Talk:Esther Lederberg

Cleanup
I have removed some over-rhetorical language, and some general material on women's role in science that, though justified,  are not directly relevant to her biography. This article is being discussed further at the Conflict of Interest noticeboard. DGG (talk) 09:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

When not using the full name in a formal context, her name, according to convention for academic is Lederberg or E. Lederberg when necessary to avoid confusion. It is not Esther, which would strike many people as sexist condescension.DGG (talk) 18:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Completely agreed; cleaned up. --Lquilter (talk) 03:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

2012 credit etc changes
Hi -- User:CatPath has been making a lot of changes to the Esther Lederberg article, at least some of which are around Lederberg's contested contributions to various research otherwise attributed to Joshua Lederberg and others. See diff from Sept 11 to today, Oct 1. I  didn't write much of the content, so I can't really assess the validity of the changes or the original material. But, in my capacity as a neutral admin who likes to keep an eye out on possible controversies in scientist biographies, I noticed these changes. Because a lot of the changes revolve around issues of allegedly uncredited work or contributions to other projects, and this page in particular has been subject of previous conflict of interest concerns, I thought it would be useful for future discussions to have some documentation here on the talk page about what is happening and why. If a discussion is needed to be sure the article is fully neutral in its presentation of conflicts, then we should have one. So, specifically, I'm hoping that CatPath could provide a cogent summary of the state of the article prior to the beginning of her/his edits (Sept. 10), and the general effect of the various edits, and I've posted a note to CatPath's user talk page about it. Thanks. --Lquilter (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to address several issues with my edits. First, there have been attempts to smear Joshua Lederberg's reputation and ignore (and even belittle) his contributions to the field of bacterial genetics in this and other Wikipedia articles. Some of the statements are outright lies about Joshua Lederberg's behavior.  For example:

"'However, Joshua Lederberg himself failed to mention Esther Lederberg's name in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech of 1958.'"
 * (Here's the diff.) This assertion is simply wrong. JL mentions EL twice in his speech.  He states near the beginning of his speech,"..I have enjoyed the companionship of many colleagues, above all my wife [Esther]."  Later on, JL acknowledges EL's scientific contribution: "In accord with Burnet’s early predictions we had anticipated that the provirus for lambda would behave as a genetic unit but Dr. Esther Lederberg’s first crosses were quite startling in their implication that the prophage segregated as a typical chromosomal marker." All of the negative statements about JL found in this and other articles have been inserted by a single editor citing a single website of questionable reliability, http://www.estherlederberg.com/.  While the site has an impressive collection of the late Esther Lederberg's writings, a large section is devoted to attacks on Joshua Lederberg with misleading interpretations of his past writings and correspondences.  Given the questionable reliability of this website and the potential coi issues with the editor inserting these statements, I felt that it was necessary to immediately remove all negative commentary about Joshua Lederberg from this and other Wikipedia articles.  Of course if reliable sources can be found that support this editor's assertions, then the negative statements should be restored.


 * Second, I realize that EL's contributions are sometimes ignored by the scientific community, but this article does the opposite and gives her credit for findings for which she had no role or gives her sole credit when others were involved in the research. For example, in this edit, diff, I replaced the two cited papers because Esther Lederberg was inserted as an suthor when in fact she was not (see and  for proof).  In this edit, diff, I corrected the "mistake" giving EL sole credit for the discovery of the F factor.  Even EL herself wrote that Cavalli-Sforza discovered the F factor independently before their collaboration.  The earlier version implies that Cavalli-Sforza joined the study after EL discovered F factor when in fact Cavalli-Sforza and EL discovered it independently before their collaboration started.  It is true that EL coined the term "F factor" by herself, but she should not receive sole credit for the discovery of the phenomenon of F factor.  In the most egregious example (diff), it is claimed that EL "...was a major researcher in elucidating the genetic basis of Galactosemia as well as Maltophilia." If EL were a "major researcher" in these fields, the she would have written some research articles describing her studies of these diseases. Well, my quick search of Pubmed shows that there is not a single research article about Galactosemia listing EL as an author. Amusingly, "Maltophilia" appears to be a made-up disease, another dubious contribution from the website http://www.estherlederberg.com/.


 * Finally, the science itself is described incorrectly, at times contributing to the first two issues that I described above. Unfortunately these issues extend to a number of other Wikipedia articles where Esther Lederberg is mentioned.  Again, the source of these edits is a single editor with a possible coi citing the same website of questionable reliability.  I've been working on those other articles as well.  CatPath (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, CatPath, for the explanations. It's very helpful. --Lquilter (talk) 22:01, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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