Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Osteopathic medicine in the United States/1

Osteopathic medicine in the United States edit

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Delisted. Real4jyy (talk) 04:35, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This 2007 listing has two problems:

Significant uncited material in the International practice rights section, violating GA criterion 2b), and
A lack of updated material, resulting in citations from the early 2000s or earlier being described as current. I'm not sure if the information has to meet WP:MEDRS as its not strictly WP:BMI, but a lack of updates means the article violates both GA criteria 3 and 4. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29, do you have any reason to believe that the profession has materially changed in the last 15–20 years? (I don't, but perhaps you know more about it than I do.) If nothing's actually changed, then I don't understand why the date on the citation would affect whether the article addresses the main topic, stays focused on that topic, and complies with NPOV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing, the article talks in 2000s-voice extensively about how the differences between osteopathic and other disciplines of medicines have decreased (There is currently a debate within the osteopathic community over the feasibility of maintaining osteopathic medicine as a distinct entity within US health care sourced to nine citations, none later than 2008; The president of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine commented on the current climate of crisis within the profession sourced to a 2009 source; However, the proportion of osteopathic students choosing primary care fields, like that of their MD peers, is declining. Currently, only one in five osteopathic medical students enters a family medicine residency (the largest primary care field) sourced to two sources from 2005). The article also talks about how this change was very recent (in 2007): In 2004, only 32% of osteopathic seniors planned careers in any primary care field; this percentage was down from a peak in 1996 of more than 50%.

So to take this to its logical conclusion: either the trends evident in 2007 have continued or they have stopped. There is not, however, evidence of either in the article. Can you really therefore say that the article addresses the main aspects of the topic or is neutral, when it actively or passively ignores the last fifteen years of what by all accounts was a fundamental threat to the profession in 2007? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:28, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delist. Another example would be a section about "Attitudes" cited entirely to 1998 and 2005 (and overquoting). The Research emphasis section and the Primary care sections certainly should be updated.
There are MOS:CURRENT issues everywhere (eg, "At the same time, recent studies show an increasingly positive attitude of patients and physicians (MD and DO) towards the use of manual therapy as a valid, safe, and effective treatment modality", recent being cited to 2002 is poor prose, and this is found throughout. But I don't know if that problem is an issue at GA-level (not that familiar with what GA expects, but if the datedness is a concern, most of the medicine GAs are in the same boat).
More importantly, there is considerable uncited text throughout; even if the uncited or content cited to dated sources is correct, this article does not meet GA standards based on the uncited text alone. And the overquoting throughout means the article does not rise to the expected prose standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia, the Wikipedia:Good article criteria explicitly says that GAs must comply with the MOS pages on "lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation" and no others. Violations of MOS:CURRENT are consequently irrelevant for decisions about whether to list or de-list. It would, of course, be a better article if it complied with all of the MOS pages, but it can be a Good Article™ without doing so.

The uncited paragraphs, of course, do not comply with the recently amended rules about citing ~everything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I know that part ... which is why I said the vagueness in the text as a result of MOS:CURRENT is a prose problem. The text is meaningless without an as of date. How we can say something is current or recent when it's not (or at least needs checking)? How can an article be "good" if it misleads readers? Maybe these issues don't occur in other content areas, but in biomedicine topics, they do matter, and if that's what a "good article" can do, then (as I've said before), I truly don't understand what GA is or means, at least in the biomedical or any dynamic topic (perhaps not a problem on more static topics, whatever those may be). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Articles can be good without being Good™, and they can be Good™ without being good. (AIUI readers are almost completely unaware of the little green GA icons, so they are not relying on this designation.)

Renaming GA to something like Wikipedia:Articles that, in the opinion of a single human, meet six specific criteria, which suggests they are probably better than most articles but you wouldn't necessarily want to call them 'good' because there is definitely room for improvement, especially since they're not required to comply with all of the policies and guidelines, some of which are obviously important might give editors a clearer idea of what the process is really supposed to achieve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
LOL, well anyway, uncited text, and I don't think dated text should qualify for a GA. If that means I'm wrong, the process has Coords now, and they'll have to earn their big bucks and ignore my "delist". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might be misunderstanding "fundamental threat to the profession" re. primary care -- primary care means a specific subset of medical specialities, the exact same that are less popular amongst graduating MDs in the past couple decades as well, that DOs were and still are markedly overrepresented in compared to MDs. My impression is that the trends described (DO educations becoming more like MD educations, DOs not being 100% locked into primary care all the time in every circumstance but still much more likely to match to it than MDs) have continued. I'm not sure how to source it. Vaticidalprophet 20:00, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's just the thing. I don't have any reason to believe that the situation has changed. @AirshipJungleman29, you say that the bit about "the feasibility of maintaining osteopathic medicine as a distinct entity" is sourced to 2008, and surely things have changed because it's been a whole 15 years since then. That sounds reasonable on the surface, but I'm remembering that this debate was going on in the 1960s (and perhaps before then, but I know that in the 1960s, California told all the DOs they could legally become MDs if they wanted to, and nearly all of them wanted to, which triggered the same doomsday thinking among DOs), so if it hadn't resolved in the half-century between the 1960s and the 2000s, why should it have been resolved in the 15 years since then, especially since we've spent the last few years distracted by a pandemic?

If you want current statistics, then https://osteopathic.org/about/aoa-statistics/ has the newest numbers, but I'm not sure that they're directly comparable. For example, it says that last year, 57% of DOs were matched to primary care residency programs, but "seniors planned" (=the stat in the article) and "seniors actually got" (=the stat in the report) are different things, and primary care (=57% in the report) is much bigger than family medicine (=20% in the article), but these are also different things. So, have the numbers changed? Probably, but maybe not materially. It's hard to tell at a glance whether these differences are important, or just the usual year-to-year variation (maybe with a bit of pandemic chaos thrown on top).

Overall, I think that recent sources give editors confidence that the article is (probably) neutral (i.e., that it fairly reflects the current views of sources), but if the underlying facts haven't changed materially, then spamming in a fancier citation is just so much window dressing. The article says about 20% of DOs go into family medicine; if that is still true, then the article is accurate and neutral regardless of whether the little blue clicky number leads you to a source from ten years ago or ten hours ago. It's ultimately the facts that matter, not the citation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have a pretty strong impression from, like, Student Doctor Network that the situation on the ground has changed (at least, people still made "should I go DO or Caribbean?" threads in 2007 that could go either way, and ten years later the conclusion was always "what the hell, absolutely DO, there's no possible dispute about this"). I don't think {{cite sdn thread}} would go down very well, though. Vaticidalprophet 23:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That California dispute is outlined in the article, WhatamIdoing. The article says about 20% of DOs go into family medicine; if that is still true, then the article is accurate and neutral regardless of whether the little blue clicky number leads you to a source from ten years ago or ten hours ago. Sure. Is it true? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:46, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently it is true. https://www.aafp.org/students-residents/residency-program-directors/national-resident-matching-program-results.html says 22.2% for the most recent round. The article says "about one in five", and 22.2% is fairly described as "about one in five".

Did you try to find sources to answer your question, or were you just hoping that someone would do it for you? I strongly doubt that anyone is going to clean up the article for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:48, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, WhatamIdoing, as I have little knowledge of medical terminology, sources, or the US medical school system, I was indeed hoping that you would be able to answer my question and help improve the article. I have a further couple, if you don't mind; to quote that source "the percentage of DO students matching to family medicine (22.2%) continues to decline steadily"—do we know what it is declining steadily from? Presumably it was more than one in five (and incidentally it contradicts "the proportion of osteopathic students choosing primary care fields... is declining"). Also, is "the number of DO seniors matching to family medicine reached a record high" relevant? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The number of DO students has gone up over the last couple of decades. This makes it possible to have both a reduced percentage and a higher absolute number.

If you are interested in this, I suggest that you spend some time with your favorite web search engine. That's what I would have to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I would keep GA status. The needed revisions seems minor, but should be addressed. Rytyho usa (talk) 16:17, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have reopened per SandyGeorgia's concerns, which I share. Apologies for stepping on your toes, Airshipjungleman, but I think further discussion/improvement is needed here. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:39, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't want to have to mar the article with maintenance tags, but I was quite surprised to see it closed as a Keep without further independent review, so did some cleanup and tagging; I maintain some hope that this is not representative of GA standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The other concern I have is that this article is quite typical of the state of most of the medical GAs, and I am still hoping we're not saying this kind of work is GA standard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm kind of involved as I reopened this, but for the record I am in favor of a delist in light of the numerous citation needed instances in the article at present. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:41, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.