Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dana Ullman (2nd nomination)

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. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:51, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dana Ullman[edit]

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Insufficient notable sources to establish notability as defined by WP:AUTHOR. The bulk of the article is made up by the Views and Controversies section which also does not appear to infer notability. Shritwod (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 14:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 14:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:GNG. The issue is that we need at least a couple of sources that meet the trifecta of reliable, independent and secondary. I cannot find a single one. The only one that might arguably meet these three criteria is a piece in the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper that might be assessed as having qualified reliability for 60s and 70s counterculture but doesn't cover a current biography. Our standards for sourcing have tightened in the last ten years, we are much more conservative, and this lacks the quality of sources necessary to create a verifiably neutral biography. Guy (Help!) 14:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Please excuse the fact that I have little experience on Wikipedia...and due to a conflict of interest, I have no idea if my "vote" here carries weight. However, it seems obvious that I have significant notability, as per Time magazine and ABC News 20/20, let alone 10 books (two of which contain a Foreword by the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II), their publication in ten languages. I also want to remind people here that my alma mater, UC BERKELEY, published a four-page interview with me, February 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20040910125954/http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/February_1999/QA_with_Dana_Ullman.asp

Some antagonists to my work and to the field of homeopathic medicine are diligent at work to delete anything related to my work, but they have also ignored the following RS contributions:

--Quoting from this article, "Ullman was arrested for practicing without a license and spent eight hours in jail (where he read Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis), But he won in court, and his case set a precedent: he was the last person to be arrested in California for practicing "alternative medicine." Also, this article reports that Dana Ullman "co-taught a course on homeopathy at UCSF's medical school for four years."

-- Dana Ullman has written chapters on homeopathic medicine in two important medical textbooks, including one published by Oxford University Press and one published by the American Academy for Pain Management.

----"Integrative Sexual Health, Edited by Barbara Bartlik, Geovanni Espinosa, Janet Mindes, and Series edited by Andrew Weil. Oxford University Press, 2018. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/integrative-sexual-health-9780190225889?lang=en&cc=us#

----"Weiner's Pain Management: A Practical Guide for Clinicians," American Association for Pain Management/CRC Press, 7th edition. 2005. https://www.crcpress.com/Weiners-Pain-Management-A-Practical-Guide-for-Clinicians/Boswell-Cole/p/book/9780849322624

Due to a conflict of interest, I cannot add the above material to the bio for me, and so I am hoping that someone with a neutral POV will consider doing so. DanaUllman^Talk 04:38, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I feel also compelled to mention one more significant notability about my work. I was the first person in history to use the word "nanopharmacology" in a publication of a major scientific journal (FASEB, 2006): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17142803 DanaUllman^Talk 04:42, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In reverse order:

You used "nanopharmacology" incorrectly (as our article on homeopathy makes clear, the correct term is non-pharmacology), but nobody cares because that is a primary source, a letter not a peer-reviewed publication, it's your assertion that you coined the term, you provide no independent source to back that claim, and the term is visible in the peer-reviewed literature four years earlier if not before. I can't help feeling that we are at the nub of the matter here: your view of your own achievements is not in line with the objective evidence.
The identity of your publishers is irrelevant. What matters is reliable independent sources. Publisher PR blurbs are not independent and absolutely do not establish notability. Adding two more, makes no difference.
The interview in an alumni magazine is similarly not independent. It's also not about you, it's about the alternative to medicine that you promote, and it is wholly uncritical - even though homeopathy has been known to be bogus since the 1840s.

What you need is sources that meet the trifecta of reliable, independent and secondary, to establish notability. That's what's missing. It doesn't really matter if there are five affiliated sources or seven, if they are affiliated they don't establish notability per WP:GNG. The sources you cite would be acceptable for uncontroversial facts but not for anything that might reasonably be challenged, and very little that you say falls into that category, because your primary activity is, and always has been, the promotion of homeopathy, which is inherently controversial due to its inconsistency with all relevant scientific knowledge. Guy (Help!) 07:21, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

weak keep The ABC News and Time Magazine quotes are essentially claims of notability. I'd almost be more comfortable merging it, but I don't see any reasonable place to merge with. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. In considering whether or not it is appropriate to keep a biographical article, I would consider a two-pronged test. The first prong is "notability"—have the subject's actions and accomplishments had a significant impact on the world outside their own circle? Ullman is difficult to evaluate in this regard, if only because it is difficult to determine the correct biographical category and criteria; he's not a proper 'criminal', having reached settlement before trial; he's not a proper 'academic' or 'professor', holding no significant academic appointments(?) and having published little research in scientific (or even unscientific) journals; he's not a proper 'pundit' or other 'celebrity', having participated in only one or two large-market discussions/interviews over the last several decades; he has written some books, but none have been bestsellers. Put all those accumulated dribs and drabs together into a pile and one might make an argument for clearing Wikipedia's "notability" threshold, but it is far from certain.
The second prong is "sourcing"—we cannot build a Wikipedia article out of what we think might be true. Whether we think an individual is sufficiently notable or not, we cannot write a biography – especially of a living person – without robust sources. After eleven years of development on Wikipedia, we are able to cite a modest number of sources in which Ullman relates his views, but find few (if any) which describe Ullman himself. He's a guy who was interviewed about one side of the homeopathy issue in a couple of news reports; the interviews weren't about Ullman specifically. For Ullman's arrest and subsequent settlement for "practicing medicine without a license" – something that ought to be an important, formative biographical event, however spun – we can't come up with a single WP:BLP-compatible source. That absence of robust independent coverage (contemporaneous or retrospective) means that Dana Ullman fails as a Wikipedia biographical subject on this second prong. (The paucity of coverage also argues against the first prong's 'notability' test.)
There is also a third issue, regarding how this article was created and is still used. The original biographical article was created by a third party at Dana Ullman's direct request: [1]. Our article is part of establishing Ullman's image, and marketing Ullman's books—note how carefully the bibliography is kept up to date. Ullman has maintained a close and active interest in the article's maintenance ever since it was created. Having a Wikipedia article is part of building Ullman's profile and brand. While these 'outside context' factors aren't dispositive, they certainly should disincline us to giving the benefit of the doubt with respect to notability questions and the preservation of the status quo. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:09, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

irrelevant side discussion

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

It is odd and even confusing that TenOfAllTrades would assert that I have "maintained a close and active interest in the article's maintenance ever since it was created" when records show that I did not contribute virtually anything to Wikipedia for a 10-year period...but this editor is well-known for this strong antagonism to me and to homeopathic medicine. This editor also has obviously not read my comments above that include additional notable and well-referenced facts about my work, though I'll show good faith and assume that he may have not read them until after he read this.

As for JzG's assertion that homeopathy is a "non-pharmacology" rather than a "nanopharmacology," he is pretending to be ignorant of an important study published in a major scientific journal, "Langmuir," which is published by the American Chemistry Society. This study conclusively showed that six different homeopathic medicines, made from metals (gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, and platinum), were diluted 1:100 six times, 30 times, and 200 times, and using three different types of spectroscopy, the scientists consistently found nanoparticles of each of the original metals in solution...and further, the scientists conducting this research provide compelling reasons for how and why this occurs. The study verifies that nanoparticles persist in solution in homeopathic water, and the doses that persist are at a dosage similar to the nanodoses to which the human body's own hormones and cell-signaling agents are known to operate. Reference: Chikramane PS, Kalita D, Suresh AK, Kane SG, Bellare JR. Why Extreme Dilutions Reach Non-zero Asymptotes: A Nanoparticulate Hypothesis Based on Froth Flotation. Langmuir. 2012 Nov 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23083226 The additional reference that confirms that nanodoses used by our human body is here: Eskinazi, D., Homeopathy Re-revisited: Is Homeopathy Compatible with Biomedical Observations? Archives in Internal Medicine, 159, Sept 27, 1999:1981-7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10510983 The fact that neither of these articles are even mentioned in the article on "homeopathy" is simply further evidence of the anti-homeopathy biases here by extremists who are not interested in a NPOV.

As for my assertion that I was the first person to use the term "nanopharmacology" in a title of a publication in a major scientific journal, that can be seen and verified at PubMed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) and doing a search for "nanopharmacology" and looking in reverse order of the listings. DanaUllman^Talk 18:53, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, now there's a moving goal post. Your prior claim in this page was that you were the first person to use the article in a publication, not limiting it to the title. Obviously, a large portion of the text of a typical publication is not in the title. The claim becomes of even less import with limiting it to the title. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch, NatGertler, but actually BOTH of my statements are accurate. I was the FIRST to use the word "nanopharmacology" in a TITLE of a publication AND the FIRST to use the term in a "major scientific journal" (the only other publication that used this term was a "pharmacy" journal, not a "scientific" journal. Thanx for reminding me to be more specific. DanaUllman^Talk 21:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but nanopharmacology does not seem to merit an encyclopaedia entry in any case, and although I acknowledge that this term is somewhat related to nanomedicine which does have an entry, it is not nanopharmacology as you describe it. It seems a rather moot and irrelevant argument. Shritwod (talk) 22:21, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In what way have I shown "strong atagonism" to you, DanaUllman? After wasting rather more time that I would have liked, I really can't find anything but infrequent, mostly-incidental interaction. There are a handful of threads scattered across the project where we've disagreed with one another about content or sourcing issues. I've never edited Dana Ullman or Talk:Dana Ullman. After going through the entire history of Homeopathy, it looks like I've made fewer than 10 edits to the article, mostly reversions of vandalism and removal of linkspam, none since 2007; I have occasionally commented on the article's talk page (five edits in the last two years). It looks like you sent me an unsolicited email in 2008 inviting me to check out your new book and website; the only time I've ever posted to your user talk page was to ask to you not send me any more spam. (I had completely forgotten about that, truth be told. I still don't remember receiving the email, but it's right there in black and white.)

As to your views on homeopathy, and how they might differ from my own—none of that makes a difference about whether or not you're notable enough – or there are enough independent, reliable sources to be found about you – to justify and support a Wikipedia article. There are lots of people who were wrong but who have had sufficient impact (one way or another) to warrant coverage: Stanley Pons, Prosper-René Blondlot, the Flat Earth Society, heck, even Samuel Hahnemann himself. I just don't think that, in terms of impact and available sources, Dana Ullman rises above the bar. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:19, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dana, your comment he is pretending to be ignorant of an important study published in a major scientific journal, "Langmuir," this is absolutely characteristic of your approach to debate. You assume that anyone who does not share your idiosyncratic and homeopathy-centric view of the world is "ignorant". I am well aware of the Langmuir paper. Chikramane et. al. show ideological bias, sloppy technique, and a fundamental failure to understand their own experiment. Silicates are expected in solutions prepared in glass - ask any electrochemist why they wash glassware in HF - but Chikramane claims that silicates in solutions in glass are evidence for homeopathy, because he is a True Believer looking to support his faith, not to test it. The paper with the heavy metal contamination is [the same thing only sloppier http://inscientioveritas.org/homeopathy-nanoparticle-chikramane/]. It was accepted by a journal because the editors did not realise they were looking at tooth fairy science - Iris Bell has made a career of publishing one study in a journal and then moving on after the editors realise they were hoodwinked. Six years after that paper was published, it has changed nothing. It is not "important", it has had zero effect other than to give homeopathists more dust to throw in the eyes of science in the hope of staving off the inevitable. And that's not working. Since the paper was published the NHS has shut down pretty much all homeopathy due to lack of evidence of effect. The oldest homeopathic hospital in the UK, favoured by Prince Charles, has handed out its last taxpayer-funded sugar pill [2]. Two of the four large scale policy reviews (Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council and the European Academies' Science Advisory Council) post-date Chikramane and had submissions from homeopathists which referenced Chikramane. It did not persuade.

And even if the Langmuir finding were correct, reproducible, and in any way "important", they would still be irrelevant. It would be like using mass spectroscopy to find titanium in a carpet and asserting that this is the mechanism by which carpets fly, because titanium is also used in aircraft. Not only is the Langmuir paper a self-acknowledged "hypothesis" (actually conjecture), it fails to address the fact that there is no objectively demonstrated connection between the substances used in homeopathy and the conditions they purportedly treat.

Unfortunately you are so convinced of your own correctness that you automatically discount every conflicting view as based on bias and ignorance. Ignorance, for you, includes not only lack of knowledge, but also reaching the "wrong" conclusion. You cannot accept that anybody else could look at the same facts and reach a different conclusion. That's why you got banned, and topic banned, and if you continue attacking people here for daring to follow the mainstream conclusions about homeopathy rather than your own preferred interpretation then I confidently predict that you will end up sitebanned again. Guy (Help!) 08:14, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, this is not the place to be debating the efficacy of homeopathy. It's irrelevant to the question of whether this page gets deleted. It's rare enough that an extended exchange on a wikipedia deletion page even effects the question of whether the page gets deleted, much less change the world as a whole, so this is just so much kittenfolding. Let's keep the topic on whether the subject meets our standard for inclusion. I expect that in the future, my Wikipedia page will reflect that I was the first person to use kittenfolding in a Wikipedia discussion. -Nat Gertler (talk) 14:03, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @DanaUllman:@JzG:The purpose of this particular discussion isn't to rehash a lengthy debate whether or not Ullman's views about homeopathy are factually correct, or whether homeopathy itself is a legitimate and scientifically-supported practice, or to argue about the relative merits of various published articles on the topic.

The purpose of this discussion is to determine whether or not Wikipedia retains the biographical article Dana Ullman. For the purposes of this discussion, it actually doesn't matter if Ullman's beliefs are rational and well-founded. What matters is whether or not he is a sufficiently noteworthy individual, and whether or not there are sufficient reliable and independent sources to support building a complete encyclopedia article.

The only claims by User:DanaUllman (or anyone, really) that need to be discussed – and refuted, if necessary – are the ones relating to whether or not Ullman is a notable figure, and if reliable and independent sources genuinely support those claims. So, for example, his over-inflated claims about being first to use the term nanopharmacology in a scientific journal are fair game for puncturing (though I think that ground is now thoroughly exhausted). His comment about the Langmuir paper is irrelevant to this discussion, as Ullman is not an author of the paper, was not acknowledged in the paper, and was not cited in the paper. Trying to make this AfD discussion about the merits (or not) of homeopathy rather than the merits (or not) of the article on Dana Ullman is a red herring to be avoided.

User:DanaUllman should avoid further sidetracking (especially given his still-extant topic ban on homeopathy), and everyone else should avoid taking the bait. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:12, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know. Shouldn't rise to the bait, Dana is well aware that I am familiar with the Langmuir study. Guy (Help!) 14:20, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I only (!) brought up the study in Langmuir because JzG referred to homeopathy as "non-pharmacology" rather than "nanopharmacology," and this study provided strong evidence for the persistent of nanoparticles of the original source material in homeopathic medicines. There was a certain logic to this reference, especially in light of the increasing emergence of nanomedicine and nanopharmacology. DanaUllman^Talk 17:45, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And I mentioned it only because your error, which you repeat above, required correction. But as ToAT says, we should not encourage you to further violate your topic ban. Guy (Help!) 17:54, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

JzG has chosen to write a totally inappropriate critique of the Langmuir study without referencing a single independent or PUBLISHED analysis of this Langmuir study! All of the comments that JzG has chosen to make are his own and do not represent any reliable source of information (if he had such a source, I'm sure that he would have provided it...but he did not). The researchers in this Langmuir study KNEW that silicates fall off the glass walls...and this is NOT the point of their study. The fact of the matter is that the researchers found that ALL six metals were forced into the silicates and three different types of spectroscopy found nanoparticles of these 6 metals even after dilutions of 1:100 thirty times and 200 times because these silicate fragments cling to the glass walls during the dilutions. Therefore, Avogadro's number has NO real meaning in any making of a homeopathic medicine because this important determination doesn't account for the silicate fragments or the vigorous shaking/turbulence. I feel compelled to respond to this misinformation that [User:JzG] provided and that he walled off as "irrelevant." Because I was not able to add this comment to the walled off material, I am inserting it here. DanaUllman^Talk 01:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dana, please give it a rest. This really isn't relevant. What matters here is whether you meet notability criteria on Wikipedia. The correctness of not of any idea about homeopathy is irrelevant to that. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Although I'm a little on the fence here. There are two major publications that mention Ullman (ABC News, and Time Magazine), as well as a brief mention in a journal editorial. However, none of those sources appear to dedicate "significant" coverage to Ullman or his work - he's being used as an example of a homeopath or a source for pull-quotes in articles that are really about homeopathy more generally. It's true that these sources mention Ullman as a significant figure in the field, but that probably isn't enough either: Joel Waul, the current holder of the world record for the largest rubber band ball is prominent in the field of large rubber band balls, but there probably isn't much sense in having an entry dedicated to his biography. Nblund^talk 22:21, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete--Per the extremely persuasive arguments by TenofTrades.~ Winged Blades^Godric 01:32, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Very little to give the subject notability in the wiki sense except his homeopathic trolling, which isn't really covered by reliable sources. -Roxy, the dog. barcus 10:49, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete From looking for sources which might establish notability one way or another (which I had assumed would be straightforward) most of the results are articles by the subject himself promoting opinions and from what is left I don’t think it is possible to write a neutral page on this person as per WP:BLP core content policies. The second aspect I assumed could establish notability definitively was the books. I am concerned by the argument above that the wikipedia page is basically a promotional source for the books, about which I wasn’t able to find any reviews aside from homeopathy-promoting websites which cannot under the circumstances be considered neutral. If the author is considered a “foremost spokesman” it should be the case that his books would have mainstream reviews in reliable sources and I am not finding any. Mramoeba (talk) 00:36, 30 April 2018 (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.