Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Estelle Lazer


 * 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. There is sufficient consensus. (non-admin closure)  J 947  05:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Estelle Lazer

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Nothing to indicate that the subject passes WP:PROF. There has been some press coverage of her work on Pompeii, but not enough to meet the WP:GNG. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 11:56, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Archaeology-related deletion discussions. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete does not pass the notability requirements for academics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:03, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. Early career academics are not usually notable, as here. TV presence not yet enough for WP:GNG WP:Too soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC).
 * Keep I turned up numerous mentions in decent sources. here are a couple of pages in a book. Another book mention. Another book mention here. Mention in New Scientist. A book mention on her Antarctic work. She is quoted at length in the New York Times here.  The evening Standard mentions her here. Republicca.it (Italian) mentions her Pompei work here. El Pais has something substantial here. Here is a Cambridge University-published book that devotes a few pages to her Pompei scanner work.  She may not meet the pure research standard for notability, but with refs like these I believe she has met the GNG.104.163.152.194 (talk) 06:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't think this should be judged on PROF. Her coverage in multiple third party sources obviously underlines her notability.--Ipigott (talk) 13:02, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep As has been repeatedly pointed out the POV that she must meet PROF is misdirected. GNG requires only sufficient RS over time. There are plenty., , , SusunW (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the sentiment but in this case that POV is a strawman. I mentioned the GNG in the nomination, as did, we simply disagree that Lazer meets it. If we're going to start counting passing citations to people's work as "significant coverage" we'll have to throw out WP:PROF altogether and include pretty much everyone who's ever published a scholarly paper. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 15:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * And I will disagree with you that there is insufficient coverage. "Estelle Lazer undertook the first modern systematic study of the human skeletal remains of the victims from Pompeii" is enough to establish that she is notable, if more sources can be found, and they can. (By the by, the book sources clearly show her excavational work is NOT connected to her university work, as she works as a freelancer) In addition to the books,, , , ,  SusunW (talk) 16:04, 27 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. Almost all of the above claims for GNG are actually based on citations/mentions of Lazer's work, the fodder of PROF, not on pieces with biographical discussion on Lazer herself...and these citations are far below our conventional bar. I think this person will be notable, but not yet. Agricola44 (talk) 17:22, 27 February 2017 (UTC).
 * Comment So someone could be notable in the GNG, but once WP:PROF is applied they're not? That seems to contradict the basic principle of the GNG, WP:ANYBIO and Wikipedia policy. I'm not sure I understand WP:PROF. For my field, at least, it's a silly criteria. 104.163.152.194 (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * No, see DGGs comment below. PROF exists because most professors are notable under GNG because some 3rd-party publications have discussed them or their work. Many WP eds now operate on the assumption that all academics from a particular group of interest are notable per se (for example Megalibrarygirl's false conclusion below that "the first to undertake that kind of investigation makes her notable") and this seems to be nudging WP toward just being a WP:DIRECTORY. Agricola44 (talk) 00:39, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep Enough there for a start, and enough hints in the text that notability will easily be established. This is an academic working in popular field, the offline published sources appear first. The recommendation in El Pais 'a antropóloga australiana Estelle Lazer, um das maiores autoridades mundiais na análise forense da antiguidade.' alone is enough at this stage. To have your books translated into another language as stated in 'El Pais' also suggest notability. ClemRutter (talk) 17:50, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep as per, anyone who was the first to undertake that kind of investigation makes her notable. However, there are also enough sources provided above to show she passes GNG. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:36, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep . on the basis that the book is in over 300 worldcat libraries. But in judging notability of academics, we do not count citations from other academic articles as significant for the purpose of the GNG.  If we did, every person who published 2 or more papers that were cited 2 or more times would meet the GNG, which would include essentially every postdoctoral fellow in the world (and every assistant professor in the sciences). One of the reasons we have WP:PROF is to avoid this interpretation--I in fact did make this interpretation for people whom I thought important in the days before WP:PROF was firmly established. The argument succeeding nicely in getting everyone to use WP:PROF instead.  DGG ( talk ) 22:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Grahame (talk) 23:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep - WP:GNG criteria met. Hmlarson (talk) 01:16, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep --- notable in her space. I found some reviews:
 * The fat, hairy women of Pompeii. Dayton, Leigh. New Scientist, Sep 24, 1994; Vol. 143, No. 1944. Reports on University of Sydney archaeologist and physical anthropologist Estelle Lazer's findings that a substantial number... more
 * Researchers, Armed With CT Scanner, Set Out to Demystify Victims of Vesuvius. POVOLEDO, ELISABETTA. New York Times, Oct 06, 2015; Vol. 165, No. 57011 The article focuses on a study by researchers including Estelle Lazer, an Australian f... more
 * Art and Archaeology. Spivey, Nigel. Greece & Rome, Apr 01, 2010; Vol. 57, No. 1, p. 146-149. The article reviews several books including "Lord Elgin and Ancient Greek Architecture... (and) Resurrecting Pomepii by Estelle Lazer... more
 * Etc.
 * K.e.coffman (talk) 03:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. My impression is that she passes both WP:GNG and WP:PROF. There are several in-depth pieces specifically about her and her research in news-media, such as this ABC interview, this piece in Australia's Science Channel, this piece  in the Sydney Morning Herald, for example, as well as the sources quoted by K. e. coffman above. I think that's already enough to pass WP:GNG. Regarding WP:PROF, the case for satisfying this guideline becomes more clear if one looks at the substantive content of scholarly reviews of her work (rather than, say, simply counting the number of such reviews). In particular, these reviews say that she undertook the first modern scientific study of the skeletal remains from Pompei, and dispelled some common misconceptions (e.g. debunking the presumption that most victims of Pompei were childern, elderly and the infirm); see for example the `Cold cases' section of this  article in World Archeology. Nsk92 (talk) 17:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * At the end of the day however famous, Pompeii is just one site, and it's rare for there to be more than one osteological study from a single site anyway. So I struggle to see how being the first to do so meets PROF's criteria of making a significant contribution to a major discipline. But obviously the consensus regarding the GNG has gone against me on this one. Maybe my judgement is off because what seems routine to me as someone in the same field is significant to people with a more detached viewpoint. Lesson learned, and apologies for the time wasted! –&#8239;Joe (talk) 19:54, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - my impression is that PROF is not meant to imply that a research isn't notable simply because they have an h index greater than two. But it isn't meant to superseded GNG when an individual receives coverage in multiple, in depth, non-academic sources. That is, my interpretation of criteria 7, "The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity." is that GNG applies directly for an academic for non-academic coverage. My interpretation of criteria 1, "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." is that to academic coverage must speak to an individual's academic impact to qualify as counting towards GNG. That is, "substantial impact outside academia" sounds to me identical to "significant coverage outside of academia" (because I think WP:IMPACT is too subjective when applied in a non-academic sense) while "significant impact in their scholarly discipline" sounds to me to be asking for a bit more (and is less subjective because academic impact can be judge based on whether or not the conclusions of one scholar are accepted as starting point of multiple pieces of independent, reliable scholarship). In this case, I think a little bit of both are true, and enough of PROF criteria 7. Smmurphy(Talk) 20:19, 6 March 2017 (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.