Template:Unreliable medical source

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Alternatives:

Be bold! Consider searching for medical references and adding them to the article, instead of using this template.

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.^{[unreliable medical source?]}

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

Template:Unreliable medical source

Contents

Usage

When to use and not use this template

Parameters

Template data

Redirects

See also

Inline templates

More templates

Policies, guidelines, essays, and WikiProjects

Medicine-specific

General