Talk:Lamarckism/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Ceranthor (talk · contribs) 20:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Happy to review this.  ceran  thor 20:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking it on. I'll respond to comments promptly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Prose

 * 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.

Earwig's tool

 * 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.  ceran  thor 00:00, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I've made some small tweaks to the introductions.

Spotchecks

 * "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.


 * Not sure you saw that there were a few comments here.  ceran  thor 14:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I hadn't, many thanks.

Images

 * Will come back to this after above comments are addressed.
 * File:Jean-baptiste lamarck2.jpg is fine
 * File:Darwin%27s_Pangenesis.svg is fine
 * File:Lamarck's Two-Factor Theory.svg is fine
 * File:Weismann%27s_Germ_Plasm.svg is fine
 * File:Giraffe23.jpg seems fine, though I wonder if there are images that better display the giraffe neck?
 * Perhaps this featured image does a better job - it's in nature, and it shows the animal feeding on the tops of acacia trees ;-}


 * File:PSM_V49_D527_Edward_Drinker_Cope.jpg is fine
 * File:Charles-Édouard_Brown-Séquard.jpg is fine
 * File:Paul_Kammerer.jpg is fine
 * File:Trofim_Lysenko_portrait.jpg is fine
 * File:DNA_methylation.jpg seems to be missing a source link?
 * 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.


 * File:Neo-Lamarckian_somatic_hypermutation_and_reverse_transcription_to_germline.svg is fine
 * File:Neo-Lamarckian_inheritance_of_hologenome.svg is fine
 * File:Lamarck_Compared_to_Darwin,_Baldwin,_Waddington.svg is fine
 * Thanks.

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

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

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