Talk:Non-cellular life

Prions are smaller than viroids

"Viroids are the smallest infectious pathogens known to biologists". This statement in the entry is not factually correct. 2600:1009:B164:FC49:E973:18F3:B83D:C21D (talk) 23:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

As I see, this sentence has been remoed meanwhile. Nevertheless prions should be included, details can be found in the table provided at Kingdom (biology)#Comparison of top level classification. Ernsts (talk) 08:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Theoretical/opinion-based article presented as factual - rampant problems and not scientifically grounded

The entire basis of this article, to include the validity of its current title, is not accepted by the majority of the scientific community. This is even stated in one of the page's main sources, which directly states that it is ignoring academic discussion of the matter, runs contrary to commonly-accepted opinion, and is generally the personal opinion of its sole author (Trifonov, 2012).

I have not analyzed the sources in detail, but those I did look at were of extremely poor quality. Single authors, anthropological preaching about what is fundamentally a scientific subject, etc. One even appears to now redirect to some kind of scam website?

Given that the cell theory of life is accepted by the large majority of experts, the fundamental nature of this article is rejected by most scientific sources - ergo, most do not agree that there can be any non-cellular life. In this regard, I propose page deletion if no credible academic sources can be found to substantiate this page's continued existence (per reason 7 of the Deletion policy). Not opinion articles, not single scientists making statements, an actual credible academic resource or organization that supports this page.

If not deletion, massive rewrite will be necessary. Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 04:09, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed NomzEditingWikis (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a biologist. I'm a science fiction author, reading about this as background research for a book. But here's the problem with deleting the page.

At least for non-biologists, when talking about life in total, we need a classification for things like viruses. If one pops up to the page about Domain (biology), there is a clear division between cellular life and "everything else". There absolutely needs to be a page to cover "everything else". We can't ignore viruses when talking about life, even if it's a page that starts out by saying, "biologists do not consider any non-cellular arrangement such as viruses 'life'" and then explain why not.

If the page needs a rewrite or a replacement, and if you're qualified to start it -- then start it. Find better sources. Add an introductory paragraph talking about how viruses aren't consider life, but acknowledge any conflict. This is wikipedia -- we can all contribute. Jplflyer (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Trifonov 2012 is only cited once on this page. This page has existed since 2006, and the Trifonov paper was added in 2017 in this edit, and there's a decent amount of text left from before. So, I don't agree that Trifonov's opinion dominates.

I haven't checked all the other references, but on a cursory view they don't seem outright awful (aside from a couple). Articles from Nature and Science are in there; not that those journals have never made mistakes, but the articles don't deserve to be summarily dismissed. You may be applying a standard that's impossible to meet. This isn't medicine, this is a fairly niche biology topic that, coming down to the definition of "life", is more philosophical than experimental.

Are any of the cited articles from predatory journals or otherwise unusable sources? Apocheir (talk) 23:42, 15 September 2024 (UTC)