Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:19, 11 June 2014

hello!

Hi - pleased to meet you! Nice to meet another science-oriented person on WP. I recently did a quick blast over the Armyworm related articles. They were a big, smeared mess and I separated them out into stub articles and created a main disambiguation page for armyworm (that is what is linked above) but the various articles could definitely do with some bug-expert knowledge. Ditto agriculturally important Ostrinia sp and Pink bollworm.... again, pleased to meet you! Jytdog (talk) 17:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Pleased as well Jytdog. I haven't been in the articles you've mentioned much yet, but I saw some other sloppy entomological articles and decided to actually get into a bit of editing on Misplaced Pages finally (although that's rolling out rather slowly since research takes priority over hobbies). I'll definitely be taking a look over them when I get a bit more time. I have lurked in the ag articles that tend to get more passionate edits (e.g., the biotech related ones) as well, so I may pop into those on occasion with edits, but I imagine that could turn into more of a time sink than I could handle pretty quickly given the amount of edits you've put into them. I'd definitely like to clean up some of the entomology sections over time though, so we'll see where that leads.Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

that would be amazing! thanks for being willing. Jytdog (talk) 18:10, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Hand foot and mouth disease

Can you provide a reference discussing the new HFMD vaccine? I would be very interested to see it. If it comes from a reliable source, I will be sure to discuss it in the article. Thanks King! TylerDurden8823 (talk) 08:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi TylerDurden8823. I originally made the edit after browsing through Timeline of vaccines and seeing the vaccine listed there. I used the same source from the BBC as on that page, which also links to the original study at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2961049-1/abstract. It's a primary literature source, so it's probably best to stick to saying a vaccine exists at this point, but that in the quick browsing I could find nothing is that commercially available, efficacy on HFMD as a whole (since it's only for one virus), etc. I don't have much expertise in vaccines, so I mainly just wanted to make sure the point was made that a vaccine does exist in some fashion after seeing the discrepancy between the two pages. Beyond that, it seems the currently developed vaccine is still being studied, so it doesn't seem like there's much more to say at the moment, at least from my cursory browsing. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:32, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for the clarification. I'll see if I find any citable secondary sources mentioning the vaccine. If not, I'll keep a watchful eye for future reviews mentioning this. Perhaps we'll see a vaccine released to the public in the near future. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 21:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Questions about deletions

Hi, I would love to know why you removed "Bayer strongly denies the allegations" citing http://www.britishbeekeeping.com/ and the possible cause of Bt GMO crops on honeybees colony collapse disorder from and ? EllenCT (talk) 22:47, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

On the specific note of Bayer's response, it was out of place after making the other deletions in that section since it was a standalone statement. The other problem is that it's ambiguous what the allegations were, and what was particularly being responded to. Either way, unless there was scientific evidence being presented against something, a group simply denying something without evidence shouldn't have any weight in a section that's describing scientific research. Now if we had proper sources saying a specific claim was made, but another grouped responded saying the methodology was wrong, etc. and the latter view was shown to be readily accepted, then the former statement would simply be struck. There just doesn't appear to be a place for "group X denies claim Y" type statements in this context as that's not how science is written about. Either there's evidence refuting an idea and we strike the claim, or the claim remains if there isn't evidence. If all we have is a denial and no evidence, it's not relevant here.

On GMOs, I removed the content from the initial paragraph because that topic was not describing a possible cause per se, but a topic that have been looked at and mostly disregarded or has very little evidence. Basically, it was weighting the intro paragraph to list the main factors that are getting the most attention or have good evidence behind them, while leaving out other things where we say in the actual section that the current evidence shows that factor isn't a concern. It's like how we don't give undue weight to miasma theory as an actual potential cause of disease in an article about germ theory of disease. The way the current section is written, Bt isn't affecting honeybee health (it's a largely insect order specific protein so you don't get broad nontarget effects like you do with pesticides), so we shouldn't be listing it as a possible cause, but rather something that was looked at and largely refuted. It's mainly a nuance trying to say that it was once something that was looked into as a possible cause, but that research points to it not being an issue. That's why I deleted it from the intro sentence, but left the actual section to describe what research was looked into on the topic. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:57, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I was under the impression that honeybees are insects. What are the sources you determined rule out Bt GMOs as a possible cause of CCD? To what extent do you believe evidence of corporate astroturfing, when it exists, should be included in pertinent articles? EllenCT (talk) 02:19, 11 June 2014 (UTC)