Talk:Catherine Pickstock

Year of birth
On 9 Feb 2018 an IP editor added a reliable-looking source (Wiley book) for CP's year of birth: "Catherine Pickstock (born 1952)".

Yesterday a new editor, possibly WP:COI or WP:SPA as they have edited on no other topic yet, removed the date and the source, saying "This person was not born in 1952.".

I think I came across this article while stub-sorting (I tend to look at those filing under "P"), and for some reason had added it to my watchlist. I have no WP:COI. The unusual edit summary caught my attention.

It looks to me as if the date is indeed likely to be wrong, even though it appears in an apparently reliable source.


 * 1) She matriculated, ie went to University, in 1988. There is no mention of her being a mature student or having done anything interesting before going to university, so she is more likely to have been aged about 18 and born around 1970.
 * 2) In 2017 she and her husband appeared in The Times in an article about the need for au pairs. No mention of their ages (I even used one of my "two free articles per week" to see the whole article), or of any special needs or other factors, but the children look to be between, say, 5 and 18. So born between 1999 and 2014, when she was aged about 47 to 62.  Possible, unlikely.
 * 3) The book source gives the same year of birth for her doctoral supervisor John Milbank. Possible if she was a mature student, but unlikely.

So I suggest that the year of birth should not be re-added unless it is found in a reliable source other than McGrath's book. If there's a mention of "x-year-old Pickstock" in a reliable source - good newspaper etc - then the template  can be very useful.

I think it's important to give someone a chronological context, ie distinguish her in the lead from the early 20th-century bluestockings, so I'll add "(active 1988-)" to the lead, with a comment pointing to this post. Pam D  08:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)