User talk:Animalresearcher

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welcome
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I wonder if you would be interested in helping to establish a way to sytematically work towards better Wikipedia articles that are related to animal research. In the near future, Wikiversity might be approved as a sister project to Wikipedia. I have been thinking that it would be possible to have a scholarly Wikiversity project devoted to improvement of Wikipedia articles that concern animal research (see). --JWSchmidt 22:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll give it a look.--Animalresearcher 20:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Your advice?
Hello Animalresearcher, I wonder if you would mind having a look a an animal experimentation related mini project i'm embarking on? You opinion would be welcome. Thanks.  Rockpock e  t  07:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Proposal
Hi, I am posting this message to everyone who has edited on animal rights or animal welfare related articles in the last couple of months. I have just created a proposal for a WikiProject to help co-ordinate editors on the many articles under the mentioned subjects. If you would like to find out about it or show your support for such a project, please visit User:Localzuk/Animal Rights Proposal and WikiProject/List of proposed projects. Cheers, Localzuk (talk) 10:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Request for clarifications on Operant Conditioning edit
Recently you edited the Operant Conditioning article in a couple of places and would like some clarification about their basis.

The first edit involved the deletion of the term "involuntary reflexive" from the portion reading "while Pavlovian conditioning deals with the conditioning of involuntary reflexive behavior so that it occurs under new antecedent conditions." However, Classical Conditioning cannot be used with all behavior in general, only with reflexes (respondent behavior). Is it possible that you are confusing Classical Conditioning with operant procedures that condition stimulus control over operant behavior? I would agree that both cases involve procedures to cause a behavior to occur in response to a novel antecedent stimulus. However, Classical Conditioning does this using successive trials in which the novel stimulus precedes an existing unconditioned stimulus. Wouldn't this happen regardless of any consequences delivered, whereas consequences would have an effect upon the occassion of non-reflexive behavior? For example, you can condition salivation to occur in response to a tone regardless of whether or not you provide reinforcement afterwards (ie. whether or not you give them food to eat for having salivated). An operant response, however, will not change in frequency without a change in the contingency of the consequences that maintain it. Operant conditioning employs consequences while Classical conditioning does not.

Stimulus control procedures, such as discrimination training or generalization training, require the use of consequences to alter the frequency of operant S-R relations. If you reinforce a response when it occurs in situation 1, but extinguish it when it occurs in situations 2, 3, and 4, the response will occur with greater frequency upon the occassion of S1 and with less frequency upon the occassion of either S2, S3, or S4. That is to say, S1-R will be reinforced, while S2-R, S3-R and S4-R will have been extinguished. Unfortunately, the article currently lacks a good section on the stimulus control of operant behavior, something I hope to get around to adding in the future.

The second edit I refer to in the article is an addition stating, "The subject has no control of the consequences in Pavlovian conditioning." As I mentioned before, in the implementation of Classical Conditioning there are no consequences to speak of, hence the procedure being referred to as representative of "S-R Psychology," while operant conditioning employs the addition of a third term, the consequence, in what is called the "Three-Term Contingency" (S-R-S). --Lunar Spectrum | Talk 10:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Although the early literature on Pavlovian Conditioning did utilize nearly only reflexive responses, there has been a significant movement away from the restriction to reflexes in recent years. This is reviewed, pretty clearly, in Domjan's textbook on the Principles of Learning and Behavior that I refererenced. It, in turn, references many principle articles on conditioning written in recent years that do not use reflexive actions to measure classical conditioning.

Also, I do not find it out of turn, at all, to speak about consequences when talking about Classical Conditioning. RA Rescorla has made quite a career out of demonstrating the requirement that the unconditioned stimulus have some characteristics of a reinforcer for the procedure to work - and that the reinforcing value of the unconditioned stimulus is of nearly direct relation to the ease with which a conditioned response may be elicited.

Both of these areas of behavioral psychology are quite broadly supported by research in the last 3-4 decades, even if they are not discussed by Pavlov or Konorski's earlier work. Part of the process at Wikipedia is adding referenced, sourced, material, and I added references with my additions. The Classical Conditioning page is very weak in this area, and I had planned to add more as time permits, later. The key is adding references as the material is added, so that the material is verifiable. But I think you will find both of the points I added are broadly supported in recent reviews on Pavlovian or Classical Conditioning, and much of the support can be found in the citations in Domjan's text. --Animalresearcher 10:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a very good point about the similarilties between USs and primary reinforcers, and there's clearly overlap between the two procedures in terms of their effects upon behavior. But how does that suport the statement that "the subject has no control of the consequences in Pavlovian conditioning" when Pavlovian conditioning doesn't use consequences to begin with? And even if a consequence could be construed from Pavlovian conditioning, if a behavior has no control over it consequences, then the behavior is inconsequential and the consequence would have been unable to maintain the frequency of that response. Doesn't it seem that the reliable elicitation of a response, despite its lack of control over its consequences, would imply that respondent behavior is a distinct class of behavior apart from operants? --Lunar Spectrum | Talk 19:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You are right, consequences should be replaced with "presentation of unconditioned stimulus". Consequences clearly implies things that I didn't intend to imply. A student of eyeblink conditioning explained to me that eyeblink conditioning could be operant or classical depending only on whether the eyelid was restrained or not. In classical the unconditioned stimulus is out of the control of the animal. In operant the reinforcer is controlled by the animal. I've been doing a lot of work translating between classical and operant, and forget the whole world hasn't been living inside my head for the last few years. ;) --Animalresearcher 23:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the sentence does look better now. I hate to press the issue, though, but the only problem left is that instead of describing a contrast between Pavlovian and operant conditioning, the sentence now describes a similarity (which would make the "Unlike" redundant). In operant procedures also, the subject's response does not have control over antecedent stimuli, only upon its consequences. I could simply change it to "Like," but I might just wait until I've put in a section on the stimulus control of operant behavior to be able to follow up on that similarity.


 * What you mention about the eye-blink reflex sounds right. The eye-blink by itself would be a respondent behavior, while the restraint of the reflex would be operant behavior. However, during the restraint of the reflex, I don't think that the original motor impulse causing the eye-blink would itself be inhibited. Rather, the learned restraint probably occurs through the activation of opposing muscle groups which prevent the eye from blinking, but do not prevent the neural activation of the reflex from being transmited. So that would mean that during restraint, at least two responses occur: the orignal reflex and its opposing restraint (an operant). --Lunar Spectrum | Talk 23:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Template
Looks good, I'll take a look at it more carefully when I have a bit more time (I'm sure you are busy with the SfN meeting as well) and see if I can suggest other things to add. One thing, in your edit about Cambridge University, didn't Adrian win his Nobel prize before the work on primates? I may be wrong about this though. best, Nrets   19:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * My point was more that a Nobel Laureate at Cambridge is also one of the most famous primate researchers ever. But yes, his Nobel prize was mostly for demonstrating nerve cells are excitable, and that nerve cells signal by action potential frequency, not magnitude.--Animalresearcher 21:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I see. One more (unrelated) thing - if you need a break from arguing about AR, you might want to check out WikiProject Neuroscience. There's a current drive to improve neuroscience related articles which you might be interested in. The collaboration of the week is: neuron. Nrets   03:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I do some Neuroscience article editing. To me, that is more minor. A fair showing of all points of view related to animal research is likely to have a very strong effect on me personally in the future. There is a lot more at stake. --Animalresearcher 18:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

electrical synapses
I guess it depends how you define adult. The original papers by Connors and Hestrin labs were in juveniles (~p21) precisely because of the reasons you mentoned about the optics, so yes it may not represent what happens in older animals. However using transgenic mice that selectively express GFP in specific subtypes of interneurons you can more easily identify interneurons in older animals, so in 2002 Galarreta and Hestirn showed that electrical synapses are still present in 2-7 month-old mice, which are definitely adults. Take that in combination with the observation that some connexins persist into adulthood, and its not such an unreasonable conclusion to say that in some cell types, electrical synapses are fairly common even in adults. Also, in parts of the brain such as the inferior olive its been known for a long time that gap junctions are present and allow the cells to oscillate together, so in this case I don't think its such a stretch. I guess. Nrets  21:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Your edits
AR, your edits to animal rights articles are becoming unacceptable. Your recent edits about BUAV and the ALF said the opposite of what the source said, and were arguably defamatory; your edits to PETA about their attitude to pets said the opposite of what the source said; and your edit that PETA deliberately prolonged monkeys' suffering for publicity is not only highly unlikely, but was sourced to Wikipedia, which is not allowed. If you continue with this kind of editing, I'll either seek administrative intervention or I'll initiate the dispute resolution process against you. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, please try to write refs so that others don't have to clean up after you. Write your sentence. End it with a period. THEN write a full citation &mdash; byline, headline, name of publication, date of publication, URL if available &mdash; between two ref tags. Don't just put a URL between refs tags, because there's no point in making the reader go to the end of the page just to see a URL. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * One more thing: please don't use activistcash.com or CCF as a source. They're attack websites and it's not clear who runs or finances them. They may be used as a source on themselves and issues they are directly involved in (i.e. as primary sources), but not as secondary sources on third parties. See WP:V. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Activistcash and CCF are both under the Center for Consumer Freedom, a lobby group created by big corporations - it is not AT ALL unclear who runs or finances them. It is EXTREMELY unclear to me that they constitute a better or worse source than BUAV and PETA, which are attack websites and organizations. They attack me. CCF defends me, so you will have little trouble understanding why I ask you what the difference is? Should we avoid using PETA as a source? --Animalresearcher 10:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, there were those of us who lived through the Silver Spring monkeys incident, and the Wikipedia listings on it were attempts at revisionist history by PETA, or people who merely sourced PETA on the topic. AT EVERY STAGE of the Silver Spring monkey incident, there was substantial controversy. It's a little different when you know the incident with lucid detail from having lived through it. It is VERY hard for an outside observer to think PETA was doing anything other than engaging in lawsuits to gain publicity, even if it meant prolonging animal suffering. I would not say they wanted to prolong the animal suffering, but that they wanted publicity and further animal suffering was viewed by them as collateral damage. You need to ask yourself under what possible legal framework did they feel they were entitled to the animals, or could make better assessments on pain and suffering than the medical and veterinary experts who saw them? --Animalresearcher 10:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * To answer about the CCF thing. The CCF is an unreliable organisation as the source of their funding is unknown, they are an attack organisation. BUAV is a world reknowned organisation that are approached by many organisations with regards animal rights. I have never seen a single publication by the BUAV which could be classed as 'an attack' - they provide facts. The CCF do - an example: On the front page of their site at the moment they have this article linked. It states 'When Animal Liberation Front spokesman Jerry Vlasak famously commented that medical researchers who use animals should be targeted for "political assassination,"'. Now this is taken completely out of context. At no point did he state that anyone should be targetted - he said that he thought it would be an effective tactic. Here is the exact transcript: If these vivisectors were being targeted for assassination, and call it political assassination or what have you ... I think that strictly from a fear and intimidation factor, that would be an effective tactic. And I don't think you'd have to kill -- assassinate -- too many vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives. Now, does that sound like someone calling for assassination? Or does it sound like someone talking about how he sees things going? To me, having heard him speak at another event, it sounds like the latter.
 * If you can provide some reason why CCF should be used as a source then please do.
 * Now, PETA, on the other hand should only be used rarely in my opinion - on articles about themselves and as direct quotes from them about specific things. Newkirk can be used as a source as she is a well known and published author.-Localzuk(talk) 20:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If i may interject, BUAV has been accused of fabricating evidence (see the two newspaper reports in here) and making false allegations. World renouned they might be, but free of agenda they are not. PETA - and other groups - regularly alter the context of notable scientists' comments to imply they think testing is ineffective. In addition, a High Court judge recent ruled the Animal Liberation Press Office "was not a neutral reporting exercise or even simply a vehicle for apologists for the ALF, but a vital part of the ALF's strategy." . Seeing as Vlasak is the US representative of the Press Office and his British counterpart was described as a "central and pivotal figure in the [ALF]" - it doesn't take a genius to work out that what he says has great influence in ALF policy. Finally, the CCF is hardly alone in describing what Vlasak said as such. Here is a notable source interpreting the implication perfectly: "Kill scientists, says animal rights chief", "Fury as former surgeon calls for selective assassinations". Rockpock  e  t  21:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer more mainstream sources anyway,..CCF is largely useful in collecting information from more reputable sources about the controversy, which is mostly the same ways BUAV and PETA are useful. I know a LOT more about PETA because I know a few principals in the Silver Spring monkey case, and because I looked into them when they regularly protested at my center in the early 90s. --Animalresearcher 00:20, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

PETA
D'oh. Silly me, should have double checked the paragraph... Have reverted myself now.-Localzuk(talk) 20:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

BLP
This is to warn you that some of your edits to articles and posts to talk pages about individuals have come close to crossing the line into violations of WP:BLP, a policy that the Foundation takes very seriously for obvious reasons. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons may not be posted anywhere on this website; that includes articles, article talk, and user talk. Violations of BLP are blockable offenses. See WP:BLOCK. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I notice that you're regularly editing from a variety of IP addresses. It would be appreciated if you would edit logged in from now on. It's a violation of WP:SOCK to use different accounts or IP addresses to avoid public scrutiny of your contributions history. See WP:SOCK. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I do the best I can...I use the same computer and it occasionally times me out...sometimes I am even apparently logged in when I start an edit and then when I save it the edit reverts to an IP address....this is not my intention...if you've noticed on the talk pages I go back and change the attribution to my user identity, I haven't figured out how to do that in editing pages yet or I would do it there too. --Animalresearcher 01:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If it's not intentional, it's okay. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Animal rights
Query for you about your Posner edit, which I couldn't understand. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Animal rights has philosophical and ethical context. In philosophy and ethics, there is debate. This is a good one pitting the foremost ethicist on animal rights against one of the foremost US legal scholars. It would be even better if there were more publicly accessible debates in which one POV were pitted against another so that all sides of the debate could be shown equally. It is certainly possible it would be better moved to the section on criticism, but since the debate features Singer and Posner equally, I felt it would be better there. But if you want to move it down to criticism, I won't complain.--Animalresearcher 17:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Coroebus
Replied to you here and carried out this edit.

BCI
I think our difference lies in what we view as the brain communicating with a computer. I disagree with your view, because I'm taking a signal processing perspective. The ability to decode LGN signals requires signal processing - certainly by computer. The fact that this processing is passive is in my view irrelevant. All the article's definition requires is a communication pathway - a signal to be processed. BTW, I moved your commend to my discussion page - I guess you intention to put it there rather than my user page. Cheers Saganaki- 14:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Your editing
Could you please say what your main account is? You use this one as a more or less single-issue account to cause problems on animal rights articles, problems that have been so severe at times that other editors (myself included) stopped editing them because of you. That is clearly a violation of WP:SOCK, which says you must not use alternate accounts to avoid public scrutiny where other editors have a legitimate reason to track your edits. There certainly is a legitimate reason given the trouble you have caused in the past on these articles. Therefore, I'd appreciate it if you would be upfront about your WP identity. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have not made an edit as anything other than Animalresearcher since the last time you brought this up. Therefore I cannot say I know what you are talking about. With respect to Sam Harris, he has national acclaim as an author. When he was listed as a neuroscientist, I got interested. I found no papers. I found no abstracts, no evidence he has attended a meeting, no listing of his publications on the web pages of his lab (Mark S Cohen at UCLA), no nothing. Cohen does not even list Harris in his ackowledgments of his talks (powerpoint presentations). Given that he has two NY TIMES bestseller books on issues of religion and god (which he wrote while claiming to be enrolled as a neuroscience graduate student), and no impact as a neuroscientist, I thought it straightforwardly misleading to refer to Harris as a neuroscientist on that Wiki page. I don't think of it as an issue that you should not refer to graduate students in Neuroscience as Neuroscientists, but when someone has such a high level of achievement in one relevant discipline, and no achievement at all in another, you are probably better off categorizing them with the discipline in which they are famous. --Animalresearcher 21:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Using two accounts so that edits to one controversial topic do not spill over to a different account that might be associated with your real-life identity is perfectly allowed. This second account can't be used to simply "cause trouble" eg vandalism and the like, but that limitation is quite tightly defined. If you have any questions about the policy you can e-mail me privately through my user page and discuss this in confidence. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

UCLA - Animal testing on non-human primates
Hi. The section you recently added to this page seems to focus more on animal rights activities than allegations, which is the section title. All the bits about bombs, etc., while well documented, are fairly peripheral to the allegations which you clearly stated early on. Perhaps this should be toned down a bit to stay on topic? Bob98133 17:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The NHP page was originally a split off the animal testing page by slimvirgin. SV copied all the allegations of abuse, except the UCLA incident, to the NHP page, and additionally left them on the animal testing page. I wanted to move them all to the NHP page and replace them on the animal testing page with a pointer, because the entire purpose of the split was to save space, and not to duplicate everything. However, my edits on the animal testing page were reverted, and I see what you are saying in that the UCLA incident scarcely involved allegations of abuse, so I re-organized that section on the NHP page. I also initiated discussion on the animal testing page to see if these items of controversy MUST be listed on every testing page, or if pointers may be placed on some pages to save space and come closer to article size guidelines. --Animalresearcher 18:12, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Animal testing ethics
Hi AR, I've just started writing an article on the ethics of animal testing, which is a big subject so I'm thinking it should have its own page, and then be summarized on Animal testing. I've started a draft on a talk subpage -- Talk:Animal testing/ethics -- which I'm going to work on there until I have a version that's ready to become an article.

I'd like to make this as intelligent and nuanced as possible -- not the pro argument followed by the anti, and so on, but something using good sources that weaves and balances the various positions through the text. Not easy to do, but I'd like to try.

I was wondering if you have any interest in writing something about the role of ethics in IACUC reviews of research proposals, and in particular how different species are dealt with. The section header is here. That is, what ethical considerations are normally looked at when IACUCs review proposals that involve, say, mice as opposed to, say, primates?

You seem to be in a good position to write something about this, so I'm hoping you might have time. If you don't, if you could recommend any reading for me, that would be very helpful. I've been reading What Animal Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy by Larry Calbone, a veterinarian who works with laboratory animals, and it's exactly the kind of nuanced approach that I would like to emulate.

If you don't have time, no worries, but if you do, your help and expertise would be much appreciated. SlimVirgin (talk) (contribs) 00:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's very helpful, thank you. It's given me a lot to work with. SlimVirgin  (talk) (contribs) 04:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi there
Good to see you back on the animal testing page, progress has been slow but steady while you were away, with a lot of work from everybody on the lead in particular. I hope you think it is an improvement. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Reverting
AR, if you continue to turn up at articles solely to revert, I'm going to request admin action against you, with a view to an eventual ban. It has gone on long enough, and you go too far. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 00:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * (moved from SV talk) Go ahead and request admin action for my restoring material that aligns Wikipedia entries with reliable third party sources on the topics at hand. It'll be a wonderful day for you when you can silence those attempting to make Wikipedia pages NPOV. --Animalresearcher (talk) 00:57, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Please don't add posts to my talk page in between posts about other issues. AR, if you want to edit WP, you have to stick around and learn the policies, and how to write and edit and use the sources. Almost everything you've been doing here since 2006 has been wrong in some way, because you edit so infrequently, yet you plunge into contentious issues regardless. It makes for a very bad combination. It's also somewhat arrogant, and I hope you'll stop to consider that.


 * If you revert again, I'm going to report you for editing warring, given that you've been reverting to your preferred caption since 2008 or thereabouts. It has stymied article development, and it can't be allowed to continue. Also, please read the 3RR policy.


 * There is a discussion about this on the talk page, where two editors disagree with you (two editors who normally don't agree on these issues), and for good reason; see the discussion here. If you want your views to be considered, please persuade us, but do not keep reverting.  SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 03:09, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

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