Talk:Smegma/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Photo

Why does this article have to have the worst possible and certainly not at all realistic case of neglected hygiene? Wikipedia Commons holds several quite normal cases of smegma secretions as usable photos and for some reason most non-English versions of this page manage to use one of these instead. Without problems or discussions and particularly also without leading viewers on. Is there such a horror of a normal physical excretion among US-editors here that you need to post the most exaggerated picture available? Why not take this for example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASmegma_Penis02.mirrored.jpg

I just reverted the image that was in use as excessive. The image presently there is a cropped version of the image you just linked. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:43, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Contentious material on cancer

The material on penile cancer that was reintroduced last year is highly contentious and not reliable seeing as it came from doctors in the forties who were seeking to promote the practice of circumcision. I feel it constitutes propaganda for the pro-circumcision cause so I am removing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scowie (talk • contribs) 14:28, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The study you removed, published in Science, is well sourced and immediately countered by other reliable sources (ACS , NIH) which you also removed. Based on your belief that doctors in the 1940s were biased and the source is "propaganda", you have removed both sides of the issue. I tend to believe that balanced discussion of earlier beliefs and the current consensus makes more sense than bowdlerizing the article.

If you have WP:MEDRS sources discussing it as "propaganda", discussion of that point would probably be an appropriate addition to the article. - SummerPhD^v2.0 00:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I consider it WP:Undue_Weight to have these arguments in the article.Scowie (talk) 01:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

The propaganda undue weight issue doesn't seem to measure up against the brevity of the section with three WP:MEDRS sources discussing it. Additionally, without the section we are citing a source 4 times with the title "The carcinogenicity of smegma: debunking a myth" while not so much as mentioning the topic of that article. Heck, the American Cancer Society in 2015 is still giving a fair amount of space to the belief from this 1940s study. We also, of course, have the 2006 journal article solely dedicated to the belief and numerous other peer reviewed journal articles discussing the question. - SummerPhD^v2.0 05:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)