Wikipedia:Peer review/Aspirin/archive1

Aspirin

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article shows a lot of promise, but it's not even certified as a good article. While I think it could make the good article criteria as it is, I don't see any reason not to work on it more than that. What do you think this article would need to be a successful FAC? An automated peer review suggested the table of contents be shortened, and that the article be shrunk by moving some content to separate articles, but I'm not sure which sections I should do this to (if I even should). Also, some other users have said that the article is under-cited - does anyone have any recommendations as to where I could find reliable sources for this article?

Thanks, CrazyChemGuy (talk) 22:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, it seems Aspirin#Adverse_effects contains heavy use of statistics from the studies cited. Would it be beneficial to reword the section to omit much of the statistical data (eg. "Patients 18 years of age or above were chosen from the United Kingdom Research Database from 2000 to 2005. Out of 4,028 cases of gastrointestinal bleeding 53% had used a combination of over the counter drugs (2007). When using a combination of antiplatelets and anticoagulents there was 1 in 8 chance of increased risk of gastric irritation" ) and reword it as simply the results of the study, in this case, something along the lines of"Aspirin has been shown to cause blood loss[ref]", like what is seen more in Paracetamol#Comparison_with_NSAIDs? CrazyChemGuy (talk) 21:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Itub

• The "Central effects" section is repetitive. Both paragraphs say almost the same thing.
• Some duplication throughout the article, which may be excessive (I'll leave it up to the interested editors to decide). For example, Reye's syndrome is mentioned in four places: lead, contraindications, dosage, and pediatrics.
• Substantial lack of references in the section on contraindications.
• Some sections are dangerously close to the "instruction manual/medical advice" style which should be avoided. The section on gastrointestinal complaints even has some imperative phrasing: "To avoid gastrointestinal complaints take aspirin in an enteric coated form."
• Some references missing in the section about the mechanism of action, particularly regarding selective COX-2 inhibitors.
• Most of the section on interactions needs references. For example, the interaction with alcohol, mentioned twice in the article, has no source.
• The synthesis section could use a reference regarding the first step.
• Inconsistent referencing. Some places have a year in parenthesis as a reference, which may be a vestige of an earlier version of the article using Harvard style. There are also a couple of numbers in parenthesis ((42) and (43)) which may be attempts at referring again to an existing reference, and which may be wrong due to changes in the reference numbers. This should be corrected to use the <ref name="whatever" /> syntax.
• Content omission: the article has no information on production and sales figures. How many tonnes per year are made and where? What are the annual sales, or the consumption per capita?

If the article is to be shortened, perhaps on option is to summarize the mechanism of action and spin it out into its own article. The section on adverse effects is also a bit long and perhaps can be made more concise. But I'm not sure that spinning it out into adverse effects of aspirin would work (sounds almost like a POV fork...).

Hope this helps. --Itub (talk) 10:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Another section that could be made more concise is the history section, as there is an article about it already. Just make sure that anything that gets deleted is already included in history of aspirin. For example, I think the dispute about the early syntheses is not covered by history of aspirin. --Itub (talk) 11:01, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Another comment: some sentences seem to editorialize without any source, using statements such as "note that...". For example, "These results may be contested, however, as there is currently no accepted method of determining who resistant and who is not." (contested by whom?). "It should be pointed out, however, that this research is not complete, and there is currently no well-established medical recommendation on the use of aspirin or other NSAIDs for use in the treatment or prevention of cancer." (Who says this is not complete or well-established?). See WP:WTA for general suggestions. --Itub (talk) 11:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the great suggestions! I'm going to discuss splitting the mechanism of action section into it's own article on aspirin's talk page, and work on some of your other suggestions in the mean time.CrazyChemGuy (talk) 21:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Casliber

• Ok, the lead focusses alot on indications. It should be more general - add in when isolated, and from where (willow tree link etc.) and since when it has been reularly used. Congeal indications into one paragraph.

• By 1899, Bayer had dubbed this drug Aspirin as was selling it around the world. - err, something wrong here. Something removed as sentence doesn't make sense.

The text has a lot of redundancies, but it looks promising overall. I need to sleep now but will try and trim some text down tomorrow.