Sigrd

Welcome!

Hello, Sigrd, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
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• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Jytdog (talk) 12:44, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

COI

Hello, Sigrd. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 06:49, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Question

Wikipedia is a scholarly project, and like all scholarly endeavors, disclosure of conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. If you are connected to Stock's lab, I am sure you are aware of the importance of disclosure of COI. As you may know, violating COI policies and guidelines often ends up bringing scandal upon people, institutions, and companies that do so. See Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for some examples. If you have a COI it would be good to disclose it now and to follow the COI guideline going forward. Please know the editing with a COI, within the limits provided in the COI guideline, is allowed in Wikipedia but you must abide by the Terms of Use and our COI guideline, as well as other community policies, guidelines, and norms.

Please let us know -

are you the same person or people as the earlier Mesports account?

what is your relationship with Signum, ME sports, Nerium, Princeton, or Block? Thanks, Jytdog (talk) 12:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, we are related to Signum Biosciences. How we can disclose COI for future edits? We would like to understand the reasoning behind the reason EHT and Tetramethylhexadecenyl succinyl cysteine pages were redirected to your edited Signum Biosciences page. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sigrd (talk • contribs) 13:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC) Sigrd (talk)

OK, you are talking! hooray!! there is a lot to learn here, and there are several layers of issues, so let's take this slowly, OK. first thing, wikipedia basics. you need to sign your posts by typing four tildas after them, like this ~~~~. the wikipedia software will turn that into a "signature" with links to your userpage (this User:Sigrd) and to your Talk page (this page we are writing on) and a date stamp. also, we thread comments by putting a colon in front of it, when we are replying to someone (like I did here). the wikipedia software turns the colon into a tab. one colon is one tab, two colons are two tabs, etc, and when the tabbing gets too deep, we "outdent" by putting {{od}} in front of the comment. you will eventually see that in our thread. there. OK? so please sign, and indent, going forward.

next issue, you write "we". Please note that per the WP:USERNAME policy, a wikipedia account needs to be used by one person. if there is more than one person from Signum working here, each person needs his or her own account, and needs to disclose his or her own COI. OK? So please say "i' going forward, and be a single human. And please do respond to my question about whether you are the same person (or group) that ran the MEsports account.

next issue, is making a disclosure per the Terms of Use. Would you please write a disclosure of your conflict of interest on your User page? (this User:Sigrd) You do not have to give any personally identifying information, but you do have to disclose the conflict. So something like "I am a scientist and work for Signum Biosciences, a biotechnology company developing drugs and dietary supplements" would do. Whatever that is. It would be useful to know if you are a PR person or a business person or a scientist, to help folks understand where you are coming from (you could also be a PR person with a PhD..., but i don't know how science-literate you are, nor will others, and this would just be helpful information to include in the disclosure) Also, if you are the same person or group that ran the MEsports account, please include that on your user page disclosure as well. (we have a policy against "sockpuppetting" - it is ok that if you are the same person, you dealt with the username problem by making a new account and abandoning the old one, but you just need to disclose the continuity) OK, that is enough for now. We will get to the article issues, but they are more complex, and we need to get basics down first, one thing at a time. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 13:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. Just resolved my COI disclosure in my userpage User:Sigrd.I am part of the same group that ran the MEsports account. Can we get to the articles?Sigrd (talk)

i appreciate your patience. your willingness to "play ball" is really essential. We have had to site-ban conflicted editors who would not stop to actually deal with their conflicts nor work with the community. this is an encyclopedia and the community will not allow WP to be used for PR. If editors don't respect that, they lose their editing privileges, and fast. so really, i appreciate your patience - it is better for you, and for Signum, and for WP. Will you please copy the underlying source text to your userpage? "I formerly edited using an account called Mesports but have abandoned that account". Thanks. I will open a new section below to start talking about the article issues. Jytdog (talk) 14:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I just copied the text to my userpage User:Sigrd.Sigrd (talk)

thanks! Jytdog (talk) 14:29, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

edit war warning

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Signum Biosciences. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and breaking the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. Jytdog (talk) 12:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Big picture stuff

OK, so you want to understand why i worked over the two articles you created. As i mentioned above, there is a lot to learn here. I am providing you with the context you need to understand why I did what I did. After you have absorbed all the stuff I write below, let's talk about the specific articles.

Wikipedia is a pretty complex place. Being an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that over the years, Wikipedia has developed lots of policies and guidelines (PAG) to help provide a "body of law" as it were, that form a foundation for rational discussion. Without that foundation, this place would be both a garbage dump of random content and a wild west - a truly ugly place. But with the foundation, there is guidance for generating excellent content and there are ways to rationally work things out - if, and only if, all the parties involved accept that foundation and work within it. One of the hardest things for new people, is to understand not only that this foundation exists, but what its letter and spirit is. (I emphasize the spirit, because too often people fall prey to what we call "wikilawyering") The more I have learned about how things are set up here - not just the letter of PAG and the various drama boards and administrative tools, but their spirit - the more impressed I have become at how, well ... beautiful this place is. It takes time to learn both the spirit and the letter of PAG, and to really get aligned with Wikipedia's mission to crowdsource a reliable, NPOV source of information for the public (as "reliable" and "NPOV" are defined in PAG!). People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something, or they have a conflict of interest. That passion/conflict is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead to WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, which is really destructive. WP:ADVOCACY and WP:COI are some of our biggest bedevilments.

PAG are described and discussed in a whole forest of documents within Wikipedia that are "behind the scenes" in a different "namespace", in which the documents start with "Wikipedia:" or in shorthand, "WP:" (for example, our policy on edit warring is here: WP:EDITWAR not here EDITWAR). You won't find these documents by using the simple search box above, which searches only in "main space" where the actual articles are. However if you search with the prefix, (for example if you search for "WP:EDITWAR") you will find policies and guidelines. Likewise if you do an advanced search with "wikipedia" or "help" selected you can also find things in "Wikipedia space". The link in the welcome message above the "Five Pillars" points you to our most important policies and I recommend that you read them all, if you have not already and if you intend to stick around! They guide everything that happens here.

With all that in mind, here are some things that I suggest you read (I know, I know, things to read... but like I said, Wikipedia can be complicated!)

• WP:COI - please do read this.
• WP:OR - no original research is allowed (and please especially see the WP:SYN section of that -instead..
• WP:VERIFY - everything must be based on reliable sources (as we define them - see WP:RS for general content and WP:MEDRS for health-related content)
• WP:MEDRS - this is our guideline for sourcing health-related content in Wikipedia. This is probably the key thing you will need to mind
• WP:NPOV - this does not mean what most people think it means. it means that you read the most recent and best reliable independent secondary sources you can find, and figure out what the mainstream view is, and that is what gets the most WP:WEIGHT.
• WP:MEDMOS - this our manual of style, for how we write about health-related things. We are very careful not to discuss pre-clinical findings, as well as initial clinical results, as though they are applicable to medicine. We are very conservative in that regard!

• WP:CONSENSUS - Wikipedia has plenty of policies and guidelines, as I mentioned, but really at the end of the day this place is ... a democracy? an anarchy? something hard to define. But we figure things out by talking to one another. CONSENSUS is the bedrock on which everything else rests. So please talk - please never edit war (see warning above). If you make a change to an article and someone else reverts it, the right thing to do is to follow WP:BRD (please do read that) - but briefly, when you are reverted, open a discussion on the article's Talk page. Ask the reason under policy and guidelines why your change was reverted -- and really ask, and really listen to the answer, and go read whatever links you are pointed to. Think about it, and if there is something you don't understand, ask more questions. Please only start to actually argue once you understand the basis for the objection. If you and the other party or parties still disagree, there are many ways to resolve disputes (see WP:DR) - it never needs to become emotional - because we do have this whole "body of law" and procedures to resolve disputes.

OK, so that is the foundational stuff. The two articles you wrote violated some of these policies and guidelines. Once you have absorbed the stuff above, we can talk about specifics. Jytdog (talk) 14:07, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

actually I need to add some stuff:

• WP:EXPERT - this is an essay with advice for experts, like you
• Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest (medicine) which is related to the essay above, and finally:
• User:Jytdog#NPOV_part_1:_secondary_sources this mini-essay on my user page.

The very short story here, is that both of your articles were WP:SYN - they were essentially literature reviews that you might find in the biomedical literature. And scientists have a tendency to produce stuff like this, as that is a genre they are used to. And yours was doubly problematic, in that the hypothesis you were pursuing (in the SYN you wrote) is that both of the compounds are beneficial to health. And I understand why you want to pursue them - you may well believe it is true, and you have a financial COI here. But this is an encyclopedia, not a scientific journal - the genre is one you are probably not familiar with writing -- and we are editors here, not authors - what we do is read existing secondary sources - independent ones - and summarize them here. Getting your head around that, will be one of your big challenges to working here. And this is not a place to promote new hypotheses - via "syntheses" (e.g. that those two compounds have health benefits) - instead we need to summarize what independent secondary sources say. Happy to discuss and I look forward to your thoughts and questions, if you have any. Thanks again for talking. It really is essential here. Jytdog (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

discussion

Interesting. I understand much better the WP:COI and WP:SYN related issues. I will like to edit both pages using encyclopedia-based references avoiding any PR purpose or biomedical literature-similar content. Any advice?Sigrd (talk)

great! again thanks for taking the time to understand this place. So if you were tasked to create these two articles by your boss or your board (you might be the CEO for all i know) your answer to them is "content in Wikipedia needs to be based on what they call "reliable sources". for us that means at review articles by a group other than us or Block, that goes into some depth on each of these. until those exist there is nothing we can do, really".

and with that said, what independent secondary sources are there, that directly discuss either compound? i looked at the refs you included carefully and didn't find any. i also searched pubmed on my own. Jytdog (talk) 15:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. There are two peer-reviewed scientific articles found in PubMed related to EHT and SIG1273 (TSC). In addition to a review written by a magazine editor . I would like to edit the page with a description perspectiveSigrd (talk) 16:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

References

OK thanks for bringing sources. (side note, you can just go like this - PMID 25034344 - and the WP software will put a link to the pubmed abstract in place, which is really handy.) We use pubmed and MEDLINE constantly - it is a super fast way to tell if an article is a research paper or a review. Before we go further, please actually read the following two sections of MEDRS:

• Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Definitions and
• Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Respect_secondary_sources

Please write back after you have read those two sections from MEDRS, and let me know if you can anticipate what I am going to say about the sources that turned up in your pubmed searches (which are the same articles I found). Thanks Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

ok, I understood the primary source issue. There is a Published book about drugs and targets for PD which talk about EHT. This one should be a secondary source.Sigrd (talk)

References

Great, thanks for reading that stuff. Nice find!! yes that book has the following: "Activation of Balpha containing PP2A was reached by inhibiting PP2A demethylation mediated by eicosanoyl-5-hydrotytryptamide (EHT). EHT administration to alpha-synuclein transgenic mice reduced alpa-synuclein Ser129 phosphorylation, its subsequent aggregation, and ameliorated the associated neuropathology and behavioral aberrations. EHT action on PP2A is mediated by its antagonistic effect on PME. reported to occur at IC50 3.9µM." yep. Which is not enough to base a whole article on. You see what I faced now, when your articles were called to my attention. I wanted to do something, and it seemed that the most I could do was make an article on the company. I'll add a citation to the article about EHT using this source.Jytdog (talk) 02:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

note - i added the scibx source too. Jytdog (talk) 02:39, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I found other sources...

• There is a review article that mention EHT as PP2a modulator (PMID 25426138).
• Another book chapter.
• This other article that seem to be a review.
• This website discuss methylation and use EHT as example.

Secondary sources are emerging from the ground.Sigrd (talk) 13:01, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

References

Please don't waste time with sources like #1 and #3. Please. The first is a press release gathered into some self-published crap book, and the #3 is not reliable per MEDRS and not even per RS. Please don't waste my time, or the community's time, with stuff like this. I have a job too, and there is lots of stuff I want to do in WP. I am happy to help you, but please don't waste my time. You would never cite things like this in a scientific paper. Don't bring it here either. WP is not a biomedical journal but we do have high standards for content about science.

Source #2 has more subtle issues. It is from a biomedical journal, Jacobs Journal of Food and Nutrition, however, that journal is not indexed by anyone I can find. Journals like this are also discussed in MEDRS - we don't use them. We need high quality sourcing, and as a conflicted editor, you should be holding yourself to really high standards. Do not scrape the bottom of the barrel.

PMID 25426138 is OK though, a review published in an indexed journal. Like the book above, passing mention: "P2A enzymes have the particularity that their enzymatic activity is positively regulated by its methylation which is itself regulated via the opposing activities of a PP2A-specific methyltransferase and a PP2A-specific methylesterase (PME). Accordingly, treatment of mice with the PME inhibitor eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide (EHT) increases PP2A methylation as well as decreased α-syn-pS129 levels in brain and a concurrent reduction in synuclein pathology". I'll add this to the article. Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

quick note for you. the fastest way to tell if something is a review, is go to the Pubmed abstract, and click on "publication types" near the bottom. if it is a review, it will say "review" there, like PMID 25426138 does. A primary source will say something there like "Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't" like PMID 25034344 does - it will not say "review" there. MEDLINE also tags articles as "reviews" if they are reviews. this is why we love PMIDs to be included in citations - very quick way to determine the type of source (and immediately confirms that the journal is good enough to be pubmed-indexed) Jytdog (talk) 15:30, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

comment by another editor

Hi Sigrd. I see you reverted the EHT page. The reason why user Jytdog replaced the EHT page with a redirect was because the page as it was was in pretty severe violation of two Wikipedia rules: it was all based on primary sources (Wikipedia strongly favors reviews and evidence summaries on the structure of evidence-based medicine, as befits an encyclopedia -- it reduces the chances of someone with an unrepresentative POV cherry-picking sources), and because the article was written by an interested party, evidently to promote the release of Signum's exclusive licensee Nerium's EHT product (as did the coincidence between the publication of the article and the release of the product). For what it's worth, I would prefer to have an actual EHT article rather than a redirect, and the originally-written article seems pretty fair to me, but these are pretty significant "issues" with the article. Please see (and join!) the discussion page for this article.

It would help if you could join the Talk page, and especially if you could identify a review article, preferably written independently of Signum, that gives significant discussion of EHT. Can you identify one?

Thank you, by the way, for disclosing your affiliation. Unethical companies often try to cloak their affiliation when writing or editing Wikipedia pages important to their company.

Thanks,

Mikalra (talk) 15:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Mikalra, I moved your comment here from the User page. As you can see from the discussion above, I'm getting Sigrd grounded on how WP works and have asked him the same question as you. My intention was that once we are grounded here, to move to the article Talk pages and take it from there. This is too interpersonal for article Talk at this point - we are dealing with issues best discussed at the User talk page level. Almost there though! Jytdog (talk) 16:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

total aside

btw (and if you can't answer due to confidentiality i understand) - do you guys know the actual target of EHT so you can establish SAR and do med chem to find something that works more at the nanomole level? seems like you did cell-based screening and target identification is always a challenge after that....and natural compounds are so darn promiscuous. but i'm curious - you guys are working on interesting stuff. Jytdog (talk) 17:01, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. Actually, EHT was discovered using a cell-free biochemical HTS screen using natural extracts against PP2a enzyme. So, we know PP2a is the target of EHT. Cell-based assays were performed later to characterize the activity in therapeutic relevant pathways that involved PP2a. We fractionate the original coffee extract until we found the single molecule active=EHT. We have also performed SAR studies using modified synthetic analogs, but the results are not published.Sigrd (talk)

Thanks, that is so interesting! so the idea that EHT somehow protects the methylated site directly or binds somewhere further away that prevents the demethylase from binding (sorry, i didn't actually read the many primary sources you provided) interesting! and a cool mechanism. exciting! Jytdog (talk) 02:37, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Sigrd, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Sigrd! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! 78.26 (I'm a Teahouse host) Visit the Teahouse This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 17:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

wrapping up

Sigrd thanks again for talking through all this stuff. And for really talking... (i am being thankful because people can be really combative instead of talking, and i appreciate that you are talking).

I think you are starting to get the way that Wikipedia works. Just want to wrap up.

• first, i hope you consider contributing on articles where you don't have a conflict of interest. We always need more expert editors in biology who understand Wikipedia and its mission. You could consider joining Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology, WP:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, and/or Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry if those projects interest you.
• second, per WP:COI, please do not directly edit articles where you have COI as you did here (and please interpret that broadly -- Signum, articles on the compounds, or the target). If you continue to do so, you will likely end up topic-banned or site-banned. Really - you compromise the integrity of WP when you do that. Instead, use the "edit request" function as described in the WP:COI guideline (which I hope you have read by now). I have added a box, to the bottom of the yellow/brown box at each of the relevant Talk pages, that says "Individuals acting on behalf of this person or organization are strongly advised not to edit the article. Click here to request corrections or suggest content". If you do click where it says "click here" it will create an edit request where you can propose content and sourcing for other editors to review and implement, if they find it to be OK. That is how we manage COI in WP. Does that make sense, and can we count on you to abide by the COI guideline? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

thanks for the update and invitation to continue editing other articles. Unfortunately, I feel the WP community would not appreciate my particular expertise and contributions after my COI disclosure. I can predict even small contributions of general concepts articles like neuron, cell or brain would be challenged by other editors arguing any private agenda. Like you mentioned before - Please don't waste my time - . Sometimes honesty is a burden...I will continue in the future to request corrections and suggest content about these articles for the enrichment of WP content with strict secondary source-based information.Sigrd (talk) 02:18, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

that's not true at all! plenty of editors have COI declarations and edit freely in areas outside their area of direct COI. lots do. but you will do as you will! good luck to you and to Signum. exciting work. Jytdog (talk) 06:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)