Talk:Passive smoking

Human are animals

Thus per this and WP:MEDMOS we use the heading "In other animals" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

"Other animals", although technically correct in a very narrow sense, is pedantic, unnecessary and likely to confuse readers. The section on "Animals" refers to the main article on the subject, the title of which is "Animals and tobacco smoke" (not "Other animals and tobacco smoke"). Unless one is an idiot, everybody understands that this means non-human animals, in the same way as everybody understands that the Animal right movement is about the rights of non-human animals. The article "Animal testing" is also clearly understood by everybody to refer to non-human animals - it would be equally silly to say "Other animal testing" or "Non-human animal testing". Here, the intellectual "rigor" that would be invoked to justifiy the choice of a title such as "Other animals" verges on actually intellectual rigidity, and the presumption that readers are stupid.

Dessources (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Please get consensus at WT:MEDMOS. Cheers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Please note that I am invoking WP:MEDMOS rules to revert from "Other animals" to "Animals", since the first title may confuse readers into thinking that two kinds of (non-human) animals are discussed in the article, and that the section deals with the second kind. I think we should stick to the simple, common-sense, plain language and usage-based "Animals" to designate non-human animals in obeyance of the following two rules of WP:MEDMOS: "Write for the average reader and a general audience—not professionals or patients." and "Use plain English".

Dessources (talk) 19:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you provide the exact text that supports this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

See box entitled "This page in a nutshell" at top of the MEDMOS page ([1]).

See also under Common pitfalls on the same page ([2]) the following points:

• "Wikipedia is written for the general reader. ... Although healthcare professionals and patients may find much of interest, they are not the target audience."
• (Example of pitfalls:) "You use jargon when there are suitable plain English words" - Here, assuming that the word animal includes humans while virtually all readers will interpret the word as meaning non-human animals is taking the word with its technical jargon meaning.

The Wikipedia article on Animal states that "In everyday colloquial usage, the word (animal) usually refers to non-human animals." This is the way the word is understood by the general reader. This understanding is acknowledged throughout Wikipedia in the articles I mentioned above (Animal rights, Animal testing, Animals and tobacco smoke). But the list could be extended with a lot of other entries, such as Animal law, Animal testing regulations, Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, Cruelty to animals, Animal welfare, Animal-liberation movement, etc. All these articles refer, without ambiguity, to non-human animals. I contend that the use of the title "In animals" in the body of the passive smoking article is similarly void of ambiguity, while, on the other hand, replacing this title with "In other animals" would puzzled most readers and create an ambiguity, thus achieving the exact ipposite effect than what was sought.

Dessources (talk) 23:22, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You could propose making this change to the guideline on the talk page their if you wish.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

What change? Please explain.

Dessources (talk) 00:03, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Here it states "In other animals" [3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:25, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We have an established consensus documented at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Diseases or disorders or syndromes which gives suggestions for section headings, and it is normal to use those headings for medical articles. In this case the suggestion is In other animals as is used in many other articles falling under the scope of WikiProject Medicine. The section headings are not compulsory, but using different ones from the Manual of Style will always beg the question, "Why should this article be different?". James is pointing out the (cogent) argument you make above is not to make this article an exception, but to challenge the general recommendation, and therefore ought to be made at the talk page Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles. If it is accepted as valid, then it would apply to all our "Diseases or disorders or syndromes" articles. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 00:28, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! It does help.

Dessources (talk) 00:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Having looked at the examples at [4], I understand the motivation for a well structured list of sections, with standard section headings. However, I think the Passive smoking article does not belong to such category. If one had an article entitled "Health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke", I would probably consider the article sufficiently medically focused to put it in such a category. However, the Passive smoking article is of much more general nature, and deals with a lot of issues - even the majority of issues - which are not medical, but social, sociological, economic and political. The article should therefore be considered to be aimed at a much larger audience, and I think it is not correct to subject it to strict rules that act as a straight jacket and make its reading less natural to this general audience. This means that for me, the rule "Wikipedia is written for the general reader" takes precedence over the internal Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Diseases or disorders or syndromes convention. I don't think it necessary to make an exception to the convention: I simply think the convention is not fully applicable in the case of this article. I still plead for "In animals" in the context of the Passive smoking article.

Do you have other examples of actual articles where this "In other animals" title is used?

Dessources (talk) 01:09, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

A Google search for 'site:en.wikipedia.org "In other animals‎" ' gives 6,900 hits. Not all of those will be section titles, but those hits which read 'Jump to In other animals‎:' are showing the navigation link to a section with that title. Of the first 20 hits, 16 match that, so I'd guess perhaps 5,000 or so articles have In other animals as a section header. By no means all of them are diseases or conditions, but just about all of them are medical/anatomical. It is worth pointing out that it is difficult for a medical article to become a Featured article without complying with the Manual of Style (MOS), as that is one of the FA criteria. Most Good medical articles would also be very likely to conform to the MOS. I understand your argument above, but it's not convincing me that it's making a case for having this article as an exception to what is very common practice here. On the other hand, it's pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 01:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Note, however, something interesting. A Google search for 'site:en.wikipedia.org "In animals‎" gives access to a lot of Wikipedia articles which have, in their title, "in animals" (while you get none which have "in other animals" in their title. And checking the first batch, one can see that "animal" means for the majority of them "in non human animals". So there will be an inconsistency between the usage of the word "animal" in article titles and section titles. Something that will have to be fixed.

Dessources (talk) 01:51, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The title of the article (Passive smoking) is already in violation of the first WP:MEDMOS rules, which states that "The article title should be the scientific or recognised medical name that is most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources, rather than a lay term." Clearly, passive smoking is not the recognized medical term that is most commonly used in recent medical sources. "Exposure to tobacco smoke," "exposure to secondhand smoke" or "environmental tobacco smoke" are much more frequently found in the medical litterature than "passive smoking".

As per the change of the section title from "In animals" to "In other animals", the anomaly with such a change is that it is an isolated application of a larger principle in a context where this larger primciple does not apply or is not applied (the larger principle being here the WP:MEDMOS rules). It would therefore be wiser to stick to the advice contained in WP:MEDMOS at [5]: "The following lists of suggested sections are intended to help structure a new article or when an existing article requires a substantial rewrite. Changing an established article simply to fit these guidelines might not be welcomed by other editors." So I suggest that the change be postponed until the article is completely rewritten to fit the WP:MEDMOS guidelines.

Dessources (talk) 01:34, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I vote the name of the section is titled Animals other than humans and tobacco smoke or Non-humans and tobacco smoke or even maybe Marsupials and tobacco smoke, and in reply to the straw-man argument about the title of the article, passive smoking is the accepted terminology, though you may hear people say second-hand smoke, the term is officially passive smoking.

Secondhand smoke claims

The section addressing secondhand smoke causing harm in non-smokers is bias. It makes its claims as conclusive fact; instead of citing it being opinion. Only 19% of overall studies show a connection between secondhand smoke causing illness in non-smokers. There is no scientific basis to claim this section a fact. It is the author's opinion. Citing 'scientific concensus' is also an opinion. It does not cite many secondhand smoke studies as having been funded by prohibitionist health organizations and drug makers--yet other articles liberally cite tobacco industry funded studies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smace05 (talk • contribs) 15:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Your opinions are only your opinions. We need reliable sources. Jesanj (talk) 15:21, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

This has bee thoroughly discussed with one or more users under several user names (see above). We report what reliable sources have to say about the matter. - SummerPhD (talk) 15:42, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Similar problems from the same editor at List of smoking bans in the United States have provided some useful sources, after a good bit of clean up. - SummerPhD (talk) 17:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Skeptical views of Prof. Philippe Even, ("world-renowned pulmonologist")?

Is this guy credible?

http://smokingoutthetruth.com/philippe-even/

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Even (He doesn't appear in English Wikipedia)

I expected to see him mentioned in this article.

Thanks! Glueball (talk) 10:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

A blog that likes what he has to say (and labels him a "world-renowned pulmonologist") is not a reliable source. WP:MEDRS applies to this article. If the professor has something published in peer-reviewed journals on the subject, we might have something to include. For someone "world-renowned, it's surprising I find nothing he's published. - SummerPhD (talk) 04:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

To know more about Philippe Even, read the article about him in the French Wikipedia article. If he deserves the qualification of being "world-renowned" it's not for his scientific achievement (he has virtually zero publication in peer-rewiewed journals). In October 1985, he, and two other of his colleagues, organized a press conference in a rush, in the presence of the French Minister of Health, at which they announced that they had discovered a cure for AIDS. They had a few days before administered ciclosporin, an immunosuppressant drug, to two AIDS patients, without their informed consent, and bypassing the ethics committee; they rushed the announcement because they wanted to "get a head start on the Americans". Philippe Even and his colleagues had no evidence whatsoever that the drug, which they obtained illegally, would work - they based their decision to use it on speculations from an unpublished PhD thesis, in which the author said that ciclosporin could be used to study AIDS in vitro. The two patients died within days of the administration of the "miracle" drug. The whole affair caused a huge scandal that threw a great deal of international discredit on French science. All the above information is simply the Englsih translation of information found in section "Le scandale de la ciclosporine" in the French Wikipedia article, which is fully sourced - in particular the story appeared in scientific magazine Science et Vie, No. 820, January 1986 (see [6]). See also article in Time Magazine, Nov. 11, 1985 Medicine: Furor Over an AIDS Announcement. Since this event, Philippe Even has become kind of a disgruntled contrarian scientist. Dessources (talk) 00:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Huh, that's a surprisingly dramatic story. Anyone else thinks he deserves a write up on English Wikipedia? I think it would be useful, since a lot of mentions on English pages / blogs / comments, are from second-hand smoke skeptics. Oh, and I don't know French. Glueball (talk) 08:10, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move. Favonian (talk) 22:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Passive smoking → Second-hand smoke –

• 'Passive smoking' is a colloquialism which is best dealt with by a redirect. The most widely-used technical term is 'second-hand smoke', as used in the majority of the scientific literature and indeed the current text of the article. An old redirect exists from an incorrectly-punctuated page named 'second hand smoke' (missing the hyphen) which prevents a straightforward page move with a new redirect, and administrator assistance will therefore apparently be required. However, there is no evidence that such a move will prove controversial. 13:19, 15 February 2012 (UTC)Hypocaustic (talk)
  • Support; clear WP:COMMONNAME. Powers ^T 02:06, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, for several reasons:

1. "Passive smoking" is not merely a colloquialism as the nominator suggests, but an accepted scientific description. Google Scholar results for "passive smoking" are obtained from The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association, etc.
2. WP:COMMONNAME. In terms of comparative quantity, a search of Google Scholar reveals 15,000 hits for "second-hand smoke" vs 45,000 for "passive smoking". Likewise, a Google Books search reveals 41,300 hits for "second-hand smoke" vs 155,000 for "passive smoking".
3. The nominator asserts that the article currently uses "second-hand smoke", but he has edited the page several times this year to remove 17 occurrences of "passive smoking", and restructured the lede where it was previously the first-used term.[7] (As a side issue, he also changed from US to British English with that edit, which may have violated WP:ENGVAR.)

Even if the page move goes ahead, I believe the article should be edited to undo many of the recent changes implying that "passive smoking" is only a colloquialism. All evidence points to the contrary, and I think this is actually merely a stylistic preference by the user who made the move request. Cross porpoises (talk) 14:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

You should probably add in 70k+ results for "secondhand smoke". Powers ^T 15:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:Cross porpoises. Most of the foreign language wiki articles down the left hand side of the page seem to translate to passive smoking, but I don't know if that counts for anything, except maybe common use? Callmederek (talk) 21:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Other languages might count for certain proper nouns without well-established English usage, but not for determining what common use in English is. Powers ^T 02:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per User:Cross porpoises.

PubMed search "passive smoking"

2802, Free Full 702, Review 340, PMC 362

PubMed search "second-hand smoke" or "secondhand smoke" or "second hand smoke"

1311, Free Full 550, Review 148, PMC 348

RDBrown (talk) 11:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• An aside that might be of interest here: should the sidestream smoke article be merged with this one? —  AjaxSmack  02:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
• Re the query about side-stream smoke, thanks for pointing that out Ajaxsmack but I'm not certain that it would add to clarity to merge this immediately. Side-stream smoke is essentially the smoke which emerges from the lit tip of the cigarette/cigar etc., which combines with exhaled tobacco smoke to form second-hand smoke.Hypocaustic (talk) 12:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks to the above contributors for some thoughtful points. As the proposer of the idea, I can reassure all concerned that this is not simply a personal stylistic preference; I'm fairly comfortable using both terms in conversation myself, and I suspect that 'passive smoking' did indeed predate 'second-hand smoke' - which may explain the different number of Google hits identified above, although as Powers has identified the frequent omission of the hyphen can complicate searches via PubMed and the like. However, the substance of the proposal is really not about a terminological popularity contest, and there could well be a real issue as regards NPOV. I take the point raised by Cross Porpoises above that passive smoking is not 'merely' a colloquialism - it does indeed appear in earlier scientific articles - but it can also be used in ways which are colloquial, imprecise, pejorative or dismissive. Potential pejorative or opinion-loaded uses are probably of the greatest concerns as regards Wikipedia's editorial standards, as further searches of literature may illustrate; tobacco industry spokespeople, in particular, have been observed to dismiss or belittle the evidence about 'passive smoking' as fabricated, but the scientific consensus around the risks presented by 'second-hand smoke' is regarded as quite robust by all competent authorities. My view would be that the proposed move remains a potential improvement which is not highly controversial, but I concur that it needs to be clear that it is not simply one contributor's whim.Hypocaustic (talk) 12:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I advise reading WP:POVTITLE. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:21, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
• Well-spotted, Cybercobra. I'm not sure that this alone settles the question, however. The rubric advises that "notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often avoids a common name for lacking neutrality include colloquialisms where far more encyclopedic alternatives are obvious". Whatever the degree to which 'passive smoking' may or not be colloquial or common (and the above discussion suggests that this may be subjective), it seems hard to avoid the likelihood that a more encyclopaedic alternative is indeed obvious.Hypocaustic (talk) 14:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A more elegant solution

The illuminating discussion above suggested that a straightforward move-and-redirect swap did not meet with universal approval, but also revealed that the two terms 'second-hand smoke' and 'passive smoking' are not actually direct synonyms; second-smoke is a substance, whereas passive smoking is the exposure to it. As definitions of both are available and can be referenced, a more encyclopaedic solution to what appears from the record to have been a recurrent debate may be to move on from a false dichotomy and have some content (expanding on those definitions) on both pages, with links between them. Ideas, opinions on this? It's not a proposed move in the normal sense, but as there has been some controversy it looks appropriate to try to discuss it here first.Hypocaustic (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2012 (UTC)