Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ricardo Dolmetsch


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Owen&times; &#9742;  13:30, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Ricardo Dolmetsch

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

WP:NOTLINKEDIN. The subject of the article fails several of our notability policies: there is no evidence of WP:INDEPTH coverage – all references are to publications where he was co-author, or to unrelated press releases about drugs that don't even mention the subject's name, not speaking about confirming his role or achievements. There is no evidence of compliance with any criteria listed under WP:NACADEMIC either. The listed awards are minor awards, none has an article (note: NIH Director's Pioneer Award is not an award honouring its recipients but a research initiative).

Worst: there are many unverified claims in the article: the subject, who left Novartis in 2020, is claimed to have been "involved in early successes in gene therapy, including (...) Zolgensma (...) and Hemgenix". However, Novartis was not involved in Zolgensma development – the drug was developed by a US startup Avexis which received marketing authorisation for it just before the subject left Novartis, while remaining a separate company from Novartis; whereas Hemgenix is not a success yet, as it's barely a year on the market with very little uptake from payers outside the US. Claims that Dolmetch contributed to their "successes" appear unfounded and entirely unsourced WP:PUFFERY.

Nearly every sentence needs one or more of,  , or.

All in all, with lack of independent coverage, I don't think this coporate staff member fulfils our criteria of encyclopaedia-level notability. — kashmīrī  TALK  11:33, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. —  kashmīrī  TALK  11:33, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators and Colombia.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 11:39, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep, primarily through role in Novartis over many years rather than through academic posts. His research output is high; unusually, for a mid-career scientist, has had an interview published in a peer-reviewed journal (Nature Medicine). While there might be concerns about particular claims, these can be resolved by normal editing. Scopus H-factor of 49 suggest significant impact. Klbrain (talk) 12:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Role in Novartis over many years? What policy would this be based on? Because there are tens of thousands of corporations in the world, perhaps hundreds of thousands of C-level executives, and he wasn't even C-level, so we'd need a policy if this was to be a notability criteria. — kashmīrī  TALK  18:41, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep: Notable, also a few book listings found, mentions he was profiled in the NY Times in 2014, and here . Oaktree b (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * NYT profile is an interview, but is here: . Allan Nonymous, also this hits us the trifecta for WP:GNG. (talk) 18:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep, mostly per WP:PROF and the multiple first-author quadruple-digit-citation papers in his Google Scholar profile. The additional evidence linked above by Oaktree is also suggestive (although not yet definitive) of possible notability through WP:GNG as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Two citations precisely, from 1997 and 1998 (so citations span 25+ years). Barely a dozen first-author articles, the last one from 2018. 65 publications indexed by PubMed – a mediocre result for a late-career researcher. Sorry. — kashmīrī  TALK  18:48, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There's also a paper from 2001. Just FYI, the threshold for citations is generally around 100, this is beyond that by an order of magnitude. A claim that he fails WP:NACADEMIC is thus pretty weak. Allan Nonymous (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The first-author citation counts I'm seeing on Google Scholar are: 2426 (1998), 2394 (1997), 1112 (2001), 358 (2011), 233 (1994), 209 (2003), etc. And many many more citations if you include all his papers, not only the first-author ones. That is a strong record, over a wide range of years. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep, per WP:PROF which he clearly passes with 20+ papers that have 100+ citations. There isnt much more that needs to be said. --hroest 12:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

The article, seemingly created by the subject or someone very close to him, contains a lot of made-up claims and attempts to look more important. For instance, the author claims to have been Global Head of Neuroscience at Novartis. Actually, he wasn't – he did not work for the Swiss pharmaceutical giant but for Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research, a US-based biotechnology company (separate legally and structurally, even as wholly owned by Novartis). Different company, different post, different splendour, different country. I've updated the article, but a bad taste remained. Then, the article claims that the subject oversaw the development of gene therapies while in NIBR ("his team... helped bring several therapies to the clinic that included Zolgensma"). That again is misleading. Not only has NIBR never done any substantial work on the mentioned gene therapy (apart from internal consulting) but NIBR even does not carry out clinical development. The mentioned Zolgensma in particular was licensed by Novartis long after all its preclinical and much of clinical development was over.

After the subject joined NIBR, its neuroscience division indeed attempted to engage in clinical development – initially, it was clinical trials of branaplam. Yet the two trials they conducted not only failed but the first one was a disaster (children dying due to poor decision making, and no sensible data generated in 7 years) – to the extent that, to the best of my knowledge, Novartis recommended internally that NIBR no longer does clinical development again. The subject left NIBR shortly after.

That's not the end of problems with the article. The subject could not "curate the drug development pipeline that included... ofatumumab", the reason being that ofatumumab received marketing authorisation four years before the subject joined NIBR, not mentioning that ofatumumab was discovered and had preclinical development done by the Danish company Genmab.

Unfortunately, I have no time to research other claims, however the sheer number of WP:PEACOCK/WP:PROMO statements constitutes a big red light for me. — kashmīrī  TALK  00:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)


 * please be aware that this is WP:NOTCLEANUP and while the COI and the WP:PROMO statements are a problem, they are not grounds for deletion but rather grounds for improving the article. Feel free to improve the article and remove unsourced / unsubstantiated statements. I see that even some of the sourced statements use articles written by the subject itself as source which is obviously not an independent source. --hroest 16:31, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hannes Röst Well, I added quite a few tags, but @Allan Nonymous removed all of them. However, I think we all know that being listed among co-authors on a paper is not same as "that's what he worked on", and isn't covered by WP:ABOUTSELF.
 * I know it's not WP:CLEANUP, however the sheer number of problems with the article is a good indicator whether the article is ready for mainspace. Note that it was created in draftspace, however the author did not submit it for review before moving it to mainspace. Had the article followed the normal route, we wouldn't be having such a discussion at AfD.
 * Draftifying is an option, too. — kashmīrī  TALK  17:18, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I removed them under the assumption that being a co-author on a paper is an uncontroversial sign they worked on the subject. Any conclusions drawn from the research (i.e. the results/conclusions/implications of such research) would definitely require an independent source (likely a paper that cites and interprets the information or a review). If you disagree, feel free to add them back, I made the edits assuming this interpretation WP:ABOUTSELF was uncontroversial. Allan Nonymous (talk) 18:54, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Allan Nonymous I can only echo 's comments posted at this link: Papers authored or co-authored by Dolmetsch don't help with [establishing that he is notable]. Because they are not about Dolmetch. —  kashmīrī  TALK  20:22, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think you're confusing two things here, WP:NOTABILITY (i.e. the policy used to establish whether a subject is notable) and WP:VERIFIABILITY (i.e. whether some content about a subject can belong in an article). These two policies have different standards based on the different aims they serve. My edits had nothing to do with WP:NOTABILITY, and everything to do with WP:VERIFIABILITY, so have little bearing on the argument at hand here and probably better discussed on the talk page of this article. Allan Nonymous (talk) 20:43, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They are linked. We can't establish notability – and this discussion is about the subject's notability – without being able to verify claims. If it turns out that a large number of claims are unsourced, or false as shown earlier – then editors might prefer to send the article back to draftspace. — kashmīrī  TALK  21:07, 12 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Keep, as per David Eppstein's logic. Incidentally, I have tried to tidy the article up a bit but it still needs removal of promotional language. Qflib (talk) 18:54, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello my name is Ricardo Dolmetsch. Someone brought to my attention that there was a wikipedia article about me and that there was a discussion about its content. I’m arriving a little late to the discussion but I thought I could shed some light on some of the issues that are being discussed. First I didn’t commission or approve this article. It was submitted by my mother who is a journalist in Colombia, without my consent or approval. My mom thinks I’m important but I don’t think that meets the criteria for notability in Wikipedia. There are many scientists who have records like mine so I leave it to you to decide whether to keep the page or take it down. The small group of people who need to know about me can usually find me online, so a Wikipedia entry is not absolutely essential.


 * 1) In case you decide to keep the page I would like to clarify a few things for the record.  My original name is Richard Carl Elciario Dolmetsch and I was born in Colombia but my scientific name since my graduate days has been Ricardo Dolmetsch because there were too many Richard’s in the department where I got my Ph.D. and Rick, Rich, Dick and Richard were taken.
 * 2) I make no claim to having discovered or invented Zolgensma.  Zolgensma is a gene therapy for SMA that was developed originally at Avexis which was purchased by Novartis who oversaw the registration of the drug. I was one of the Novartis scientists that proposed the purchase of Avexis.  I was later the main contact between Avexis and Novartis research (which was called NIBR in those days) until it was discovered that the Avexis development team had committed fraud and Avexis was reorganized.
 * 3) At the time of the Avexis purchase Novartis had about ten gene therapy projects in development in the neuroscience group which is one of the reasons that Novartis was interested in Avexis. The neuroscience gene therapy programs were initiated by a very bright recruit to our group and were quite advanced.
 * 4) For about twenty years, the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) was the research and early development arm of Novartis. It was in charge of the pipeline from discovery to Ph2 proof of concept clinical studies.
 * 5) Branaplam was a small molecule splicing modulator developed for SMA. It was in active development at the time of the Avexis purchase. It’s not true that any children died because of executive decisions related to Branaplam. The program was put on hold by the FDA because there was a tox signal during development but the children that were being dosed continued to be dosed albeit at a lower dose. The program failed in a later trial for Huntington’s Disease because of toxicity observed in adult patients.
 * 6) I was the global head of Neuroscience at NIBR which was the research and early development arm of Novartis. I was part of the Neuroscience leadership team which included a head of Neuroscience development and a head of Neuroscience Commercial. My leaving NIBR had nothing to do with Branaplam. I left Novartis in good standing to take a position at uniQure.
 * 7) Ofatumumab was an approved drug that had been previously on the market in oncology. It was purchased by Novartis and developed for MS. I was part of the leadership team that worked on this program as I was part of the leadership team that worked on Erenumab (developed at Amgen) and Siponimod (developed at Novartis).

Ok that’s it. Thank you all so much for being such selfless editors of Wikipedia. It’s kind of amazing that we have this resource. I’m thinking I should join the effort and help you all. 24.2.241.30 (talk) 17:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC) Ricardo


 * Thanks for commenting here and clarifying, Ricardo. You'd be most welcome to register for an account and contribute your knowledge to the global encylopaedia.
 * The way you described your work is definitely more modest than the original writeup by the article author, as the issue I flagged was, essentially, with exagerrated claims not backed up by the few available sources. For instance, while you now described your role in the purchase of Avexis by Novartis, the article said that "your team [at NIBR] brought Zolgensma to the clinic", which I hope you agree is rather imprecise (and folks at Novartis Gene Therapies may be offended).
 * I'll see how to reword the article using based on other details that you provided. The scarcity of reliable independent sources is always a challenge.
 * Re. branaplam, I'm inclined to disagree on details, but this is perhaps not the place to discuss it.
 * Cheers, — kashmīrī  TALK  19:31, 14 May 2024 (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.