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Welcome to my User Page
Hi everybody 😁. My name is Cliff Knickerbocker, but I've been known among my fellow editors as "Uploadvirus" since I began editing in early 2009.
I'm a 62 year old semi-retired scientist and researcher who lives in Southern Illinois USA 🇺🇲. If you want to know more about me, feel free to look around here, or just contact me through Facebook, Messenger, by email (
at cliffknickerbocker1960@gmail.com or uploadvirus@yahoo.com, or by using other personal contacts listed below.
I don't spend much time editing here anymore, mostly because my wife and my research take up 99% of my time. But one other big reason I don't make more time to edit here is because of the ugly fights I've had with randomly hostile, purely narcissistic administrators in the past. These people make editing 100 times more laborious for usually zero real reason, other than - in my opinion - to go on power trips" and feed their egos.
That being said, I do believe that Wikipedia is STILL the greatest site on the Internet for general education and entertainment purpose, bar none.
Should you wish to collaborate on real world research, for fun or learning or publication, I'm always eager to do so. In fact, research is the one thing I love doing more than anything in the world.
My one huge problem is that I ABHOR writing in the overly constrictive, incredibly picky format demanded by most of the good academic journals. It's my life's biggest regret that I can't often force myself to do it, because I'm very gifted at doing research that is impactful and highly publishable.
In any case, my personal contact information in the real world is:
Cliff L. Knickerbocker BSCh MS DDF
Adnomery Research Company
208 East Charles Street
Marion, IL 62959
During the period 2009-2013, I created from scratch, made major contributions to and/or quite extensive revisions of, a fairly large number of articles at the English Wikipedia. For detailed lists and a current count of these articles, see my Babel Tower at the top of the page.
I've also spent considerable time on Wikipedia doing minor revisions and other edits, mostly to general and clinical oncology-related content, with particular emphasis on my career research specialty, the numerous histological and molecular variants of lung cancer known as the "non-small cell lung carcinomas".
I've also been involved with some peer reviews, have done award-winning work with the Wikipedia Guild of Copy Editors, been a part of the Wikipedia Typo Team, and have served for well over a decade as a New Pages Reviewer, Recent Changes Patroller, Vandalism Patroller, and a Rollbacker.
During 2013, though, I had multiple conflicts with one particular administrator, who happened to be a narcissistic linguist with a (stupid) passion for extraneous hyphens, who ruined the looks, readability, and IMO credibility of the majority of my articles by inserting hyphens everywhere.
On appeal, and despite getting clear consensus for my position amongst in-house experts (with 75%-80% of the vote), my appeal and reversion request was STILL denied. I HAD NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE SINCE. That my opponent was a "bot expert", with over one million edits, I am almost certain had a lot to do with the decision.
So I don't edit very often anymore, but I do try to recruit new editors. I also served 3 terms on the Board of Directors of Wikipedia Project Medicine (2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022), with my third term ending after 31 December 2021.
I've also served on the Pulmonology Task Force, and helped out with the Pharmacology, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Anatomy Projects here.
In October 2020 I had a paradigm shift in my research emphasis (see below). After over 44 years of doing lung cancer research, and have decided to spend the vast majority of what time I have left researching human chromosomal abnormalities and the diseases they cause, with emphasis on copy number variants (particularly microduplications) involving the acrocentric chromosomes in our genome (numbers 13, 14, 15, 21, and 22, plus the Y sex chromosome). I will be contributing when I can
to the Wikipedia Neuroscience Initiative, and plan to write comprehensive articles on certain pure partial trisomies of the acrocentrics. For more information, please see the research-related sections below.
For more information on my activities and interests, please see my Babel Tower (top of the page).
In the real world, I am semi-retired now at age 61, but I continue to operate a small private research, education, teaching, and consulting firm called Adnomery Research Company (ARC), here in Marion, Illinois, where I have lived with my wife, Jackie Ward, from 2017 to the present (March 2022).
The current (August 2022) focus of my research is a case study on a beautiful little girl ("HQ"), born in 2015, who has autism, intellectual disability, global developmental delay, , macrocephaly, overgrowth syndrome, The proband was born to a physically healthy 24 year old, Caucasian mother (para 2 gravida 2 abortus 0) after a relatively uneventful pregancy, with the mother reporting significantly less fetal movement than in her previous pregnancy. The child was noted to have global developmental delay, intellectual disability, classic juvenile autism, macrocephaly, strabismus (esotropia), hypotonia, early ataxic gait, pica, moderate insensitivity to pain, mild craniofacial and skeletal dysmorphisms (including arachnodactyly of 3rd and 4th fingers, dentogenesis imperfecta,
The probands mother, maternal grandfather, maternal great-grandmother, paternal uncle, paternal first cousin, and a few more distant patrilineal members had physical characteristics of mild to moderate Marfanoid body habitus, and had certain clinical diagnoses all suggestive of a possible fibrillinopathy.
The probands pathologies included classical juvenile autism, macrocephaly, dentogenesis imperfecta, relative insensitivity to pain, chronic severe comstipation.
genoniky tested by array cGH and found to have a Genotype of 46,XX, dup (15) (q21.1, q21.1), and more precisely, dup 15q21.1 (45,767,342-46,789,177)x3. As a result
She was born in 2015 after a relatively uneventful pregancy to a non-consanguinois Caucasian family in Illinois to a para 2 gravida 2 C
Current Research Projects and Agenda
Full and Partial Trisomies in the Genome of the Human: Clinical Consequences and Potential Interventions
I spent most of my life (1976 to 2020) focusing my research on the molecular biology and genetics of non-small cell lung cancers, particularly those in rare histological subtypes and variants.
In February of 2015, however, my youngest granddaughter - who I call "Princess Hadlee" - was born after an uncomplicated (para 2 gravida 2) pregnancy, to my youngest daughter, who was a promising first year nursing student.
Although she appeared robustly healthy from birth, it became apparent in her first year of life that she had signs of a mild muscular hypotonia, craniofacial dysmorphisms, and a global developmental delay.
My daughter acted quickly and bravely to get her tested, and she was diagnosed on 2017 with classical juvenile autism by experts at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
It was later confirmed by doctors at St. Louis Children's Hospital that my "Youngest Princess" indeed had some signs and symptoms of a possible syndromic neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) featuring stereotypical behaviors and communications disorders consistent with autism.
After a brief bout of acutely increased intracranial pressure in 2020, we worried about the possibility of cranioisotosis, so she was screened for genomic variants in her DNA by array comparative genomic hybridization (a-CGH).
The screening showed that she has a duplication of a portion of the genetic material in the long arm of chromosome number 15 - more specifically, an interstitial duplication in subband 1 of band 1 of region 2 (ish dup 15q21.1), with genotype (per Paris standard) of 46, XX, dup ish (15) (q21.1, q21.1). To date, I have not been made aware of the exact chromosomal coordinates of the breakpoints.
About 15 years ago, when I was at the U of A, Dr. Michael Young (now Dean of Research at New Mexico State University) and I did some non-linear mortality trend analyses of age-adjusted death rates from stroke. At the time, official data suggested Arkansas had (only) the 11th highest stroke death rate amongst the 50 US states. However, our trend analyses suggested it was already #1, or would be very soon. Within just a couple of years, new data showed we were correct! Partly because we were so busy doing other things, but mostly because of the intensely negative political fallout that publication of such a study would no doubt have generated, we never did submit our work for publication.
I grew up in the coal mines with my Dad, and started working for him in the 7th grade - laboring, blasting, and operating heavy equipment (i.e. bulldozers, end loaders, and draglines). I became a fan of "walking draglines" and surface mining at a young age, and for many years (off-and-on) I helped build and work on draglines, mostly as a Project Manager for the White Equipment Corporation. You can see one of the machines I helped put together in two videos, located here [[1]] and here [[2]]. It is a specially modified Rapier W2000. It was, at the time, the largest of its kind ever built.
The original machine was purchased and disassembled in Pottsville, Pennsylvania over several months, then transported to Bessemer, Pennsylvania in a total of 188 individual tractor-trailer loads. During the reassembly, we lengthened the boom from 285 to 315 feet and added a bigger bucket (45 cubic yards, instead of 30). This upsizing required extensive engineering modifications to the ballast, hoist and drag drums, house, and swing gear support structures to allow for much heavier stresses. This unique and awesome machine was then re-erected for the ESSROC Corporation between 1991 and 1993, with the Bucyrus-Erie/MINSERCO Corporation and British engineers and electricians assisting with parts of the erection and commissioning processes. The entire (huge) job ran for about 30 months, involved more than 30 employees, and was budgeted at over $2 million. Unfortunately, I recently found out that this beauty has been idle for at least 2 years now, and will probably be scrapped at the site.
I later earned a Master of Science degree in Health Science from the University of Arkansas. My emphasis area was in cancer epidemiology, with particular foci in the clinical epidemiology of unusual variants of lung cancer and mortality trends due to skeletal system cancers (sarcoma using non-linear modeling techniques. My masters thesis was entitled "Skeletal Sarcoma Mortality Trends in Arkansas are Confounded by Misdiagnosis of Fatal Lung Cancer Cases in the Oldest Old". During my masters program, I was elected to Phi Kappa Phi, graduated #1 in my class, was voted the "Most Outstanding Masters Student" award, and was awarded a Northwest Arkansas Cancer Challenge Fellowship in lung cancer epidemiology. The latter honor allowed me to spend part of a summer studying lung cancer epidemiology at the The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
While at the University of Arkansas, I was the Assistant Director of the Health Education Projects Office, under one of the most accomplished health science researchers in the world, Dr. Michael E. Young. As a team, we conducted considerable research into risk factors for gynecological cancers, stroke mortality trends in Arkansas and the "stroke belt", and drug use and pregnancy prevention among teenagers. I also helped Dr. Young revise and update his nationally recognized and honored drug prevention program, "Keep a Clear Mind".
After completing my masters degree, I won the first Walton Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship in Health Science that was ever granted at the U of A. After completing four years of this teaching and research fellowship, working with Dr. Michael E. Young, and doing an internship in the Human Performance Laboratory under Dr. Ro DiBrezzo, I returned home to Illinois to help take care of my aging parents, and to (slowly) complete my dissertation and (eventually) obtain my Ph.D. degree.
Academic and Professional Honors, Awards, and Grants
Elected to membership, University of Missouri-Rolla Chapter
For being in top 10% of mathematics students in U.S.
Walton Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship in Health Science
University of Arkansas, College of Health Professions
$120,000 cash grant (plus tuition) over 4 years
For outstanding research and teaching potential in health science
Specializations in lung cancer and skeletal sarcomas
Northwest Arkansas Cancer Challenge Education Grant
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
$4,000 cash grant over 3 months
For advanced education in lung cancer epidemiology
Teaching Assistant Training Award (won twice)
University of Arkansas, Center for Excellence in Teaching
$650 cash grant over 2 years
For outstanding overall teaching and training effectiveness
21st Annual Graduate Institute of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
$2,500 cash grant over one month
For advanced study in lung cancer prevention
Outstanding Masters Degree Student in Health Science Award
University of Arkansas, College of Education and Health Professions (declined the award
ned award athe Waltoninning Walton Distinguish)ed Fellowship
Phi Kappa Phi Honor Fraternity
Elected for being in top 2% of graduate students in the U.S.
Northwest Arkansas Cancer Challenge Research Grant
With Dr. Michael E. Young, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator)
$8,000 cash grant for a one year project "Setting the [Research] Agenda"
For developing research proposals in lung cancer prevention
My Featured Personal Articles at Wikipedia
I created and wrote (nearly) all of the substantive information in the following three articles myself. The first two were submitted to (successful) peer review, and the third will be when it is completely finished. I think I can make a good argument that these articles are more comprehensive sources than any other that is currently available in the world literature (as of August 2012).
Most contributors and administrators here at Wikipedia have been exceptionally kind to me, and a few have even awarded me with particular accolades, which I display here with much gratitude
This editor is a Signator and is entitled to display this Scroll of Signatures.
This editor is a Veteran Editor and is entitled to display this Iron Editor Star.
To Uploadvirus, for contributions to medical articles. Axl¤[Talk] 08:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The Modest Barnstar
This barnstar is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing articles totalling over 4,000 words during the GOCE March copy edit drive. Thanks for participating! Dianna (talk) 01:46, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
The Copyeditor's Barnstar
This barnstar is awarded to Cliff "Uploadvirus" Knickerbocker for copy editing articles totalling over 30,000 words during the May 2012 copy edit drive. Your work is much appreciated! -- Dianna (talk) 00:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
The 10k Copy Edit Barnstar
This barnstar is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing a big article of 10,000 words or more during the Guild of Copy EditorsMay backlog elimination drive. Thanks so much for your help with the wikiproject! -- Dianna (talk) 00:42, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Leaderboard Award – Number of 5k articles edited – Equal 5th Place
This Leaderboard Award is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing 4 articles of 5000 words or more during the Guild of Copy EditorsMay 2012 GOCE drive. Congratulations on winning this prestigious award. Thank you for your efforts. --Stfg (talk) 11:24, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
For exceptional copyediting efforts during the GOCEJuly copy edit drive, editing articles with a combined total of 101,619 words, Cliff "Uploadvirus" Knickerbocker is presented with this exclusive, brilliant, Most Excellent Order of the Caretaker's Star. Thank you so much for helping out with copy edits. -- Dianna (talk) 01:55, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Leaderboard Award – Number of articles edited – 4th Place
This Guild of Copy Editors Silver Award is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing 44 articles during the Guild of Copy EditorsJuly 2012 GOCE drive. Congratulations on winning this prestigious award. Thank you for your efforts. -- Dianna (talk) 01:55, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Leaderboard Award – Word Count – 3rd Place
This Guild of Copy Editors Silver Award is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing articles totalling 86,247 words during the Guild of Copy EditorsJuly 2012 GOCE drive. Congratulations on winning this prestigious award. Thank you for your efforts. -- Dianna (talk) 01:55, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Leaderboard Award – Number of 5K articles edited – 2nd Place
This Guild of Copy Editors Silver Award is awarded to Uploadvirus for copy editing five articles of 5,000 words or more during the Guild of Copy EditorsJuly 2012 GOCE drive. Congratulations on winning this prestigious award. Thank you for your efforts. -- Dianna (talk) 01:55, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
The Teamwork Barnstar
Cliff, thanks for stepping forward to help with the barnstar preparations yesterday. It's so easy to make mistakes in that task , and I really valued the second pair of eyes. Thank you! Simon. --Stfg (talk) 11:54, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Some of the writing I've done here at Wikipedia has (apparently) been plagiarized verbatim in the peer-reviewed literature! Here are cites for a few examples I've run across:
Krishnamurthy A, Vijayalakshmi N, Majhi U. A fatal case of pure giant cell carcinoma of the lung. J Can Res Ther 2011;7:363-5. - the authors copied and used part of an introduction I first wrote for my award-winning article on combined small cell lung carcinoma, and that I also used in several other articles.
Krčedinac J, Panjković M, Božanić S, Samardžija G, Stojanović M. Large cell lung carcinoma with rhabdoid phenotype: Case report. Arch Oncol 2011;19:34-6. - in their conclusion, the authors copied from my large cell lung carcinoma with rhabdoid phenotype Wikipedia article.
Google searches of various phrases reveal many other examples. Please, folks - when you use someone else's work, just give them credit with a cite! That's all we researchers ask!
Favorite Quotes
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because he knows there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But those who do actually strive to do the deeds, who know great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat" - Theodore Roosevelt
"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give" - Winston Churchill
"I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves" - Anna Quindlen
"The Honorable General" is the first person to step foot on the battlefield, and the last to leave it - whether standing on his feet, or lying in his body bag. He is the first to dig a shovelful of Earth, and the last to take credit for the improvements wrought. He makes certain his troops are well fed, clad, and rested before takes a mouthful of sustenance, dons his field jacket, or places his head upon his pillow. During a struggle, The Honorable General dedicates himself to educating his troops as to their great might and even greater worth. He continuously assures them of the righteousness of their campaign, and of its inevitable success. He constantly provides all members of his command with the tools and the personal leadership they need to be victorious. If the battle turns against him, he is the first to claim the fault for himself, and the last to criticize the performance of his followers. When the battle is finally won, he is the first to offer praise to those who persevered under his flawed command, and the last to claim responsibility for the fruits of their victory. Most importantly, The Honorable General never forgets that his ultimate duty is to strive to funnel all available resources into the hearts and heads of his troops - for in only that way can he insure, beyond doubt, not just that his troops will conquer all, but that they will always strive to remain as honorable as he is." - Cliff Knickerbocker (for Damon Ward).
In Memoriam
My Mother: Esther Mae Knickerbocker (b. 14 April 1932, d. 24 March 2010)
My Father: Roger Cliff Knickerbocker (b. 19 June 1915, d. 6 February 1977)
My Stepfather: Frank L. White (b. 11 July 1922, d. 14 December 2010)
My Interim Father: Dr. Ronald Browning, Ph.D. (b. 24 April 1934, d. 27 April 1992)
My Research Father: Dr. Michael E. Young, Ph.D. (b. 26 March 1950, fl. 2020)
My Second Mother: ("Nana") Ora Helen Sherrod Ritsch (b. 21 May 1904, d. 1 February 2002)
