Talk:Phineas Gage

Here's some actual OR

Well, it looks like I returned from my trip up the Amazon at just the right moment. Tryptofish, I see you've put a lot of work in while I was gone, and I appreciate that. My connectivity will remain intermittant for a while but when I'm back to civilization first thing I'll do is look that over. Assuming I'm still not topic-banned.

While people catch their breath some might enjoy a discussion of what little can be made of this request. This is strictly OR and has no place in the article, but it's fun anyway.

There are far too many imponderables to get much handle on the velocity of the tamping iron as it left the blast hole (which is what the edit summary linked above seems to want -- let's call this the "dry" exit velocity). But a pretty good lower limit can be placed on the tamping iron's, er, um... how shall I put it... um, "wet" exit velocity -- the velocity as it exited Mr. Gage's noggin -- as follows.

A fun digression for those interested

We're told the iron returned to earth about 80 ft away. Naturally we all enjoyed high school physics, and so readily recall that a 45-degree inclination at exit from the, um, muzzle gives the most conservative estimate of muzzle velocity. So -- let's see -- 32 ft/sec/sec, add 7, carry 6, ... um, wait, no, that's impossible, wait, ... OK, right... Yeah... Got it. A projectile starting from h=0 at 45 degrees, and returning to h=0 at distance 80 ft away, has a flight time of about 2 1/4 seconds, reaches a max height of about 20 feet, and would have had a muzzle velocity (i.e. the velocity leaving the exit wound) of about 30 ft/sec = 50 mi/hr. That's on earth of course -- if Gage had been on Jupiter, or under water, we'd have to rework all this. More significantly, this neglects the elevation of Gage's head above h=0, and since the max elevation was only h=20 it's clear this introduces significant error (correction of which would lower the velocity estimate). If someone wants to work this out for initial h=5 -- assuming Gage was stooping or squatting, and not atop of some large body of rock, and' that the terrain isn't very steep -- that would be great. (Terrain likely does come in here, since Bigelow quotes a witness as saying that the iron was found "in the road below", which suggests some change in elevation. On the other hand, here in the OR-play zone we might also indulge the inference that Gage wasn't way up top the big rock seen in the article's beautiful photo: there's nothing to indicate Phineas was removed from a height by his men, and had he fallen from there his catalog of injuries should have included something orthopedic.) But even more significant is the 45-degree inclination assumption. From Harlow's and Bigelow's (slightly conflicting) descriptions of Gage's posture the iron likely emerged at 60 degrees at least, and probably more. Assuming even a 70-degree inclination we get... well, 70 deg in radians is 2 pie r squared, except pie are not squared -- cake are squared, pie are round -- so cotangerine of ... Well, this is too hard on a four-function calculator. Doesn't even have √ -- geesh! Anyway, anyone who's seen a pop-fly at the ballfield will appreciate that a projectile can be launched at very high speed yet return to earth not too far away, if its path is sufficiently near vertical. Had the exit been truly vertical, in fact, for all we know the iron reached the Van Allen belts and then came straight back down. Adopting an inclination above 45 degrees increases the exit velocity tremendously, completely swamping any error due to Gage's initial elevation above h=0. In sum, it's almost certain the iron's velocity leaving the exit wound at the top of Gage's head was at least 50 mph, and likely much more. Thus endeth the OR. References

EEng (talk) 01:48, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

I admit to being greatly jealous of travel to the Amazon, and I look forward to hearing what your responses are to my advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:16, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

As the IP user who initially requested the amount of blasting powder that caused the famous injury to be quantified and presented in the article and therefore readers of a ballistic persuasion, such as myself, to be armed with the necessary information to get a ballpark on the velocity of the iron bar in their own time, I am pleased that someone else also finds this question pertinent to the article.

Sadly we are of course stepping into OR territory with the above analysis but if the quantity of blasting powder was recorded, or at least a likely value estimated by contemporary sources, then I thought we could include that figure in the article to help improve it, and that is why I tagged it as "Quantify".

Lastly, having done my own back of the envelop calculations, I also arrived at a subsonic velocity, the initial hunch that is left the "muzzle"/(bored rock hole) at subsonic speeds as detailed in my above linked request, is most certainly correct. Sadly readers won't be informed on this, thus is the nature of the wiki-beast I suppose. However, why exactly was the quantify tag removed?

86.40.80.183 (talk) 04:32, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

As the editor that removed the tag the first time I can give my reasons.

• It happened 165 years ago. Any documentation from day to day activities at that time is scarce and the information is very unlikely to exist. Even Gage's exact accident location is unknown.
• A few of the editors here are very knowledgeable of any known sources and would most likely have added this material before now.
• After working on construction sites where blasting took place in modern times, I know there is an art to it and there is no standard charge. It depends on many things, see Rock blasting.
• Even if you knew the exact amount of powder and composition you couldn't calculate the velocity accurately because you wouldn't know how much energy escaped between the iron and bore hole or even into the rock strata.
• I am not a fan of tags being in articles forever waiting for information that is almost certainly never to appear. Ward20 (talk) 05:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I was the editor who reverted it the second time, and I want to thank 86.40 for bringing this question to the talk page. I don't really have much to add, to what Ward20 already said. I agree that the reasons given in the edit summaries when the tag was added amounted to WP:OR (although I now also appreciate that 86.40 had good faith reasons for asking), and I agree that it would be unlikely that we could find information to satisfy the tag. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Not to worry comrades, thanks for the thoughtful replies nonetheless! I understand contemporary sources may not have any estimations for the speed of the rod, but that does not mean a modern reliable source will never come along and compute a figure that would be suitable for the article? Maybe we could even petition Mythbusters or real ballistics experts to do some cadaver(or human head facsimile) tests? Perhaps a single line could be added to the article communicating that no contemporary sources state the quantity of blasting powder involved or have an estimation for the speed of the rod but modern testing could match the injuries with a narrow range of speeds?

86.45.233.145 (talk) 15:43, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for being understanding! (Feel free to contact Mythbusters or anyone else on your own, but Wikipedia, as a collective entity, won't do that. If the results are broadcast or published, we can add them to the page, but we do not use "personal communications".) I shortened the passage you added (please see WP:CRYSTAL for why), and I moved it to fit into an existing paragraph. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping the spirit of the sentence in! I understand you about my edit entering WP:CRYSTAL territory, as you can guess, I was going out on a limb with my edit. However I feel that your edit will be effective, and hopefully someday, someone will read your sentence and a light bulb will go off over their head and they'll say - hey I could find out a likely speed today at work in no time! and then, they'll share it, and their methodology with us.

86.47.78.34 (talk) 06:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

A source touching on projectile speed

• Ordia, JI (1989). "Neurologic function seven years after crowbar impalement of the brain". Surgical Neurology. 32: 152–155. discusses the significance of projectile speeds below 1000 ft/sec in reduced concussive damage. Not clear how this can be used just now, but thought I'd throw it in since it's topical to this thread. EEng (talk) 22:38, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Another to-do list (sort of)

T-fish, I'll be in contact at most intermittently for another week so here's something I think will help in the meantime. Can you work with CG to pin down specifically what he's talking about in the following? There's no way to address his concerns if I can't figure out what he's talking about.

1. "40 false references in existence when I first came to this page" [4]... "30% false references" [5]... "More than 40 false references that do not exist." [6]. Since he refers to "when I came to this page" I guess this version must be the one with all these incorrect references. Could you get CG to list, say, 10 of these? I'd like to start correcting them as soon as possible.

2. The "not enough opinions" banner. [7] Do you think you could get CG to give sample text (rough, but including citations to sources) for two or three of the opinions he feels should be inserted?

3. And finally, John_Vandenberg directed a question to CG [8] (which CG never answered) when the COIN discussion began to turn from the idea of establishing balance by adding missing material, to establishing balance by removing existing, cited material. The question was: "Which academic peer-reviewed literature published since has refuted or contested anything in the article?" Could you perhaps encourage CG to make a list of such literature he's come across while working on the article?

Thanks. EEng (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

In the interest of saving time, I'm going to answer number 2 myself, because I can easily see what the answer is. Chris' concern, and I want to say that I consider it a legitimate one, is that the page devotes too much emphasis to the interpretations of primary source material by secondary sources written by Macmillan et al. If you examine what I've written in the BRD section, above, I've explained in greater detail how I view this issue. And that, in turn, leads to number 3: I don't interpret what Chris said as having found new sources, so much as referring to sources (the Damasios, for example) that appear to be WP:RS, but which have been questioned by Macmillan et al., and which may be underrepresented on this page.

So let's please focus on number 1. ChrisGualtieri, I would appreciate it if you would list here some examples of what you consider to be false references. I'm not concerned with exactly how many of these there are, just with what sources Chris regards as being "false". Ideally, I'd just like to see a couple of sources listed as a bullet list, without a lot of accompanying discussion, and I would prefer that EEng not respond to it when Chris provides it here, until after I have been able to respond myself. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I thought it was self explanatory the last time I mentioned it. The "hack of hacks" resulted in each source having fake references that do not work. When trying to verify the information, clicking on these false references did nothing. When looking at the references by themselves, it appeared as if there were more citations then were used. Each source had a false reference tied to this "hack of hacks" - so when I said "over 40 false references" - I was just giving an example because 30% of the references in the reference list were non-operational and trying to verify the information was ridiculous. It really irks me when I click on sources and they go to the wrong spot, or don't work at all. That "hack of hacks" should never have been done because the false references were generated to attain a preferred appearance. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks Chris very much for your prompt reply. I understand, then, that you did not mean that the source material (particularly Macmillan et al.) were bogus sources, which may have been what EEng was concerned about. Instead, your concern is one of formatting: that clicking on certain source links failed to bring you to where it should have brought you, due to the complexity of note formatting on the page. I agree with you that we should simplify the notes, a lot, and I want to now direct EEng to what I said about the notes in the BRD section, above. Thanks again. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

It was even more basic then the notes. It was the simple fact that in the "hack of hacks" version of the page that all the references, regardless of being in the main text or in the notes, had at least one "non-working" reference. This is the "a" ref on I think every reference. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 00:30, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

If that is what you are worrying about, why not just say "the hack of hacks resulted in one spurious backlink for each reference", which we already know anyway. You are wasting everybody's time by implying that the references themselves are incorrect. Have you found any of the references themselves which are actually incorrect? --Mirokado (talk) 01:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I've been really busy as of late, but this gross misunderstanding is EEng's issue and its why the whole "hack of hacks" thing was front and center in my first interactions. This is months old and the problem has not existed for months - why such an issue is even being discussed is beyond me. I gave that as an example of problems in this page's history for the DRN matter, but it was not a "current" issue. Just like the 400+ Template:Shy issue, the matter was resolved and I am going out of my way now to nip this useless tangent in the bud. I've explained this matter several times before and EEng has been incredibly slow to understand the issue - constantly reiterating and twisting it. The all caps and bold screaming that I am some "troll" because I want the May 20 date noted is only a fragment of the past issues. I knew this page would be a nightmare because the Shy template matter still eludes EEng and the false references (spurious backlinks, in your wording) from the "hack of hacks" was something that is over and done with. I think this whole matter is a monumental waste of time, but here we are discussing stuff from last year that were fixed without much complaining. Why is it even being discussed? I can only see it being done to complicate or bog the progress down and wear out out editors. Now, since all issues are resolved - can we please move forward? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 01:44, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I said some time ago [9] that I would not be answering CG's posts except as necessary to prevent other editors being misled by them; this is one of those situations. CG, I'm calling your bluff on this:

I've explained this matter several times before and EEng has been incredibly slow to understand the issue

Since neither I nor T-fish had any idea what you were talking about, go ahead -- provide a diff showing how we should have known that your "40 false references" were a formatting glitch, not the serious problem with sourcing you wanted people to imagine. And even if you could supply such a diff somewhere (which you can't) you certainly gave no such explanation at DRN, where you wanted others to be shocked at what a fake, liar, and COI-POV pusher I must be:

Before I arrived at the article, it was a complete and utter mess. Notes that were longer then the actual body. More than 40 false references that do not exist. A vast array of useless wiki markup...

That was February 2 during your most recent forum-shopping excursion, not "last year", so it is you that are "constantly reiterating and twisting it". Turning a completely appropriate question into an attack on you has been a staple of yours for months. EEng (talk) 03:26, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I've mentioned this numerous times including in a lengthy and detailed post on 17:17, 8 December 2013 (UTC). I don't have enough time to deal with your problems, but don't go repeatedly making up stuff. You even acknowledged it in the invisible text comments on ther article with "Hack of all hacks .... A side-effect of this hack is that each Sources entry has a spurious "a" backlink to the (thrown-away) reference to that entry here." Though to be fair, other cases of broken refs existed. The "spurious backlinks" are false. The definition of "spurious" is "not being what it purports to be; false or fake." Do not continue to moan and complain about this when it was you, EEng, who acknowledged and brought up the "spurious" aspect on your own. You knew this, and I believe you know exactly what "spurious" means. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 06:04, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to make up my mind whether the two of you need an interaction ban, which would amount to a de facto topic ban of you both from this page. I asked Chris for a clarification, because what he said was unclear to me. He provided the clarification. There is no need for a complaint about it having been unclear, because it has now been clarified. For goodness sake, move on! --Tryptofish (talk) 00:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that is clear enough! Mr Fish, sorry for interrupting the conversation. One way forward would be to select a particular part of the article and widen the references there. --Mirokado (talk) 02:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to be so blunt about it, I've been sorta inactive as of late because of many things. Same as EEng. Now, in order of importance - Gage's verified life should take precedence. This article is a biography of Gage. The phrenology matter is secondary, but I see little value in Macmillan's text, when Fleischmann did a proper short analysis by showing that Gage's case was taken as proof by both "sides". The Gage case was not definitive or ended the debate, but it was a curiosity. A curiosity that has persisted, and the story has been exaggerated over time, but Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:54, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

For both Chris and EEng, being busy with other things is fine with me. WP:There is no deadline. Mirokado, welcome! I'm happy to have input from other editors, and I hope you'll stick around here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:18, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

There may be no deadline, but four months of complaining that other sources should be included, without a single proposal for actual article text to be added or changed, is a long time. Do you think you could help CG come up with something concrete? I'm afraid, though, that I must reiterate that Fleischman is aimed at grades 4-6, ages 9-12 [10], and its inadmissability as a fact source is beyond debate. EEng (talk) 03:26, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

EEng, the book may be introductory, but has been fact checked and it is better written then anything you've produced on this page. Though is just more fussing over things like the Corsini Encyclopedia and other textbooks. And true to the hostile POV denounced in Macmillan 2000, you have repeatedly attacked other researchers and writers. You even attacked an entire university with a bizarre and twisted idea. EEng needs to stop being a bully and realize that Lena and Macmillan's POV is not "consensus" or even the majority opinion. EEng seems incapable of being objective and remaining emotionally distant in this matter. How about you actually read the book because it gives far better details and context then is present on this page - and I pointed out several instances prior. How about you stop wasting our time and actually put up those sources from up to 2013? If you are not going to remain civil or be cooperative then you are WP:NOTHERE and I think a topic ban is in order. I much rather make sure it is as accurate as possible, but I do not like someone knowingly holding back information (like the 2013 interview with Macmillan on more recent findings) and playing coy. It is deceptive at minimum and dishonest at worst. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:43, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

EEng, go back and read what I already said at #Additions from Fleischman, above, and stop making the same complaints over and over again. If you are so impatient about deadlines, then maybe you can find the time to read what I said at each section of #WP:BRD, above, instead. Chris, please don't take the bait. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry. I forget that the situation is only going to be resolved by third parties and no amount of input from me is really helping. Just message me when you want me to look or answer something. I should not be so quick to respond to each point. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:32, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Chris. I appreciate that. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Chile Route 68

A recent edit [11] linked Chile Route 68 as the route used by Gage between Valparaiso and Santiago. This is an interesting idea, though the modern Route 68 can't actually be the route Gage used since the modern route passes through tunnels not built until long after Gage's death. Thus I've removed the link. However, there is some published information on the circumstances of Gage's work in Chile, and it may be possible to make use of this Route 68 idea somehow, so I'm noting it here for future use. EEng (talk) 03:11, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Checking back

I've unavoidably been away, and I want to check back now about how things are going with the content dispute that I was informally mediating. I see that most of the talk page discussion has now been archived. The part that I am the most concerned with can now be found at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD. More discussion starts around the middle of Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 4, and continues through all of Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 5 and Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6, as well as at #Another to-do list (sort of), above, as well as at User talk:Tryptofish#Inquiring minds (and brains) want to know, User talk:Tryptofish#Gage matter, and User talk:Tryptofish#Gage again.

I see that, recently, CFCF removed the dispute tags, because things have been very quiet for a while. Since EEng and ChrisGualtieri were the main disputants, I'd like to know what each of you two, in particular, would hope to see happen next.

My personal opinion is that it would not serve the purpose of improving the page simply to let things sit because the dispute has quieted down. I would hope that EEng, in particular, would work on implementing some of my advice at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD. Not necessarily everything I said, of course, but maybe meet me part way. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

This article is still a miserable pile of conjecture and assumption spoken as if fact and EEng has not relented in the least. I got better things to do then deal with one article that is deliberately and willingly being stifled by an editor who will not drop the stick and be open and objective about the content or the POV being expressed. The vast uncertainties and repeated hostile attacks on other scholars and their motives are all indicative of numerous problems. Its ambiguous, out of date and just plain wrong. It is sad to say this, but I don't have any intention of wasting further time on this matter if EEng is permitted to edit this article further. He's failed to take the hint and he's just overtly hostile - I'll not deal with him or editors like him anymore. The past conversations and the COIN discussion are all indicative of EEng driving good editors away - including the previous GAN and that says volumes about the future of this page. Thanks for trying to assist Tryptofish, but I'll have to pass. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:52, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for responding, Chris. Putting this in plain and unemotional language, it seems to me that it now behooves EEng to work to incorporate the suggestions at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD and perhaps elsewhere. It also seems to me that, if EEng fails to make a genuine effort in this direction, that would be an indication of WP:IDHT. --Tryptofish (talk) 13:49, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe sanctions would be required to deal with EEng's COI and POV issues, specifically a topic ban. I've since returned the Macmillan book and other materials - it'd take me probably a month to get those back. So its not going to be fixed, in the short term, if a topic ban is issued. Though yes, your analysis was great and hopefully helpful for the future efforts to tackle this page's issues. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I've asked EEng not to reply to what you have said about him personally, and I hope that he will resist that temptation. But I do very much want EEng to respond to what I have said about Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD. Let's see what we can accomplish there, and not get ahead of ourselves. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I've unavoidably been away as well -- traveling -- and though I've been amusing myself with some lightweight non-Gage articles, I haven't had the quiet time (or even a desk) necessary for this giant project, though I hope to have some leisure for that soon.

You'll recall we discussed your comments here and there, but in thinking about how to continue the discussion I ran into the following very serious problem.

I was pursuing the BRD process last-in-first-out, because it's far easier, technically, to revert or revise multiple changes by working backward in time rather than forward. Unfortunately, that also meant that my edit summaries often referred (explicitly or implicitly) to questions of balance, consistency, and so on, that can only be judged in light of aspects of the article not present in the version visible at that step in the process, due to earlier changes by CG )mostly deletion of content and sources) which the BRD process hadn't yet worked back to. Thus over and over I found myself wanting to say, "Well, if you look in this version [link to some old version], bou'll see that this point is explained [etc etc]" and it just got too complicated. Remember the giant multicolored table explaining about birth and ancestry or whatever it was -- how exhausting!

I'm hoping that with the distance lent by the intervening weeks some fresh approach will occur to me.

EEng (talk) 18:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

For a start, at least, I suggest not overcomplicating the issue. Please just look carefully at what I said at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD, and indicate here your reaction to what I said there. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

EEng, since I asked you the question immediately above, you have made a very large number of edits to the page. I've examined them, and they do not look to me like any sort of implementation of what I suggested at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD, and indeed a fairly large amount of it seems to me to go in the opposite direction of what I recommended there. I want you to understand that I am very serious here. If you disagree with what I suggested at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD, and can justify why, I'm happy to listen. But I will not go along with ignoring me. If you would rather respond in user talk, OK, but please respond to my question: what is your reaction to what I said at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#WP:BRD? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:37, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not ignoring you. I'm restoring the article to the point that we can talk about what to do without referring constantly to missing material and missing cites. Some of your comments can't be addressed until then, but I'll comment on those I can now. EEng (talk) 00:08, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm noting here, because EEng told me on my talk page, that EEng has entered some replies to my comments in Archive 6, by editing the archived material. I'm putting the archive page on my watchlist now, because, like most editors here, I assumed that archived talk pages would not be edited further – really, that's very unusual. I don't want to ask anyone else who may be interested to watchlist the archives, so I'm going to copy to here any comments to which I'm replying. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Tryptofish's summary of the current situation

First, I see that EEng has made these two edits: [12] and [13], that take on board some of the suggestions that I have made. Thank you very much, and I appreciate it!

Second, I've given careful thought to EEng's replies to me at:

1. Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589273712

2. Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589275654

3. Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589283267

4. Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589408098, and

5. Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589424404.

At #1, EEng correctly points out that I was incorrect in my assumption that the sources allow us to conclude that a note was written by Harlow. Consequently, I would revise the sentence that I suggested there to: "An anonymous 1850 note[cite] sometimes attributed to Harlow[cite] called Gage "gross, profane, coarse, and vulgar", but it has been observed[cite] that Harlow, and Gage's friends and family, may have been reluctant to describe Gage negatively while he was still alive."

In #4, EEng and I seem to have a small consensus that "is from a comprehensive Gage genealogy" can be changed to "is from a Gage genealogy". From my perspective, that's a very, very small point, and it is the only place where I can see EEng agreeing with me about anything. Through all the rest, EEng appears to genuinely disagree with me, and to believe that I am failing to understand various things. I've read and re-read all of it very carefully, and I believe that I do understand, but that I just plain have a different opinion about it.

At Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive829#Personal attacks and OWN violations, John said that it was unlikely that I, by myself, would succeed at bringing editors here to consensus. With regret, I have now concluded that he was right. I don't think that my informal mediation is going to get us any further. I still would like to find a way to resolve this disagreement as a content dispute, without having to put anyone in the position of sanctions for conduct. At Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Archive 86#Phineas Gage, the closing statement recommended that, if my efforts proved not to be enough, we try the Mediation Committee. I'm going to wait a day or two to see if there are any further comments here, and if not, I'm going to follow that advice and open a MedCom request. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:56, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

#2, #3: As it happens, I completely rewrote those sections, so maybe things are going better than you thought. And lest anyway get the wrong idea, that was last night, before T-fish made his post just above.

#5: I'm sure we can work something out, but it goes to the heart of the trouble in recent months, so I'd like to take it carefully. For starters, please consider the following:

• The following from WP:Reliable_sources_and_undue_weight#Aspects_of_reliability (yes, just an essay, and these are excerpts):

In assessing the suitability of a source for the purposes of research a number of aspects should be considered:

• Expertise of the originator with respect to the subject
• Declaration of sources – A source which is explicit about the data from which it derives its conclusions is more reliable than one which does not, ideally a source should describe the collection process and analysis method.
• Age of the source and rate of change of the subject – Where a subject has evolved or changed over time a long standing source may not be accurate with respect to the current situation.

• The source ranking here:

To determine scholarly opinions about a historical topic, consult the following sources in order:

1. Recent scholarly books and chapters on the historiography of the topic

2. "Review Articles", or historiographical essays that explicitly discuss recent scholarship in an area.

3. Similarly conference papers that were peer reviewed in full before publication that are field reviews or have as their central argument the historiography

4. Journal articles or peer reviewed conference papers that open with a review of the historiography.

5. Earlier scholarly books and chapters on the historiography of the topic

6. Single item "book reviews" written by scholars that explicitly discuss recent scholarship in an area.

7. Introductions to major scholarly works on the topic or introductions to edited collections of chapters often represent a survey of the historiography

8. Signed articles in scholarly encyclopaedias

EEng (talk) 23:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• I've been trying to deal with wide-ranging English Wikipedia problems for quite some time - there are a lot of systematic bias and other issues which are deeply engrained in the psyche of the culture. In my time, Mediation Committee is toothless and our priorities get locked up in silly things. I mean what can Mediation do if there is an impasse? As a scholar, EEng doesn't even recognize how poorly written the article is and refuses assistance. I've been fairly up to date with Macmillian, but at least his stance on the Gage story is as compelling as it is wise. I think when EEng better reflects on this he'll be more apt to work together with others, but the page is deeply personal to him. As for Mediation, it won't be fun and nothing good will come of it. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:09, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

user:Tryptofish, I also dont see the need for MedCom at this juncture. The article is gradually improving again. There are quite a few discussions that could be had, and a few were started but now we have discussion occurring on archived discussion pages! I think we could have a detailed and productive discussion here about how to phrase the rod burial issue (and I'll restart a proper discussion about that shortly lest the discussion continues in the archive), and others. I would really like to understand broadly what issues you see with the current content of the article, and see them thrashed out on the talk page, a few at a time I think. If you are trying to get 'consensus' from only the original parties of the old disputes, you will likely fail. But that is neither necessary nor desirable. If the regulars on this page cant agree, the appropriate course of action is to bring in other people with WP:3Os, WP:RFCs, etc.(p.s. feel free to {{ping}} me any time.) p.s. Chris, it was a much better article before you broke it. Some aspects have been improved on since then, but overall it has regressed, you are responsible, and you've not done simple things like restore citations that you removed. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:25, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

rare appearance of phineas in the media

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/05/phineas_gage_neuroscience_case_true_story_of_famous_frontal_lobe_patient.html

) Jytdog (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I think there was recently something in the New York Times, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/opinion/sunday/beyond-the-damaged-brain.html EEng (talk) 01:00, 8 May 2014 (UTC)