User talk:The-data-are

Flora (microbiology)
Hi, what evidence is there that the term "flora" is outdated? Graham Beards (talk) 20:38, 6 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I am a tenured Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at a medical school in the US. I hold a Ph.D. in Microbiology, and by training, I am a bacteriologist. The term "flora" is outdated as it is a misnomer, and a more specific and correct term (microbiota) exists. The term flora refers to the plant life of a particular region. The microbiota is the collection of microorganisms that live within a specific biome. A concise description of this can be found within the Flora (microbiology) page. For a more lengthy discussion, please refer to an article by Marchesi and Ravel (Marchesi, J.R., Ravel, J. The vocabulary of microbiome research: a proposal. Microbiome 3, 31 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-015-0094-5). Also, there is an outstanding article on defining the term "microbiome" that exclusively uses the term "microbiota" with no mention of the terms "flora" or "microflora" (Berg, G., Rybakova, D., Fischer, D. et al. Microbiome definition re-visited: old concepts and new challenges. Microbiome 8, 103 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00875-0). Further evidence for this can be found by comparing the number of search hits on PubMed using these terms. Searching PubMed for the keyword "microbiota" returns 113,640 results (over the last 10 years; 2013 to present), while searching for "flora" returns 16,806. The-data-are (talk) 21:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Qualifications carry no weight here, but for what it is worth, I am an emeritus professor (of microbiology) at in the NHS of UK. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and although we are expected to be up-to-date, we still use many current common terms. "Flora" is not outdated; it appears on hundreds of reports from our microbiology labs everyday. That's why we still have Flora. Graham Beards (talk) 06:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Graham. Thank you for your humbling reply. In hindsight, it appears that I attempted to flaunt my credentials. This was not my intent. This is one of my first forays into editing Wikipedia articles, and I wanted to provide some credence to the fact that I am somewhat knowledgeable in bacteriology. Now that I am currently hyperaware of my tone here, I realize that what I am about to say is pedantic in nature. However, I am a believer in the precision of language when it comes to science and where science meets public discourse.       While appearing on hundreds of NHS microbiology lab reports daily is evidence that the term flora is commonly used amongst clinical microbiologists and clinicians in the UK, this does not address the fact that the term is a misnomer and a more suitable term exists. In addition, the use of the term flora only muddies the water for members of the public seeking information regarding organisms that live in and on their bodies. For example, in the NHS (as in the US), when a patient with recurrent C. difficile is offered an alternative to antibiotic therapy, are they offered a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) or a fecal "flora" transplant? The-data-are (talk) 15:02, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, nice to meet you. I don't disagree with your reasoning at all. The problem is your approach. Rather than piping links to Flora (microbiology), you should propose changing the name of the parent article. If the consensus goes in your favour, we can merge the Flora with Microbiota (or whatever the consensus is) and leave a re-direct at  Flora (microbiology). (And yes our patients are offered a faecal microbiota transplant, though only a few know what this means - and even fewer now what it entails ! ). Graham Beards (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)