Template:Unreliable medical source

❧

Wikipedia

^{[unreliable medical source?]}

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

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, {{Unreliable medical source|date=October 2025}} 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 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 {{medref}} or {{medref|section}}, respectively, rather than individually tagging a large number of statements.

For sources promoting non-medical fringe theories and pseudo-science, the variant template {{Unreliable fringe source}} can be used.

For sources unreliable for reasons other than promotion of dubious scientific claims, the more general template {{Unreliable source?}} 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, {{failed verification}} 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: {{Unreliable medical source|date=October 2025}}
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: {{Unreliable medical source|reason=Your WP:MEDRS-based reason here.|date=October 2025}}
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: {{Unreliable medical source|sure=y|reason=Your WP:RS-based reason here.|date=October 2025}}

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

{{Medrs}}
{{Medical source}}
{{MEDRS}}
{{UMED}}
{{Umed}}
{{UNMED}}
{{Ums}}
{{UnMED}}
{{UNRMED}}

Template:Unreliable medical source

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