Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Lenton


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  Arbitrarily0  ( talk ) 22:19, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Lenton

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I'm doubtful about the notability of this climate scientist. The article text does not not make a good case - this is a plain CV drop, based mostly on primary publications. Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO is a responsible role but not any kind of directorial position. Cites are topped by a few very high numbers, but the top four are data release papers, which automatically get referenced by anyone who works with current data of the relevant type. Overall I'm seeing neither personal notability nor sufficient recognition of impact on the field here. - I'm not too hawkish on pruning scientist biographies though, so please have a look. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 23:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)


 *  Keep Neutral. Data release or not, the GS cites are high enough to pass WP:Prof. The BLP could be better written. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:05, 13 December 2020 (UTC).
 * Very weak delete. While the GS citations are high at first glance, that's mostly due to papers with an extremely high number of coauthors and Lenton as middle author.  There's a paper with a high number of coauthors and him as first author with 163 citations, and then several on this level.  But as climate science appears to be an extremely high citation field, I'm skeptical as to whether this is enough. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Since it sounds like the high citation but long author list papers may be a factor in a number of folks decisions this time, I recalculated the subject's h-index using only papers listed on google scholar with 10 or fewer authors (19) or papers with 10 or fewer authors and the subject in the first or last position of the author list (14). I'm not sure what to conclude about those numbers since I don't have a good baseline for comparison to other scientists using similar criteria. Frankly I was hoping recounting with these criteria would come out above 30 or below 10, which might have been more informative. Having done the calculations it seemed worth sharing them though. MoneciousTriffid (talk) 19:51, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your work in tackling this difficult issue. It has sometimes been proposed that the citations of each paper should be divided by the number of authors to get a figure of merit. The database companies have this information but don't provide it. I think an h-index of 19 is enough to pass WP:Prof. Author order indicates little as it is so variable. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:46, 13 December 2020 (UTC).
 * My impression here is that authorship in these institutional/national data release papers may conflict with the spirit of why we look at citation numbers. We use them as a heuristic to gauge the author's impact on the field - how many people have found this author's work worth referring to? For an annual data compendium, that seems misapplied; referents are basically citing the most current database release, not the personal contribution of whoever helms the release. Hence my inclination to not give much weight to these citation numbers. Haven't come across this particular problem before, admittedly. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:46, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Your comment is quite correct. This is a problem (what is the individual contribution of a member of a large and productive research group?) that crops up on a regular basis and I have not seen any plausible way to deal with it proposed. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:41, 13 December 2020 (UTC).
 * Myself, I'm looking for evidence that the subject has themself contributed something with high impact. I mostly ignore massively coauthored papers for this reason, unless it looks like the subject had a leading role in the paper.  (Though certainly "massively" depends somewhat on the balance between number of authors versus number of citations.)  So Elmidae, helming the data release likely should grant some notability, but it looks like the role of the current subject in the highly cited papers was smaller than what one might describe as "helming". Russ Woodroofe (talk) 02:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I would like to see single-author papers, but have not found any yet. Some more authoritarian research institutions may discourage them. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:26, 14 December 2020 (UTC).

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 03:54, 20 December 2020 (UTC) Change vote. While independent achievement may exist the sources are not yet enough to confirm it. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:07, 20 December 2020 (UTC).
 * Weak Delete per nom and a very good discussion above. Kolma8 (talk) 13:28, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.