Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Tooth development/archive1

Tooth development
Nearly all of this article was written by Dozenist, and I think he has done fine work here. Though biology and anatomy are two subjects that I know very little about (thus reading this article is rather difficult for me), I think this article could serve as a template for other articles about growth and development. Wikipedia needs articles that provide an in-depth exploration of anatomical subjects. While this may seem off-putting to the average user at first (especially the terminology involved), I think it's easy to see the benefits of having such information in our little encyclopedia. I suppose this is a partial self-nom, though my contribution was limited to extensive copyediting (essentially no substance). - Jersyko   talk  19:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment I tried to make myself read this article but I just couldn't, it is so complicated & stuffed with jargon my eyes began to water! As a result I will neither oppose nor support this nomination but I do have these comments:
 * Saying (in the first sentence) that the teeth "erupt" into the mouth seems rather strange to the uninitiated. From the article below I gather this is apparently the scientific term for emerging teeth but can't it be rephrased so as to not bite the reader with a jarring phrase?
 * What in the world does this sentence mean? "It is widely accepted that there is a factor within the tissues of the first branchial arch that is necessary for the development of teeth" There is a factor? What factor?
 * 'Bud stage' under 'The developing tooth bud' needs to be expanded to improve flow
 * The 'Notes' (i.e. refs) are very difficult to read, maybe it is worthwhile playing around with font size etc. Mikkerpikker 20:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Support. This is a technical article, and one that assumes some foreknowledge of the subject matter, but I found it highly professional and quite readable. The illustrations support the text very well, it has both strong writing, it is properly referenced. (Altho I do think multiple references to the same document and page number could be condensed into one note using one of the newer biblio systems.) jengod 00:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. Great article, but some technical terms should be explained a little more and please do something about those references! --WS 01:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * How about referencing to chapters rather than individual pages? --WS 18:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Somebody already went through and deleted some repeated notes. I can add the chapters along with the pages if people really want that, but I think the pages themselves are pretty important to have.  Some of the chapters are very, very long, and if someone wanted to go through and check my references it would be difficult to find exactly where I was referring to through chapters.  In fact, I have gone back sometimes to double-check a reference of mine, and it was sometimes difficult to find even knowing which page to look for the comment!! - Dozenist  talk  20:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment I guess I'm not sure about the title and the animal section. We have an article on tooth development which is all about humans, and an article on animal tooth development.  Why not move this to human tooth development and make it a subarticle of animal tooth development -- I know the "whole humans are animals" thing could be considered POV, but this is a biological article, so it makes sense to use biologically precise titles. Tuf-Kat 07:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The very first sentence of the article was edited to say "Human tooth development refers to the complex proces...", but I think it should just say "Tooth development refers to the complex process...". What I tried to make clear is that if there were two different articles, one called "Human tooth development" and one called "Animal tooth development", the information would basically need to be repeated in both.  The vast majority of tooth development in both animals and humans is the same, and understanding the general process in humans can help to understand the process in animals by then pointing out the differences.  This is why I thought an article on the general topic of tooth development modeled in humans would be the appropriate main article, and an animal tooth development article should be an off-shoot to explain the variations. But anyways, if you are interested in being completely precise in distinguishing humans vs animals (and I'm not a zoologist so there may be a better idea), I have seen at least one article that separated the topic by having titles of "human" and "non-human animals". Then again, I think the distinction is pretty clear that in this case "animals" would be a word referring to all non-human animals. -Dozenist  talk  12:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the rewrite and addition to the intro by Tuf-Kat solves the dilemma. - Jersyko   talk  16:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * (via edit conflict) I've reworded the lead to make this distinction more clear, and I would greatly prefer moving this to human tooth development and making it a subarticle, or moving the other article to non-human tooth development -- I guess another reason I don't like animal tooth development is that only animals have teeth, so it seems like an odd distinction to include in an article title (begs the question of where plant tooth development is). Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?  Perhaps there ought to be an anatomy and physiology WikiProject to set some guidelines on how to set up articles on human/non-human topics... (Or is there already?) Tuf-Kat 16:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC) (PS I do support the featurability of the content, BTW, and am willing to bow to whatever consensus there may be on this issue)
 * Take a look at the brain article. There is a separate link to an article about the human brain in the article.  Both of the articles are fairly long and cover a lot of ground.  Of course, a immense amount of time has been put into studying all types of animal brains, compared to the amount put in to study non-human animal tooth development, anyway.  Additionally, there are many differences among the brains of animals, whereas (according to Dozenist) there appear to be few differences among animals in regard to tooth development.  Perhaps, then, the solution here is to delete the animal tooth development (err, redirect it) and simply address everything in the tooth development article. -  Jersyko   talk  17:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC) (sorry for the gaps in my reasoning here, but I think they're easy enough to fill and i don't have time to expound further right now)
 * Merging the articles would be fine with me too, if that makes more sense. There doesn't appear to be much to merge in from animal tooth development, and something could always be split out later (rodent tooth development looks like it may be a reasonable topic, though it may be a long time before we have somebody who actually writes it) Tuf-Kat 17:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I went forward with the merge. Any objections? -  Jersyko   talk  22:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support, though I'd like to see more information on non-human tooth development in this article. More development of the differences, etc. Also, please replace the Encarta citation with something more substantial (it appears in note 75). --Spangineeres (háblame)  17:11, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I did not replace the encarta citation, but I did switch the order of the notes that refers to the encarta article and the other article by Randall-Bowman. I am glad you pointed it out though because I had forgotten to write Randall-Bowman's information in the reference section, which I added as well.  For more non-human tooth development stuff, I thought it would be a good time to mention that there may be many differences if you are considering the specific question of teeth.  For example, some animals may not have canines, or really only have molars and premolars, but there is little different (at least so far that the research has shown) in the development of those teeth between animals.  The differences I have found so far are in peer review articles that have concluded, for example, in rats a specific enzyme or protein, such as the Notch1 protein and Hes1 mRNA, being expressed in the stratum intermedia, and this information may indicate that ameloblasts and the stratum intermedia are separated by Notch signaling .That may prove to be very important eventually in understanding rat tooth development, but I do not see this information being very helpful in an article about the broad topic of tooth development in general.  If someone wants to write an article about rat teeth or add to the exisisting horse teeth article, then I think the particular enzymes and protein involved in the development of those teeth should be expanded upon there.  General information pertaining to animal tooth development could be added to this article without much disruption of flow, but the problem is finding some general developmental differences since most sources say there are very few large differences.  What does everyone else say? -Dozenist  talk  19:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Could anything be said about the timing of tooth development in animals, for example? There's a large table detailing the timeline of human teeth development, but nothing for non-humans. Does it take as long, at the same stage of development, etc. A table comparing different animals would be interesting.  Also, a couple more things.  I remember reading when I was younger that some people develop a third set of teeth if they lose their adult teeth.  If that's true, should that be included, either in the eruption section or the abnormalities section?  Also, from a readability standpoint, the terms "histodifferentiation" and "morphodifferentiaion" in the section 'Bell stage' need to be defined or wikified to an article that defines them. In the section 'Nutrition and tooth development', there's mention of "demineralization and subsequent decay" as a result of fluoride deficiency, but what is the extent of that? The second sentence of Water fluoridation suggests that there are studies showing the benefit of fluoride in reducing tooth decay, and a sentence quantifying that (perhaps using the sources from Water fluoridation controversy) would be interesting if included.  Either that, or incorporate links to those articles into this one. --Spangineeres  (háblame)  21:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) About the timing of tooth development in animals, maybe somewhere something can be found, but keep in mind that some animals, like sharks, continuously produce teeth (at least, I think they do). Since humans have only two sets of teeth, the timing of shark teeth would probably not be as important, and naturally comparison of time in development for humans would not be very informative given the different number of sets of teeth and even the variance of life spans across species.  If horse teeth erupted with consistant timing and if they came in a limited number of sets (which they very well may), then perhaps a veterinarian can help make a chart.  Then again, that information could still fit nicely in the horse teeth article.  (2) A third set of teeth in humans does not exist.  If you lose your permanent tooth, then that is it.  Apart from that, a person may have a "supernumary tooth" (an extra tooth), and that is mentioned in the section of abnormalities with the term "hyperdontia". (3) That is a good point.  Definitions of histodifferentiation and morphodifferentiation should probably be added since the meaning may not be apparent.  (4) Concerning fluoride, there is no controversy in the dental research community of fluoride's ability to reduce the incidence of tooth decay.  The rest of this article stays focus on information that is accepted by dental professionals (both practitioners and researchers), and getting into the debate of water fluoridation controversy seems out of the scope of the article.  Although many people like to discuss the issue as a scientific debate, the debate really is not in the scientific community, but more in the social/political realm.  This article, I think, is best if it sticks to the current thought of the scientific community.  If a reader were to click on the link to fluoride, there clearly are links to the "water fluoridation" and "water fluoridation controvery" articles, and I would think that is sufficient. - Dozenist  talk  22:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to suggest that this article cover the fluoride debate, but rather include a mention of the magnitude of the effect of fluoride deficiency. It may not be quantifiable, but it'd be nice to know what the general effects are of not having enough fluoride&mdash;do 80% of those deficient experience tooth decay, or 10%?  If numbers like that are tough to get or you don't think it's that important, no problem; I'm just tossing ideas out there. Oh, and regarding the animals, I think it would be interesting to include that info about some animals developing teeth continually, while others do it in sets, etc.  Nothing detailed, but general references to point out other differences between humans and non-humans. --Spangineeres  (háblame)  23:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Whew... well that's good. I thought at first you might have been suggesting to include the controversy in this article or directly mentioning it, and I was a little worried about that!!! In terms of the actual numbers, I will try to look for something, but of course one study is not going to be the definitive word on it.  The water fluoridation controversy article mentions the improvement of dental health from fluoride ("In the most recent scientific review of 113 articles from 23 countries (59 of which were conducted in the U.S.), it was claimed that water fluoridation reduced dental decay by: • 40 to 49 percent in the primary dentition or baby teeth, • 50 to 59 percent in the permanent teeth or adult teeth."), but I would prefer to find the actual source of any statement like that if it were to be inserted into this article.  Hmmm... and actually, the more I think about it, the less I feel it needs to be inserted in the article.  It seems something more appropriate in articles about fluoridation, but I will still see if there is something I can find.  I will look to the source in this article about fluoride, which I think was the ADHA. - Dozenist  talk  00:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Added all info I could find on development of shark teeth. Makes the section nice and neat, I think. - Dozenist  talk  05:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)