Talk:Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield

Goldacre's criticisms?
Removal of "dreary internet troll" from the opening paragraph. Although cited, it was inappropriate and Goldacre's expression of opinion on twitter. Suggestion that something more suitable be posted on her criticisms of the internet and more specifically social networking websites. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.95.1 (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Does it make sense to discuss Ben Goldacre's criticisms of Greenfield in this article? ciphergoth (talk) 14:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd say it does - I already added in a line about the views which Goldacre criticised. Dan Gluckman (talk) 12:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. Fences and windows (talk) 10:20, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The structure of the Goldacre paragraph pushes the conclusion that Goldacre is wrong, and that he is the only public intellectual to have criticized Greenfield. But this is simply not true. In fact, without a broader sense of just how controversial Greenfield's pronouncements are, this article is borderline-useless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Numberonealcove (talk • contribs) 16:52, 10 July 2013‎
 * This section has been getting some attention from an editor keen to position Greenfield's earlier work as a rebuttal, and it looks like it needs cleaning up again. Feel free to be WP:BOLD and add reliably-sourced information about other criticism, or just dump some links on the talk page for other editors to work with. --McGeddon (talk) 15:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Removal of material about Royal Society
I have blocked User:Susan Adele for 31 hours for edit warring. Their latest edit stands, which removed material about Greenfield being whispered against to join the Royal Society. The edit summary gives a justification for the edit: "Deleted all reference to the article by Steve Connor - an out of court settlement was made and this article should be removed from Wikipedia". Can this content be discussed here, please? Note that Steve Connor's article in the Independent is not the only source available for this material, and I can find no verification of the Indie retracting that article. Fences &amp;  Windows  03:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you think the content in the wiki article fairly reflects the news reports of 2004 cited by the google search? I don't. But surely it is all old history anyway. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  10:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "a suggestion being that her research lacked sufficient substance worthy of fellowship" wasn't a fair representation. It might be 'old news', but some mention of the incident in this biography would be proportionate. Fences  &amp;  Windows  15:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I am unhappy to include the "some scientists said" bit. Who? Unattributed. "In February the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) reported that she was one of the candidates being considered for the 44 new fellowships awarded to scientists by the Royal Society every year for outstanding work. A spokesman for the Royal Society refused to comment in detail on a story in today's THES which says Lady Greenfield has been rejected, but told the Independent: 'The candidate in question was considered by the relevant sectional committees at the meetings in January and the decision was taken then that she, along with the majority of other candidates, would not be placed on the long-list for election this year.' A fellowship to the Royal Society is the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar. Past fellows include Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin." In summary all that is being said is that she was one of many who were nominated but has not yet been chosen. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  16:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Research
It's not my area at all, but the article appears bereft of any sources or commentary on her published research work. All we seem to have is a link to public lectures she gave, and stuff about some of her more controversial media pronouncements. None of her actual published research appears at all. --P LUMBAGO 11:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Good point. Her research work has somewhat taken a backseat in the past 15 years to her media work, but here's some sources: . Her most cited work was in the 1980s on acetylcholinesterase, then she worked on synaptic pharmacology in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, focussing on the substantia nigra. She's also published ideas about consciousness. Google Scholar search, PubMed search. Fences  &amp;  Windows  20:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well she hasn't bothered to publish any of her more recent claims in a scientific journal. 71.234.123.137 (talk) 18:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Would it be a good idea to create a section listing her academic papers? Bibliography can be split into multiple subsections, Books and Journal papers. -AnnanFay (talk) 22:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

More recent claims
She also claimed or very nearly claimed that somehow "internet causes autism."

http://boingboing.net/2011/08/08/baroness-greenfield-links-internet-and-autism-internet-has-hearty-laugh.html

Might want to add more info to the controversy section (or perhaps add a section "views on technology"). She also gave a speech railing against how young people listened to beat driven music, and that the fast-cutting ads for a video game called "entropia" indicated that video games are very chaotic and caused brain damage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4goSnBcyo (part 1, there are at least 7)

Computer games are causing dementia in children??Ben Goldacre: These serious scientific concerns belong, at least once, in a clear scientific paper.
"This week ...Greenfield ... apparently announced that computer games are causing dementia in children...why, in over 5 years of appearing in the media raising these grave worries, has Professor Greenfield of Oxford University never simply published the claims in an academic paper?...When I raised concerns, she said I was like the epidemiologists who denied that smoking caused cancer. Other critics find themselves derided as sexist in the media. When Professor Dorothy Bishop raised concerns, Professor Greenfield responded: “it’s not really for Dorothy to comment on how I run my career”...hope that it will simply result in an Oxford science professor writing a scientific paper, about a scientific claim of great public health importance, that they have made repeatedly – but confusingly – for at least half a decade. " Why won’t Professor Greenfield publish this theory in a scientific journal?, The Guardian, Saturday 22 October 2011 91.39.101.244 (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move
Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield → Susan Greenfield – - Seems to be her WP:COMMONNAME from sources, and there are no other Susan Greenfields with Wikipedia articles from whom she needs to be distinguished. McGeddon (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC) Not moved. This is plainly the naming convention being employed for articles such as this, so you should try to obtain consensus to change the naming convention. Nyttend (talk) 00:26, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support —  f c s u p e r ( How's That?, That's How! ) (Exclusionistic Immediatist ) — 20:02, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - Per WP:NCPEER, "Personal name, Ordinal (if appropriate) Peerage title" is the usual title of a peer. While she is known as Susan Greenfield, she is also very much known as Baroness Greenfield, I'm not convinced either necessary far outweigh the other. -- KTC (talk) 14:50, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

21st environment
The part about the impact of the 21st environment on the brain doesn’t make any sense. What environment? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.255.216.242 (talk) 22:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I imagine the missing word is "century". I've added it. --McGeddon (talk) 19:02, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

"Directorship scrapped" or "Greenfield made redundant"?
User:Sagpa13 is keen to state that Greenfield ceased to be the director of the Royal Institution when she was "declared redundant"; the previous wording was that the position of director was "scrapped". The cited source quotes "a source close to the institution" as saying "The RI had to consider the legalities. The only way to get rid of her was to abolish the job. Because of the financial problems, they simply could not afford to fund the director. She had negotiated a long term contract. This was the only way to ask her to leave.", which explicitly suggests that the RI could not have made her redundant, and digging around another article argues that Greenfield "should have been sacked" instead of the position being abolished. I'm not finding any great sources that cover the reasons behind the decision, but it would seem more accurate to say that the position was abolished, rather than that Greenfield was made redundant (implying that a replacement director took her place). What do other editors think? --McGeddon (talk) 17:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Redundance implies that no one did take Greenfield's place. The RI does not have a director any more as the post no longer exists. Therefore Greenfield was made redundant. (Sagpa13 (talk) 14:38, 14 November 2013 (UTC))


 * My mistake, I didn't realise redundancy implied the abolition of the post. I don't see any harm in explicitly stating that the post was scrapped, though, so I've put this back. --McGeddon (talk) 17:38, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

BMJ editorial flaming Greenfield
Someone might want to add a pointer to this. http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3064 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.152.82.214 (talk) 00:18, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ I added it. Although it's "just" an editorial and contains a biomedical claim, it's usable per WP:PARITY I think. Alexbrn (talk) 07:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

McGeddon (talk)I would like to suggest the addition of Susan's article on the newspaper "The telegraph" to the BMJ conflict with "We can’t ignore that technology is changing our brains" as the statement of Susan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarasare (talk • contribs) 14:30, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Probably shouldn't: her response is already noted and must avoid giving undue space to WP:FRINGE notions. Alexbrn (talk) 14:39, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Does she make any new statements there which are worth quoting in the article? "I am not pretending to conduct experiments that test a specific, falsifiable hypothesis" seems unrelated to the objections, but if "I set out to provide a review – accessible to everyone – of the current state of all the research in this field" is her describing the intention behind her own book, that might be worth including. --McGeddon (talk) 14:52, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've just got lured into this due to User:MUK81's edits. I have added in her response (at the 'paywalled' BMJ). I don't thinks it's "undue space", but wo'nt get into an edit war over it. Snori (talk) 11:25, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Opening
"Her research is to identify a novel approach to the treatment of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease." I find this very awkwardly written and ambiguous. Does it mean her research is intended to do this or it is going to do this or that was its purpose and it has already done this? Does this describe every piece of research she has ever done or just her current research? Something clearer and better written is needed. --Lo2u (T • C) 21:26, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Non-diffusing subcategories
There was a huge feminist uproar that women writers and scientists were "ghettoized" into subcategories, hence we keep them in redundant categories. It was dragged out painfully (see the talk page for Category:Women writers and the consensus was to put them into redundant categories. If the categories in question are not labeled as non-diffusing, then they should be. Asarelah (talk) 03:12, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes you were correct and i have self-reverted. Jytdog (talk) 03:12, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

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Attendance in the Lords
She very rarely voted there. Last time in 2018 according to the Public Whip.82.100.251.67 (talk) 20:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)