Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gravata case


 * 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 delete. Consensus is the sourcing is not there to confirm this is truthful (historically so, no issue with the creator's work). If someone would like this content to incubate as a myth in draftspace for possible restoration as such, just ping me. Star  Mississippi  01:19, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Gravata case

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

I've been unable to find any sources that can verify that this actually happened. Everything I've been able to find appears to have come from the same original story (possibly through a newswire?), which doesn't have any additional details besides what's already in the article. The very few modern references aren't from reliable sources. CarringtonMist (talk) 21:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CarringtonMist (talk) 21:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. CarringtonMist (talk) 21:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 21:11, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Health and fitness-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 21:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete but do more searching first  Suspect it's a fraud, but it bears some more research . The woman's name was Maddalena Granata, in Nocera. One journal article from 1933 states "There should be no difficulty in finding out whether there is any truth in this report; a letter to the village Syndicato has brought no reply; probably a visit to Nocera...[should be done]." Guinness book of world records records Maddalena Granata as having had 15 sets of triplets. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 21:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Found a woman in 1863 who supposedly had 13 sets of triplets. That's as far as I'm going down this rabbit hole. Fine with deletion.-- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉</b> 22:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I took a look at the JSTOR link and the info on Maddalena Granata doesn't seem to match up with the info in the Gravata sources in terms of gender/number of the children. CarringtonMist (talk) 22:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The Granata story and the Gravata story seem to come together together in some sources. But, yeah, bunch of anecdotal extraordinary tales. <b style="color:white">rsjaffe</b> <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 04:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep but rewrite as an article about a myth, not least to avoid going round this loop again in future. Pam  D  12:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment I created the article. The sources support the information in the article. If it is a fraud or hoax, it is not of my construction. There were other sources found, I believe, but they were the same article in different papers.-- Auric   talk  14:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, Auric, thanks for commenting! I definitely didn’t think this was a hoax started by the creator of the article, and I hope it’s clear that I didn’t intend to imply that it was (I didn’t, and probably wouldn’t have, added the hoax tag to the article). One of the problems I have with the new info you've added to the article is that the claims for Gravata vs. Granata are quite different, and I'm not sure any sources actually connect the two (the claims are also pretty different re: the number of children/multiples and the location in Italy--one is Tuscan, the other is from Campania). I’m not sure if the French source linked by rsjaffe above links the two at all, as I can’t read French, but maybe it does? I’d be okay with changing the article to be clearer about the unverified nature of the claims, and the possibility this was a rumor/hoax of some kind that went around a lot in the early 20th century, but wouldn't that technically fall under WP:OR, since none of the sources actually say it was a hoax? CarringtonMist (talk) 15:25, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the story was sent by newswire and while the same information was in the initial stories, some typesetters were not as careful as others, like this article from the Alexandria Gazette that has Mocera instead of Nocera, and some papers didn't publish the full story or changed it to fit. Most of them mention a French paper, the Paris Register, whose source is other Italian papers, so there may have been some translation problems as well. My initial article was based on later news reports that lacked the detail of the first reports. I'm going to move it to "Granata case" if the article survives. Also the french source is about a Spanish case.-- Auric   talk  16:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting to note that Granata is also in List of people with the most children, so that may need cleanup too, pending the outcome of the work on this page. <b style="color:white">rsjaffe</b> <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 19:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete. This is fascinating. I'm in favour of deletion because we really have no idea, from these sources, whether this actually happened or not, as the nom says. I don't think this article can be written as PamD suggests, because that would be WP:OR, unless someone can find a secondary source discussing that this is a myth? And I don't see any good reason to perpetuate a (possible? probable?) error made by 19th-century newspapers by presenting this as fact. Excluding period newspapers, I'm finding nothing at all - nothing anyone could use to show it's a myth, but also nothing one could use to show otherwise. I'm not sure we even have enough information to really go looking - others have mentioned the name, but additionally there is no Liposta/Lipoata in Nocere as far as I can tell. (Liporta/o exists, though: .) So for all we know, neither of the names we have for her are correct either. -- asilvering (talk) 06:18, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * You've got to understand this news story was published at a time when there was no unified spell checking as we understand it. Local typesetters might not have understood how to spell a foreign word from another language. Typos do not invalidate a source. Also, since there is no discussion of it as a myth, we can assume that it isn't one. There is a pattern where the original sources have more details with dates and names, which are gradually lost as the story diffuses. I've found mentions in sources as late as 1999, although the "fl" has been lost and they assume she died in 1886, despite the original sources that mention her "robust health" at the time. One of Ripley's cartoons mentions her, published in 1955, but with distorted details again (52 children instead of 62).-- Auric   talk  11:39, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you're misunderstanding my point about the spelling. The point was that it would be difficult for anyone looking for information on her that does not come from the original news articles in question to be sure they had a "real" null result. If I find that there are no census records for a Maddelena Granata/Gravata, does this mean this story was completely fabricated? Maybe. It might also mean that her name was bungled before it even made it to the first news story.
 * since there is no discussion of it as a myth, we can assume that it isn't one This is not how myths and hoaxes work.
 * "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a good maxim to keep in mind here. These aren't just "not extraordinarily good sources", they are highly unreliable ones. I wouldn't trust a 19th-century gossipy news wire story farther than I could throw it, but additionally this is precisely the kind of story that is easy for newspapers to get wrong - difficult for overseas papers to fact-check, easily misspelled names and places, easily misreported numbers, and an eye-popping central claim. It's dubious until proven otherwise.
 * The only claim we can accurately make here at present is that many newspapers reported this story, and said these things. Granata might be notable, if she existed. But the claim we can accurately make is not notable. No one appears to have discussed "this case was described in several newspapers", only repeated it. If the best we can do is WP:ITEXISTS, we don't have an argument for keep here. -- asilvering (talk) 20:19, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The article could be rewritten as a myth, but that would be WP:OR since all the sources refer to it as a fact. The point about names is well taken, but WP:UCRN applies here. At this point, I think I should have looked harder for sources before I published it. I'd be happy to have it moved to draft for more refining. -- Auric   talk  15:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, it would also be WP:SYNTH/WP:OR to explicitly connect all of these cases, since there don't seem to be any secondary sources that discuss this story as a whole. AFAICT we're the ones making the connections between different names, locations, etc. They're pretty obvious connections, but my understanding of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR is that that doesn't matter. I'm also not sure how WP:UCRN is related to the verifiability point that asilvering made? CarringtonMist (talk) 15:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think that particular OR problem could be cleared up by wording choices pretty easily - but the far bigger problem is that there is no secondary reporting on this at all (that we have found), since in the absence of a historical document (birth certificates, pension record, etc) these newspaper articles are acting as a primary source (of a hoax, it currently appears). You're correct that WP:UCRN is not at all related to my point. -- asilvering (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I say WP:UCRN because the majority of sources call her Maddalena Granata while some (later) sources call her Gravata. We can assume these are the same people, because the likelihood of two women with almost the same name, from the same place, having had a very large number of surviving children and no reporting on this coincidence is quite unlikely. -- Auric   talk  14:15, 2 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete per asilvering. The subject is likely a hoax, with no evidence to suggest otherwise and also lacks notability. Pabsoluterince (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The level of detail, particularly in the earlier medical sources, argues against this. I found an Italian source from the Bullettino delle Scienze Mediche which says that her doctor has had four of the "fruits" preserved in an anatomical cabinet. -- Auric   talk  15:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Responded on talk. Pabsoluterince (talk) 16:40, 2 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.