The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Calling published medical journal articles "self-published primary sources" is a baffling misunderstanding of both "self-published" and "primary sources". The Lancet and Nature could not be called "self-published' by any reasonable standard. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib)19:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, accidentally used the wrong adjective. Fixed now with respect to the first, but a scientific research reports and position papers are indeed primary. Agricolae (talk) 20:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - All of the references are by the subject of the article and it is doubtful that significant RS can be found to source the statements in place of those (non-)refs. --mikeutalk18:32, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Stating "no evidence of notability" ignores both the evidence provided by PropelAssisting and policies for determining notability. This nomination appears to be more about providing a quick and facile response to Fringe concerns instead of actually examining notability. Upon examination, this subject passes WP:NACADEMIC #1 The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. This is a researcher published in some of the most prestigious medical journals including Nature, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and more. The article in Nature has been cited twice, articles in Lancet have been cited twice, their New England Journal of Medicine article has been cited fifteen times, etc. These are independent reliable sources for Hyman's research having significant impact. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib)19:14, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's my understanding that citation counts of two and fifteen are not considered high enough to satisfy WP:NACADEMIC #C1. The rule of thumb that I have heard in AfDs on academics is multiple papers with >100 citations each. Granted that was usually in reference to contemporary academics, and I am not sure how to evaluate NPROF C1 for someone who was active prior to the internet age, when many papers may not have been catalogued by online search engines (which is why I asked for input at FTN before jumping immediately to an AfD). Spicy (talk) 19:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Almost all of Hyman's pre-fringe research was published in the 50's 60's and 70's. Looking for >100 citation counts for a researcher active in this time period is greatly anachronistic. The pre-internet and poor cataloging issues you mention are real but there were also far, far, fewer journals at that time to publish in. A 1966 article in Nature is significant by its merely being published at that time period but is highly unlikely to be scooped up in a literature search by authors of post-1990 papers where the cataloging is much more complete and the number of journal articles published each year has comparatively skyrocketed. The >100 citations may be often applied at AfD but appears in no policy or guideline and Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Citation_metrics contains specific caveats for older articles. I posited those citations as a minimum reflection of impact on other researchers. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib)19:48, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The citation record in GoogleScholar is slightly better than the above discussion indicates, but it is still rather low, with the h-index of about 9. Certainly far below of what would be needed to justify satidsfying WP:PROF#C1 based on citability of his work, even taking into account when most of his papers were published. Eggishorn is correct that the references cited in the article are not self-published. But they are all (every single one of the 22 references currently cited in the article) to the publications of the subject himself. Thus they are not independent sources and they cannot be used for justifying his notability. I am not seeing anything else that would justify passing WP:PROF or WP:BIO on other grounds. The article is written in a promotional tone, and reads like a tribute by a close colleague or a family member rather than a neutral third party. The biographical and personal info given in the article is currently completely unsorced and presents WP:V problems as well. Nsk92 (talk) 20:01, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I did not quite follow the above discussion regarding the FRINGE issues, as the article doesn't mention this aspect explicitly (or perhaps as a non-expert I am unable to recognize it). If there is a significant WP:FRINGE aspect to the subject's work , I would upgrade my opinion to 'strong delete', since WP:PROF requires a higher scrutiny in such cases. There are several places in WP:PROF where it explicitly mentions that certain particular aspects that usually count towards academic notability, do not count in WP:FRINGE cases. I would, in fact, expect that most notable WP:FRINGE researchers should have to qualify for notability under WP:GNG/WP:BIO rathere than WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 20:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fails WP:PROF even allowing for citation counts probably being generally lower in the past. (The point of WP:PROF is that we need to be able to write about academics who have demonstrable influence even when biographical coverage is spotty, but there still has to be demonstrable influence.) As written, the article is one long failure of WP:MEDRS, which requires secondary or tertiary sources that evaluate the claims made in primary ones. The assertions about his solving Gulf War syndrome are pure WP:FRINGE. The "systemic coccal disease" material is also extremely dubious. (The closest thing I can find to a genuinely independent, third-party evaluation is a brief comment by Sartin (2000), which lists it among proposed explanations for GWS that remain hypothetical and have not been demonstrated in appropriate test populations using standard microbiological techniques. Most mentions of it are by G. L. and N. L. Nicolson, who coauthored with Hyman and shouldn't be considered independent experts.) XOR'easter (talk) 21:17, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
9 paras in "Congress Explores Scientific Fringe". Science. Vol. 291, no. 5505. February 2, 2001. p. 814. also 1 para in "Gulf War Illness: The Battle Continues" same page
"Gulf War Syndrome Research Boosted". Science News. October 15, 1994.
Wow, nice finds. I had done a cursory search earlier and only turned up the Who's Who/Men and Women of Science entries, which I agree are pretty useless. The Science Mag and CNN articles seem decent, although I am not sure if they're enough on their own since they address only one aspect of his career. If there are a couple more popular press articles like those there may be an argument for meeting GNG, even if NPROF is not met - and we will have some material to replace the primary sources with. I'll try to see if there's anything on Newspapers.com/Gale/Proquest tomorrow. Spicy (talk)
Absolutely not. In this case whether or not one can make an argiment thatb the subject satisfies WP:GNG is a relatively minor consideration compared to other more important ones. The article, as it stands now, is written completely from the pro-Hyman's fringe theory point of view and actively promotes it. The existence of the page, in this form, is actively harmful, and I have more than half the mind to blank it right now, before waiting for the AfD to end, basically on WP:IAR grounds and per WP:FRINGE. If an article about Hyman is kept, or if a new article about his Gulf War Syndrome fringe theory were to be written instead, it would have to be written completely from scratch, from the first stence. There's nothing in this page that's usable and worth keeping. If somebody really wants to develop an article of this kind, they should probably work on it in user or draft space first, given the tricky nature of the subject matter. But this turkey here has got to go, GNG or not. Nsk92 (talk) 00:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the article (if it is kept) needs to be rewritten from scratch (if not merged into one about the Gulf War bacteria theory), that it needs to be done carefully, and that WP:TNT might apply. And I am concerned that the sources found so far are along the lines of "hey check out this guy's wacky idea" with little analysis on how the idea actually turned out (although the Science Mag article is somewhat critical of it). But it's at least helpful to know that secondary sources exist. Spicy (talk) 00:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, interesting. Based on the last few links above, it may be that the fringe theory that Hyman was propagating (that bacteria were causing the Gulf War Syndrome) is actually notable. If that's so, there seems to be a WP:BIO1E situation appliable to Hyman himself, and an article about the fringe theory (which had some other advocates as well) would be more appropriate. I still think that this bio article about Hyman should be deleted, with prejudice. There is essentially nothing in this article that is salvageable and could be used in potential article about his fringe theory. That article would have to be written completely from scratch. We should also be extremely careful in not allowing Wikipedia to be used as a platform for spreading and propagating medical misinformation and quakery. Nsk92 (talk) 00:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am so tempted to vote keep based on the $4.3 more than five million Bob Livingston and the rest of Congress gave him, but a few mil is hardly notable among trillions. I think fringe and marginal articles like this should go straight to draft space. If someone cares enough to write an article based on the neutral sources then all well and good, if not then it's still all good. fiveby(zero) 01:02, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Good job, fiveby, and thanks - I totally missed the Science and CNN cites. Those articles seem to resolve my issue with WP:FRIND, but the WP:MEDRS and WP:PROF concerns remain substantial. The current BLP, which reads like a WP:PROMO list of the subject's primary work, doesn't merit inclusion in an encyclopedia. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 00:43, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I looked for sources on the Internet Archive, Gale, ProQuest and Newspapers.com. There is a lot of coverage of his Gulf War theory, e.g. [2],[3], [4], etc. And there's a staff obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: [5] However I am concerned that a) the coverage is largely surrounding WP:ONEEVENT and b) most of the articles just repeat his claims uncritically. Per WP:FRINGEBLP (this isn't a BLP, but the same concerns apply): Caution should be exercised when evaluating whether there are enough sources available to write a neutral biography that neither unduly promotes nor denigrates the subject. Even if there is enough coverage to meet GNG I do not think that we have the serious critical sourcing needed to properly address his fringe claims, which, it seems, are all he is really notable for. (The paper from Southern & Patel linked above isn't usable since it's primary research and fails WP:MEDRS). I don't buy the NPROF argument, plenty of people who published in the 60s and 70s have impressive citation counts, see [6] for example. Spicy (talk) 12:59, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I'm thinking about suitable redirect targets. Would it make sense to add a subsubheading/paragraph "Unknown bacteria" to the "Less likely causes" subheading of Gulf War syndrome? The fringe theory was taken seriously enough to get some substantial (pork barrel) funding. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 13:24, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And $5 million sounds like a sizable amount of money, but it isn't really, not in this context. Your typical research grant for a small research team studying a seemingly esoteric aspect of gene regulation (say the primary, 1 post doc, 2 grad students, a lab tech), running over 5 years, when one includes salaries and benefits, biomedical supplies, live-animal care and maintenance costs, reagents and equipment, overhead, and the built-in annual cost increases, could run up to half that, depending on what your salary and the study's particular expenses needs are. If he was going to be hiring more, better paid, clinical people, and had a lot of costly clinical lab testing, genomics or large-animal live-animal studies in the proposal, to me $5 doesn't look all that 'substantial'. And this is in a military funding background where DARPA throws money around on fringe all the time, just in case they 'win the lottery' with one of them (or sometimes just on 'shiny pennies'). I am just warning not to let that price tag give you sticker shock: it isn't so sizable that it self-evidently overcomes WP:UNDUE and or WP:PROPORTION, such that we need to find a place to put it. Agricolae (talk) 14:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's really the only notable issue so far, the criticism in Science and Science News of Congress micro-managing research and giving money for unproven treatment to a person in your district. Not enough for a bio and not enough for Gulf War syndrome unless that article were expanded. Russ Woodroofe it would be undue per WP:FRINGE for it to go in even the "Less likely causes" section. fiveby(zero) 15:45, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Congressional micro-managing/pork-barreling, yet again, gets reported on all the time, so that diminished the noteworthy nature of any single specific instance. Agricolae (talk) 16:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, meh. The WP:DUE concerns make sense to me. One could add a "Fringe theories" subsubsection at the bottom of the Causes section of Gulf War syndrome, but after looking, I think it's still WP:UNDUE (though a little better). It looks like between this stuff and Multiple chemical sensitivity there might be enough for Fringe theories on Gulf War syndrome, but that would be more trouble to write than just adding a paragraph to an existing article. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Draft I read above that we could possibly put the article back in draft. If that is possible, I would like the opportunity to conduct more research to find more corroborating articles and re-write in more neutral verbiage. There is more research that is not listed in the current article. Being new to wikipedia and not fully understanding all of the laws of the site, I have been able to understand better what it is you are looking for based on your reviews of the article. Is anyone apposed to a revision and if not how do I go about putting it into draft space? PropelAssisting (talk) 20:28, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, or redirect if a suitable target can be found. While it is possible that the subject is very marginally notable, the current article vastly overstates what he is done, and is undersourced and/or primary-sourced. WP:TNT applies. I don't strenuously object refunding to user space of the WP:SPA originator, but I tend to think that there is so little that is usable there right now that it would be better to just start over. PropelAssisting, if you make another attempt at this article, then essentially every sentence should be supported by citation to an reliable independent source. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:28, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I wish the sources existed for this, because the claims made could make him notable, but primary sources do not an article make. Natureium (talk) 20:45, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.