Template:Did you know nominations/Eluru outbreak

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by BlueMoonset (talk) 22:16, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
Withdrawn per request by nominator.

Eluru outbreak

  • Comment: First DYK. Thanks in advance for reviewing!

Created by MSG17 (talk). Self-nominated at 00:33, 12 December 2020 (UTC).

  • The article is new enough, long enough and within policy. The hooks satisfy format. However, neither hook sounds like it will be interesting enough to a broad audience. Indeed, I can't - yet - see any single line in this whole article that will be interesting enough on its own i. e. as a hook, despite the general good quality. At best, I'd prefer the original hook can be modified to just "... that water chlorination measures taken to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in Andhra Pradesh may have caused a new illness?" However, the substance of the hook is dynamic - chlorination 'might' be the reason, and that information is susceptible to change. For now it's a . Regards, Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 02:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Unfornuately, I don't see any other statements that would work for a hook right now. However, I can modify the first hook to less subject to change:
  • This way, whether or not this is confirmed as the cause or even if the cause is still not confirmed, this hook is applicable. MSG17 (talk) 03:24, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
@MSG17 and Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI: Hi MSG17, welcome to DYK. Given that this is an article about an epidemic, it falls under the WP:MEDRS guideline, meaning that all statements about health or medical topics need to be cited to medical journal review articles or government health agencies. Popular media articles, even from otherwise reliable sources, are not acceptable for these topics. Unfortunately, none of the current sources are considered reliable medical sources.
In addition, the hooks about water chlorination are questionable, as water chlorination isn't clearly the same as "chlorine used for sanitation" mentioned in the source, nor does it seem to be the primary suspected cause. It's a good effort, but this article will need to be substantially rewritten in order to be within policy. I'm not sure if you have a scientific background, but if you're unsure how to find medical sources we can ping the WP:MED project to try to get someone to help out. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 08:10, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
I see, I didn't know about this. Thanks. I will look for better sources and start restructuring the article. MSG17 (talk) 00:13, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
@John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): Ok, so I did some looking on the NIH, JSTOR, Google Scholar and AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) websites and didn't see any papers on the recent outbreak (which has apparently been confirmed to be due to contaminated water and food according to the popular media). Can you help me find or get in touch with WP:MED so we can see if there are any medical-grade sources? MSG17 (talk) 02:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
I made a post here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Help needed with Eluru outbreak. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
This is a difficult issue. The article is about a very recent outbreak of an unidentified disease, so is much less likely to have published scholarly papers available as sources. PubMed has nothing, and there is nothing available on https://www.aiims.edu/ which I would have expected to have some statement if any were made. I think that you're going to have to go ahead with the news sources, but take extreme care not to make any biomedical claims. Just in my own opinion, it should be acceptable to report the number of people affected and other statistics, and to explicitly quote expert opinions, as long as they are clearly attributed and avoid too much speculation. I strongly recommend against making any speculative medical claims in the hook. I'd suggest something neutral like:
  • ALT3: ... over 600 people were taken ill from a mystery disease during the Eluru outbreak in Andhra Pradesh?
As and when good medical sources become available, the article should be updated from them. --RexxS (talk) 15:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I think that is a better hook now that the outbreak seems to have subsided and reports have came out stating a different cause (according only to popular media however). MSG17 (talk) 23:25, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
@MSG17: I think User:RexxS generally has a good approach, though I'm not sure if one can write an article about a disease outbreak without any biomedical claims at all. If a public health agency or official is quoted in a popular news articles, that's still not ideal. You'd have to use phrases like "according to X" or "it was reported that" quite a lot. Anything from non-public health officials should be omitted, or explicitly discussed as speculation if it seems to be notable for some other reason. I'll have another look at it once you've reworked it. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 04:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Honestly, I don't think this will be studied for a while, if at all. I searched PMC and WHO and didn't find any results. Quite frankly, I am also tired of working on this page. I will withdraw this nomination. I have found another topic with a lot more research, however, that I am planning to write about and possibly submit here if there is enough info.MSG17 (talk) 01:55, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Marking this nomination for closure as per the withdrawal notice from the nominator above. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:22, 31 December 2020 (UTC)