Talk:Supervised injection site

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jessica Tran, Yuna.song (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Yuna.song.

"Three of these analysts were well-published authors..." and other outsourced claims

Up until present, this paragraph was present in the article:

"The Drug Free Australia team included an epidemiologist, an addiction medicine practitioner, social researchers and a senior welfare practitioner. Three of these analysts were well-published authors of research papers in 20 different peer-reviewed medical journals. They released their findings to the media and to politicians, leading to a robust debate in Australia regarding the effectiveness of aspects of the Sydney MSIC."

Three sources was used. One was a blog reproducing an excerpt from Daily Telegraph. It could possibly be used for "The Drug Free Australia team included an epidemiologist, an addiction medicine practitioner, social researchers and a senior welfare practitioner" as it do state the authors credentials. However, then the blog then goes on to a letter to the editor by Ingrid van Beek criticizing that DFA's report is used to prove the failed nature of the experiment "despite a range of health professionals respectfully pointing out the various flaws in its [the DFA report] extrapolations over the past several years."

Another was ABC's Lingua Franca with a program called "Graeme Turner on the Rhetoric of Alan Jones" and reading trough the transcript I can't find anything that do corroborate anything in the Wikipedia article at all. The show goes on to criticize the rhetoric of Alan Jones, who is critical of Sydney MSIC. It is argued that his eight minutes of ranting over the theme that "politicians and academia [are] fabricating evidence to protect themselves, their reputations and their agenda" are a typical propaganda stunt and that it becomes hard, if not impossible for the defenders of Sydney MSIC that he later introduced to his show to make any valid point in that context.

The third was a parliament debate over Sydney MSIC. It was dubious at best and that it supports that claim that DFA's report was "leading to a robust debate" takes quite alot of imagination. It is true that DFA was qouted in the debate, but it is also true that DFA where said to convening "misinformation to political decision makers at this crucial time", that DFA is "peddling misinformation about the center" and that the center provides "information that refutes a number of claims by Drug Free Australia" and so on. To me, a debate where the material used by members come under such criticism can't be said to be robust.

So, the first sentence can stay, the second lacks support in the sources. The first leg of the third is supported by the hansart while the second leg is not. I have now edited the article to reflect this and notes that this article needs a through factcheck. Steinberger (talk) 19:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Steinberger, first an apology for performing an 'undo' which inadvertently removed a paragraph of yours elsewhere I had no quibbles with. Secondly, I am happy to go with two quotes to illustrate a robust debate in Australia. The blog, of course, is from Piers Akerman, one of the most read journalists in the country, and it is on the Daily Telegraph site, thus conforming with Wikipedia policy. The Hansard debate does very well illustrate that there was a solid debate around Drug Free Australia's analysis, and all the mud-slinging that is done in Parliament by those politicians trying to defend their decision to open the Sydney injecting room does not for a moment change anything about my statement that it led to robust debate.110.175.209.31 (talk) 02:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The hansart is WP:PRIMARY! WP:NOR state that sources, especially primary sources, should never be interpreted. They should be conservatively summarized, if used at all. Steinberger (talk) 08:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Steinberger, there is no interpretation of the use of Hansard. I have stated that Hansard shows a debate which is a descriptive statement, not an interpretive one. Again you are trying too desperately stretching Wikipedia policy in ways that it does not intend, as per Literaturegeek's manifest concerns with your approach on the Harm Reduction Discussion page. There is clearly no new conclusion drawn from Hansard or statement in Hansard that are somehow synthetic, as Literaturegeek had observed on a very similar matter on that same Discussion page. And of course my description of there being a robust debate in Australia, for which the Hansard page is cited as one source of evidence, is a very conservative description of a primary source as you suggest Wikipedia would want. If Hansard records debates, which it does, and there are two opposing views in this obvious debate which both mention Drug Free Australia's analysis, then this has been very conservatively but very truly described as a debate. How could it be otherwise? Minphie (talk) 01:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

A debate, yes. But to call the debate a "robust" one is to evaluate it, that is to interpret and not to describe. To me a "robust debate" is a debate where the premises is agreed upon, that is not the case here, is it? So, it is not a robust debate and you are over-interpreting the source when getting to that conclusion, in the face of WP:NOR. Again. Steinberger (talk) 08:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

This article relies heavily on primary sources

The article relies heavily on the evaluations of MSIC. The problem is that they are WP:PRIMARY. EMCDDA have a systematic review from earlier this year. It is much better for usage as it is a true secondary source (and not questionable a bit, in difference to DFA's review). Steinberger (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Steinberger, I will take this preposterous claim as further evidence of tendentious editing. I cannot even give this claim the honor of clutching at straws, so ludicrous is the claim. You know as well as I that Drug Free Australia's analysis conforms entirely with the statement by Wikipedia that "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them." You will find that the Drug Free analysis references, analyses and evaluates in every case, the data of the primary MSIC evaluations. This has more the appearance of game-playing aimed at keeping evidenced text off the SIS page, with a possible motivation of censorship.110.175.209.31 (talk) 02:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Read what I written at the top again. This is not about DFA, this is about the Official evaluations - they are WP:PRIMARY as they do not summarize studies, they are rather studies in themselves. If I were to assess DFA's review I would say that it comes somewhere inbetween a secondary and a primary source. Secondary as it relies on data from other sources, primary as its analysis is so novel and its conclusions are so very contrary to the one its primary sources presents. That said, DFA's review is questionable source as its reputation in terms of accuracy and factchecking is so bad - therefor it should not be used conservatively and only with attribution.

To me it is clear that you are the one engaging in WP:Tendentious editing. Steinberger (talk) 10:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Steinberger, there is no truth to your statement here. The Drug Free Australia analysis is, as already demonstrated, securely a secondary source as per my quote reproduced from the WP:NOR page. As stated it is a secondary 'analysis' and 'evaluation' of the primary sources, which are the government-funded evaluations of the MSIC. The DFA analysis covers many aspects of these government evaluations, showing the deficiencies and errors as any decent analysis of a very flawed government evaluation will. You also record above a new allegation about accuracy and fact-checking with not a scrap of evidence to support this statement. Wikipedia is not the place for unsubstantiated mud-slinging. And of course the DFA analysis has been used with attribution as per advice previously received.

It is important now that you come up with something to back your use of a palpably untrue statement by injecting room staff cited by NSW politician, Robyn Parker, who as we have already seen was very incorrect in her statements about Drug Free Australia figures (already demonstrated in this Discussion page) and could not have substantiated her statement if asked to. I have seen nothing from you which substantiates their clearly unsubstantiated claim. You might do well to e-mail the MSIC and ask for a reference for this material. You need to substantiate your assertion with something that shows it to be true and Drug Free Australia confirms that no such refutations of their work exist, only refutations by MSIC staff of their own 2003 evaluators' figures on heroin user numbers in Kings Cross.Minphie (talk) 00:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC) 00:24, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

There is truth to my statement that the official evaluations are WP:PRIMARY. There is no truth to the fact that Parker et al not where specific. Do not insist on making that interpretation without explicit support in the sources. It does not matter that you tink otherwise, as demonstrated on this discussion page. Steinberger (talk) 15:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Addiction psycho-social rather than medical

I have reinstated sentences and citations removed by Ohiostandard who appears to have assumed that there is some kind of academic consensus that addiction is a medical issue, rather than a psycho-social one. There is no such consensus, and so Ohiostandard has no right to impose an individual belief or view on Wikipedia readers as authoritative.

Even more extraordinary is that the sentence and citation reinstated were not even remotely medical in any shape or form. European consumption rooms are not medical entities in any shape or form either, with not a nurse or a doctor to be found in most - they are a psycho-social intervention. The Sydney and Vancouver centres have medicalized one part of SIS operation, which is intervention in overdose events. In some there may be medical advice on injecting, but the rest of the intervention entails education and psycho-social supports and distribution of injecting paraphernalia. Such supports in a needle exchange setting are not perceived or promoted as medical in nature.Minphie (talk) 03:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I have again reinstated citations and text related to the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice. It has been established elsewhere that the journal is most-definitely peer-reviewed, that it is treated as a reliable source for one of the most authoritative reviews on needle exchange (see Needle Exchange Talk) and that contributors to the journal share hundreds of PubMed articles between them, making it compliant as WP:MEDRS. Added to this is that the relevant injecting room articles are largely not addressing medical data, but rather discussing data within a psycho-social context, which makes WP:MEDRS superfluous. Minphie (talk) 11:25, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

It have been discussed several times and the consensus is not that the journal is peer-reviewed. Rather the opposite. However, some - not all - think that it could be used anyway in specific situations. Second, I tried to dubble-check your statements that the editorial board are represented with several articles indexed in PubMed and did not find any on the names I picked for a try. How exaclty did you find that they had authored hundreds articles between them? Steinberger (talk) 11:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Steinberger, go to this and type dupont rl into the search box under the Search = Pubmed option. Minphie (talk) 12:05, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I have results. Checking at some though (voith ea[au]) they are all comments or letter to the editor, not studies. Steinberger (talk) 22:10, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of sources

This is what was added

Real Women of Canada, a drug prevention group, has expressed concern that there had been increasing numbers of overdose deaths in Vancouver since 2003 despite the presence of the facility.

Let look at the ref http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/coroners/publications/docs/stats-illicitdrugdeaths-1997-2007.pdf 2007 56,54,55,67,51,49,90,87,108,191,140 1997 one has to look at the first page to find the date for each column and when one does one finds that illicit drug deaths rates have fallen dramatically in Vancouver. This is supported by the next ref [1] page 46. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing resembling a misrepresentation of sources here. A correct reading of the numbers you have listed above do indeed show exactly what Real Women of Canada have asserted. Insite opened late 2003 with Vancouver on 49 deaths in 2002, increasing to 51 in 2003, and in the first full year after Insite opened deaths rose to 67 in 2004 and then tracked at higher mortality than 2002 from there on with 55 in 2005, 54 in 2006 and 56 in 2007. The crucial question is what impact Insite had. It certainly was not responsible for the lower mortality in 1999 as compared to 1998, nor for lower deaths in 2000 as compared to 1999. Likewise it is not responsible for the lowest levels in 2002. Real Women of Canada are quite correct - deaths have increased since 2002, the year before Insite was opened.Minphie (talk) 08:55, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Real Woman is not a trustworthy compiler of facts. They have an incentive not to scrutinize their analysis if it favors their view and that is why they and similar organizations never should be cited for facts on important public heath issues. The sources that we are to cite are the really reliable ones. As in this example where the Drug Prevention Network of Canada have made the same argument as Real Woman of Canada, from similar figures as it seems:

"A lawyer affiliated with the abstinence advocacy organization recently declared that drug overdose deaths in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside had increased in virtually every year since the facility opened. This claim stands in stark contrast to a recent study published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, which showed that overdose deaths around Insite had declined by 35%. How could such a discrepancy exist? The maxim that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” may apply in this instance. In citing data from the B.C. Vital Statistics agency, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada representative lumped all drug-related deaths together, including many causes of death that bear no relevance to Insite, including suicides and alcohol-related deaths. Conversely, The Lancet study systematically reviewed each recorded death and excluded those that did not apply."

— Thomas Kerr: Insite has science on its side National Post, May 30 2011

Steinberger (talk) 16:46, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

References

Drug Free Australia

Steinberger, your stated rationale for deleting text about the Expert Advisory Committee observations on Insite's research is that Drug Free Australia is not a reliable source of critique for injecting rooms. But we have been through this all before. Go to [2] and you will see that on 26 May 2010 you lodged on the WP:RSN this question "I wonder if papers and booklets published by Drug Free Australia, specifically "The Kings Cross Injecting Room - The Case for Closure" and "The Case for Closure: Detailed Evidence", can be considered reliable sources? Are they WP:SPS? Can they be used without attribution? Steinberger (talk) 10:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)" to which you got this reply:

We could use an article about this group to gather all the sources in one place. From reading [7][8][9][10], this seems to be an advocacy group, rather than a scientific research group. In fact it often criticizes scientists. It does seem to be cited in reliable sources, but always with attribution. That's what I'd recommend here. Not self published - clearly it's an established group, not just one person - but attribution required, and I'd recommend adding something like "advocacy group" or "lobbying group" by their name. --GRuban (talk) 12:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

If you go to the Drug Free Australia document cited in the text you seem keen to delete you will find on page 15 that Dr Robert DuPont, first President of the United States National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) (120+ Pubmed citations) worked with Australian epidemiologist Dr Joe Santamaria (20+ Pubmed journal articles) on the Lives Saved estimates for Drug Free Australia's 2010 analysis, which included Insite's estimates. So I have taken the advice above and added attribution to my text.

Also, you have blanked the text on the Expert Advisory Committee, which had nothing to do with your stated rationale. If it disappears again without excellent rationale for doing so I will take this issue to an Administrator. Minphie (talk) 04:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

On a topic like this we should be using source compliment with WP:MEDRS. Journals would need to be at least indexed on pubmed. Articles must be reviews, and peer reviewed. This is consensus. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:12, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

DocJames, as I have said above we have been through all this before 13 months ago on the Harm Reduction Talk page with precisely the same issues involved. LiteratureGeek advised at the time re Drug Free Australia's analysis of Safe Injection Sites[3] see Section "Support for Safe Injection Sites a Minority World View", which was being disputed by Steinberger and sockpuppet Figs Might Ply, that,

Steinberger, this article is not a pure medical article, infact it is not even 50 percent medical article in my view. It has significant, political, social as well as medical implications and involvement. WP:MEDRS, only applies for when talking about specific medical statements.... Why is this article so biased in favour of harm reduction when there is extensive controversies throughout the world? Can anyone enlighten me? I do not know who is most or least to blame for this but the article is not balanced.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:11, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

REAL Women of Canada seems to be notable enough for a criticisms section as it has its own wikipedia article and is a non-governmental organisation (NGO), although admittedly I am sure better quality sources could be found. Drug Free Australia document seemed comprehensive and from my brief look the organisation seems to be notable. This source, is a government source but was part of the revert, certainly a reliable source for a criticisms section. This source, is another reliable source but was also reverted. I have got about half way through reading the large revert of text you performed and much of it seemed to be fairly cited. For example, one source did say it costs $3,000,000 per year for their injection room and they also estimated that they save just one life per year. That is a huge amount of money and not statistically significant outcome, 1 life saved, a very valid criticism, why did you revert it? It was not WP:SYN or original research and Health Canada is not a partisan source as claimed. Almost all sources it can be argued are partisan, the idea of WP:NPOV is to report all of the notable viewpoints and allow the facts to speak for themselves. I could think of a lot of drug and alcohol services who could do immense benefit to society with 3 million dollars.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:24, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

You should not be mass reverting these content additions but rather if other views exist then add them for balance. If the content section gets too big then we can always split it off into a new article called harm reduction controversy.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:32, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason to be reverting text that is evidenced and from reliable sources as defined above. Again, you will have seen that there is no possible rationale for excluding Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice as well, seeing as an e-mail from the Editor has been reproduced categorically stating the journal is peer-reviewed, along with her e-mail address and the request that she be contacted directly by anyone wanting to revert text on that basis so they can confirm it for themselves. Given the issues discussed above there is no justifiable rationale for reverting text for this article. Minphie (talk) 21:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

JGDPP still isn't a reliable or admissible source

Minphie, I'm going to try to explain this as clearly as possible, one last time. If someone puts up a web site and calls it a medical journal it's up to the medical research community to decide whether it is one or not. It's not up to politicians to make that determination, nor to governments or quasi-governmental bodies (so subject to political influences), nor to any kind of advocacy group. It's up to the medical research community.

The medical research community doesn't mail in ballots to make that determination, and it doesn't get on a massive conference call and debate the issue. It votes by citing the articles in the candidate publication... or in the case of the so-called Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice it votes by not citing its articles.

Go read about the standard metrics that are used to quantify this "voting by citations" process: impact factor or SCImago Journal Rank, h-index, and about citation indexing databases. I'll even point you toward an interface that accesses Scopus to provide citation metrics for JGDPP; it's here. Study that target page carefully and then come back here and tell me how many times it says any article in JGDPP has been cited by papers written by wholly independent researchers publishing in legitimate journals. Hint, look for the number "1" in the panel at the left of the screen when you scroll down. That's right: The Scopus citation database says JGDPP has been cited by a legitimate academic publication exactly one time since they began indexing it in January, 2009.

I couldn't find any citation database provider besides Scopus that bothers to index JGDPP; Thomson-Reuters doesn't, PubMed doesn't, & etc. ( If I didn't make it clear before, the Scimagojr user interface I pointed you to above employs Scopus data as the back end. ) But since Scopus only began indexing the publication on January 1, 2009, it makes sense to use Google Scholar to try to catch any citations to JGDPP that might have been made in legitimate journals from 2007, when the JGDPP began, through the end of 2008. That's a somewhat labor-intensive process; but it's made easier by the fact that Google Scholar's article ranking and selection algorithm returns only eight JGDPP articles at the time I'm writing this. I presume that's because Google's algorithm is excluding JGDPP papers that aren't cited by other academic publications unless they have some other claim to fame, as the "HOPE" "article" does, btw. In other words, I presume Google Scholar doesn't recognize content on the pages of unknown web sites as being an academic paper unless what looks like e.g. an article title appears in some fairly standard citation format on a foreign web site, or unless the page reaches salience by being the target of links from legitimate academic or reference sites.

But look! Google Scholar's result set for JGDPP shows that those eight articles have a grand total of 17 citations among them. That's not wholly pathetic, since JGDPP has only published something like (iirc my count correctly) 100 articles since it began in 2007, right? Well, no. Unless Google Scholar's algorithm missed some additional JGDPP papers that actually were cited by other journals, that result of 17 cites listed really is pathetic.

Why? Because unlike the very sophisticated Scopus citation indexing database, which found JGDPP was cited only once in the two year interval between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010, Google Scholar pulls in a great deal of "chaff" with the "wheat". You have to actually dig into the details and examine each of those 17 entries individually to weed out the self-citations, the citations that appear in self-published works, the citations in prestigious journals that were made only to disparage the JGDPP, & etc.

Completion of that somewhat laborious process confirms that the Scopus results for the two-year interval since the database began indexing JGDPP were not a mistake. Scopus found JGDPP had been cited only once during those two years. Likewise, and assuming the Google Scholar result set covers all 4+ years JGDPP has been in existence, all but two of Google Scholar's 17 candidate citations evaporate when you examine them. So unless there's been some monumental error in the review process I've described here, which I rather doubt, JGDPP appears to have been cited by the legitimate academic community just twice over its entire publication history. That's it, that's the total for the entire "journal". And since I don't have ready access to the full text of the source documents where those two citations of JGDPP occur, it's a possibility that even those two citations were made to only to disparage the publication.

The Google Scholar entry for the Kall "review" article about needle exchange programmes and HIV that you were championing a short while ago at RSN, for example, shows 4 citations at the time I'm writing this. But when you look just a little more closely at the details of those 4 you see that in one Kall is citing herself, in another Kall's JGDPP editor, Eric Voth, is citing Kall in one of his ubiquitous letters to the editors of legitimate publications, one is cited merely to repudiate Kall, and the last candidate citation is just a duplicate "come on" page-not-found link that appears to be gaming Google's search algorithm to drive traffic to a paywalled site. Of the four candidate citations Google Scholar returned, not one confers the least shadow of legitimacy.

If you're interested in disputing any of these data or the conclusions that follow from it, Minphie, please don't try to do that with a wall of arguments. Just come back here with some reasonable list of legitimate, independent, cites to JGDPP that occur in mainstream, well-accepted journals. We'll have nothing more to talk about re JGDPP as an admissible source if you can't do that. I'll be quite surprised if you can, though: Based on what I've been able to determine, it appears to me that you're scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel by trying to push opinions from this advocacy publication onto Wikipedia. Since the legitimate academic community takes no notice of JGDPP except to criticize it, there's certainly no reason that Wikipedia articles should take it seriously or admit it to the discussion either.

If the conclusions you're so eager to promote here are correct, JGDPP won't have a corner on the market. The same conclusions will also appear in articles published by legitimate, established, respected journals, and you'll need to find them. But out of all the possible sources available to Wikipedia, there's absolutely no reason anyone here should resort to dragging in anything published by JGDPP.

Finally, and for the last time, legitimate medical journals: (1) Don't serve as a captive publication outlet for their controlling editors and organizational members (e.g. Voth and Kall, respectively ); (2) Do commit themselves to scientific neutrality rather than to advocacy; (3) Don't put up token submission instructions and claims to peer-review only because they've been publicly criticized for lacking those niceties, nor do they do so only years after their inception, and (4) Do receive supportiing citations in other legitimate medical journals, rather than just being cited to be disparaged.

By the way, you said at RSN recently that Eric A. Voth who founded one of JGDPP's out-of-thin air antecedents and was the publications first Chief Editor, has 25+ papers on PubMed. He doesn't; you have to look at the details. Two-thirds of his PubMed list of 25 articles aren't articles at all; they're just very brief letters to the editor criticizing other people's articles from a drug interdiction POV. ( He must have written hundreds of such letters to get so many published. ) He's first or sole author on just six actual papers, and that includes two published in 1992 in Kansas Medicine. He's also listed as second author on three more papers. None of his papers comprise any kind of scientific experiment at all, incidentally; they're all editorial commentary or practice surveys or reviews of other's work. Let me know if you'd like the actual list.

Oh, and I'm reverting your most recent restoration of content from Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice. If you want to post any of the conclusions it presents you'll have to find them in a legitimate journal, one that the medical research community accepts. You've singlehandedly drained far too much time and attention from editors here by unilaterally insisting on your POV; I for one not will allow you to take up any more of my time in that way. If we need to escalate this, as you intimated above, then so be it.  – OhioStandard (talk) 10:03, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

OhioStandard, the comments attributed to the university academic Dr Garth Davies on the SIS page meet all the requirements of deriving from a reliable source. The cited report by Davies is one of four which was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and which verifiably entered the public arena via the RCMP’s submission of this and an alternate Insite report by another academic, Dr Colin Mangham, to the Canadian government, which then became the academic basis of the government’s opposition to Insite. Your concerns above about the JGDPP are only incidental to the issue of whether Davies’ or Mangham’s reports are reliable sources, because their history, importance and academic sourcing already qualifies them as reliable sources for Wikipedia. The fact that these reports appear a year later in a peer-reviewed journal is of no import to their already established nature as sources.

Not that this is now important, but issue can be taken with your text above regarding the JGDPP. Over at the Needle-exchange programme discussion page we previously clarified that the latest review of needle exchange effectiveness reviews relies on a JGDPP review as one of its most rigorous reviews reviewed (if you understand the double language of a ‘review of reviews’). In other words the JGDPP review is a central review. And there are other citations of JGDPP in the literature, such as here or here or here (these are just citations for Garth Davies only, not for other articles in the journal). Nor does the Wikipedia descriptions of what constitutes a reliable source require your hierarchy of citation frequency in other sources, so this needs to be put aside. The requirement is that sources be published, ‘in print or online’ by reliable authors and peer-reviewed (and even this is not absolute). Checks on other citations are to ensure that the publication is mainstream, but there is no hierarchy of citations frequency spoken of.

And as I have previously stated, all of these JGDPP considerations are irrelevant because the Davies report is an RCMP given to the Canadian government, and relates to its importance in the debate on injecting rooms as it relates to the Canadian government’s use of the report in their deliberations. Minphie (talk) 00:46, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

DocJames, I have dealt with your fallacious consensus before over on the Insite Talk page. If there was a consensus between us we would not be in dispute. It is precisely because we are in dispute (not consensus) the issue of the reliability of the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice has been taken THREE times to the Reliable Sources Noticeboard and there it has been found to be a reliable source on two occasions.

1. The first commenced 9 March 2011 here has no consensus with the only third-party input apart from those in the dispute coming from ItsmeJudith and TimidGuy. Neither agreed, with TimidGuy suggesting that “It seems like a reliable source” and “I don't see why this source couldn't be used in WP” while ItsmeJudith said “It doesn't look like a normal academic journal because it isn't published by one of the publishing houses that handle journals”. The only other inputs were myself and Steinberger, the disputants. And of course, in reply to ItsmeJudith I would have to assert that her/his objection does not even match Wikipedia's Reliable Sources criteria (which considers online as fine so long as it is demonstrably mainstream and peer-reviewed). Where on the Reliable sources page does it limit reliable sources to ItsmeJudith's criteria.
2. The second commenced 5 June 2011 [4] had only the third-party input of TimidGuy. OhioStandard was not a disinterested third-party by any call, being one of the earlier disputants, who blanked text citing a JGDPP article first on 22 March 2011 here. (This appears to have happened after OhioStandard discovered that the Drug Free America Foundation has many registered organisational entities,[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Journal_of_Global_Drug_Policy_and_Practice#This_.22journal.22_a_small_part_of_major_astroturfing_of_international_drug_policy here] which OhioStandard read as an attempt to conceal or deceive, rather than understanding that a multitude of corporate entities operate with an even greater multitude of sub-entities for the sake of utility with no intention to deceive simply because they are all traceable. Organisations who see Drug Free America as ideologically opposite could very quickly be shown to have as many or significantly more sub-entities). Then on 29 May, 6 days before the Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion, OhioStandard again blanked text citing a JGDPP article here on precisely the same false rationale as used by DocJames and Steinberger. So there can be no argument that the only third-party entered on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard’s June 5 request had only positive comment by TimidGuy, that “I don't know of a guideline that would proscribe it.” Certainly no negative consensus here.
3. The third commenced 8 June [5] contained third-party input affirming the journal as a reliable source for the issue discussed, which lead to the resolution of the needle exchange programme page’s use of an article in the JGDPP which was used by the Palmateer review of reviews team in the European Monitoring Centre Monograph on Harm Reduction.

This makes the third party input 2-0 in favour of JGDPP reliability for the three discussions. If anyone wants to revert the JGDPP text after this I suggest they remember that we are in dispute, there is no consensus, and that perhaps best take the issue to the next level in dispute resolution, which could be mediation or arbitration (I don't have enough Wikipedia experience to know which is best but suspect mediation would fail, necessitating arbitration of this issue). And as said before, the appeal to WP:MEDRS has absolutely no place in this discussion, because the sentence specifically describing Mangham’s criticisms are about law and order which is not remotely medical. I have pointed out a number of times before that addiction is universally considered to be chiefly psycho-social, therefore issues within that domain, ie law and order or rehab, are not adjudicated by medical research or commentary. And as it happens, the appeal to WP:MEDRS has already been shown here to be without any foundation anyway, so I would expect no more use of this false rationale. Minphie (talk) 12:30, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

It's amazes me that you have the audacity to mention "consensus", Minphie. Your single purpose on Wikipedia has been to single-handedly crusade against consensus by pushing highly POV-driven war-on-drugs sources into our articles on needle-exchange programs.

The only other thing I'll respond to in your comments above is your apparent assertion that financial backing by the RCMP or mention by some conservative government politico magically makes a source reliable. You might as well argue that JGDPP is a reliable source because it was kicked off by funding from an utterly partisan and hugely corrupt juvenile programs division of the Bush-era Department of Justice. The self-proclaimed "journal" is simply propaganda. Everyone besides you knows it, including the entire academic community.

So for the very last time, now, you need to immediately stop trying to push Drug Free America Foundation propaganda from their JGDPP astroturf project into our articles. If you continue to try to circumvent the overwhelming consensus among the many editors who've reverted you over and over again, and have for so very long paid you the courtesy of answering your endlessly-repeated talk-page arguments, you'll leave your fellow editors with no option but to finally seek to have you banned from editing articles that have anything at all to do with drugs.  – OhioStandard (talk) 00:12, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I would strongly support a complete topic area ban for Minphie. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:58, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

OhioStandard, DocJames, Steinberger, I believe that we are at a place where this content dispute needs the input of other parties beyond the neutral third party comment previously requested and received on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. DocJames, you appear ready to take action and this may be a possible way ahead, so invite you to take it. I certainly feel that mediation/arbitration of the issue is the next step according to what I see in the dispute resolution policies. I have not altered text on the pages with disputed text, but if you have not initiated a further step in dispute resolution in the next few days then I will be happy to initiate it.

OhioStandard, with respect, I will make some comments about what you have said immediately above. I believe that if you e-mail Calvina Fay who heads up the Drug Free America Foundation, and ask her whether my contributions to Wikipedia on drug policy are a fair and unbiased rendering of the views of the world's drug prevention organizations, I feel confident that she will confirm that I have accurately portrayed them on Wikipedia, with no original thoughts of my own. I must wonder why you feel that unquestionably mainstream organizations such as Drug Free America, Real Women of Canada, Drug Prevention Network of Canada and Drug Free Australia are somehow now for Wikipedia sinister fringe entities that must be silenced or banned from Wikipedia. And I wonder why you believe that Wikipedia must stifle and ban anything that had anything to do with the Bush-era in US politics. Is Wikipedia party political now? And is Wikipedia content now governed by notions of undemonstrated guilt by association? I had rather thought that Wikipedia was about allowing both sides of the drug policy debate held by mainstream entities to speak for themselves, and allow the Wikipedia reader to decide for themselves. Minphie (talk) 08:10, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

minphie just mellow out man. wikipedia is an encyclopedia edited by the people, the people have spoken. its not about being partisan its about facts, and fact is bush faked a lot of facts, thats why wikipedia is distanced from his lies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.23.9.22 (talk) 03:43, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Re-write

I've had a read of the article history and the Talk page. I'd like to suggest this article be rewritten- the coherency of the current article seems to suffer from endless minor edits and and compromises. My main points are that the evaluation section seems way too long, all those headings could be condensed into a sentence or two, and that the article could have a more narrative flow. Are there any users who object to this suggestion? --Dasket (talk) 10:25, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I too think that the evaluations section is to long, so agree. And if you have not seen it, the reliability of "Drug Free Australia"-material have been discussed at RSN and the organisation was not considered reliable enough to be cited for facts (but may, if considered a notable enough participator in the public discussions, be cited for its own opinions). Steinberger (talk) 15:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

With respect, Dasket, your suggestion raises some concerns for me. This article has been very hotly contested for years, with literally every sentence the result of compromise, and it seems unusual that a two-day old account would show up to suggest a rewrite. I'll take my concerns to your talk page, however. --OhioStandard (talk) 19:48, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I've responded on my talk page to your concerns. Could we talk about changing this article? I've read some of the discussion that's gone on about it, and it seems to me that editor minphie has forced the current convoluted version of the article by being an argumentative, uncooperative dogmatist. I see minphie hasn't been blocked but the consensus seems to be that they work for/are infatuated with Drug Free Australia and are not seeking consensus/using good evidence. Do they need to be included in future discussion about the article if they continue to pursue fringe/unverifiable theories about the subject? --Dasket (talk) 11:58, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, let's see what arguments, if any, he makes in further discussions. Steinberger (talk) 12:52, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Coming in cold, it looks like he took flight for the hills as soon as a possible connection with DFA was suggested. How long is it considered polite to wait? --Dasket (talk) 13:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, you mean that we should wait for his input before any changes? That is not necessary per WP:BRD-cycle. If he objects however, we can't say beforehand that we are to ignore him. Steinberger (talk) 14:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Statistics for people kicking the habit through these sites

There's a number cited (apparently disputed) about how many people have been referred to detox programs, but I'm not seeing many numbers about how many people are confirmed to have kicked the habit of whatever drug they're on from using an injection site. The numbers for ODs and HIV infection are important but the assumption is most of these people because they don't die or get sicker will continue using. Are there any numbers to show, for example, X% of Insite users in 2014 later indicated they were drug-free after being referred to a program directly due to Insite? 68.146.52.234 (talk) 19:11, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 May 2016

Please change to the second citation. The first version is improperly cited and is preventing it from being collected by citation analysis algorithm.

McNeil, R; et al. (13 March 2014). "Impact of supervised drug consumption services on access to and engagement with care at a palliative and supportive care facility for people living with HIV/AIDS: a qualitative study". Journal of the International AIDS Society 17.

1738details (talk) 13:59, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Where in the article is the citation that needs to be changed? clpo13_(talk) 17:44, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

References

Canadian supervised injection sites

It should be noted that Toronto is moving forward with the installation of three injection sites within the city, provoked by the success of InSite in Vancouver. As of this writing, Toronto City Council has approved Board of Health supervised injection site recommendations (36 in favour, three against) . Given the number of supervised injection sites currently operating in Canada and the world, these additions are highly significant. Debasedhero (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Impacts on surrounding real estate price?

This needs to be discussed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.98.51.36 (talk) 10:05, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how this would be relevant at all in discussions. Also, considering how real estate prices are a complex collection of impacts and market forces, how would you control for it? You can really only show a price going up, or a price going down, but how to correlate it directly to environment is extremely difficult.

15:33, 10 January 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.219.56.130 (talk)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2017

On this page about Supervised Injection Sites, under the first heading OPERATING FACILITIES, the last sentence is unsourced and reads "In April 2016, the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program opened the 'Supportive Place for Observation and Treatment' or 'SPOT'." While this is technically accurate (SPOT did open last April), it is misleading. SPOT is NOT a supervised injection facility. I propose removing this sentence entirely, as it does not pertain to the page topic.

How do I know all this? I am a physician at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless. I work in SPOT. I know of what I speak! Supervised injection is not legal anywhere in the United States (yet), and is definitely not tolerated in SPOT. There was some misleading coverage in the news last year when we opened SPOT, and it made its way onto this page. I am happy to clarify further if needed.

Thank you very much, Gabriel Wishik, MD, MPH Boston Healthcare for the Homeless program Gwishik (talk) 23:35, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:13, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit request on 17 October 2017

We propose to add a policy section to the article. We will be focusing on section AB 186 in particular. We will detail the background and arguments behind this proposal. Our group will have more information on this once we meet with our district representative Scott Weiner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DNf999 (talk • contribs) 04:40, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Brianmaucsf (talk) 18:37, 4 November 2017 (UTC)== Are the edits formatted consistent with Wikipedia’s manual of style? If not, specify… ==

I thought that the edits made by the group were very high quality and in depth. It looks like a lot of research was done to find the exact relevant bills and policies in place that are related to their topic. It was a well organized, brief timeline of events describing the supervised injection site policy progress in San Francisco.

As a general rule of thumb, Wikipedia encourages a simple writing style with the goal of being as easy to understand as possible. In the Supervised injection site wikipedia article, I thought that something that could be improved was to add some subtext under the title heading of Proposed Policies because jumping straight into the San Francisco section without any lead section writing can be confusing for some readers. Other than that, all of the other style elements seem consistent with the Wikipedia manual of style. The grammar, organization, and spelling is all appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianmaucsf (talk • contribs) 23:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Are the edits formatted consistent with Wikipedia’s manual of style? If not, specify…

I thought that the edits made by the group were very high quality and in depth. It looks like a lot of research was done to find the exact relevant bills and policies in place that are related to their topic. It was a well organized, brief timeline of events describing the supervised injection site policy progress in San Francisco.

As a general rule of thumb, Wikipedia encourages a simple writing style with the goal of being as easy to understand as possible. In the Supervised injection site wikipedia article, I thought that something that could be improved was to add some subtext under the title heading of Proposed Policies because jumping straight into the San Francisco section without any lead section writing can be confusing for some readers. Other than that, all of the other style elements seem consistent with the Wikipedia manual of style. The grammar, organization, and spelling is all appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianmaucsf (talk • contribs) 18:39, 4 November 2017 (UTC)