Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David L. Epstein


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 04:11, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

David L. Epstein

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Non-notable BLP, apparently created on the basis of a misdemeanor conviction. Not likely to ever justify a full encyclopedic biography. RxS (talk) 23:15, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:BLP, non-notable individual who only has an article because they were charged with a crime. Resolute 23:24, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete Doesn't meet WP:PROF notability standards.   Will Beback    talk    23:39, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 02:14, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete Neither his crime nor his academic work not the combination of the two would appear to satisfy WP:PROF or WP:GNG. --Crusio (talk) 07:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete doesn't meet WP:PROF and the notoriety is momentary. --rgpk (comment) 14:06, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Subject of this article meets criteria in WP:PROF because of the major award mentioned in the third reference. Peacock (talk) 18:25, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:PROF. Subject of the article has won a decent award, was previously director of a center at a major university (Columbia qualifies), and has decently high citation counts. Gscholar was frustrating b/c subject has also published under D. Epstein (too many name collisions to analyze) as well as D. L. Epstein, so I turned to ISI Web of Science instead. Restricting to the social science index and limiting to schools where he's been, I get an ISI h-index of 11, with cites of 126, 90, 61, 35, etc (past experience, as well as, say, this paper, suggest that ISI severely undercounts versus Gscholar, our usual rough tool of choice). I conclude from available evidence that the subject means WP:PROF's criterion 1. Ray  Talk 19:02, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * In my experience, it's GS that severely overcounts. That's why it's a rough tool... An h of 11 is not very impressive, I think. --Crusio (talk) 19:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * This sort of thing is field-dependent. WoS has been criticized in the past for undercounting, not merely b/c GS overcounts, but also because it fails to track chapters in books, invited articles to conference proceedings, that sort of thing. I did a very small random sampling of some tenured faculty at a (very) good university from the faculty list for the politics department, and he seemed above the norm for poli sci, so I said keep. If you have contradictory information, I'd be happy to revise my opinion on this one. Ray  Talk 21:15, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It is true that GS counts books and book chapters, which WoS doesn't do. However, the effect if that is very much dependent on the particular field and within a field, the disadvantage is the same for everybody. As citation counts should be interpreted in the light of the particular field (for example, neuroscientists tend to be much more cited than mathematicians), the field remains level. GS has enormous problems for citation analysis: the same article often has multiple entries (which can either inflate or deflate an h-index) and any citation is counted (and hence easily manipulated: see the curious case of Ike Antkare)... --Crusio (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Citation counts are not a great way to judge notability (a review article, for example, is almost always heavily cited though its contribution is small). Nor are directors of centers always useful unless the center itself is notable and the individual was responsible for setting it up and acquiring funding etc. Usually, one should look for other factors that would indicate notability. At an ivy league university such as Columbia, I would expect a notable professor to, at the least, hold a named chair. Epstein does not appear to hold one, though his cv seems to have disappeared from Columbia's website.--rgpk (comment) 21:33, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that citation counts are not a great way, but the reason they're commonly used as a proxy for academic influence is that a lot of very influential academics are, nonetheless, not written about directly until their obituary. Hence WP:PROF. And our standards allow for named chairs at universities less prestigious than Columbia, so I don't find it implausible that a professor not holding an endowed chair at Columbia might be notable. Ray  Talk 05:22, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It is unlikely that a notable tenured professor is without a chair at Columbia. Failing other evidence of recognition in the field (and citation counts are not a good independent measure), I'd say that an unchaired tenured professor is almost certainly not notable enough for Columbia to be working at retaining that individual and therefore is unlikely to be notable enough for a wikipedia article. That's just the way elite universities work. --rgpk (comment) 19:11, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete, essentially per and . -- Cirt (talk) 01:50, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Weak keep per Ray. A researcher at a major Ivy League university is a long way towards notability, but I'm not sure that he makes the grade. Bearian (talk) 19:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fails WP:BLP. This article is no more than a resume, and the sources (university staff page, a blog, and an association article) don't establish notability. Even his award doesn't have a WP article! -- P 1 9 9 • TALK 01:31, 3 June 2011 (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.