Talk:V. S. Ramachandran/Archive 4

References to lists in Prospect, Newsweek, and Time
The reference (list) in Prospect provides no information on Ramachandran whatsoever. The reference list in Newsweek is vague "The San Diego-based neuroscientist is using state-of-the-art tech not just to watch the brain but to test big ideas: why we laugh, cry and recognize individual faces." This sentence does not describe any research carried out by Ramachandran --he is known for low tech approaches to studying the brain. The Time reference list does provide a discernible claim about Ramachandran's research although his theory about phantom limb pain has been abandoned by current neuroscience. The Time 100 list was actually compiled by conducting an on-line survey. It is not based on peer evaluation. (preceding unsigned comment made by based on page history.)
 * Wikipedia policy is to report what reliable secondary sources say about article topics, not to second-guess just how flattering or informative any particular honor might be to the article topic. To say Ramachandran's theory on phantom limb pain has been "abandoned" by current neuroscience is wrong. Current research suggests more complications. Ramachandran's mirror therapy for phantom limb pain has been widely adopted. Although it is not successful for all cases, it has been of great value to many patients reported on in many different studies. HouseOfChange (talk) 11:31, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I did some research into the Time 100 list for 2011. It was, according to Time, based on an online poll using the prompt, "Cast your votes for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes that you think are the most influential people in the world." The initial list of 203 names was created by Time editors, who selected a final list of 100 names based on the votes, both positive and negative, from readers. The list of 203 included very few scholars, and the final list of 100 had an even lower proportion. Ramachandran's selection seems a significant indicator of unusual popular interest in his work.HouseOfChange (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Similarly, the "Prospect" list aka as "The FOREIGN POLICY/Prospect 2008 World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals" list that included Ramachandran, says of him only "Ramachandran directs the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Richard Dawkins calls him the “Marco Polo of neuroscience” for his work on behavioral neurology. His best-known book is Phantoms in the Brain." So both the Time and Prospect list sought public input because the "honor" involved is to be considered a public intellectual or a person who influences the public. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:37, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * About the "Newsweek list" aka Century Club from 1997: this was compiled by Newsweek staff, not a public vote, with the theme "As we peer ahead to the dawn of another century, it is not too soon to identify some of the faces we'll be watching in the year 2000 and beyond. In the following pages, NEWSWEEK presents a list of 100 people for the new century...Our object has been to take a snapshot of the future, framing some of the personalities whose creativity or talent or brains or leadership will make a difference in the years ahead." This seems relevant to the article as an indication of non-specialist admiration of R and his work, although like the Prospect list it had been removed from the bio. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 6 September 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. It's his common name and per usual naming practices in southern India, he is referred to by his given name of Ramachandran (Vilayanur is a name derived from his family's place of origin). There was no explicit opposition. (non-admin closure) Celia Homeford (talk) 10:49, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran → V. S. Ramachandran – WP:COMMONNAME and WP:SELFIDENTITY, because his books list "V.S." in the author space. Also, "VS Ramachandran" returns 200k+ google results, vs. 44k for "Vilayanur S. Ramachandran" and 40k for "Vilayanur Ramachandran". Arbor to SJ (talk) 03:51, 6 September 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me &#124; my contributions 22:31, 17 September 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me &#124; my contributions 21:12, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia seems to prefer full names when naming pages about people. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Haha, really? Tell that to J. R. R. Tolkien or E. J. Dionne. In all seriousness, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:INITS take precedence "prefer[ring] full names."


 * In Ramachandran's case, reliable sources use "V.S." in most instances, to reflect his author name printed on his books. Examples: The New York Review of Books, NPR , and several sources cited within this wikipedia article such as The Guardian and Time . Arbor to SJ (talk) 05:58, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:INITS and typical Tamil name practices. We are nowhere near the threshold of If reliable sources write out several or all of a subject's given names nearly as often as they use initials here: I get 36.5k Google Books hits for "V. S. Ramachandran" against just 3.3k for "Vilayanur S. Ramachandran" and 470 for the full expansion of the origin-place and patronymic. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

NeurEl bias
Editor NeurEl's interest seems only be to portray VS Ramachandran in a negative light that is inconsistent with his actual reputation in contemporary neuroscience (see his editing history). He has repeatedly deleted references to Ramachandran being listed on Time Magazine's 100 most influential people's list, he has deleted the reference about him being listed on among the 100 most public intellectuals in the world etc. There is a potential conflict of interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sciencelover2016 (talk • contribs) 05:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Without wading through the entire edit history, the last edit was you reverting text that was referenced. It may not have been flattering to Ramachandran but it was referenced and you should be discussing any contested edits here and not just reverting them. Likewise to the other editor involved. As for your rambling attacking commentary in the edit summaries I suggest you cut that out right now (see WP:Civil). Why not add the text and references from the Time article back into the article for the rest of us to review and we can go from there. Regards. Hughesdarren (talk) 05:37, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Rapid reverts are making it impossible to make improvements in this article
There may be better options for combining the views of various editors. but the lightening like reversions indicate that some of the editors are not interested in improving this entry. Perhaps it is time to lock this entry down for a few months.23:09, 27 September 2018 (UTC)Neurorel (talk)


 * Probably not a bad idea, I've been reverting the most recent edits but editors with a (very) short editing history. None of them seem to want to engage in any meaningful way on the talk page. Unfortunately I have no actual expertise in the area. Perhaps you can contact an admin? Hughesdarren (talk) 23:35, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I have reverted to the last stable version (I think?). From the edit history, a week ago one SPA/sock addied a quote praising the subject to the lede, and edit warred to remove additions of referenced criticism to the same section, claiming that "Attempting to include one persons opinion about a specific study as general reception about Ramachandran is inaccurate". With that rationale, the original glowing praise by one person also shouldn't be there. I have no strong opinion one way or the other, except that I obviously take a dim view of what looks like attempts to promote the individual, which includes removal of sourced criticism. And the sockpuppet edits should be reverted on sight. --bonadea contributions talk 06:25, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Another revert from a single contribution editor
Alas, it is very difficult to edit/improve this entry. Single contribution editors appear to be determined....to prevent any sort of contructive edits.Neurorel (talk) 03:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Article problems
Comparing the lead of this article to related GAs George Armitage Miller and Steven Pinker, I see no prototype for asserting in the lead that "Ramachandran has encountered skepticism about some of his theories." Surely the same could be said concerning Pinker, Miller, and nearly every other scholar or popularizer. Clear discussion of each objection belongs in the article body. As it stands, the lead creates the unfair impression that Ramachandran's theories are noted for creating skepticism.

The article also omits Ramachandran's early work on visual perception. A 2009 New Yorker profile contains much useful information but is used only to cite his Tamil heritage. I intend to work on this article and try to improve it. HouseOfChange (talk) 10:17, 1 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The article lead should not suggest that Ramachandran is a technophobe unable to use sophisticated equipment. See for example, from the New Yorker article, "In 1994, Ramachandran published a paper in Nature that is now considered a landmark in the field of neuroplasticity. He described experiments that he had conducted with U.C.S.D.’s multimillion-dollar magnetoencephalography machine, which records the changing magnetic fields caused by brain activity. (Though he calls himself a “technophobe,” Ramachandran occasionally uses high-tech gadgetry, chiefly as a means to support his hunches.)" Published accounts say he has a "Victorian" fondness for low-tech methods. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Inspired by GA Steven Pinker I reorganized sections to separate biography (rather than early life and education) from research, and added a section on popularizing science, which has been a big part of Ramachandran's notability. The lead should summarize the most important information from the rest of the bio; accordingly I moved some items from the lead down into the bio where they can get more informative discussion. HouseOfChange (talk) 08:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Director of UCSD's Center for Brain and Cognition
Multiple RS describe Ramachandran with this title, including the New Yorker profile from 2009, viz "Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, an Indian-born behavioral neurologist who is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at U.C.S.D." The fact that UCSD lists some other organizations as "research centers" on one of its webpages has nothing to do with whether or not the Center for Brain and Cognition is an official part of UCSD. It may very well relate to specific organizational administrative details within UCSD, which have nothing to do with this biography. Information about the research work and organization of the CBC is on UCSD official servers; it is not "Ramachandran's personal website" as asserts in his edit summary. No RS states what the edit summary claims, "There is no funded research associated with it and no other faculty participate." On the contrary, the CBC official UCSD website mentions that it has 3 divisions, Ramachandran is head of one of them, etc. etc. etc. There is no justification for replacing the RS-supported information about Ramachandran's titles and employment with a garbled mess mentioning some random papers written by other CBC members. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:54, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The CBC website is a personal website maintained by Ramachandran. It is filled with inaccurate claims and it is not an official UCSD website. The Vice Chancellor of Graduate Research maintains the official list of all UCSD research centers (see list below). The CBC is not included. Research centers in the UC system are comprised of multiple faculty who pool their research grants. Ranachandran has no research money and there are no other facutly who participate in the CBC. There are no postdocs who work in the CBC. Ramachandran does occasionally publish a paper under the heading of the CBC. The Psychology department acknowledges the CBC as a research center that is affiliated with the department but they go no further.


 * Unfortunately, a good deal of the information cited as references in this entry is inaccurate or misleading.


 * You state that "the CBC official UCSD website" mentions that it has 3 divisions". Given the fact that John Smythies, Director of the Integrative Neuroscience Program, is deceased it is not likely that this division exists. (In fact, John Smythies never had any official connection to UCSD.)


 * Because there is such a cornucopia of misinformation on the internet that can be harvested by unsuspecting wikipedia editors, working on this article is frustrating for everyone involved.Neurorel (talk) 18:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * John Raymond Smythies died in January 2019. It is not unusual for an academic website to be out of date. His obituary in BMJ, linked from his en-wiki bio, says that he worked at CBC until his death. This article says "Well into his 80's. he decided to join the world-famous neuroscience team lead by Dr. Ramachandran, in California, and remained active until a few months before his demise in January this year." [A 2014 research paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4030137/] coauthored by Smithies and Ramachandran lists "Department of Psychology, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA" as the research affiliation for both. I agree that there is a cornucopia of misinformation on the internet; nevertheless Wikipedia is sourced to published sources from respectable institutions whenever possible. Your claims of personal knowledge about Ramachandran's relationship with UCSD are not RS, not unless published sources agree with you. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:16, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia says what reliable sources say. Recent and reliable sources on whether or not to describe Ramachandran as director of the Center for Brain and Cognition:
 * "Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, distinguished professor with the neurosciences program at UC San Diego and director of the Center for Brain and Cognition" Daily Cal 2018
 * " V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego" WaPo 2018
 * "V.S. Ramachandran, director of UC San Diego’s Center for Brain and Cognition" La Jolla Light 2019

It is ridiculous to censor the name of his current and prominent position from this article. If the center is part of UCSD's psychology group, then it is obviously part of UCSD. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:09, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Most Recent List of Official Research Units (ORU)
Here is the most recent list of research centers at UCSD. As far as I can see the CBC is not on the list. Neurorel (talk) 05:40, 8 July 2019 (UTC) https://blink.ucsd.edu/sponsor/ora/orus/roster.html


 * This biography does not claim, and has never claimed, that the CBC is on UCSD's official list of research centers.


 * You have multiply expressed your opinions about the CBC, so let me reply with some WP:SYNTH of my own. It is extremely common for universities and departments to humor a very distinguished faculty member by giving him a small pile of money to do whatever productive things he feels like doing for a "Center." This riles up other faculty less than putting the same amount of money into the salary of local bigshot. If productive work does not emerge from the "Center" then the money is quickly removed and the Center vanishes.
 * Very distinguished faculty members are unlikely to welcome the oversight and red tape that would accompany being part of the university's regulated "research centers." They are likely to prefer having control rather than being forced to wait in a queue for official university web team to get around to making changes they want. This situation does not make the cbc.ucsd.edu pages into Ramachandran's personal webpage. It is hosted on servers owned by UCSD and credited to the pysch-department-sponsored Center, so that substantial inaccuracies there would embarrass both UCSD and the Psych department, who would complain.


 * The 2009 New Yorker profile describes at great length one of Ramachandran's meetings at the CBC, where his collaborators included Smythies plus multiple grad students and post-docs. Until a different RS tells us more about the CBC, the article should reflect what reliable sources say, despite your many claims of personal knowledge about the center, which increasingly raise a likelihood that you have some conflict of interest that makes you a less-than-neutral contributor to this article. HouseOfChange (talk) 10:21, 9 July 2019 (UTC)+


 * Here is Colapinto's description of Ramachandran's lab (CBC): On the last day of my visit with Ramachandran, I attended the lab discussion that he holds, each Monday, with his postdoctoral and graduate students at the Center for Brain and Cognition Laboratory, on the second floor of Mandler Hall. The lab, a room of modest size, was dominated by a long central table heaped with the strange tools of Ramachandran’s trade: Neurorel (talk) 19:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)


 * In other words, the RS stated that the CBC existed at UCSD, that it involved grad students, postdocs, and Smythies (contradicting your assertions that CBC had no grad students, no postdocs and no connection with Smythies.) I see from the Talk archive that people explained to you before that a scientist's "lab" often refers to his group of collaborators, especially people supported by his grants, or to the room where they regularly meet, and does not imply bubbling vats of acid or people in long white coats. I will add some info from this RS to the article, replacing material you disputed and removed because its only source was the CBC website. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:35, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Royal Institution fellowship
Wikipedia articles are based on what reliable secondary sources say ab[out their topics. For example, the New Yorker profile says "Ramachandran, who is fifty-seven, has held prestigious fellowships at All Souls College, in Oxford, and at the Royal Institution, in London." The Guardian says, and presumably also fact-checked, "The former Cambridge PhD student has also been feted in Britain, giving the Reith lectures in 2003, gaining fellowships of All Souls College and the Royal Institution, as well as a two-part Channel 4 series."

The assertion by that he is free to erase this particular honor from the biography because he could not find mention of it at the Royal Institutions own website is not supported by Wikipedia policy. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:25, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Status of the Center for Brain and Cognition
Here are some of the facts that point toward the status of the CBC: 1) it is not recognized as a research center by the Vice Chancellor of Graduate Research (see list of ORUs above), 2) it is not recognized as a research center by the Dean of Social Sciences (see list of research centers on Division of Social Sciences, 3) the identification at the bottom of CBC web pages is "ramalab@ucsd.edu", 4) the CBC accepts private donations that can be directed to V.S. Ramachandran (see Funding tab on the CBC web site).

Funding for officially recognized research centers is directed to the Office of Graduate Research. Only private research centers receive donations outside of official administrative oversight. (above comment from


 * The website of CBC is hosted on UCSD servers, and a search from main UCSD website will find all its pages. The CBC exists, it is part of UCSD, and Ramachandran is its director. Reliable sources say this. Negative gossip like what you posted above should not appear in any BLP, or on its talk pages, or in the edit summaries. Please stop violating Wikipedia policies for BLP. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:38, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Notice that on the bottom of the web page you site the information at the bottom identifies it as an official university web page. The same is true for the web pages for the Department of Psychology. Faculty members often create personal websites for their labs. These are not reviewed or approved by UC or UCSD. The "ramalab" at the bottom of the CBC web pages makes it evident that you are looking at the pages of a personal website. Not so long ago the Psychology department identified the CBC as a personal website but I can no longer find that information. Most of the information on the CBC web site is very much out of date.
 * Not only is John Smyties deceased, many (if not most) of the people pictured on the web site no longer have any connection to UCSD. The Psychology Department does provide a conference room to Ramanchandran. This is what Ramachandran refers to as the CBC. If you were to scour the internet for images of the CBC you would eventually find photos of people sitting around a conference table. In the background you might see a hand stenciled sign that says "Center for Brain and Cognition". Ramachandran does help graduate students to develop interesting ideas to pursue...so he does support brain research in a very limited way. However most faculty members in the Psychology department refer to such activities as taking place in their "lab" (said Neurorel)
 * The Talk page is for proposing improvements about the article, not for warehousing gossipy OR about the bio subject and his place of employment. Your multiple claims of insider knowledge about UCSD are " original research", also utterly trivial. The bio mentions the CBC in its lead, and briefly describes its organization in the article. Steven Pinker is a professor at Harvard; does his bio include an account of Harvard's dark history? Is his talk page a showcase for dismissive snark about his workspace? Hopefully not. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Mirror therapy section needs expansion
Multiple WP:RS have described with great interest R's discovery of this idea and his subsequent research results. This article has only 43 words about R's connection to the topic, followed by 67 words criticizing mirror therapy. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:16, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Despite the initial excitement about the function of mirror neurons, the past ten years have not brought forth any significant research to support Ramachandran's many theories. Wikipedia has a very long entry about mirror neurons for those who are interested in the subject.Neurorel (talk) 01:51, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * These Wikipedia "Good Articles" related to psychology make clear that, even for topics like schizophrenia that have very long entries of their own, a researcher's biography should describe that person's notable work on the topic. This article about Ramachandran fails to describe his role in developing mirror therapy or the work he did on it. HouseOfChange (talk) 09:49, 6 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Ramachandran has done no clinical research on mirror therapy as a treatment for phantom limb pain, or recovery from stroke. (Remember, he is not licensed to treat patients.) In some cases he has conducted short evaluations of subjects, but he typically included an "M.D." on his team. The consensus among people who have conducted research and published results is that Mirror Therapy does not produce predictable outcomes. Unfortunately, like all the other approaches to treating phantom limb pain, it is not consistently effective.Neurorel (talk) 14:41, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ramachandran invented mirror therapy. Multiple RS have described his work inventing it, the results he observed, and the further uses others have made of it for phantom limb pain, arthritis, stroke recovery, and more. Our article should describe his role in more than 46 words. It does not cancel Ramachandran's innovative work that MT "is not consistently effective"--the same could be said for aspirin, for CPR, and for almost any other therapy for any condition. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:11, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Two Areas That Are Not Mentioned
Early classified visual research: Ramachandran has never discused the classified research he did for the Air Force (now declassified). It appears to be related to more accurate target identification. His correpondence about his research can be found on the internet. There are official declassified documents.

Testimony as an expert witness on false pregnancy (pseudocyesis):Ramachandran testified as an expert witness for the defense at the murder/fetal kidnapping trial of Lisa Montgomery. The trial received global publicity; however Ramachandran has never mentioned his theory that pseudocyeis can induce lethal psychotic behavior... (these comments made by Neurorel, based on page history.)


 * This article describes the career of a notable elderly scientist, with the intention of summarizing notable events in his career and notable related topics of encyclopedic interest. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a scandal sheet. Controversies that have created public comment may belong in the article, but there has been no public controversy regarding either of the matters you mention above.


 * Ramachandran's testimony at the Montgomery trial did not include any "theory that pseudocyeis can induce lethal psychotic behavior." From the header of this Talk Page, which cites Wikipedia policy for BLPs: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous." The talk page is meant to discuss improvements to the article, not to host gossip about the bio subject. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:38, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from official summary of the testimony used by the Appellate Court Neurorel (talk) 06:08, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Federal Appeals Court,8th Circuit,ruling 08-1780,Lisa M. Montgomery,Appellant.Filed: April 5, 2011 Dr. Ramachandran testified that Montgomery suffered from severe pseudocyesis delusion and that she was in a dissociative state when she murdered Stinnett and delivered the baby. According to Dr. Ramachandran, Montgomery’s childhood sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder predisposed her to pseudocyesis. He testified that Montgomery sustained her pregnancy delusion with Internet research on cesarean sections, home birth, and hormones to assist in delivery. Montgomery’s purchases of by maternity clothes, a home birthing kit, and items for a baby nursery were consistent with pseudocyesis. Dr. Ramachandran further testified that inconsistent stories were not evidence of malingering, but of Montgomery’s delusional state. He explained that malingering involves a consistent story because “it’s a planned volition and a lie” and that a delusional state involves “constantly chang[ing] the story to accommodate the delusion and then forgetting what you said earlier.” Because Montgomery’s delusional state fluctuated, her story also fluctuated. Dr. Ramachandran stated that Montgomery’s symptoms of pregnancy, her extensive internet research on home birthing, and her minimal research on cesarean-section delivery supported his opinion that she was not malingering. Dr. Ramachandran opined that Montgomery was suffering from a severe mental disease or defect when she committed the crime and that she was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of her acts.


 * The summary you quote creates a false impression. Its first sentence includes two entirely different statements by Ramachandran, and then expands on both parts of the sentence in the rest of the paragraph. You seem to be trying to support your earlier claim that the first testimony (pseudocyesis) caused the second (legal definition of insanity.) This is WP:SYNTH and would not be allowed in any article. In fact, There is no RS anywhere that supports a claim R said pseudocyesis caused the murder or that pseudocyesis was the "severe mental disease or defect" that caused the dissociational state.
 * The summary you quote also omits some important facts--the fact that M was examined not only by R but also by MD William Logan; both men "diagnosed Montgomery with depression, borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and pseudocyesis. The government's expert, Park Dietz, M.D., agreed that Montgomery suffered from depression, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder but did not diagnose her as suffering from pseudocyesis." In other words, M suffered from severe mental problems aside from pseudocyesis. No WP:RS says that the "severe mental disease or defect" described by R in his testimony was pseudocyesis.
 * Furthermore, referring to your false, therefore slanderous, claim above that Ramachandran expressed a "theory that pseudocyeis can induce lethal psychotic behavior"--neither the summary you cite nor any other source supports that claim. It is inappropriate for you to continue, on the talk page, trying to inflate this argument against Ramachandran after admitting that you know it would be inappropriate in the article. HouseOfChange (talk) 09:56, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Addition of Court Testimony is some sort of technological glitch
I have no idea how the section you deleted got saved! I agree with you that it is not suitable for the Ramachandran entry. My intention was not to save it. Something very strange happended on Wikipedia that I have never seen before...(said Neurorel)


 * Less than 24 hours ago you proposed adding a slanderous and inaccurate account of Ramachandran's testimony to the article. Today, you published multiple paragraphs of exactly that material. What kind of technical glitch would make that happen? It seems much more likely to be your response to my notifying you about the complaint at Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:54, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I encountered a large message indicating that there was some sort of editing conflict that would need to be resolved before I could take any further action. In the ten years I have been editing I have never seen this message. I simply closed the page assuming that nothing would be saved. None-the-less it saved the material. Having considered the matter, I concluded that the material was not suitable for the Ramachandran entry. However, the material is factual and verifiable. It does not constitute slander because it is true. We obviously don't agree on everything but I think you have made some positive edits.Neurorel (talk) 20:45, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * This part of your material is false and slanderous: "Federal prosecutor Roseann Ketchmark characterized Ramachandran's theory linking the murder/kidnapping to pseudocyesis as "voodoo science." First of all, what Ketchmark called "voodoo science" was simply R's statement that M suffered from pseudocyesis. Ramachandran did not advance any "theory linking the murder/kidnapping to pseudocyesis." That claim is entirely your own distortion, something you claimed earlier on this very talk page (viz. "his theory that pseudocyeis can induce lethal psychotic behavior.") R said she had pseudocyesis. R also said she experienced a dissociative state that prevented her from distinguishing right from wrong. The BBC article does not even name Ramachandran, and it certainly doesn't support your repeated and slanderous claims about his testimony. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:28, 6 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Before making any more attacks on me (a violation of Wiki rules and protocols) you should read the Federal Appeals Court discussion of the case. It clearly identifies Ramachandran as the expert witness called by the defense during the trial.Neurorel (talk) 22:33, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * When you claim your statements are true and therefore not slanderous, I have the duty to make clear which of your statements are false. I did try to do so as civilly as possible. My point about the BBC is not that I doubt R was the expert witness. My point was that R's testimony was not treated as controversial in the only RS you chose to cite.  HouseOfChange (talk) 22:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)


 * More than controversial...Well known forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz testified that that Montgomery did not have pseudocyesis and dismissed Ramachandran's theory as outrageous. I believe his exact words were the most outrageous thing I have ever heard in a courtroom.Neurorel (talk) 23:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Not only Ramachandran but MD William Logan and psychiatrist Linda McCandless testified at the trial that M had pseudocyesis. Both the opposing attorney (Ketchmark) and the opposing attorney's expert witness (Dietz) used strong prejudicial language to disagree with the diagnosis of pseudocyesis. This does not rise to the level of a scandal or controversy about Ramachandran, whose testimony generated no independent coverage, even though his name is sometimes but not always mentioned in news reports about a trial that received wide media coverage. HouseOfChange (talk) 08:36, 7 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The ruling of the Appellate Court [Source redacted] provides a detailed discussion of who testified to what at the original trial. I have added it as a reference.

I have removed the court documents as a blatant violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. Do not add court documents to any article (or talk page) about a living person. Do not use court documents or any other public records (ie: tax records, home addresses, phone books, etc...) that may contain personal and private info about any living person. Keep in mind that BLP policy applies not only to article mainspace, but also to talk pages and any other space in Wikipedia. Zaereth (talk) 18:14, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Let's not confuse editor interpretations of what Ramachandran's theory was with the court record of his testimony at trial
Wiki editors may have their own opinions but they are not what wiki editors use as references. The Appellate Court record is the legal summary of what Ramachandran testified to, not the opinion of an editor. The reference [12] is to the entire summary of testimony at the initial trial. (said Neurorel)


 * I thought I had made clear this reasoning in the previous section:


 * The Appellate Court record condenses events in the trial, because its only interest is facts that relate to the appeal.
 * The Appellate Court record, by juxtaposing in one sentence the fact that R diagnosed pseudocyesis and the different fact that he said M was in a dissociative state, invites the incorrect interpretation that R said M was incompetent because she had pseudocyesis. No reliable source makes this connection. Inviting people to draw this false conclusion violates WP:OR and WP:SYNTH.
 * The Appellate Court record omits material facts that support R's two different areas of testimony -- first, it omits mention that his diagnosis of pseudocyesis was supported by another MD and by a psychiatrist who also examined M. Second, it omits mention of the other grave mental defects that not only R but even the opposing counsel had agreed were present.
 * I see that someone who knows more about Wikipedia than I do has removed the reference again citing WP:BLPPRIMARY.
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so let's consider the interests of students and others who want to learn more about notable parts of Ramachandran's biography, rather than focusing on trivia. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:45, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * This and other comments of yours (something like "elderly scientist") are irrelevant to the article and to editing at Wikipedia generally. I don't think Neurorel's motives for adding the 8th Circuit opinion are to improve the article, but, at the same time, contrary to what said, the addition of the decision is not a "blatant violation" of WP:BLPPRIMARY, which permits the addition of a court citation as long as there is also a reliable source discussing the case, which there is.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:56, 8 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I still don't have time to sit down and properly evaluate this article. However, BLPPRIMARY clearly says "Where primary-source material has been discussed by a reliable secondary source, it may be acceptable to rely on it to augment the secondary source, subject to the restrictions of this policy..." "This policy" being "Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses." (Emphasis in original.) Court documents often contain personal info about not only the subject, but multiple people involved, including victims and witnesses, police officers, etc... If there is a reliable source to support the assertions, then there is no need for a court document, and if there is no RS, then we most certainly can't use it on OR bases alone. Either way, we shouldn't be using them.


 * In general, I'll say that this article is ultimately about this person. It's not about his theories. It's not about a trial. It's about describing the life and career of a human being, and putting everything into context and with the proper weight.


 * In the entire scope of his life and career, I can't, at this time, foresee a possible reason why an appearance as an expert witness in a trial would carry enough weight to merit a mention (given the size of the article). It's very, very common for attorneys to introduce expert witnesses, and any opposing attorney worth their salt is going to find an expert witness with an opposing view. That's just how trial work.


 * Beyond that, in general this is not a place to really debate his theories. It's really not the place to describe them in any detail, nor any controversies surrounding them. A brief summary is ok, but the details really belong in the articles about the theories themselves. The sole purpose of this article is to answer the reader's question "What is a VS Ramachandran?" Zaereth (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Your interpretation of the qualifier in BLPPRIMARY makes zero sense and is simply wrong.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As you wish, however your reply makes zero sense, thus fails to persuade, as the argument is the equivalent of "Is not. Is so." Zaereth (talk) 20:59, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

TT Yang, WP:PRIMARY, and WP:OR
In the early 1990s, MEG technology was advancing rapidly; many people were exploring it including TT Yang. More details can be found in the 1998 DO Hebb lecture paper by R together with William Hirstein.

Wikipedia says what reliable secondary sources say. Many reliable sources attribute the 1994 MEG experiments to Ramachandran for devising this ingenious test of his theory; not one gives a main role to TT Yang for knowing how to run a MEG machine. Here is how multiple sources describe 1994's experiments to map brain changes in people with amputations:
 * "In 1994, Ramachandran published a paper in Nature that is now considered a landmark in the field of neuroplasticity. He described experiments that he had conducted with U.C.S.D.’s multimillion-dollar magnetoencephalography machine,"
 * "Ramachandran proved the theory by mapping the brain activity of a group of amputees,"
 * "Ramachandran subsequently confirmed these results in a magnetoencephalography (MEG) study,"

Instead of following RS, the article currently attributes primary credit for these experiments to TT Yang, basing this claim on the personal website of TT Yang. Furthermore, primary source cited here makes no explicit claim of taking credit for devising the 1994 experiment.

The edit summary by for his edit expanding the role of TT Yang while diminishing the role of Ramachandran is "I have somewhat rewritten the second part. The famous letter Ramachandran wrote to Nature (describing T.T. Yang's initial MEG experiment) is hiding behind a pay-wall. I am searching for a more accurate reference. Colapinto's account in the New Yorker is flat out wrong. The MEG scanner used was at the Scripps Research Institute. Ramachandran did not participate in the initial experiment but he did help publicize it."

I believe that this article should remove its inflated claims for the role of Yang, claims based on OR and a single PRIMARY source, and instead describe the experiments as RS unanimously do. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:57, 8 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Please note that the original research paper (1993)see below, does not even list Ramachandran as an author. T.T. Yang carried out the MEG scan with the neuro scanning machine at Scripps under the direction of F.E. Bloom who was his principal Ph.D. advisor. (Ramachandran was on Yang's dissertation committee; however at that time UCSD had no state of the art neuroscanning technology) Ramachandran was very impressed with the results even though they were limited to two subjects.In 1994 Ramachandran published the famous letter in Nature lauding the research and pointing out its significance. However, he did not participate directly in carrying out the research. Ramachandran has been a herald of neuroscience and he has advanced many remarkable theories, but he is not a highly regarded experimentalist. Neurorel (talk) 21:59, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Noninvasive somatosensory homunculus mapping in humans by using a large-array biomagnetometer,T. T. YANG*tt, C. C. GALLEN*, B. J. SCHWARTZ*§, AND F. E. BLOOM**Department of Neuropharmacology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037; tDepartment of Molecular Pathology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093; and §Biomagnetic Technologies, Inc., San Diego, CA 92121


 * The 1993 paper (mapping the homonunculus) by Yang with his thesis advisor Bloom and others, is not the 1994 Nature paper that multiple RS praise as Ramachandran's "landmark", "ground-breaking" work. The 1994 paper mentions the 1993 in a single footnote to a single sentence, "Our approach provides highly reproducible, detailed and accurate localizations of discrete areas of the face, hand, and arm." I wouldn't consider that as extravagant praise. The 1994 paper recounts an entirely different set of MEG measurements on two amputees. But enough OR: the point is that no RS makes the claims that you do. No RS attributes the ground-breaking aspects of 1994 papers to Yang, and no RS describes the 1994 paper as a mere lauding and publicizing of work by Yang.
 * Both the 1993 paper and the 1994 paper describe the MEG machine used as the property of Biomagnetic Technologies. You assert that Colapinto is mistaken to say the machine was at UCSD. The location of the machine has zero to do with the notability of the 1994 paper, which is widely acknowledged. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:22, 8 July 2019 (UTC)


 * First, you are indeed correct about fact that the MEG machine was a protoype built by Biomagnetic Technologies. I used to have copies of these papers on my computer and I looked through them many times; unfortunately I no longer have my old desktop and the Nature articles are behind a pay-wall. To make a long saga relatively short: T.T. Yang was test driving the machine to see what it could do. (I believe that Scripps eventually purchased the machine.) When Ramachandran sent a letter (considered to be a short research paper) he focused on the significance of the cortical displacements in the Penfield map. He was very excited because he believed that the images produced by the machine supported his theories about cortical shifts after amputation. However, only a few years later, Herta Flor (Uiversity of Heidelberg) and other researchers in Europe were able to decisively disprove Ramachandran's theory about the significance of the cortical shifts. Flor became one of the most highly regarded pain researchers in the world. Ramachandran did not.. Neurorel (talk) 23:56, 8 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The fact that somebody not-Ramachandran probably ran the MEG machine on a famous experiment he devised isn't notable or a blot on Ramachandran. 's claim that Herta Flor is a more notable pain researcher is not a blot on Ramachandran, whose career took a different direction. R's later career addressed a wide range of neurological ideas and experiments.
 * The fact that Ramachandran's early theories on cortical reorganization were later improved by other researchers is also not a blot on Ramachandran. Nobody now believes in Niels Bohr's original guess that the atom was like a little solar system, but Bohr's wrong guess was still a very productive idea.
 * If there are review articles discussing further progress made on neuroplasticity please add them to the relevant articles. In this article, the length and detail of text about further improvements should be proportional to and less than the length and detail of text describing Ramachandran's work on the topic, per WP:BALASP. And unless the review-article authors describe their results as a rebuke to Ramachandran, it is WP:SYNTH to present them as if they were.
 * The 2009 New Yorker article quotes widely-cited praise from Richard Dawkins and Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel, quotes you removed from this article as "puffery." In another New Yorker article, Atul Gawande reports seeking out Ramachandran, whom he describes as "an eminent neuroscientist," and whose experiments he describes with admiration, to consult on a puzzling neuro case. So eminent scientists don't seem to agree with you about Ramachandran's talent and achievements. HouseOfChange (talk) 07:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Ramachandran Quotation
V.S. Ramachandran. Ramachandran has been an effective spokesperson for building public interest in brain science because of his intuitive approach. This (in print) magazine interview helps readers quickly get a sense of what makes Ramachandran unique. (said Neurorel)
 * The quotation or a shorter version of it can go in the article, but only material that is already in the article should be summarized in the lead. Quoting WP:LEAD: "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents...Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article."
 * WP:LEAD also says "The notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. As in the body of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources." Contrast this advice from WP:LEAD to what is now in this article's lead. Does it establish or explain Ramachandran's notability? No. Here is a quote from the BBC that covers some of why R is notable:

"Professor Ramachandran's work has concentrated on investigating phenomena such as phantom limbs, anosognosia or denial of paralysis, Capgras syndrome, and anorexia nervosa. Although most of these conditions have been know since the turn of the century they have usually been treated as curiosities and there has been almost no experimental work on them. V.S. Ramachandran has brought them from the clinic to the laboratory and shown that an intensive study of these patients can often provide valuable new insights into the workings of the human brain."
 * One couldn't learn any of this from the article lead as it stands. A different explanation of R's notability, from TED talks website:

"V.S. Ramachandran is a mesmerizing speaker, able to concretely and simply describe the most complicated inner workings of the brain. His investigations into phantom limb pain, synesthesia and other brain disorders allow him to explore (and begin to answer) the most basic philosophical questions about the nature of self and human consciousness."
 * Another intro to R, from PBS:

"Vilayanur Ramachandran has been called a Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience ...Ramachandran has brilliantly sleuthed his way through some of the strangest maladies of the human mind. He has done this by marrying simple tools such as mirrors and cotton swabs with an insatiably inquisitive mind and a tonic sense of humor. One of the areas in which he has made some of his greatest strides is in the arena of phantom limbs, in which amputees and even those born without one or more limbs feel pain and other sensations in their missing body parts."
 * Very little of these genuine explanations for R's notability appear even in the body of the article. So please feel free to add more information to the article about R's notable career and discoveries, including if you will his joking remarks making fun of MRIs. Then we can try to agree on which of the many notable facts in the bio is so important that it deserves to take up a big part of the lead. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Awards And Honors
Awards and Honors should have reliable references. For example: All Souls College does not list Ramachandran on their roster of former Fellows Neurorel (talk) 16:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The information you removed from a directly quoted source said he was a "fellow" not a "Fellow" of All Souls. Multiple RS report that he had a fellowship from All Souls College, which should therefore not be erased from this article based on what one website says.
 * The All Souls website may be out of date. Or the small-f fellowship R held there was different from the large-F Fellowship. Harvard has a Society of Fellows, but few of Harvard students with fellowships have that large-F Fellowship. The point is, we don't know but we don't have to know. Many RS including the BBC and the New Yorker have stated that R had an All Souls fellowship, Wikipedia says what reliable sources say. HouseOfChange (talk) 10:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You are splitting hairs. All Souls College has an official web site pricisely to clear up confusion about who was (or was not} a Fellow/fellow. I grant you that Ramachandran might have been a visiting fellow at some point in the past. This fellowship provides room and board for about a dozen people per term. There are no academic duties of any kind. It is my understanding that All Souls does not keep a record of these fellowships. Our job as editors is to find reliable references --we cannot blindly accept every claim that has been made about awards and honors. For example, you mention the claim that Ramachandran was a senior Rouse-Ball Scholar. This is highly unlikely: The Rouse-Ball Scholarship is granted for outstanding mathematical work (and is named after two famous mathematicians at Oxford). It is also curious that Ramachandran would have been awarded a "senior" Rouse Ball scholarship --this honor is awarded to undergraduates. My best surmise is that Ramachandran might have received a travel scholarship to work with professors at Oxford (when he was a graduate student at Cambridge).
 * Many RS describe Ramachandran as having a Rouse-Ball fellowship at Cambridge, not Oxford. This source says "His medical training was followed by a Ph.D. from Trinity College in Cambridge, England, on a Rouse-Ball Scholarship." These remarks from a recent scholar suggest that Trinity has a "Rouse-Ball fund" that supports student work. The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior says R was "elected a senior Rouse-Ball scholar" at Cambridge. There is no need to seek out additional material from primary sources, however, because Wikpedia says what WP:RS say. Many RS say that R had an All Souls fellowship (at Oxford), also a Rouse-Ball fellowship or scholarship (at Cambridge). HouseOfChange (talk) 20:18, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Expanding material on Ramachandran's research
As a bio, this article should discuss topics in relation to R's work on them. For example, R's interest in neuroplasticity was started not only by monkey experiments by Pons but also because he was doing visual research about how people "fill in" blind spots in their vision. Many RS report how R recruited amputees, because people unlike monkeys could tell him what stimuli caused "sensation" in their absent limbs. He got surprising results, also widely reported. Then he followed up with MEG work on his amputee patients. This kind of information should be the focus of each section.

Instead, most sections give major space to criticisms of work related to the topic. The mirror neuron section, hilariously, begins with a statement that R's work has been criticized without having told us what R said or did that resulted in criticism.

I hope others who have an interest in describing R's work for an encyclopedia audience will start to do work on this article. It is a big job, and the article is in bad shape now. HouseOfChange (talk) 08:52, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Three Examples of Research Centers at UCSD
As we debate the status of the CBC it's a good idea to have some familiarity with what official UC research center websites actually look like. They are the flagship research organizations of the University of California. There is no mistaking them...Notice the information at the bottom of the home page:

Regents of the University of California

https://medschool.ucsd.edu/som/fmph/research/cim/Pages/default.aspx

https://ccb.ucsd.edu/

http://www.chd.ucsd.edu/about/index.html


 * We are not debating the status of the CBC. The article has never claimed that the CBC is one of UCSD's offical research centers. Due to your concern, I have added to the body of the article the links you want and the statement that CBC is part of the UCSD Psychology Department.
 * As for the lead, it should say what reliable sources say, the R is director of the CBC, full stop. We can add your quibbles to the article body, but they do not belong in the lead. I wish you will stop edit-warring the lead to insert your personal POV about the CBC. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Seems like a reasonable solution.Neurorel (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

WP:V and WP:VNT: Edits that violate these don't go in the article
"Editors may not add content solely because they believe it is true, nor delete content they believe to be untrue, unless they have verified beforehand with a reliable source." (WP:VNT)  therefore, please stop 1) removing (positive) content supported by RS and 2) adding (negative) content that is not based on RS.

1) Removing content supported by RS because you could not find some additional verification at a primary source. For example, that
 * Ramachandran had a fellowship at All Souls College. Your reasoning is that the All Souls College does not list him as a Fellow. ASC has many other small-f fellowship categories, and many RS describe R as having an All Souls fellowship (small f).
 * R was a Rouse-Ball Scholar at Cambridge.
 * R had a fellowship at the Royal Institution.

All these honors and more have support from many RS:
 * BBC 2003: "He also studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Ph.D. and was elected a senior Rouse-Ball Scholar. He has received many honours and awards including a fellowship from All Souls College, Oxford.
 * New Yorker 2009: "Ramachandran, who is fifty-seven, has held prestigious fellowships at All Souls College, in Oxford, and at the Royal Institution, in London."
 * The Guardian 2011: "The former Cambridge PhD student has also been feted in Britain, giving the Reith lectures in 2003, gaining fellowships of All Souls College and the Royal Institution, as well as a two-part Channel 4 series."(The Guardian, 2011)
 * Encyclopedia.com: *...Rouse Ball Scholar; gold medal, Australian National University; fellow, All Souls College, Oxford; "Decade of the Brain" lecturer at the Society for Neuroscience's Silver Jubilee; Ariens Kappers Medal, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, for landmark contributions in neuroscience..."

2) Adding content that is not based on RS.


 * You repeatedly ascribed a lead role in one of Ramachandran's most notable pieces of research to grad student TT Yang who ran the MEG machine, based on said grad student's archived personal website.
 * You have been edit-warring to include, with the misleading title "What do most neuroscientists think of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran?," some joking chat that starts by calling R "a nut." Quora is like BBB a place where anybody can post anything at all.  The problem with this was explained to you at BLPN less than a week ago, but you added it again yesterday anyway, a poster child example for "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced."

Please follow Wikipedia policy. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:39, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

In regard to the many claims that have been made about Ramachandran's degrees, honors and awards
The best approach to the confusion surrounding the question of Ramachandran's fellowships is "Trust but verify." All Souls College provides a variety of fellowships, most of which are temporary (they are granted for a period of time). There are research fellowships, Royal Fellowships, Quoandam Fellowships (the most prestigious). All Souls College has listed quite a few of their fellowships on their web site. If Ramachandran had been awarded a "prestigious" fellowship it would be on the website. Also, if Ramachandran was doing his Ph.D. work at Cambridge, why would he hold a fellowship at Oxford? Once upon a time... professors updated their CVs on a yearly basis and gladly provided them so that their awards and honors could be verified. For example, Stephen Pinker posts his CV (38 pages) on his Harvard website, which makes it easy to verify.Neurorel (talk) 22:16, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The best approach is to follow Wikipedia policies, e.g. WP:V. It is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH to propose that All Souls College should or would have listed every visiting fellow, and that by not listing R they are sending a secret message that R was never an All Souls fellow.
 * The All Souls webpage listing its visiting fellows shows only fellows from 2018 and later.
 * There is no conflict having a PhD from Cambridge but later having a visiting fellowship at Oxford.
 * Yet another RS (bio for Gifford Lectures) saying R has All Souls fellowship plus other honors you elsewhere wikilawyered to remove: "In 2005 Ramachandran was awarded the Henry Dale Medal and elected to an honorary life membership by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. His other honors and awards have included fellowships from All Souls College, Oxford, and Stanford University.."
 * The way to overcome what RS say about Ramachandran would be to find even more reliable sources that say the first sources were wrong. if you can't do that, quoting WP:VNT, "Editors may not .. delete content they believe to be untrue, unless they have verified beforehand with a reliable source." HouseOfChange (talk) 23:20, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, are there any RS that contradict any of the awards mentioned in this line-by-line footnoted version of the paragraph in article, from Edge.org:
 * In 2005 he was awarded the Henry Dale Medal
 * and elected to an honorary life membership by the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
 * where he also gave a Friday evening discourse
 * (joining the ranks of Michael Faraday, Thomas Huxley, Humphry Davy and others ). His other honours and awards include fellowships from All Souls College, Oxford,
 * and from Stanford University (Hilgard Visiting Professor);
 * the Presidential Lecture Award from the American Academy of Neurology,
 * two honorary doctorates,
 * the annual Ramon y Cajal award from the International Neuropsychiatry Society,
 * and the Ariens Kappers medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.

HouseOfChange (talk) 20:53, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Phantom Limbs & Cortical Reorganization
The history of phantom limb pain research is very clear: Ramachandran's theory about referred sensations was conclusively disproved. Herta Flor et al. proved that cortical reorganization was only evident in subjects who experienced pain.(said Neurorel)


 * "Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so."


 * Your summary of Flor's research is inaccurate and POV.
 * The 1995 Flor paper is a primary source, based on data from a total of 13 amputees, of whom 8 experienced phantom pain and 5 did not.
 * Based on this tiny sample, here is what Flor reported: "The mean shift in the focus of cortical responsivity to facial stimulation was 0.43 em (s.d. =0.40, range 0.01-1.00) for the five pain-free subjects, whereas the mean shift (M) for the eight subjects with phantom-limb pain was almost five times as large (M=2.05 em, s.d. = 1.08, range 0.52-3.86; F(l,ll) =9.94, P<O.OI) (Fig. 3)."
 * In other words, Flor said there was MORE shift observed in the 8 who suffered pain than in the 5 who did not suffer pain.
 * Flor (1995) did not say that "cortical reorganization was only evident in subjects who experienced pain," as says above.
 * Flor (1995) also did not say "that pain (rather than referred sensations) was the perceptual correlate of cortical reorganization" as Neurorel put into this article.
 * There are two review articles on phantom limb referred sensation published in 2018. Spoiler, the origin of these sensations remains complicated and in dispute. Interpreting the advance of neuroscience over three decades as proof that Ramachandran made dumb mistakes in the 1990s is a bad take on scientific history. Let's replace SYNTH from primary sources, with NPOV science from 2018. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:38, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Ramachandran likely obtained his MBBS from the University of (Madras) Chennai
Both Stanley Medical College and and the University of Madras list Ramachandran as an alumni on their websites. Based on Ramachandran's descriptions of his classes and his claim to have won a Gold medal, the evidence suggests that Ramachandran attended the medical college at the University of Chennai. Neurorel (talk) 01:46, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * We don't base our articles on "the evidence suggests" aka WP:OR. We base in on what reliable sources have published. For example, this RS which was in the article to cite the Stanley Medical College fact until you removed it. A little Googling also reveals Ramachandran published his first paper in Nature while his affiliation showed "Stanley Medical College".
 * Please cite some RS for anything you change in the article.HouseOfChange (talk) 02:27, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Here is one: The Gifford Lectures, Bio for Ramachandran There are quite a few medical colleges in Madras/Chennai. I am searching for the transcript of an interview in which Ramachandran talks about his experience of Medical College...
 * I mentioned above two RS that link Ramachandran to Stanley Medical College. In addition to those two, here is the author info for Ramachandran on his 1972 Nature article. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:36, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia entry for the University of Madras lists Ramachandran as an alumni of that university (see photo on the bottom of the page). Of course, the Nature article seems very credible. Neurorel (talk) 16:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Painless phantom limbs and painless stimuli are entirely different things
Ramachandran's 1992 and 1994 papers do not contradict, and are not contradicted by, the work of Flor (1996) and Karl (2001).

Most amputees have phantom pain. Ramachandran did not segregate out a group of pain-free amputees. He used painless stimuli to look for evidence of cortical reorganization in a mixed group of amputees.

Both Flor (1996) and Karl (2001) separated their amputee patients (13 for Flor, 10 for Karl) into two groups: those whose phantoms were painful and those whose phantoms were painless. They saw more cortical reorganization in patients reporting phantom pain than in patients reporting no phantom pain. Flor expresses it as follows: "Our results indicate a different magnitude of motor and somatosensory cortical plasticity in amputees with and without phantom limb pain." Neither of them said that non-painful phantoms have zero or insignificant plasticity.

Also, please review WP:PRIMARY to see why review articles not reports on small groups of patients should be used to support claims of scientific fact.HouseOfChange (talk) 02:47, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The article I cited was a review article that discusses many research papers. It is a secondary source. Ramachandran and Yang's MEG research was based on two subjects. The famous MEG image in Nature showed the cortical reorganization of a subject who had phantom pain. Ramachandran maintained that there was cortical reorganization (remapping) that corresponded to referred sensations he had studied in other patients. However the current consensus is that there is no measurable cortical reorganization that corresponds to non-painful referred sensations. It is worth noting that there is almost no research on non-painful referred sensations (other than Ramachandran's) because it does not present a problem or condition that needs to be treated. Phantom pain is a very serious challenge for people who have undergone amputations. Ramamchandran developed mirror therapy as an approach to phantom pain but there is no evidence that mirror therapy effects "maladaptive plasticity".Neurorel (talk) 16:49, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that neuroscientists in Europe could not replicate Ramachandran's research on non-painful referred sensations. In fact, their attemps to confirm Ramachandran's experiments produced contradictory results. (said Neurorel)


 * Karl (2001) is a WP:PRIMARY paper based on work with 10 patients. Knecht (1996) is a WP:PRIMARY paper based on work with 8 patients. All scientific papers include mentions of other work in the same area; this does not mean that all scientific articles are review articles.
 * I am going to look for other editors to comment here. Edit warring is not the answer, but your inaccurate WP:SYNTH based on decades-old primary sources should not be in the article. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:41, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Overall, this entry is in good shape.
In my opinion this entry is in good shape. It represents a balanced view of Ramachandran's accomplishments and failures in neuroscience.Neurorel (talk) 17:30, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

July 23: Neurorel thinks MT section is too long
Shortened section. There are at least two large, recent review studies that arrive at a variety of conclusions about the effectiveness of mirror therapy for treating stroke related issues. It would be better to move the complicated discussion to the entry on Phantom pain.Neurorel (talk) 15:24, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Mirror therapy is now a first-line treatment for PLP, hemiparesis, cerebral palsy, complex regional pain syndrome. Many recent review articles praise its effectiveness. Bio should not misrepresent R's work by implying his very successful invention was not very useful. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:56, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You have edited this section based on YOUR OPINION about the efficacy of mirror therapy. There are many research studies and reviews of published papers --there is a wide variety of conclusions. For example: "... mirror therapy is not effective for chronic CRPS1, possibly because movement of the limb evokes intolerable pain." Lorimer Mosely (who was the first person to hold the Pain Fellowship at Oxford is the pain researcher who developed Graded Motor Imagery, which is sometimes combinded, with MT.
 * In MY OPINION, the current research leans toward the consensus that MT is effective as an adjunct therapy, but not for all patients. However, this is an entry about V.S. Ramachandran, not the effectiveness of mirror therapy. As far as I know Ramachandran has not carried out any research on the effectiveness of MT. He is not a licensed physician (in CA) and he does not do clinical/medical research on stroke related conditions.Neurorel (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2019 (UTC)


 * This is an article about Ramachandran, the inventor of mirror therapy. If MT is successful, that deserves to be mentioned here as well as at mirror box and phantom limb. Instead, based on research published more than a decade ago (e.g. Mosely from 2004) you keep making the case in all those articles that mirror therapy is in dispute and not recommended.
 * "Current consensus" is shown by review papers being published in 2017, 2018, or 2019, based on MANY primary sources such as Mosely, whose paper from 2004 is not an indication of current consensus. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:07, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

July 27: Neurorel removes from lead that R invented MT and substitutes copy paste from CBC website

 * (Neurorel said then) Please pay attention to the information provided on the CBC website

Please notice that the characterization of Ramachandran is taken directly from the CBC website. You have created a very long section about Ramachandran's work on mirror therapy; however Ramachandran has developed a variety of theories (and done research) on a wide range of topics. For example, he has theorized about the role of mirror neurons and the neurological cause of autism. Ramachandran is known for his wide ranging speculations, not as a pain researcher. The description in the first page of the CBC is flattering and accurate (in my opinion). Let's stick to Ramachandran's sense of his importance.Neurorel (talk) 02:54, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * First, we can't just copy and paste text into Wikipedia from another website. Second, the lead summarizes material already in the article, which the quotes are not. Third, Ramachandran invented the mirror box and he is famous for doing so. The fact that he invented the mirror box should be in the lead of the article. I agree he is also famous for his wide-ranging speculations. If the "Marco Polo" nickname is in the article, it would make sense to repeat it in the lead because in fact this is something extremely frequently quoted about Ramachandran
 * 2008 "because of his explorations into uncharted territories"
 * 2009 ("El Marco Polo de la Neurociencia")
 * 2009 ("Marco Polo" in article title)
 * NPR 2011 "called the Marco Polo of neuroscience"
 * 2011 ("Marco Polo" in article title)
 * 2011 "Marco Polo of neuroscience"
 * 2012 ("il Marco Polo dei giorni nostri...")
 * 2013 "for his wide-ranging explorations of how the brain works"
 * 2016 ("Marco Polo'nun ipek yolu seyahatleri gibi, Ramachandran bizi zihin seyahat­lerine çıkartıyor...")
 * 2016 "a living legend, dubbed the 'Marco Polo of Neuroscience'"
 * 2017 ("Marco Polo des neurosciences")
 * 2017 "Richard Dawkins famously called him 'a latter-day Marco Polo'"

HouseOfChange (talk) 03:20, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

July 27, Neurorel said, "Avoid inference that Wikipedia is endorsing mirror therapy"
There are now at least five companies marketing mirror boxes to the public. Discusions of mirror therapy should avoid any inference that Wikipedia is endorsing it as a home remedy. Also, because there is the possibility that for some patients it can actually increase the level of pain, it is often used in conjunction with graded motor imagery.Neurorel (talk) 14:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ramachandran invented mirror therapy. How he discovered it, how it works, and a brief modern assessment of its value belong in this bio. Stating, as modern review articles do, that Ramachandran's invention has proved valuable is not equivalent to "endorsing" it as a home remedy or otherwise.
 * Any therapist practicing Moseley's "graded motor imagery" will be using mirror therapy. Its own money-making website] describes mirror therapy as an essential part of graded motor imagery. Judging by Google scholar results for the phrases "graded motor imagery", "mirror therapy", and "mirror box," there's more interest in MT than in Mosely's variant. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

July 27, HouseOfChange responded, "It is normal for bios to talk about the the major achievements of the bio subject."
VS Ramachandran invented mirror therapy to treat phantom limb pain, then expanded it to improve motor function in stroke victims. Google Scholar gives more than 8000 results for mirror therapy and another 5000+ for mirror box (which may include some overlap.) I have looked at a lot of other bios of people who invented stuff, therapies, or otherwise. These bios mention the invention in the lead, with an indication of why it was important if that isn't clear), describe how the inventor invented it, what it is/how it works, and why it was important.

See for example:
 * James P. Allison: 2018 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine although he was a PhD not an MD (something Neurorel repeatedly mentions concerning Ramachandran.) Wikipedia has articles about cancer, T-cells, and CTLA-4 but nevertheless Allison's bio describes in detail what he (Allison) discovered and how.
 * Keith Campbell (biologist): part of the team that first cloned a mammal. Dolly the sheep has her own article but Campbell's bio explains clearly his role in the research leading up to Dolly, etc.
 * John J. Wild: invented ultrasound. His article describes how and why he did it, as well as its many later uses. It does not go into detail about possible misuses of ultrasound, or criticisms of ultrasound, or alternative imaging methods that are not ultrasound, and yet no rational person would consider the description of Wild's invention in his bio as an "endorsement" of ultrasound by Wikipedia.

This article has a great deal of text about areas where Ramachandran made minor or contested contributions to science including consulting work. But there have been repeated edits to remove material about R's invention of mirror therapy, to remove material about the value of mirror therapy, and to add material about criticism of mirror therapy from primary research published decades ago.

Ramachandran's invention of mirror therapy is an important part of his bio. As for the value of mirror therapy, WP should simply say what MEDRS say: briefly in the bio and with more detail in the article mirror boxHouseOfChange (talk) 22:11, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

July 28, Neurorel said, "Please attempt to present a more balanced view of mirror therapy"
I have presented a number of references (reviews of published research) that confirm that mirror therapy is used as an adjunct therapy in clinical settings. Much of the discussion about its effectiveness is anecdotal. We should present a balanced picture based on clinical trials. Please stop the disruptive reverts of my edits.Neurorel (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Please stop adding misleading material to the article. The 2016 review article by Barbin does not dispute the effectiveness of MT, it says that the evidence is not good enough to demonstrate effectiveness. The 2017 and 2018 reviews both studied MT in depth and both concluded it was effective in well-managed trials. More detailed information about MT can go into the mirror box article.
 * Wikipedia policy is not "balance" but NPOV. That is, we follow what RS say. RS (review articles) say mirror therapy is effective but needs more study.
 * If you find some RS that surveyed a wide range of clinics using MT and concluded that MT is "used as an adjunct therapy in clinical settings," feel free to add it. I presume that by "adjunct" you mean that people using MT don't withhold pain meds from people who are having pain?
 * Also, please stop removing information about Ramachandran's work from the lead and from the section on mirror therapy. Others before me have complained about your eagerness to remove material describing R's work and the recognition he has received for it.
 * Take your lengthy critiques of MT to the mirror box article but keep them solidly grounded in what recent RS say. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

July 29, Neurorel said "Ramachandran inspired a revolution in pain research."
Ramachandran's invention of the mirror box and his perception based approach to phantom pain inspired a revolution in pain research. However, he did not do any independent clinical research on neuropathic pain during that revolution. (He did have a former graduate student who did some research and they published a paper together.) Clinical research determined that mirror therapy is helpful but has shown only modest effects that are sometimes very hard to quantify. (This limitation shows up over and over in the research.) That is why it is used in conjunction with other therapies such as graded motor imagery and transcranial electric stimulation. The good news is that these therapies increase the effectiveness of mirror therapy. One study found that using MT in conjunction with other therapies increases its effectiveness from about 40% (of patients) to about 70! Neurorel (talk) 16:35, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No RS cited in the article claims R inspired a revolution in pain research. The vague hyperbolic claims you put into the lead do not belong. there. The lead should contain brief clear statements based on RS about R's work, summarizing material already found in the bio. He invented mirror therapy, which is widely useful. People who want to learn details can go first to the body of the article and afterward to the article mirror box.
 * Also, the Talk Page discussion of mirror therapy is ongoing. I would hope you are reading and learning from all the previous sections above this one on exactly the same topic. There is no need to create a new section of the Talk Page every time you wish to say once more that MT is not perfect. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:32, 29 July 2019 (UTC)