Template:Unreliable medical source/doc

Usage

This template is intended to be used when a statement about medicine or health (including veterinary, psychiatric, etc.) is sourced but it is questionable whether the source used is medically reliable for supporting the statement. It produces a superscripted notation like the following:

The treatment is definitely effective.

Articles tagged with this template will be categorized into Category:All articles lacking reliable references.

Place this template inline, following the questionable claim (and any punctuation attached to it). The template should be placed outside the reference (<ref> ... </ref>), within the article's text:

Potentially controversial statement.<ref>some alleged source for this</ref>{{Unreliable medical source|date=October 2021}} Next sentence.

When to use and not use this template

This template should be used to express doubt about the credibility of a source for a medical claim.

This tag should not be used on unreliably sourced contentious statements about living persons; if the source is not reliable, the statement should be removed immediately.

For whole articles or article sections that rely on poor medical sources, considering using the banner template or , respectively, rather than individually tagging a large number of statements.

For sources promoting non-medical [[WP:FRINGE|fringe theories and pseudo-science}}, the variant template can be used.

For sources unreliable for reasons other than promotion of dubious scientific claims, the more general template can be used.

This tag should not be used to indicate that the sourced material could not be found within a given source. In that case, is a better template. For statements that have failed verification and have a questionable would-be source, consider removal of the source (and possibly the statement) over using both tags.

Parameters

The template has the following optional parameters:

• date: should be set to the month and year when the article was tagged. Example:
• reason: a note explaining why you think the source is unreliable as per WP:MEDRS. Displays as a tool tip. Keep it short (one sentence) as longer material belongs on the talk page. It is good to reiterate the reason in your edit summary. Example:
• sure or certain: if set to "y" or "yes" will remove the question mark from the template's output to denote a degree of certainty that the source is unreliable. Please use this with a reason parameter, and only after a good faith attempt to verify the reliability of the source in question. Example:

See also

Inline templates

• , for requesting a citation to a medically reliable source instead of or in addition to a non-medical one already present
• , same as above, except it highlights the text that needs a medical reference
• , an alternative to ; especially useful for tagging sources that are low-quality but not necessarily wrong
• , for when a source has been surpassed by more recent works
• , for non-medical pseudo-science sourcing
• , for unreliable but non-fringe sources
• , for non-medical misuse of primary source material
• , for questionable claims that seem unlikely to be properly sourceable
• , stronger than dubious, may indicate sources in conflict with each other

More templates

• , a banner template for flagging an entire article or section as relying on poor (or no) medical sources for medical claims
• , a note for user talk pages with links to WP:MEDRS
• , a banner template for flagging entire article or section as needing better sourcing generally
• , a banner for placing on an article's talk page
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup/Verifiability and sources
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles