Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genetic memory


 * 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. Article has improved much since most people cast delete !votes. The Placebo Effect (talk) 17:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Genetic memory

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Article is unencyclopedic and seems to be based entirely upon uncited original research. Juansmith 06:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete unscientific, speculative nonsense (and per nom) --Icarus (Hi!) 06:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect to Genomic imprinting, a kind of genetic memory. Fee Fi Foe Fum 07:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect. Either restore the old redirect to racial memory, or create a disambig page for that and genomic imprinting. This article was the result of one guy putting down his own thoughts.  Someguy1221 11:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Per Someguy. Twenty Years 15:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a subject that is treated in other encyclopaedias, such as the one cited. An administrator hitting a delete button is not the way to fix the article.  All that is required is ordinary editors with the courage to actually write.  Keep. Uncle G 02:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. The article seems to wander. Not clear that there is a real topic here that is recognized by science. The article does not even meet the requirements of WP:NEO so far as I can see (establishing that the term is widely used to mean a specific thing). A Google search for the term gives a strange variety of items that have little in common with one another. EdJohnston 19:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Nine books discussing the subject and two dictionaries of science with articles about it, and you think that it's not recognized? My goodness! Uncle G 19:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Dabify to racial memory, genomic imprinting, and instinctual behaviour. 132.205.99.122 23:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Have you actually looked at the article? Or are you just parrotting what others wrote earlier?  The horizontal rule has a significance.  Uncle G 14:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with EdJohnston, it's rambling, it's kind of like a DAB page with exposition 132.205.99.122 (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep with Massive rewrite This is an important topic worthy of being kept, however this article is full of un verfied information. A google search of the title does produce a lot of information however, mot if it relating to instincts, racial memory, and past life regressions. The first two would qualify as science, the last as parapsycology/psuedoscience. It's clearly a notable topic worthy of an article and not just a redirect. However, this article if currently full of quackary, psuedoscience, and has hard to verify sources recently provided by Uncle G. This article should be shortened, massively simplified, and should basically be turned into a brief overview of how it is related to other topics. Also it should be sourced with verifiable, reliable internet sources.Earthdirt (talk) 03:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FUTON bias is unbecoming in a Wikipedia editor, and certainly not a reason to change an article. Uncle G (talk) 04:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Well aren't we the judgmental one Uncle G. I think this article is currently close to unreadable to the general population and that IS certainly a good reason to rewrite an article (e.g. it does not even currently have subject heading and doesn't mention/link the word instincts or genes/DNA). Also FUTON bias typically refers to the use of print/online "primary", peer-reviewed academic journals, not obscure books that most libraries won't even have (some of which have less than 1 page available online). Finally, my mention of your sources was meant to be a positive one, since prior to that the article had nothing, I see why you might have interpreted it in a negative way from the sentence it was in though, please remember the important Wikipedia Guideline WP:AGF. I do think the sources could be improved for the benefit of the general readership. Just curious, do you actually own/have all the books you cited?Earthdirt (talk) 01:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep and rewrite. This topic can be properly expanded given more time and academic references. --Madchester (talk) 05:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep with a rewrite. The article is better sourced than many other I've seen, and it's certainly a legitimate topic. Readability is a bit of an issue, but the solution is to rewrite, not delete. Ourai  тʃс 23:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I read the entire article twice, including the ref list. Hurt my head. If there is substance here it is sprinkled around in bits and pieces. I can find little or no science. Admittedly, reference 8, "Functional Osteology and Myology of the Shoulder in the Chiroptera" seems like real science, but it's hard to guess how it relates to "genetic memory and central nervous memory" as the citation indicates. I don't believe this is worth trying to save unless someone can check through the references and verify that they, themselves, are factual rather than speculative, and that they support the article as specified. Tim Ross ·talk  01:53, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Rewrite or convert into a disambiguation page including links to DNA (see Nirenberg's article on Genetic Memory for a biological/medical use of the term) and epigenetics. - tameeria (talk) 21:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * addendum: I realized that maybe not everyone here will be familiar enough with Nirenberg's credentials, so here's some explanation: Marshall Nirenberg and colleagues received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1968 (cue: date of reference linked above) for their "interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis" . So "genetic memory" was the title of Nirenberg's talk outlining the subject of his Nobel Prize award. While it is not a widely used term today, it is still being used in this sense in the scientific literature on occasion. I hope that this will establish notability of the term as well as help document its scientific use. - tameeria (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Your claim about Nirenberg's Nobel lecture does not seem correct. The title of his lecture, as found here, was 'The Genetic Code.' Nothing about genetic memory that I could find. The phrase 'genetic memory' appears in a 1968 article he published in JAMA, as you have also observed. However this seems like an intuitive or metaphorical title intended to get the attention of a non-specialist audience. No indication that this was a term that he and his two Nobel colleagues ever used in communication with each other about their common work. EdJohnston (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was the Lasker Award Lecture (see footnote in article) shortly before he received the Nobel Prize, but it was about the same research. Maybe genetic code would be a more appropriate link for a dab page than DNA, though in the article he says: "Genetic memory resides in specific molecules of [DNA] ." Even the very first sentence of his Nobel lecture reads: "Genetic memory resides in specific molecules of nucleic acid." This can be easily verified with the two lecture PDFs referenced above. Anyway, a search with the phrase "Genetic memory" on Google Books brings up 652 hits and on Google Scholar 920 hits. There appears to be plenty of scholarly research out there with most of the papers being from either computer science (neural networks and genetic algorithms) or molecular biology and medicine with the occasional ecology paper. - tameeria (talk) 03:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. Fairly well-sourced, but it is so poorly written, it needs a major re-write.  I'd tag it and work on it later. Bearian (talk) 17:36, 12 December 2007 (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.