Talk:Phineas Gage - Misplaced Pages

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Phineas Gage was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 20, 2005	Good article nominee	Listed
June 14, 2007	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

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Tone of Voice

It seems to me that this article is not subjective, and is instead trying to present an idea. The article seems to argue that Gage's mind was not severely changed by his injury. While this is all very well, it is not the correct tone for a Misplaced Pages article. The article should be changed not to present an idea, but to merely state the facts. mrscientistman (talk)Mrscientistman —Preceding undated comment added 23:28, 18 March 2009 (UTC).

I changed the text to clarify that the uncertainty regards the extent, nature, and duration of psychological changes, not whether there were any such changes at all. I hope this relieves your concern. (It is recognized that there are a lot of citations still needed.) EEng (talk) 14:21, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Lebanon clarification

Was Gage originally from Lebanon? The article merely states he wanted to "go home to Lebanon", and does not indicate if this is homesickness or psychosis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.144.1.162 (talk) 03:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Lebanon, New Hampshire (Gage's hometown) is what was meant. 24.147.70.156 (talk) 18:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

older entries

Removed the following:

As a less positive result, this case also helped lead to the creation of frontal lobotomy, which was a quite controversial psychosurgical measure in use in the early 20th century that has been since superseded.

As it is almost certainly erroneous. Unfortunately the Moniz page on whonamedit.com (see this link) suggests a connection between Gage and the development of psychosurgery where there is very little evidence to support it.

There is a page with a comprehensive analysis of this issue here which again suggests the development of lobotomy / leucotomy procedures by Moniz and Freeman and Watts had little to do with Gage's case.

- Vaughan 21:11, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very well. I had read that a while ago, but if it is truly disconnected then perhaps it was better to remove it. I won't push this anymore except to say that we should probably mention in the article that a connection between Gage and leucotomy has been suggested by some groups of people, but is not generally accepted. -- EmperorBMA / ブリイアン 06:31, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. I've added some text to that effect (and the link above). Feel free to make changes if necessary. - Vaughan 09:23, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hanna Damasio and not Antonio as first writter of the investigation mentioned

The person that really investigated about Phineas Gage and made the computer simulation (see picture) that appears in the article mentioned was Hanna Damasio and not his husband Antonio. She is the first writter (and therefore the most important one) while his husband is only one of a group of secondary writters. Even if Antonio is a better known neurologist this is no reason to give him the merit of an article. Antonio himself in his book Descarte´s error says that was his wife the one conducting this investigation.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Garrondo (talk • contribs) 12:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

Images copyrighted

I suspect that these images are copyrighted as they both come from journal articles: Image 1, Image 2. If you uploaded them, can you provide some copyright information for them, otherwise they are liable to be removed. Vaughan 13:10, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what image this refers to, but there;s no way a photo from the 19th century is still under copyright!!!!!! The article seems to imply that a 19th century image is under copyright. If you are referring to that, I suggest someone clean up the article by putting the images back. Unsigned comment by User:72.83.87.96 13:10, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

The images referred to were ones removed from the article long ago. EEng (talk) 06:26, 17 July 2009 (UTC) the rest of this post has been moved to the bottom

For the sake of completeness, this discussion is about two images which were uploaded by commons:User_talk:DrFlo1 and deleted at commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Archive/2005/06#Unknown_license_3.

The deleted images are unable to be restored, however the image descriptions say that they are "adapted from Ratiu P, Talos IF, Haker S, Liebermann D, Everett P, J Neurotrauma 2004".

John Vandenberg 06:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

== Image Reversed? ==

It appears the computer-generate image may be reversed, as compared with the image of the damage in Gage's skull.

Death?

Does anyone have any specific details to Gage's death? I've heard he has died of convulsions/seizures but I'm not sure. David 03:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

He died of convulsions (see Macmillan, p.108), though whether these were a late-manifesting result of the original injury is impossible to say. 24.147.70.156 (talk) 21:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Another element of the accident

I don't have a citation for it (because I read it years ago, don't remember where), but regarding his accident, it was noted that the resulting hole was smaller than the diameter of the pipe, and recently it has been suggested that the skullbone suture at the top of his head flexed outward to allow the pipe to pass. I don't know if it's a significant addition to the article or if it would require a citation.--Anchoress 12:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, apparently Ratiu et al ( Ratiu P, Talos IF, Haker S, Lieberman S, Everett P (2004). "The tale of Phineas Gage, digitally remastered". Journal of Neurotrauma 21 (5): pp.637-43.) were the first to notice this. At http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2883334186873702319 is their video simulation of the skull hinging open as the bar passes through, then closing again. This may have been one more factor in Gage's survival, in that it provided room for the brain to move away from the bar as it passed through, making the damage "cleaner" -- in a physical, not sterile sense -- much as Harlow says the 1/4-inch leading point did. (Others more qualified have discussed this I'm sure -- this is just my layman's speculation.) EEng (talk) 14:40, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Apology for Tycho

I accidentally reverted to the wrong version, and attributed the vandalism to you. Sorry. It should be fixed now. Zuiram 06:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Retain / Regain consciousness

Wasn't it so that he retained consciousness after having it shot trough the head? Nsoltani 15:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

He may not have lost consciousness at all, and if he did, it was only for a few minutes. See Malcolm Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage, 2000, p.406 24.147.70.156 (talk) 22:18, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Double negative??

A recent change from "appears" to "would be unlikely" has reversed the meaning of this sentence: "In light of modern medical science, a bilateral damage of the frontal brain by a projectile measuring 1.25 inches in diameter and weighing thirteen pounds, ~~appears~~ would be unlikely to be incompatible with survival, since this would imply an extensive damage to vital vascular structures, such as the superior sagittal sinus..." Knowing little of modern medical science, could someone who knows more sort out the correct version? .. dave souza, talk 09:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Skip Ransom

I'm not really sure if this is something I could even put on the article, but at this link there is a song by the band Skip Ransom about Phineas Gage.--Spikymann 23:10, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Uncited References

Specifically, this edit, which was undone by Garrondo. Really, a citation is needed there. Any specific reasons for undoing that edit? This is supposed to be a "good article", you know. I've put it up for Good Article Review. --24.199.103.240 15:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I reverted becouse it will be really hard to find a citation for that since its simply historic common sense; and therefore I didn´t believe it was needed. How can the story of a destroyed life give impulse to a surgical thecnique? On the contrary; maybe if Moniz had heard of Phineas Gage he wouldn´t have been so eager to use his technique. Anyway; if somebody finds a citation for that I would the first to grate him/her.

I have been reading the links on the botton and one of them talked about why Phineas Gage had nothing to do with lobotomy; so I have changed it to citation--Garrondo 16:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Good Article review

The Good Article review on this article has ended, and in a 3 to 1 discussion, (Or 3 to 0 depending on how you look at it, I counted one for GA status because he/she was trying to discount the reasons for delisting, even though he/she didn't actually seem to come out in favor of GA status) this article has been delisted from WP:GA, (or will be after i'm done making this comment anyway) primarily for various concerns over references. Review archived here: Misplaced Pages:Good article review/Archive 21. Homestarmy 17:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Phineas Gage skull replication

I am the author of the open-access paper below in which we replicated Phineas Gage's skull by printing a virtual reality model in 3D. The model has utility in medical, neuroscience, and biology education.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0001119 Kelley DJ, Farhoud M, Meyerand ME, Nelson DL, Ramirez LF, Dempsey RJ, Wolf AJ, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ. Creating Physical 3D Stereolithograph Models of Brain and Skull. PLoS ONE. 2007 Oct 31;2(10):e1119. PMID: 17971879

Please consider including this in the physical remains and legacy section as well as the external references section.

Thank you for your consideration.

Dan Kelley UW-Madison

PS I mistakenly added our citation to the main page and apologize for my lack of protocol. Please adjust my entries accordingly.

Abe2mu 07:09, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Dan, how open is "open". Is the entire article, with all images, video's, etc all covered by the Creative Commons license? If so, we can integrate all of those into this article, and we could even attempt to reproduce the journal article on Wikisource. John Vandenberg (talk) 04:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this the true story?

The Alberta Nelson Biology 30 textbook (from the old curriculum; the new one comes in next year) has a "Case Study" on Phineas Gage. Though the story is quite similar to the one in this article there are some major differences. The textbook says "In, 1948, a thunderous explosion vibrated throughout a Vermont mine. A quarry worker, Phineas Gage, lay on the ground impaled by a tamping iron." This article says "Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was a railroad construction foreman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull..." Which one is correct? It makes no sense that this would be a coincidence; both have the same name, lived in Vermont, and were impaled in the head with a tamping iron. Even the same death mask is shown in the textbook as on the article. On the other hand the dates are out by a century and the job varies (railroad/mine). Maybe the textbook's story was altered for copyright issues? Though, in that case, they might as well make a completely fictional story. I was just curious. Thanks. –bse3 (talk • contribs • count • logs) 03:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It must be a printing error in the textbook. The journal articles from 1848 are really real. see Wikisource:Author:John M. Harlow, M.D., which has the full text of one of the articles, and snippets of the other article. John Vandenberg (talk) 04:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I just thought it was weird and wasn't sure which was correct, but deep down I really trusted Misplaced Pages :) –bse3 (talk • contribs • count • logs) 22:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a typical example of the way in which even serious textbooks, articles, etc. repeat fractured accounts of Gage without verifying the facts. Macmillan has a whole chapter on this, giving many examples. 24.147.70.156 (talk) 22:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm somewhat suprised

that nobody has put forth the seemingly common sense answer that even if my brain were unaffected the never ending pain of having such and injury would make anyone likely irritable and take up cursing as well. Section "3.1 Criticism of popular story" seems like a good place to say something about it (even thought that pat of the article presents the possibility the story is exaggerated or inaccurate) but I haven't the foggiest how to mention something along those lines and still fit an encyclopedic format. The possibility exists that his brain damage may have had little to do with his apparent attitude change, and more to due with trauma pain and a lack of understanding with friends and coworkers. I am painfully (pun intended) aware of how this can happen, having a similar injury of my own. 216.46.209.216 (talk) 06:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, someone has. See Zbigniew Kotowicz, "The strange case of Phineas Gage," History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 20, No. 1, 115-131 (2007). You might find an abstract here: http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/1/115 . 24.147.70.156 (talk) 22:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Substantial revisions

A few weeks back I made a few corrections and revisions, after which I got bolder and bolder, so looking back now I realize that I've changed things a great deal. This is my first time contributing, so please be gentle. I hope I did everything appropriately, though I realize that citations are needed (too tired just now) and that I need an account if I'm going to carry on with this. 24.147.70.156 (talk) 22:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Be sure that if your work was not for better it would have been reverted. This article is an important one for neuropsychology but it has not been edited much in the past months so any contribution would be welcomed. Well done. However as you say citations would be very useful (Access to McMillan book seems a need), and having an account always helps to do things more personal. --Garrondo (talk) 08:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Burial of the rod

Discussion started at User_talk:EEng#Reversion_of_my_edit_on_Gage

user:Sbharris recently added that the rod was buried with body, and it was reverted by EEng. Sbharris has pointed out that it is mentioned on p 59 of John Fleishman's book, which reads:

With her son-in-law and the mayor of San Francisco, who happens to be a physician, standing by as witnesses, Phineas's coffin is unrecovered and carried to a shed. There, Dr. J. D. B. Stillman, a local surgeon, removes the skull. The huge fracture on the forehead is unmistakable. Dr. Stillman removes something else from the coffin-the tamping iron that Phineas carried everywhere, even to his grave.

EEng has mentioned on his talk page that he will respond in a few days. In the meantime, does anyone else know of another source for this?

John Vandenberg 11:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

For those joining the discussion late, here are the original comments left by Sbharris at User_talk:EEng:

Reversion of my edit on Gage I've always been curious about people who revert things rather than simply adding a tag. Reversion is for cases where one fancies themselves an expert on the subject, and is pretty sure the addition is wrong or unsourcable. But this is not such a case. But the tamping iron burial is a very commonly known bit of data about Gage, and obviously your bookshelf lacks John Fleishman's book on Phineas Gage where the burial of the rod with Gage, and recovery of them both by Dr. J.D.B Stillman is mentioned on page 59 (Shattuck takes them both east that December, to Harlow). You can actually find the text if you google "Phineas Gage burial". No, I didn't add the ref. I'll leave it for you do to, as penance for doing things wrong on Misplaced Pages. Don't revert other people's stuff unless you're sure you know what you're doing.

S B H arris 22:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

And here is my response:

That something is "commonly known" makes it neither true nor verifiable, and this is never so important as when the topic is Phineas Gage. "The factual record is small, and the most important element of it – Harlow’s 1868 report – not readily available, and most who have written about Phineas have been too lazy or slipshod to check it. Paradoxically, the very slightness of reliable fact which allows myths about Phineas to flourish also makes disentangling those myths a conceptually easy, if tedious, task." (Macmillan, "Phineas Gage – Unravelling the myth." The Psychologist 21,9 (2008): 828-831, at 831.) How truly good Fortune has favored us – public-spirited Wikipedians with egos in check – by puiptting before us this opportunity for us to disentangle one such myth (?) together!

The image of Gage at rest alongside what Harlow called "his constant companion for the remainder of his life" is a charming one, but one for which there is zero evidence to date. Taking down from my bookshelf John Fleischman's Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science, I am reminded that it is a fine juvenile work which renders Gage's tale into an engaging transcontinental adventure for its young audience, working in some worthwhile science along the way. It does this by leavening established fact with measured bits of fancy – some drawn from the "popular, semifictional, and fictional works" Macmillan debunks, some from scientific writings which have uncritically borrowed from such works (Odd Kind of Fame, ch. 13-15), and some from the author's imagination.

For example, in the short passage from Fleischman quoted earlier we find the following "facts": Shattuck and Mrs. Gage were personally present at the exhumation; Stillman (and not, say, San Francisco mayor Henry Perrin Coon) was the one who actually detached poor Phineas' skull; the "shed." Among all the extant sources, there is only one brief mention of the actual event of the exhumation (Odd Kind of Fame, p.417) and nothing like these details appears there – they're all just made up.

I am in no way impugning Fleischman's book: as a popular-science work for children, it does a very good job. But the very features that make it (as John Vandenberg points out) a common entry on summer reading lists for middle-schoolers – the lively fictionalization coupled with the lack of stuffy scholarly apparatus – are gthe same things that disqualify it as a reference for grown-up purposes.

What I said in my Edit Summary – "If you do know of primary evidence, I'd very much like to know about it" – was sincere. Primary sources are generally not preferred for Misplaced Pages, but on Gage the primary record is so compact (Odd Kind of Fame reproduces essentially its entirety) that for questions of fact, there's no point in doing anything but just check that record directly.

Returning now to the question at hand: It is true, as you say, that "the tamping iron burial is a very commonly known bit of data about Gage." But you will find that every author offering that bit of data cites either to nothing, or else to something which (perhaps transitively) cites to nothing either. Certainly there may exist somewhere an undiscovered primary source, or neglected derivative work pointing to a such a source, which would establish the buried-iron factoid. And again I say that I would be delighted by such a discovery. But in the meantime, citing Fleischman in an article on Gage is akin to citing The Crucible in an article on witchcraft or (an example perhaps closer to your heart) using Copenhagen as a fact-source for the life of Bohr.

In summary, there is indeed no evidence that Gage's iron went to the grave with him. I can easily believe that 99.9% of your edits are superior, but this time you flew too close to the sun, particuluarly in the obnoxious stridency of your comments. Penance indeed!

EEng (talk) 20:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, it might be more useful to ask Fleischman where he got his information, rather than to continue what has been essentially Macmillan's mission in life, which is to go around and label everybody who has Gage info that Macmillan can't verify from his own primary documents, as being "mythologizers." As I read between the lines, even in what Macmillan presents, it's pretty likely that the rod wasn't kicking around in Gage's family, owned by his mother or brother-in-law for six years, because if had been, they would likely have sent it immediately to Harlow when he first corresponded with Gage's mother in 1866. After all, the rod had been to Boston in the East without Gage before that-- why not again after his death? I can understand a family member wanting to accompany Gage's skull, but there's little reason to do that with a piece of metal. Why wait to send them both together? There's only one good and natural explanation, and you know it. They couldn't send them separately, because they had no access to the rod before the skull. Jackson, who Macmillan quotes, thanks three people for obtaining skull and rod: Coon the mayor (who certainly was not keeping the rod), Stillman the surgeon (ditto) and Shattuck the brother-in-law who transported both East with him after the exhumation. The mother is not mentioned, and would be if she'd kept it. If the rod was out all that time, was Shattuck keeping it in some corner? What on Earth FOR?

I'll see if I can find the original Harlow and Bigelow reports; they must have something to say on the matter. S B H arris 00:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

(Snappy comeback thought of later: Well for that matter, why the delay from 1866 to 1867 for the exhumation?) The level of knowledge (and skill in marshalling that knowledge in support of a thesis) on display here means I would be far out of my league in even attempting rebuttal. I will say only:

this discussion has, with amazing rapidity, become a vivid illustration of the wisdom of the no-original-research policy;
nontheless I will be the first to congratulate you, should you manage turn up actual evidence for (or against) burial of the iron;
I need not write to Fleischman because he and I have a mutual colleague, through whom I have known the answer to your question for a long time; and
please end (I ask you once again) your use of personal slights ("Macmillan's mission in life"; "only one good and natural explanation, and you know it") in substitution for argument and evidence.

By the way, you shouldn't need to look far to "find the original Harlow and Bigelow papers": complete facsimiles appear in An Odd Kind of Fame – which of course is on your bookshelf. I wish you the best of luck in your researches, and hope that by the time we hear from you again you will have turned up something tangible.

EEng (talk) 02:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Cross edit. Yes, I know the reports are in Macmillan, but I can't find my copy of him either. You've known for years that Fleischman made this up? Why not just say that? Afraid I won't understand you? You're the one talking about NOR, but you're using the results of YOURS, here, in this. Irony.

Just change the article so say that nobody knows what happened to the rod between Gage's death and his exhumation, and one author has claimed (without citation) that it was buried with Gage. In any case, both became available to science at the same time, and were sent East to the requesting physician together. Let readers draw their own inferences. S B H arris 02:59, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Last edit. I don't know what you mean about being unable to find your copy of Macmillan "either"; mine's right here. I didn't mention what I know privately about Fleischman's sources exactly because that would be use of original, unpublished research, which in turn is what I was trying to point out to you – Misplaced Pages is not built by writing to authors to ask for their otherwise-unmentioned inspirations for obviously fictionalized works for children. And no, it never occurred to me that you wouldn't understand, although apparently in the event, you really did not: no matter what Fleischman might write back to you, if the answer isn't published somewhere openly, then it's not usable in Misplaced Pages. So what would be the point?

To reference Fleischman as an author who "has claimed (without citation)..." would be, I repeat, like citing Copenhagen for a life of Bohr. The article doesn't need to be, and should not be, a full catalog of the distortions and myths to which the Gage's story has been subjected over the years. Macmillan has done that admirably, and to excellent effect as a lesson in the history of science. Anyone interested in the minutiae of this particular controversy can find it all right here on Talk.

You've managed at last to post a reply that is not sneeringly disdainful, so pending arrival of new evidence – usable evidence – if we stop right now we can do so knowing that at least something rare was achieved, however ephemeral.

EEng (talk) 03:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Look, Fleischman's overactive imagination is NOT the source of the idea that the rod was buried with Gage. A Google of "Phineas Gage tamping iron buried" turns up three per-Fleischman references (Hockenbury 2002; Davidoff 2000; Phares&Chaplin, 1997) who all claim this same thing. I can't see their references on Google. But this factoid (repeated incidentally by H. Damasio herself in 2005 in a paper in which she discusses her CT of the skull for Social Neuroscience, as you also can read on Google) is not just from a children's tale. If it's myth, it's one that has been universally accepted. Perhaps I can get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, I suggest we mention THAT in the article, and that Macmillan has questioned it, because he can't find a source for it. Okay? S B H arris 03:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Could you please provide full citations for the three per-Fleischman references? I cant find the 2005 paper by H. Damasio; Social Neuroscience was established in 2006, and her only paper in that journal is as a contributor to "The neural substrates of cognitive empathy" doi:10.1080/17470910701376902. John Vandenberg 04:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) John, I CAN do that, but I have to type then in by hand, and then you still have to find the books. It's a lot easier if you'll do the Google string above in Google (not Google scholar). If this doesn't work for you, I'll see what I can do. http hits in google are often too long to work well as past-ups, but I'll try it for the Hanna Damasio, et al. paper. One copy of a similar or exactly the same paper by her (making the same clain of burial with the rod) is in Science 1994 May 20, 1994 v264 n5162 p1102(4). http://merlin.allegheny.edu/employee/l/lcoates/CoatesPage/INTDS_315/Phineas_Gage_Science_Article.pdf

Here's the Google Books Social Neuroscience cite (It's a book called: key readings: indeed 2005) of the same or similar paper by this group and I hope the link works for you:

http://books.google.com/books?id=PqNs1L1SwPMC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=Phineas+Gage+tamping+iron+buried&source=web&ots=YRzOW3GKaI&sig=PfQhFwvcvaXx3q-Q5I7kKReeea0&hl=en&ei=BViYSczNPJLQsAPArsR4&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result

The Book editors are John T. Cacioppo and Gary G. Berntson: books.google.com/books?isbn=1841690996. But again, this is basically the same 1994 CT paper by H. Damasio in Science. Apparently the Damiosos are a husband-and-wife team.

Here is Macmillan complaining in 2000 that Hockenbury and Hockenbury writing in 1997 have Gage buried with the rod. So this kind of thing has been going on for some times, long before poor Fleischman and his juvenile. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/jhin/2000/00000009/00000001/art00008

I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot, sbharris, but if you really want to pursue this let me save you time by supplying information that will guide your search and place it in context with what's already known. (Not that you should accept it uncritically -- would be great for you to double-check me -- but it will give you an overview and framework.) I can't do this for several days, but if you can wait...

EEng (talk) 15:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure, no sweat. But again please do your Google and discover this is an old, old and widespread factoid, going back at least to 1997, and Macmillan has been railing about it since 2000 so it predates the two works WE started arguing with. I'm sure I read it in Oliver Sacks, or somewhere, long before THAT. If Macmillan hasn't tracked down the source of it, I think it's unlikely that we're going to be able to, since it appears to go back so far. S B H arris 18:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Note: User Sbharris, I drafted the below before your latest posting. Had I seen that post, I wouldn't have bothered. Nobody is attacking Fleischman. "Juvenile" is not a bad word -- it just means it's a book for children, and a good one at that. I know very well that the buried-rod idea goes way back, as you'll see below; nothing you're coming up with via Google is going to be news to me. We were never arguing (at least I wasn't) about "two articles"; I just said that there's no primary support for the buried rod, and tried to show you how you could discover that for yourself (by tracing citations back until they run out -- I know becuase I did it long ago).

But now all this nice work would go to waste if I don't post it. It tries to show you where you might check to determine the origin(s) of the "buired iron" idea since you seem to want to know. (I suspect multiple people came up with it independently, actually.) Now you seem to want to give up. Anyway, here it is. (All the cites below can be found in the bibliography of Odd Kind of Fame.)

For starters, I never said that Fleischman's imagination (and I will thank you to stop misrepresenting what I say by e.g. putting the word "overactive" in my mouth) was the source of the idea that the iron was buried. I said that the fictionalized parts of his book were drawn from popular stories, from scientific articles which have drawn from popular stories, and also from Fleischman's imagination. And I repeat that I consider his to be a fine book, for children.

Damasio et al 1994 refers to "...the skull and tamping iron, alongside which Gage had been buried...." This paper continues to receive a lot of attention, and I believe you could trace most or all bar-burial assertions in scientific/medical articles after 1994 to it (but do check me on this). Fleischman as well may have got the idea there, or from Blackington (see below).

So where did Damasio 1994 get the idea? There's no cite for that particular paragraph, though the paragraph immediately prior cites Ferrier 1878, and the paper's opening cites Harlow 1868. Ferrier 1878 merely refers to Harlow, "through whose interest in the man till death we owe the preservation of this unique specimen," citing, yes, Harlow 1868.

JBS Jackson's catalog of the Warren Museum (items 949 and 3106) says nothing about where the bar had been between death and exhumation of Phineas. Sbharris says that Jackson "thanks" Shattuck, Stillman, and Coon, and infers much from the idea that Gage's mother "is not mentioned." This is incorrect. Jackson was paraphrasing the thanks given to the family in Harlow 1868, which appears in two passages, but Jackson drew from only Harlow's second passage, quoted here:

I desire here, to express gratefully my obligations, and those of the Profession, to D.D. Shattuck, Esq., brother-in-law of the deceased; to Dr. Coon, Mayor of San Francisco, and to Dr. J.D.B. Stillman, for their kind cooperation in executing my plans for obtaining the head and tamping iron, and for their fidelity in personally superintending the opening of the grave and forwarding what we so much desired to see.

But earlier in the same paper, Harlow also said:

It is to be regretted that an autopsy could not have been had.... In consideration of this important omission, the mother and friends, waiving the claims of personal and private affection, with a magnaminity more than praiseworthy, at my request have cheerfully placed this skull (which I now show you) in my hands, for the benenfit of science.

Although "cheerfully" seems a strange adverb for the placing of a human skull into somebody's hands (whether for the benefit of science or any other purpose), in any event Gage's mother was indeed thanked. (It's really necessary to get all the context before jumping to conclusions.) Meanwhile, Harlow's "superintending" passage naturally leads one to conjecture that the iron was recovered from the grave along with the skull, but conjecture is all it is.

Finally, the numerous popular stories about Gage from 1869 on may very well have narrated an iron burial, inspired either by the conjecture which (as already described) one easily makes from Harlow 1868, or by borrowing from one another. Blackington 1956 is a particularly good candidate, but my xerox of him, like those of dozens of similar tales, is where I can't put my finger on it just now.

Blackington 1956 is of special interest because Fleischman (in the 1990s at least) had been features editor of NH's Yankee magazine, the founder of which had acquired Blackington's papers in 1956. Unfortunately much of this material was lost, so we don't know what Blackington's sources were, but no doubt Fleischman drew inspiriation in part from Blackington 1956 (though I repeat I can't check Blackington just now to see if iron-burial is really in there).

So modern science articles may be borrowing iron-burial from Damasio 1994, or may be making the conjuecture directly from Harlow 1868. Damasio et al probably just misread Harlow.

Fleischman (who contributed to Macmillan's researches, by the way) may have got it from Blackington, or Damasio, or...

One final note: there is another fictionalized account of Gage, Brooks 1869, which explicitly states that the bar was kicking around the house until the exhumation. Brooks was a San Francisco newspaper editor (and author on the side) and would have been acquainted with the family at least in passing. And there are indications he had access to family details not found elsewhere. So in fact, the one indicator we have about the iron's whereabouts, other than Harlow 1868, puts it above ground at all times.

But on the question of whether or not the burial should be asserted in the article as fact, none of this matters, because as I said way back there is only the one narrative extant of the exhumation – quoted above from Harlow 1868 – and it does not support an iron burial as fact, only suggestion. That leaves, as I also said way back, the possibility of "an undiscovered primary source, or neglected derivative work pointing to a such a source, which would establish the buried-iron factoid." I take it this is the quest you are on, and I have already wished you luck, though I warn you again I've been over this material pretty darn thoroughly. Without such new evidence it makes no sense to present this idea as fact.

It would also be inappropriate to present the buried-iron idea even as "disputed," assuming your inquiries confirm, as I've already said, that "every author offering that bit of data cites either to nothing, or else to something which (perhaps transitively) cites to nothing either." That's not something disputed, it's just commonly-heald myth without foundation.

On the other hand, if do you find that "undiscovered primary source, or neglected derivative work pointing to a such a source, which would establish the buried-iron factoid"...well then, things would be different.

But even if the undiscovered source doesn't turn up, this could still be the basis for an excellent addition to the article: an illustration of the persistence of unsupported statements about Gage, in the face of all evidence.

I leave you, finally, by repeating the quotation from Macmillan with which I opened my original post:

The factual record is small, and the most important element of it – Harlow’s 1868 report – not readily available, and most who have written about Phineas have been too lazy or slipshod to check it. Paradoxically, the very slightness of reliable fact which allows myths about Phineas to flourish also makes disentangling those myths a conceptually easy, if tedious, task.

Tedious! Oh god yes, tedious!

EEng (talk) 00:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

existentially pregnant

Who decided to link each of these words individually to Wiktionary? --70.143.50.113 (talk) 05:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I did, because pregnant (in the sense of "heavy with meaning or implication") and existentialism (in any sense) may be unfamiliar to some. You mentioned they're linked individually -- would there be some way to link them not-individually? EEng (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Portrait of Gage

This discussion has been split from the very old discussion #Images copyrighted which is about different images. John Vandenberg 06:14, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The images referred to were ones removed from the article long ago. You are probably correct that any particular 19th-century work, such as a daguerreotype, is no longer under copyright. However, TCP/IP doesn't support daguerreotype transport (I understand they're working on it) so there's no way to upload a daguerreotype to Misplaced Pages over the internet. You can only post, say, a jpg of the daguerreotype. And any such jpg (being a "derivative work") is under copyright, unless and until the maker of that jpg releases it; and until such time, that jpg can't be used here. To get around that you'll need to get your hands on the daguerreotype and use a camera or scanner to create your own jpg of it, if you can get the owner of the daguerreotype to agree to that. (By the way, there are no free images of the newly-discovered daguerreotype. So for now, to see Gage's face, you'll have to follow the link to the website where it's posted --- what's so bad about that?) EEng (talk) 06:26, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, can you tell me why a slavish reproduction of a 2D, public domain image, is considered a derivative and not just a copy? Shouldn't the precedent set in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. establish that such a digital reproduction which adds no creativity or originality to the process, deserves no further protection by copyright? I don't think it should. Indeed, this is almost exactly the same issue as the National Portrait Gallery vs. User:Dcoetzee. With this in mind, I've uploaded the Los Angeles Times version of the photo here and would hope that we could include it in this article. FBenenson (talk) 20:19, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Happy to answer your question (amateur lawyer to amateur lawyer, of course). As a 2nd-Circuit decision, Bridgeman applies in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont only. You're gonna have to wait for either the 11th Circuit, or S.C., to rule similarly. Or you can try to get Misplaced Pages policy changed based on Bridgeman, but I don't see that happening somehow. EEng (talk) 00:34, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added the daguerrotype image to the article. The original is way out of copyright, and the Wikimedia Foundation (the people who run Misplaced Pages) have plainly indicated that they will defend the position in Bridgeman v. Corel's findings quite vigorously. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

EEng, Bridgeman applies throughout the US; this is how federal courts work. It is true there is a controversy over Bridgeman can apply to non-US images, but that is not relevant in this case. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 02:41, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Generally it's unwise to rely on Misplaced Pages (or Wikipedians) for legal guidance, but since this is a wikipedia matter it seems appropriate. Thus at we find: "Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. has precedential value in U.S. courts. But as a decision of a federal district court, its precedential value is confined to courts of the same circuit, in this case the Second Circuit." So that is how the federal courts work, and in fact it is Bridgeman that is irrelevant here. Thanks for pointing out, by the way, that Bridgeman (even if it had value here in the first place) has uncertain application to non-US images: it's entirely possible the Gage daguerreotype was made in Chile, where Gage spent most of his post-accident life. Once again, I am removing the offending image. If you wish to continue to fuss about this, I rely on you to open a case with whatever Wiki-authority has jurisdiction. Or perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me how to do so. EEng (talk) 05:06, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Be aware that if you revert again on this article, you would be violating the three-revert rule. I mention it because I don't want you to be blocked over a legitimate dispute like this. I understand that you feel strongly about this issue, but that doesn't entitle you to blindly revert against several editors' consensus that you are wrong about this. — Gavia immer (talk) 05:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Could we please have some calm here. I would desperately like to see a proper discussion here, and I am going to bring in a few of our copyright experts to take a look at this discussion. EEng believes it is a copyright violation, and given he has done so much work on this article it would be nice to convince him the image is OK rather than block him before we are all on the same page. He may be right after all, so we should err on the side of caution. John Vandenberg 07:00, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, John, it would be useful to have an opinion from someone who actually knows the rules. I may have facts that would help such a copyright-status evaluation, but likely not for another 24 hours; please wait for that. I cannot speak for the people who found the daguerreotype, but I believe that would be happy to contribute a version of the image of Gage for use on Misplaced Pages, but it will take some time to work this out. They only just realized what they had a few months ago, and this is all new to them. I believe they would want to do this in mid-August, when the print version of the journal article comes out. In the meantime, the daguerreotype is viewable on their website (along with a lot of other neat stuff) so no one's being denied access to the pleasure of gazing on Phineas' visage. And naturally I agree with your proposal to "err on the side of caution" so that (as you mentioned on my Talk) the image should stay out in the meantime, and further attempts to insert it should be reverted. As to you, Gavia immer, the PD-US template on the image files relies on assertions about prior publication, death of author, and so on, but you don't supply that information. Please take the time to call out the specific facts satisfying the requirements of the PD tag, and if you can't then the tag should be removed. EEng (talk) 17:51, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

There are emails flying around about this. Please can we wait until the full facts are known! We need to know where it was photographed. etc. I will be offline for about six hours, and hopefully I will know more by then. John Vandenberg 22:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

With image again removed from article (not by me!) I put back the original link to the website where the image may be seen. Please note that this is not any kind of reversion. EEng (talk) 23:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

The LA times has a god picture of Gage for the top of this article. I am not sure if copoyright would apply here, but perhaps someone with more knowledge of copyright could add it, if legal. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-gage16-2009jul16,0,6843461.story 66.245.192.242 (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/195_copr.html for the law. Obviously the L.A. Times had no qualms about violating copyright on a photo from the 1850's. Even if the photo was not published or copyrighted at the time it was taken, the limit for public domain in the U.S. is photographer's lifetime plus 70 years. We have no idea what the provinance of the photo is (nor do the people who had it), but it's certainly P. Gage by the marks on the head and bar (I certainly have no doubt at all that it is-- his permanently closed blind left eye, which still appears swollen with regard to his ~1850 life mask, suggests this is photo is from even before that mask was done. On the other hand the inscription on the bar was apparently placed Jan 1850, and this appears on the iron in the photo, so it must have been taken after that. From Gage's youthful appearance and excellent suit, one would otherwise probably suppose it taken when he was touring with the bar in the early 1850's (he recovered it again after giving it to the museum). His health was bad by 1859, and he had spent some time in Chile before that, and died in 1860, so the photo date is 1850-1859 at the widest, and probably a lot closer to 1850. But let us say at latest 1859, 150 years ago. What is the youngest the maker of the daguerreotype could have been? This is professional job. Could he have been younger than 15? Seems unlikely. If he was 15 and took the photo in 1859, he would have been born 1844. 70 years ago is 1939, so he'd have had to live from 1844 to 1939, or to age 95, for this photo to be NOT in the public domain. That's with EVERY possible error on the high side. It's more likely the photographer was older than 18 and Gage was photographed no later than 1852, so the photographer needed to have made it to 100.

I would suggest that since protection would require a child-photographer who lived at least to age 95 in 1939, and more probably more than 100, we should presume he didn't live that long, and let those who have evidence otherwise take up the cause. By the way, every year the photographer has to have lived longer for this photo not to be in public domain now, adds a year to the lifetime of the photographer, to have died less than 70 years ago. In 2010, he must have lived to be at least 96 and more likely 101.

Oh, and if the image if from Chile, it's really in public domain, and copyright ends for unpublished images 70 years after end of the year in which it was created. Since it can't have been created later than 1860, that would be public domain as of 1931. S B H arris 02:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

The LA Times image has already been mentioned above; they appear to have permission to display this image, and their page looks like they have a records management ID for it: "(IS635, xx) July 15, 2009". I'm not sure what that is about.

Unpublished works, which I suspect this is, have very different copyright terms. Often the copyright starts from the time that it is first published, and the people in possession of the photo may know the provenance. We are seeking to clarify these things, and we may need to check with Chilean laws. My guess is that it is public domain in the U.S., but we need to be certain, especially when it has been disputed. John Vandenberg 06:32, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

No. Since the 1970's when these things were fixed and (mostly) codified all over the world, the copyright on old unpublished works has NEVER started the moment they are published, without limit on how old they are. All works fall into public domain at some time after creation, published or not, and the longest period I've ever seen for this in law is unpublished corporately created works, and it's only 120 years. That's all you can get by not publishing. The owners of the Gage daguerreotype, who have had it for 30 years in their Victorian photo collection but didn't know what they had until somebody saw it on their website and tentitively identified it, are not even claiming the original is copyrighted. What they've copyrighted is their photo of the daguerreotype which they have a better claim on. Since they own the daguerreotype and have not allowed anybody else to photograph it (and are certainly not about to now), that makes things hard. Some countries like the UK allow copyright newer photographs of works that are 2D anyway (like the Mona Lisa)-- see the National Protrait Gallery fiasco. I don't know what the US law is. I think this is going to come down to a one-of-a-kind irreplaceable historic iconic photographic image thing. This thing comes close to being a national treasure, as though somebody had discovered a photo of Lincoln being carried out of Ford's Theater. S B H arris 18:37, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Err, no. See for example Copyright law of the United_Kingdom#Posthumous_Works where unpublished works are copyright until 2039, and we enter very murky waters when rule of the shorter term comes into play.

I have started Chilean copyright law to compile notes about what Chilean copyright in case that ends up being a factor. John Vandenberg 15:03, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

The magic for me is that Misplaced Pages is the ultimate starting place. I rely on it for reliable basic information and valuable links to primary (or primarier) sources. So, if the photo is here or just a photo link is here, this is still a magical place. I'm the newbie who first added the report of the Daguerreotype (and forgot to give a summary of my changes). I'm the webkeeper of the guy who wrote the song about Phineas Gage that was used in the BBC segment about Phineas. Mac MacMillan sent him the the journal pre-print and he sent it to me and I added a paragraph to Misplaced Pages. I live near the beautiful accident site, so I'm as curious as anyone about discoveries. I hope Misplaced Pages continues to attract quirky people not unlike me (who are not unappreciative of litotes) for whom a Phineas link is as good as a Phineas wink.

And I added photos of the site to Panoramio/Google Earth a while back (with share-alike rights, so I hope you all go nuts with those photos). Meanwhile, I'm scratching my head about this copyright controversy, because this ol' website is great either way. Danaxtell (talk) 01:56, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Glad you like it. May you never hit the politics of it. Right now you're in the newlywed phase before you meet the in-laws. S B H arris 02:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as a Commons admin and as someone who does a lot of work with copyrights on WMF sites, the photo of the daguerreotype is easily public domain based on Bridgeman v. Corel. Under US law, some sort of creative aspect is required to engender a copyright. While the NPG is claiming copyright of its photos of public domain works (which is permissible under UK law), the precedent set by Feist v. Rural underlies Bridgeman. While EEng is correct in that the decision really applies to the jurisdiction covered by 2nd Circuit Court, nobody has appealed this to the Supreme Court because they know they would get shot down and then there would be a single national standard, which nobody who makes money from licensing PD works wants. For more proof, see the links at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2009-07-13/Copyright threat#Further reading.

As for the PD status of the daguerreotype itself, according to the Flickr page, it was originally posted there in December 2007. If we then consult http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm, we see that works published anytime after 2002 are PD when one of the following cases applies:

Author died more than 70 years ago.
If corporate authorship, 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation, whichever expires first.

But Gage being the celebrity he was, it was also quite reasonable to assume that this was published some time in his lifetime, in which case the pre-1923 rule would also apply. howcheng {chat} 21:35, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, its been more than a week and this conversation seems to have stalled. I'd really like to have the Gage portrait included on this page and I do not believe there was any substantial evidence procured that the photo is not in the public domain. Can we work to getting it uploaded again and included? Thanks. Fred Benenson (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The people who have the daguerreotype long ago asked if they can contribute an image for use on Misplaced Pages so all this fussing isn't necessary -- that seems to have been lost in the shuffle of all this talk about teenage photographers and so on. I'll be helping them set up an account so they can do that in the next 24 hours, and then everyone should be happy.

EEng (talk) 00:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

At this point the debate should be moot (on Misplaced Pages/Wikimedia at least) since we are now blessed to see Mr. Gage in all his glory, right there in the article. But for the record a few points should be made. I do not speak for the daguerreotyupe's owners, but as someone close to the situation who finds the let's-just-make-up-facts drift of this discussion disturbing.

IUP: "Before you upload an image, make sure that...you can prove that the image is in the public domain." The operative word here is prove. The burden as always is on those who contribute material, to demonstrate that it is free for use; to say here, "I do not believe there was any substantial evidence procured that the photo is not in the public domain" is analogous to a juror saying, "The defendant's guilty because he didn't offer any substantial evidence that he's innocent." PD can sometimes be established by simple rules such as those scattered thoughout the discussion above, but such rules apply only where specific facts trigger them.

And those facts don't exist here. This is not like an image from a book or prominent collection, where such things as date/place of creation/publication would be known; no one participating in this discussion (including me) knows any of that here. The "factual" assertions above are mere conjecture. They contradict analogous BLP policy specifying assumption of a 120-year human lifespan. As for Gage's "celebrity" making it "reasonable to assume that this was published some time in his lifetime": Gage was nothing like a celebrity until long after he was dead, and anyway such logic demands that a negative be established -- how would someone prove the absence of past publication? And it was never stated that 2007 was the first publication anywhere, merely the first on Flickr (if even that). Since the daguerreotype has been in the same hands for 30 years, and its owners have made a practice of sharing their images, those whose legal knowledge extends past the 1970s will recognize the beginnings of a fact situation deferring PD until 2047.

Finally, the effect of Bridgeman has been misstated. Even granting for argument's sake that it both controls and actually applies to the facts here, it would not put this photo "in PD," but merely cause it to inherit the status of the underlying work, which as already seen is far from clear. In the meantime, the legal, moral, and courtesy obligations are to respect the claims of those who brought the daguerreotype to light, until someone offers facts to the contrary.

EEng (talk) 05:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

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