Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dewayne "Lee" Johnson

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 redirect to Johnson v. Monsanto Co.. Clear consensus exists below not to retain, selecting this option out of the two presented (other being 'delete'). Daniel (talk) 02:12, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dewayne "Lee" Johnson

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This is a WP:COATRACK for a court case rather than about the BLP subject. Pretty clear cut WP:BLP1E deletion as the same content already exists at the main articles on glyphosate, etc. per *WP:BIO1E, so there isn't content to merge, and this isn't a useful redirect. The person themself isn't notable outside of involvement in the case, and the court case information is handled at:

While the stuff going on with Roundup/glyphosate gets plenty of coverage, this would be a person to remember WP:INHERIT with too. Pretty much all descriptions are tied directly to the court case rather than in-depth coverage about the person themself outside of that one instance. KoA (talk) 00:24, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as BLP1E, duplicative, a coatrack for the most controversial/criticizing parts of the glyphosate article. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 05:26, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@KoA and Shibbolethink: I don’t get how WP:BLP1E or WP:COATRACK are relevant here. BLP1E says we avoid having articles on someone known only for one event, unless they, like John Hinckley Jr., have a "substantial and well documented" role in a significant event, like Hinckley did in the Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Johnson's role in the landmark case against Monsanto is likewise quite substantial and well documented. Instead of this AfD, we should be working together to write Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company to feature in List of landmark court decisions in the United States, and perhaps we will even get it passed as a WP:GOOD article one day. It was a landmark case and Bayer/Monsanto have reportedly put aside $16B to "fight and settle" with thousands of other plaintiffs, and they are reportedly also discontinuing the Roundup product in its current form. LondonIP (talk) 18:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That court case article should have been written in lieu of this one. I would support moving the contents of this article to a newly created court case article. But I would not support leaving this man a standalone article as it is doubtless that he does not meet WP:BIO. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 19:45, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I will write the court case article but I started with this BLP because I was drawn in by the travesty of his story. The Guardian source I just added clearly shows he meets BIO and I've explained above that WP:BLP1E isn't relevant here. LondonIP (talk) 20:10, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Guardian source doesn't really add anything for notability beyond what we're already discussing. When it comes to the actual subject of the article, Johnson, it's still all centered on his glyphosate court case as one event, not him as a BLP as most of the notability around the events are tied to glyphosate or some of the pseudoscience going on that is detailed in the articles already. WP:INHERIT plays a large role or the spirit of WP:COATRACK when it comes to trying to impute notability like that.

I already outlined WP:BLP1E's application above, but the bullets listed there are very clear:

If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event. No serious debate that this isn't the case.
If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual. No serious debate here either. They're otherwise just a groundskeeper.
If the event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented.. In this case, the individual's role is not particularly substantial, and definitely not something like the listed example of Hinckley/Reagan's assassin. The next sentence of the policy illustrates that in saying there needs to be persistent coverage in sources. Instead, coverage of Johnson himself on a WP:N fashion is pretty limited, especially as news sources have moved on to other cases. Johnson's event was more of a flash in the pan that has blended into the other court cases where one could arguably interchange other plaintiffs in place of Johnson. There's nothing saying that his involvement was particularly unique.

That policy then gives even more guidance by sending folks to the WP:1E guideline. The general rule is to cover the event, not the person. That was already how this was done at relevant glyphosate articles before you created this article. Above, you described examples of someone in a large event that also had a significant role. Instead, the event is more about the court case, what the lawfirm was doing, and how those ignored what the science says. Johnson doesn't really rise to that level of a major player in the wider controversy.

When the role played by an individual in the event is less significant, an independent article may not be needed, and a redirect is appropriate. In this case, a redirect doesn't really work because we have so many articles like I mentioned above. That's because Johnson's court case is just one event among many related to the glyphosate & cancer claims, so that is why they are housed at the glyphosate articles, etc. to maintain WP:NPOV. I wouldn't delve into that too much for this AfD except that trying to split out Johnson as a BLP embellishes his significance in the wider context of what was going on, and you can't easily disentangle that. This AfD is focused on Johnson as a BLP rather than the court cases, so when you account for all of that, you're not really left with anything that fits the spirit of our guidance on 1 event people.

The last part of the guideline, Editors are advised to be aware of issues of weight and to avoid the creation of unnecessary pseudo-biographies, especially of living people., is why I have been concerned about this page's creation and POVFORK issues like to avoiding mention of the scientific viewpoint needed for DUE and WP:FRINGE. Instead, if someone really just wants to expand content on the subject, Monsanto_legal_cases#RoundUp or Glyphosate#Legal_cases would be the best starting points to keep everything in context and carefully develop content elsewhere from there. That's when a true split could be considered for possibly Johnson's court case, but that's very different than the subject of this AfD, Johnson himself. KoA (talk) 02:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What the Guardian profile adds to this BLP is an RS that one would normally require to meet WP:NBIO, and demonstrates also it is not a WP:BLP1E/1, as it describes the legal precedent Johnson’s case set and his impact on the Roundup product and Glyphosate-based herbicides overall litigation and regulation issues. It's also not a WP:BLP1E/2, as Johnon is mentioned in reports on the cases of other plaintiffs, like the Pilliods' vs Monsanto, and Hardeman vs Monsanto, and is highly likely to be mentioned in the many thousands of other cases in the courts. As to WP:BLP1E/3, the Johnson case is reportedly so significant that Bayer/Monsanto is not appealing it, and is instead settling at a cost of $16B, and removing Glyphosate from its Roundup product.

Please be aware that there is a very long thread on Village Pump about the use of the WP:FRINGE guideline as an justification for throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Since this article is about an individual who had significant exposure, it clearly doesn’t classify as pseudoscience, even according to your own sources. For example, the UK Cancer Research source you added here makes a clear distinction between light and heavy exposure. I don't see how WP:FRINGE is at all relevant here. LondonIP (talk) 00:50, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Those comments are being very loose with what sources actually focus on. The first paragraph is stretching a lot. The source you mention doesn't get into anything of depth related to Johnson specifically. You're confounding events unrelated to Johnson himself or not part of his court case event either. I already mentioned how WP:1E cautions against so much of what you are saying in comments here, but you need to be more careful about embellishing it cautions against to try to claim BLP notability.

For the second, this is not a forum to try to insinuate Johnson's cancer was caused by glyphosate or cherrypick what the science says in our articles. There is no good evidence to make such a general claim for low exposure, and high exposure rates have poor but heavily discussed data (it's WP:OR anyways for you to impute that over to Johnson specifically). More on the background below if it's of interest to others, but there's been way too much shooting from the hip here already on Johnson, the court case, and the science in terms of WP:BLUDGEON while trying to respond to what's specifically relevant to this AfD. Trying to deal with the issues arising from that glossing over is getting this AFD too long already. KoA (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On WP:FRINGE and scientific claims

For a quick core summary from the glyphosate articles for those uninvolved: The consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.[9] Organizations such as the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues and the European Commission, Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment[10] have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans. Only one outlier organization has tried to claim otherwise[1][2], the IARC, a sub-branch of the WHO, and was heavily criticized for their methodology. You're already getting into fringe territory when a court ignores the science so much, but it's also a common anti-GMO talking point that glyphosate cancers cancer and other maladies. Both of those on their own are common WP:FRINGE issues. Then you get into issues where the WHO assessment involved someone who as paid by a lawfirm involved in such litigation.[3] It's just a tangled web where the science was put to the wayside. KoA (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So you don't want to respond to my charitable interpretation of WP:BLP1E. The collapsed section above would have been good in response to my question of WP:DUE on the subject talk page. I guess we will have to continue that discussion on the court case page. LondonIP (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Does not meet the criteria of WP:BLP1E, as explained to nom above. LondonIP (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Biology-related deletion discussions. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 13:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 13:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. LondonIP (talk) 18:50, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The current version has almost no content about Johnson himself, and while the case is clearly notable and has extensive RS coverage, the individual has much more limited coverage. Creating Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company, focused on the legal case, as discussed above by User:Shibbolethink and User:LondonIP, looks like a good reuse for some of these references.Dialectric (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect - to Johnson v. Monsanto Co.. I see now that an article on the case was created on Nov 29. All refs that have significant coverage of Johnson focus on the case, there is no indication that Johnson is notable independent of the case, and the current version has almost no biographical content.Dialectric (talk) 03:23, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Johnson v. Monsanto Co.. WP:BLP1E concerns and duplicate content concerns. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:23, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to the new article Johnson v. Monsanto Co. per BLP1E. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 20:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.