This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | ← | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 |
Hi MastCell, I see you're cutting back, but you still seem to be interested in Lyme Disease, and I think it needs some work. It seems from the history that the consent of the WP:MED editors involved is needed, to get an edit to stick. So I'd like to ask a few questions about your various posts on this topic, especially those at Simesa's user page - shall I do it here, or would you like to come over to my user page, or should we ask Simesa to host? Probably LD talk page is not best, because it's being watched so closely. As a new editor I'm not quite ready for primetime on such a volatile topic. I am, arguably, civil and scientifically literate, so it shouldn't be too painful for you ;-) Thanks, Postpostmod ( talk) 17:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
My understanding of the role of ELISA in Lyme disease diagnosis largely coincides with that of various expert groups: ELISA may be negative in the short term after Borrelia infection. In people who are promptly and successfully treated, detectable antibodies may never develop. On the other hand, people with late symptoms related to Borrelia should have detectable antibodies.
Because of the lack of specificity of Lyme ELISA (and ELISA in general), it's necessary to use the two-tier approach you mentioned with a confirmatory Western blot. This parallels the approach to HIV diagnosis and is a reasonably established diagnostic paradigm.
It seems to me that a lot of controversy attaches to the question of whether a patient can have late symptoms caused by Borrelia despite a lack of detectable antibodies to the spirochete. I'm not convinced by the available data that this occurs (my personal opinion, though one that appears to be shared by the IDSA and other expert groups). I could be convinced, but that would take more than testimonial and anecdotal evidence, and I haven't seen that yet.
I'm also very wary of the incessant attempts to attribute medically unexplained symptoms to the latest new infectious agent. This is the sort of thing that brought us ideas like "candidal overgrowth", chronic EBV, etc (it's too early to know whether XMRV is the real deal or just the latest in this unfortunate cascade). None of these ideas has ever been tested rigorously by its proponents, none has ever contributed anything of value to human well-being, and none has ever done anything more than enrich people who know how to take advantage of the desperate and suffering. Given the way battle lines have been drawn on the Lyme issue, and the sort of emotional/testimonial end-around approach to the scientific question, and in particular some of the sorts of people who have clustered around the "Lyme-literate" side (I won't name names, but I suspect you have an idea of whom I'm talking about), it's hard to avoid the suspicion that this is snake oil. But I've been wrong before and I might be wrong about this.
Sorry, you were asking me about the ELISA... :P MastCell Talk 21:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I know you are still working on the data, but what you currently have created is amazing. Thank you so much for your help!!! Also, perhaps we could move the data over to a subpage of the Dermatology task force and link to it under the Statistics section? The main things I am looking for are number of pages with and without images, as well as, if possible, the number of pages with/without images before and after the creation of the task force (Oct 08).
Thanks again so much! --- kilbad ( talk) 14:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Looking at Oct 2008 vs. today is slightly more complex, and to get it up and running will probably take till next week - only because I've got a busy rest of the week and don't really have the time to devote to it right now. MastCell Talk 15:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
As far as I know none of the Japanese books on the firebombings have been translated. Several on the atomic bombings, however, have been. One of the best books in English on the Tokyo bombings is:
Guillian was a French journalist, married to a Japanese, who lived in Tokyo during the war. Because Japan was not at war with France, he was left alone. He gives, I think, some of the best descriptions I've seen anywhere of what it was like for the people who were caught in the firestorm in March 1945. I'm not sure if this book is still in print. The copy I read I checked out from my local library. Cla68 ( talk) 23:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello. Shortly after 120 Volt monkey ( talk · contribs) was blocked, the account Millstoner ( talk · contribs) was created and headed straight for race related articles which he's been editing ever since. Obviously a sockpuppet and probably Jagz yet again. What do you think? Regards, Mathsci ( talk) 13:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I never knew JPandS was "the american equiv of The Lancet." Perhaps you disagree, but your opinion is of dubious merit as you're under suspicion of having pro-scientist sympathies. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 17:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello. I don't quite know why Captain Occam is leaving messages like this. [1] Do you understand what he's up to? Mathsci ( talk) 08:48, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
In a consistent universe, scrying has to be enough to collapse a wave function, though a sufficiently well-informed wizard should be able to find some interesting applications for the Quantum Zeno effect. Next step, entangled scrolls - if Bob gets Ray of Frost, Alice gets Fireball. - 2/0 ( cont.) 03:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
You gotta believe me, Jake! I done SEEN the black helicopters with my own two eyes! [2] Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 21:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Might I suggest a third approach: just blandly revert and ignore the socks, stop the obsession with finding and reporting new Scibaby socks, and perhaps they will just get bored and go away. Really, the majority of recent socks seem to do almost nothing - one recent sock had precisely two edits: he changed "claimed" to "asserted" and reordered some text, neither of which caused any damage. There was little harm in letting him go on editing, especially given how closely these articles are watched. After a while, they may get tired of mundane edits and escalate their behavior, and at that point they can be dealt with -- not as the iconic "Scibaby" but as just another troublesome user. No spectacle, no fanfare. Or, if CU is used, it can be done absent of any Scibaby mention, i.e. rather than "X and Y are both socks of Scibaby", it would simply be "X is a sock of Y". This would be a sort of "don't feed the trolls" approach to handling it. Given the lack of success of other approaches, what do we have to lose? ATren ( talk) 23:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Off-topic aside - every time I see Emmanuel Goldstein, I think Emma Goldman. Not a comparison I think either of them would welcome, but it would make for a very different book. - 2/0 ( cont.) 06:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, when it becomes possible to do so, the most frequently socked articles could be put on flagged revisions. The hope is that not being able to get an edit to go live might reduce the incentive to sock. This should be in addition to, rather than instead of, continuing to block socks. Cardamon ( talk) 21:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Do you suspect he has returned in recent reversions by a new account? Hipocrite ( talk) 11:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
"I have to admit I became disheartened after searching extensively - in the library - for Barnes' 1945 Lancet publication (which our article assures us exists). It does not exist, as best I can tell - although during the search I came across some fascinating work from 1945." That's above and beyond what most Wikipedians would ever do, I'm impressed. And yet, the article doesn't mention a 1945 article in Lancet, it mentions one from 1959: it is in PubMed and ScienceDirect, [3] and I found the abstract reproduced the following year: [4]. Fences& Windows 13:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I manually put "retrieved" because if I don't, people say that the references are not a consistent format. I want the article to be either a FA or equivalent to a FA. Suomi Finland 2009 ( talk) 18:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
accessdate=
because it forces the refs to stay consistent, but it's up to you.
MastCell
Talk
18:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Here. Fainites barley scribs 14:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Or maybe conclude that this is a topic that no serious, respectable reference work would stoop to touch with a ten-foot pole? (Note that only one of these is a serious suggestion). MastCell Talk 22:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC) What publication would that be? Encyclopaedia Britannica? -- JohnWBarber ( talk) 18:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
In regard to that old discussion over here, you might find this article interesting (plus this). II | ( t - c) 01:41, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
When you do a clinical trial, you have to pick some specific dosing regimen. Inevitably, it's possible that you didn't pick the right dose, or administration route, or whatever. That's a possible explanation for any negative trial of an agent. It doesn't invalidate the result of a clinical trial, though. It merely makes it incumbent upon people who believe that the trial was conducted incorrectly to design and carry out their own clinical trial, where they can use whatever intervention they believe in. Designing a clinical trial and seeing it through to some kind of meaningful result is a lot harder than it looks.
I can think of only one example where a clearly negative result later turned out to be due to sub-optimal dosing (cf. flavopiridol). There may be others that aren't coming to mind. But in general, when a drug is clearly ineffective in a well-designed clinical trial, the chance of it becoming a miracle cure (or even modestly effective) with a change in dosing regimen is extremely small, in my experience. MastCell Talk 05:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Think about it. Practicing medicine, or conducting medical research, is actually far more complex and requires far more training and expertise than, say, piloting an aircraft. But people are way more eager to second-guess a physician than a pilot. You'd never knock on the cockpit door and tell the pilot how to configure the aircraft for landing, no matter how much reading you'd done on Google or in the library. But the same people feel no compunction second-guessing much more complex undertakings in medicine. I think it's probably because flying an aircraft looks complicated, so people are willing to defer to established expertise. On the other hand, designing a clinical trial looks deceptively easy. That's not aimed at you or Krashin; it's just a general gripe of mine.
And since you brought up regulation, let's talk about that. The dietary-supplement industry wrote DSHEA and spent millions on lobbying to ensure its passage. As a result, the industry is essentially unreglated. Based on your comments about neocons, I'm sure you agree with me that this state of affairs is a disaster for everyone except dietary-supplement manufacturers. It's certainly a disaster for anyone who wants to do meaningful research on dietary supplements. Since there are huge variations in the quality, potency, and chemical makeup of various brands of a given supplement, it's basically impossible to generalize any result seen in a clinical trial. Of course, the double bind is that any negative result can be written off as "well, you just didn't use the right brand."
It would help, of course, if someone did basic work to understand why it might make a difference whether glucosamine is sulfated or HCl-conjugated, or whether there is any biological difference. For a pharmaceutical company, that would be step 1A, but there's no mechanism or incentive for such studies in the deregulated world of supplements. By the way, glucosamine and chondroitin bring in upwards of $730 million annually. That compares admirably with the best-selling pharmaceuticals - except that the supplement makers didn't have to spend a dime proving that their products actually work, whereas regulatory approval is a multimillion dollar expense for a drug company.
So I have zero sympathy for people who lean on "more research is needed" and criticize the medical establishment for not doing these studies. The supplement makers have millions in unregulated income every year. They can spend that funding studies to show that their products actually work - but that would be stupid, because a) they'd rather keep that money for themselves as profit, and b) the studies would likely be negative in which case they'd have killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. That's human nature, but I think if you want to understand why the state of scientific research on alternative-medical compounds is so shitty, then DSHEA is exhibit A. And it didn't come from greedy doctors or drug companies - it was written by the supplement industry, the ones who constantly demonize those other forces.
Sorry, I got distracted, and I don't think I actually addressed your comments about laetrile. But now that I got that out of my system, let me come back to it in a little bit. :P MastCell Talk 18:04, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
"for comparison, there are about 400-600 lightning strikes per year in the US" That many?? Really?? That must include Alaska and Hawaii? :) Sorry, it made me laugh. Verbal chat 18:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
You were former involved in a discussion in Talk:Abortion#More reliable references so, if you're still interested about the outcome of that discussion, I ask you to express your opinion in Talk:Abortion#Assessing the current agreement status-- Nutriveg ( talk) 04:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
As you predicted on the Workshop page, I removed your suggested sub-issues. As requested, they need to be a single-sentence, neutrally worded question. You can reformat your previous content and readd the other questions (I left what I felt were the two most important ones). ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 20:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Would you look into the cansema page. I am involved in a bit of a battle with an IP user who is deleting and altering the article away from its encyclopedic form. Jettparmer ( talk) 15:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't know how busy you are, but if you've got time to step through the recent changes at Hairy cell leukemia, I'd appreciate it. A well-informed anon seems determined to push current clinical trials and some, shall we say, "pre-publication" claims, and I'm trying to avoid edit warring. The new information is generally not wrong, but IMO it's undue emphasis on treatment of a tiny minority of patients (young treatment-resistant patients in a disease that mostly strikes older men and has a 90% success rate for standard treatment).
If, on the other hand, you think it's okay, then I'll leave it alone. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:26, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I know you hate going to this article. That being said, would take a look at this editor? Petergkeyes is becoming tenacious with his POV about things. He hasn't breached 3 rr since he waits before he redoes his edits. He keeps making the same edits over and over no matter what other editors tell him. Oh, he is on the talk page too finally. Thanks in advance, -- CrohnieGal Talk 13:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
In 20 years or so, when people are writing sociology Ph.D. theses on the rise and fall of Wikipedia, I suspect they'll point to things like this as a tipping point. When a discussion about something as meaningless (in the grand scheme of things) as alt-text becomes poisonous enough that excellent, sane, well-adjusted people are driven off, then we've basically planted the seeds that will eventually destroy this project. MastCell Talk 18:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
If you are able can you please review my draft of a new abortion section; please add your notes in the section below. Thanks! - Roy Boy 02:58, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
YorkieDoctor ( talk · contribs) is the latest! -- Ronz ( talk) 00:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
I removed all his edits and wrote Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/DPeterson. -- Ronz ( talk) 01:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
[7] A good point, but that's mostly because of the contentious nature of CC articles. You know as well as I do that editors are fighting tooth and nail over every little sentence of every little article. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 22:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the note on my talk page. Nice to see a familiar name over there :) Lyrl Talk C 23:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
I think your characterisation of this as "chicken and egg is wrong". But arguing on the workshop page will end up being drowned in noise, so: you you think yuo, or anyone else, has provided any evidence for your assertion that the editing environment is contentious and has given rise to a range of intractable disputes? William M. Connolley ( talk) 08:17, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
If you have additional recent diffs about thegoodlocust, post them on evidence page and notify me on my talk. Tks. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:03, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
Per your conversation on Rlev's talk page, you might want [8]. Hipocrite ( talk) 16:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi I was just over at Rand Paul and noticed that the "Board certification" section is listed twice. It may well be a WP:BLP vio listing this in the "personal life". I suggested that the info me merged into the "2010 Senatorial campaign". But was reverted immediately before I could add the info into the lower section. The editor who reverted listed talk page, where I saw you were active. I do not want to get into an edit war maybe you can take a look at the page and fix it if possible.-- Ducha mps_ comb MFA 18:32, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
FYI - WP:GS/CC/RE#Request concerning ChrisO, submitted by myself. In view of your comment about my editing here your input would be appreciated. -- ChrisO ( talk) 08:19, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I see that you have deleted a page about Sujit Saraf. Why ? Jon Ascton (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Since your search extension seems to be a lot more useful than what I have available through LinkSearch (you apparently can search by namespace), could you give me the mainspace totals for the other groups:
And one more (unrelated to the discussion) www.sourcewatch.org--which has a mindboggling number of links to an OPEN WIKI. I think that will need a bit of cleanup too.
Thanks. Horologium (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
importScript('User:MastCell/el-namespace.js');
vector.js
page and things will go back to normal.That said, I get 286 links to *.fair.org, 89 links to *.aim.org, 37 to *.mrc.org, and 92 to *.newsbusters.org. Those are link totals for article space alone and do not include links in other namespaces. I get 1,000 links to *.sourcewatch.org, which probably means that there are >1,000 but the linksearch tool just tops out there. Hope that's helpful. MastCell Talk 22:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
MastCell, regarding this comment, you wrote:
I'd like to make a subtle distinction: there is a vast difference between opine and act. My problems with 2/0 were based on actions, not opinions, in particular, several quick, unilateral actions he took early on in the probation against "skeptics" coupled with his later defense of WMC for behavior that was as bad or worse. I had a major problem with his indef block of GoRight, where he not only executed the block but actually did the work of collecting and presenting evidence, which is far more than Lar ever did. In fact, until his 1-hour block on WMC (which was clear baiting on WMC's part) I don't think Lar had enforced a single request, while 2/0 had handed out several lengthy topic bans and one indef block -- all to "skeptic" editors. Since then, Lar has, at times, been harshly critical of "skeptic" editors like Marknutley, TGL, and me, whereas 2/0 has actually defended WMC (do you recall 2/0's long, diff-by-diff defense of WMC back in Feb or March?).
Despite all this, I've chimed in several times recently in support of 2/0's participation on the request page, as long as he didn't take hasty, unilateral action -- i.e. as long as he contributed opinions toward consensus but didn't act unilaterally. I don't have diffs handy, but I know I've said that. I'd appreciate if you'd correct your statement (which I believe to be wrong but said in good faith) on the case page.
Note: in the above, "skeptic" is in quotes, indicating that we're not necessarily true skeptics, but we edit from that "side"
ATren ( talk) 19:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I think it is worth asking whether any of 2/0's actions lacked support or consensus. I think the ban of GoRight was extensively debated and ultimately supported at all levels, including up to the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. Similarly, I think it would be very difficult to convince me (or the community) that topic bans of editors like Thegoodlocust were undeserved.
On some level, it's a moot point, as my understanding is that 2/0 is voluntarily stepping back from climate-change enforcement (correct me if I'm wrong). I think that's a laudable response, and one that speaks of confidence in one's fellow admins, although I can understand why it might also feel like giving in to bullying.
I'm actually in favor of what you describe as "unilateral action", within reason - I think the probation board ended up bogging down in interminable attempts to thin-slice each enforcement request and proactively generate consensus. In some cases, it makes more sense for an admin to simply take action and then submit that action for review - in fact, many non-climate-change enforcement requests are handled this way. If an admin is taking unilateral actions that subsequently lack consensus or are deemed ill-advised, then it becomes clear that they need to stop taking unilateral actions. That's sort of how these things are supposed to work, in my opinion anyway. MastCell Talk 20:51, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I got a glimpse of your reply after it was hidden. Does corruption abound where conspiracies are suspected? No doubt the site that I referenced and that you commented upon have a bias, but is it justified? A link that I put in a reply on another talk page was to a med journal study about the two types of mercury--sorry that I was hypnotized by prior talk page entries to responding with that item when I should not have done. I should have ignored them. BTW that stuff was / is also. Oldspammer ( talk) 02:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi MastCell. I'd appreciate it if you (or Tim Vickers, who I see watches this page too) could comment at User talk:NuclearWarfare#Favor. Thanks, NW ( Talk) 03:32, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi MastCell, I appreciate you taking a close look at my proposed revision to the STATS article. I've just made a number of edits to my proposed version based on your feedback, and answered your questions back on the Talk page. Let me know when you find a moment! Thanks, NMS Bill ( talk) 15:56, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Re [10]. I agree; but I think I (and you?) have said all that needs to be said on that page now William M. Connolley ( talk) 22:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I just linked to this article and saw an error so went to it. It is a disaster of an article. I've been looking high and low for the template that states that an expert is needed for a medical article. Ok, I couldn't find it. Who would think that there were so many templates! Anyways, I am nowhere knowledgeable enough to fix this article. I've had the unfortunate need to use this drug which I can say this is a horrible but necessary need at times. Do you think you can help me at least tag the article to bring it to the attentions of editors who can fix it up. I would appreciate the help a lot. Thanks in advance, -- CrohnieGal Talk 21:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
I realize that you were engaged in the discussion so this reminder may be a bit presumptuous but here goes: Recently the editor in question came out of a 3 month topic ban largely for the same reasons that the ANI thread started, persistent allegations and/or allusions to antisemitic bents of other editors. Original topic ban, her unsuccessful appeal. That the editor seems to engage in repeated line toeing and then asking to have the book thrown at her is getting somewhat tired. She is a valuable contributor on other fronts but I really don't think that her involvement in this particular topic area does the project or herself much good. Best, Unomi ( talk) 19:09, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi there MastCell, I'm going to be away from my computer maybe for the rest of the day and part of the weekend, so let me know about the page when you find a moment to review the proposed article version again. Thanks for your help. NMS Bill ( talk) 15:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to answer earlier. The article and talk page were deleted, so I don't have any way to find the diffs. GregJackP Boomer! 22:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | ← | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 |
Hi MastCell, I see you're cutting back, but you still seem to be interested in Lyme Disease, and I think it needs some work. It seems from the history that the consent of the WP:MED editors involved is needed, to get an edit to stick. So I'd like to ask a few questions about your various posts on this topic, especially those at Simesa's user page - shall I do it here, or would you like to come over to my user page, or should we ask Simesa to host? Probably LD talk page is not best, because it's being watched so closely. As a new editor I'm not quite ready for primetime on such a volatile topic. I am, arguably, civil and scientifically literate, so it shouldn't be too painful for you ;-) Thanks, Postpostmod ( talk) 17:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
My understanding of the role of ELISA in Lyme disease diagnosis largely coincides with that of various expert groups: ELISA may be negative in the short term after Borrelia infection. In people who are promptly and successfully treated, detectable antibodies may never develop. On the other hand, people with late symptoms related to Borrelia should have detectable antibodies.
Because of the lack of specificity of Lyme ELISA (and ELISA in general), it's necessary to use the two-tier approach you mentioned with a confirmatory Western blot. This parallels the approach to HIV diagnosis and is a reasonably established diagnostic paradigm.
It seems to me that a lot of controversy attaches to the question of whether a patient can have late symptoms caused by Borrelia despite a lack of detectable antibodies to the spirochete. I'm not convinced by the available data that this occurs (my personal opinion, though one that appears to be shared by the IDSA and other expert groups). I could be convinced, but that would take more than testimonial and anecdotal evidence, and I haven't seen that yet.
I'm also very wary of the incessant attempts to attribute medically unexplained symptoms to the latest new infectious agent. This is the sort of thing that brought us ideas like "candidal overgrowth", chronic EBV, etc (it's too early to know whether XMRV is the real deal or just the latest in this unfortunate cascade). None of these ideas has ever been tested rigorously by its proponents, none has ever contributed anything of value to human well-being, and none has ever done anything more than enrich people who know how to take advantage of the desperate and suffering. Given the way battle lines have been drawn on the Lyme issue, and the sort of emotional/testimonial end-around approach to the scientific question, and in particular some of the sorts of people who have clustered around the "Lyme-literate" side (I won't name names, but I suspect you have an idea of whom I'm talking about), it's hard to avoid the suspicion that this is snake oil. But I've been wrong before and I might be wrong about this.
Sorry, you were asking me about the ELISA... :P MastCell Talk 21:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I know you are still working on the data, but what you currently have created is amazing. Thank you so much for your help!!! Also, perhaps we could move the data over to a subpage of the Dermatology task force and link to it under the Statistics section? The main things I am looking for are number of pages with and without images, as well as, if possible, the number of pages with/without images before and after the creation of the task force (Oct 08).
Thanks again so much! --- kilbad ( talk) 14:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Looking at Oct 2008 vs. today is slightly more complex, and to get it up and running will probably take till next week - only because I've got a busy rest of the week and don't really have the time to devote to it right now. MastCell Talk 15:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
As far as I know none of the Japanese books on the firebombings have been translated. Several on the atomic bombings, however, have been. One of the best books in English on the Tokyo bombings is:
Guillian was a French journalist, married to a Japanese, who lived in Tokyo during the war. Because Japan was not at war with France, he was left alone. He gives, I think, some of the best descriptions I've seen anywhere of what it was like for the people who were caught in the firestorm in March 1945. I'm not sure if this book is still in print. The copy I read I checked out from my local library. Cla68 ( talk) 23:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello. Shortly after 120 Volt monkey ( talk · contribs) was blocked, the account Millstoner ( talk · contribs) was created and headed straight for race related articles which he's been editing ever since. Obviously a sockpuppet and probably Jagz yet again. What do you think? Regards, Mathsci ( talk) 13:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I never knew JPandS was "the american equiv of The Lancet." Perhaps you disagree, but your opinion is of dubious merit as you're under suspicion of having pro-scientist sympathies. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 17:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello. I don't quite know why Captain Occam is leaving messages like this. [1] Do you understand what he's up to? Mathsci ( talk) 08:48, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
In a consistent universe, scrying has to be enough to collapse a wave function, though a sufficiently well-informed wizard should be able to find some interesting applications for the Quantum Zeno effect. Next step, entangled scrolls - if Bob gets Ray of Frost, Alice gets Fireball. - 2/0 ( cont.) 03:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
You gotta believe me, Jake! I done SEEN the black helicopters with my own two eyes! [2] Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 21:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Might I suggest a third approach: just blandly revert and ignore the socks, stop the obsession with finding and reporting new Scibaby socks, and perhaps they will just get bored and go away. Really, the majority of recent socks seem to do almost nothing - one recent sock had precisely two edits: he changed "claimed" to "asserted" and reordered some text, neither of which caused any damage. There was little harm in letting him go on editing, especially given how closely these articles are watched. After a while, they may get tired of mundane edits and escalate their behavior, and at that point they can be dealt with -- not as the iconic "Scibaby" but as just another troublesome user. No spectacle, no fanfare. Or, if CU is used, it can be done absent of any Scibaby mention, i.e. rather than "X and Y are both socks of Scibaby", it would simply be "X is a sock of Y". This would be a sort of "don't feed the trolls" approach to handling it. Given the lack of success of other approaches, what do we have to lose? ATren ( talk) 23:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Off-topic aside - every time I see Emmanuel Goldstein, I think Emma Goldman. Not a comparison I think either of them would welcome, but it would make for a very different book. - 2/0 ( cont.) 06:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, when it becomes possible to do so, the most frequently socked articles could be put on flagged revisions. The hope is that not being able to get an edit to go live might reduce the incentive to sock. This should be in addition to, rather than instead of, continuing to block socks. Cardamon ( talk) 21:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Do you suspect he has returned in recent reversions by a new account? Hipocrite ( talk) 11:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
"I have to admit I became disheartened after searching extensively - in the library - for Barnes' 1945 Lancet publication (which our article assures us exists). It does not exist, as best I can tell - although during the search I came across some fascinating work from 1945." That's above and beyond what most Wikipedians would ever do, I'm impressed. And yet, the article doesn't mention a 1945 article in Lancet, it mentions one from 1959: it is in PubMed and ScienceDirect, [3] and I found the abstract reproduced the following year: [4]. Fences& Windows 13:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I manually put "retrieved" because if I don't, people say that the references are not a consistent format. I want the article to be either a FA or equivalent to a FA. Suomi Finland 2009 ( talk) 18:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
accessdate=
because it forces the refs to stay consistent, but it's up to you.
MastCell
Talk
18:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Here. Fainites barley scribs 14:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Or maybe conclude that this is a topic that no serious, respectable reference work would stoop to touch with a ten-foot pole? (Note that only one of these is a serious suggestion). MastCell Talk 22:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC) What publication would that be? Encyclopaedia Britannica? -- JohnWBarber ( talk) 18:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
In regard to that old discussion over here, you might find this article interesting (plus this). II | ( t - c) 01:41, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
When you do a clinical trial, you have to pick some specific dosing regimen. Inevitably, it's possible that you didn't pick the right dose, or administration route, or whatever. That's a possible explanation for any negative trial of an agent. It doesn't invalidate the result of a clinical trial, though. It merely makes it incumbent upon people who believe that the trial was conducted incorrectly to design and carry out their own clinical trial, where they can use whatever intervention they believe in. Designing a clinical trial and seeing it through to some kind of meaningful result is a lot harder than it looks.
I can think of only one example where a clearly negative result later turned out to be due to sub-optimal dosing (cf. flavopiridol). There may be others that aren't coming to mind. But in general, when a drug is clearly ineffective in a well-designed clinical trial, the chance of it becoming a miracle cure (or even modestly effective) with a change in dosing regimen is extremely small, in my experience. MastCell Talk 05:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Think about it. Practicing medicine, or conducting medical research, is actually far more complex and requires far more training and expertise than, say, piloting an aircraft. But people are way more eager to second-guess a physician than a pilot. You'd never knock on the cockpit door and tell the pilot how to configure the aircraft for landing, no matter how much reading you'd done on Google or in the library. But the same people feel no compunction second-guessing much more complex undertakings in medicine. I think it's probably because flying an aircraft looks complicated, so people are willing to defer to established expertise. On the other hand, designing a clinical trial looks deceptively easy. That's not aimed at you or Krashin; it's just a general gripe of mine.
And since you brought up regulation, let's talk about that. The dietary-supplement industry wrote DSHEA and spent millions on lobbying to ensure its passage. As a result, the industry is essentially unreglated. Based on your comments about neocons, I'm sure you agree with me that this state of affairs is a disaster for everyone except dietary-supplement manufacturers. It's certainly a disaster for anyone who wants to do meaningful research on dietary supplements. Since there are huge variations in the quality, potency, and chemical makeup of various brands of a given supplement, it's basically impossible to generalize any result seen in a clinical trial. Of course, the double bind is that any negative result can be written off as "well, you just didn't use the right brand."
It would help, of course, if someone did basic work to understand why it might make a difference whether glucosamine is sulfated or HCl-conjugated, or whether there is any biological difference. For a pharmaceutical company, that would be step 1A, but there's no mechanism or incentive for such studies in the deregulated world of supplements. By the way, glucosamine and chondroitin bring in upwards of $730 million annually. That compares admirably with the best-selling pharmaceuticals - except that the supplement makers didn't have to spend a dime proving that their products actually work, whereas regulatory approval is a multimillion dollar expense for a drug company.
So I have zero sympathy for people who lean on "more research is needed" and criticize the medical establishment for not doing these studies. The supplement makers have millions in unregulated income every year. They can spend that funding studies to show that their products actually work - but that would be stupid, because a) they'd rather keep that money for themselves as profit, and b) the studies would likely be negative in which case they'd have killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. That's human nature, but I think if you want to understand why the state of scientific research on alternative-medical compounds is so shitty, then DSHEA is exhibit A. And it didn't come from greedy doctors or drug companies - it was written by the supplement industry, the ones who constantly demonize those other forces.
Sorry, I got distracted, and I don't think I actually addressed your comments about laetrile. But now that I got that out of my system, let me come back to it in a little bit. :P MastCell Talk 18:04, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
"for comparison, there are about 400-600 lightning strikes per year in the US" That many?? Really?? That must include Alaska and Hawaii? :) Sorry, it made me laugh. Verbal chat 18:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
You were former involved in a discussion in Talk:Abortion#More reliable references so, if you're still interested about the outcome of that discussion, I ask you to express your opinion in Talk:Abortion#Assessing the current agreement status-- Nutriveg ( talk) 04:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
As you predicted on the Workshop page, I removed your suggested sub-issues. As requested, they need to be a single-sentence, neutrally worded question. You can reformat your previous content and readd the other questions (I left what I felt were the two most important ones). ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 20:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Would you look into the cansema page. I am involved in a bit of a battle with an IP user who is deleting and altering the article away from its encyclopedic form. Jettparmer ( talk) 15:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't know how busy you are, but if you've got time to step through the recent changes at Hairy cell leukemia, I'd appreciate it. A well-informed anon seems determined to push current clinical trials and some, shall we say, "pre-publication" claims, and I'm trying to avoid edit warring. The new information is generally not wrong, but IMO it's undue emphasis on treatment of a tiny minority of patients (young treatment-resistant patients in a disease that mostly strikes older men and has a 90% success rate for standard treatment).
If, on the other hand, you think it's okay, then I'll leave it alone. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:26, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I know you hate going to this article. That being said, would take a look at this editor? Petergkeyes is becoming tenacious with his POV about things. He hasn't breached 3 rr since he waits before he redoes his edits. He keeps making the same edits over and over no matter what other editors tell him. Oh, he is on the talk page too finally. Thanks in advance, -- CrohnieGal Talk 13:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
In 20 years or so, when people are writing sociology Ph.D. theses on the rise and fall of Wikipedia, I suspect they'll point to things like this as a tipping point. When a discussion about something as meaningless (in the grand scheme of things) as alt-text becomes poisonous enough that excellent, sane, well-adjusted people are driven off, then we've basically planted the seeds that will eventually destroy this project. MastCell Talk 18:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
If you are able can you please review my draft of a new abortion section; please add your notes in the section below. Thanks! - Roy Boy 02:58, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
YorkieDoctor ( talk · contribs) is the latest! -- Ronz ( talk) 00:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
I removed all his edits and wrote Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/DPeterson. -- Ronz ( talk) 01:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
[7] A good point, but that's mostly because of the contentious nature of CC articles. You know as well as I do that editors are fighting tooth and nail over every little sentence of every little article. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 22:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the note on my talk page. Nice to see a familiar name over there :) Lyrl Talk C 23:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
I think your characterisation of this as "chicken and egg is wrong". But arguing on the workshop page will end up being drowned in noise, so: you you think yuo, or anyone else, has provided any evidence for your assertion that the editing environment is contentious and has given rise to a range of intractable disputes? William M. Connolley ( talk) 08:17, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
If you have additional recent diffs about thegoodlocust, post them on evidence page and notify me on my talk. Tks. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:03, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
Per your conversation on Rlev's talk page, you might want [8]. Hipocrite ( talk) 16:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi I was just over at Rand Paul and noticed that the "Board certification" section is listed twice. It may well be a WP:BLP vio listing this in the "personal life". I suggested that the info me merged into the "2010 Senatorial campaign". But was reverted immediately before I could add the info into the lower section. The editor who reverted listed talk page, where I saw you were active. I do not want to get into an edit war maybe you can take a look at the page and fix it if possible.-- Ducha mps_ comb MFA 18:32, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
FYI - WP:GS/CC/RE#Request concerning ChrisO, submitted by myself. In view of your comment about my editing here your input would be appreciated. -- ChrisO ( talk) 08:19, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I see that you have deleted a page about Sujit Saraf. Why ? Jon Ascton (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Since your search extension seems to be a lot more useful than what I have available through LinkSearch (you apparently can search by namespace), could you give me the mainspace totals for the other groups:
And one more (unrelated to the discussion) www.sourcewatch.org--which has a mindboggling number of links to an OPEN WIKI. I think that will need a bit of cleanup too.
Thanks. Horologium (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
importScript('User:MastCell/el-namespace.js');
vector.js
page and things will go back to normal.That said, I get 286 links to *.fair.org, 89 links to *.aim.org, 37 to *.mrc.org, and 92 to *.newsbusters.org. Those are link totals for article space alone and do not include links in other namespaces. I get 1,000 links to *.sourcewatch.org, which probably means that there are >1,000 but the linksearch tool just tops out there. Hope that's helpful. MastCell Talk 22:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
MastCell, regarding this comment, you wrote:
I'd like to make a subtle distinction: there is a vast difference between opine and act. My problems with 2/0 were based on actions, not opinions, in particular, several quick, unilateral actions he took early on in the probation against "skeptics" coupled with his later defense of WMC for behavior that was as bad or worse. I had a major problem with his indef block of GoRight, where he not only executed the block but actually did the work of collecting and presenting evidence, which is far more than Lar ever did. In fact, until his 1-hour block on WMC (which was clear baiting on WMC's part) I don't think Lar had enforced a single request, while 2/0 had handed out several lengthy topic bans and one indef block -- all to "skeptic" editors. Since then, Lar has, at times, been harshly critical of "skeptic" editors like Marknutley, TGL, and me, whereas 2/0 has actually defended WMC (do you recall 2/0's long, diff-by-diff defense of WMC back in Feb or March?).
Despite all this, I've chimed in several times recently in support of 2/0's participation on the request page, as long as he didn't take hasty, unilateral action -- i.e. as long as he contributed opinions toward consensus but didn't act unilaterally. I don't have diffs handy, but I know I've said that. I'd appreciate if you'd correct your statement (which I believe to be wrong but said in good faith) on the case page.
Note: in the above, "skeptic" is in quotes, indicating that we're not necessarily true skeptics, but we edit from that "side"
ATren ( talk) 19:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I think it is worth asking whether any of 2/0's actions lacked support or consensus. I think the ban of GoRight was extensively debated and ultimately supported at all levels, including up to the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. Similarly, I think it would be very difficult to convince me (or the community) that topic bans of editors like Thegoodlocust were undeserved.
On some level, it's a moot point, as my understanding is that 2/0 is voluntarily stepping back from climate-change enforcement (correct me if I'm wrong). I think that's a laudable response, and one that speaks of confidence in one's fellow admins, although I can understand why it might also feel like giving in to bullying.
I'm actually in favor of what you describe as "unilateral action", within reason - I think the probation board ended up bogging down in interminable attempts to thin-slice each enforcement request and proactively generate consensus. In some cases, it makes more sense for an admin to simply take action and then submit that action for review - in fact, many non-climate-change enforcement requests are handled this way. If an admin is taking unilateral actions that subsequently lack consensus or are deemed ill-advised, then it becomes clear that they need to stop taking unilateral actions. That's sort of how these things are supposed to work, in my opinion anyway. MastCell Talk 20:51, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I got a glimpse of your reply after it was hidden. Does corruption abound where conspiracies are suspected? No doubt the site that I referenced and that you commented upon have a bias, but is it justified? A link that I put in a reply on another talk page was to a med journal study about the two types of mercury--sorry that I was hypnotized by prior talk page entries to responding with that item when I should not have done. I should have ignored them. BTW that stuff was / is also. Oldspammer ( talk) 02:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi MastCell. I'd appreciate it if you (or Tim Vickers, who I see watches this page too) could comment at User talk:NuclearWarfare#Favor. Thanks, NW ( Talk) 03:32, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi MastCell, I appreciate you taking a close look at my proposed revision to the STATS article. I've just made a number of edits to my proposed version based on your feedback, and answered your questions back on the Talk page. Let me know when you find a moment! Thanks, NMS Bill ( talk) 15:56, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
Re [10]. I agree; but I think I (and you?) have said all that needs to be said on that page now William M. Connolley ( talk) 22:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I just linked to this article and saw an error so went to it. It is a disaster of an article. I've been looking high and low for the template that states that an expert is needed for a medical article. Ok, I couldn't find it. Who would think that there were so many templates! Anyways, I am nowhere knowledgeable enough to fix this article. I've had the unfortunate need to use this drug which I can say this is a horrible but necessary need at times. Do you think you can help me at least tag the article to bring it to the attentions of editors who can fix it up. I would appreciate the help a lot. Thanks in advance, -- CrohnieGal Talk 21:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
I realize that you were engaged in the discussion so this reminder may be a bit presumptuous but here goes: Recently the editor in question came out of a 3 month topic ban largely for the same reasons that the ANI thread started, persistent allegations and/or allusions to antisemitic bents of other editors. Original topic ban, her unsuccessful appeal. That the editor seems to engage in repeated line toeing and then asking to have the book thrown at her is getting somewhat tired. She is a valuable contributor on other fronts but I really don't think that her involvement in this particular topic area does the project or herself much good. Best, Unomi ( talk) 19:09, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi there MastCell, I'm going to be away from my computer maybe for the rest of the day and part of the weekend, so let me know about the page when you find a moment to review the proposed article version again. Thanks for your help. NMS Bill ( talk) 15:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to answer earlier. The article and talk page were deleted, so I don't have any way to find the diffs. GregJackP Boomer! 22:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)