Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Douglas Youvan


 * 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. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:03, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Douglas Youvan

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I think this article needs to stand for an AFD test. This article struck me as being a BLP with literally no verifiable information in its current state other than that he has written some books. Since BLP's are held to a higher standard, I think that, in its current state, the article should be either improved or deleted. Regarding improvement, I tried, and have not been able to find any sources that I would consider "good sources" per WP guidelines. My specific concern is Wikipedia's Professor Test for notability. Perhaps someone out there has better access to sources in this particular field than I do, because I'm not seeing anything article worthy on my end. Ditch &#8733; 04:40, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 11:57, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Undecided: I just skimmed through the news and books sources; Youvan's name comes up here and there, but specialized knowledge is required to estimate the value. I've added an expert-subject template to the article. -- BenTels (talk) 18:38, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I think he passes WP:PROF for high citations in Google scholar and external attention such as this to his research. I am troubled by the creationist external links in the article, though, because that aspect of his life doesn't seem to have attracted enough attention for us to give it the mainstream-point-of-view coverage demanded by WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. I'm also a bit troubled by the contentious edit history of the article, per WP:BLP. Maybe the best solution is to remove the links and stick to only material that can be verified from reliable third party sources? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. Researching this article has been an interesting experience. On the one hand he has co-authored quite a large number of papers (more than 50, possibly as many as 100) and seems to have done some good work as a bioscientist. He is even mentioned on the NASA spinoff website (link). On the other hand the website URL of the company he set up (KAIROS Scientific, Inc) has been hijacked by a Japanese push-up bra company. He is a creationist and has self-published a couple of ebooks, which may be considered WP:FRINGE: "As Velocity Approaches Light Speed, P Becomes Equivalent to NP for Computations Using Zero-Mass Particles"; and "Questions of a Christian Biophysicist", which has the quote 'Doug feels called ... to “extinguish Darwinism” and spread the word that “an intelligent man can believe in literal Creation”. He is credited with finding a pattern in the genetic code which is inexplicable by any Earthly process.' There is also a pattern of sockpuppetry and legal threats surrounding this article, with at least three users being blocked including User:Doug_youvan (see Nukeh). There are similar legal and other issues on Wikimedia Commons, which I'm not going to link to (but will say that they are very strange). Despite all this he might still satisfy WP:PROF. CodeTheorist (talk) 21:47, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I added the spinoff.nasa site to the article, if nothing else, at least to reference his time at MIT. But I also used it to include a snippet that the he was part of developing spectral analysis technology used by NASA.  The source looks good, but not sure I got the "jargon" right, as I'm certainly not an expert in the field, so someone may want to double check my wording.  Still don't think it's enough for WP:NOTE but at least it's something! Thanks CodeTheorist!  Anything else you can provide?  Ditch &#8733;  22:16, 29 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. For D C Youvan GS gives an h-index of 32 with 6 papers with over 100 cites. This is a clear pass of WP:Prof for his scientific activities. His religious activities do not seem to be notable. This should be reflected in the BLP. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:13, 29 July 2012 (UTC).
 * Is it possible to add the h-index info to the article with a ref? Ditch &#8733;  00:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The convention is not to do this as the h-index frequently changes (it always increases with time). Xxanthippe (talk) 00:51, 30 July 2012 (UTC).


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 04:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. First someone removes vast amounts of sourced, verifiable material from the article then someone nominates it for deletion for having "literally no verifiable information in its current state". That is fucking awesome. Note that Youvan's views of the origins of life etc is an entirely separate issue from his achievements within mainstream science. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 21:17, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this pertinent observation. The material removed is the very material that establishes his notability. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:57, 5 August 2012 (UTC).
 * As far as I'm concerned, notability (and in such cases proof of importance of someone's work) needs to be established by citing reviews and citations of the work, not work by the subject himself. Note claims such as "This work correctly predicted..." without a reference to back it up, or "This observation can be compared with Frances Crick's declaration of the genetic code as being a frozen accident," tagged as possibly synthesis (the article, as far as I can tell, does not name Youvan). Going over that edit, there is one statement that I should have let stand: "International collaborative work was funded by a Human Frontier Science Program Award", with a citation . A list of work the subject has done without secondary references proving its importance is just a resume in prose and such a list in itself does not establish notability, it establishes that a person has published (with a bunch of co-authors). Drmies (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, that "Human Frontier Science Program Award" can't be verified. The supplied link is dead, there are no search results on the organization's website for his name at all, their archive goes back only to 2004, and the search function on their website lists nothing like a "program award". It is possible that what is referred to is a "Program Grant", as they call it. Searching elsewhere delivers this paper, supported "by National Institutes of Health Grant GM42645, Department of Energy Grant DE-FG02-90ER20019, and by the Human Frontiers Science Program", which begs the question of how notable this grant was--whether it was a major award or not. Not all grants are of encyclopedic notability, though they are of great importance to a person's resume. Note that I have no interest in defending this person's notability or the lack thereof. As for "that is fucking awesome"--well, that's just hot air. Drmies (talk) 16:35, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * when the appropriate removal of bad content and sourcing starkly reveals an actual lack of notability, bringing it to the appropriate process IS TOTALLY fucking awsome!!1!!1! -- The Red Pen of Doom  17:13, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Red, you're TOTALLY FUCKING correct! :-D Concerning the Human Frontiers "award", that's not an award but a grant. Not easy to get, but that goes for all grants. All scientists in this kind of field have at least one such grant at any given time, often several concurrently, so this is not really anything out of the ordinary. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:35, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - and I believe it's a bad faith nomination: removing relevant information from the article before putting up for AfD does not show a neutral view on the subject. If any cites for the creationist views or essays are found then the links should be retained, because it is a biographical article in addition to being a research article and not every aspect of a person's biography needs to pass GNG or WP:PROF to be included as long as the biographical subject as a whole passes GNG or a more specialized guideline, but I agree that there needs to be at least one citation to let us know that this is a significant part of his life or research (more important than say cat pictures, etc.).  -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:22, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Ditch Fisher nominated this 2 days after Drmies made the edits you refer to. As explained above, they did not contribute one iota to notability. I don't see why this then amounts to bad faith on the part of Ditch. And, in any case, regardless for what ultimate reason an article has been taken to AfD, what counts here is notability and notability alone. In that respect, would you care to tell us on what policy your keep !vote is based? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:33, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I don't see any reason given for keeping the article. And cat pictures? Drmies (talk) 19:44, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. Be this all as it may. There is a clear-cut pass of WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:54, 6 August 2012 (UTC).
 * Keep I agree with Xxanthippe that PROF is met - some of his papers are cited several hundred times and there are also mentions of him in New Scientist as well as being cited by many text books. Finding good sources for living scientists tends to be difficult, but Youvan appears to have made a significant contribution to our understanding of photosynthesis. SmartSE (talk) 23:19, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we should be having articles on living scientists we can't find good sources for. It's very clearly a BLP issue.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * if you click on the scholar link at the top of the page you will find hundreds of good sources. See WP:Prof policy guideline. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:51, 7 August 2012 (UTC).
 * scholar is likely to give hits by the subject, but not content about the subject. -- The Red Pen of Doom  04:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * For Pete's sake, look at the citations. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC).
 * When I was looking for the Crick article I found that Youvan has a ton of articles in the Journal of Molecular Biology which is a pretty clear indication that he means something. I can't do the h-indices and all that, but the man is obviously well-published. Drmies (talk) 03:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Citations are not good sources. Citations don't even establish that he's not another Nicolas Bourbaki. They certainly don't establish birth name, place, date or gender, all of which self-reporting has been known to lie about, and all of which are standard for a biography.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Prosfilaes, I've been around the block here a couple of times; you don't have to state the obvious. But you're not even correct. Lying about gender is pretty rare, for instance, and it is perfectly possible to write a decent article, at least a decent stub, without that biographical information. For notability purposes it doesn't matter one little bit whether someone is proven to be born somewhere, sometime, with a certain type of plumbing. Just look at this, Category:Year of birth missing (living people). WP:PROF gets along quite well without the things we usually take for granted in biographies, because notability is judged on the appraisal of the work a person has done or, in some cases, their position. Drmies (talk) 17:50, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have access to this to see what his role in the advocacy of helping the broader public understand scientific issues? --  The Red Pen of Doom  17:54, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That article is available via Nexis, which, I believe, most university libraries in Anglophone countries subscribe to. It doesn't say anything about Youvan's work in the public understanding of science, but describes his work as one of a six-person team at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory who chopped up some bacterial DNA in order to identify the genes associated with photosynthesis. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess I was very misled by the headline! Thanks for checking. -- The Red Pen of Doom  18:27, 7 August 2012 (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.