Talk:Louis A. Perrotta

Adding link
I would like to add a link to the Bill Boggs interview with my subject. I only have a copy of that interview and screen shots from it. I am currently trying to find a link to the actual show. Am I able to use the screen shot showing the subject on the show as a reference? Mgenzac (talk) 01:55, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It depends. Where did you get the screenshot from?  NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:45, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I have it one my phone from the video of the TV show. Thank you for all your help. I am focusing on adding more references this week. Mgenzac (talk) 21:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussion during review at Articles for Creation
Hello, Mgenzac. My apologies for the delay in posting this, but I wanted to give this some additional thought before coming to a conclusion. Unfortunately, that additional thought hasn't changed my view. I still believe that the 1943 paper co-authored by the subject (with Koster) does not demonstrate that the subject "has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources" (i.e., the criterion set forth as #1 of WP:PROF).

Since posting my comment on the draft page, I see that you've added some more sources. Two of them are letters to the editor of the journal in which the paper was published (i.e., the letters by Kassebohm/Schreiber and Greenhill). But these letters do not demonstrate a "significant impact". Indeed, both of them identify the Koster/Perrotta method as merely a revival of a 1920s method that they both attribute to Delmas (one of the letter writers even calls it the "Delmas method"). And neither of them seems to hold the method in much regard. The other sources appear intended to suggest that the 1943 paper was instrumental in bringing about a change in childbirthing procedures. But this strikes me as an example of WP:SYNTHESIS, because you are citing a string of disparate sources so as to suggest a conclusion that is not actually stated by any of these sources (i.e., that the 1943 paper had a significant impact in the field). In this regard, I can only repeat my earlier observation that Wong's modern-day survey of historical practice doesn't mention Koster/Perrotta at all.

In one of your postings at the AfC Help Desk, you argued that the paper was published by more than one journal. I don't see any evidence of this. Instead, what I see is evidence that the paper was "noticed" by other journals that publish in the same or similar fields. Such "noticing" is routine in academic journals and confers no additional significance on the paper.

You also suggested that the subject's notability is not based solely on this one co-authored paper, but by the totality of his professional life. This is an argument that commonly comes up in notability discussions (especially at Articles for Deletion), but it doesn't hold much weight. When discussing the encyclopedic value of a proposed biographical article, most editors look for a demonstration of notability in at least one field, and are not much persuaded by a list of non-notable endeavors.

I expect that you disagree with my conclusion and I look forward to hearing the opinions of other editors here. I'll also ask for input from the editors at our Medicine WikiProject.

Two other points. First, the extended discussion of the paper's impact appears in the draft's introduction. The introduction should merely note the existence of the paper. The extended discussion should appear in the "Research" section (but, as I noted above, I'm not convinced that the WP:SYNTHESIS should appear anywhere at all in the draft). Second, the images in the draft have been uploaded to Commons and identified as being "your work". Merely being the person who created a digital scan does not create ownership of the scanned item's copyright. Especially in the case of the two images of the 1943 paper, there is no presumption that the paper has entered the public domain and, hence, they should not have been uploaded.

Thank you for your patience. I look forward to your response. NewYorkActuary (talk) 10:35, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

— I'll give you simpler summary: you need two articles about him (not just his discoveries) that prominently feature him that he hasn't written himself. The articles don't have to be longer than a few paragraphs, but they can't be mere mentions. Mentioning that he is the great-uncle of someone is not enough — mentioning that he made a discovery is not enough. A brief discussion of his life or a short interview is much better. Directories and membership rosters should not be included at all. Carl Fredrik  💌 📧 11:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you again for your time and advice! The critique of my subjects research article by the other surgeons speak to the controversy surrounding the techniques. Spinal is used on a daily basis today so their rejection of it is now seen as absurd. At the very same time epidurals were being introduced and the eventual acceptance of both methods revolutionized pain control in childbirth. The September 1944 letter actually states " the majority of obstetricians agree that spinal anesthesia is the most dangerous anesthetic for pregnant women. Koster and Perrotta claim otherwise." We now know the exact opposite is true. I will move the discussion of the research out of the lead sentence as you recommend. There is a video of the subject being interviewed regarding his life in 1980 from a mainstream television show. I included the link to the youtube video as it is the only copy available. Regarding the pdf of the journal article; When I looked at csusa.org it states the copyrights from 1943 would have expired 28 years later,  unless renewed, and the other author has been deceased for 74 years. I have removed it anyway as you say it infringes. The article was originally published separately in BJOG and Exp Med Surg and  then listed in Brit Chem and Phys and mentioned separately in AJOG by 2 authors. In so far as the founding and ownership of the Hospital, he is mentioned  by name in the ccahs article as an owner. That in itself is a unique and notable accomplishment that most physicians do not achieve. I am not sure how my sources are disparate as they are mostly medical texts and journals.J.P. Greenhill was a critic of spinal anesthesia, ( and of my subject's paper) yet he published and edited more than 50 books on Obstetrics. Greenhill writes about my subject in AJOG, which is the cornerstone publication of OBGYN, and discusses him in the 1943 Year Book of Obstetrics. Kassebohm also references my subject in AJOG. The medical community was not ready to accept spinal anesthesia and regarded it as dangerous. Some of the other physicians also discuss the fact that they themselves tried the procedures and were not as adept in getting similar results, and state that the methods are technique sensitive and best left in the hands of experienced surgeons. I will delete the membership list as per your suggestion. I was unsure if they were relevant. I will remove all articles that do not mention him by name specifically, even though they were included only to inform the reader of medical facts. I will attach the youtube link for the interview here for your review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFl3xAMBegk Many thanks. --Mgenzac (talk) 14:18, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Reviewer Note
I am going to accept this. Any draft that has this much discussion about whether to accept it is probably really discussion about the person rather than about the draft, and if there is this much discussion about the person, that is notability. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I see that Louis A. Perrotta was deleted recently, but it appears to have been deleted as a copyright infringement of this draft. That is, someone apparently copied this draft into article space without preserving attribution, which is an odd form of Wikipedia plagiarism, not real cause for declining the draft.  Robert McClenon (talk) 02:09, 9 March 2017 (UTC)