<a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1326/should-we-request-the-close-vote-requirement-be-decreased-to-3/1329?noredirect=1#comment6179_1329\">There are barely 5 high-rep users who are active and who can cast these votes</a>&quot;. We cannot reduce the number of required close-voters to three, if there's barely more than three people voting in the first place. The bullet point written by Bryan Krause speaks to this:</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;A reason given by opponents of this change on <a href=\"https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4019/do-we-want-to-experiment-with-changing-the-close-reopen-vote-threshold\">Biology.SE</a> was concern that a small group of opinionated close voters would have too much control over the questions that are kept open.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n</li>\n<li><p>The reduced number of required close-voters was indeed set on StackOverflow, but StackOverflow <a href=\"https://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/info/41570/so-close-vote-reviewers\"><strong>has no shortage of close-voters</strong></a>: Their problem is the humungous volume of questions they get (5.4k questions/day at the moment). I don't believe reducing the number of required close-voters should be used as a substitute when high-rep users are not close voting.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Catija's post about this topic, linked in the Meta question that we're currently answering, said: &quot;When five people are needed for this process, it puts more weight on more people to do the work and, with a relatively low number of reviews per day per person, the small crew of reviewers can become quickly overwhelmed even if they are actively reviewing posts. Reducing this number to three quickly leaves this group more room to act on more different tasks.&quot; But at only 3 questions/day, none of this applies here. As someone who performs reviews and acts on <em>hundreds of questions network-wide per day</em>, I find it hard to imagine that anyone is &quot;burned out&quot; by reviewing on a site with 3 questions/day.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Catija's post also says that while reducing the required number of close voters to 3 worked on SO which is pretty much the polar opposite of Medical Sciences in terms of activity, for the smaller sites involved in the experiment: &quot;On Web Applications and Hardware Recommendations much of the closing is still done by moderators, even on Hardware Recs, where they only need one user to vote to close. <strong>There still has to be a community willing to do the work for this to help</strong> - the site won't need five people but they will still need three or else there will still be low percentage of review completion or moderators will still need to do a lot of the work.&quot;</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Most questions here are hammered closed by a diamond mod unilaterally (or with one other close voter) anyway, so <em>decreasing</em> the number of required close voters down from 5 to 3 will not make much of a difference. Maybe you should ask the company if they are willing to reduce it down to 2, but that I think that would be a bit silly.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n\n" }, { "answer_id": 1361, "author": "V2Blast", "author_id": 23782, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23782", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It's been a little while since you escalated this request to the Community Team — sorry for the slight delay!</p>\n<p><strong>You now officially only need 3 close votes to close a question on Medical Sciences SE!</strong></p>\n<p>After looking at the data, I think it's clear that there's no reason for y'all to have this threshold set at 5. Thank you so much for bearing with us while we got to this request.</p>\n<p>We'll check back in with you all in a few months to see how things are going in this regard — if things are going great, we may not post an update, but please feel free to leave a comment here if you want us to post something.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>Here are some basic stats on how things looked before this change:</p>\n<p>Over the last two years, you've had decent numbers when looking into what percentage of questions that received at least one flag or vote to close actually ended up getting closed. While there are some dips here and there (the one in late 2021 is particularly noticeable), things have been generally in the 70-90% range, and the numbers of posts this represents are relatively small.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/4um5P.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/4um5P.png\" alt=\"Graph showing the percentage of handled tasks, as described in the paragraph above\" /></a></p>\n<p>However, the graph below shows that the site moderators, rather than the community, are doing the bulk of the closing:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/uAufR.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/uAufR.png\" alt=\"Graph showing all closed posts, posts closed by the community, and posts closed by the moderation team. The line for moderators closed is almost identical to the line for all closed posts, and is completely identical for the last several months).\" /></a></p>\n<p>The graph above may look a bit confusing, because it has six different possible lines, but only the All_Closed line is visible for most of it. This is because almost all of the questions that have been closed (including all of the questions closed in the last few months) have been closed by mods; very few questions have been closed without mod intervention. (The lines for reopened questions are all near the bottom – not very many closed questions get reopened on this site, which is not particularly uncommon.)</p>\n<p>When working on this project, Catija (another CM) had found two primary use cases for this change:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>When too many items are going unhandled (not unclosed, just unhandled)</li>\n<li>When the moderators are doing the bulk of the closing/reopening</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Both of these are valid concerns here, to a degree. The first graph still shows that there are around ~15-20% of tasks aging out of the review queue on any given month.</p>\n<p>Likewise, the second graph shows that the site mods here are casting the bulk of the final close votes. However, the mods shouldn't be having to make the vast majority of these decisions – even with other users weighing in. This creates an imbalance between closing and reopening, as the mods have to be really thoughtful about reviewing for reopening.</p>\n<p>However, the main reason for the latter seems to be that there are very few non-moderators around who can cast close/reopen votes. <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions\">Only users with at least 500 rep can cast close/reopen votes</a> on the Medical Sciences site. There are actually a total of 80 users who have enough reputation to have this privilege, but less than 5 have been active on the site in the past week (only a dozen in the past month) – and that's including the site mods!</p>\n<p>Basically, there’s no reason not to lower the close vote threshold on this site, which is why we've done so – but mods will still probably have to participate in a lot of the closing because there are so few users that can vote to close. Our hope is that lowering the close vote threshold to 3 for Medical Sciences SE can ease the load on the mods at least a little, but more regular users with the privilege need to participate in closures for that to happen.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1326", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1337, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First, let's start with some context to all be on the same page.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/revisions/30788/1\">first revision</a> of this question seemed very clearly to focus on personal medical advice:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Translating FLIPI index overall survival rate to months of life expectancy\nTranslating FLIPI index overall survival rate to months of life expectancy</p>\n<p>Please refer to Table 5</p>\n<p>I was diagnosed as (3) high risk 2019-12-19</p>\n<p>FLIPI index(3)</p>\n<p>5-year overall survival = 53%</p>\n<p>10-year overall survival = 35%</p>\n<p>Here is my own estimated analysis FLIPI(3) years of survival\n0.53 * 5 = 2.65 years\n0.35 * 10 = 3.50 years\n(2.65 + 3.5) / 2 = 3.075 years from 2019-12-19</p>\n<p>FLIPI Calculator</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In my opinion, that question was correctly closed as off topic (disclaimer: I voted to close at that time).</p>\n<p>The most <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/revisions/30788/7\">recent revision</a> now is mostly a question about survival analysis. This is a question which seems on topic on Cross Validated. The question author appears to agree, since they <a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/565141/deriving-life-expectancy-from-flipi-index-data-for-flipi3-high-risk\">cross-posted the question there</a>. The question received a helpful answer from a user there.</p>\n<p>As noted on the main Meta site question <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu\">Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>As a general rule: <strong>No.</strong></p>\n<p>Ask the question on the site you think is most applicable.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Thus, I think the question should remain closed as the question author received a useful answer on Cross Validated.</p>\n<p>If the question were <em>only</em> asked here, I might argue that it is now potentially on topic for this site under the <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">on-topic section</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>• diagnostic and prognostic methods</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>To me, survival analysis seems like a &quot;prognostic method.&quot;</p>\n<p>As an aside, this question was reopened and migrated to Cross Validated. This is not the ideal situation, as the question already existed there. (I've certainly cast the binding vote on migrations that already existed, so no judgement from me.) The question is now closed as a duplicated on Cross Validated.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1338, "author": "Carey Gregory", "author_id": 805, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/805", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/565141/deriving-life-expectancy-from-flipi-index-data-for-flipi3-high-risk\">The question you cross-posted</a> to Cross Validated received what appears to be a very good answer. You posted the following comment on that answer:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think that this was the answer that I was looking for. I have at\nleast two years left instead of the 11 months of my prior simplistic\nanalysis. Thanks for your help !</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Thank you for providing an excellent example of why depersonalizing medical advice questions doesn't change them. Your comment makes it abundantly clear that the question was personal medical advice from the beginning and it remains personal medical advice even after your depersonalization.</p>\n<p>This actually happens a fair amount. People post a question asking about a personal medical issue, the question gets closed, they edit it to remove personal details, and then expect it to be reopened because they camouflaged the real intent.</p>\n<p>In American vernacular that's called putting lipstick on a pig. Nothing has changed about the question. The goal is still to obtain medical advice from strangers on the internet, which this site has voted multiple times that it will not provide. The StackExchange corporation has also decided the same thing, which it makes abundantly clear in the sidebar.</p>\n<p>The personal details aren't the problem; you can broadcast your medical history all you want. In fact, many questions begin with people's personal medical issues but then proceed to ask an objective medical science question about it. That's perfectly fine. What you can't do is ask us what to do about it, ask us for a prognosis, or ask for a second opinion. The reasoning behind that is very clearly explained in <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/how-long-can-this-site-be-popular-if-everybody-is-asked-to-see-a-doctor/748#748\">this post</a>, which everyone who has a question closed for that reason is given a link to.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1335", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17307/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1345, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h4>Asking a good question</h4>\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Questions requesting medical advice are not allowed here.</strong> This includes questions regarding specific medical cases or those related to your own or anyone's health. Such concerns should be taken to your personal healthcare provider.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/411/is-it-ok-to-ask-questions-that-dont-show-any-research\">We expect</a> you to have done at least some <strong>research prior to asking.</strong> Please include links, quotes, or references to what you have found.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1348, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h4>Step 1: Draft your question</h4>\n<p><strong>Questions about your own health or anyone else's health are off-topic. Such concerns should be taken to a personal healthcare provider.</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/411/is-it-ok-to-ask-questions-that-dont-show-any-research\">We expect</a> you to have done some research prior to asking. Please be sure to remember to include links, quotes, or references to what you have found so far.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1344", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1347, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I closed your question as requesting medical advice because you asked about the properties of a drug you yourself are taking in comparison to two other drugs. Stated differently, you requested information about <em>other treatment options</em>.</p>\n<p>In your question, you mention details about symptoms. As noted in the right sidebar on the main site:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Do not share personal medical information, medical history or any other specific details about a person's medical symptoms, condition etc (whether yours or someone you know) on this site or any Stack Exchange site.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In the comments, you state:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the potential for someone to mishandle the displayed use of this drug</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It is clear from this comment, that one impetus for the question is whether the use of the drug is appropriate for your personal indication.</p>\n<p>In conclusion, it clear that your question is personal medical advice and is thus not appropriate for this site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1349, "author": "Franck Dernoncourt", "author_id": 43, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've removed this personal part of the question (which didn't make it as requesting medical advice by the way), and voted to reopen. The question is clearly:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What is the theoretical and practical difference between Dihydrocortisone (C21H30O5), Cortisone (C21H28O5) and Prednisone (C21H26O5)? The Wikipedia article about Dihydrocortisone literally consists of one line.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>There's nothing personal about it: millions of patients use these medications.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1350, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>@IanCampbell rightfully closed this question as a personal medical advice question. As discussed at <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1007/7951\">Should we edit Personal Medical Advice questions?</a> edited personal advice questions are still personal advice questions, disguised not to be.</p>\n<p>My view is a resounding no. As pointed out by responses to the linked question,</p>\n<h2>no personal advice question, edited or otherwise should be fit for reopening.</h2>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1346", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11663/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1352, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<h3>Yes</h3>\n<h5>The question can be reopened assuming it adheres to the other requirements of our community.</h5>\n<p>As long as the question no longer contains a request for personal medical advice, <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/411/is-it-ok-to-ask-questions-that-dont-show-any-research\">demonstrates an attempt at prior research</a>, is properly scoped, and is otherwise on topic, it can be re-opened.</p>\n<p>If you have sufficient reputation, please flag for reopening or cast a re-open vote.</p>\n<p>The reasoning for this policy is because:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The Stack Exchange philosophy suggests that questions should <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193867/how-do-you-deal-with-legitimate-questions-from-a-troll\">be judged based on their own merits</a> not based on the user that asked them.</li>\n<li>Questions belong to the community, not exclusively to the question author. All that matters is if the current state of the question is on-topic; the history is of no consequence.</li>\n<li>Law Stack Exchange also struggles with questions requesting personal legal advice. They allow <a href=\"https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/a/222/38836\">editing out the personal aspects of a question</a>, and this appears to work well for them.</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1353, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>No</h3>\n<h5>Once closed, personal medical advice questions should not be reopened.</h5>\n<p>Please do not flag or vote for reopening, as such questions are <em>permanently</em> off-topic.</p>\n<p>The reasoning for this policy is because:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The question author previously indicated their intent to seek personal medical advice. Editing the question does not change that intent.</li>\n<li>We have an ethical responsibility to not provide personal medical advice even if the request is disguised. Answering an author's question without access to their full medical history, physical and diagnostic studies is dangerous.</li>\n<li>For licensed medical providers in some jurisdictions, providing medical advice may <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1073/22190\">open them up to liability</a>. To create a welcoming environment for medical professionals, we should fully prohibit personal medical advice.</li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1351", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1386, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think we need to revise the policy.</p>\n<p>As a bit of background, I <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/1294/revisions\">had similar questions about the requirement</a> when I first started participating here. But <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1294/should-questions-that-are-off-topic-due-to-lack-of-question-author-research-have#comment6055_1294\">Carey was right</a> then, and is still right for today.</p>\n<h4>1. Complicated exceptions make it hard for people to know what's expected</h4>\n<p>Asking people to show an <em>extremely basic</em> attempt at research is straight forward. Anyone can describe the two words they typed into their favorite search engine. If we start having to judge what is &quot;too technical&quot;, that will just lead to more disagreements, more <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_lawyer\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">rules lawyering</a>, and more posting on Meta. I also don't think having a secret phrase that people have to include to keep their question from being closed is the right plan.</p>\n<h4>2. The research effort ask is very low</h4>\n<p>We aren't asking people to perform an exhaustive literature review on PubMed. We're asking them to spend a few seconds to look into the question for themselves using whatever resource they can think of. For example, the question author could have indicated they typed the following into a search engine:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Why does phenylephrine have hydrogen bromide?\n<br>^{Side note: the third hit on Google from the US seems to answer the question}</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I don't think that is too much to ask. Based on some of the grumpy responses we receive, I agree with you that it may be frustrating for some users. However, I suspect it is also frustrating for users to have to read dozens of trivial or incomprehensible questions.</p>\n<h4>3. The benefit of the research requirement outweighs the risks</h4>\n<p>People often underestimate how helpful the research attempt can be at understanding the question author's position. The extra information conveyed by the research attempt is at times the magic that allows an answer author to answer the question. If a question can trivially be answered in the first page of search engine results, it's often extremely difficult to know what the question author is misunderstanding (sometimes due to the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Curse of Knowledge</a>). Otherwise, questions without research often need details or clarity or are too broad. You'll just be trading out one close reason for another.</p>\n<h4>4. We community moderators have a light touch with this close reason</h4>\n<p>In general, we unilaterally close questions requesting personal medical advice because of ethical considerations or off-topic questions that may cause other harm. We will sometimes close questions that can be trivially answered in the first page of search engine results after giving the question author ample time to edit their question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1387, "author": "Don_S", "author_id": 7166, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7166", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>All of the points @Ian Campbell made are valid and I agree with them. However, I still feel that <strong>in some cases</strong> - surely not the majority - putting such stress on the demand for prior research as a (sometimes) automatic action (i.e., even when a person knows and wholeheartedly claims that they have no capacity to understand whatever this basic research may reveal), hollows this requirement out and understandably, those OPs that come to this site for help (and I am NOT talking about off-topic questions as defined in the tour) become frustrated with this demand.</p>\n<p>The point I am trying to make is that, in my opinion, finding an answer (or the start of an answer) in the first Google results page does not automatically render a question 'trivial'. Even if they actually try on their own, we have no idea if the OP is capable of understanding what they find (although, if they say outright that they lack any background/knowledge of medical sciences, we can assume for the most part that they are not).</p>\n<p>Thus, for such cases in which OPs insinuate (or openly declare) that they 'have no idea where to begin', I think that it should be part of the mods' job to assess the type of question, the depth required to answer it and whether a demand for prior research should be made. I honestly believe that in certain cases, you would find that it is unnecessary to make such a demand, as it would just push those OPs away, and that is not what we want.</p>\n<p><strong>Bottom line:</strong> The demand for prior research should not be automatic, but rather on a case-by-case basis.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1391, "author": "Chris Rogers", "author_id": 7951, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7951", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have to agree with @IanCampbell</p>\n<h2>Pros on the requirement</h2>\n<p>As I pointed out elsewhere on the main site, cited research helps in many ways. It helps to know what you do know so we don't repeat those things, and cited research also helps others to learn while waiting for an answer, so that is also a double whammy of usefulness of the question.</p>\n<p>A third benefit to asking for prior research is that we can also help to point you in the right direction if your research is going the wrong way.</p>\n<h2>Cons on exemptions</h2>\n<p>As with other community lead requirements, I fear that if we start introducing exemptions, they can be misused as workarounds to overcome the requirements. We don't want to go down that slippery slope, or we may find it difficult to roll back on the idea.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1402, "author": "bob1", "author_id": 24128, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24128", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with the previous posts - The requirement should stand.</p>\n<p>However, I can think of one exception that might reduce this requirement a bit, and that is medical misinformation. We get a fair number of questions on here that are about vaccines and their effects, specifically the COVID-19 vaccines, but also others.</p>\n<p>These are often asked by people with no background in medical sciences and are often touting ideas that are either completely wrong or unsupported in many instances, that they have &quot;read/seen/heard on the internet&quot;. I suppose that this &quot;on the internet&quot; counts as research if they link their sources, so that requirement is met. However, I for one, don't want to support misinformation sites through click-tracking/traffic monitoring that goes on routinely by search engines and allows ranking of search results based on traffic.</p>\n<p>I think every effort should be made to dispel any misinformation using actual science, whether the question contains research or not.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1385", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7166/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1389, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<h4>Yes, we should create a custom close reason for nutrition questions.</h4>\n<p>Here are the five fields for a custom close reason we should implement:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Brief description. (100 character limit)</li>\n</ol>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>General nutrition or dieting</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li>Usage guidance - this tells close voters when to use this close reason. (500 character markdown limit)</li>\n</ol>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Use this close reason if the question is about general nutrition or diet outside the context of medical treatment. Examples of question topics about nutrition that may still be on-topic include nutritional deficiencies that cause disease or scientific questions about nutritional management of disease.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li>Post notice close description - visible to all users. (500 character markdown limit)</li>\n</ol>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Closed.</strong> This question was closed because it is <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1013/\">about nutrition or diet outside of a specific medical context</a>. It is not currently accepting answers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li>Post owner guidance - this additional information appears in the post notice but only for the asker of the question. (500 character markdown limit)</li>\n</ol>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This question appears to be about general nutrition or dieting. There are currently <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/375543/\"><em>no</em> Stack Exchange sites that are appropriate for general nutrition or diet questions</a>. If you think your question is <a href=\"/help/on-topic\">on-topic</a> here, you can edit the question so it is about <a href=\"https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1013/\">a nutritional deficiency that causes disease or a scientific question about nutritional disease management</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>Public guidance - this additional information appears in the post for other users. (500 character markdown limit)</li>\n</ol>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This question appears to be about general nutrition or dieting, which is off-topic here. There are currently <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/375543/\"><em>no</em> Stack Exchange sites that are appropriate for general nutrition or diet questions</a>. If you believe the question is <a href=\"/help/on-topic\">on-topic</a> here, you can edit it or leave a comment to clarify.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1390, "author": "Ian Campbell", "author_id": 22190, "author_profile": "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<h4>No, we do not need a custom nutrition closure reason.</h4>\n<p>We do not receive enough questions about nutrition or dieting to require a custom closure reason. The benefit of standardized guidance is not enough to justify its creation. We can rely on the community and our moderators to provide guidance in comments.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1388", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://health.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22190/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 10, "author": "DrRandy", "author_id": 22, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/22", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Both. Human cells largely exhibit a phenomenon called <em>senescence</em> - they just give up and die after they reach a certain age via a biochemical mechanism called <em><a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26873/\">apoptosis</a></em>. The outer limit of survivability for human cells is generally understood to be in the 100-120 year range. One of the things that makes a cancer cell cancerous is the deactivation of the signals for apoptosis, making the cell effectively immortal.</p>\n\n<p>At the same time, most illnesses, particularly the \"lifestyle illnesses\" (diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia) so common today, do induce some changes which shorten lifespan.</p>\n\n<p>The most significant changes which extended human life were the development of (a) sanitation and (b) antibiotics. These together dramatically reduced death by infectious disease. Removal of early death from infection exposed these diseases of late-life and lifestyle.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1056, "author": "jiggunjer", "author_id": 282, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/282", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The claim of modern medicine being responsible for longer lifespans is of course a statistical claim, i.e. the average/net effect. Thus your second assertion does not follow logically. Though it is an interesting point.</p>\n\n<p>Diseases, both now and in the past, do not have 100% mortality rates. If you followed the ebola outbreak you'd have heard stories of survivors are quite common. The same is true with measles, the common cold, lung infections, etc. When we find a cure for a disease the lifespan statistic increases. This is because those people who would have died survive instead, NOT because infected people avoid long-term collateral damage that would have taken a few years of their 'original' lifespan. At least that is the current predominant view of things.</p>\n\n<p>Consider the following:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Diabetes decreases individual lifespan, ergo the average lifespan also decreases if enough people get diabetes.</li>\n<li>The common cold does not decrease individual lifespan, yet it still contributes to a lower average lifespan because it may be fatal in weak individuals.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So we could say (almost) every illness shortens the <em>average</em> lifespan, but not every illness shortens <em>individual</em> lifespan.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/4", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/11/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 8, "author": "Jez", "author_id": 8, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/8", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Certainly not. By definition, it cannot break down poisons (at least not quickly enough) to stop the body being harmed or killed. In addition, it can not break down (or \"neutralize\") many radioactive substances. A famous example of this was the murder of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko#Poisoning_and_death\">Alexander Litvinenko</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised. His illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 9, "author": "DrRandy", "author_id": 22, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/22", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Actually, in the case of most drugs, it has nothing to do with the immune system <em>per se</em>. Generally, drugs are either chemically modified (often in the liver) to make them inert, or excreted (either in the urine or the stool) thus removing them from the body. When the liver or the kidneys are not working properly, drugs fail to be excreted or digested, resulting in accumulation, which may be toxic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 430, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Any drug taken by mouth are being absorbed by the digestive system where a large amount may be destroyed by metabolic enzymes (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_pass_effect\" rel=\"nofollow\">first-pass metabolism</a>) and enters the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatic_portal_system\" rel=\"nofollow\">hepatic portal system</a>. Then it's carried through the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatic_portal_vein\" rel=\"nofollow\">portal vein</a> into the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver\" rel=\"nofollow\">liver</a> to be absorbed into the bloodstream and excrete the waste through <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile\" rel=\"nofollow\">bile</a>. Some other bypass the liver, entering the blood directly. Only around 2-5% of the dose is excreted in an unchanged form in the urine.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_half-life\" rel=\"nofollow\">The biological half-life</a> of a substance refers to the body's cleansing through the function of kidneys and liver in addition to excretion functions to eliminate a substance from the body (time it takes for the blood plasma concentration of a substance to halve its steady-state).</p>\n\n<p>Here are the common prescription medications which has its high half-life:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>4–16 days: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine\" rel=\"nofollow\">Fluoxetine</a>,</li>\n<li>5 weeks: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutasteride\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dutasteride</a>,</li>\n<li>22-110 days: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiodarone\" rel=\"nofollow\">Amiodarone</a></li>\n<li>5.5 months: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedaquiline\" rel=\"nofollow\">Bedaquiline</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And here are the metals:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Mercury (as methylmercury) in the body has a half-life of about 65 days.</li>\n<li>Lead in the blood has a half life of 28–36 days. In bone about 10 years.</li>\n<li>Cadmium in bone about 30 years.</li>\n<li>Plutonium in the liver about 40 years. Plutonium in bone about <strong>100 years</strong>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I hope that helps.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 7048, "author": "Tomáš Zato", "author_id": 3248, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/3248", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First of all, it's typically liver and the kidneys responsible for removing unwanted chemicals from the body, not the immune system. It should be noted that liver and kidneys <strong>have no &quot;knowledge&quot; which chemical is &quot;bad&quot; and which is &quot;good&quot;</strong>. They have evolved to let some chemicals pass, react some chemicals etc. But there is plethora of compounds that had so little influence on evolutionary process, that we're not ready to handle them, since not being able to handle them was not selected against in the process of evolution.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>So can the body break down anything?</h3>\n</blockquote>\n<p><strong>tl;dr: No, there are many chemical compounds that are not handled by human body ideally and that, even if there's enough time for the body to handle them, still cause major harm.</strong></p>\n<p>Not sure what breaking down exactly means here, but certainly there are some compounds that can get stuck in the body, notably heavy metals. Those and some others accumulate in the body, possibly but not necessarily causing harm in the future. Let's have some examples:</p>\n<h2>Bioaccumulation</h2>\n<p>Bioaccumulation is a process where organism (eg. you) absorbs certain chemical compound at faster rate than it excretes or processes it, which is probably what you meant by &quot;<em>breaking down</em>&quot;. See bellow some examples of such accumulation. Remember that the compound to be accumulated doesn't need to be exactly toxic, but as the poison is in the dose, as long as you accumulate something, it eventually <strong>will</strong> became toxic, should it even be water.</p>\n<h3>Silver</h3>\n<p>Silver is a heavy metal and was used as disinfection in the first half of 20th century^[1]. Silver accumulates in the human body, causing <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">argyria</a>. This often happens to people who adhere to so-called &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which includes promoting silver suspension as a cure to all kinds of diseases.^[2]</p>\n<h3>Lead</h3>\n<p>Lead is more dangerous than silver and is recognised as <a href=\"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">important health problem by WHO</a>.</p>\n<h3>Other examples</h3>\n<p>I will defer listing of other <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation#Examples\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">examples on wikipedia</a>.</p>\n<h2>Toxification</h2>\n<p>As I said in the introduction, evolution didn't prepare liver and kidneys for many chemicals. Sometimes the attempt to react them starts the toxic reaction itself and it would be better if the chemical stayed in blood as-is and was excreted in urine. Such event is a type of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxication\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><strong>toxification</strong></a>, toxification can generally occur anywhere, not just liver.</p>\n<h3>Methanol</h3>\n<p>Methanol is known as possible toxic component that can accidentally occur in alcoholic beverages. Methanol shares toxicity properties with ethanol, however on top of that, it is metabolized into formic acid in the liver. This is why, if there are no better alternatives, ethanol can be administered to prevent further methanol poisoning since it occupies the liver and therefore stops the toxification process. Bear in mind that this only works before the methanol was already turned into formic acid.^[3]</p>\n<h3>Arsenic</h3>\n<p>Apart from accumulating, arsenic also is oxidated in body which produces much more toxic arsenic (III) oxide which is the famous deadly poison.</p>\n<h3>Refferences:</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>[1] <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/stream/useofcolloidsinh00searuoft#page/70/mode/2up\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;Chapter VIII: Germicides and Disinfectants&quot;. The Use of Colloids in Health and Disease</a></li>\n<li>[2] <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10558603\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Over-the-counter drug products containing colloidal silver ingredients or silver salts</a></li>\n<li>[3] <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20111005043548/http://www.antizol.com/mpoisono.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Methanol poisoning overview</a></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/5", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/11/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 7, "author": "DrRandy", "author_id": 22, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/22", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Generally speaking, it's best to leave blisters undisturbed. Unroofing the blister completely is definitely ill-advised, as it exposes the entire dermis underneath, removing a primary barrier to infection. Cover it loosely with rolled gauze and leave it alone; it will either drain on its own, or reabsorb the fluid over time.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 148, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A blister is a small pocket of fluid in the upper skin layers and is one of the body’s responses to injury or pressure.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on the cause, the treatment could include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>sterile drainage of fluid,</li>\n<li>professional dressing or padding techniques,</li>\n<li>antibiotics, in the case of a bacterial infection,</li>\n<li>antifungal preparations, in the case of fungal infection,</li>\n<li>antiviral preparations, in the case of viral infection,</li>\n<li>treatment for any underlying allergy.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>^{Source: <a href=\"http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Blisters\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Better Health</a> at Australian State Government of Victoria} </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>In general, you shouldn't break small blisters (no bigger than your little fingernail) and <strong>leave blisters intact</strong> (<strong>do not attempt to pop them</strong>). However if blisters break, clean the area with mild soap and water, apply an antibiotic ointment if you see signs of infection (apply \"patch test\" to make sure you don't have a bad reaction), and cover/protect it with a nonstick gauze bandage (a clean dressing). Do not tear off the flaps of skin left over from broken blisters. You'll shed them soon enough; don't risk irritating your skin even more now.</p>\n\n<p>For soothing, you may take a cool bath or shower and apply a a clean towel dampened with cool tap water^{<a href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-sunburn/basics/art-20056643\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">mayo</a>}.</p>\n\n<p>If you develop larger blisters, contact a doctor (podiatrist, pharmacist, dermatologist), because large blisters are best removed, as they rarely will remain intact on their own. Also seek medical help if you experience immediate complications, such as extreme pain, headache, confusion, nausea or chills.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>These herbs may be applied topically to minor burns:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Apply moisturizer such as Aloe vera lotion, cream or gel, or low-dose hydrocortisone cream, which may provide relief in some cases.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apply externally to the burned area, 3 - 4 times daily as needed, for soothing and healing.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Calendula (Calendula officinalis), or pot marigold, as an ointment or a tea applied topically.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To make tea from tincture, use 1/2 to 1 tsp. diluted in 1/4 cup water. You can also steep 1 tsp. of flowers in one cup of boiling water for 15 minutes, then strain and cool.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Gotu kola (Centella asiatica)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A cream containing 1% of the herb, may help repair skin tissue.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Propolis</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A resin created by bees to build their hives, has been used historically to treat skin wounds.</p>\n \n <p>One study found that people given propolis to apply to minor burns healed as well as those treated with silver sulfadiazine, a prescription ointment. More research is needed, however.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>^{Source: <a href=\"http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/burns\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Burns</a> at UMMC}</p>\n\n<p>Following tips may improve your healing and general health:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If the burn is very recent, eat antioxidant foods, including fruits (such as blueberries, cherries, and tomatoes) and vegetables (such as squash and bell peppers).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>One study found that high doses of vitamin C post burn reduced fluid requirements by 40%, reduced burn tissue water content 50%, and reduced ventilator days.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Eat fewer red meats and more lean meats, cold water fish, tofu (soy) or beans for protein.</p></li>\n<li><p>Avoid refined foods, such as white breads, pastas, and sugar.</p></li>\n<li><p>Use healthy cooking oils, such as olive oil or vegetable oil.</p></li>\n<li><p>Reduce or eliminate trans-fatty acids, found in commercially baked goods such as cookies, crackers, cakes, French fries, onion rings, donuts, processed foods, and margarine.</p></li>\n<li><p>Avoid caffeine and other stimulants, alcohol, and tobacco.</p></li>\n<li><p>Drink 6 - 8 glasses of filtered water daily.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>^{Source: <a href=\"http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/burns\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Burns</a> at UMMC}</p>\n\n<p>Other natural home remedies include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Brew three or four teabags in a pitcher of warm water^{<a href=\"http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/burns\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">UMMC</a>}.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When the tea is almost black, remove the teabags and let the liquid cool to room temp. Gently dab at the sunburn with a cloth soaked in the tea, the more the better. Do not wash it off. If the cloth causes pain, dab at the burn with the teabags instead.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Apply witch hazel lotion which may soothe your skin^{<a href=\"http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-227-witch%20hazel.aspx?activeingredientid=227&amp;activeingredientname=witch%20hazel\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">WebMD</a>}.</p></li>\n<li><p>Use Egg Oil (Oleova).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Egg oil is rich in omega-3 fatty acids like Docosahexanoic Acid.</p>\n \n <p>The omega-3 fatty acids in egg oil are bound to phospholipids which have the ability to form liposomes (nanoparticles), which may be able to penetrate deep and heal the dermis.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Avoid egg whites, peanut butter, petroleum jelly, and vinegar in particular^{<a href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-sunburn/basics/art-20056643\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">mayo</a>}.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>^{See: <a href=\"http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-a-Sunburn\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">How to Treat a Sunburn</a> at wikiHow}</p>\n\n<p>See also:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/75/is-it-possible-to-reverse-the-skin-cell-damage-caused-by-sunlight-by-taking-appr\">Is it possible to reverse the skin cell damage caused by sunlight by taking appropriate vitamins?</a></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 157, "author": "Toon Krijthe", "author_id": 136, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/136", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In first aid, we normally leave blisters alone. But there is one exception. In multi day walking events, there is a protocol to treat blisters.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>We clean the blister and the skin around in.</li>\n<li>We make it as sterile as possible</li>\n<li>Use a single use sterile needle to make two holes on each of the sides of the blister in walking direction.</li>\n<li>gently empty the blister, while collecting the fluid.</li>\n<li>Clean it again.</li>\n<li>Now you can use the right tape to cover the area. This can be tricky because each wrinkle kan lead to new blisters.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If the blister is open or it contains blood, consult a medical professional.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 478, "author": "anongoodnurse", "author_id": 169, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/169", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>In the blister shown, the likelihood of rupture is decreased because of the thickness of the epidermis on the palm of the hand, so you can leave it alone until the underlying area re-epithelializes. You'll know this is happening because of the decreased pain and the slow reabsorption of the fluid. Eventually you will just peal it off what's left of the blister, finding clean new skin underneath.</p>\n\n<p>But this is a great starting point for an answer about the treatment of blisters in general: is it better to leave them alone, drain the fluid, or de-roof them (take the top of the blister off)?</p>\n\n<p>There is <em>a lot</em> of disagreement about what constitutes the optimal treatment of blisters. Some background might be in order.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2lJIv.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>Blisters form when the upper layers of the epidermis separate from the lower layers, usually at the level of the stratum spinosum. At that level, the cells (because of proximity to the dermis, which contains the capillaries) have moisture in and between them. When the separation occurs, <em>sterile</em> fluid from the stratum spinosum oozes unopposed into the space between the layers, and a blister forms.</p>\n\n<p>The fluid, similar to plasma, contains molecules which may promote the rapid division which takes place in the stratum basale. This then differentiates into the upper layers of the epidermis and healing by new skin formation.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Hydrostatic pressure causes the area of the separation to fill with a fluid that is similar in composition to plasma but has a lower protein level. About 6 hours after formation of the blister, cells in the blister base begin to take amino acids and nucleosides; at 24 hours, there is high mitotic activity in the basal cells; at 48 and 120 hours, new stratum granulosum and stratum corneum, respectively, can be seen.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The <em>sterile</em> fluid is a very rich and inviting growth medium for bacteria. For this reason, some people think it should be removed. The denuded skin underneath has lost some of it's protection against infection. For this reason, some think the blister should be left intact. Between these two extremes are those who favor drainage of the fluid leaving the cover intact.</p>\n\n<p>To my thinking (and training), this is the worst option. Poking a hole in the blister, no matter how cleanly it's done, will leave a point of entry for bacteria (it doesn't take much). The bacteria will flourish in the moisture (which will still seep into the space) under the roof of the blister, protected from being washed away. This may (and often does) lead to an infection of the wound.</p>\n\n<p>It's much better to prevent infection than to treat it. </p>\n\n<p>The reasoning of either of the other camps is more supportable. I favor leaving the blister intact as long as possible, giving the underlying wound time to form new stratified protective epidermalis.</p>\n\n<p>Treatment by people in this camp consists of carefully cleaning and disinfecting the surface of the blister and the surrounding skin, and covering it loosely with protective padding, usually gauze, then wrapping the entire thing with gauze wrap. The patient is instructed to check the blister daily; if it \"pops\" or becomes cloudy, the roof must be removed (most people prefer to have this done by a doctor or nurse), the area cleaned to remove any bacteria which might have entered, and a sterile dressing (over a light application of an antibacterial cream) reapplied, and changes daily until healed.</p>\n\n<p>The opposite camp reasons that the blister will break anyway, so get it over with and get the sterile dressing on, then clean and redress (with a light application of an antibacterial cream) daily. Also, if the blister is tense, it may be impeding healing of the base by decreasing blood flow. The problem with this approach is that it hurts more than leaving it alone, and the risk of infection is still greater than if the blister is intact.</p>\n\n<p>Many studies have been done to try to determine the best approach. Common sense plays a role. If the blister is very delicate (as in a large, tense and fragile blister of a burn), or if it looks unstable, I'll remove the roof of the blister. If I think it can be preserved for even one or two days, I'll leave it on. Every day it's left on without infection is a day of healing and decreased pain as new skin is made.</p>\n\n<p>From one paper:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There seems to be a paucity of good clinical evidence related to this subject, despite several review articles. The sole paper found involved a small sample, but showed infection rates to be higher if blisters are aspirated or deroofed, and that pain scores were higher in the group that underwent deroofing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>From a pain point of view:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>aspiration appears to result in less pain than deroofing. (See above: also more infection.)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The common sense comes in with type, size, and location of blister, reliability of care by the patient or their family, location or level of activity likely to cause rupture, or in the case of hikers' blisters (and others away from medical care), what the best model is to prevent infection while still using the involved area if necessary.</p>\n\n<p>Also changing the scene are the new available protective dressings of deroofed blisters that allow moist healing, non-occlusive protection and visibility of the underlying skin. </p>\n\n<p>_{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564175/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Management of burns blisters</a>}<br>\n_{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8570998\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Friction blisters. Pathophysiology, prevention and treatment.</a>} </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/6", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/16/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 18, "author": "michaelpri", "author_id": 26, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/26", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There is evidence that neonatal circumcision saying that the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks.</p>\n\n<p>According to a study done on neonatal circumcision^[1], the lifetime benefits of being circumcised outweighed the risks 100 to 1. Some of the risks people may associate with circumcision are very unlikely. Excessive bleeding only happens 0.1% of the time, infections 0.02% of the time, and loss of penis 0.0001% of the time. The percentage of death is only 0.00001%. </p>\n\n<p>Overall, it shows that males who have been circumcised require half as much medical attention as males who have not been circumcised. Also, the overall risk of circumcised men having serious medical implications is 1 to 5000; this includes things like HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(14)00036-6/fulltext#tbl4\">This graph</a> contains other relevant information.</p>\n\n<p>There are some people who disagree with the article mentioned above.^[2] In a direct statement against the article, it is said that the article is \"marred by bias.\" They note how the article fails to mention many things, such as statements against circumcision and harms in sexual experience. It doesn't completely refute the article that says circumcision is beneficial, but it is something good to think about.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{[1] <a href=\"http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(14)00036-6/fulltext#sec3\">Circumcision Rates</a>}</p>\n\n<p>^{[2] <a href=\"http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(14)00747-2/fulltext\">Bias and Male Circumcision</a>}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 427, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is some evidence which supports that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection among heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa^{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21590467\">(1)</a>,<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370585\">(2)</a>}, however the evidence of an HIV benefits for men who have sex with men is less clear^{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18840841\">(3)</a>,<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21678366\">(4)</a>} and its use to prevent HIV in the developed world is unclear either^{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20844437\">(5)</a>}.</p>\n\n<p>The treatment option for pathological phimosis, refractory balanoposthitis and UTIs is only contraindicated in cases of certain genital structure abnormalities or poor general health^{<a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=or15PgAACAAJ\">(6)</a>,<a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=V8lMJniWK_QC\">(7)</a>}.</p>\n\n<p>WHO recommends considering circumcision as part of a comprehensive HIV program only in areas with high rates of HIV (e.g. Africa)^{<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835757/\">(8)</a>,<a href=\"http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/news68/en/\">(9)</a>}.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore if you're not living in Africa or areas with high rates of HIV, the potential risks outweighs health benefits associated with circumcision. As currently no major medical organization recommends non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision, and no major medical organization calls for banning it either.</p>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision\">Circumcision</a> at Wikipedia</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 15635, "author": "Graham Chiu", "author_id": 3414, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/3414", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Circumcision is a form of sexual mutilation performed on male infants usually for religious reasons unrelated to putative health benefits. The claim of reduced risk for HIV infection is supported by this <a href=\"http://www.cochrane.org/CD003362/HIV_male-circumcision-for-prevention-of-heterosexual-acquisition-of-hiv-in-men\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Cochrane review</a> but applies to Africa. Another review looked at urinary tract infections and found <a href=\"http://www.cochrane.org/CD009129/NEONATAL_newborn-circumcision-for-the-prevention-of-urinary-tract-infections-in-infancy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">insufficient data</a> to draw conclusions.</p>\n\n<p>Circumcision has traditionally been conducted without analgesia and there are some data to suggest <a href=\"http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">stress related manifestations</a> develop in these children compared with the uncircumcised. Furthermore, there have been well publicised <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/herpes-babies-jewish-circumcision-ritual-link-rabbis-infants-a7620446.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">deaths</a> resulting from the traditional Jewish practice of sucking on the foreskin to prevent bleeding causing herpes. In any other jurisdiction, this could be considered paedophilia.</p>\n\n<p>Interestingly Iceland is looking to <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/18/iceland-ban-male-circumcision-first-european-country\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ban</a> neonatal circumcision.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/13", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/8/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 31, "author": "Boris Mocialov", "author_id": 40, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/40", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The source does not explicitly tell the long-term story, but I presume that since those particles are actual matter inside your eye (due to the ageing process as your body slowly disseminates), then they would not dissolve with the time, nor leave the eye-ball. </p>\n\n<p>Logically, they might stick to the wall of an eye-ball or something similar. Nor is it likely that the new particles would occur very often. But that is just an educated guess based on the source (TED-Ed): <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6e_m9iq-4Q\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6e_m9iq-4Q</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 240, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In general any cellular material within the vitreous may cause eye floaters, for example red blood cells as a result of hemorrhage and white blood cells as a result of infection or inflammation. So cause of it should be always determine by a doctor (ophthalmologist). Abnormal eye floaters are associated with bleeding in the vitreous from diabetic retinopathy, retinal tears, retinal detachment or large degrees of nearsightedness. If floaters are accompanied by flashes of light or a loss of side vision, seek medical advice immediately.</p>\n\n<p>Most eye floaters decrease/reduce in size on their own due to absorption through the natural processes within the eye. The brain also adapts to the floaters, teaching the eyes to become less aware of them. With age almost everyone has it, but some are more aware than the others.</p>\n\n<p>There are no safe and proven methods to cure in both safe and effective way, however appropriate anti-inflammatory drugs or antibiotics prescribed by your doctor could reduce the number of white blood cells which are results of inflammation are common types of cellular material causing eye floaters. No other medications or eye drops have been proven effective in the treatment of eye floaters.</p>\n\n<p>The vitreous itself can also be surgically removed by <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrectomy\" rel=\"noreferrer\">vitrectomy</a>. It removes the actual vitreous from the eye, eliminating the eye floaters in the process, but it also increase risk of retinal detachment or cataract, so surgery should only be used as a treatment for eye floaters in extreme cases. Some laser procedures are also used to get rid of floaters, but they also contain risks.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Some health professionals believe that certain nutritional supplements and lifestyle (e.g. reducing stress) changes may help get rid of eye floaters as well as certain herbs, vitamins and odine-containing products have been touted as effective in decreasing eye floaters (none of these have been proven effective in clinical trials).</p>\n\n<p>These might include antioxidant vitamins, MSM eyedrops and hyaluronic acid to keep the eye hydrated (See: <a href=\"http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Floaters\" rel=\"noreferrer\">How to Reduce Floaters</a>), for example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Antioxidant vitamins (such as turmeric, wild rose hip, propolis concentrate and hawthorn berry) in concert with other vitamins, are proven to be effective in treating macular degeneration, but not in reducing floaters. (<a href=\"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-30/health/sc-health-0530-eyesight-supplements-20120530_1_age-related-eye-disease-study-antioxidant-vitamins-beta-carotene-and-zinc\" rel=\"noreferrer\">source</a>)</p></li>\n<li><p>MSM eyedrops. MSM, or methylsulfonylmethane (dimethyl sulfone), is a widely-used nutritional supplement, most notably for arthritis. For uses other than arthritis, however, studies show only dubious results. (<a href=\"http://www.natural-remedies-review.com/msm.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">source</a>)</p></li>\n<li><p>Ginko biloba has been proven effective in increasing ocular blood flow and is used by patients suffering from glaucoma. (<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10385132\" rel=\"noreferrer\">study</a>)</p></li>\n<li><p>Lysine is a vasodilator, which means that it widens blood vessels, particular in large veins. Lysine has proven effective in widening blood vessels in some areas, but not necessarily in the eyes. (<a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8732492\" rel=\"noreferrer\">study</a>)</p></li>\n<li><p>Bilberry is used both for improving eyesight and for widening blood vessels (<a href=\"http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/202.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">source</a>). More tests are needed to investigate the efficacy of bilberry in treating floaters.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Nutrients which are important in managing eye floaters according to <a href=\"http://www.naturaleyecare.com/eye-conditions/eye-floaters/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">NaturalEyeCare</a>:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Hyaluronic acid</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Hyaluronic acid (hyaluronan) is a large molecule found in the vitreous gel which it is believed contributes to its gel-like quality and may also support related connective tissue. Elsewhere in the body it is found in the gel-like fluid that lubricates joints and it is a component of the tissue healing process. As we age, the amount of hyaluronan in the body decreases.</p>\n \n <p>Hyaluronic acid has been shown to be effective in helping eyes heal after cataract surgery. (<a href=\"http://www.natural-remedies-review.com/msm.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">source</a>)</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Glucosame sulfate</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Glucosamine sulfate helps maintain connective tissue integrity. Some floaters are caused by disintegration of the lining of the vitreous sac. This nutrient may help slow down the natural aging effect on a weakening vitreous. Many people have noted an increase in floaters when they have joint disorders which may be related to chronic, systemic inflammation and its effect on eye health.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Vitamin C</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that is essential for overall eye health. Since floaters are often the result of vitreous tears/detachments and/or clumping of the vitreous due to aging, vitamin C plays a role in blood and lymph circulation, waste elimination and supporting connective tissue. It may play a role in supporting the body in breaking down eye floaters. Learn more about the role of vitamin C in the body.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>L-methionine</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This amino acid can assist in removal of heavy metals and toxins that can contribute to eye disease. Methionine has a role in the body's synthesis of cysteine and taurine, two other important amino acids for vision health.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Inositol</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The carbohydrate inositol plays a role in moderating levels of calcium in the cell membrane and within each cell, which in turn plays a role in protecting the vitreous.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Calcium </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Calcium supports healthy connective tissue of the eye and throughout the body. Researchers have found that low levels of calcium (in proportion to phosphorus) is tied to increases in floaters.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>Zinc, Copper &amp; Chromium</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Zinc has some antioxidant characteristics. It plays a major role in bringing Vitamin A from the liver to the retina and helps Vitamin A create a protective pigment called melanin. Zinc also helps support the health of tiny capillaries in the eye, which are essential in nourishing the retina and related connective tissue. Zinc and copper, in balance, help support a proper acid balance in the body, which in turn helps may help avoid development of new floaters. Chromium may help limit nearsightedness, a risk factor for eye floaters. Chromium also has a role in sugar balance in the body.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>See also:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.medicinenet.com/eye_floaters/article.htm\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Eye Floaters</a> at Medicine Net</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterior_vitreous_detachment\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Posterior vitreous detachment (PVD)</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11131410\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Pars plana vitrectomy for persistent, visually significant vitreous opacities.</a> (study)</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/15", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/36/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 313, "author": "Susan", "author_id": 165, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/165", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<h2>Background</h2>\n\n<p>Most kidney stones (~80%) are calcium stones, and the majority of those are primarily composed of calcium oxalate. Oxalate (C₂O₄²⁻) is a dianion that combines with divalent cations such as magnesium and calcium. The magnesium salt is much more soluble than the calcium salt. Because these cations compete for binding to oxalate, both lower magnesium levels and higher calcium levels will tend to cause precipitation (movement out of solution into crystalline form) of calcium oxalate. When this happens in the urine in large enough quantities, it can form “stones.”</p>\n\n<h2>Does diet matter?</h2>\n\n<p>As introduced by the OP, doctors have historically advised patients who have demonstrated a propensity toward calcium oxalate stone formation (or, more generically: kidney stones) to decrease dietary intake of calcium and oxalate.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Dietary calcium</strong> </p>\n\n<p>In 1993, <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8441427\">a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine</a> dispelled the notion that a low calcium diet should be advised for these patients. They found the opposite association: higher calcium intake correlates with <em>reduced</em> stone formation (RR = 0.56; 95% CI 0.43 - 0.73). This somewhat counter-intuitive effect may be explained by the binding of calcium with oxalate in the gut, which tends to decrease oxalate absorption. The recommendation to decrease calcium intake, then, appears not to be valid. <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=11784873\">Further studies</a> have refined this recommendation, and it is now generally said that a <strong>normal</strong> calcium intake is probably best.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Dietary oxalate</strong> </p>\n\n<p>Oxalate is found in <a href=\"http://my.clevelandclinic.org/services/urology-kidney/treatments-procedures/kidney-stones-oxalate-controlled-diet\">an odd assortment of foods</a>: beets, spinach, rhubarb, strawberries, nuts, chocolate, tea, wheat bran, and all dry beans (fresh, canned, or cooked), excluding lima and green beans. This has largely been a “seems like it should work” approach rather than data-driven. In fact, <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=17538185\">large epidemiological studies</a> have not shown an association between oxalate intake and stone formation.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Other dietary associations</strong> </p>\n\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8441427\">NEJM study mentioned above</a> also looked at other correlations between stone formation and dietary components. Animal protein was directly correlated with increased risk of stones, whereas potassium and fluid intake were correlated with decreased risk.</p>\n\n<p><strong>A different approach</strong> </p>\n\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=24560157\">most recent interesting development</a> in this area that I’m aware of was published in the American Journal of Kidney Disease in 2014 and compared the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension)-style diet with a low-oxalate diet for prevention of stones. Their reasoning is nicely summarized in the abstract:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[M]ost people do not eat isolated nutrients, but meals consisting of a variety of foods with complex combinations of nutrients. A more rational approach to nephrolithiasis prevention would be to base dietary advice on the cumulative effects of foods and different dietary patterns rather than single nutrients.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The DASH diet was, as its name suggests, developed as a tool to mitigate hypertension, but it has been used as a sort of paradigm “healthy diet” in trials of a variety of interventions. It is, as described in the paper above, high in fruits and vegetables, moderate in low-fat dairy products, and low in animal protein. The high fruit and nut content may be expected to increase urinary oxalate, but these foods also tend to be high in magnesium and citrate, both of which are inhibitors of calcium stone formation.</p>\n\n<p>The authors collected 24-hour urine samples in participants with a known history of stones and randomized them to a DASH diet vs a low-oxalate diet. They found that urinary supersaturation of calcium oxalate (a measure of tendency to form calcium oxalate stones) was decreased in the DASH group compared to the low-oxalate group. This occurred despite a trend toward <em>increased</em> oxalate excretion in that group. The authors posit that this may have been due to the increased urinary pH and concentrations of citrate, magnesium, and potassium, all of which tend to decrease stone formation.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>\n\n<p>There are not solid data supporting a low oxalate diet for stone prevention. Other dietary factors that are probably helpful include: normal calcium intake; high intake of fluid, magnesium, and potassium; low animal protein.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>References</strong></p>\n\n<p>_{\nBorghi L., Schianchi T., Meschi T., et al: <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=11784873\"><em>Comparison of two diets for the prevention of recurrent stones in idiopathic hypercalciuria.</em></a> N Engl J Med 2002(346):77-84.\n}</p>\n\n<p>_{\nCoe FL, Evan A, Worcester E. (2005). <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=16200192\"><em>Kidney stone disease.</em></a> J Clin Invest. 115(10):2598–2608.\n}</p>\n\n<p>_{\nCurhan G.C., Willett W.C., Rimm E.B., and Stampfer M.J.: <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8441427\"><em>A prospective study of dietary calcium and other nutrients and the risk of symptomatic kidney stones.</em></a> N Engl J Med 1993(328):833-838.\n} </p>\n\n<p>_{\nNoori N, Honarkar E1, Goldfarb DS2, Kalantar-Zadeh K3, Taheri M1, Shakhssalim N1, Parvin M1, Basiri A. <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=24560157\"><em>Urinary lithogenic risk profile in recurrent stone formers with hyperoxaluria: a randomized controlled trial comparing DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension)-style and low-oxalate diets.</em></a>\nAm J Kidney Dis.2014; 63(3):456-63.\n} </p>\n\n<p>_{\nTaylor E.N., and Curhan G.C.: <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=17538185\"><em>Oxalate intake and the risk for nephrolithiasis</em></a>. J Am Soc Nephrol 2007(18):2198-2204.\n}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 327, "author": "highline7AM", "author_id": 179, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/179", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am not a health professional, but I did some research on exactly your question because my friend, who is quite young, has calcium oxalate kidney stones. Most of my citations are not directly from academic journals, but from websites of well known medical centers (see below). </p>\n\n<p>Few things that I learned (in addition to Susan's answer):</p>\n\n<p>-drinking enough fluids seems to be the most important thing for prevention</p>\n\n<p>-\"Sodium, often from salt, causes the kidneys to excrete more calcium into the urine. High concentrations of calcium in the urine combine with oxalate and phosphorus to form stones. Reducing sodium intake is preferred to reducing calcium intake.\"</p>\n\n<p>-reduce oxalate intake. University of Pittsburgh Medical School has comprehensive information about this. </p>\n\n<p>I know this doesn't answer to what extent calcium oxalate stones can be prevented with diet, but those things appear to contribute to it.</p>\n\n<p>1) <a href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/kidney-stones/basics/definition/con-20024829\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Mayo Clinic</a></p>\n\n<p>2) <a href=\"http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/Kudiseases/pubs/kidneystonediet/index.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">NIH, National Kidney and Urologic Diseases</a></p>\n\n<p>3) <a href=\"http://www.upmc.com/patients-visitors/education/nutrition/pages/low-oxalate-diet.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical School</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/16", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/39/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 24, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>While they're sometimes confused by the public, X-Ray CT (computed tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) work by entirely different priniciples. X-Ray radiation is harmful, and any unnecessary exposure should be limited. MRI works by putting the subject into a very strong magnetic field and using radiowaves to excite specific nuclei. </p>\n\n<p>The potential dangers of MRI are equivalent to the dangers of strong magnetic fields and radiowaves (and potentially any contrast medium that is used, which can cause allergic reactions). </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/MedicalImaging/ucm200086.htm\">According to the FDA:</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There are no known harmful side-effects associated with temporary exposure to the strong magnetic field used by MRI scanners. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Due to the strong magnetic field you need to avoid bringing any metal objects near the MRI, they will be attracted by the magnet and become dangerous projectiles.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 37, "author": "TheEnvironmentalist", "author_id": 11, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/11", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>One of the greatest benefits of MRI scans is their safety. Unlike PET, X-ray, CT and most other scans, MRIs use the properties of body tissues in magnetic fields to produce an image. The MRI machine produces a powerful magnetic field which interacts with body tissues to produce radio waves, which are in turn interpreted by a computer to determine the location of the tissues.<a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/MRI-scan/Pages/How-does-it-work.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">¹</a></p>\n<p>This does not, however, mean MRIs are completely without risk. First and foremost, an MRI machine is basically a giant magnet. If one has metal in his or her body, from a medical implant, car accident, or even an improperly done tattoo, the MRI machine can move it, potentially violently. In the case of medical implants, an MRI machine can easily destroy any electrical components.<a href=\"http://www.asnr.org/patientinfo/procedures/mri.shtml#block2\" rel=\"noreferrer\">²</a> There are a number of different reasons metal might be present in the body.<a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/MRI-scan/Pages/Who-can-use-it.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">³</a> This is why MRI technologists are trained to ask, repeatedly, about any metal that may be present.</p>\n<p>In addition to metal, some MRIs involve contrast media, chemicals injected or consumed that increase visibility of certain tissues in MRI scans. These chemicals are normally removed by the body rather quickly, and except in individuals with reduced kidney function, are for the most part safe. However, there have been cases of allergic reactions and side effects.<a href=\"http://www.insideradiology.com.au/pages/view.php?T_id=38#.VRsOKzvF_pb\" rel=\"noreferrer\">⁴</a> Also, recently, questionable studies have presented possible links between gadolinium-based contrast agents and nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, though the American FDA has stated that this link is only significant in patients with kidney disease, as <em>&quot;NSF has not been reported in patients with normal kidney function&quot;</em>.<a href=\"https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm223966.htm\" rel=\"noreferrer\">⁵</a></p>\n<h3>In Short</h3>\n<p>In healthy individuals, with properly-functioning kidneys, no medical implants, no improperly-done tattoos, and no metal embedded in the body, MRIs are completely safe, once or even quite often.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/21", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 29, "author": "michaelpri", "author_id": 26, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/26", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are several good tips to help avoid voice strain. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Like you said, drink a lot of water (6-8 glasses a day); also, limit your intake of caffeinated drinks or alcoholic drinks, as they dry your throat</p></li>\n<li><p>When you are talking, support your voice with deep breaths, like singers have to; speaking from your diaphragm puts less stress on your voice and also make you talk clearer </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you start to feel that you are getting voice strain, stop talking and just rest for a little while. </li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>_{<a href=\"http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/pages/takingcare.aspx#4\" rel=\"nofollow\">Taking Care of Your Voice</a>}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 53, "author": "msouth", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One answer to this is <strong>give it some time</strong>. Your voice will get used to being used much more than it has in the past.</p>\n\n<p>When I became a teaching assistant I was suddenly using my voice to address large groups for long periods of time when I had previously only been using it for occasional conversation. My voice was raw for a few days at the beginning of the semester, but my body was able to adapt (I should note that this experience was fairly general among the group of graduate students I served with, not just me).</p>\n\n<p>Another possible approach might be <strong>ramp up</strong>. Don't go straight from not using your voice at all to using it all day. If it's possible to do part of your work by typing and the other with voice commands, alternate a little as your voice gets accustomed to heavier usage.</p>\n\n<p>Remedies for raw throat are discussed here in an article about drill sergeants, but they are anecdotal: <a href=\"https://www.militarytimes.com/2013/04/08/di-secrets-theres-a-human-side-to-these-larger-than-life-marines/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.militarytimes.com/2013/04/08/di-secrets-theres-a-human-side-to-these-larger-than-life-marines/</a>.</p>\n\n<p>[EDIT: previous link died. I found the article again, searching for \"the human side of these larger than life marines\"--here are the suggestions from the article:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Same as sore throat remedy--honey, lemon, hot water</li>\n<li>Hot tea followed by a cold drink</li>\n<li>Pickle juice or lime juice mixed with salt\n]</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 426, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>When working with speech recognition systems, you should take the following steps to minimise strain:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>sit comfortably,\n<ul>\n<li>poor posture in sitting can lead to: swallowing, talking and breathing difficulties if your chest is slumped and unable to expand ^{<a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/ipgmedia/national/multiple%20sclerosis%20trust/assets/areyousittingcomfortably.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">(source)</a>},</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>speak at a normal pitch/volume,</li>\n<li>take breaks,</li>\n<li>drink regularly.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/accessibilityhelp/Factsheets/Voice-recognition-software-an-introduction.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">NHS: Voice Recognition Software - An Introduction</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 13626, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 55, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/55", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The best thing you can do is visit a speech pathologist (aka a voice coach) who can work with you to make sure you are not stressing your vocal folds and other parts of the speech pathway.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/22", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/43/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 39, "author": "Rapptz", "author_id": 47, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/47", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The IARC has concluded that <a href=\"http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet\">cell phones are a \"possible carcinogen\"</a> due to the amount of evidence going both directions.</p>\n\n<p>The gist of it is summarised on the website itself:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>Cell phones emit radiofrequency energy, a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, which can be absorbed by tissues closest to\n where the phone is held.</li>\n <li><p>The amount of radiofrequency energy a cell phone user is exposed to depends on the technology of the phone, the distance between the\n phone’s antenna and the user, the extent and type of use, and the\n user’s distance from cell phone towers.</p></li>\n <li><p>Studies thus far have not shown a consistent link between cell phone use and cancers of the brain, nerves, or other tissues of the head or\n neck. More research is needed because cell phone technology and how\n people use cell phones have been changing rapidly.</p></li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>_{<a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928468014000649\">Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma – Analysis of pooled case-control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009</a>} </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 5856, "author": "Refractor", "author_id": 3613, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/3613", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Exposure to ionizing radiation, such as from x-rays, is known to increase the risk of cancer. However, although many studies have examined the potential health effects of non-ionizing radiation from radar, microwave ovens, cell phones, and other sources, there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk <a href=\"http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/scenihr_o_041.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">(1)</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>Source</strong>: <a href=\"http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet#q2\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet#q2</a></p>\n\n<p>You might find my answer to <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/5847/is-wi-fi-harmful-to-ones-health\">this question</a> helpful.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/26", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/45/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 44, "author": "Shokhet", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The <a href=\"http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/guide/type-1-diabetes-cause\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">short answer</a> is that Type 1 diabetes is an <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">autoimmune disease</a>, a disease that is caused by the body's own immune system attacking and destroying insulin-producing cells, called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_cell\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">beta cells</a> (which are located in the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islets_of_Langerhans\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">islets of Langerhans</a>).1</p>\n\n<p>What, exactly, kicks off this autoimmune response <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_1#Cause\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">is as yet unclear</a>. Some options are <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20432533\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">genes</a>, and different components of the environment, like <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v3/n4/full/ni0402-338.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">viruses</a>, and certain <a href=\"http://hazmap.nlm.nih.gov/category-details?id=6918&amp;table=copytblagents\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">chemicals</a> and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptozotocin\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">drugs</a>.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>According to diabetes professional <a href=\"https://twitter.com/darthskeptic\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">@darthskeptic</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>That candy won't give you diabetes.</p>\n \n <p>Unless it's molded into a blade, hardened, sharpened, then used to\n remove your pancreas.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(<em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/darthskeptic/status/508508744100347904\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">6 Sep 2014</a></em>)</p>\n\n<p>See <a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/q/51/49\">Is there evidence that eating too much sugar can increase the risk of diabetes?</a> for info on Type 2 Diabetes.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>1 Funny what I could have told you as a five-year-old</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 542, "author": "kenorb", "author_id": 114, "author_profile": "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/114", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>Introduction</h3>\n\n<p>Diabetes is a lifelong condition that causes a person's blood sugar (glucose) level to become too high.</p>\n\n<p>There are two types of diabetes:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Type 1</strong> (previously known as insulin-dependent, juvenile or childhood-onset) – where the pancreas doesn't produce any insulin (10% of all diabetes, often inherited/genetic)</li>\n<li><strong>Type 2</strong> – where the pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin or the body’s cells don't react to insulin</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It's very important to be diagnosed as soon as possible, as it can get progressively worse if left untreated.</p>\n\n<p>Type 1 diabetes can develop at any age (usually before age of 40), particularly in childhood (that's why it's called juvenile).</p>\n\n<h3>Causes of type 1 diabetes</h3>\n\n<p>Type 1 diabetes is an <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease\" rel=\"noreferrer\">autoimmune condition</a> which arise from an autoimmune disease or virus infection<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11919574\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2002</a> and as a result of the body's pancreas is unable to produce insulin to be converted into energy and without insulin your body will break down its own fat and muscle, resulting in weight loss. In other words glucose can't be moved out of your bloodstream into your cells.</p>\n\n<p>The main cause of type 1 diabetes is unknown<a href=\"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs312/en/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">WHO</a>. However a number of theories explains that cause may be one of the following:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>genetic susceptibility,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Balance between regulatory and effector T cells determines disease risk, timing of disease activation, and disease tempo<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20432533\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2010</a>.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p>a diabetogenic trigger (such as virus infection<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11919574\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2002</a>),</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Evidence is emerging that insulin-producing beta cells are highly susceptible to acute infection by <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxsackievirus\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Coxsackie virus</a> if their production of interferon is inhibited, resulting in diabetes. Coxsackie B viruses (CVBs) have been implicated in human diabetes and can induce diabetes in animal models, which provides a strong basis for virus involvement<a href=\"http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v3/n4/full/ni0402-338.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Nature</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This relationship is currently being studied further.</p></li>\n<li><p>environmental<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17941471\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2007</a> (such as exposure to an antigen<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16306330\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2005</a>).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Other factors possibly playing a role in modifying the development of the disease are vaccinations, psychological stress and climatological factors.</p>\n \n <p>It may partly explain why the disease incidence increased has so much in the last three decades despite markedly improved hygiene and health care standards.<a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17941471\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2007</a></p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Read more:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Diabetes-type1/Pages/Introduction.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Introduction</a> &amp; <a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Diabetes-type1/Pages/Causes.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Causes of type 1 diabetes</a> at NHS</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_1\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Diabetes mellitus type 1</a> at Wikipedia</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://health.stackexchange.com/questions/43", "https://health.stackexchange.com", "https://health.stackexchange.com/users/49/" ]