Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gordon MacPherson

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. Arkyan • ^(talk) 21:51, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gordon MacPherson

Gordon MacPherson (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Biographical page with no claim of notability. {{prod}} recently removed by anonymous user. Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 23:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete I'm surprised it's lasted this long in its current state. EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)Changing to keep per Mwelch/DGG EliminatorJR ^Talk 10:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep assuming someone with adequate knowledge of the field can clean up the article. It obviously sucks rocks as it stands, but there is a lot of stuff just from a general Google search that seems to indicate he's widely published, cited and recognized. I'd imagine searching the medical literature of the field of immunology, particularly with respect to dendritic cells, would yield results for him that would be more impressive still. I certainly am not qualified to take on the task of adequately describing his work in this article, but perhaps someone else out there is? Mwelch 01:49, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I searched pubmed for articles by "Macpherson G" and got >120 over the past 35 years. He's clearly a solid biomedical scientist - that's not the issue. The issue is that there is no independant reference establishing his notability (also see WP:BIO), nor is there even any claim to notability in the article (e.g. "Widely recognized for his contributions to the field of dendritic cell research") on which which we can base a search for a confirmatory reference. There are tens of thousands of funded researchers in the world, and they can't all have pages sitting on WP, waiting for someone to come up with the right references to show what they did that makes them important. (Note that there are many dozens of co-authors on the breast cancer susceptability paper (recently added to his page), and they are definately not all notable.)-Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 03:11, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm looking more specifically at WP:PROF, which (to my very non-expert and very much subject to being wrong) eyes, it appears he meets. I absolutely agree that the article, as it stands, without even a proper assertion of his notability, isn't to be defended. But if he's notable per WP:PROF, then that's cause for the article to be improved, not deleted. At the very worst, the exact phrase you use above could be put into the article. And just in quickly scanning the Google hits, I saw references that could certainly be used to back up that phrase. I saw that his work the basis for a textbook chapter (a notability criterion explicitly cited in WP:PROF). I saw that he's given seminars internationally with regard to dendritic cells. So it looks like the references are there to support that basic claim of notability. The claim and refs just need to be put into the article. The only reason I haven't re-written the article accordingly myself is that I know absolutely nothing of the field and am hopeful someone else can do it better justice. I guess if no one does by AfD close, I'll be happy to give it a whirl. Mwelch 04:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep There is a direct way to tell, and the basic one we generally use: notability in science is being cited, and he has been the principal author of some exceptionally highly-cited papers: 427, 279, 250, 176, 146 , and fifty-three others, mostly of dendretic immune cells, obviously a hot topic, though not intimately familiar to me. (some of those 120 are other people, & letters & corrections). Even for experimental medicine, where people publish and cite a great many papers, this is remarkable. In addition to his main subject, he is one of the large group involved in a major recent publication on additional breast cancer genes--I can not tell his exact role. As Rustavo say, he is unlikely to be the one in charge, since he's still only the equivalent of an U.S. Associate Professor. If I can figure out who did what, I'll put it in. Other confusions: Despite the (incorrect) link, he is not the Dunn Professor of Pathology, it's just the name of the Institute. The Google search above was curious in its details--there is actually another Gordon Macpherson who edited a medical dictionary that covers, among many other things, immunology, was published by Oxford University Press, and is beings sold on the web by dozens of online book stores. And our guy has posted from his university address to rec.food google groups, and advertised on the web to find a post-doc. Those are the sort of things that get ghits, in addition to the real stuff. Another of these infuriatingly modest pages that don't look like much. Good catch, Mwelch.

Incidentally, I see no reason why there shouldn't be 10,000 articles for scientist bios, just as with musicians or politicians or authors, or athletes. Of the probably about 50,000 active researchers with significant grants (that's a guess, but it's more than 10,000 in the US alone), the top fifth are the notable ones. WP has only a half-way decent sampling of those from the English speaking world, and we have barely begun to start the other areas. We have very few continental European biologists, for example, & the German French and Scandinavian Universities are every bit as good as the Anglo-American ones. DGG 04:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Coment I certainly can't argue with that last sentiment. Since you seem to have taken on the task of fixing up this article, can I ask that you try to include the subject of the highly cited articles-perhaps use review articles that discuss a major finding as references? -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 05:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

As you suggested, I will identify some review articles in the citing papers; I seem to have taken on the job of fixing academic bibliographies & showing their significance, but I leave subject editing to those with a more recent knowledge than mine--I last taught the subject over 20 years ago.DGG 23:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Great work - the "Annual review of immunology" citation was exactly what was needed. I hope you don't mind that I rewrote your summary a bit. I think we have consensus to close this discussion. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 20:37, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Widely referenced and cited papers, as DGG points out. I'll let the originating editor know that an article they created is up for AfD, shall I? – B.hotep ^u/_t• 20:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, but all of that information and those citations were added by DGG since this AfD discussion started. I agree that as a result of changes inspired by this discussion, the article now merits a Keep. There is also no need to be rude - I did notify the orginator that his article was proposed for deletion, and I didn't think he needed a second reminder when the deadline was extended though a switch to AfD. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 19:52, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep He's written or co-written papers that have been cited thousands of times. Passes WP:PROF in his small but extremely important sub-speciality. --Charlene 11:16, 3 June 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.