Template:Unreliable medical source

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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, This page is being depreciated 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=December 2025}} 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 This page is being depreciated or This page is being depreciated, respectively, rather than individually tagging a large number of statements.

For sources promoting non-medical fringe theories and pseudo-science, the variant template This page is being depreciated can be used.

For sources unreliable for reasons other than promotion of dubious scientific claims, the more general template This page is being depreciated 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, This page is being depreciated 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: This page is being depreciated
• 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: This page is being depreciated
• 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: This page is being depreciated

Template data

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Unreliable medical source in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Unreliable medical source

An inline maintenance tag that generates the text "[unreliable medical source?]"

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Reason	reason	no description	String	suggested
Certain?	sure certain	no description Example y Auto value y	Boolean	optional
Date	date	no description Example {{subst:DATE}} Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	String	required

Redirects

• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated
• This page is being depreciated

See also

Inline templates

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

More templates

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

Policies, guidelines, essays, and WikiProjects

Medicine-specific

• Vickers, Tim and Eubulides (30 June 2008). "Dispatches: Sources in biology and medicine"". The Wikipedia Signpost.
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)
  • Wikipedia:Biomedical information
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (science)
• Wikipedia:Reliable source examples § Physical sciences and medicine
• Wikipedia:Current science and technology sources
• Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest (medicine)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Resources, external resources useful for writing medicine related content

General

• Wikipedia:Citing sources, especially § Unsourced material
• Wikipedia:Independent sources
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Reliability

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Unreliable medical source/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.