User talk:MastCell/Archive 4

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Re: User_talk:3R1C#FDA

Hello. I realize it's a slightly—accusatory—thing to state, but after reviewing the discussion and that user's contribution, it seemed like it needed to be stated and it needed to be addressed. Additionally, has anyone contemplated opening a request for comment? It seems like he is preventing any kind of consensus from being developed. For continuities sake, lets keep any discussion on this on one or the other talk page. Yours or mine?

Additionally, sorry for tacking on three edits to your talk =P // 3R1C 15:27, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem, my talk page is already so messy it doesn't matter. Maybe an RfC is the way to go - I think the other editors of the article (none of whom are staunch FDA partisans) are starting to feel like we're beating our heads against a brick wall. I guess mediation or an RfC would work. MastCell Talk 18:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Feel free to request my help for any arbitration or mediation this may lead to. // 3R1C 19:54, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Generic update: the criticism stuff just got forked into Criticism of the FDA. // 3R1C 06:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I just ran into the topic by accident (the WP:COI bot picked up the single-editor history of Criticism of the FDA). Whatever the rightness or wrongness of forking the article, it has the appearance of being steamrollered through on a very small consensus, by an editor whose non-neutrality is blatant ("I think that those oppose it are simply pro-government people who just don't want all the criticism out there to be revealed"). I think wider input would be useful, so I've posted it to WP:RFC [1] Tearlach 21:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a COI bot? That's interesting. Yes, the impetus for the move was the ungodly size of the criticism section. My point was that rather than forking, the criticism section should have been edited and cut down to a reasonable size, which could have been accomplished by applying some notability criteria. I mean, if the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security, which draws much more criticism than the FDA, doesn't need its own criticism fork, come on. I didn't fight the move though, because in my experience if you're the only one opposing a consensus it's time to pack it in. But as you've seen, we're dealing with a very motivated single-purpose editor with a strong and non-mainstream point of view which he is determined to insert, expand, and advocate on Wikipedia. I don't have the time or energy to contest every inappropriate POV edit. Hopefully the RfC will involve more editors. MastCell Talk 03:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a COI bot?
It's actually a bot for classifying new articles, but part of the output is potential COI articles: see User:AlexNewArtBot/COISearchResult. Tearlach 10:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks... that looks like a handy tool. MastCell Talk 16:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Postscript: Turns out that User:Regulations was a sockpuppet of User:Billy Ego, now banned by the Arbitration Committee. MastCell Talk 01:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Relative importance of science and medicine vs politics and showmanship in wiki entries

I've been surfing around entries related to medical topics. I see MastCell has done a lot of work helping to keep entries up to the wiki standards of using only credible sources that can be fact checked etc. Very good job, and a lot of work done.

One example I cam across was the wiki entry for Harvey Bialy. Harvey is not a scientist of any note at all really, but his entry is very extensive, you would think he had made significant contributions, not just written a book about Peter Duesberg. Compare to Beatrice Hahn, Mikulas Popovic, Jay Levy, and other real scientists who have made huge contributions to our understanding of HIV and AIDS. Robert Gallo does have a wiki entry, but it states "his role in this discovery remains controversial." as if he and his lab had only one role. In fact Robert Gallo and his team of researchers had dozens of roles. The entry for Luc Montagnier states that he discovered HIV a full year before Robert Gallo's work.

My point is not about HIV and AIDS at all really, I am only using it as an example here. My point is that many people with no real training at all in virology and medicine, or with some training but no significant contributions to the science of the field they write about, get pretty good wiki entries, while thousands of very hard-working scientists who devoted their lives to the particular virus (or other science/medical issue) get no mention at all. Leonard Horowitz has an entry saying he is a "medical researcher" with a "doctorate". It does not mention that his doctorate is in dentistry, and that he has never done any lab work, never published a peer-reviewed paper. His "research" involves taking the ideas of people such as Alan R. Cantwell and turning them into books. Also selling "structured water" made holy by exposing it to the "sacred sounds" (http://www.steamventinn.com/3e/ http://www.rangeguide.net/freewaves.htm http://www.lifetechnology.org/solfeggio.htm ) of the 528Hz DNA repair energy.

Reading the entries for Gallo and Montagnier, one would never guess that the "controversy" etc. was largely invented by the press to sell stories, and that Gallo and Montagnier worked very well together in collaborations both before and after that international press invented the idea that they were "rivals" ( http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/349/24/2283 ).

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N Engl J Med. 2003 Dec 11;349(24):2283-5. PMID: 14668451

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. The chronology of AIDS research. Nature. 1987 Apr 2-8;326(6112):435-6. PMID: 3550473

The complete lack of wiki entries for most of the scientists such as Mikulas Popovic and Jean-Claude Chermann who were truly instumental in the science, while people such as Leonard Horowitz get entries indicating that they are scientists or researchers, distorts reality. It does, however, mirror the popular press and Hollywood versions of the world of science and medicine.

I am not suggesting that MastCell had any hand in causing this. Quite the opposite, I am writing here because it is people such as MastCell who are doing great work to level the playing field a tiny bit, and make the wiki a bit closer to reality than the Hollywood version. Please keep up the good work. I hope I can begin to help, I am new to wiki this week.

I am editing this today, April 16, to add my signature. --Nocontroversy 21:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Your Mediation Cabal case

Good afternoon (GMT time); I have accepted a Mediation Cabal case - requested by Levine2112 - to which you are listed as a party. Mediation has commenced at the case talkpage, where you are invited to participate.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via email, IRC or my talk page; I will try to answer all your questions as fully as possible in so far as it does not compromise my neutrality.

Kind regards,

anthony[review]
00:38, Thursday June 12, 2008 (UTC)

Global dimming

As a regular lurker of environmental articles, would you be so kind to give this article a Wikipedia peer review? I sure could use the input of someone knowledgeable on the subject to bring it up to Featured Article status. Kgrr 18:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I usually lurk on those articles in order to avoid the inevitable controversy in an area where my scientific knowledge is so-so. But the dimming article looks pretty good - I'll try to swing by the peer-review. Good job so far. MastCell Talk 19:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paranormal

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paranormal. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paranormal/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paranormal/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Thatcher131 01:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Generally, statements by uninvolved editors are placed on the case talk page. Do you consider yourself a party to the editing dispute or not? Thatcher131 01:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I hadn't realized that. My bad. No, I haven't been involved in the editing dispute, so you can remove my statement or I'll move it. Sorry about that. MastCell Talk 05:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Process Physics and Usenet discussion

The thread on sci.physics.relativity to which I linked is apparently the only place in which Cahill et al's claims about the original Michelson-Morley experiments are technically analysed; the papers reporting these results have never been cited by anyone outside their research group, so far as I can see. In other words, the professional physics literature has just ignored these sensational claims - with good reason, if the Usenet analysis is to be trusted; and it is a sophisticated discussion, covering quantitative and methodological aspects of the problem. But anyone coming to that article and wanting to see a critique will otherwise have to be content with the qualitative statements under "Experimental results". Until such time as someone actually writes a paper covering the same ground, I believe the link to Usenet should stand. Mporter 12:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Garlic

I'm staying away from the article until an admin responds to my request to look into Alan2012's behavior. Meanwhile, from my perspective he's extremely close if not already past the need for another NPOV warning. I admire your patience with him. --Ronz 16:06, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The AN/I got archived without response [2], right before it looks like a bunch of admins jumped in and started addressing the backlog. I've restoring it - seems like the right thing to do. [3] --Ronz 16:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
OK. It seems he's not been editing much recently, so it may be a moot point. MastCell Talk 00:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
He doesn't edit often. --Ronz 00:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
No response on ANI again! Any suggestions? This guy's behavior is just getting worse and worse. --Ronz 16:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Input request

You seem to have a knowledge of medicine, so, would you mine dropping into Talk:Pregnancy and reviewing some images that are currently under dispute? Things are getting kind of heated, but, I think another opinion (particularly an expert one) might help sort things out. Thanks. -Severa (!!!) 05:26, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like a Ferrylodge-vs.-consensus situation, but I'll take a closer look if it continues to flare up. Take care. MastCell Talk 04:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. Yes, it's cleared up at Talk:Pregnancy. Nandesuka summed up the truth of the matter precisely. -Severa (!!!) 02:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Cancer and bacteria

Hey MastCell - without wanting to add to your burden, could you offer your opinion on Talk:Cancer in a discussion I'm having with Ronsword (talk · contribs) on the role of bacteria in oncogenesis? JFW | T@lk 17:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that discussion and was about to chip in with my 2 cents, but real life intervened. I'll stop by. MastCell Talk 20:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"Junkscience"

Thanks for that sterling work on Steven Milloy. (My specialty is Myron Ebell.) In order to do his job, he has to obscure his conflicts of interest, so by their nature it won't be absolutely transparent. However, it shouldn't take many false and uncorrected claims to cast enough doubt on someone's reliability as a source of information for the media never to speak to them again. Unfortunately, they don't seem to work that way.Goatchurch 10:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

K Harris discussion

Thank you for stepping in to the discussion and helping to hopefully diffuse the situation between ThuranX and myself. I don't know what exactly set him off, but by reading his user talk page, I'm starting to understand I'm not the only editor that he does not work well with (even resulting in some warnings against him for incivility to others). I'd like to leave it to you and other editors to work towards a consensus on the Trivia section issue. I will still voice my opinions but will not be responding to ThuranX and I've made as much clear on his user talk page. Thanks again, and have a good day. ju66l3r 04:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Why?

Do you have to give sources for a category? No one seems to treat them that way, but my impression was that categories were there to say there is a connection. If there is a connection with science, as there is in the case, say, of John Edward, why shouldn't I put it there? And if, as is seemingly the case, no one has to give sources for a category, why should the ones I think are good be reverted, while the ones other people think are good stay? More to the point: How do I put a citation request on a category??? Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 02:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Please do answer that question about sourcing categories. Because normally you can get rid of an unjustified thing by putting in a citation request, or put what you want in if you can source it. I don't know how to do this with categories. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 02:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The best way to do it is to raise the issue on the article talk page and explain why you think the category is justified or unjustified. I'm not familiar with John Edward, so I'm speaking from ignorance, but generally psychic mediums (media?) are not considered to be within the realm of "science" as it's classically defined. But again, the best way to approach it is to raise the issue with the involved editors on the article talk page. If that doesn't work to your satisfaction, you may wish to pursue some of the steps in dispute resolution (e.g. request outside input via a request for comment). MastCell Talk 02:42, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh dear, there really is no WP:RS check here? It is just a pure vote? That is really bad, because Cats are used as weapons, as ways to put down or uphold pages. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 02:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
And thanks for the reply (= Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 02:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not really a vote... if you firmly believe you're correct on the basis of policy but are being "outvoted", then it's best to follow the steps outlined in Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Specifically, a third opinion or request for comment can bring in outside, uninvolved editors to give their opinions. Unfortunately, if you still find that the consensus is against you, then you'll probably have to live with it as disputes are ultimately resolved (ideally) by WP:CONSENSUS. In general, the use of categories to make a point is frowned upon - they're intended to make Wikipedia easier to navigate, not to make a statement about the subject. MastCell Talk 03:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't mind mediation- it tends to go well for me (: I don't argue things that a neutral would say are POV. In other words, for instance on the parapsychology page, the Parapsychological Association is an affiliate of the AAAS; so it is, to a neutral, a scientific field (the only half-way decent source to the contrary is a Russian Academy of Science statement from 1998). Even parapsychology's best/worst critics say so it's science. But they just deleted it as a science, and put it in as a pseudoscience saying "this is manifestly not science", and called me silly- well, on one of the summaries.
Well, anyway, you don't want to hear all this! Thanks for explaining things (= I guess I really should take more advantage of the official channels. You're good at being an admin. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 03:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Er... thanks, I'm flattered, but in fact I'm not an admin. MastCell Talk 04:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Maybe you should be. I thought you were because you responded to the template. Well, templates must show up on some page, and people must monitor them. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 05:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

FDA

Is it a futile game we play? Does it eventually get easier?--Dr.michael.benjamin 05:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I was just feeling the same way. In general, when a single-purpose editor with an axe to grind settles in, it can be a frustrating haul. Generally, such people either get tired, or the other option is to bring in outside members of the Wikipedia community (via a mechanism such as a request for comment) to chime in. I think that the editor in question is pushing a point-of-view in a way that won't be palatable to most of the community. The best approach is probably to continue insisting on following Wikipedia's policies (on reliable sources, neutrality (particularly the avoidance of undue weight), etc). The problem is that you and I, who have interests here other than the FDA, will end up spending most or all of our time dealing with said single-purpose editor - I've encountered similar problems on AIDS reappraisal and many alternative medicine topics - to the detriment of adding useful content to the encyclopedia. Another approach is actually to walk away from the article for awhile, rather than contesting every edit, let him do what he wants, and then come back in a week or two to survey the damage and start fixing it. That can be useful for one's sanity. MastCell Talk 17:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
A reasonable approach, as usual. Thanks.--Dr.michael.benjamin 02:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Repeated Vandalism by Navychaps and UCMCPadre

Dear Newyorkbrad and MastCell, request your follow up to discipline or block two vandals NavyChaps and USMC Padre who repeatedly violated the Bio of Living Persons rules by disparaging and posting private information about Gordon James Klingenschmitt, leading to deletion of his entire article. The Checkuser report (which you requested) suggests they also routinely violated Sockpuppet rules. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/USMC_Padre Suggest using your "admin powers" to block these two users, and also Commanderstephanus and MiddleLinebacker who routinely used foul language. I'm not informed of proper procedures after Checkuser confirms the identity of abusers. ChaplainReferee 19:58, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I have no admin powers. Newyorkbrad may be able to take care of it for you. It looks like neither account has been particularly active since that article was deleted. MastCell Talk 23:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Why delete things you know nothing about!

You marked my entry on Neuro Emotional Technique for deletion. Your reasons for doing so do not fit the deletion criteria as you claim. It has now been deleted and I am blocked from putting it back. I spent several hours working on that entry and very carefully documented it with links and references. Why mark it for deletion? To me that’s just vandalism. I now no longer care about Wikipedia and will no longer be contributing to it as I feel there is no point to it if any one can delete your hard work just because they feel like it.

Thanks very much for ruining my Wiki experience. Maybe someone will have the decency to delete all of your entries for no good reason. If all Wiki articles were marked for deletion based on such flimsy reasoning then there would be no Wikipedia. NegMan April 27th 2007

I'm sorry for the hard feelings. The article clearly did not appear, to me, to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines; specifically, there were no reliable secondary sources cited, and I could find none in my searches of Web-based content. I proposed its deletion and notified you on your talk page as a courtesy. As no one stepped forward to either contest the deletion or improve the article, it was deleted.
I see you've already contacted the deleting administrator, which is the first step if you feel a mistake was made. However, I agree with his response; the article did not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion. If you continue to feel the deletion was in error, you can bring up the subject at deletion review. You can also create a new article on the topic, but such an article would be likely to be speedily deleted unless it provides reliable, independent secondary sources establishing notability, as Wikipedia defines those terms.
It sucks to lose a page you've worked on, but when we release our contributions here, we open them up for others to read, edit, alter beyond recognition, and sometimes even delete. I hope that this episode doesn't lead you to leave Wikipedia; unfortunately, however, a fact of life here is that we can't exercise complete control over our contributions once we've made them. MastCell Talk 20:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser case completed

Hi, A checkuser IP Check case you filled has been completed by a CheckUser, and archived. You can find the results for 7 days at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/IP check/Archive. -- lucasbfr talk, checkuser clerk, 08:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC).

Criticism of the FDA

The page has been temporarily restored so we can reach a consensus on the fate of the content. I've suggested we keep the vote open for five more days.-RustavoTalk/Contribs 00:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. MastCell Talk 03:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Bilfilm Sinusitis Edits Violate NPOV

The artical on Biofilm Sinusitis was about 1/10th of the artical when I posted it. Now it has been so diminished as to violate NPOV and as edited it left a factually incorrect impression.

I would think that rather than deleting the biofilm section, which had all working links until David deleted it a couple of times, that you might beef up the rest of the artical into something useful, rather than the hack job that you just preformed.

Work on Biofilms was done at the Centers for Disease Control up to 2002, but the work was never well known. Have you ever run across the paper below before?

Biofilms: Survival Mechanisms of Clinically Relevant Microorganisms Rodney M. Donlan1* and J. William Costerton2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30333,,1 Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 597172

  • Corresponding author. Mailing address: Biofilm Laboratory, Epidemiology and Laboratory Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, N.E., Mail Stop C-16, Atlanta, GA 30333. Phone: (404) 639-2322. Fax: (404) 639-3822. E-mail: rld8@cdc.gov.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=11932229

If your name is not Palmer, or Costerton, or Hutlgren or Lewis you are not an expert in this feild. And that is the a problem. You need to get your head out of your textbook and over to the SEM lab and ask them about biofilms. Then go to the confocal microscope lab and ask them. Then drop some live dead stain on "sterile mucus" and put it up on a scope which has a floresent power supply. Do that and you will be a changed man.

Medicine is an observational science, at the moment all kinds of wild speculation about inapproperte immune response and genetic defects are in your text books simpally because it was easier to speculate than devise the probes and do the work to find out what the immune system was reacting against. When probes were developed that showed engufed bacteria, and bacterial DNA in human epithial cells under attack, and biofilms are found on the surface you would think the text books would get rewritten. Well have they? Now, The only people who havn't found biofilms on materials removed from CS patients are those that havn't looked for them. If the kind of repression of information that you are trying to practice continues then Chronic Sinusitis and many other chronic diseases will remain incurable for lack of the correct approach.

That is just unacceptale. Truehawk 23:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As I've mentioned elsewhere, please take this discussion to the sinusitis article talk page. It may be useful to look at the discussion of your edits there, if you haven't already. Briefly, Wikipedia articles are ideally based on verifiable, reliable secondary sources (here that means medical texts, review articles, NIH workshops, panel recommendations, etc). It's fine (encouraged, even) to also cite primary sources (journal articles), but we cannot draw conclusions that overstep what the authors themselves report.
Citing a bunch of primary studies and synthesizing our own conclusion about "what it means" violates Wikipedia's policy on original research and synthesis. This is particularly important as you're synthesizing the primary data to reach a conclusion which is not found in any secondary sources I'm aware of. The mention of biofilm in sinusitis should mirror its representation among experts in the field, as detailed via secondary sources - to do otherwise would violate the "undue weight" section of NPOV. The fact that review articles and medical/infectious disease textbooks don't mention biofilm in their chapters on sinusitis leads me to believe that we, also, should mention it briefly or not at all.
I get the sense, from your edits, that you're here to advocate for what you consider a neglected area of research. However, Wikipedia is not an appropriate venue for such advocacy. Nor does Wikipedia set the scientific agenda; it only reflects it. If you look through the things I've mentioned and want to contribute, please do. But if your goal here is to use Wikipedia to promote a minority hypothesis unsupported in the expert secondary-source literature, in a manner which gives it undue weight, you're bound to be disappointed. MastCell Talk 23:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Obviously you don't mean review articals such as:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=14567521&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17040016&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17040016&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16089234&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/112/10/1466

And had I not read your comments on the discussion page, I would not be leaving my comments on your talk page, a courtsey you did not show me. Truehawk 23:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Also MastCell, I think if you look in you microbiology text book it will have some comments at the begining about the limitations or culture technique and some cavete about 99% of bacteria being unculturable. I have seen several such statements in Micro texts, so I know they are pretty standard. If you don't find it there, just do a web search on unculturable bacteria. Seems that you don't want even well settled facts published because they are not "common knowledge". Truehawk 00:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to respond to you at Talk:Sinusitis. Please don't interpret it as discourtesy; I'd just prefer to centralize discussion at the article you're suggesting we edit. MastCell Talk 14:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: Checkuser request question

Hi, it seems you wrote your case after the begining of the archive template ;). Normally everything is in order now. Thanks! -- lucasbfr talk 18:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. MastCell Talk 19:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)