Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Etzel Cardeña


 * 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 a rough consensus that the subject meets WP:PROF and possibly also the GNG. A major concern of those editors in favour of deletion, that this is a BLP without reliable sources, has been rectified by. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 07:14, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Etzel Cardeña

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Contested PROD. PROD reason was "No reliable secondary sources tending to show notability. Two of the reference links are dead, but can be seen by their names to be in any case primary sources; one is to the editorial board of a journal that Cardeña is on; one, in Swedish, is an extremely popularly written interview with Cardeña ("Are you more telepathic when you're in love?" "Why are Swedes so rude?") in Salongk.se, via the Wayback Machine; the venue is no longer online. The last one, billed in the article as an article written by Cardeña, is actually an open letter signed by nearly one hundred academics, of whom he is one, and published in the controversial Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (see our article)." The PROD was contested with a claim that the subject meets "multiple WP:PROF criteria" - however, the WP:RSes to write an article from are not only not present, but don't (on a quick WP:BEFORE) appear to exist. Perhaps they do, but we need the actual sources before a WP:BLP can be allowed to exist. David Gerard (talk) 19:46, 2 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 19:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 19:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 19:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 19:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete - no notable Ghits, fails WP:NBIO. Since this is a BLP, the fact it has no sources also is a reason for deletion. Kirbanzo (talk) 20:11, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Full transparency: I wrote the PROD rationale which David Gerard quotes above. The PROD was removed with the comment that "article makes a clear claim of notability through multiple WP:PROF criteria; prodder appears to be using the wrong notability guideline for this subject". Of the WP:PROF criteria, I believe the remover must be referring to number 5, "The person holds or has held a named chair appointment ... at a major institution of higher education and research". I say that because I can't see any other WP:PROF criterion that Cadeña remotely meets. It is claimed in the article that Cadeña is "the Thorsen Professor of Psychology at Lund University"; so, he holds or held a named chair appointment. Lund University is certainly a major institution of higher education and research, but there is something unusual about the Thorsen chair of psychology. The only mentions of it that Google finds are closely together with Cardeña, in contexts where Cardeña himself has listed his credentials, with one exception: an interesting article from 2015 titled "A decade in the borderland of science", just one and unfortunately in Swedish, in Sydsvenskan, a respectable daily. Apparently the Danish industrialist Poul Thorsen had difficulty in persuading any major university to take his money and create a chair in parapsychology: both Copenhagen and Stockholm declined. I quote an exerpt from the Sydsvenskan article:

Quote from Thorsen's will:
 * "The rest of my fortune will be offered to a Swedish university in the order of Lund, Upsala, Stockholm, as the university in question will undertake to apply the interest of the untiring fund capital for full or partial remuneration of a professor, possibly a lecturer, in parapsychology linked to teaching in hypnologi."

"The story of Lund University's most odd professor's chair begins in 1961. The Danish manufacturer Poul Thorsen writes the above formulations in his will. It states that his wealth must be devoted to two purposes. One was to ensure lifelong livelihood for two women, servants in the Thorsian household. The second was to finance research within Thorsen's great interest, parapsychology. From the beginning, Thorsen would [=wished to] benefit Copenhagen University, but they thanked no [=declined]. The same message met Thorsen in Stockholm. In the end, Lund University accepted the donation. An important role, then, was [=was played by] the director, Philip Sandblom, who thought that the money could come in handy. Together with the psychological department, Lund University succeeded in part in [=in partically redefining] the purpose of the donation, so that it also included research within the somewhat more accepted field of hypnology, ie research on hypnosis. At the beginning of the 21st century, the last of the two women in the testament had died and the money could eventually be paid to Lund University, where the professors at the psychological department did not see any obstacles to announcing the service [=to inviting applications for the new chair]. So [=This] was done in May 2003. That it was not any service was pretty clear soon [=That it was not just any chair soon became clear]. Not least for [=to] the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Sune Sunesson, who was able to [=had to] handle Lund University's probably most laborious appointment case ever. ''"

(Note: This is from Google Translate, as far as possible. I'm a Swedish speaker, and have offered clearer alternatives where I found the machine translation incomprehensible. The whole article, which expresses doubt about letting this kind of chair into Swedish academe, is well worth reading.)


 * What's my point? Well, it seems strange that his type of named chair, obviously not nearly as respectable as a regular Swedish professorship, can on its own make a person notable. I can't believe that is the intention of WP:PROF. Bishonen &#124; talk 21:07, 2 September 2018 (UTC).
 * If this article stays, that's definitely worth discussing in the article. There was also (non-RS) discussion of the Thorsen chair in ScienceBlogs - the chair was empty for decades until Cardena accepted it - David Gerard (talk) 21:34, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * ping, who contested the PROD - do you have any good sources on Cardena? - David Gerard (talk) 21:35, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep per WP:PROF (named chair at a major university), #C8 (editor in chief of a notable journal), and #C1 (16 publications with over 100 citations each on Google Scholar). Making fun of someone's research specialty is not an adequate reason for deletion, and neither is using the wrong notability criterion (this is a case for PROF, not WP:GNG). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:47, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Even given prima facie notability - we still need the actual RSes for a BLP, and the article doesn't have them. Do you have them? Then they need to be there in practice, not just hypothetically, for the article to be allowed to exist - David Gerard (talk) 23:16, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't use WP:GNG to assess notability, I used WP:PROF. You suggest its criterion C1 is satisfied by "16 publications with over 100 citations each on Google Scholar"; I don't agree. C1 goes like this: "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources". The number of publications with 100 citations does not in itself show that. (100 bare citations isn't much.) I don't so far see any reason to believe his research has had a significant impact. But I'm ready to change my mind if you supply the independent reliable sources that say it has. P.S. Is it my quotes from the interview in Salongk.se, which was offered as a source in our article, that you call "Making fun of someone's research specialty"? The interview was offered as a source, and I tried to describe its character, to assist the non-Swedish-speaking reader, without any intention of making fun. It's actually a better source, being at least secondary, than several of the others.Bishonen &#124; talk 11:15, 3 September 2018 (UTC).
 * To me this objection reads as "I don't believe in our established notability guidelines so I am going to make up different requirements that articles must also satisfy". We have hundreds of published reliable sources discussing his research, some of them likely in-depth. And C1 was only the third of three notability criteria that I cited him as passing; we only need one. In any case, if you pretend that for reasons GNG should take precedence in this case, and  look like reliable in-depth independent sources, certainly enough to source the named professorship criterion of WP:PROF. And to respond to previous comments about how "respectable" the chair is: I think the controversy over the chair makes it more notable, not less. And our personal opinions about respectability should be very far from how we decide notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 12:53, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This may be prima facie notability - or it may not - but please refrain from making personal attacks on other editors. With the sources to hand, and adding the second source you give (no way the first passes WP:RS), this article should be about two paragraphs if it survives - David Gerard (talk) 16:14, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. In addition to what User:David Eppstein writes above, Etzel Cardeña is – for good or bad – a piece of Swedish modern research history. He – and his chair, but he as a person was not irrelevant – it was controversial already in 2005, of course, but wasn't just a piece of news back then. It was the focus of a nation-wide debate in 2012. It started, if I remember correctly, with Pseudovetenskap sprids okritiskt in Svenska Dagbladet and continued in a good number of newspapers. He's been the focus of a number of portraits in respectable newspapers, like the longish "Tio år i gränslandet" in Sydsvenskan (the major newspaper in southern Sweden). I can't find the article online, but it's available through Mediearkivet. Another example, a portrait in Forskning & Framsteg, one of the major (respectable) Swedish popular science newspapers. /Julle (talk) 17:34, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If we can get this stuff into the article, I'll be delighted to change my !vote - sounds like he'd pass WP:FRINGEBLP - David Gerard (talk) 17:52, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * AfD is not for cleanup. And notability is based on the information that can be found about the subject, not on the current state of the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:19, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Even if prima facie notability exists - BLPs must have the RSes actually present - you keep pretending you haven't had this pointed out to you - David Gerard (talk) 09:48, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep per David Eppstein and Julle, though I'm not sure if Eppstein is right about Cardena passing WP:PROF, given that the Journal of Parapsychology seems to be considered a fringe publication in most of academia. But this is irrelevant considering the reliable sources noted by Julle, the high citation counts and endowed chair noted by Eppstein, and his status as a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, all of which allow him to pass WP:PROF easily. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning)  talk  17:47, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - per WP:PROF. Per WP:GNG.BabbaQ (talk) 13:00, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —AE  ( talk  •  contributions ) 14:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Mindless evoking of checklist is no way to run an encyclopedia. The WP:PROF -- like all notability guidelines -- are intended as a shorthand, not religious dogma. --Calton | Talk 15:02, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * keep. No evidence of RS that demonstrates notability for a large amount of the content in the article, though some of it is mentioned in some fringe publications. However, the individual themselves is apparently notable even though the article does requires further citation. To be clear I don't support the concept of " an editor has prove reliable sources don't exist before removing currently unsourced content" per WP:BLPREMOVE. Proving something doesn't exist is an impossible task, insead it is standard practice to remove unsourced content until such a time as RS can be (and has been) provided in text; an admin should know that.  Endercase (talk) 17:53, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You removed content that has been discussed as sourced in this AfD; in particular his named professorship. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 9 September 2018 (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.