Talk:Clive Wearing

Clive Wearing's Musical Career
Speaking as Clive's daughter, I find it insulting to the man that no real mention of his huge contribution to the world of Music is made. Nowhere does it mention his life's work of editing the works of Orlandus Lassus. Nowhere does it mention his major contribution to the accepted practice of period instruments, contextual performances and original language of Early Music. Clive sang at Westminster Cathedral as a Tenor lay clerk for many years and also had a successful career as a Chorus Master and worked as such at Covent Garden and the London Sinfonietta Chorus. He ran The London Lassus Ensemble and was the person who thought up and staged the 1982 London Lassus Festival to commemorate his 450th Anniversary. To dismiss all this and concentrate instead on the awful thing that happened to him totally negates everything he strove to do. His illness came about because he worked so hard at his music. To focus entirely on that leaves the reader with the impression that his musical career was not noteworthy. On a personal level (and I know what has been happening with Wikipedia in the news recently) I don't like this and would prefer to see my father's real contribution to the world of music acknowledged in no small way here. Eleison 12:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * People just might know enough about your father to enter information about him. This is where wikipedia excels - enter it yourself, since you probably know best and let other people edit it for you if you don't know how to format it properly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.38.211 (talk • contribs) 22:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Eleison, I went ahead and wrote up a short bit on your father's musical career, based on the information you provided above. Unfortuantely, I don't know any more than that, and can't find anyplace to cite that information from. If you could help us out with that, maybe just providing some more detailed information to fill in what's missing, I think we can definitely make this article a whole lot more representative of him and his contributions. ObsidianOps 16:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I believe at the time, it was difficult to edit anything! I have figured it out now, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eleison (talk • contribs) 14:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Eleison. I sang with the Europas, and so have been able to begin to set the record straight. But I am sure there are others out there who know far more about Clive's extraordinarily prolific musical career. It would be good to see this section expanded. Bblandford (talk) 21:02, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Clive
Clive Wearing also appeared in a documentary called "Equinox: Prisoner of Consciousness." I have found so few references to this film on the internet, though, that I cannot do much insofar as adding it to the article. Anyone have a copy / more information? --- Stephen Goldmeier |  Profile  |  Talk  |  (._.)  | 05:46, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Memory
I think the sentence of "In educational psychology contexts, Wearing's dual retrograde-anterograde amnesia phenomenon is often referred to as "30-second Clive" in reference to his 30-second episodic memory capacity." should be removed because there is no citation as a reference. To maintain the reliability, there should be some citations either from a standard text of educational psychology or in some scientific journals.

It is worth noticing that, apparently, Clive Wearing's almost complete loss of memory has not affected his language abilities at all: he is capable to form meaningful sentences and understands completely what is said to him, within limits of his memory, and also can still read. (I know this from a TV documentary "Time".) -- Voice from Finland, November 28, 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.214.205.62 (talk) 14:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Virus
If he was infected with Herpes Simplex I (HSV-I) then why not say that instead of "a virus that usually causes cold sores." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.56.169.70 (talk) 08:37, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Contributions to neuropsychological research
Though his case presents similarly to the Famous H.M. there are extremely important differences things that exist in almost no other individual on the face of this planet. Clive has a strange perception of time and consciousness worth quantifying in scientific terms, is it really the case that nobody has attempted this, what a sad loss to the world of medicine and the alleviation of others pain that would be were it true. The explanations given by his wife Deborah are certainly compelling though ultimately they leave no room for treatment insights. If anyone has any knowledge with regards published articles which EXACTLY recorded the damage done to his brain in the form of an image (MRI, CT, PET), please set up a link. TalonX84.152.233.6 (talk) 15:06, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Learning?
I am curious about how he has managed to learn "4 new facts" since his encephalitis. This was from an older documentary on him, which noted that he knew Hong Kong was reunified with China, knew about the Berlin Wall, etc. And specifically it was noted that these were the 4 new facts that he managed to learn, whereas everything else, he has not been able to store into longterm memory.

Does anyone have any info about how this is possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.154.86 (talk • contribs) 05:38, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I mean this whole article is a WP:BLP violation...
OK, so here's what I'm seeing with this article:
 * 1) For his music career alone, Clive Wearing might not be Wikinotable by our WP:BIO standards. If he is he's borderline. (It's hard to tell cause there's no refs for that part (another issue, but fixable I assume).)
 * 2) So the article is mainly about his disability. Well I mean it is an egregious invasion of privacy. Jesus how would you like the details of your mental shortcomings to be immortalized for future generations to cluck over, while you were still alive?
 * 3) Yes we have other articles about people with similar disabilities. However, AFAIK the subjects are either dead (Henry Molaison, Kent Cochrane), anonymized (S.M. (patient)), or sufficiently abled to have agency and have sought the public spotlight (Scott Bolzan). And any who aren't, their articles are probably BLP violations also.
 * 4) BUT... maybe "no harm no foul" applies here? Yes, Clive Wearing is alive, but he can't be harmed by and will never be aware of this article. (However, I gather that if told "There is a worldwide encyclopedia, and it tells all about how you are disabled, and many people read it" he would be distressed for the few seconds he would remember this; but this is mostly a theoretical danger.)
 * 5) And the subject is of scientific interests. It's not like it's prurient gossip or something.
 * 6) BUT... I mean he can't request a takedown, but if you look at the top of this page, in 2007 User:Eleison wrote:
 * So I mean assuming she is who she says she is, this is an important data point. However, she's not asking for the disability material to be taken down. She just wants more on his musical career. And there is more, a lot more -- at the time she was writing, his musical career was covered in a half-sentence, and now it is a whole section. Is she happy now? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. It may be that she's distressed by her father's disability being immortalized here at all but figured she can't do anything about that. Who knows? But anyway, she's not the subject. Clive Wearing is, and while she has some standing we have to look at more than that. And anyway, now I'm not happy: this article was created based on his disability, and shoehorning in an unref'd but positive section on a (arguably) non-Wikinotable career to gruntle a relative is not necessarily a good way to approach the issue.
 * So I mean assuming she is who she says she is, this is an important data point. However, she's not asking for the disability material to be taken down. She just wants more on his musical career. And there is more, a lot more -- at the time she was writing, his musical career was covered in a half-sentence, and now it is a whole section. Is she happy now? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. It may be that she's distressed by her father's disability being immortalized here at all but figured she can't do anything about that. Who knows? But anyway, she's not the subject. Clive Wearing is, and while she has some standing we have to look at more than that. And anyway, now I'm not happy: this article was created based on his disability, and shoehorning in an unref'd but positive section on a (arguably) non-Wikinotable career to gruntle a relative is not necessarily a good way to approach the issue.

If this was a normal situation, I'd severely redact the article first and then discuss it. But it's not a normal situation. So maybe "no harm no foul" applies here. I don't know. My inclination is that they guy's privacy is being egregiously invaded, he's alive, we don't have to be robotic pedants about WP:BLP but we should err on the side of kindness, and the article is probably unsalvageable, so this article should be deleted. But maybe I'm missing something?

(N.B. I came across this article from a reference at Reddit, where random mooks are basically dissecting this living person's case like he was a frog on a table and some are making various witty and snarky comments about it too. So.... not sure how well this sits...) Herostratus (talk) 17:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Without any pretense or claim of having refreshed my own memory on BLP rules, I just want to add that not just this man, but his amnesia specifically, was made part of several documentaries and reports, as the article itself notes, and on which the article is based (presumably reliable sources). That said, if his daughter is disappointed there is a disproportionate amount of material in the article about his disability compared to his career, by all means I would support adding more information about his career. LjL (talk) 23:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)