Talk:Black Death

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 6 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hdgoble (article contribs).

Historians only guess the death toll

It needs to be pointed out that historians are only guessing the death toll in the lead paragraph. 172.79.188.66 (talk) 02:02, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

It says 75-200 million. That's pretty clearly a guess. -- asilvering (talk) 02:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

New work on pandemic death tolls from Our World In Data has a better professional estimate of 50 million deaths from the Black Death, so I've updated the estimate and added sourcing. Mcenedella (talk)(contribs) 12:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe Our World in Data conducts studies, they are an aggregator and interpreter of statistics whose goal is "to make the knowledge on the big problems accessible and understandable". There are several studies cited in the article already that provide a good basis for revising the number down based principally on the estimate of population lost. CompleteAnonymity (talk) 12:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I've updated the numbers in the lead and the sources to cite the academic sources and reflect the numbers there not newspapers. But there is need to rationalise further in the article as well and be clear which sources estimates come from AlasdairEdits (talk) 17:56, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I've added few more sources. There is also this blog post with source analysis, and though it's not a reliable source for WP, it's still interesting:

The first sentence of Wikipedia’s Black Death article claimed a death toll of “75 to 200 million people,” citing three news articles 62 which themselves provide no sources for their estimates. 63 Searches for academic literature 64 turned up many academic sources using the 200 million figure, but nearly all of them (that I checked) made clear that the 200 million figure sums deaths across multiple (usually, “three”) different pandemics caused by Yersinia pestis, occurring centuries apart. 65 Moreover, for the academic sources providing a citation for the 200 million figure that I was able to track down, 66 the reference trail in all cases led eventually to a single source: an article from the May 1988 issue of National Geographic by photojournalist Nicole Duplaix, titled “Fleas: The Lethal Leapers” (pp. 672-694). That article, too, is clear that the 200 million figure refers not to deaths for the “Black Death” of the 1340s-50s, but to deaths summed across multiple pandemics. 67 Moreover, this number is highly suspect, given that Duplaix provides no source or analysis for it.

Artem.G (talk) 19:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I will say that, while I'm happy Max Roser used his platform to draw attention to this error in estimation (including my attention), I'm disapointed that an information aggregator such as Roser who is trying to "make the knowledge on the big problems accessible and understandable" would notice this problem with the article, and, instead of correcting it, use it as an oppurtunity to discredit Wikipedia while promoting their own site. Not very much in the spirit of working together to make knowledge accessible.

I think I should note also that Our World In Data (which is made up of several employees of Oxford University, and funded by the Gates Foundation) is also worthy of such scrutiny. Sadly, while Wikipedia is collaborative and somewhat democratic, Our World In Data & Roser present their narrow viewpoint authoritatively, without any feedback mechanisms. CompleteAnonymity (talk) 12:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I think many of the above points are valid. Since adjusting the death estimate to be consistent with modern scholarship a month ago, the prose in the lead paragraph has drifted a bit. I've cleaned up and streamlined that prose.

I've also removed some assertions that are not supported by the linked sources (such as the reference to human-to-human transmission, which is in fact contradicted in the sole cited source in the pneumonic plague article (Benedictow’s The Black Death).

I think scholars are hesitant to update Wikipedia because the revert and flame wars sometimes feel like a lot of hassle to someone who is not a regular participant. Mcenedella (talk)(contribs) 19:30, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 20 September 2023

"percent" (as in %) is spelled wrong - per cent with a space. 2 words. 2A06:C701:4C72:7900:FD67:C7BA:223B:6A56 (talk) 12:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

: Not done: Percent seems to be consistent with the MOS of the article. See WP:MOS. Seawolf35 (talk) 15:44, 20 September 2023 (UTC),

Sorry,  Done Seawolf35 (talk) 15:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Improvements to general writing quality

Several poorly written sentences and sections make the article needlessly complex.

Examples (original in italics, revisions underneath):

It is recognised that an epidemiological account of plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period.

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Researchers are hampered by a lack of reliable statistics from this period.

A research in 2018 challenged the popular hypothesis that "infected rats died, their flea parasites could have jumped from the recently dead rat hosts to humans". It suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people".

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In 2018 researchers suggested an alternative model in which ""the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people".

The most authoritative contemporary account is found in a report from the medical faculty in Paris to Philip VI of France. It blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory).

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Philip VI of France wrote in 1355 that a conjunction of planets had caused "a great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory).

--and so on. It would be worth doing a full pass on this article for clarity and I am willing to do so if allowed. VHarbee (talk) 15:32, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to add this example which I came across while reading the article, which was both difficult to parse and definitely inaccurate (at least in regards to linked articles).

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Early Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing.

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St. Agnes of Rome lived ~3 centuries before St. Benedict, so the phrase "took the injunction to heart" is definitely false. 64.46.14.251 (talk) 22:19, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 February 2024

Change "An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern bubonic plague, after the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions." to "An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern plague, after the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions." (removing the word "bubonic"). The case fatality ratio linked appears to refer to plague in general, rather than just the bubonic form. Wizzeh (talk) 06:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done Tollens (talk) 03:39, 15 February 2024 (UTC)