Talk:Pfiesteria piscicida

Untitled
the first link doesn't seem to be working. Any ideas on how to fix it? Matthias5 18:59, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nearly every result from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=pfiesteria+piscicida&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search disagrees with the author's claim that p.piscicida is non-toxic.--Kmclaughlin 10:35, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Other Studies
Litaker et. al. published what may be the definitive peer-reviewed analysis of P. piscicida's life cycle in the highly regarded Journal of Phycology in 2002. Using state-of-the-art DNA sequence tagging they insured that they had a clean clonal colony of the beast and followed its life cycle. No amoeba stage ever existed.

The confusion seems to lie in the contamination of the tanks used inthe original Burkholder et. al. studies. Amoeba were there, but it was surely not a monoculture to begin with. The fish themselves bring untold other biota into the tanks.

Other research (I don't have the name but am looking) has shown that P. Piscicida doesn't have the sequence to be capable of making a classic phytoplankton neurotoxin. Additionally, NOAA's lab in Charleston has been trying to grow (and observe) monocultures for about 4 years and has yet to show the complex life cycle orignially thought to define the phenomenon. Nor has it shown a classic neurotoxin.

New Research
I updated this today to reflect the most recent research. A NOAA scientist has isolated the fish killing toxin produced by P. Piscidida. The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology this week. Hopefully, this will allow this article to stay as it is, reflecting our best understanding of the dinoflagellate. The Litaker et al article was 5 years ago and plenty more research has been done on both species of Pfiesteria since then.

Disputed
I removed the Disputed tag. Because while the information on Pfiesteria piscicida might itself be disputed, the article does not seem to be. The article here presents sides of the dispute and allows the reader to decide which are factual. Since the article makes no statements about which side is right, but rather it explains that there is a dispute, the factual accuracy of the article is, in my opinion, not questionable. Fanra 15:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Copied material in article not properly sourced.
The article seems well-written and mostly well-sourced. However, a tag in the article implies material in article is copied from ("incorporates text of") a published source, the CRS report. Whether that report is public domain or not, such material needs to be referenced properly: copied text needs quotation marks and in-line citations. Why not identify the copied text properly, and then the tag is not necessary. Otherwise, the good work of wikipedia editors is insulted, as it is not separated from other text that is merely copied without proper sourcing. Sincerely, doncram (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You're wrong. Public domain means you can do what you want with it. Plagiarism is an issue of giving credit, not of how you use the words, so as long as there's a footnote there's no plagiarism. Yes, it does need to be referenced, but no, it does not need to appear in quotes. --Trovatore (talk) 20:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I disagree. There's a difference between the issue of copyright violation (which copying PD text is not), and proper referencing/avoiding plagiarism.  Copied text is not referenced properly if it is not quoted to reflect the source for both the content and for the wording.  If you reword the material, you can drop the quoting, but keep the source to reflect the source of the content.  This is being discussed in Talk at WP:REF by the way. doncram (talk) 01:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It appears the text in question is the section on human health and it has an inline citation as well (currently #11) - see diff. - tameeria (talk) 14:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Tameeria that is helpful. If the copied text is limited, as that indicates, then it could just be reworded, or put in quotes, and the USGovernment tag could be removed, eliminating the problem for this article.doncram (talk) 17:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Why is USGovernment such a bad solution for this case? I mean, if someone wants to rewrite that section, I wouldn't object (especially if there is some other reason to do so, such as it being out of date or in need of a worldwide perspective), but I'm not sure I see why that would be needed. Kingdon (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The WP:REF discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 20. It is a long thread and there is apparently little consensus (at least based on what is there). Kingdon (talk) 11:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That section should probably be moved to the Pfiesteria genus article since it applies to both species and Pfiesteria-related organisms. tameeria (talk) 19:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think someone might have to dig up proceedings from the multi-state workshop at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, at the end of September 1997 (if any were published), or other sources to say on that one way or the other. Other sections of the source contain statements such as "Dinofiagellate[sic] species similar to, and easily confused with, Pfiesteria . . ." and so it is hard for me to tell one way or the other whether that section concerns (mainly) P. piscicida, Pfiesteria more broadly, dinoflagellates more broadly, or organisms which haven't been fully identified. Kingdon (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Al Franken
This animal was referenced in Al Franken's book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.86.191 (talk) 08:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Rarity
Perhaps a mention of how common this is in people would be nice... Unless it's not rare, in which case leave it out. Please. 69.132.69.87 (talk) 17:22, 15 August 2011 (UTC)