Talk:History of aspirin

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of aspirin article.
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Good article History of aspirin has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on March 18, 2008.
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[edit] Comments

I noticed that this page does not cover, how or when aspirin was discovered to be harmful to children. This is outside the area of my expertise, so could someone more knowledgeable about the subject include this? 65.7.130.54 (talk) 05:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It alluded to that in the competition section, when it mentioned Reye's syndrome. I expanded on this a little. The sources I used for this article don't go into detail about how the link was discovered, but there is a bit of info in the History section of the Reye's syndrome article, with a footnote to a 1987 study (which probably has citations to the earlier studies from the early 1980s).--ragesoss (talk) 05:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please clarify the second to last word in this sentence in the second paragraph of the final section Revival as Heart Drug.

The study began in February 1971, though the researchers soon had to break the double-blinding when a study by American epidemiologist Herschel Jick suggested that aspirin either prevented heart attacks or made them more deadly.

Should it be more deadly or less deadly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.81.184.4 (talk) 20:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It should be more, as written. Basically, if you see fewer heart attacks among aspirin takers who are admitted to a hospital (for whatever reason), it could be that aspirin is causing them to die of heart attacks before they even make it to the hospital.--ragesoss (talk) 20:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

This article does not meet the GA criteria at the present time. It is, however, a good start, but it is lacking on several key areas:

  • The lead is only a single sentence (see WP:LEAD for tips on improving this).
  • I am concerned that the article is not broad enough, because only two sources are cited as references, so the viewpoint is limited. This could also be an indication of lack of completeness, another GA criterion, though I need to do a more thorough review to judge that aspect.
  • Section headers are fairly wordy, and long. I wonder if these exact titles of section headers were stolen from chapters of the book in question? For an encyclopedia article, it helps to shorten these subsection headers, so that they are more concise, more descriptive of the content of the section, and make reading the table of contents easier.

Dr. Cash (talk) 15:29, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment from bypasser: This pretty much proves that "Good Articles" doesn't live up to its original purpose. I guess you have to be a video game article referenced to 40 random web sites to pass. The lead here could easily be improved, and the rest is fine. –Outriggr § 02:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Review suggestions addressed

I've expanded the lead, made the section headers more concise (although this necessarily makes them less descriptive of the content of each section, and no, they were not stolen from book chapter titles), and added a couple of supporting sources for the more potentially contentious points. As for completeness, both of the main sources I used are broad histories of aspirin (although Aspirin Wars focuses more on the business aspects, and digresses frequently to tell the tales of the businesses and business people involved, even when aspirin is not the main business focus); I think this article covers all the main issues in the history of aspirin.--ragesoss (talk) 06:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


    • Comment: Have you taken a look at the article on Paracetamol? It has featured status and a great many diverse references. There are a great many websites you could cite just as back-up, including: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] etc etc etc! The paracetamol article also has an info box on the drug next to the lead, which I think this article could benefit from.--seahamlass 11:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The comparison there would be to aspirin, not this article, right? The main aspirin article does have an infobox, and has information about the usage, etc., and developing uses that are not yet firmly established (like for colon cancer prevention)... information that is out of place in a historical article. The one source above which does have some history is aspirin-foundation.com, which has just one short overview that doesn't have anything to add.--ragesoss (talk) 16:01, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


Whatever. I was just trying to help you. It doesn't matter to me if you pass or fail, I don't care one iota. I would wish you luck - but, as it stands, I'm pretty sure that this is a quick-fail due to lack of references. You can't just rely on a couple of books and repeatedly refer to them., you need a much wider range than that.--seahamlass 19:17, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your suggestions, and the point that the article could be improve with more diversity of references is a good one. I was just saying that the paracetamol-type references are not the kind that will be appropriate for this article, since it is a historical article and that article, naturally, is filled with scientific references. There are a handful of articles by historians about aspirin, as well as some historical material from aspirin makers and historical actors that might supplement the current sources (though of course that must be taken with a grain of salt). However, the two books I primarily used in putting together this article are broad, reliable sources that, as far as I can tell, cover all the major issues that a history of aspirin article should cover. If there are specific aspects that you think are missing from the article, I can look into that. But the general complaint that there are few source isn't that big of a deal, certainly not a show-stopper for Good Article status, which requires broad coverage, not many sources.--ragesoss (talk) 20:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


Totally agree with Seahamlass - this is nice article, but not enough references. Although you don't seem to appreciate any criticism I'll risk it and suggest you add at least ten more web-based ones to the page. Perhaps some of these might meet your rather high, snobbish and panickity standards.

Good Article status certainly does require broad coverage, but to say that means "not many sources is rather naive. --79.68.135.162 (talk) 21:54, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both. I've add the article from the McGill Journal of Medicine as a reference on the Bayer synthesis section (although it doesn't really say anything different from the books, which is not surprising since the article is at least partly based on the Mann and Plummer book, although with details from primary sources). I also added several of the Bayer websites to the external links; they don't have anything content-wise that needs adding (and of course, they have a Bayer-centric take on the history), but readers may want to consult them. Most of the rest of websites are either not reliable sources (no author listed and not published by academic organizations) or don't have any historical significant historical content. The one partial exception is the review article, "From Aspirin to Aspirin Resistance – History, Biochemical Background, Diagnostics and Clinical Relevance". However, the historical section of that article is very brief and I don't see any content that should be added here; this is not surprising, since the main point of that review is to discuss aspirin resistance, a recently identified phenomenon for which it is much too early to speculate about its place in history.--ragesoss (talk) 00:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Wellcome: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/PDFS/Publications/Witness/wit23.pdf

This paper summarises development of aspirin vs thrombosis. JFW | T@lk 14:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] second nomination review

While I am still a little cautious that so much of the article comes from one primary source, there are a good number of additional sources added in that I think the article meets the citation requirement of WP:WIAGA. It is clear that a lot of research has gone into this material, and it is reasonably accurate, well written, neutral, and I don't see any major edit wars in the edit history.

I did make a few minor spelling & grammatical corrections here and there, and removed a few internal wikilinks, mostly to some rather obscure individuals that probably won't have wiki articles for some time, or if at all, for that matter. It would be nice if there was an image for the top right corner of the article, and I think some chemical diagrams outlining some of the early synthetic routes to aspirin might be a nice touch. But overall, as it stands currently, I think it does meet the Good Article criteria, and can be listed. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article? If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do? Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia? At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm happy with the GA reviews this article has generated; comments about prose, content and sources have been on point and helpful. (This has been my experience with previous GA reviews on other articles as well.) I object slightly to the series of delinking edits Dr. Cash made with the explanation that the red links were "mostly to some rather obscure individuals that probably won't have wiki articles for some time, or if at all, for that matter". Most if not all probably do merit articles (I'd venture that all are "notable" by current standards), and red links are one of the ways to increase the likelihood that such articles will be created sooner rather than later. However, it's not a big deal (not even a big enough deal to revert the delinking). I write a lot outside of Wikipedia, primarily as a graduate student in history (and secondarily as a blogger).--ragesoss (talk) 22:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your responses, and I'm happy you enjoyed the GA reviews.
This is only a personal preference, but I would have asked for fewer red links too, simply out of a desire for efficiency of the GAN process. (I agree with you about red links in un-reviewed articles.) You will be more familiar with the people than I am, and finding a few references that establish notability and writing a quick stub article usually doesn't take a long time, if they really do seem notable, and takes the burden off the GAN reviewer to try to figure out for themselves if there ever will be articles on those people. Also, the people who patrol new articles are generally good at looking at sources and giving a quick thumbs up or thumbs down ... and that would also take a burden off the GAN reviewer. This is efficient use of wiki-volunteers, because we've got a 200 article backlog here, but there's no backlog (that I'm aware of) on patroling new pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trademark

Would like to see information on Bayer's loss of trademark recognition for the name "aspirin," by which "aspirin" came to be considered to be a generic name which any producer could use. Xenophon777 (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2008 (UTC)