Talk:Clarence Lushbaugh/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Larry Hockett (talk · contribs) 21:54, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll be happy to review this one. Thanks to the nominator for the work that has already gone into the entry. I will leave comments this week and will proceed section by section. I try to stick to the GA criteria; if I see something that would just be "good to fix" (rather than a "must fix" to meet GA criteria), I'll try to mark it as such. Larry Hockett (Talk) 21:54, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Starting with some easy stuff: The article appears to be stable. Earwig's tool returns no copyvio concerns (one false positive - 47% - due to a direct quote) and web searches of random phrases in the article don't turn up anything either.

There are no images in the entry, so we don't have to worry about copyright there ... but on that note, I see at least one image of Lushbaugh on a basic Google Images search. If we search and do not find any photos in the public domain, we should be able to use that image under fair use since the subject is deceased. I can provide some assistance if you haven't done that before.

As far as broadness (criterion 3), I will evaluate that more as we proceed, but I noticed one thing that I didn't want to forget to tell you. The In Memoriam source (currently ref #1) has some good info about personal interests. We don't have to load the article with every trivial hobby a subject ever had, but apparently Lushbaugh was enough of an artist that his work was once exhibited at a gallery.

Lead section

 * The lead section doesn't adequately summarize the article. See WP:LEAD; this is one of the most important portions of the Manual of Style for a GA nomination. Lushbaugh was an influential physician who practiced for >40 years, so a good summary is going to be more than a couple of sentences. The suggested maximum lead size is four paragraphs, and I bet you would need at least three. Here are some questions that come to mind that I would like to see briefly addressed in the lead: Where did he get his higher education, or at least the MD and PhD? Where did he work - at least the major ones? If you could provide some date ranges for the employers, or at least for when he entered and retired from pathology research, that would help the reader. Briefly, how did Lushbaugh specifically contribute to early chemo research?

Early life and education

 * finishing his bachelor's --> finishing his bachelor's degree
 * He would remain --> He remained
 * Starting in the sentence above, I'm not too sure what's happening chronologically. Could you be more specific? It sounds like he started medical school, paused to earn a Ph.D., then took a job as university faculty instead of finishing medical school. Don't describe it as procrastination, because a procrastinator may or may not get the degree, and the degree is really what we care about here.
 * "a nurse at the University of Chicago medical program" - Not sure what this means and no source to help the reader figure it out. I assume she was a nurse at a hospital affiliated with the University of Chicago, but I don't want to assume.

Academic career

 * "During his medical studies, he and his contemporary Paul Steiner" - Where we left off in the previous section, he had paused his medical studies, if I understand correctly, so I would put this in the previous section in chronological order (when he was still attending med school).
 * Same sentence - Could we use a more specific word than contemporary? I assumed they were medical school classmates, but if this is correct, Steiner would have been out of med school by the time Lushbaugh was in his mid-teens.
 * "eventually being republished as such" - make this part into a new sentence: It was eventually republished as such in ...
 * Some of the things in this section seem out of place. If he worked as a graduate assistant or staff during grad school, I would put that with his education. For a professor, "academic career" usually starts at the point where the person begins teaching full-time after earning the Ph.D.
 * Are there any sources on what training (like an internship or residency) Lushbaugh had between med school and becoming a pathologist? I know medical training was different then.

Los Alamos

 * "from an improperly transferred source of plutonium-239" - I don't know if a lay reader will understand what transfer refers to. Suggestion: "while working near a mixing tank containing highly concentrated plutonium-239"
 * "He would reply" - He replied

SL-1

 * "Lushbaugh was at this point known as an expert on radiological pathology." - At what point? You were last discussing 2001. I assume you mean, "By 1961, Lushbaugh was known as ..."

I'm going to pause there for the moment. That's enough feedback to address for now. Thanks for a very interesting read! I will continue soon. Larry Hockett (Talk) 00:31, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Update from nominator as of July 31
, thank you for all the input. I'm still working through the list (progress as of this edit can be seen here), and had a couple notes regarding some of the points you raised.

Regarding the image, there are two that I know to exist of him. One is the one that I'm sure you've found, which can be seen in the HPS memorial page, and the other is from this article in Mother Jones. My estimate is that both photos were taken during his tenure at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The source material from the HPS memorial page belongs to the Radiation Research Society, which appears to be a private organization, so that photo could either belong to them or to the HPS itself, which gave Lushbaugh an award in 1984: he appears to be wearing a medal in that photo. The Mother Jones article photo could belong to either the magazine itself or Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab. Whether or not this has any bearing on which photo to select, I'm not sure - the clearer photo by far is the HPS memorial one. Regardless, I may indeed take you up on your offer of assistance with non-free photos.

Regarding the addition of more personal life additions, I'm glad you brought that up. I'd been considering adding more of the information about his artistic pursuits, and I'd also found some testimony regarding his personality at Los Alamos here that I thought might be interesting to add, if for no other reason than to illustrate his reputation.

As to the chronology and categorization of his education and academic career, I came up with a few considerations. Before that, I will say that your note regarding the 'procrastination' phraseology took me to reexamine the source material from which I made that assessment. Rather than a personal judgement, it was my interpretation of the following phrase in what is currently source #2: "Then I became a fellow in pathology and sort of diddled and daddled about getting my M.D." My initial reading of that phrase was that he was "dilly-dallying" during the course of his M.D., whereas looking at it now it seems that the use of the word "about" implies that he was mulling over the decision entirely. I've modified the article to reflect this updated assessment, but let me know if you have any thoughts regarding it.

This leads into the issue of the distinction between "education" and "academic career". The chronology of his time with the University of Chicago seems to be as follows: graduates with B.S. in 1938, becomes fellow in the pathology department in 1939, and concurrent with this he begins his Ph.D studies. Between 1939 and 1942 is both performing teaching duties pursuant to his fellowship, and is doing graduate research work in the pathology lab. He earns his Ph.D in 1942, and the same year joined the University as a professor and pathologist in their research department. Sometime in there, he starts his M.D., and finishes it in 1948. Then in 1949, he joins Los Alamos Nat'l Lab. As you can see, his education and academic career are almost entirely intertwined. Do you have any recommendations for how to distinguish them? Currently, I have the academic career section start when his fellowship does, which does seem to work okay.

As an aside, this chronology should answer your question regarding if he had any kind of residency prior to starting at Los Alamos. It looks like the answer is "no". An explanation of sorts for this can be found on the bottom paragraph here - to paraphrase, it looks like some of his tenure at Chicago was accepted as radiological/medical practice. Now that I read that over, a summary of this event may be worth including in the article. I'll add that to the list, unless you have any objections.

As I mentioned, I'm still working through the list, and have yet to start on the lead, so expect a day or so more of editing until I'm through with round one here. /Tpdwkouaa (talk) 02:20, 1 August 2021 (UTC)


 * - My apologies for inadvertently setting this aside for the last week. I'll take a look at this in more detail when I can devote some sustained attention to it - hopefully by this weekend. At a quick glance, it looks like you have expanded the lead section and addressed many of the points I raised. I appreciate your work. Now we just need to go over the changes made and check the remainder of the entry for issues related to the GA criteria. Larry Hockett (Talk) 07:08, 6 August 2021 (UTC)


 * - I'm back. Thanks for the changes to the lead. I made a few minor tweaks to the wording and added some wikilinks to important terms, but you greatly improved that section. One more piece of feedback on the lead: Even though it didn't sidetrack his career, the work at Oak Ridge with the irradiation of cancer patients is a big chunk of this article, so it should get at least a sentence in the lead. Below I'll pick up where I left off with the section-by-section feedback.

Oak Ridge

 * The first sentence of the second paragraph has grammar issues. Change the semicolon (after chambers) to a colon, and it may help to break the sentence into two separate sentences.


 * Next paragraph - not sure what we mean by "including by the Atomic Energy Commission's review board." Was the board questioning all of those items?


 * "He also later asserted" - see WP:SAY.

Other activities

 * "would return to academia" - returned to academia


 * Link Chernobyl disaster

Personal life

 * "short, balding stature" - short describes stature, balding does not (they both describe appearance though)


 * "would divorce" - divorced

I think the wording fixes above are probably the hardest part, but next I'll go through and assess Good Article criterion 2, that the article information is verifiable with no original research. Larry Hockett (Talk) 11:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * - Apologies for the slight radio silence. I think I've gotten through all of your notes - let me know what you think concerning the intro, if you think it needs to touch on anything else. Appreciate all your input thus far! /Tpdwkouaa (talk) 03:34, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I intended to check your references last week, but I dropped the ball. I will do that now while making a pass through the article to look for any outstanding prose issues. If I see minor things, I may just clean them up myself if that's okay. Great work on the lead section. I think it's fine now. Good job getting the image uploaded (especially with an appropriate fair use rationale). Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:22, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Passing this. Thanks for an interesting read. Larry Hockett (Talk) 02:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)