15,558
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
claim Claim from [[Stephen Moreton]], {{PhD}}, that [[Ken McGrath]] has given a previous higher estimate in a 2008 e-mail<ref>in www.circfacts.org/sensitivity</ref> is refused by [[Ken McGrath]] as not being by him.<ref>a.) according to McGrath’s e-mail from 18.09.2017 to the author: “… the message to which he refers was from another of the colleagues who inflated the figure.” b.) In an e-mail from 27.09.2017 to the author [[Ken McGrath|McGrath]] writes: “I have no idea where the ’70,000’ number comes from. It is even more impossible, absurd even, than the 20,000 estimate. It is probably representative of the inflation of the number brought on by wishfull wishful thinking and should be ignored.”</ref>
→„>1000<10,000“: Delete dead link.
[[Ken McGrath]], New Zealand senior lecturer in pathology and anatomist (now retired), estimated the number of nerve endings in the prepuce, Summer 1998:
{{Citation
| Text=I did a quick back-of-the-envelope guesstimate based on a fingertip and arrived at an orders of magnitude figure of >1000<10000 … this figure quickly inflated, first to >10,000 and then to >20,000; neither of these is anywhere near the truth, because they are an order of magnitude too high. …” <ref>McGrath’s e-mail from 5.7.2013 quoted in www.circfacts.org/sensitivity (emphasis from author)</ref>,<ref>So the numbers „70,000+“ and „between 80,000 and 100,000” are found on the internet, see: http://www.savingsons.org/2009/10/ ; https://www.vice.com/de_ch/article/7bm5gx/ein-mann-und-seine-vorhaut
many more by searching on internet.</ref>
| Author=[[Ken McGrath]]
}}
In '''2017''', [[Ken McGrath]] confirms his estimate from 1998<ref>McGrath’s statement in a contribution to a yet unpublished book (emphasis from author), made available to the author by forwarded email from L.R. Watson to [[Ulf Dunkel]] on May 31, 2017.</ref>:
}}
And in a further actual statement about the 20,000 figure [[Ken McGrath|McGrath]] writes:
{{Citation
| Text=[…] it is impossible for the [[foreskin]] to support such a huge number: there is not enough surface area to mount so many receptors (they would nearly outnumber the epithelial cells!) and the known number of axons ranging into the prepuce could not connect to that number. Furthermore, such a vast number is totally unnecessary to achieve the known high sensitivity of the prepuce.
In a further e-mail from 19.09.2017 to the author [[Ken McGrath]] writes about his estimate:
{{Citation
| Text=I made my estimate at the Symposium held in Oxford UK, Summer 1998. … I made my informal ‘back of the envelope’ estimation in response to a question during discussion outside the meeting. … Paul Fleiss did not differentiate between the types [of nerve endings] either and simply took Bazett's total number for his estimate.
| Author=[[Ken McGrath]]
}}
=== A purely quantitative consideration for plausibility speaking against “20,000 nerve endings” in the [[foreskin]] ===