Talk:Malcolm L. McCallum

I have added a multitude of citations, references, and links. I am not done with this, but it is far more complete than yesterday when the message was posted.

This page is linked to the List of herpetologists at on wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herpetologists#M

McCallum's website: http://www.herpconbio.org/McCallum/

The Herpetological Conservation and Biology journal website: http://www.herpconbio.org

I interviewed the subject of this article prior to writing it. It is not autobiographical. This individual has rapidly become an internationally renown herpetologist.

To any Admin: I made a mistake and should not have nominated this article for deletion, please remove the tag. Deunanknute (talk) 01:24, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

note
Since the article creator interviewed the subject, WP:OR should be scrutinized and WP:COI may be relevant. This article relies excessively on primary research by the subject which may introduce WP:UNDUE bias. This article should neither promote nor denigrate the subject, but fairly and neutraly portray all significant coverage from reliable, secondary sources. --Animalparty-- (talk) 03:56, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, McCallum has provided at least a selection of secondary articles here. --Animalparty-- (talk) 19:56, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

More assistance for finding third-party sources about the subject, not just by him or his employer.--Animalparty-- (talk) 03:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

30 January 2015
I have deleted a large chunk of material from the article because I was trying to strengthen it. Virtually all the changes made by another editor were kept, frankly they really improved it. One point, however, is the reference to the UN document in which his paper on public interest in the environment is discussed. This is not a mere mention of a manuscript or citation. They have devoted 2/3 of a page the article. IN these kinds of policy-related articles, that is largely an indicator of importance. In fact, this article is called out because it is an important indicator that the Aichi criterieon 1 set by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity may be failing. This is critical because they only had a handful of goals to attain by 2020, and McCallum's paper suggests they might be falling behind. Not to further belabor the point, if you go to his Google Scholar profile you will find that this manuscript was cited over a dozen times and causes a flurry of follow up studies within six months to a year of being published. This is why it is important to mention its link to teh UN document. hardly anyone gets cited in these papers, let alone have a manuscript called out and discussed in depth. THis is not evident at first, but consider just how many people are working on environmental issues and the UN chose to only cite a handful due to space, so they are very selective based on the decision. This is much more important and influential than a news story, and arguably more important than getting published in a top tier journal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herpetology2 (talk • contribs) 02:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Comments like "IN these kinds of policy-related articles, that is largely an indicator of importance" and "This is much more important and influential than a news story" are both unverified assumptions, not facts. As editors we should not be evaluating the importance of any primary source, nor make any unverified assumptions about what inclusion in a larger report means. We can only include what other secondary sources actually state, without drawing any conclusions or interpretations not explicitly stated. The entirety of the 500 page report (PDF) that directly, explicitly mentions McCallum's work is, on page 3: "It is important to note, however, that while information from these types of Google search data they are used in numerous fields and have been shown to be a clear proxy for underlying trends (McCallum & Bury, 2013), it has also been noted that this type of data should be interpreted with caution (Ficetola, 2013)." The preceding paragraph and Figure 1.2 may or may not have been influenced by McCallum & Bury, 2013, but in the absence of explicit confirmation, we cannot assume anything, nor can we assume what being mentioned early in the article means. If that report, or another reliable source, explicitly states "McCallum & Brury 2013 was an important study because...", only then can we state anything like that (with a reference, of course). If a study was influential or important, there should be sources that clearly say so, without needing to look up citation rates. Wikipedia is not the place to "set the record straight," nor to shed undue light on an ignored topic. If a certain topic or study has been largely neglected by media, then it should be minimally or not covered on Wikipedia, no matter how important you or I think it is. These comments apply to not just McCallum & Bury, 2013, but to everything in this or any other Wikipedia article. I've linked to pretty much every relevant policy and guidelines on your talk page and above that explain what all Wikipedia articles must adhere to: Biographies of living persons, No original research, Neutral point of view and Verifiability. And lastly, Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. --Animalparty-- (talk) 05:55, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Academic genealogy
I wanted to ping and  regarding 's contention on the  Conflict of Interest Noticeboard that I shouldn't have removed the "Academic Genealogy" subsection of this article because some unnamed administrators have approved it. That is not my reading of the ANI thread at where it seems to have been discussed. Geogene (talk) 18:56, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * These genealogies are only present in articles edited by Herpetology2. As far as I am concerned, it's total BS. --Randykitty (talk) 19:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy
 * http://nghiaho.com/?p=978 Herpetology2 (talk) 21:09, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I did not claim they apprved that. I claimed you deleted all the text of stuff on the page of which they did edit, and reword to make better, which their input did improve.  You proceded to delete as we have already discussed.  If they edited the text, and left text there which I did not further change, I must assume their writings were approved by them, unless of course, they are in the habit of adding text to accounts which is deliberately incorrect.  Since I believe they were trying to help I must assume they approved of their own changes.  This is only logical sense.  As for the geneologies, I have posted a link above specifically to a wikipedia page regarding academic geneologies that also has dozens of links.  The fact that I might be the only one who does this, does not make it wrong.  I looked at Albert Einstein's profile, and there are all kinds of things in there that you would delete based on your deletions on thsi page. They have for Einstein his doctoral advisor as well as other advisors. They not only tell the number of pubs, but go through each and every one.  Believe me, many of those publications are HARDLY important whereas others are.  Being unfamiliar with something does not mean that something is not important.  Herpetology2 (talk) 21:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with RandyKitty that we do not include these sections. We also do not include relative google rank, or altmetrics, or similar material. We do include data for WoS or Scopus or GS about number of citations, because this is one of the way scientists are judged, but we only do this for pee-reviewed published papers. There might be some exceptional circumstances that would justify it, but they will be rare--there have indeed been a very few people whose most notable work was not formally published.
 * For good measure, we normally list only the 3 or 4 or 5 most highly cited or otherwise influential papers; Wikipedia articles are not CVs.  There are 2 exceptions:one is a general one for creative artists---academics who main notability is their work as creative artists, do have all their published work listed, as for other creative artists. The other exception is for world famous  scientists.  When Isee someone trying to compare the coverage for a normally notable academic with the coverage for Albert Einstein, and complaining they are not allowed to have the same detailed treatment, I tend to think that the article is in large part puffery and self-promotion. I can't believe a successful scientist is truly that unaware of their relative importance.  DGG ( talk ) 22:58, 9 June 2015 (UTC)