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	Circumcision has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 3, 2013 Peer review Reviewed February 12, 2013 Good article nominee Listed
Current status: Good article

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Why are article topics weighted according to the amount of publications?

I find this extremely wierd. One reason is that it can be much easier to publish about some things than other things, and then there will be more publications just because it is easier to publish about that. Another reason is that controversial topics tend to generate a lot of publications. If something is well accepted and not controversial there are often less publications about that, but just because something is controversial it doesn't necessarily make it more important. Considering circumcision I think it is pretty obvious that the medical aspect is very controversial, so of course a lot of the publications are about the medical aspect. There are also tons of opportunities to do medical research on circumcision, and medical reasearch might get much more funding than reasearch on the social/legal/moral aspects of circumcision. How are you supposed to do research upon the legal/moral aspect of circumcision anyhow? Probably there are much more medical publications than legal/moral publications simply because there are much more opportunities to do medical research and publish about it. I also don't necessarily think you can solve the moral/legal problem with circumcision by doing research. What kind of research can possibly prove that infant mutilation is immoral? What kind of research can prove that theft, murder and rape is immoral? Are there lots of publications about the morality of theft/murder/rape? I doubt it, because it is not very controversial wheter is is immoral or not, and because you can't do research to prove if a thing is immoral or not.84.210.15.173 (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that you do indeed recognize that the distribution of the weight in the sourcing regarding the topic of this article is heavily medical, and that Misplaced Pages's guidelines direct us to take that into account in organizing the article. A counter-argument to "medical reasearch might get much more funding than reasearch on the social/legal/moral aspects" is that medical research is a LOT more regulated and expensive to do than simply reading up on and then writing one's own philosophical reflections on a subject. Medical research is only ever an expense; comparatively, philosophical writings cost next to nothing, so you can argue that medical sourcing should be weighted more heavily because it's so much more resource-intensive to produce. But, this article's talk page is probably not the right place to pursue these sorts of general questions. Zad68 20:05, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

How many philosphers are there compared to medical doctors these days? How many serious places can you publish your own philosopical ramblings, compared to places where you can publish medical research? How many of the places publishing philosophical ramblings are approved by wikipedia? It might indeed be more costly to do medical research, but it isn't necessarily more difficult. I think a better weight system would take other things into consideration. Such as in which context the word circumcision most often is used. The word "circumcision" is probably used much more in a religious context than in a medical context. You might also give weight according to the historical use of the word "circumcision". Zionists certainly love to talk about their right to the "holy" land due to the jewish history in that geographical area.84.210.15.173 (talk) 20:23, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I see. Well, interesting question anyway. You can do your own research to answer some of your own questions by exploring journal indexes like JSTOR and PubMed. Zad68 20:37, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

84.210.15.173, your points are all valid really. There's no quantitative way to reliably determine article weight for topics that are treated substantially by multiple disciplines and the results of such database searches are merely indicative. Compared to the humanities and social sciences, medical researchers publish more frequently, they publish shorter pieces that are often highly focused, and they might publish (essentially) the same research findings in multiple locales. There's also more money available for medical research, greater commercial interest, greater government funding for research into public health issues, and the medical field itself is vast compared to most other disciplines. Having said that, database searches have greater force, as in this instance, when the results indicate that medical publications outweigh all other scholarly publications on the topic by a rather massive majority. Thus, it's easy to argue in this instance that the medical manual of style should apply. That is not to imply that a generalist encyclopedic article on circumcision should not be relatively comprehensive, without being overly long, and it should allow the reader to navigate in clear way to more detailed treatments of different aspects of circumcision. This doesn't correspond to policy but, personally, I'd be more comfortable arguing for a different organisation of this and other articles if there was an equivalent guideline to WP:MEDRS for other disciplines like sociology, history, philosophy and anthropology. If your interest is specifically in the representation of the ethics of circumcision, there are other scholarly sources that could be added to the relevant section of this article. FiachraByrne (talk) 22:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Having fully read your last comment to the end, I'm kicking myself for posting a reply. FiachraByrne (talk) 23:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I found your reply independently interesting and useful Fiachra and not at all tainted by an irrelevancy in the tail end of the comment that precipitated yours. --— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht /_Stalk 11:51, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I made this argument before, that this is clearly a case of Ignore all rules. The vast majority of circumcisions are performed for cultural/religious reasons, not medical reasons. While wikipedia's rules for giving weight to the amount of citations is a good rule of thumb, it clearly does not apply here. It's not a far fetched guess to make that people are gaming wikipedia's rules to push a pro-circumcision bias under the auspices that the medical benefits support their pre-conceived biases. This is unacceptable for a wikipedia article. Circumcision is performed for religious and cultural reasons, and as such the article should give weight to that rather than the medical purposes. ScienceApe (talk) 07:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Just like when you brought this up before, I agree with you again that it would take an application of WP:IAR to ignore the sourcing and Misplaced Pages content rules to reconfigure the article significantly, as you appear to be suggesting. In general if there's a case where it is suspected that editors are pushing an agenda, the best course of action—and the only course of action directly supported by Misplaced Pages's core content policies—is to have the article adhere strictly to the sources and a straight-forward application of those content policies, as this article does currently. Waving the WP:IAR flag to suggest that the article instead be reconstructed according to the wishes of that same group of editors suspected of pushing an agenda is the opposite of a productive thing to do. Zad68 17:34, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I understood that ScienceApe was proposing that we should supersede the sanitized picture of circumcision that you Zad, and a small coterie group of other editors maintain in this presently peculiarly skewed article. And not that we should continue to support the censorship. Why do you describe the opposite  ?--— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht /_Stalk 19:14, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

No, you did not read what I said. I said users are gaming the rules to push an agenda, meaning the rules themselves are responsible for a slanted article that does not reflect reality. You're invoking an argument from weak induction fallacy when you assert, "If there's agenda pushing, then the course of action is to follow the rules". That is NOT the case in this situation, so your generalization drawn from induction does not apply here. The vast majority of circumcisions are performed for cultural/religious reasons, not medical reasons. This is a fact in reality, and this article does not give weight to that fact in reality, it gives weight to using medical reasons to justify circumcision. You Zad68, are responsible for gaming the rules to push an agenda. ScienceApe (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah following the policies and procedures of Misplaced Pages is not "gaming the rules". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Strawman fallacy. You are intentionally misrepresenting my arguments. ScienceApe (talk) 21:12, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

That happens here a great deal ScienceApe.--— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht /_Stalk 15:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Sadly yes, the other problem is that we are trying to convince the people that are pushing an agenda, that they are pushing an agenda. It's pointless to have a rational discussion with these people. ScienceApe (talk) 17:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Sexual Sensitivity Damage Dispute

The article doesn't seem to effectively highlight the fact that the damage circumcision does to men's sexual experiences (both physical and psychological) are highly disputed. It seems to only have references to a limited set of studies, performed by the AAP (which is often discredited due to its pro-circumcision biases), with a weak statement of "doesn't seem to". There are many reports and studies that find circumcision reduces sensitivity and hinders sexual function as well as causing a number of psychological issue early and later in life. While I'm not saying the article should state that circumcision definitively does do damage, I think it is important to reference several sources and highlight the fact that many studies have shown circumcision has potentially negative side effect on sensitivity, sexual function, and psychological well being. The section seems very glossed over though it really is a component of the topic that is incredibly relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pod1989 (talk • contribs)

We use secondary sources per WP:MEDRS Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:26, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I also pointed this out, that there were clear problems with the conclusions drawn, which were even highlighted by the ones who conducted the study.

Limitations to consider with respect to this issue include the timing of IELT studies after circumcision, because studies of sexual function at 12 weeks postcircumcision by using IELT measures may not accurately reflect sexual function at a later period. Also, the self-report of circumcision status may impact study validity. This could be in an unpredictable direction, although it is most likely that the effect would be to cause an underestimation of the association. Other biases include participants’ ages and any coexisting medical conditions.

So not only does the terse statement in the wikipedia article fail to explain what sexual function is despite the original source expounding on what it meant, it also failed to outline the limitations and problems that the source identified with the experiment. This has to be represented in the article. ScienceApe (talk) 07:46, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

What has to be represented? Are you proposing on adding a line that "there is not good evidence regarding an effect on sexual function" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:24, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I stated what needs to be represented. The source identifies clear problems with the conclusion it drew. Failure to represent these problems give the article a slant. ScienceApe (talk) 21:11, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It would be more constructive Doc James if you devoted your responses to considering the highlighted ( 'bold ') text above and less to suggesting that another editor is making suggestions which he clearly is not.filibustering,stonewalling, and avoiding the issue are so 2013. --— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht /_Stalk 09:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Doc James asks a reasonable question. ScienceApe is unhappy with the representation of this study and its findings in the article. Therefore it is reasonable to query what concrete proposals they offer to improve the representation of the study. FiachraByrne (talk) 11:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Except I already said what needs to be represented in the very post he responded to. Tumadoireacht is right, he's filibustering, his question was inherently rhetorical, and not genuine. In another post he deliberately strawmanned me and misrepresented my position. These people are not honestly discussing the problems with the article. ScienceApe (talk) 17:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

That's the standard MO at this article when someone points out how biased it is. The article owners ask for concrete change proposals which they can shoot down by citing biased literature and agreeing with each other. This is unlikely to change without intervention: Most people outside the US consider circumcision to be an unsavoury, atavistic, but essentially harmless practice. As it is also a taboo subject for most of them, they are very unlikely to get involved. For many, however, circumcision is a religious obligation, an important source of income, or something which they must defend for psychological reasons because they themselves or their parents have afflicted their children with it. (Let's ignore the tiny but vocal sneaky minority of those for whom it is a sexual perversion.) This seems to be a much larger number than those who, like me, started researching the subject due to a public debate and found that in many cases it amounts to baby torture.

Of course similar situations exist at many articles, and it is still possible to fix them. I would be motivated to do this here. But even when I still had the time to do it, I couldn't. Several of the article owners seem to have far superior access to the often extremely expensive literature. This makes it almost impossible to check for selective or misleading quotations, cherry-picking of biased sources etc. Also, for the reasons I gave above the interventionist bias also seems to exist in a large segment of the literature. By agreeing to elevate that segment to 'most reliable', the article owners can easily quell all dissent.

For flying saucers or ghosts we rightly eliminate most of the specialised literature because it is fringe. For circumcision or the virgin birth of Jesus we can't do this because these aberrations are too popular and consequently the specialised literature is accepted as scholarly or even scientific regardless of its intellectual shortcomings.

I would like to offer a solution, but I can't think of one. Hans Adler 17:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Edits January 4

There has been a series of edits today that do not appear to improve the article's use of the sources, and so were reverted by myself and Jmh649. The latest edit was this, it modified "Circumcision does not appear to have a negative impact on sexual function." in the lead and in the body to state instead, According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Circumcision does not appear to have a negative impact on sexual function.(citing four sources) Despite the AAP's positive stance on the procedure, their policy states that the "health benefits (of circumcision) are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns."(citing the AAP policy statement). The issue with this proposed change are that 1) The current article content is cited to four sources, not just the AAP Technical Report, and the proposed edit misrepresents the sourcing by making it appear as only the AAP is stating this and giving undue weight to the AAP's policy statement that is not cited anywhere in the article currently; 2) It makes it appear as if the entire cost/benefit analysis being done is based on sex effects, which is not true; 3) The lack of recommendation of routine use of the procedure on neonates is not just the position of the AAP but of medical organizations worldwide, the article already covers this where it says "No major medical organization recommends either universal circumcision for all infant males" and sourced to Bolnick, calling out the AAP here only again is redundant and is undue weight on the AAP. Zad68 13:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem with the other citations in the citation bundle which you keep using as a "get out of jail free card", is that there is no free version on the net for any of those citations. I was only able to find their abstracts here, 1 2 3, and none of them mention anything about circumcision impacting sexual function. You need to provide us with a link to the full contents of those articles if you're going to keep using them as an excuse to keep the article in its present form. ScienceApe (talk) 17:17, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Please look again. The entirety of Perera 2010 is freely available online and the article provides a convenience link directly to the full text of that source. The entirety of the AAP 2012 Technical Report is freely available online and the article provides a convenience link directly to the full text of that source. For all three of the AAP 2012 Technical Report, Doyle 2010 and Perea 2010 the freely-available abstracts do indeed clearly state their conclusions regarding sexual function. The conclusions drawn by Sadeghi-Nejad 2010 have been discussed several times before and I have provided verbatim quotes from that source, they can be found in the archives. Zad68 17:34, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Provide the links please. ScienceApe (talk) 19:10, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The links are provided in the article references. FiachraByrne (talk) 19:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I can't find them, can you post them here so I can read them? ScienceApe (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

1. http://www.kinderaerzte-im-netz.de/bvkj/kinpopup/psfile/pdf/70/121126_Ste50aa5e211e6a6.pdf
2. Bronselaer, G. et al., "Male Circumcision Decreases Penile Sensitivity as Measured in a Large Cohort," BJU International (2013). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102?dopt=Abstract
3. Frisch, M., Lindholm, M., and Grønbæk, M., "Male Circumcision and Sexual Function in Men and Women: A Survey-based, Cross-sectional Study in Denmark," International Journal of Epidemiology (2011);1–15.
4. Sorrells, M. et al., “Fine-Touch Pressure Thresholds in the Adult Penis,” BJU International 99 (2007): 864-869.
5. Boyle G., Goldman, R., Svoboda, J.S., and Fernandez, E., "Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae," Journal of Health Psychology (2002): 329-343.

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