Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/B S Dwarakanath


 * 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   no consensus.  MBisanz  talk 03:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

B S Dwarakanath

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Google came up with only one hit: a French-language article that features a mere mention of the subject's name and nothing else. THE AMERICAN METROSEXUAL 07:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's because you searched for his full name. Search for B S Dwarakanath. You'll get lots of hits. He has over 150 publications and international awards to his credit. Radiation Biology is not a glamorous field. Moreover, due to discrimination, many Indian scientists cannot publish in journals like Nature etc. And most importantly, DRDO labs do not advertise their scientists' on the web. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.68.29.162 (talk) 11:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. I thought about that after I wrote it. At any rate, the article still seems to be an autobiography; I mean, look at the article's name and the creator's name. THE AMERICAN METROSEXUAL 19:58, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. Satisfies Notability_(academics): influential scientist whose research influence has been noted by User:58.68.29.162; winner of multiple prestigious national-level awards; membership in multiple prestigious scholarly associations. Clearly notable.  The article needs to be sourced and wikified, but the remedy is editing, not deletion.  Baileypalblue (talk) 13:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you baileypal. I do not know how to reference. I'm quite new to Wikiepedia. Also, organisational references are not available due to above mentioned reasons. I checked the page of the Society for Cancer Research and Communication's webpage. They still have not updated their webpage with this year's winners.

I have links for some of the other awards but I don't know how to reference. Could someone please help me out here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abhilashdwarakanath (talk • contribs) 15:46, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.   —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep Not everything in the article is really significant, but he did publish 51 papers listed in scopus, with the highest citation counts 46, 45, 28. This is respectable, though not sensational, for a medical scientist in this area. Is his academic position is likely to be notable? I think yes, as the joint head of a major institute  and Are his awards notable? for this I am not at all sure-- Society for Cancer Research and Communication is not an international society.  He has an editorship, but not of a major journal.  DGG (talk) 04:02, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Strong Keep Scopus is not the be all and end all of scientific publications. I must stress that due to various constraints, scientists from the third world do not get as much exposure as the ones from the first world. If you look at the awards list, quite a few of his awards have been international ones. Scopus gives a list of 51 papers. However, Dwarakanath has more than 150 papers to his credit. He is the Jt Director of the world's first institute wholly dedicated to Nuclear Medicine. And one more thing that has been skipped by the author in the page is that Dwarakanath is one of the advisors to the Ministry of Defence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.68.29.162 (talk) 05:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

@ Americanmetrosexual: Yes please look carefully at the scientist's name and the author's name. They are two different names. B S and Abhilash aretwo different names. I think Abhilash is his son. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.68.29.162 (talk) 05:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if that's the case, then it's a conflict of interest, which is discouraged. THE AMERICAN METROSEXUAL 06:59, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. How often needs it to be said that autobio or COI are NO REASON TO DELETE! They are indicators for cleanup and editing, nothing else. Both are discouraged,but there is NO RULE AGAINST IT. Having gotten this off my chest, the citation figures given by DGG are rather low. In addition, I seem to be unable to find the journal Biotechnology in Health Care of which Dwarakanath is claimed to be an editor. In fact, the way that this entry is written, it looks to me that he actually is not claimed to be an editor at all, but just a referee. In all, not sufficient evidence of notability. --Crusio (talk) 07:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep Biotechnology in Health Care is a book coauthored by Dwarakanath, R K Sharma and Lazar T Matthew. It is indeed sad that quite a few good Indian publications do not receive the kind of attention they deserve in the Western World. If you carefully peruse Biomedexperts, Dwarakanath is listed as one of the world's top 50 authors for work related to Gliomas and 2-DG.

If anyone here has access to the NIHs at Bethesda, you could inquire. Dwarakanath and group have strong collaborations with the NIH and they concluded one quite recently. Dwarakanath's group also has research collaborations with Dr Joe Mantil's group at the Kettering Institute in Dayton, OH.

And if I'm not wrong, Dwarakanath delivered a Keynote address at the International Conference on Radiation Biology at Jaipur, India this November. You don't get to do that unless you're a highly noted academic in that field.

strong keep oh do keep this page. one never sees indian scientists on wikipedia, and heaven knows they deserve to be there. at least Dr. Dwarakanath does. he is immensely cited, and has his brilliant work on 2-DG to his credit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.142.8.172 (talk) 11:48, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Note. This user has made few or no other edits outside of this topic.--Eric Yurken (talk) 16:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment: being editor of a book is nothing really special for an academic. And, in fact, Dwarakanath is not highly cited. Web of Science lists 36 articles for "Dwarakanath B*", with 245 citations in total, the most cited article having 38 citations and an h-index of 10. Nothing to be ashame of, but far from notable in my book. --Crusio (talk) 12:38, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

comment - The west has the propensity to conveniently ignore or dismiss publications in national journals and citations gotten from them. For the record, I haven't seen many brilliant radiation biologists on Wiki. Wolfgang Pohlit and Viney K Jain are conspicuous by their absence.


 * Weak keep. Article needs to be rewritten to avoid WP:PEACOCK terms. Possibly meets WP:PROF criterion #1 (significant impact in scholarly discipline, broadly construed). Citation impact seems to suggest notability, even though it may be a bit lower than one would expect for notability in this field. News coverage seems to also indicate a certain degree of notability (there are false positives).--Eric Yurken (talk) 17:08, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I disagree with both Eric and the anonymous IP just above. The GS search linked by Eric gives citation counts in the low 30s, despite the supposedly broader coverage of GS, this is actually lower even than in WoS. On many of the articles found, Dwarakanath is not even first or last author, but occupies a much more junior position. In any case, a total number of citations less than 300 is in my eyes completely insufficient for notability, especially in a high-citation density field like (tumor) medicine. As for the lack of coverage of national journals, WoS actually includes 20 journals with the word "Indian" in their title (plus one "West Indian"). This does not even count journals edited in India but without India in the title, such as the Journal of Genetics. In addition, this person is supposed to collaborate with Western groups and to be a founder of leader in his field. One would therefore expect that he would at least from time to time publish in Western journals and garner more citations. I am not trying to belittle the accomplishments of this person or the accomplishments of Indian scientists in general. This person just does not meet WP:PROF. Concerning WP:BIO, unless I am mistaken, none of the 7 hits in Eric's Google News search touches upon the subject of this biography. --Crusio (talk) 19:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. One of the news entries (Hindustan Times; Dec 19, 2005) states that: “Earlier on Saturday, the Science Congress was inaugurated by Dr BS Dwarkanath, chairperson of the Bio Cybernatics Institute of Nuclear Medicine …” Assuming that it refers to the event organized by the Indian Science Congress Association, it would arguably indicate national prominence. It is bits and pieces like this here and there that make me lean toward a "weak keep".--Eric Yurken (talk) 03:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Not much to add to extensive study by Crusio. The news search results are next to negligible with only two of them mention this person, both in no way assert the notability. The citation counts are also unimpressive towards notability. Leave  Sleaves  20:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

comment Do I need to provide an entire list of his publications in which he's the first author? Never claimed he's a 'founder' his field. Unless I'm very much mistaken, even scientists who have notable contributions and are not founders of their field can be on wikipedia. Is wikipedia becoming elitist now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.68.29.162 (talk) 14:42, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment No, you don't need to produce the whole list of publications. Please read WP:PROF: numbers of articles published does not contribute to notability. What counts is whether those articles have been influential, which can be measured by citations or (more rarely) articles in more general media such as newspapers. Sorry about my use of the word "founder", it should have been "leader". (However, note that the article calls him a "pioneer", not that much different from a "founder"). --Crusio (talk) 15:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment I once again stress on the fact that defence scientists' work in India are kept quite hush-hush due to various reasons. Moreover, I ran a search and it is quite surprising that the citations and impact in national journals are NOT accounted for. Anyways, when we informed him that he has a page on Wikipedia, he was quite agitated and requested us to withdraw it ASAP. So you can go ahead and delete it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.68.29.162 (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2009 (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.