Talk:Grete L. Bibring/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 03:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Earwig found no inappropriate copying from other sources. (GAC 2d)
 * It is a violation of WP:BLPCAT to list her as a "Jewish psychoanalyst" without a direct statement from the subject attesting to her religious faith, and some evidence of its relevance to her notability. (also GAC 2c)
 * Throughout the article, Bibring is frequently referred to as "Grete". This is too informal to be encyclopedic. It should be "Bibring". (GAC 1a & 4)
 * The lead is only a single sentence. It says nothing about what she contributed to psychology, or what she went through to get to Harvard, or her presidency of the the APA, all of which seem important enough to be summarized in the lead. I think it could use expansion. (GAC 1b)
 * I could verify through other sources that her information exists in the social security death index, but not see the information itself without registering. Doesn't this violate WP:ELNO #6? Is her birth and death information available more freely anywhere? (GAC 2b)
 * It's helpful to me that I have access through my employer to reference 2, a published review of an entire book about Bibring. But the reference is used to cite, among other things, her birthplace as Vienna, and it doesn't actually contain that information. It also states that she grew up surrounded by "music, science, and art", but not that her family imparted those things to her. So we need better sources for those claims. (GAC 3c) More to the point, perhaps, the book review already mentions material that we don't cover in our article (her mentorship of women at Radcliffe . And there's a whole book about her that we are not citing. Surely there was something worthwhile to include from it? (GAC 2b, 3a)
 * Reference [4] (and its unnecessary duplicate reference [8]) is very badly labeled as "Documents", with "Center for History of Medicine" as its publisher. It is actually from the exhibit "Grete L. Bibring: The Modern Woman", in the "Life and Family" section of the exhibit, and the center is part of the Conway Library of Medicine. Several other references are also badly (and highly promotionally) formatted; e.g. reference 6 " Dictionary definition of Bibring-Lehner, Grete (1899-1977) | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary" is actually an entry from the International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (published by Thomson Gale, 2005). (GAC 2a).
 * Why are we relying on a book by her husband for her marriage date when it is in reference [4], a more independent source? (GAC 2b)
 * "Alongside joining the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, she also became" awkward phrasing and there should be no space before the following footnote. (GAC 1)
 * "work at a psychoanalytic clinic", "some years", "the Nazis forced": all unnecessarily vague (GAC 3a). And the Nazis certainly did not force the specific choice to travel to London with the Freuds. And it should be "forced to flee", not "forced flee". (GAC 1a)
 * The source for their move to London says nothing about traveling with the Freuds (GAC 2c).
 * "He accepted the position and, in 1941, Grete and Edward, along with their children George and Thomas, emigrated to America." has been tagged with "[citation needed]" since before the GA nomination. Ordinarily, all cleanup tags should be cleaned up before the start of a GA nomination. This is a showstopper unless/until it is fixed. (Immediate failure criterion #3.)
 * Reference 10 has an invalid DOI (GAC 2a). I know, it's the one the publisher lists, but it doesn't actually work. I found the paper at the url https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1978.11926843 (I actually read it through a different address but one that I don't think will work more generally without my institutional subscription).
 * I don't understand why the "Life" and "Career" have overlapping views of the same events with different details. I think there are really three subtopics that should be kept more separated: the events of her personal life, the events of her professional life, and the contributions she made to the field. (GAC 1b, 3b)
 * "second generation Freudian Scholars" is not really what reference 10 says. It does have the phrase "second generation", but the second generation of Freud's inner circle, not of scholars of Freudianism. And why is scholars capitalized? (GAC 1a, 2c)
 * "popularized ego psychology" is also not really in the source. It says that the Freudian diaspora, more generally, introduced ego psych. And it says that "her lectures demonstrated certain basic tenets" of ego psych. (GAC 2c)
 * "held positions as a training analyst and teacher at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institution from 1933 to 1938": not in the source (GAC 2c, but hint, it is in the NYT obit)
 * "After moving to America in 1941, Grete Bibring became the first female professor at Harvard Medical School": not in the source. (Also, the "International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis" makes clear that she only became a professor 20 years later, in 1961.) It is mentioned in, though, so it seems to be true, just badly sourced. (GAC 2c)
 * "director of the psychiatry department at the Beth Israel Hospital from 1946 to 1955 in which time, she reorganized the psychiatric teaching unit": source has start date but not end date, and says only that she "established a psychiatric service", not that she reorganized anything. (GAC 2c)
 * Did you know that she published two books? Our article only mentions three research papers. But the books are cited by Tartakoff, and probably given full reviews elsewhere. Surely this is important enough to mention. (GAC 3a)
 * "she accepted a fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences": this is written as if the writer does not understand what it means. There are certain things called fellowships that are really small grants that one might accept; that's not this is. The American Academy is a society that one cannot join; one has to be invited, and that invitation is a significant honor, accorded only to very high-level academics. Their members are called fellows. She became one. See for instance WP:PROF. (GAC 1a)
 * "In 1959, at the age of 64, her husband passed away": whose age? And see WP:EUPHEMISM (GAC 1a, 1b)
 * "Grete carried on": really? Some of our sources make clear that the time after her husband's death was very productive for her (it's when she earned her professorship, became president of APA, etc).
 * "translating to 'The Journal of Psychoanalytic Pedag'og": no. For one thing, "Pedag'og" is not a word in English. (GAC 2c) For another, why is the translation of the journal title relevant for this biography? (GAC 3b)
 * "continued to treat clients up to her death"..."treating patients until two weeks before her death": isn't this a contradiction? (GAC 1a)
 * The photo is properly licensed and captioned. But can't we find another that shows her more close-up? And the description of the photo raises more questions about our article: it shows her as working at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Ambulatorium, under Wilhelm Reich, in 1922; our article says nothing about this part of her life. (GAC 3a)
 * The infobox is misleading about her nationality, saying only that she was Austrian (not also American), and about her residence, saying only that it was Cambridge (not Vienna or London). (GAC 2c)

I chose this one to review because I thought at a quick look that it seemed close to ready. But on more careful reading I found it to be a disorganized mess, with little overall structure, bad writing, badly used sources, badly formatted sources, and much missing information. It can be made to become a Good Article, but I think it will take significant effort to reorganize it with some more structure, cross-check all information against multiple sources, and add information from the uncited biography and about her two books. Perhaps this is too much for the review period (supposed to be only one week from when the review starts), and this should be failed for now to allow enough time to do the revision properly before resubmitting to GA. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:09, 23 March 2018 (UTC)