Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarah Ballard

Sarah Ballard

Sarah Ballard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Non-notable postdoc in astronomy based on the WP:ACADEMIC criteria. She has written 7 first-authored papers, and, while being a solid publication rate, this is not particularly unusual for an early-career scientist. Her discovery of 4 extrasolar planets is also not sufficiently noteworthy, given that thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered. Her postdoctoral-fellowship awards mentioned in the article, while nice on her CV, are not particularly important information to include in Wikipedia. OtterAM (talk) 21:00, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. OtterAM (talk) 22:19, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• Delete. Good GS citation record in very highly cited field. Large author lists of papers make it difficult to assess extent of independent achievement. Off to a good start but as yet WP:Too soon for WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:50, 5 May 2016 (UTC).
• Delete. Looks like she's on track for eventually passing WP:PROF but WP:TOOSOON to be there yet (by citation counts or any other of the WP:PROF criteria). Note that the kind of named postdoctorate that she has is very different from the kind of named full professorship that WP:PROF#C5 would count as notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:43, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
• Delete. With very few exceptions, post-docs are WP:TOOSOON. Agricola44 (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2016 (UTC).
• Delete, per above. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:23, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I had thought this AfD would be a snow, but it has been suggested that coverage in local media and mention of the work in a space.com source equate to notability under GNG. I wish to challenge this, because GNG requires reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. Certainly, local media can be used to confirm the existence of the work, and the existence of the subject. But they are not useful for ascertaining the notability of the scientist or her work, in terms of long-standing encyclopedic impact. News media often fails to be a reliable secondary source on matters like these. In many cases, it is based purely on interviews with the subject. So it clearly and directly fails the independence requirement of WP:GNG. Also, it fails WP:PSTS, WP:SCHOLARSHIP, etc. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

• Keep WP:ACADEMIC states that it is "an alternative" to WP:GNG and independent of it. So a subject is notable if it meets either criterion. As Ballard has been shown to be the subject of substantial independent coverage at space.com, KIRO Radio, Public Radio International, CSNE and elsewhere, she passes the GNG notability test. Each delete argument above only considers the criteria of ACADEMIC and is therefore invalid and the article should be kept.

As a separate statement I find the willingness of the delete !voters to take this ill-considered action in the face of well-known systemic bias issues regarding Wikipedia coverage, in this case women scientists, to be dismaying. The article happens to have been created by me at a University of Washington/Cascadia Wikimedians sponsored event specifically set up to increase Wikipedia's coverage of women in the sciences. If only discovering a planet had the same automatic-notability feature as playing in one professional baseball game. - Brianhe (talk) 08:48, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

• As one who has first-hand experience with sexism (having been passed-over in a job application because of it), I can assure you that I am very well in tune with the effect of which you speak...So, you can rightly assume some resentment on my part for a comment such as yours. My observations agree pretty-well with Bialy's: the WP push to create a politically-correct "balance" of the sexes has resulted in a spate of substandard articles on women who do not meet long-established notability guidelines. For example, the ill-fated Art+Feminism Regina Meetup on obscure female artists from that region a few months ago was a disaster! Some of the articles have been deleted, but many have resisted deletion, basically because of special pleading. If this dynamic continues (as it is likewise for other groups – this is basically a larger issue of boosterism), WP will eventually be reduced to an inclusive list of all people. Agricola44 (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2016 (UTC).

It would surely help the cause if the countering systemic bias folks could more reliably write articles that meet our notability guidelines. So far, I have not been impressed. All of the deletion discussions here that have arisen from the putsch over the last few month have involved lots of special pleading. If BLP articles written about women should be held to a lower standard than those of men, then I think the appropriate place to suggest that is at a policy page, not introduced by stealth into individual AfDs (I am paraphrasing Xxanthippe). Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:08, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

"All involved special pleading" is quite a claim. Are you including this deletion debate in that? Because WP:GNG, which I have pinned notability on in this case, starts with the word "general", the very opposite of "special". - Brianhe (talk) 12:07, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

No, the sentence: "As a separate statement I find the willingness of the delete !voters to take this ill-considered action in the face of well-known systemic bias issues regarding Wikipedia coverage, in this case women scientists, to be dismaying" is special pleading. It is asking that criteria should be applied asymmetrically in the light of the fact that the subject is a woman rather than a man. If this had been an article about a male scientist, most likely it would close as a SNOW delete. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:14, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Actually, no. The nominator's argument that discovery of several X is unimportant if counting all X is large, is bizarre and untenable. It's like saying Albert Hofmann is unimportant because he only discovered one of many psychoactive compounds, or Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran is unimportant because there are so many known pathogens. To reduce it to numbers it would be more reasonable to ask how many discoverers of X exist. Or more to the point in this case, how many have introduced a new method of discovering X (transit-timing variation)? The special pleading here seems to be coming from the side downplaying a scientific discovery. - Brianhe (talk) 12:20, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Good examples! Those people are notable because the discoveries that they made were of a lasting, substantial scientific and cultural impact, as evidenced by discussion in scholarly sources of the highest quality. For example, Hoffman was the subject of an entire book. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. If the suggestion here is that the subject under discussion made, not just one, but four scientific discoveries of equivalent lasting scientific scientific import, then it should be a trivial matter to find high quality scholastic sources attesting this individual's impact. If such sources are presented, I will happily change my vote. However, if you are suggesting as you appear that every minor scientific discovery made by a post-doctoral researcher should be elevated to the level of a Nobel Prize on the basis of the gender of the researcher, I hope you appreciate why I see this as problematic. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:45, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I find your stance problematic as it is a case of moving the goal-posts. If a scientist is notable for discovering a new compound, then another scientist should be notable for discovering a new way to find exoplanets. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I was not the one who invited a comparison to Nobel Prize winners, but you are for some reason perpetuating it. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran was the winner of the Nobel Prize in 1907, the subject of a centennial article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine as well as entire chapters in books on the history of medicine. There are reliable secondary sources of the highest quality attesting Laveran's notability. Are there reliable secondary sources concerning Sarah Ballard's work? If, as you attest, the discovery of the exoplanet is as significant as the Nobel Prize work, it should be a trivial matter to find such sources. WP:ITEXISTS is not the same as notability. Thanks, Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:29, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

See my sources below. It was very easy to find them. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 14:26, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Astronomy-related deletion discussions. Brianhe (talk) 08:56, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 14:42, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: My understanding is that WP:PROF is more relevant than WP:GNG because Sarah Ballard is not a figure with "significant coverage" as required for GNG. As the expression goes, everyone has their 15 minutes of fame, which seems to have generated a few brief mentions of Sarah Ballard on some news stations and blogs. (This is not atypical for postdocs, since public outreach is often a requirement for positions like Carl Sagan postdoctoral fellowships.) However, none of these mentions suggests that she is generally well known. Instead, she seems to be a typical postdoc, making good, incremental scientific progress in an interesting field. Although I didn't specifically mention it in the nomination above, I agree with the others that WP:TOOSOON applies in this case. OtterAM (talk) 16:14, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

• Comment @OtterAM: Just remember "15-minutes of fame" is still notability as notability is not temporary nor does it degrade over time (see WP:NTEMP and WP:DEGRADE). Davidbuddy9 Talk  01:29, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

By "15 minutes of fame" I mean the idea that almost everyone (in the US at least) finds themselves in the news at least once in their lives. But, being mentioned by a newspaper/website does not necessarily imply notability. OtterAM (talk) 01:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Her most highly cited paper has roughly 80 authors, the second around 100 (you do the counting) so it is not clear if her contribution to it stood out from the rest. Time will tell. That is why I cited WP:Too soon. For a seriously notable woman astronomer take a look at Virginia Trimble. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC).

• Comment: It might be useful to note that per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES (people subsection) that articles on academics below the level of professor (like the subject of the WP article) are generally not kept, while even articles on professors are kept or deleted in roughly equal numbers. OtterAM (talk) 02:08, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
• Keep discovered Kepler 61b, a billion year + planet about twice the diameter of Earth that is considered a good candidate for the detection of extra-terrestrial life. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 12 May 2016 (UTC).
  

She did not discover it single-handedly. There were 79 other authors on the paper. Are they all notable too, or not? Xxanthippe (talk) 01:11, 12 May 2016 (UTC).

The other authors must not have been notable or we would have media coverage. The coverage is solely about Ballard, which indicates her notability. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Even our own article on Kepler 61b says "The planet was discovered by the Kepler team". WoS shows that the highly-cited papers on which Ballard is an author have fairly large author lists (>50). These kinds of "big science" projects make it difficult to assign credit and the "keeps" are erroneously assigning the credit to one person. I'll say again that post-docs (which Ballard is) are almost always WP:TOOSOON. It is very typical for a post-doc to be a first author on a group paper, but one has to remember that that person is working under the supervision of a senior scientist, project leader, or professor. Ballard very likely will be notable in the future, but an article will have to wait until she has accomplishments that can more clearly be attributed to her own work/leadership/research. Agricola44 (talk) 15:38, 12 May 2016 (UTC).

We can't use Wikipedia as a source in these arguments. The editors writing about Kepler 61b may have made an error. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Please see my comments below. Agricola44 (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC).

• Keep She is clearly the important person in the discovery of the exoplanet. If she wasn't, her name would not keep coming up. Nature [1] lists her name, not the others. She is the lead author of the publication (the others must not be notable, or they would be mentioned by name in the news.) Again, Ballard is mentioned (not any other scientists) in different articles about astronomy and exoplanets here: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Source says she discovered 4 planets: [7]. Entire article about her and her planet-finding method: [8]. All of this coverage shows her passing GNG easily and not just by "local" sources. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

She is the lead author on only one of the five science articles on the discovery. Proof is needed that lead authorship on one paper with >50 authors is significant. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:26, 13 May 2016 (UTC).

Again, my proof that she is significant is that she is the only one being talked about in the media. If the others were significant, media would cover them as well. Can you explain why the media is not covering the others? Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

WP:GNG requires independent, reliable, secondary sources. "The media" is not a source. The source is interviews with the subject herself; thus primary, not secondary, and not independent. An independent would be an official statement by a scientific body, an award, or even a secondary source in the scientific literature discussing the significance of Ballard's contribution. These secondary sources of course can be repeated in "the media". Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:45, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I have given you examples in my Keep argument which include an article from Nature, several news sources and others. (Some sources require a subscription, but you should be able to read the abstract.) Newspapers are reliable sources as are journals. Please see notability guidelines. These guidelines do not say anything about official statements by scientific bodies for a secondardy source to be considered reliable and independent. And by definition, "the media" (if we define it as newspapers, radio, journals and magazines) are a secondary source which would, by definition, report on the information they have been given by the primary sources. My sources pass GNG. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:55, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing what I would consider to be a reliable, independent, secondary source indicating notability. Even something small, like an interview with an independent scientific authority attesting the significance of Ballard's contribution to this work. Independence is the key requirement. Just because her name was mentioned in a press release, or she is quoted in the article does not mean she is notable. For example, it is very possible that she is the press liaison for this project? So, if you have a quotation that you feel would help to support your case in a substantive way, please post it. But argumentum ad googlium seems a rather poor basis for a nuanced discussion about notability. Also, I cannot view your links to assess them. Sławomir Biały (talk) 01:12, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not arguing from Google. I carefully selected sources to present. If you don't have database access like I do, you can still see the source and abstract. You are dabbling in original research when you say we don't know why Ballard is named and in speculation that she is the press liaison. It is more correct to say she is in the press because she was the study's lead. Not all of my sources are behind subscriptions either. Also, I'm pretty sure Nature is reliable, independent and science-backed. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 02:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

The Nature link is broken for me, and seems like a search engine. That's not what we call a reliable source. A reliable source is something that we can reference to make some specific statement, with specific attribution. For example: "According to Professor X of the Royal Astronomical Society, Ballard's has made significant contributions to the study of exoplanets through the introduction of transit timing variations." That is what is missing here. An independent assessment that Ballard personally made significant contributions to this area, and that it is noteworthy enough to have an encyclopedia article about it. Another example is the AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maryna Viazovska. Note that there, I had initially voted to delete, until someone quoted Peter Sarnak's independent assessment of the subject's work. That is what a secondary source is: it is a reliable authority making an evaluative claim about the primary source, which is Ballard's work in this area. News media are reliable on Wikipedia typically as primary sources: they can repeat what others say in an area, they can be used to verify facts, in this case the existence of a person called Sarah Ballard, her work, etc. But they cannot generally be used in this way as secondary sources for making evaluative claims, particularly in the sciences, such as notability of the subject of this BLP. Indeed, what I and others have seen does not sufficiently distinguish Ballard from the other members of the research group, in a way that is directly supported by secondary research in the area.

I find it very telling that you are as yet unable to find a quotation that clearly and directly supports your contention that the subject is notable. That suggests that the subject does not pass GNG. I think it should be easy enough to find such an independent assessment if the subject is notable under that guideline. After all WP:PROF is actually supposed to be a weaker guideline for academics than GNG. It is extremely unusual that an academic will meet GNG but not PROF. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:02, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi! First of all, EBSCO is not a search engine: it's a database which indexes newspapers and journals. The link is to an abstract for the article to Nature. If you have database access, like I do, you may read the article. In the article, only Ballard is referenced by name--no one else. One quote is: "Sarah Ballard at the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues estimated the planet's diameter at about 18,8000 km..." I understand what a secondary source is, thank you: you are indicating that not all secondary sources are independent or reliable. Each must be evaluated on its own merits. I agree. In this example, Nature is a secondary source talking about Ballard's work on the exoplanet. The paper at Astrophysics is the primary source. Nature is one of the most cited scientific journals in the world. Ballard is not the press liaison. She is clearly listed as the lead in the study: [9], [10], [11]. She is the one who discusses the possible find here before it was confirmed: [12] And anyone can meet GNG and not something else. It's way easier to show GNG. She passes GNG already clearly. However many people here are trying to argue something else. I can only try to describe the argument being made as something like this: Ballard is only "part of a team" and therefore not able to pass GNG. This argument is problematic since it is Ballard that is mentioned in all of the articles: not anyone else on the team. She has significant coverage--enough to pass GNG as I have shown with my finds and with what is inside of the article already. I find it a problem that I have backed up all of my claims, but all those !voting delete have to show are negative arguments trying to move goal posts. If you feel you need database access, you can request it like I did from the Wiki Library. I am also going to ping @Dr. Blofeld, Ipigott, and Sadads: since they are very familiar with PROF and can do justice to that part of the argument. My position is that she meets GNG and no other standard needs to be met here. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 14:21, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

fixing my broken ping: @Dr. Blofeld, Ipigott, and Sadads:

Notability of one scientist on a team of a hundred or so is not inherited. In my estimation, and that of others here, identification of Ballard's team of researchers by name does not confer notability onto the subject. Her individual contribution must be assessed by a secondary source, and cannot be inferred from quotations such as the one you provided. Furthermore, I motion that all inaccessible deep links to databases be discarded from consideration, unless they can be properly formatted as proper references, or quotations given to secondary sources giving an independent assessment of Ballard's contributions to these studies. I am not even convinced that the alleged Nature article that you have presented as a secondary source even exists.Sławomir
Biały 15:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Comment about presuming notability from media coverage. One of the arguments advanced earlier is that if the media fails to cover the co-authors on a paper, their contributions must have been non-notable. However, as a general matter, I don't think that the mass media is capable of making a reliable determination as to the relative contributions of each co-author to a complex, highly collaborative research project. Just this week, I read a press release by a major university which really trumped up the role of one of its graduate students in a recent research paper -- without even acknowledging that someone unaffiliated with the school was the lead author. Moreover, in observational astronomical research, some co-authors might contribute crucial observational data, offer insightful interpretations of data, or write parts of the final paper. The fact that observational astronomy is a collaborative endeavor doesn't diminish the achievements of the lead author, but it does make it somewhat unrealistic to assign one person the sole credit for the outcome of a research collaboration. To the extent that the contributions of Dr. Ballard's co-authors are relevant here, they shouldn't be assumed to be trivial simply because of the lack of media coverage. Put another way, Dr. Ballard has been a co-author on several papers, and her contributions to those works should not be presumed negligible simply because the media might not have paid attention to them. Best Regards, Astro4686 (talk) 07:18, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

• Keep per Rich and Megalibrarygirl. Meets GNG. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:13, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
• Move to Draft at best - The best parts here are the exoplanets findings, the article is still questionable overall at best. SwisterTwister talk 04:16, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
• Comment. I have to regrettably observe that this article is another case in which boosters (in this case for articles on women) are misdirecting the discussion. For those who do not know or who are willfully looking past the way in which the dynamics of "big science projects" work...this case is entirely typical: a post-doc is lead author on a paper that represents a team effort of dozens (sometimes hundreds) of people, all of whose names are on the paper, and an excited but not terribly informed media contact the first author for talking points. The philosophical error of some of the above arguments, which basically amount to "there are sources, so GNG!", is that PROF was developed because a very large fraction of academics would otherwise qualify exactly in this way. (One might view this from the perspective of statistics in that academics, as a cohort, are not a random sampling of the population. Rather, they are highly biased toward notability....hence the need for PROF.) So, we judge academics (which Ballard is) against a different standard. However, in Ballard's case there's more because of the "big science" aspect ... the media could have contacted anyone else, for example the senior author, or her supervisor David Charbonneau (the 2nd author). The internal decision-making process on author order is a major issue within academia (why was Charbonneau not the first author?), but usually a good supervisor will put a grad student or postdoc first because they know how the dynamics of publicity work. Consequently, it's extremely disingenuous to make the claim (as some panelists do above), that these are Ballard's discoveries and that is why there are sources and these sources are why she is notable. It comes down to something that has been observed numerous times before: it is close to impossible to separate out a grad student or post-doc's contributions from her advisor's/lab's/research team's because mere appearances from author list (and it's accumulated benefits) can be deceiving – that is why WP:TOOSOON (in the absence of conclusive demonstration of notability) is the judicious interpretation of all such cases. Agricola44 (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC).

Comment. I concur with Agricola44's description of the nature of modern scientific collaboration and how it complicates efforts to award credit for a research group's achievements. Best Regards, Astro4686 (talk) 07:18, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Keep We need more articles like this one.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:45, 14 May 2016 (UTC)