Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dewi Evans

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. No prejudice against restructuring the content in a different way, pursuant to further discussion. Mojo Hand (talk) 23:38, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dewi Evans

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Dewi Evans may meet notability criteria, but only as the main prosecution expert witness in the Lucy Letby murder case of 2023, and so does not warrant an independent article. That case, and Dr. Evans’ role in it, is currently the source of a great deal of public focus in the United Kingdom. This article was only created six days ago, and is already becoming a focus for people with a given agenda (casting aspersions on Dr Evans’s evidence) which is not part of the mission of an Encyclopaedia. For the time being, Dr. Evans’ contribution to the Lucy Letby case can be encapsulated within the Lucy Letby article and with a redirect from the current article. The material in the current article is either far more detail than is warranted for a retired paediatrician, or cherry-picked controversies. Should Ms. Letby’s conviction be vacated as a result of Dr. Evans’s evidence, there may be grounds for an independent article about him. But I understand there is consensus and precedent from a certain case in 2007 is that tangential witnesses in criminal cases are not notable in and of themselves (I am sorry I do not know the specific case, user:Bearian drew it to my attention).

Seeing as Dr. Evans has not generated enough interest to warrant an article about his life before now, it seems to me that precedent applies here. ElectricRay (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - While I agree that being a star witness in one case doesn't make one notable, as an elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, he meets WP:NACADEMIC #3. If there are issues with balancing and WP:NEGATIVESPIN, the BLP article should be fixed not deleted. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Still deciding. On one hand, yes, there's precedent for deleting this sort of article, where the main claim to fame is being a witness, but on the other hand, they might be independently notable. I'm no longer an admin. Bearian (talk) 18:47, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators, Medicine, and Wales. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 18:49, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One suggestion from user:Sirfurboy is that the Lucy Letby article be converted to the Lucy Letby case which might allow a section about Dr Evans insofar as it is relevant to that case.ElectricRay (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ElectricRay, while I do think there is a case to WP:SPLIT most of the material about his activities during the Lucy Letby case as too much of Dewi Evan's article is focused on the case per WP:PROPORTION. I oppose merging his biography into a potential article on the basis that Dewi Evans is independently notable.⁂CountHacker (talk) 19:40, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@⁂CountHacker my main concern is that this article is plainly being used by people to character assassinate a person who gave evidence in a criminal trial. As I said, he meets notability criteria on that score; beyond that, he is basically a retired doctor. He certainly does not warrant a 2,000 word+ article with 54 footnotes. Is there a way of protecting the article, or limiting it to the introductory 4 lines? i.e.,

“Dewi Richard Evans (born July 1949) is a retired British consultant paediatrician and professional expert witness. He is a fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health. During the 1980s-90s, he helped develop the maternity unit in Singleton Hospital, Swansea.
Beginning in 2022 he rose to prominence as lead expert witness for the prosecution in the Lucy Letby trial.”

This is really all it is justified in saying. ElectricRay (talk) 09:50, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AfDs aren't the proper venue for dealing with a content dispute about a BLP and discussing how the article can be fixed. The subject is clearly notable and article can be fixed. It's best to go to the talk page and discuss with the editors involved in this article on how to fix the article after this AfD is closed. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 01:13, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - As CountHacker has said, looks like he meets C3 of WP:NACADEMIC to me. Qflib (talk) 22:06, 12 February 2025 (UTC) I wish to withdraw this recommendation, having found that becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians does not satisfy C3; see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5885086/#:~:text=The%20RCP%20success%20is%20a,a%20globally%20inclusive%20medical%20college. Qflib (talk) 18:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Qflib, I do believe that you may have read that passage out of context. "Exclusive" to "globally inclusive" isn't stating that fellowships of the Royal College of Physicians are non-selective, rather that fellowship is no longer solely reserved for Anglican males with an Oxbridge degree. Fellowship is still "highly selective" in the sense that you need to be elected to the RCP, see their website [1]. I do think there is a fair point from others that the RCP is a broader professional body but it is also a learned society as well, publishing its own academic journal.⁂CountHacker (talk) 09:54, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It’s not simply that there’s a large number of fellows from around the world. He wasn’t elected as a fellow for his academic career, and so it’s difficult to construe using it to satisfy NPROF. Qflib (talk) 15:48, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - I also agree that Evans meets C3 of WP:NACADEMIC. The article should be edited for quality and conformity to WP:BLP. Mellangoose (talk) 15:21, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the C3 criterium: is Evans an academic? Dr Evans seems to have published only two scientific papers, very many years ago. Both very short and with co-authors. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12098-009-0171-5, https://www.bmj.com/content/2/6183/171.short The medical Royal colleges do have many academics as members but are primarily, in my opinion, professional organisations. The organisations do carry out academic functions, among others, but probably most members don’t. Richard Gill (talk) 05:56, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard Gill, I would say he 's contributed to more papers than you think. I've found a few more papers written by him, in addition to the two that you've found. [2], [3], [4],[5], and this BMJ article written solely by Evans [6]. A lot of the difficulties in finding his works seems to be that Evans is often cited by his initials, D R Evans, and the fact that most of his work pre-dates the digital age, being published in the 70s and 80s. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 10:12, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Brilliant work. Still, I don’t think this body of work is enough to call someone an “academic”. A good PhD student who publishes a handfull of papers while simultaneously being a teaching assistant and goes on to have a succesful business career has been academically formed but is not normally considered an academic, 40 years later. Richard Gill (talk) 16:21, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Subject meets WP:NACADEMIC. Mysecretgarden (talk) 14:37, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Lucy Letby, and I think that page should be renamed to Lucy Letby case as the page is only really about the case and Letby has no notability beyond the case. That move cannot be decided here, but the merge can be. Reasons for merge are as follows:
1. the Royal College of Physicians is a respected professional body, but not an academic one as envisaged by WP:NACADEMIC. Evans has a lot of experience in clinical practice and such like, but is clearly not an academic. Those notability guidelines would be misapplied to him. What matters, and what always really matters are secondary sources from which a page can be written.
2. Evans is, in fact, covered in at least one excellent secondary source: Coffey & Moritz (2024) Unmasking Lucy Letby London: Seven Dials. The book paints him as more than an expert witness in that case. It suggests that his analysis directly led to the nature and extent of the case itself. It talks about him at length. There are plenty of other sources (many primary but some secondary) that cover him, but always in relation to the case. Although he has worked on previous cases, they don't appear to be covered anywhere. So we have sufficient sourcing to say he is notable, but it is notability entirely related to the Letby case, and this is apparent in the concerns about this page as it stands. These concerns cannot be adequately addressed. The vast bulk of secondary sourcing on Evans will be about his participation in the Letby case. Thus WP:PAGEDECIDE pertains. Should we allow this page to persist, noting concerns that it is an attack page, and concerns that it will always be very closely related to the Letby page? Or should we cover him in relation to the Letby case, which is exactly what the sources do too. At AfD we too often look only at GNG/ANYBIO, and forget PAGEDECIDE. I think the PAGEDECIDE case lies in favour of merger. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:46, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - As an author of many articles on Wikipedia, I'm against the proposal to delete this article. However, as a user of Wikipedia, I came here looking to find out about the background of Dewi Evans since his name has cropped up several times, not only regarding the Lucy Letby case. He is involved in other controversial cases in South Wales, including those of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Linda Lewis. He is definitely notable, some would say notorious given his past record. He is not an academic (his publication record is insignificant) and he is not a scientist (despite calling himself that), but he is a physician who, during the course of his career and subsequent retirement, has left a stream of controversial medical decisions that are highly questionable e.g. the Linda Lewis and "Bonnie" Lewis cases are horrendous - with Dewi Evans deeply involved. See Bonnie Lewis.This makes him and his background of interest in an article on Wikipedia that follows the usual criteria. Deleting such an article would be a dis-service to the public, who need to know about this man, his work, and his character. Egrabczewski (talk) 11:42, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In court, Dewi Evans said explicitly that he did not consider himself a scientist. Richard Gill (talk) 16:21, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Bonnie Lewis link is an advocacy page about Letby, which does not demonstrate Evans had any notability outside of the Letby case, even though he was indeed criticised over that one. I am also unaware what he has to do with Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. Are there any sources that speak to those, and that are not linked so inextricably to the Letby case? Thanks. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:09, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

regarding Sally Clark: he has signed letters to newspapers and to the BMJ (or a paediatric journal) calling for the rehabilitation of Roy Meadow, and another disgraced paediatrician. Richard Gill (talk) 16:21, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Evans appears to meet the notability criteria of WP:NACADEMIC. Kind Tennis Fan (talk) 20:24, 17 February 2025 (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.