Talk:Prosection

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A fact from Prosection appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 July 2008, and was viewed approximately 0 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that whether prosections are as effective as dissections in the teaching of medicine is an unsettled aspect of medical education?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/July.

Wikipedia

Pro?

prosection is not dissection by a "professional" - that's not what the prefix pro- refers. It means that a dissection has already been completed (pro- means before) before the students look at it, as opposed to dissecting themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.137.217.220 (talk) 17:25, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are misreading the article. Prosections are done by professionals, because they don't let children prepare these, or amateurs, or butchers, or people who don't know what they are doing. Professional dissecters do this. Just like a professional printer prints a textbook, a professional metallurgist creates a scalpel, or a professional anatomist dissects the animal to create a prosection. - Tim1965 (talk) 19:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you are incorrect and I am not misreading. I am a professor at a medical school and we employ prosectors who are senior medical students and not paid and, therefore, not professionals. It is called a "prosection" because the dissection is completed prior to the junior medical students beginning their dissection. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.137.217.220 (talk) 17:17, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone can claim to be a medical professor. On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog. - Tim1965 (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Prosector: "One who prosects, or prepares the material for a demonstration before a class." Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 25th Edition, copyright 1990, Baltimore:Williams & Wilkins. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.42.233 (talk) 21:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See, the problem is, anyone can claim to be Dr. _______ from the University of Cincinnati. Some student with a grudge, a middle school kid who picked a name off the Internet, whatever. That's why Wikipedia does't rely on your or my personal opinion or personal expertise. Only cites to published, neutral, third-party sources. - Tim1965 (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you have your source - Stedman's. Now let it go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.137.217.220 (talk) 18:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me? I'm not arguing the point. I'm pointing out that rely on your supposed credentials is not appropriate. You should assume good faith in discussions on Wikipedia, not be snarly about things. - Tim1965 (talk) 19:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion began with my offering input, in good faith, based on specific expertise with the intention of making this article more scholarly. You will notice that I did not edit the article originally. I offered a suggestion in discussion hoping that, since you are the first author of the article, that you would reinvestigate the etymology, edit the article yourself, and supply the appropriate sources. The truth is, we tell our medical students not to use wiki because too often it contains erroneous information, especially related to medicine. We will be launching an in-house wiki next year devoted to medicine as part of our curriculum reform to assure that our students are getting accurate information. In short, I have little interest or time to edit Wikipedia directly but I was interested in helping you make the article more accurate.

You could have responded in 2 ways. You could have taken my input in good faith and double-checked your information, i.e., you could have verified the etymology of prosection. Instead of doing that, you decided that your interpretation of the etymology must certainly be correct, though you cited no reputable source for your interpretation that prosection is a contraction of "professional dissector" (by the way, you misspelled dissecter (sic) in your discussion above - I'm not being snarly or overly critical. Again, I'm just trying to help). When someone offers a suggestion as how to improve your article, you should take their suggestion seriously and not blow it off, as you did in your discussion starting "You are misreading..." I agree that, in the end, authors must cite sources but, again, I didn't edit the article originally and, therefore, I was not an author. The fact is that in many professions, most notably medicine, knowledge is still represented as individual expertise. When an expert offers a suggestion, in discussion, you may want to first consider that perhaps they have a point rather than immediately question their credentials. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.42.233 (talk) 11:57, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are misreading my comment at the top of this discussion. Someone else (User:129.137.217.220) assumed that the "pro" in "prosection" meant "professional" based on the claim in the article that prosections are done by professionals. I disagreed, but made no claim as to what "pro" meant. I merely said (as the article does) that prosections are created by professionals. You, like anyone, can edit Wikipedia. No one (especially not me) "owns" an article, or is responsible for updating it, adding to it, or even correcting it. No commenter should ever assume that someone who has already edited an article continues to watch it, or has the responsibility for changing it. I never questioned your credentials; I said that they simply don't matter here on Wikipedia; only citations do. I also said that there's no way of knowing you are a professor of medicine or a professor of political science or a bum off the street. Assuming I've been obsessive about the definition of prosection by telling me to "let it go" does not assume good faith on your part. - Tim1965 (talk) 12:23, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. But you must understand, you are never going to find a source that reads, "prosections are not necessarily done by a professional." That's the problem here. That prosections are dissections performed by professionals is not a falsifiable hypothesis because no one working in the anatomy field is laboring under that misconception in the first place - we employ amateurs to perform prosections all the time. No one thinks about it and certainly no one is ever going to write in a peer-reviewed journal article that "prosections are not always peformed by professionals." That makes about as much sense as expecting someone to write in a political science paper that "Joseph Stalin was not born in 1783." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.42.233 (talk) 12:58, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]