Talk:Phenols and polyphenols derivative

Untitled
There are two issues here that have been re-ambiguated by the introduction of this new article, with this title.


 * Phenol size / complexity.
 * Phenol origin.

The issue of flavanoid classification as being "outside" of polyphenols is not based on the **origin** of the phenol, whether in nature, synthesis, or semisynthesis. Flavanoids can originate in any of these ways. Many, many are made by organic synthesis, and so are not "natural". If you want an article about low to mid-molecular weight phenolics, it cannot be designated by the title "natural phenols".

As well, there is no accepted scientific phrase "natural phenol". There is an understood chemical category of "natural products", and an understood category of "phenols", and an associated adjectival form, "phenolic". "Natural product" is a wiki term already use, because it is common in organic chemistry: The term draws thousands of title hits in Pubchem. A search for "natural phenol" in titles in Pubmed, on the other hand, give three hits (and not even all three of these support its use as it appears in this article title). In Scifinder and Web-of-Science (more comprehensive in chemical searching than Pubmed), this disparity in use of these two terms would widen even further. Hence, in this Professor's opinion, the use of "natural phenol" is coining a new term in the title of an encyclopedia article, rather than accommodating accepted usage, and should be reversed.

There appear to be two options to deconvolute the issues:

(i) Change the title of this page to "Phenolic natural products", and focus on naturally derived phenolics, regardless of size. This would then reference the polyphenols page and the lignin and lignan pages, because, despite being high molecular weight (polyphenols) or truly polymeric (lignin), these are indeed "Phenolic natural products";

OR

(ii) "Change the name to "Phenols, 'Small Molecule and Oligophenols'". "Small molecule" is a wiki-term arose to differentiate non-polymerics (non-repeating) chemical compounds of lower molecular weight that are both natural and synthetic  generally that have (or are prepared with hopes of having) bioactivity/pharmacologic activity.  Here the differentiation is not on the origin of the molecule, but on its relative size and complexity (which appears to be what you are aiming for).

In any case, the **deconvolution of the matter of size/complexity, and the matter of origin (in nature vs. synthesis, etc.) must take place!**

After this decision is made as to focus and title, the references to the article need to be corrected in polyphenols and other articles.

In the polyphenol article, in particular, the use of "natural phenol" is completely misleading to the extent of being incorrect. (Commercial simple, monocyclic and even bicyclic—e.g., naphthelenic—phenols in use in industry and research likely do not, judged on the basis of quantities in use, *mostly* arise from natural sources. Rather, they come from petroleum and related sources. That is, many low molecular weight phenols (and most low MW phenolic chemical matter, by quantity in use) are not considered "natural products".  (Coal- and oil-derived phenolic products are actually naturally derived, but arise from plants only after eons of geothermal processing, and so are nowhere in the chemical literatures considered under the umbrella of "natural products" as the term is used by chemists.)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meduban (talk • contribs) 16:22, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Natural phenol
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Natural phenol's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Haslam": From Edgar Charles Bate-Smith: Practical Polyphenolics, Edwin Haslam, 1998, ISBN 05-521-46513-3 From Paper chromatography: Vegetable tannins – Lessons of a phytochemical lifetime. Edwin Haslam, Phytochemistry, Volume 68, Issues 22–24, November–December 2007, pages 2713–2721,  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 06:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Please change the title of this article, to reflect standard use of chemical terms
I would ask that someone with the authority and training take the necessary steps to change the title of this article, to reflect standard use of the chemical terms "phenol" and "natural", so that to the ear of an informed chemist, the article title does not appear unsophisticated or naive (if not incorrect).

This is requested, based on the following points.

(1) Phenol, is in its noun form (as opposed to the adjectival "phenolic"), refers to a single discrete substance and not to a class of substances. Phenol has the linear formula C6H5OH (MW 94.11), and can be described by the nonstandard description, "hydroxybenzene". Its established registry numbers are: CAS Number 108-95-2 Beilstein Registry Number 969616 Council of Europe no. 11811 EC Number 203-632-7 MDL number MFCD00002143 Hence, there would be immediate misunderstanding of concept, for instance, on the part of a non-specialist seeing the phenolic natural product, quercetin, the foremost image of the article, alongside the noun form of "phenol" in the title. For meaning of title inferred by a chemist or other chemical specialist, see close of this section.

(2) The word "natural" that precedes and modifies the noun of the title has a standard meaning when used in chemistry, most closely approximated by the following documented component definition of the word: "Formed by nature; not subject to human intervention, not artificial." (Oxford English Dictionary, definition "natural," part 7).

(3) While it may be possible that an accepted special usage of the phrase "natural phenol" has arisen that supercedes its component meanings, to my knowledge, this is not the case—"natural phenol" is not a standard usage to mean (as the article covers) natural products that contain a phenolic substructure. For my basis for making this statement, see my talk page.

(4) Note that I do not imply that this expression cannot be found used, in this manner, anywhere in the scientific literature. I do imply that it is not the standard way of referring to such substances as are covered in the article—that the leading laboratories and authors writing about such substances and the bulk of well-trained chemists in relevant chemical areas do not refer to the objects of the article as "natural phenols".

Hence, to a chemist/chemical specialist, the title of this article would prima facie be understood to mean: "The single discrete substance, phenol, C6H5OH, CAS Number 108-95-2, that is formed, not by human activity, but by nature (i.e., generally, biosynthesized by a living organism, but also, possibly, originating in an abiologic process in nature).

Since a cursory reading of the article makes clear that this is not what the original contributors intend for the content, rather than change article to match title (not useful), I would propose changing the title of the article to better reflect the current content and apparent intent of the original article contributors.

Specifically, among the options that I am aware of, I would propose: "phenolic natural products", or     "phenolic small molecules". Of these, the former of these is the more standard; moreover, it is already a term cross-referenced to the existing "natural phenol" article.

I will look twice to see if this recommendation is followed over the next month, and at those times, respond to any comments or questions.

[ un professeur ] Leprof 7272 (talk) 03:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Citations needed for synonyms
In reading and writing the preceding talk section, I reviewed the citations immediately following the opening phrase of the article—a list of title and title synonyms, including natural phenols, bioavailable phenols, plant phenolics, low molecular weight phenols, and phenoloids.

There are three citations to this list. All three use the final synonym (the rarest of the terms).

Hence, citations are needed for the preceding four synonyms in the list, so that other editors can evaluate the strength of their listing and use. Cheers.

[ un professeur ] Leprof 7272 (talk) 03:47, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Renaming of article
This article covers phenolics, di-phenols and flavonoids, all of which are covered in their own respective articles (phenolics in Phenols, and the latter two in Polyphenols. Leprof 7272 details the case for the renaming of this article very well in their above post. The article still has valuable information, and this information should be moved into existing articles, excepting information already published in said articles. Indeed, Phenols has a 'Natural Occurence' sub-section. I think much of the information that would fall under Polyphenols is already there, or is available in sub-articles. The work required to move/merge the information in this article is out with the limits of my current free time. However, to at least get the ball rolling (hopefully leading to improvements of articles related to polyphenols and the Polyphenols article itself) I am proposing a rename to Phenol Derivatives and Polyphenols. The obvious overlap between this article and the respective articles this rename represents should aid the migration of information included in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markwdck (talk • contribs) 19:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree with this. I did the merge.  Doing the same for the Phenols and polyphenols derivative page

Original research
In general this article violates WP:OR - there are WAY too many unsourced statements, and way too much use of primary sources. Working on fixing this but it will take a lot. We need to source text from secondary and tertiary sources, NOT primary sources, as per WP:PSTS. Jytdog (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2013 (UTC)