Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles

• Add advice on how to incorporate the psychological, emotional, and social effects of health problems into articles.
  • should be infused throughout
  • may need some subsections, e.g., reaction to a life-threatening diagnosis
  • I support this one—and not just because I'm a psychologist! ;-) ... We have had discussion about this topic before. Let's link to such archived discussions, e.g., this one from 2008. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 14:36, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
• Add advice on how to present costs.
  • accuracy ("the wholesale list price in Ruritania in 2017 according to Alice", not "the price")
  • WP:MEDMOS2020 results
  • any recommended metrics, such as cost effectiveness, cost per DALY averted, etc.
• Add statement about gender-neutral language.
  • Avoid unexpected neutrality for subjects very strongly associated with one biological sex (e.g., pregnancy, menstruation, and ovarian cancer affect "women"; prostate cancer and orchiditis affect "men") but encourage gender neutrality for all others (e.g., heart disease)?
  • Defer to MOS for any individual person.
• Reading levels
•  Done How to talk about suicide-related content (e.g., the "committed" RFC)
  • I've added a statement about the word "commit", and alternative phrasings. Bibeyjj (talk) 12:10, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
• Clarify how to include "evolution" in anatomy articles (suggest under "Development" subheading). Bibeyjj (talk) 18:52, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
• (Your idea here)

According to International Federation of Associations of Anatomists, proper latin names should be capitalized (and in italics), for example Rectus femoris muscle, but I don't see that in the wikipedia articles. Lmalena (talk) 15:54, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this note.

@Andrew Dalby, do you know whether "proper latin names" means proper nouns (Rectus femoris muscle is not a proper noun) or if it means something like "all properly translated Latin names"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing @Lmalena Thanks for pinging me. I can't help much, and Lmalena doesn't (I think) link to the exact page where this rule is stated. I didn't know it, but I would love to see it, because I'm always looking for official websites on which rules for scientific Latin are given, and I didn't know till now that modern anatomists have rules like this: now I do know!

As we know, in botanical Latin there is a rather similar rule for genus and species names (both must be italicized, the genus name must have an initial capital, the species name must not). This rule is indeed followed by people writing in other languages when they give botanical Latin names in text. Evidently the anatomists are aiming at the same thing. The meaning, therefore, must be "properly defined Latin anatomical terms". Andrew Dalby 21:02, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

This document: https://www.ifaa.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IFAA-RAT-Document-1-FIPAT-Chair-edit-220620.pdf contains the word "proper". I don't see anything on the website about capitalization, but perhaps I've used the wrong search terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, for what I understand it was originally something that was done before with all latin composite words (as biological species, or anatomical terms, or some legal terms too). A proper name is the formal/official name of an organ. It is always in latin, to avoid the variation in different translations. Lmalena (talk) 22:48, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Where is the source (e.g., the exact webpage) in which the IFAA says that the Latin names should be capitalized? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm not finding any rule on uppercase or capital letters. PMID 38492195 (available via Wikipedia Library) gives examples in lower case. -- Colin°^Talk 07:49, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

There's another bit of drama at the old dramaboard over the phrase committed suicide. I'm finding that the selective quotation of the beginning of a sentence in MOS:SUICIDE grates on me. I'm contemplating this change:

• "The phrase committed suicide is not banned on the English Wikipedia..."
• "The phrase committed suicide is neither recommended nor banned on the English Wikipedia..."

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Too many people don't understand "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." -- Colin°^Talk 08:02, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I like the suggestion; it's more neutral. milladrive (talk) 01:09, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

There being support for this and no objections for over a month, I've made this change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi, this is about recent edits to Effects of pornography. Correlations which have been found are rather low (below of explaining 7% of the variation). In some cases, only 0.01% or 0.04% of variation got explained. Please advise what to do in respect to WP:MEDSAY. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:59, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

If the effect is generally accepted to exist (e.g., you are finding this information in a textbook or a review article, not something that's merely "One study found..."), and the effect size is small, then just say that the effect is real but small (or very small). If the effect can only be found in a primary source, then it should probably be removed entirely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:34, 8 October 2025 (UTC)