Talk:Cleft palate incidence by population

Rename
Consider moving this article to Clefting prevalence in different cultures, as per Naming conventions (capitalization). Also I wonder if the name can be shortened somehow, as per Naming conventions (common names). Perhaps just Clefting prevalence would be enough?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops I already did without looking at the talk page first. Shouldn't be a problem though. AdamBiswanger1 03:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

After rereading this article, I thinkt that the best name would be Clefting prevalence in United States, as the article is addressing only the United States. Otherwise it would have to be tagged with Globalize/USA. Also, this article needs a proper lead. And don't be shy with hyperlinks.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 22:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Certain quotes
I am moving the removed content here, I think it may be moved into more relevant sections.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 03:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Of the many races seen throughout the U.S., 36,419,434 classified themselves as African American or Black, 35,305,818 were of Hispanic or Latino origin, and 11,898,828 of Asian descent. There is a total U.S. population of 281,421,906 people.
 * There is an estimated 45% of the population who are of non-Caucasian descent (U.S. Census, 2000). The U.S. is becoming more of a “melting pot”, as it was once coined (Strauss, 1990). People from vast countries are immigrating and bringing their ancestry with them.
 * I'm just not sure how that information is relevant. It is a summary of the U.S. population, when this is an essay on clefting prevalence throughout the world.  Perhaps the info can be mentioned, but I don't see any need to go into that much detail.  AdamBiswanger1 15:36, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I see your point, but let's see what the article's author has to say.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As the author, I want to keep that information unless it is a grounds for deletion (which I cannot imagine). Let me know. I want the public to know the exact U.S. population, divided by races, in order to see that the U.S. is almost half non-Caucasian.  These races have ancestors from different countries, therefore, explaining why prevalence rates are reported in the world.  Also, if you read there is a section below about the U.S. (i.e. Hawaii). The general public may not know this information.  The residents of the U.S. are now so diverse that we must report statistics on them and their people in the native countries.  It is important information that I would like to keep. --Chm33 21:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * What can solve this problem I feel is a proper lead: we should not assault the leader with statistics from the very first paragraph.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 22:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks Piotrus. I will work on this. --Chm33 02:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * 1. European Americans are about 70-75% of the U.S. population.

2. Many Hispanics are also Caucasian, African, Native American, or Asian - therefore that figure is not exclusive of all those other groups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.191.188.172 (talk) 21:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Massive cleanup required
I'm not at all convinced that this article should just be dropped. A large point of Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia, is to present a clear cohesive view of a topic - not a jumble.

Problems with this article: In case anyone thinks this is worth saving, here's a summary of the data from the page in standardised form: Per 10,000 births worldwide	10-27 Sudan	       9 Latino	       9 Malawi	       7 Native American	4 US Korean	20 US Pakistani	19 Hawian Japanese	16 Jordan	       14 Hawian Philipino14 Bolivia	       12 Hawian Polynesia11 African-American10 Hawaian European10 Translating "wrong way round" to "per 10,000" 1/500 = 	20 1/750 = 	13.33 1/1000 = 	10 1/10000 = 	1 1/2500 = 	4
 * Problematic jumble of race/country/culture - but thats the least of it* No easy verification - all the references are to scientific papers which few have access to
 * Mixed measurements: Some per 1,000 births; some per 10,000 births and some given 'around the other way" as 1 per 750. (Just because researchers report using different measures doesn't mean we can't fix that here)

"culture" vs race, ethnicity
It seems like this article is getting confused between the obviously related but technically distinct categories of culture, ethnicity and race. Since we're talking about a biological problem, it would make more sense to have this article be named "prevalence in different ethnicities" or something similar. Even with ethnicity it's not clear cut that we're talking about biology/ancestry, but it's certainly clearer than "culture".

Unless it's proposing that something like different diet is responsible, in which case the article should make this clearer. --81.129.138.146 (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

New title
I changed the title of the article from "Clefting prevalence in different cultures" to "Cleft palate incidence by population".

First, there was the use of the term "culture". As already noted in the section above, culture does not affect the incidence of cleft palate (except for any environmental factors from customs and such). The factors that are probably the most important are genetics and environment. For example, say there are two women who are identical twins that were separated at birth, and both get pregnant at about the same age. They were raised in the same large metropolitan area with many diverse cultures, like London or New York City. One is raised by a Latino, Catholic family in a community of Latino Catholics, and one is raised by an Asian, Buddhist family in a community of Asian Buddhists. The fact that the twin mothers have different cultures will probably not matter much compared to other risk factors. The most important factors are likely to be the genes of the parents, the mother's age at the time of the pregnancy and the environment that the mother had her pregnancy in, and perhaps to some extent the environment that she was raised in, if it is different than her current environment. The age of the mother is important because the risk of birth defects rises rapidly with age once a women reaches her mid-thirties. Besides genes and age, factors such as taking certain medications, smoking and diabetes are also important. Culture is probably at least a very small factor because it affects the environment that the baby is gestated in to some extent. For example, mothers from different cultures often eat and drink different foods. However, unless the foods contain pollutants or certain natural compounds that significantly affect the mother's body, such as phytoestrogens, which are natural compounds in plants that mimic estrogen. Too much caffeine, which is also naturally found in some foods, such as coffee or tea, may also be bad for pregnant mothers.

I did not use the term "ethnicities" instead of "cultures" because while it is a big factor in the risk of birth defects, it does not cover everything, particularly the environment. The term "populations", on the other hand, is used by scientists to describe not just all of the people in a single area, but populations within populations. For example, the incidence of cleft palate can be given for a population that consists of people of European descent in Southern California.

I changed the term "prevalence" to "incidence" because it is the correct term to use in this case, see incidence (epidemiology) and prevalence. Unfortunately, even supposed scientists sometimes get this wrong, which can be seen when searching for statistics on this topic. Prevalence gives the number of cases of a condition at a certain time, while incidence gives the number of new cases over a certain period of time, with both divided by the total population. The following is taken from the "prevalence" article. "...Prevalence answers, "How many people have this disease right now?" and incidence answers, "How many people per year newly acquire this disease?" - the period of time for incidence can be a day, week or month, not just a year. The number of people who are born with cleft palate over the course of a year is much more useful information than the total number of people who currently have cleft palate, which is what prevalence gets you. Prevalence is an important piece of information for many diseases, but it does not make sense to use it in this case. I can only come up with two cases in which the use of prevalence would make sense for cleft palate. The first is if you got the prevalence of the condition, and then discarded everyone over the age of 1 year. It would be helpful to choose the same time every year to sample the prevalence. However, I do not know if this kind of thing is done. The second is if one were to use the "period prevalence" of the condition over the course of the year but counting only those people who were born in that year. While period prevalence is sometimes used, I have no idea if the second part is ever done. On the other hand, incidence of cleft palate in the previous year will give you the number of people born with that condition over the course of that year divided by the total number of people born that year. Incidence is typically expressed in the number of occurrences per 100, 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 births, depending on how common the condition is. "People" takes the place of "births" when not dealing with a birth defect. The number of babies born with a birthmark would probably be given per 100 births, while the number of babies born with cleft palate would probably be given per 10,000 births. Say that there were 1,245,614 total births and 847 cases of cleft palate. The incidence of cleft palate would be 847/1,245,614 = "0.00068 per birth" or "6.8 per 10,000 births".

Finally, I used the term "cleft palate" instead of "clefting" because it gives people a better idea about what the article is about. People are more likely to know that an article is about the condition of cleft palate, if "cleft palate" is used instead of "clefting".

If you want to contact me for some reason, please use my user talk page. Thanks, Kjkolb (talk) 03:46, 15 February 2016 (UTC)