Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Niall McLaren


 * 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. Black Kite (t) (c) 17:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Niall McLaren

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Had been improperly proded by another editor. Lets evaluate. Greg Bard (talk) 18:32, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 18:47, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 18:47, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions.  —Jenks24 (talk) 18:53, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I do believe he satisfies the notability criteria 1, namely "Criterion 1 can also be satisfied if the person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline. In this case it is necessary to explicitly demonstrate, by a substantial number of references to academic publications of researchers other than the person in question, that this contribution is indeed widely considered to be significant and is widely attributed to the person in question." The paper that would satisfy this criteria would be "A Critical Review of the Biopsychosocial Model." If we look at the wikipedia page for biopsychosocial model you can look at the history and see that this page has drastically changed over time specifically because of McLaren's work. If you look at the 64 citations for this paper you'll notice a lot of books refer to this paper many of them philosophy of psychiatry texts (of which is a very small field hence the small absolute citation count for a paper of this importance). The first one is by an extremely well known expert in the field Nassir Ghaemi. Go to this link http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Q69zDCED9ssC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&ots=Um0eU1VaoR&sig=3ExzNQDIkLumcJ5Slzk2jQTBZaU#v=onepage&q&f=false Type in Mclaren in the search box and you will see his contribution. The short version from this book is this. "The biopsychosocial model only lists relevant aspects of psychiatry; it is silent as to how to understand those aspects under different conditions and in different circumstances. As a consequence, it becomes eclecticism, where the clinician essentially does whatever he wants to do (McLaren 1998)."
 * Delete Doesn't appear to meet WP:PROF - no mentions of him in a Google books search other than in his own works, one article came up via Google scholar but I am not seeing any evidence he has had a significant impact in his field.--Pontificalibus (talk) 19:05, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete needs more sources not necessarily electronic sources--Herjee (talk) 00:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - I didn't see any notable biographical sources on Google and Yahoo. SwisterTwister  talk  19:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep I'm not a wikipedian so I'm not sure exactly how this process works but I'm very familiar with this author's work as I'm a psychiatrist in the US. I'm guessing none of you have read his writings so I'll petition why I think he deserves a place on wikipedia. First, he's published many papers, while many do not have large citation counts most have only been in publication for several years and thus have not had the time to accumulate lots of citations. His citation counts build slowly, mainly because his work focuses on philosophy of science and more esoteric issues in the field. Philosophy of science writings DO NOT get published in high impact journals so all citations he gets are basically from word of mouth due to the importance and merits of his writings. You can see this based on his paper "Critical Review of the BioPsychoSocial Model" which currently has 64 citations, many more than when I checked a couple of years ago. If you do a simple Google Scholar search for "Niall McLaren" you'll see many of his papers. I'm not sure how only one article came up for the first editor but he's published quite a lot. You can check out his one paper at http://www.scribd.com/doc/57443035/Niall-McLaren-A-Critical-Review-of-the-Bio-Psycho-Social-Model-1998.

I have looked at several of the other books that cite him and here are some examples of what they say.

The philosophy of psychiatry: a companion By Jennifer Radden "Moreover, the composite "biopsychosocial" theory, which attempts an amalgam of several of these types of explanation has fared no better when subject to a careful analysis; it is not a model in any scientific sense (McLaren 1998)."

Health psychology: a critical introduction By Antonia C. Lyons, Kerry Chamberlain "In psychiatry McLaren (1998) has strongly argued that the biopsychosocial model is seriously flawed and should be abandoned."

The rise and fall of the biopsychosocial model: reconciling art and science ... By S. Nassir Ghaemi "The biopsychosocial model lists relevant aspects of psychiatry but is silent as to how to understand those aspects in different conditions and in different circumstances."

'''It must be understood that Engel's "model" was published in SCIENCE and has 4681 citations. Another paper of his regarding the biopsychosocial model was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (the highest circulated journal in the field) and has 1528 references. If this "model" were wrong then showing this would certainly constitute a "major" contribution to the field.''' Indeed, McLaren has done just that through careful and scholarly analysis. I can tell you personally that in the field the biopsychosocial "model" is mentioned quite often as a rationale that psychiatry is a scientific discipline (when in fact the "model" doesn't exist).

If you want a very quick rundown of this contribution just read the wikipedia page for biopsychosocial model. Look at the line "The model was theorized by psychiatrist George L. Engel at the University of Rochester, and putatively discussed in a 1977 article in Science, where he posited "the need for a new medical model"; however no single definitive, irreducible model has been published. The part in bold is new as of the last year or so. I'm sure you can check the article history to see. The bottom criticism section is a good summary of the paper.

Granted, McLaren's wikipedia page should be written better and we should probably focus on his contribution to the field specifically in regard to the biopsychosocial model. Nonetheless, I believe my arguments above satisfy the criteria outlined in wikipedia. If you need more references please just write on this page and I'll get to it over the next couple of weeks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.0.179.248 (talk) 05:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC) 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Relisting comment: Can we address these claims, please, and comment on the sources. )


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Aaron Brenneman (talk) 12:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)




 * Delete. This author and his books are mentioned many times on WP, see and so his ideas are adequately covered. But I don’t believe that he (or any of his books) are notable enough to have a separate article. Johnfos (talk) 04:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, the notability criteria note that "Generally, more experimental and applied subjects tend to have higher publication and citation rates than more theoretical ones." The paper that would make Dr. McLaren notable is most certainly theoretical ("A Critical Review of the Biopsychosocial Model"). Also, "Criterion 1 can also be satisfied if the person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline." I'm not sure how many sources we need to find but there are many more than the poster had listed above. After reading the link to his paper http://www.scribd.com/doc/57443035/Niall-McLaren-A-Critical-Review-of-the-Bio-Psycho-Social-Model-1998 '''it appears that he has shown that a well known concept in the field does not meet the definition of what it claims to be (ie the biopsychosocial "model" is NOT a model in the scientific sense of the word). Also, based on the references above it appears that those who write books on the topic agree with him.''' I did a quick pubmed search and it turns out that 669 academic papers have the word "biopsychosocial" in their title alone. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=biopsychosocial%20%5Bti%5D. A generic pubmed search for biopsychosocial returns 2667 papers. It would certainly appear to me that this "model" has permeated medicine when in fact, as the author has argued it was never a model. Sounds like a relatively important contribution to science. I've seen a lot of people get wikipedia pages who've done a whole lot less. I think it is also very important to note that it's MUCH harder to be notable for philosophy than it is for more direct forms of science. Perhaps his page should be kept but the portions regarding his books should be minimized and his contribution regarding The Biopsychosocial Model be the major focus of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dogswithawideanglelenswearinghats (talk • contribs) 07:22, 23 August 2011 (UTC) Addendum- Also, I just noticed that Pontificalibus said "one article came up via Google scholar but I am not seeing any evidence he has had a significant impact in his field." I just did a simple search in Google scholar for Niall McLaren and on the FIRST PAGE all three of his books plus three of his papers show up. Subsequent pages contain many other papers of his. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dogswithawideanglelenswearinghats (talk • contribs) 07:37, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep I might be new to wikipedia editing but right at the top of this page it says "All input is welcome, though valid arguments citing relevant guidelines will be given more weight than unsupported statements." As wikipedia policy states at WP:PROF "If an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, they are notable." The reason I have made bold "they are notable" is because the poster above has stated that since McLaren's ideas are "adequately covered" he therefore doesn't deserve an article. However, reading the policy above explicitly states that if notability criteria are met the person deserves an article. Also, Johnfos recent delete vote does not address any of the arguments above. Johnfos "believes" he doesn't deserve an article.
 * 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.