Talk:Jean Tatlock

Physicist?
Studying psychology she's a physicist? --Alien4 04:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No, she's not a physicist, though I suppose in terms of her biography content she's more of interest to physicists than psychologists. --Fastfission 16:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Image
Doesn't anyone have a photo? 10:45, 19 October 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.74.219.48 (talk)

Date of Death
Does anyone have a Verifiable trusted Reference for her date of death?

I found one newspaper article that says: January 4, 1944

But, I don't trust it completely without some more confirmation.

- 4.240.165.183 (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * _ _ I don't know if i was the first to put "July" into the article, but i recognize the Google Books (apparently facsimile) scan of Einstein and Oppenheimer by Silvan S. Schweber, page 353, note 16, last sentence, as the (probably single) source i relied on. I also get
 * 37 for "Jean Tatlock" "July 1944".
 * which is supposed to leave out apparent dupes but still includes a lot of what look like WP-derived pages. _ _ My understanding is that Google Books documents are not acceptable sources (or not citable ones, if there is a distinction), even tho i understand the in-practice less feasibly verifiable citation of a hardcopy work of this quality, based on the citing editor's claim to have read the same page from the hardcopy, to be acceptable.  I have not made whatever effort would be required to get my head around the basis for that distinction (perhaps there is a corps of major-library based editors who verify paper citations by less-trusted editors?), but i declined to provide a citn for my edit on the basis of that understanding of that guideline or policy.   _ _ IMO the info from the reliable-looking GBks source makes the article more  valuable than no date, but i would not complain abt a fact tag on it, nor removal. --Jerzy•t 00:39, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is one of the big problems with Wikipedia: You put in something, like "July 1944" and all of these spam sites copy the text (with errors included) and it appears to give it confirmation.


 * One thing that can help is in the search box, say at Yahoo!, put in:


 * "Jean Tatlock" "July 1944" (13 hits)


 * Then try:


 * "Jean Tatlock" "July 1944" -wiki -wikipedia (8 hits)


 * But you still have to look at the text to see if it was copied without the words "wiki" or "wikipedia" in it.


 * Once you do that, you get ONE site, and that is www.cvnc.org/reviews/2007/112007/LoveSong.html a review about a play, and you know that they just pulled it off of somewhere else. It is amazing you'll have "x" amount of hits, but if you start looking at the sentence, they are all the same text.


 * If you search on Google ("Jean Tatlock" "July 1944" -wiki -wikipedia) you 73 hits, but once you change it to: "Jean Tatlock" "July 1944" -wiki -wikipedia -"Donne primarily through his former girlfriend" -"Tatlock suffered from severe depression" -- You get ONE. That same  www.cvnc.org, so the Internet yields virtually ZERO hits of good references. All of the "July 1994" references on the Internet appear to come from either Wikipedia or Simon Tanutama.


 * If you search Google on: "Jean Tatlock" "January 1944" -wiki -wikipedia -"Donne primarily through his former girlfriend" -"Tatlock suffered from severe depression", you get 25 hits, and they look better:


 * American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000%5C005%5C661yvvkb.asp)
 * J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life - Abraham Pais, Robert P. Crease - 2006 - (Google Books)
 * Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect - Charles Thorpe - 2006 - (Google Books)
 * ''Physicists in Conflict: From Antiquity to the New Millennium - Neil A. Porter - 1998 - (Google Books)
 * Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer - Gregg Herken - 2003 - (Google Books)
 * Notes for Chapter Seven - Brotherhood of the Bomb - www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbmedia/notes_chap7.doc
 * Brotherhood of the Bomb: "... Jean died on January 5, 1944, according to the San Francisco coroner." - (link.aip.org/link/?AJPIAS/71/647/1) - G Herken - 2003
 * About J. Robert Oppenheimer - www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ai/aboutopp.htm (From American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by the American Council of Learned Societies.)


 * So, I think that is January 5, 1944 is correct. It might be one of those things were it was late night January 4th, and the body discovered on Jan. 5th.


 * I think Google Books are an acceptable reference. At least you referenced a work, and the books are scanned on scanners, so if there is an error it is with the writer/editor/publisher of the printed book. - 4.240.159.57 (talk) 05:55, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, i don't think your research is as exhaustive as you're suggesting in your tone.
 * One problem is that "July 1944" precludes hits in most pages that mention specific days in that month.
 * The reliance on sources dated 1998 thru 2006 (and an undated one or two), for a 65-year-old event, suggests a sample bias of some sort. Maybe there's been an Oppenheimer renaissance following declassification, maybe not; or maybe the excitement of the new has obscured valid earlier scholarship with less flash.
 * Maybe the problem is with me, but i think my experience is that Google tests with multiple NOT conditions are likely to be inconsistent with simpler ones. (Or am i thinking of multiple OR conditions?)
 * I'm nonplussed by your reference to a specific person by name; perhaps i am missing your point.
 * But -- excuse me for quoting a whole damn 'graph of my own authorship from higher on the page -- i said
 * My understanding is that Google Books documents are not acceptable sources (or not citable ones, if there is a distinction), even tho i understand the in-practice less feasibly verifiable citation of a hardcopy work of this quality, based on the citing editor's claim to have read the same page from the hardcopy, to be acceptable. I have not made whatever effort would be required to get my head around the basis for that distinction (perhaps there is a corps of major-library based editors who verify paper citations by less-trusted editors?), but i declined to provide a citn for my edit on the basis of that understanding of that guideline or policy.
 * To put that in perspective, my devotion to the Mop and Bucket has not created occasion for me to pay enuf attention to distill what i've heard into something more definite.   But i think that should be understood as an assertion that WP policy and guidelines and policies of verifiability must be consulted and cited in this matter. You responded
 * I think Google Books are an acceptable reference.
 * which indicates no interest in going beyond throwing your acceptance of GBks against the wall and claiming that it sticks. IMO you've seriously damaged the credibility of your judgment in this matter: you've created a reasonable presumption that
 * you are ignorant of our standards and
 * that doesn't bother you.
 * I suggest you study V and NOR before you go any further.  What you'll learn hopefully will include that WP's watchword is established human knowledge. In this case, the sources cited here show that there is
 * one scholarly-sounding source that denies both January dates,  a presumably relevant journalistic source that may or not be ambiguous in saying "4th", and   a significant # of sources for the 5th that i have not seen any scholarly-looking footnotes from.
 * That still provides the basis for the article asserting 1944 in the lead, and i am reducing my assertion to that.  I see no sign that info beyond the year is of enuf value to assert even a month in the absence of clear evidence that the discrepancies have been resolved by evidence, convincing to scholars, of what explains the apparent contradictions. (And IMO special caution is called for in light of the persistence in the article for the last 7 months of mention of a cloak-and-dagger theory of the death.)   Probably Schweber couldn't read his own hand-written notes on the date, and transcribed "J???y" as "July". Maybe he says that, or at least changed it in the paperback. Or, if someone has stated that possibility, and someone has examined the sources he cited to show that they don't support July, and they've both said that (where Oppenheimer scholars discuss the literature) and the only explanations by anyone with credentials seem to show that one of the January dates is correct, that doesn't prove January is correct. But it probably shows that January is the accepted month, the established knowledge. If none of those apply, we should say that at least one authority, if that's what he is, (namely Schweber) uses July as the date, and that a number of others use January, or just give the year, but avoid asserting that there is established knowledge abt that. --Jerzy•t 08:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead an remodeled the article. I was doing it while you posted your note here, so I was in mid-editing and didn't see it. The main point is; it is referenced now, and the references meet Verifiable - References. I added a lot more detail and made the article more acceptable toward Wikipedia Bios. - Thanks - 4.240.159.57 (talk) 11:21, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The existence of Google books certainly indicates my impression was somewhere between badly exaggerated and completely wrong; issues similar to those raised at Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 17 may have confused me. The treatment of the date as verified by 4's OR is entirely another matter. --Jerzy•t 01:25, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Chronology of WP's account of death date
I am reproducing in full the initial article Jean Tatlock, submitted by 19:23, 6 December 2004. (There are no deleted revisions in the edit history; while i have checked only one other article's history for similar text suggesting that this text was cut and pasted from another article, i suggest that the
 * misspellings of 2 proper names, "commited", and "involvent",
 * the typo "staudent", and
 * two syntactic errors,

are hallmarks of a first draft and evidence against an earlier WP version. Altho editing on J. Robert Oppenheimer was steady in the weeks preceding, mention of JT in it was limited to
 * In 1936 he became involved with Jean Tatlock, who sparked his interest in politics.

That sentence was added in February of that year, and appears to have been the only mention there for the entire period until the JT article was created.) Now, here's an example of what i was talking about when i referred to OR, something we sometime have to do, even tho it can't end up in the article:
 * 1) Here's the intial text:
 * Jean Tatlock briefly dated Manhatten Project leader J Robert Oppenhiemer while she was a graduate staudent at The University of California, Berkley. Tatlock's interest in radical politics haunted Oppenhiemer throughout his life, and his involvent with her was seen by many as evidence that Oppenhiemer might was spying for the Russians. Some historians believe that Oppenhiemer had an extramarital affair with Tatlock while Oppenhiemer was working The Manhatten Project. Tatlock commited suicide in July of 1945.
 * 1) User:Fastfission changed the date  from "July of 1945" to "July 1944" in an edit that also quoted JRO as saying "Between  1939 and her death in 1944..."
 * 2) I worked on the sentence containing "July 1944", and miscopied the date into the lead sent as "July 1943".
 * 3)   User:Jonxwood corrected my mistranscription.
 * 4) In response to the concerns of the  i dialed back the precision of the mention that by now held my attention, to simply "1944".
 * 5)  (who insinuates elsewhere being the same person as 4.240.165.183) did a major and no doubt valuable expansion, changing the first mention of the date to "January 5, 1944" and the second to "January 1944".
 * Fat Man and Little Boy is a 1989 film featuring JRO & mentioning JT's suicide. (BTW, our article discusses, w/o being specific, dates consistent with the January death in the film's article's "Basis" section.) At Goofs for Fat Man and Little Boy on IMDb we find (supposedly having been reviewed by the IMDb editors)
 * Factual errors: The telegram to Oppenheimer states that Dr. Jean Tatlock committed suicide 5 January 1945. She actually committed suicide a year earlier, in January 1944.
 * That "error" would have substantial value by bringing the romance tragedy later in the rising tension of the main plot. Especially if that was exploited, but even if not intentional, it is understandable if some viewers vividly recall RJO reading the telegram in the month of Trinity, July 1945. This would explain our early use of that date, and an editor who knew the correct year but not the specific date would probably make the shift i've cited, to July 1944. I suppose that Schweber may have relied on our article for his footnoted book. But we may have something to learn in general about how hard it is to get these things right.  I found in Herken
 * ... Groves tentatively scheduled a test of the implosion bomb for Independence Day, in the New Mexican desert near Alamogordo, 200 miles south of Los Alamos.
 * For reasons that Oppenheimer decided to keep obscure, he had named the test site Trinity — a secret tribute to Jean Tatlock, who had committed suicide at her San Francisco apartment the previous January.
 * and said, wait a minute, that's another curveball: am i just being an asshole, isn't the January previous to a given July the one in the same year, not the January in the previous year? He's saying January 1945!
 * That's from the GBks page for the
 * Edition: illustrated
 * Published by Macmillan, 2002
 * I was still playing Is This Anything? with myself when i stumbled on (emphasis added by me) the fact that Herken chose to reword, to
 * For reasons that Oppenheimer decided to keep obscure, he had named the test site Trinity — a secret tribute to Jean Tatlock, who had committed suicide at her San Francisco apartment in January 1944.
 * for the
 * Edition: reprint, illustrated
 * Published by Macmillan, 2003
 * (The changed sentence is footnoted in both editions, but the corresponding page of footnotes is suppressed on GBks for the first edition; for the 2nd (paperback, i assume), the note reads
 * 54. Teller (2001), 149; Blumberg and Ownes (1976), 100-101; Rhodes (1986), 335-37.
 * I haven't explored whether those sources document Herken's date.)

I think my asshole-ism ration doesn't extend so far as to cover further editing on this aspect of the article, but i intend to stretch it close to exhaustion by stating my continued belief that
 * January 1944 is a good date (which i'd express January 4/5 1944, FWIW), which is useful, and
 * what the IP has done is to put OR into the article, which is not our job.

Some may respond that the evidence is clear enuf that it's not useful to reflect the bad dates that are out there. My view is that it's not more useful than having the consensus date in the lead sent, but it is useful to others doing their own OR for purposes other than editing WP -- including satisfying themselves that we're aware of the fact that there is evidence against the consensus, and they probably haven't just found the hidden truth. Thus the footnote's contents should be expanded to enumerate, at its end, the influential (presumable) errors:
 * Herken's miswording (paired with his tacit self-correction),
 * Schweber's July date, and
 * the fact-based film's 1945 date (without comment on whether intentional or inadvertent).

--Jerzy•t 07:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

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Edith Arnstein Jenkins' memoir
The current version of the article mentions this, but does not provide an actual citation or even mention the title. Wouldn't it be better to source a claim about the memoir from the memoir itself? Jenkins is mentioned nowhere else in the article, so it would also be good to say who she was and hence why her memoir contained relevant information. 208.59.185.238 (talk) 04:14, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The article writer misunderstood. I have rewritten that passage. The fact is indeed from Bird and Sherwin, which quotes interviews. I have added a reference to Edith Arnstein Jenkins's book though, with a link so it can be viewed by the reader, but it is far more coy. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:54, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Psychoanalyst?
This article states of Jean Tatlock “As a psychoanalyst in the 1940s, she saw her homosexuality as a pathological condition to be overcome, which may have led to her eventual suicide.” However, I can find no other reference on this page to psychoanalytic training. To become an analyst at this time, one would have had to study for a number of years at a psychoanalytic institute after medical school and psychiatry residency. Did she do this? 71.251.129.181 (talk) 13:58, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The source says: "The newspapers reported that a $732.50 bill from her analyst, Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld, was found in the apartment, evidence that she had "taken her own troubles to a psychologist." Actually, as a psychiatrist in training, Jean was required to undergo analysis and pay for it herself... Robertson and many other friends were unaware that Tatlock was struggling to cope with issues surrounding her sexual orientation. Jackie Oppenheimer later reported Jean as telling her that her psychoanalysis had revealed latent homosexual tendencies. At the time, Freudian analysts regarded homosexuality as a pathological condition to be overcome."

- Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, p. 251


 * I have rewritten this bit accordingly. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  19:46, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Adding "(disputed)" after suicide as cause of death in infobox
User changed "Suicide" to "Ruled suicide. Suspected assassination by U.S. Government." as the cause of death in the infobox in this edit:. I went ahead and reverted this edit. I did, however, add "(disputed)" after "Suicide" as there is discussion in the "Death" section about possible foul play. Because this article has "GA" status and my edit could be controversial, I want to state ahead of time that I will not object to anyone removing this edit I made regarding "(disputed)" status to her cause of death from the infobox and returning it to just "Suicide". Thanks! Wikipedialuva (talk) 03:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC)