Talk:Avicenna

good sources/Rfc

[this] and [this] Notice that the editor who did all this is by far the top contributor to the article, with 350 edits. A great deal of what we have here is original research. There is a large group of articles at Iranica [1] its more neutral than what we have here. Also a good source is Goodman, Lenn Evan (1992). Avicenna. Routledge. ISBN 9780415019293. http://books.google.com/books?id=VJ6x-pcqMicC. Retrieved 9 July 2010. 

Misuse of sources

This article has been edited by a user who is known to have misused sources to unduly promote certain views (see WP:Jagged 85 cleanup). Examination of the sources used by this editor often reveals that the sources have been selectively interpreted or blatantly misrepresented, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent.

Diffs for each edit made by Jagged 85 are listed at cleanup3. It may be easier to view the full history of the article.

A script has been used to generate the following summary. Each item is a diff showing the result of several consecutive edits to the article by Jagged 85, in chronological order.

• Avicenna: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]

Johnuniq (talk) 10:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Will look at this article next. Will now tag article. This may take some time, the last one took months. --Merlinme (talk) 18:36, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

In the interests of concentrating on the worst problems first I've done a search for "pioneer", "father" and "first", all words heavily over-used by Jagged_85. Ignoring routine uses of first, that gives:

1. Ibn Sīnā is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of momentum in physics. Really don't think he is.
2. In this, Ibn Sīnā is credited as being the first to correctly document the anatomy of the human eye, along with descriptions of eye afflictions such as cataracts. Need to check this, but sounds rather sweeping to me.
3. The Canon of Medicine was the first book dealing with experimental medicine, evidence-based medicine, randomized controlled trials,[31][32] and efficacy tests,[33][34] and it laid out the following rules and principles for testing the effectiveness of new drugs and medications, which still form the basis of clinical pharmacology[34] and modern clinical trials. Most of this is wildly over the top, based on previous research.
4. Avicenna was a pioneer of neuropsychiatry As far as I'm aware neuropsychiatry didn't even exist in any recognisable modern sense
5. He first described numerous neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor. I'd be staggered if this is true. The Romans and Greeks didn't know about epilepsy?
6. In chemistry, the chemical process of steam distillation was first described by Ibn Sīnā Need to check
7. As a chemist, Avicenna was one of the first to write refutations on alchemy, after al-Kindi. He wasn't a chemist in the modern sense.
8. In the chapters on mechanics and engineering in his encyclopedia Mi'yar al-'aql (The Measure of the Mind), Avicenna writes an analysis on the ilm al-hiyal (science of ingenious devices) and makes the first successful attempt to classify simple machines and their combinations sounds like hyperbole to me.
9. He first describes and illustrates the five constituent simple machines: the lever, pulley, screw, wedge, and windlass first to describe the lever???
10. He is also the first to describe a mechanism which is essentially a combination of all of these simple machines (except for the wedge). need to check
11. Father of modern medicine; Avicennian logic; concepts of inertia and momentum; important contributor to geology; pioneer of aromatherapy and neuropsychiatry I've already deleted inertia, momentum, neuropsychiatry. Need to check others.

If anyone wishes to check some of these for me, feel free. --Merlinme (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I've had an initial sweep through. I've been quite aggressive in my cuts. If someone wants to put material back in, using references which they have personally verified, please do so. It's slightly scary though how web searches just produce wholesale copies of what is a lot of highly dubious Wikipedia material. --Merlinme (talk) 22:57, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Progress report: on diff 7 from this list. --Merlinme (talk) 17:07, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Progress report: on diff 13 from this list. --Merlinme (talk) 15:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Asfhana, Asfhona

Sometimes, he is from Asfhana, sometimes from Asfhona.--Palapa (talk) 22:46, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Followed the approach of Galen and Hippocrates

The original wording, which I've reverted to: was "He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine and followed the approach of Hippocrates and Galen." Jagged changed this to: "He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine. He was influenced by the approach of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as Sushruta and Charaka." The diff is here: [2]
It's fairly typical of the puffery and outright dubious edits which Jagged made; I can't find any evidence at all of a direct link to Sushruta and Charaka, for example. I could be persuaded that "influenced by" is a better phrasing than "Followed the approach of", but please justify the phrasing here rather than just reverting my Jagged cleanup edits. --Merlinme (talk) 12:53, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Protect the article

There have been dozens of IP's changing the background information of Avicenna. I suggest we protect the article from vandalism. Unfortunatly do I not know how to do it, so I hope anyone else could do it. (That is of course if the majority of contributers in this article accept to protect it.) --Arsaces (talk) 07:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

The procedure is to make a request at WP:RFPP (a bit scary the first time: copy a previous request and edit it). However, while it's irritating, I don't think this article gets enough vandalism for semiprotection. Sometimes, if you go to the trouble of establishing that new editors and unregistered users (IPs) have not added anything constructive in the last few months, an article will be semiprotected for a couple of months, but I have a feeling we are not at that stage here. Johnuniq (talk) 07:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This article have a good number of watchers. So it's well maintained. The better way is to solve content disputes in the talk page. Or if you think there is vandalism or disruptive edit, warn users in their talk pages and talk with them. Finally you can report them to admins. I agree with Johnuniq. Winter Gaze (talk) 09:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

For future reference ...

Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Cleanup3 - in regards to the banner tag on the article. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)