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Talk:Lamarckism/GA1

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Latest comment: 5 years ago by Ceranthor in topic GA Review

GA Review

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Latest comment: 5 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
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Reviewer: Ceranthor (talk · contribs) 20:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Happy to review this. ceranthor 20:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for taking it on. I'll respond to comments promptly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Prose

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Lead
  • No changes to suggest as far as prose goes. See my note in the refs section about the lead.
Noted.
Early history
  • "in ancient times, and remained a current idea for many centuries." - I'd cut the comma here
It's correct.
  • "The historian of science Conway Zirkle wrote that:[14]" - Would be helpful for the lay reader to give a date or time range for this quote.
Added, but it's basically clutter given that the history isn't controversial or something that will change.
  • "Zirkle noted that Hippocrates described pangenesis" - you introduce this term without a link or background, which makes it jargon to a lay reader IMO
glossed and linked.
  • "and persisted through to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.[15]" - would this be early history, though?
No, but it's part of the same quote on the same aspect of the topic, so this is the natural place for it.
  • "Between 1794 and 1796 Erasmus Darwin wrote Zoonomia suggesting "that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament... with the power of acquiring new parts" in response to stimuli, with each round of "improvements" being inherited by successive generations.[16]" - as its own sentence, this seems like a one-off. Try to find some way to incorporate it into the above paragraph?
Done.
  • "Darwin called his Lamarckian theory pangenesis," - This comes after the first mention of the term in the body, so maybe link it up there and then just explain it here?
Moved the wikilink.
  • "He pointed out that he regarded pangenesis as occurring in protozoa and plants, which have no blood.[19]" - bit unclear to me; does this mean Darwin only thought pangenesis was possible in those groups, or that it also extended to them, and therefore blood was not a fully exclusionary testcase?
The latter. Mentioned animals there too as a belt-and-braces measure.
  • It might be worthwhile to put the laws as bullets or even in a small table.
Numbered list.
  • "Lamarck proposed a systematic theoretical framework for understanding evolution" - again, a date would be very helpful!
Added.
  • "In an aside from his evolutionary framework, Lamarck briefly mentioned two traditional ideas in his discussion of heredity, in his day considered to be generally true." - a date would also be useful for the aside, assuming it was different from the first set of laws
Stated.
  • "However, as historians of science such as Ghiselin and Gould" - these should be linked and given full names at their first mention
Done.
  • Dates would be nice also for Weismann's experiments, Gauthier's critique, and Ghiselin's writings about Weismann
Added.
Textbook Lamarckism
  • As per above, I think Gould and Ghiselin should be fully described at their first mention in the body. Otherwise, this section is fine.
Done above.
Neo-Lamarckism
  • Not necessary to link scientists or philosophers
Unlinked.
  • You should briefly describe "orthogenesis.[33]" and link to it in the body at its first mention
Done.
  • "With the development of the modern synthesis of the theory of evolution, and a lack of evidence for a mechanism for acquiring and passing on new characteristics, or even their heritability, Lamarckism largely fell from favour. Unlike neo-Darwinism, neo-Lamarckism is a loose grouping of largely heterodox theories and mechanisms that emerged after Lamarck's time, rather than a coherent body of theoretical work." - no citation?
Ref added.
  • "The idea that living things could to some degree choose the characteristics" - not a fan of the italics here. Don't think it's particularly encyclopedic to do so
Gone.
  • "made them puppets at the mercy of the environment" - too idiomatic for encyclopedic writing; unless it's a quote, in which case feel free to add the citation and quotation marks
Reworded.
  • "According to Peter J. Bowler": - date for context?
Added.
Apparently Lamarckian mechanisms
  • Not sure about this title - might be better as "proposed" or "alleged"... "Lamarckian mechanisms"?
Mot proposed, but resembling: reworded.
  • "for example in chickens[111][112][113] rats,[114][115] and human populations" - you haven't used a serial comma throughout the article; stay consistent please
Removed.
  • "Critics such as Jerry Coyne point out that epigenetic inheritance lasts for only a few generations, so is not a stable basis for evolutionary change.[125][126][127][128]" - missing an "it"
Added.
  • Adam Weiss's writings should be given a date (didn't see one)
Done.
  • "within the immune system, and coupled it " - cut the comma here
Done.
  • "to the B-cells, and were then transported" - same as above
Done.
In sociocultural evolution
  • Bit short. Is any more info available on this topic? If not, might be worth combining into the "apparent" section?
It's non-biological, so rather different in character from the "apparent" material; and as such, it's a bit of an aside, like the "in human culture" section in animal articles, but still of some interest as showing how the theory has wider applicability.

References

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  • In the lead, an argument might be made against citing some statements but not others. I am a fan of consistency, though I'm not sure it would add much here to cite every single statement in the lead. What are your thoughts, and what have you done in the past on similar articles in evolutionary biology, if you've written any?
I try not to cite the lead, only adding refs when things are controversial (or indeed controverted).
  • ref 1's link is broken.
I get a "temporarily unavailable" message so it should be all right, but I've added an archiveURL just in case.
  • Refs seem reliable
Thanks, I hope so.
  • I wonder why certain journals are spelled out but not others: PNAS, for example
Several of us have always called PNAS like that. It feels very natural and people know what it is by that name.
  • Similarly, why are certain journals linked but not others?
Removed.
  • Why is this source "Rutherford, Adam (19 March 2010). "Beyond a 'Darwin was wrong' headline". The Guardian." indented under the one above it?
It was the same day as the ref above, but I don't see the indent as helpful so have removed it, and added a separate URL.
  • Unsure about the blog post from Jerry Coyne at [1].
He's a famous evolutionary biologist so his opinions are valued wherever they're published.
  • why do some of the book sources lack page numbers?
With Steele 1981, for example, the citation is to the entire work.
  • Planning to come back and do 5 to 10 spotchecks.
Noted.

Earwig's tool

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  • Mostly looks fine, with a few exceptions. There are a few instances here where I would rather you rephrased some of the introductions to the quotations so that they didn't use the exact same text as the source. Let me know if that's unclear at all. ceranthor 00:00, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Reply
I've made some small tweaks to the introductions.

Spotchecks

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  • "These pangenes were microscopic particles that supposedly contained information about the characteristics of their parent cell, and Darwin believed that they eventually accumulated in the germ cells where they could pass on to the next generation the newly acquired characteristics of the parents.[18]" - not sure I see this info in the source?
Added a ref.
  • "The biologist and historian of science Michael Ghiselin also considered the Weismann tail-chopping experiment to have no bearing on the Lamarckian hypothesis, writing in 1994 that:[1]" - checks out
Noted.
  • "He argued that "the restriction of 'Lamarckism' to this relatively small and non-distinctive corner of Lamarck's thought must be labelled as more than a misnomer, and truly a discredit to the memory of a man and his much more comprehensive system."[2][29]" - accepting the first on good faith; the second checks out
Noted.
  • "The prokaryotic CRISPR system and Piwi-interacting RNA could be classified as Lamarckian, within a Darwinian framework.[125]" - checks out; would suggest combining this with the paragraph under it, too
Done.
  • "Thomas Dickens and Qazi Rahman (2012) have argued that epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and histone modification are genetically inherited under the control of natural selection and do not challenge the modern synthesis. They dispute the claims of Jablonka and Lamb on Lamarckian epigenetic processes.[132]" - checks out
Noted.
@Chiswick Chap: Not sure you saw that there were a few comments here. ceranthor 14:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Reply
No, I hadn't, many thanks.

Images

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Perhaps this featured image does a better job - it's in nature, and it shows the animal feeding on the tops of acacia trees ;-}
The image page on Commons states "Own work" and provides a link to the Protein Data Bank structure image as well as to the software used. I've added a link there to the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the author's institution.
Thanks.

Remaining: possible further digging into refs; images and spotchecks. ceranthor 19:16, 29 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

I've posted all my comments. ceranthor 00:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Great - thanks for getting to all of these in a timely fashion. Happy to pass this now. ceranthor 17:14, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

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