Talk:Ectoplasm (paranormal)

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Ectoplasm pictures[edit]

Would it be at all possible to find a picture of ectoplasm that doesn't look like a catfish wearing a tophat? Thanks.

I have a picture of ectoplasm I took Christmas morning, when I was taking pictures of my tree.Mack49 18:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how to copy my picture to this.

Maybe get a picture of a ecto-ghost from Danny Phantom.

Does it have to be real ectoplasm? We could simulate it in a self generated image so long as we say what that it is a simulation. All the ectoplasm that I've seen in documentaries etc looks like thick wallpaper pastes so it shouldn't be too hard.

Alternatively, we could just take a screengrab of ectoplasm in popular fiction. That scene where Peter is slimed in the hotel would do.

perfectblue 06:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone HAVE any real ectoplasm? In a container of some kind? There are oodles of scientists who'd love to have it to examine. And oodles of scientists who'll believe in it's physical existence just as soon as someone provides a verifiable sample of the stuff!

EdgarCarpenter 19:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Ectoplasminpopularfiction.jpg[edit]

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BetacommandBot 08:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh[edit]

This article seems crap to me. Unsupported claims about a pseudo-scientific "substance" that is supported by a screenie from Ghostbusters. Wow.

I put it on my lengthening list; perhaps I'll get around to fixing this up if nobody else does. (And yes, I realize ectoplasm is indeed a technical term, but this article doesn't seem to.) Eaglizard 21:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did I just clean up the claims you're talking about? ——Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 03:15, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, yes, quite so. I see that I happened to catch it in-between times. Glad somebody's paying attention to it. ;) Being here anyways, I wound up copy-editing the crap out of it, hope I wasn't too heavy-handed. Eaglizard 04:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC) Oh, I also merged the "Skepticism" section's one sentence into the second paragraph, where it fits better. The article needs more fleshing out, tho. It's kinda bare, now, I'm afraid. :( Eaglizard 04:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Paranormal articles often need a heavy hand. Like you say, it needs fleshing out, as we're using the lead for stuff not covered in the article. ——Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 04:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blithe Spirit[edit]

Is ectoplasm involved in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit? I think not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.23.79 (talk) 00:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Photo[edit]

...cannot have any bearing whatsoever on the subject. None of the 'spirit photographers' have ever claimed ectoplasm to be one way or another involved in their 'art'. Any of these, though would do. -- Evermore2 (talk) 09:15, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Profound influence on pop culture?[edit]

Could this phenomenon be the very reason that the definitive ghost is a white sheet w/holes for eyes and a mouth? Sounds worth mentioning. AngusCA (talk) 20:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source?[edit]

The article says the word ectoplasm was coined by Charles Richet, citing a website that says the word was coined by Charles Richet. No source is given.

The OED gives the following as its first use:

1883 J. E. Ady in Knowl. 15 June 355/2 Its [Amœba's] jelly-like body becomes faintly parcelled out into an outer firm (ectoplasm) and an inner soft (endoplasm) layer.

The OED gives the first use in parapsychology as:

a1901 F. W. H. Myers Human Personality (1903) II. 548 In describing..imperfectly aggregated ectoplasms we have already touched on the next class, that of quasi-organic detached ectoplasms.

Maybe Richet was the first to use it in parapsychology, but somebody needs to find a source for that. Otherwise the article needs to be altered.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Endoplasm666 (talk • contribs) 14:36, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

   Charles Richet
--Jerzy•t 11:02, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gurney/Innes(/Peirce)[edit]

   I cauterized a sentence with a few vague words, in place of

"could only point to three cases that met Innes's requirements, one of which later turned out to be fraud".[1][2]
[Jerzy shows only the directly involved refs:]
  1. ^ Gurney, Edmund. (1887). Letters on Phantasms: A Reply. Nineteenth Century 22: 522-533.
  2. ^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. (2000). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: 1857-1866. Peirce Edition Project. p. 426. ISBN 0-253-37201-1 "Innes Attack proved the most devastating. In many of his cases Gurney had referred to corroborating evidence from contemporary documents, such as postmarked letters. Innes notes that there was no indication in the book that such letters were received and examined by Gurney and his assistants. In his reply to Innes, Gurney could only point to three cases that met Innes's requirements, one of which later turned out to be a fraud."

pretty much bcz my draft tags

({{when|date=September 2016|reason=the direct quote makes claims, perhaps by .... }}
and
{{whose?|i.e.= to whom was the fraud attributed? Gurney? someone who Gurney was hoodwinked by?|date=September 2016}})

wouldn't have gone to the heart of the problem.    I suggest our colleague was uncomfortable with the scholarly apparatus, and set our readers an unfair test of their ability to hold clear the distinction between Wikipedia's voice and that of CS Pierce, by quoting him directly in both the text and the notes. I don't rule out the possibility of a remedy that would split the notes between source citations, and commentary on the body text, but my edit is a try at meeting the need with the simpler structure that in most articles suffices.
--Jerzy•t 10:25, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Requested move 17 May 2018[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. This article receives more page views than others with the name and appears to have encyclopedic value beyond recent references in pop culture. However, in this discussion there is no agreement that the paranormal usage meets the "greater long-term significance" criterion that might make it a primary topic over other entries on the disambiguation page. Dekimasuよ! 00:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

– The clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC by pageviews. The cell biology pages endoplasm and ectoplasm (cell biology) could probably be merged into cytoplasm as sections. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 12:17, 17 May 2018 (UTC) --Relisted.  Painius  put'r there  18:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Relist comment. Members of associated WikiProjects have been notified of this requested move.  Painius  put'r there  19:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, per nom, per "Who you gonna call?", and common and most familiar name. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:30, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - OP has only asserted page views evidence, not provided it. To provide evidence of long-term significance of the scientific concept, here is a Google Ngram showing the scientific use of this phrase was profoundly more common throughout history. Even if the paranormal subject has higher views, the other is a scientific topic with long-term significance, and so I see this as a WP:NOPRIMARY situation. -- Netoholic @ 00:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Anyone can see the page views using the page information button on the side. It's not rocket science to find the page views for yourself if you doubt that I am telling the truth. Also, I don't see how ghosts don't have long term significance. AFAIK, notability is not just about how "scientific" a topic is.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 08:11, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Zxcvbnm, for future reference, you can call up page view comparisons here, also linked at WP:STATTOOL. You are correct about the page views.--Cúchullain t/c 17:16, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Sad but true; the pop culture/paranormal notability of the term has overshadowed its use in a biological context. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:32, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. This topic gets 93.3% of the page views and has substantial historical importance in both spiritualist and pop culture milieus.--Cúchullain t/c 17:16, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:20, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:17, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose choosing made-up meaning as primary over real-world meaning. Dicklyon (talk) 01:50, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Cell ectoplasm is only called that because we as humans gave it a name. Classifying things as "made-up" versus "real world" on Wikipedia is pointless, because everything is technically "made up" by people. Now, notability is a more concrete criterion. Most people are barely aware that cells have an ectoplasm, even in biology class it's usually just taught under the more broad term of the cytoplasm. Many people, however, know of the word as it applies to ghostly "matter".ZXCVBNM (TALK) 03:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. If there's a primary topic it would be cell ectoplasm, because of its overwhelming long-term significance. The 20th-century dabbling in pseudo-witchcraft (well, the term was first applied to the paranormal in 1894 according to our article) will fade into insignificance in time, while biology will remain significant. Andrewa (talk) 23:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning oppose. Both terms have been in use for their respective purposes since the latter half of the nineteenth century; both are of some importance to specific communities of interest. The natural history topic is of greater long-term encyclopedic importance. I don't see a "primary" topic between them. bd2412 T 00:12, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Any attempt to select one of these relatively obscure topics over the other as WP:PTOPIC is a guarantee that readers will wind up reading the wrong article. 'Nuff said.
"PTOPIC by pageviews" is a really bad argument. That number includes readers who were looking for something else. Narky Blert (talk) 00:54, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The current names and links are sufficient to enable anyone to find what they want, and the biological name is of very long standing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:29, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. My knee jerk reaction was to oppose since I've heard of the cell biology meaning but not the paranormal meaning, but a look at the page views for the four "Ectoplasm" pages over the last few years shows that Ectoplasm (paranormal) is viewed much more frequently than the other pages (Ectoplasm (cell biology), Ectoplasm (radio show), and Ectoplasm) combined. This suggests it is indeed the primary topic for ectoplasm per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Others like me who were skeptical, may be interested to see that if you Google "Ectoplasm" the first few zillion search results all refer to the paranormal topic, not to the cell biology topic. I don't think this is a case where the "long-term significance" and "educational value" of Ectoplasm (cell biology) should trump the fact that our readers seem much more interested in Ectoplasm (paranormal). Happy editing. Ajpolino (talk) 23:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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