Talk:Sexual effects of circumcision

message: I've reverted the following addition, which was added to the end of the paragraph in the 'foreskin sensitivity' section beginning "Boyle et al. (2002) argued that...":
*"Hammond's survey (1999) of several hundred men documenting long-term physical, emotional, and sexual harm from infant circumcision supports this conclusion."
There are several problems with this addition:
*First, it's original research.  Hammond did not refer to Boyle et al; indeed his paper was published several years before.  So the claim that it "supports this conclusion" is a new hypothesis.
*Second, it misrepresents the source.  A certain fraction of the men in Hammond's paper reported sexual problems, but since the survey did not include a control group for comparison, it would be impossible to establish correlation with circumcision, let alone causation.  At best one would have to say that the men attributed these problems to their circumcision (or that Hammond did).  Furthermore, care would have to be taken to avoid giving the impression that the survey is more representative than it may be.  Hammond himself expressed concern about this; others have described it as an "inherently biased sample". Jakew (talk) 15:58, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hammond 

message: I find this article to be very confusing. The introduction is concise and to the point at least: there no apparent consensus on the issues. What then follows is a few good sections on sensitivy and the article thereupon degenerates into a list of research. Why were these particular articles cited? If these are really known to be representative, then there should be a more applicable review article to cite and paraphrase, and if they are not known to be representative then this particular page may represent an original and inconclusive meta-analysis, which should be frowned upon.
There is then the problem of statistical significance: only the probability of type 1 errors (the p-value) is represented. But if one wants to support the null hypothesis, then the probability of type 2 errors is the only important measure of significance (in the English sense of the word not the specialized statistical sense). With that in mind, the articles which do not reject the null hypothesis are possibly given undue weight, there is no way to know without the power being represented. Again, why were these articles selected? Then there is the Richters and Fink articles, which reject the null hypothesis but are not statistically significant; so why is it significant for this article?
It is difficult to tell if this list of articles represent an original research meta-analysis, a POV cherry picking, or merely a haphazard NPOV collection of the various issues collected through some unknown means. The overemphasis on statistical significance and the ignorance of statistical power gives undue weight to the null hypothesis for any given issue; this is undoubtedly POV although which point of view depends on the particular issue. The easiest remedy would be to delete from the end of the sensitivity section down, but that is a bit excessive especially since these articles at the very least highlight the various issues and the lack of consensus. An involved fix would be to add the statistical power, eliminate studies with redundant findings in favor of reviews and tie the studies together into some coherent paragraphs.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.240.68.68 (talk) 14:31, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup needed? 

message: Richters (2006) in the table under "Penile Sensation" is labeled as finding penile sensation "Better in circumcised males" but the abstract says "This study provides no evidence about the effects on sexual sensitivity."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.111.221.142 (talk) 00:16, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richters (2006) 

message: In the discussion Talk:Medical analysis of circumcision#Why should this article exist? we reviewed whether having that separate article was worthwhile.  After looking at it we determined it was a dumping ground for bad sources and ended up redirecting it back to the main article.  I think the same is true for this article.  It's all primary sources of wildly varying quality and age, with no criteria for inclusion, and the article tries to go as far in doing its own meta-analysis of the primary sources without actually doing so, and we should not be doing that.  Nor should be we making an article that encourages the reader to do their own meta-analysis of the sources whichever editors happened to see fit to include (or not).  While I was updating Circumcision#Sexual_effects I found a number of good-quality, up-to-date reliable secondary sources that cover this topic.  I see no value in keeping this article around.  Anybody agree and willing to redirect this one to Circumcision like we did Medical analysis of circumcision?  Zad68 17:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. This is an encyclopedia, and encyclopedias are tertiary sources. Biosthmors (talk) 17:41, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

text: Agree. —MistyMorn (talk) 17:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's 3 of us, and there's also agreement from a Mystery Editor, so I'll go ahead and redirect.  Zad68 17:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this page needed anymore?  It should be redirected to [[Circumcision]]