Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derek George Smyth


 * 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 keep. Tone 12:35, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Derek George Smyth

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WP:BEFORE done. Looking at this article - created 19:54, March 20, 2011 -a reader would be easily persuaded that it is about an eminent British scientist, one Derek George Smyth. It would be expected that a scientist with co-author credits in 61 in papers in scholarly journals would have at least a page profile at least one of the universities he has been purported to work at And so on. It would appear to me - with WP:AGF glasses on - that this article fails WP:NACADEMIC or in the alternative WP:ANYBIO, WP:GNG and so on. It would appear to me that there is a possibility that this may also also be a blatant hoax. WP:AFD is WP:AFDNOTCLEANUP. Unless it sometimes is. Pete AU aka Shirt58 (talk) 11:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No results found for "Derek George Smyth" site:yale.edu.
 * No results found for "Derek George Smyth" site:rockefeller.edu.
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment Except that if you search for ‘Derek Smyth peptide’ you come up with dozens of authored and co-authored papers like this one, so if it’s a hoax it’s an incredibly elaborate one. Mccapra (talk) 14:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Almost certainly not a hoax. is published in the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, for instance. It lists his affiliation as the William Harvey Research Institute as of 2016. He's not listed in their current faculty directory, but the paper was published four years ago so it wouldn't be surprising if he'd moved on or retired. I'm actually not surprised that a scientist born in the 1920s isn't listed on the Yale or Rockefeller websites, because if he was affiliated with those institutions it would likely have been in the pre-Internet era. As for notability, he's a second or third author on two papers in Nature , and a number of other widely cited papers, so a decent case for WP:PROF. But I know most sciences have very high citation counts, so I'm not sure if his scholar result  establishes notability just by citation count alone. I'll leave the !voting to the experts. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:06, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Striking the "almost certainly" above as I also found a book reference to his group at National Institute for Medical Research: . I think I'm now a tentative keep given this and the many highly-cited papers in prominent journals. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2020 (UTC) Now a firm keep as I found an announcement (only on ProQuest, but maybe it's somewhere on The Times website as well), that he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2002. That's a pass of WP:NPROF #3, I think. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment I would agree. First, An author search in PubMed.gov obtained a list of 125 papers with the bulk of them pre-Internet in time of publication. Second, he was an invited participant in the "Endogenous Opiates" section of the "Wellcome Witness to Twentieth Century Medicine" seminar, The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 1997. Finally, there is a short profile of uncertain reliability for Derek George Smyth. Paul H. (talk) 17:20, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Clearly meets academic inclusion rule 3.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:18, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , Did you mean to !vote keep? Your edit summary said "K" and this looks like a keep !vote except for the first word. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 00:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:NACADEMIC. Couldn’t find reliable uninvolved mentions of the subject. Idell  (talk) 08:08, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment by nominator: "Hoax" assertion struck. This is perhaps an cautionary tale about the shortcomings of Wikipedia, about how article deletion and retention is in the hands of lay people - like me - not experts. This article could have been speedily deleted as a hoax. Someone - me - with advanced permissions granted by the Wikipedia community decided that it should be discussed here instead, with the now obviously incorrect assertion that it may be a hoax. In the "WP:BEFORE done" assertion, I pretty much manifestly made the mistake of requesting for Internet-era references. I'm unambiguously WP:INVOLVED here. so I'll leave it at this. Pete AU aka  --Shirt58 (talk) 10:13, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable by virtue of being elected a a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Mccapra (talk) 10:24, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep under WP:NACADEMIC, as other have said. -Kj cheetham (talk) 13:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable by virtue of being elected a a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Author Sanju (talk) 01:47, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. A google scholar search for "D G Smyth" shows many papers with hundreds of citations, surely passing WP:NPROF C1.    The article isn't in such great shape, but it appears that he mostly worked before the internet era, explaining the lack of online sources that the nominator was concerned about. Note that I'm uncertain whether fellowship in the RSC is sufficient for NPROF C3, although honorary fellowship surely would be. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:30, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Definite Keep. He absolutely worked at Yale with Fruton; see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja01502a039. Real person, of significant notability. Raymond033 (talk) 03:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per PROF#3 - "admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry." Bearian (talk) 11:36, 14 September 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.