User talk:209.16.74.251

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[edit] RNA interference

The link you have added to RNA interference a few times now has been removed again. It is a personal advocacy site and, as the dispute itself is (quite rightly, IMO) not covered in the article, a link to only one side of the story is inappropriate and violates the neutral point of view policy. Unless you can show that this inventorship dispute is both legitimate and notable, references to it are unnecessary. Opabinia regalis 01:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

That is not an appropriate link for this page, and repeatedly restoring it without discussion is inappropriate as well. The link is to a personal advocacy site related to an obscure authorship dispute that is irrelevant to the general discussion of RNAi presented here, and the inclusion of only one disputant's opinion on the matter is a violation of the neutral point of view policy. To the anonymous user who has repeatedly inserted this link, please do not do so again, especially not without discussion. Opabinia regalis 23:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I think to call the site an "obscure authorship" dispute is dishonest. The author of "RNA interference page" credits and singles out Craig Mello and Andrew Fire as the discoverers of RNAi by name, and yet when a link is presented to the readers with the possibility that Craig Mello and Andrew Fire may have committed an intellectual fraud and thievery to credit themselves as the conceivers of RNAi (based on their own inconsistent stories of conception; the entire website is dedicated to what led Mello et al and Fire et al to the recognition that the key interfering agent mediating RNAi was/is indeed dsRNA molecule, not about authorship dispute as the editor claims), the readers should be allowed to read upon an alternative and factually disputed assertion detailed in the website. I think, ‘Mr. Editor’ should not deprive his readers of this 'controversy' or at the very least explain why he implicitly portray (by name) Craig Mello and Andy fire as the real co-discoverers of RNAi, if the page were dedicated to a "general" discussion of RNAi. Why leave out the thousands of other equally worthy scientists who ultimately contributed to the discovery of RNAi???? Mention their name too. Let me know if you need help with names. Plus who are you...more relevantly what makes you the self-proclaimed “RNA interference historian” in any case?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) 20:32, 23 July 2006 mussa ali (UTC)

Thanks for coming to this page to discuss these changes. Mello and Fire are the commonly recognized discoverers of RNAi and claiming otherwise based on your personal analysis or involvement with the case violates Wikipedia policies on original research and verifiability. The dispute itself seems not to be covered by any independent and reliable source outside of your website, which I'm sure you understand is not admissible as a source due to your personal involvement. Until and unless the scientific community independently recognizes other individuals as key discoverers of RNAi, the accepted attribution should remain in the article. Mello and Fire's labs were the two involved in the discovery, so it's not surprising that "credit" goes to them. Attribution that included every postdoc, grad student, and lab tech in either lab would be unwieldy and frankly unlikely, here or in the scientific literature. Opabinia regalis 01:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC) Since you are the self styling RNAi historian, I think I am dying to know who you are. Are you friends of Mello and Fire? Have you done any work with RNAi before its conception. I agree with you a key recognition was published by mello and fire in 1998. And since you went to the trouble of highlighting that "historic eureka moment" any 'controvery' surrounding it is a fair game. Don't you think? Otherwise the self proclaimed historians would be having a field day and pushing a personal and biased history down everybody's throat as the true history. mussa ali

"Mello and Fire are the commonly recognized discoverers of RNAi"?? I think you should rephrase that to read as Craig and Andy are commonly extolled for having disclosed a key RNAi finding in their lab. Do you know that Craig Mello had stated publicly that he has “discarded” the original RNAi notebooks. That is a public record and verifiable. I bet in your eyes this is completely irrelevant! I will have more to say....later mussa ali—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) .

I'm not an "RNAi historian", nor do I personally know Mello, Fire, or anyone else involved. I have worked a bit with RNAi in the past but don't at the moment. Also, I didn't originally add the text attributing the discovery to Mello and Fire, but since it is the accepted attribution I believe it should stay in the article. Notice that the article doesn't say anything about "eureka" moments; it only states that the two labs in collaboration were the first to notice (and publish about) dsRNA-mediated silencing in C. elegans - which is true regardless of who knew what earlier. mussa ali Secondly, your personal experience of what did or did not occur at the time is not an acceptable source for this article, especially if your retelling has not been published outside of your website. has there been any external, third-party coverage of this inventorship dispute? As in, a news brief in a journal about the court case(s), or something to that effect? (Off the subject, just FYI - you can sign your comments with four tildes (209.16.74.251 17:28, 30 September 2006 (UTC)) and indent them by beginning each paragraph of your comment with a colon. Makes threaded discussions easier to read.) Opabinia regalis 06:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC) Enough about the rnaiconception.com website issue…

Let’s look at your loose use of the word “noticed”. Since you weren’t there in either Mello’s or Fire’s lab, you do not have or ever had a first hand knowledge of who may have “noticed” it first. i.e., assuming by “noticed” you mean to infer “recognized” or “conceived.” (If you need a more direct Mello audio back up? Let me know…) mussa ali

More relevantly, (I am generously assuming that you have some RNAi background, and I encourage you to read my perspective on the competing RNAi-induction models), your use of the word “noticed” may be mechanistically flawed. Assuming Fire’s paradigm is correct, that is a dsRNA contaminant (unbeknownst to us at the time) was sufficently inducing RNAi in C. elegans, the first group to have “noticed” or observed dsRNA mediated interference in C. elegans was that of Dr. Kempheus group at Cornell in 1995. (For starters, You should hyperlink Cornell and Dr. Kempheus too). mussa ali

As such I think you should replace the word “noticed” with “reported”. mussa ali

Again you should let your readers know who you really are at least in terms of your scientific credentials and just as relevantly your affiliations(s)…..before you start deleting other people’s website with shameless pomposity. mussa ali—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) .

My personal opinion is that the RNAi Wikipedia page reads more like a promotional advertisement for University of Massachusetts and the Carnegie Institution of Washington masquerading as the brief history of RNAi. You should do much better ... Mr. Historian. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.16.74.251 (talk • contribs) . mussa ali FYI, and if you ever noticed, almost everything on the rnaiconception website (http://www.rnaiconception.com/inventionofrnai-2006.pdf) is supported by published documents and extensive third-party corroborations. In fact I invite or challenge you to read it thoroughly and critique it. Do not be afraid to ask me any questions you may have. Again, my gut tells me you are a spokesperson for Mello and company masquerading as an HISTORIAN. Who are you... since you are the historian, editor, site manager etc who are you???? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.183.113.24 (talk • contribs) . mussa ali Since this is starting to get petty is anyone going to acknowledge plant science contributions to all this? I suppose it is possible that all the C. elegans researchers reinvented the wheel. But who cares when the proof of concept was already known? David D. (Talk) 20:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC) David D. That is actually a very interesting point. But, I just need to finish off this RNAi historian's/expert's pompous viewpoint that is patently flawed. I agree the conversation has gone petty.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) . It is time to remind the people posting here to be WP:CIVIL. Personal attacks are never appropriate.TedTalk/Contributions 00:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, this has exploded since I was here last. Mussa, your point about the usage of "noticed" is fair, and it's been clarified. How it can be an ad, though, is beyond me - Mello, Fire, UMass, and the Carnegie Institution collectively get one mention in one sentence at the end of a section that is primarily about plants. Opabinia regalis 00:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC) Although I have many issues with the website, I thank you for fixing one of its major flaws. Appreciate it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) 21:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

By way of closing, and assuming that the editor of this page has no ulterior motive(s) and or is not (or has ever been) C&A's friend and was not engaging in a tacit C&A promotional exercise, I want to apologize for some of the comments I have made. I think I may have gone a bit overboard. I also would like to commend the editor for the significant changes that have been made to the original version of this page, which was the genesis of my contentions.

I can't speak for the other contributors to this article, but I don't know and have no connection with any of the people involved. I'm glad this was resolved and I'm sure you could make valuable contributions to this and related articles if you decided to stick around. Opabinia regalis 04:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC) Mussaali I have removed the conversation on this page that had nothing to do with RNAi. If you feel the need to continue this conversation please continue on Opabinia regalis' talk page. David D. (Talk) 02:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Since you won't let me respond to or edit the comments made @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Samsara/Archive04 about me as a sign of protest I will be pasting the UMASS/sterilization audio page http://www.worcestermagazine.org/audio.pdf on any wikipedia website where UMASS or Craig Mello are mentioned. Opabinia regalis: You have yet to reveal your identity; I am still waiting. Just your assertion alone that you are not affiliated with UMASS is not worthy of credence. For the last time, who are You? why are you afraid to tell your readers who you really are? To quote ‘you’: “Irrational inclusionism is just as bad as irrational deletionism”

[edit] Personal Attacks

Personal attacks are not appropriate in the discussion pages. If you continue to attack other contributers, you will be sanctioned -- up to and including banning your account and blocking contributions by IPs you use. TedTalk/Contributions 15:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spam

Spamming or threatening to spam Wikipedia is not appropriate. Neither is using us as a platform for advocating your side of whatever disputes you may have with Mello, UMASS, etc. And for the last time, I am in no way personally involved in your dispute. Any further discussion should go here, not on my user page. Opabinia regalis 15:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

That is not an appropriate link for this page, and repeatedly restoring it without discussion is inappropriate as well. The link is to a personal advocacy site related to an obscure authorship dispute that is irrelevant to the general discussion of RNAi presented here, and the inclusion of only one disputant's opinion on the matter is a violation of the neutral point of view policy. To the anonymous user who has repeatedly inserted this link, please do not do so again, especially not without discussion. Opabinia regalis 23:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I think to call the site an "obscure authorship" dispute is dishonest. The author of "RNA interference page" credits and singles out Craig Mello and Andrew Fire as the discoverers of RNAi by name, and yet when a link is presented to the readers with the possibility that Craig Mello and Andrew Fire may have committed an intellectual fraud and thievery to credit themselves as the conceivers of RNAi (based on their own inconsistent stories of conception; the entire website is dedicated to what led Mello et al and Fire et al to the recognition that the key interfering agent mediating RNAi was/is indeed dsRNA molecule, not about authorship dispute as the editor claims), the readers should be allowed to read upon an alternative and factually disputed assertion detailed in the website. I think, ‘Mr. Editor’ should not deprive his readers of this 'controversy' or at the very least explain why he implicitly portray (by name) Craig Mello and Andy fire as the real co-discoverers of RNAi, if the page were dedicated to a "general" discussion of RNAi. Why leave out the thousands of other equally worthy scientists who ultimately contributed to the discovery of RNAi???? Mention their name too. Let me know if you need help with names. Plus who are you...more relevantly what makes you the self-proclaimed “RNA interference historian” in any case?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) 20:32, 23 July 2006 mussa ali (UTC)

Thanks for coming to this page to discuss these changes. Mello and Fire are the commonly recognized discoverers of RNAi and claiming otherwise based on your personal analysis or involvement with the case violates Wikipedia policies on original research and verifiability. The dispute itself seems not to be covered by any independent and reliable source outside of your website, which I'm sure you understand is not admissible as a source due to your personal involvement. Until and unless the scientific community independently recognizes other individuals as key discoverers of RNAi, the accepted attribution should remain in the article. Mello and Fire's labs were the two involved in the discovery, so it's not surprising that "credit" goes to them. Attribution that included every postdoc, grad student, and lab tech in either lab would be unwieldy and frankly unlikely, here or in the scientific literature. Opabinia regalis 01:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC) Since you are the self styling RNAi historian, I think I am dying to know who you are. Are you friends of Mello and Fire? Have you done any work with RNAi before its conception. I agree with you a key recognition was published by mello and fire in 1998. And since you went to the trouble of highlighting that "historic eureka moment" any 'controvery' surrounding it is a fair game. Don't you think? Otherwise the self proclaimed historians would be having a field day and pushing a personal and biased history down everybody's throat as the true history. mussa ali

"Mello and Fire are the commonly recognized discoverers of RNAi"?? I think you should rephrase that to read as Craig and Andy are commonly extolled for having disclosed a key RNAi finding in their lab. Do you know that Craig Mello had stated publicly that he has “discarded” the original RNAi notebooks. That is a public record and verifiable. I bet in your eyes this is completely irrelevant! I will have more to say....later mussa ali—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) .

I'm not an "RNAi historian", nor do I personally know Mello, Fire, or anyone else involved. I have worked a bit with RNAi in the past but don't at the moment. Also, I didn't originally add the text attributing the discovery to Mello and Fire, but since it is the accepted attribution I believe it should stay in the article. Notice that the article doesn't say anything about "eureka" moments; it only states that the two labs in collaboration were the first to notice (and publish about) dsRNA-mediated silencing in C. elegans - which is true regardless of who knew what earlier. mussa ali Secondly, your personal experience of what did or did not occur at the time is not an acceptable source for this article, especially if your retelling has not been published outside of your website. has there been any external, third-party coverage of this inventorship dispute? As in, a news brief in a journal about the court case(s), or something to that effect? (Off the subject, just FYI - you can sign your comments with four tildes (209.16.74.251 17:28, 30 September 2006 (UTC)) and indent them by beginning each paragraph of your comment with a colon. Makes threaded discussions easier to read.) Opabinia regalis 06:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC) Enough about the rnaiconception.com website issue…

Let’s look at your loose use of the word “noticed”. Since you weren’t there in either Mello’s or Fire’s lab, you do not have or ever had a first hand knowledge of who may have “noticed” it first. i.e., assuming by “noticed” you mean to infer “recognized” or “conceived.” (If you need a more direct Mello audio back up? Let me know…) mussa ali

More relevantly, (I am generously assuming that you have some RNAi background, and I encourage you to read my perspective on the competing RNAi-induction models), your use of the word “noticed” may be mechanistically flawed. Assuming Fire’s paradigm is correct, that is a dsRNA contaminant (unbeknownst to us at the time) was sufficently inducing RNAi in C. elegans, the first group to have “noticed” or observed dsRNA mediated interference in C. elegans was that of Dr. Kempheus group at Cornell in 1995. (For starters, You should hyperlink Cornell and Dr. Kempheus too). mussa ali

As such I think you should replace the word “noticed” with “reported”. mussa ali

Again you should let your readers know who you really are at least in terms of your scientific credentials and just as relevantly your affiliations(s)…..before you start deleting other people’s website with shameless pomposity. mussa ali—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) .

My personal opinion is that the RNAi Wikipedia page reads more like a promotional advertisement for University of Massachusetts and the Carnegie Institution of Washington masquerading as the brief history of RNAi. You should do much better ... Mr. Historian. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.16.74.251 (talk • contribs) . mussa ali FYI, and if you ever noticed, almost everything on the rnaiconception website (http://www.rnaiconception.com/inventionofrnai-2006.pdf) is supported by published documents and extensive third-party corroborations. In fact I invite or challenge you to read it thoroughly and critique it. Do not be afraid to ask me any questions you may have. Again, my gut tells me you are a spokesperson for Mello and company masquerading as an HISTORIAN. Who are you... since you are the historian, editor, site manager etc who are you???? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.183.113.24 (talk • contribs) . mussa ali Since this is starting to get petty is anyone going to acknowledge plant science contributions to all this? I suppose it is possible that all the C. elegans researchers reinvented the wheel. But who cares when the proof of concept was already known? David D. (Talk) 20:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC) David D. That is actually a very interesting point. But, I just need to finish off this RNAi historian's/expert's pompous viewpoint that is patently flawed. I agree the conversation has gone petty.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) . It is time to remind the people posting here to be WP:CIVIL. Personal attacks are never appropriate.TedTalk/Contributions 00:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, this has exploded since I was here last. Mussa, your point about the usage of "noticed" is fair, and it's been clarified. How it can be an ad, though, is beyond me - Mello, Fire, UMass, and the Carnegie Institution collectively get one mention in one sentence at the end of a section that is primarily about plants. Opabinia regalis 00:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC) Although I have many issues with the website, I thank you for fixing one of its major flaws. Appreciate it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mussaali (talk • contribs) 21:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

By way of closing, and assuming that the editor of this page has no ulterior motive(s) and or is not (or has ever been) C&A's friend and was not engaging in a tacit C&A promotional exercise, I want to apologize for some of the comments I have made. I think I may have gone a bit overboard. I also would like to commend the editor for the significant changes that have been made to the original version of this page, which was the genesis of my contentions.

I can't speak for the other contributors to this article, but I don't know and have no connection with any of the people involved. I'm glad this was resolved and I'm sure you could make valuable contributions to this and related articles if you decided to stick around. Opabinia regalis 04:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC) Mussaali I have removed the conversation on this page that had nothing to do with RNAi. If you feel the need to continue this conversation please continue on Opabinia regalis' talk page. David D. (Talk) 02:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Since you won't let me respond to or edit the comments made @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Samsara/Archive04 about me as a sign of protest I will be pasting the UMASS/sterilization audio page http://www.worcestermagazine.org/audio.pdf on any wikipedia website where UMASS or Craig Mello are mentioned. Opabinia regalis: You have yet to reveal your identity; I am still waiting. Just your assertion alone that you are not affiliated with UMASS is not worthy of credence. For the last time, who are You? why are you afraid to tell your readers who you really are? To quote ‘you’: “Irrational inclusionism is just as bad as irrational deletionism”

[edit] Vandalism

Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, as you did to RNA interference, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. . You have been warned before in very nice terms. I think that reasonable discussion is no longer possible and a more formal procedure is now required. TedTalk/Contributions

Please do not make personal attacks on other people. Wikipedia has a policy against personal attacks. In some cases, users who engage in personal attacks may be blocked from editing by administrators or banned by the arbitration committee. Comment on content, not on other contributors or people. Please resolve disputes appropriately. Thank you. TedTalk/Contributions 18:07, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

This is your last warning.
The next time you vandalize a page, as you did to User:Opabinia regalis, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. TedTalk/Contributions 18:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)