Talk:Aspartame controversy
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[edit] Rise in Brain Tumor Rates
The claim that brain tumor rates are rising is part of the controversy, and many dispute it. This claim should be sourced to original data that can be intrepreted to support a rise, such as something at the CDC or the NIH web site.
- Hello. In the scientific community, there is a claim that aspartame may be one cause of brain tumors. Scientific papers on both sides of the issue were cited. I do not think it would not be appropriate to cite original data on brain tumor rates because it doesn't even begin to clarify the issue. What is looked at in the scientific literature is only certain types of brain tumors in certain population groups and the conversion of one type of brain tumor to another. Plus there is discussion of various animal studies and in vitro studies. Unfortunately, articles on both sides of the issue often cited "rising overall brain tumor rates" in relation to aspartame when the scientific issue is much more complex than that. The scientific studies cited in the article related to aspartame and brain tumors go into great detail about the issue. Twoggle 04:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] References
Three references styles listed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:References#Embedded_HTML_links. Embedded HTML Links, Harvard Referencing and Footnotes. The text of the article seems to discourage the use of Footnotes: "Many of today's style guides require not using or recommend against using footnotes and reference endnotes to cite sources." I would prefer the Embedded HTML Links format. The other issue is that a very, very long Reference section would tend to push other sections off the page. That is why References are supposed to be put at the end of the article. However, External Links also go at the end. Since the Reference section will be extremely long and the External Links section will be shorter, I suggest putting the shorter section before the longer section. If that is not agreeable. Then I would want a link to the External Links section before the References (not just in the Table of Contents), so readers getting to the end of the article are well aware that there is another section a long ways down on the page, below the References section. Twoggle 15:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hi, good point to bring up. I chose to put the HTML references in the same way as other references, using the <ref name=></ref>, I do understand that that sometimes gives long references sections. IMHO, that is not a real problem, it is more that I don't like the mix of styles. For now I do it automatically, using a script that cleans up a lot of things in a page, but that indeed gives sometimes very ugly titles (but at least people know where they go when they click the link). I might be able to cut that down (I could e.g. only use the homepage as a text after the full link). Any suggestions for that? By the way, if there is an inline URL, the URL still should be also in the references section, so that does not cut it down.
- Of course the External links - section can go before the references section, but both are not a real part of the article, people scrolling there already know that they get into a list of links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:05, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
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- Hi! I tried the reference links with IE and Foxfire your script set up and there was something not working right because clicking on the reference numbers either didn't go anywhere except a big jumble of HTML (rather than a clickable link). I suggest that we use Embedded HTML links as described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embedded_Citations. It would be relatively easy to duplicate these links in the References section using the suggestions on the Embedded_Citations page and then, gradually add more detail to the Citations as they suggest. You're right about the link being in the reference section. In addition, they suggest a full citation. However, smaller type can be used and that is why I recommended putting the External Links first -- The novice Wikipedia reader may click on the reference links while reading the article, but may not realize that way, way down the page below a more detailed reference citations are some pro- and anti- and new links. Twoggle 21:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hmm .. I am running Opera, and did not see a problem. It is conform one of the cite-mechanisms of Wikipedia. Now I must say, there were some references in that page, that looked like a whole lot of jibberish to me, quite a deeplink. Thus far (though I have not run the script on that many pages yet), I have not heard anything. Maybe one of the links in this article is not compatible with my script, I will leave it, its OK (it is in my disclaimer here, if it goes wrong, just revert and drop me a line). See you around! --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hi! I tried the reference links with IE and Foxfire your script set up and there was something not working right because clicking on the reference numbers either didn't go anywhere except a big jumble of HTML (rather than a clickable link). I suggest that we use Embedded HTML links as described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embedded_Citations. It would be relatively easy to duplicate these links in the References section using the suggestions on the Embedded_Citations page and then, gradually add more detail to the Citations as they suggest. You're right about the link being in the reference section. In addition, they suggest a full citation. However, smaller type can be used and that is why I recommended putting the External Links first -- The novice Wikipedia reader may click on the reference links while reading the article, but may not realize that way, way down the page below a more detailed reference citations are some pro- and anti- and new links. Twoggle 21:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
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- I didn't try Opera, but all I know is that I didn't see any clickable links, just something more akin to HTML code (in plain text/ASCII format). If there are no objections, I'll just manually go ahead and do what you were doing with the script, using the REF function, but gradually add more detailed citations. It's probably the easiest way to fix up the citations so they have more detailed information. Twoggle 14:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- What the script does is first see if the url has the format [http://www.here.com A link about here] (so, this url has a decent description), these are left as is, just puts a <ref name="http://www.here.com"> before, and a </ref> behind (so if the same url is linked twice, it will appear only once in the references list!). Links of the type [http://www.here.com] (so without description) are converted to <ref name="http://www.here.com">[http://www.here.com http://www.here.com] (so the url of the link becomes the description, otherwise all those link will look like [1] <- this, which is non-informative in a bulletted list). Most references were of the latter format, but there was at least one very stange one .. might have gone wrong. But by all means, go ahead. I will copy the old version to my sandbox, and run my script on that, see if and what I can improve. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- I didn't try Opera, but all I know is that I didn't see any clickable links, just something more akin to HTML code (in plain text/ASCII format). If there are no objections, I'll just manually go ahead and do what you were doing with the script, using the REF function, but gradually add more detailed citations. It's probably the easiest way to fix up the citations so they have more detailed information. Twoggle 14:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] US Policy Section
I cut the section because of the NUMEROUS citation requests, and a lack of citations being added over a resonable amount of time. Please add citations if replaced. Thank you. 76.20.176.60 00:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
