Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Dessler

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.

The result was keep. Sandstein (talk) 17:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Andrew Dessler

Andrew Dessler (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (View log)

Not notable professor. Fails professor notability guideline Wikipedia:Notability (academics) on all line items. He's a professor with some scientific publications but this isn't anything distinguishing from the thousands of other professors. He is not significantly more notable than the average professorDHeyward 03:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep What rock are you living under? This chap is plenty notable, with numerous significant publications; moreover he is cited by loads of others. Decoratrix 04:02, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• The only place I've seen him is on blogs and this bio. His article doesn't assert any notability that meets the guideline. I'd gladly remove it if substantial information is presented. But this has been here for a month with no assertions of notability beyond what I'd expect for an associate professor and publications. Please respond with notability as it relates to Wikipedia:Notability (academics). —Preceding unsigned comment added by DHeyward (talk • contribs) 04:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Meets several WP notability criteria, including (i) collective works are significant; (ii) publication of a significant work on politics of climate change; (iii) regarded by peers as key figure (eg appointment to be keynote speaker at EPA conference). In addition his appointment to White House advisory post in the year 2000 sets him apart from the "average" professor. Decoratrix 05:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

  The publication list in the article is average for a tenured professor. The EPA keynote speaker is not in his bio on Wikipeida or on his faculty bio page. What conference was it? What other significant researchers presented or attended? Was it a conference Keynot or a session Keynote? Not sure why he wouldn't list it if it was that significant. He was a Senior Policy Analyst in 2000 for the white house. I don't believe this a particularly significant position in the administration (i.e. Senate confirmation) but I haven't seen much on it. There are currently 18 policy analysts in that office. The director is probably notable. Maybe even the deputy director. But policy analysts - probably not. As for his book, it was very informative but also not particularly notable. For example, it's not a widely used textbook or a bestseller. --DHeyward 06:28, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete: Plenty of sources, unfortunately they are print sources. Putting that aside, I don't see any notability within the main context of the article. - Rjd0060 05:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

  No reason to discriminate against print sources. Last time I checked they are as valid or better than on line sources. See also comments on notability above. Decoratrix 05:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not. See the now-bolded statement in my comment. - Rjd0060 05:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Since the article was listed for AfD, there have been a number of new sources (and new article text} indicating the breadth of note and the clear satisfaction of notability criteria. Decoratrix 06:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Delete not notable.--MONGO 06:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Key comment Only adverse comments below this line should be seriously considered, since the article has been significantly expanded with eight new line notes of reference since the AfD listing. Notability is now clear and documented. Decoratrix 16:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

You cannot void the comments here just because there have been new additions. If you feel like canvassing on the users talk page to inform them there have been changes, you can. I still say delete based on the changes. - Rjd0060 16:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as nominator. Not notable. Nothing makes him standout from the average professor. --DHeyward 03:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC) struck bolding - the nomination is your opinion unless/until the nomination is retracted. GRBerry 20:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Pete.Hurd 19:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Web of Science gives a grand total of 759 papers that cite Dessler. His h-index is 20. In itself, these figures are only borderline, although I admit that I don't really have comparative data for scientists in his field. It is not clear what "ecitor for the American Geophysical Union" means. If he edited a notable journal, that might tip the balance. Associate Editor or Keynote speaker don't really pull it off, there are 13 in a dozen of those. --Crusio 00:32, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep It shouldnt really be analyzed by total number of citations, or h-index, both of which under-emphasize possible very important individual papers., Looking in more detail in WoS, His most cited 5 papers have been cited 65, 62, 60, 60, 60 times respectively. High, but not quite decisive. Looking at the journals he publishes in, almost all his work is in Journal of Geophysical Research and Geophysics Research Letters, the two highest ranking journals in geophysics. I'd consider that a tie-breaker. I would also think Texas A & M did also when they appointed him to full professor. The Dept of Atmospheric Sciences there knows the standards in its own subject better than we, who can only guess at it. DGG (talk) 03:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

  I've never used WoS as I don't seem to have access so this is just a question based on how this was presented here. Forgive me if I am misunderstanding the data being presnted. I take it the number 65, 61, etc are the number of times his work has been cited by others in their own papers. And his papers were in the premier journal in his field? It's prestigious to be accepted to be sure, but wouldn't publication of significant work in that journal invite citation? Meaning that a middling reference number after being seen by practically every researcher in the field would seem to tip the other way in terms of acceptance. For example, being referenced 60 times after publishing in the "Journal of a Small Town in Iowa" would be quite a bit more impressive than being referenced 60 times after bing in "Nature" especially if those 60 other articles are in established journals. I'd be more inclined to say he is well known within his field based on his publications in JGR but I am not sure how to use the citation numbers as a tie-breaker for general notability? What's good or bad?

  Keep Good point, DGG, and good question, anonymous. I think good or bad is relative here, DGG is right, we have to judge Dessler relative to his field (citation counts vary widely among different fields). I looked up Dessler's most cited paper (cited by 65 other papers), published in GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS in 2000. I searched in WoS for all papers published in that year in that particular journal. There are 1040 "hits", Dessler's article ranks 22nd. The journal has an impact factor of about 2.5 (averaging over several years), ranking it 10th out of 131 journals in this particular field. So DGG is right, this is a prestigious journal in this field and Dessler's article was one of the highest-cited ones in 2000. This is the only article that I looked in further detail, but given that this is a field with relatively low citation counts (compared to, e.g., neuroscience), the citation counts given by DGG are fairly impressive (one of the articles with 60 was only published in 2001). This also puts the h-index of 20 into more perspective, because for this field that is apparently quite high, too. --Crusio 10:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - good research above. Well done. Victuallers 15:54, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, meets notability and reliable sourcing criteria. -- Terraxos (talk) 18:42, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

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.