Allart,
I'm sorry you've had a rough first landing in Wikipedia. Your comments on the pituitary gland are obviously correct, and it must be quite frustrating to have them reverted.
The reason your edits keep getting changed back isn't because we're all chumps (although you may think that by now!) but because Wikipedia has, nowadays, reasonably strict policies on sourcing: additions of content should be verified by a reference to a proper (usually secondary or tertiary) source. However, this wasn't always the case, so there's plenty of nonsense floating around from when we weren't so strict, and there are also plenty of edits that don't comply with that which slip by because no one was looking. You just happened to edit an article where people were looking, but where no one had removed the old, misleading cruft.
I know Tortora describes and distinguishes between the secretion of releasing and inhibiting hormones by the hypothalamus into the hypophyseal portal system and the movement of the posterior hypophyseal hormones down the axon projections from the hypothalamus. I can check at work tomorrow and find the page numbers, and that should provide sufficient verification for the material you've added.
Please don't be discouraged. I appreciate your taking the time to fix our A&P content, which is of uneven quality to say the least, and no one will trouble you further about your changes to pituitary gland once we find a source. If you run into any trouble with your edits, please drop me a line at my talk page. I'm afraid my experience of teaching A&P is much more limited than yours, but I've been around here long enough to have a pretty good handle on Wikipedia protocol and how to get things done. This website desperately needs actual subject matter experts like you, and I'd like to do what I can to help you settle in. Choess (talk) 23:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
- Likewise, I realise that your edits to "Pituitary gland" are accurate. However we have strict rules about verifiability and referencing on Wikipedia. Take it slowly and don't be discouraged. Best wishes and welcome to Wikipedia. :-) Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Allart's Response: Thank you, the thought occurred to me that there are well meaning, but inexperienced contributors. I imagine that the writer was simply filling a void, but am surprised that this description wasn't caught and repaired sooner. I just wish the responses came from people in the field and not just a train of 'visitors'. I really appreciate the good pages in Wiki,as do my students, and some pages are absolutely amazing, but bad pages make for bad reputation, and the pituitary is important. It would be also be important in Wiki, I expect, to have a solid foundation upon which contributors can build. I can't update the refs yet, since i have a project to finish. Here are a couple that should cover the bases.
References: The portal system, anterior and posterior pathways, etc - any highschool AP or college textbook: a. Saladin, Kenneth. Anatomy and Physiology: Unity of Form and Function, Fifth Edition, 2010. Chapter 17, page 643, McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, NY
Pituitary gland development (also in more advanced texts): b. Hidetoshi Ikeda, Jiro Suzuki, Nobuaki Sasano and Hiroshi Niizuma. The development and morphogenesis of the human pituitary gland. Anatomy and Embryology. Volume 178, Number 4 (1988), 327-336
Breakage of the infundibulum: Primary source is personal observation and i can back that up with real photos for verification - that pituitary is firmly trapped in the saddle and breaks off as the brain is lifted. Where I photograph, all the cadavers are fresh, so this would not be an artifact of preservation. Much as I feel my images should be shared, i still have to make a living as an adjunct. I should imagine that not referencing this should not to be such an issue. There are many things in biomedical science that are long known, described long ago, taken for granted, and would not warrant referencing.