Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John D. Hawks

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 no consensus. Cirt (talk) 05:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

John D. Hawks[edit]

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Fails WP:PROF. Entire text of article is "John Hawks was a Ph.D. student of Milford Wolpoff and is an associate professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison. He writes about human evolution at john hawks weblog, with introgression as one focus." Highest cited paper: 21. h-index is about 5. Prodded by another user, deprodded by article creator. Abductive (reasoning) 19:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for "john hawks" in Wikipedia gives 40 results of which over 20 places are references to this Hawks. Of these 9 articles and a number of talk pages are currently linking to the article. How is someone notable enough to be mentioned over 20 times in articles and talk pages yet not considered notable enough to have an article for those references to link to?

Please explain the meaning of "Highest cited paper: 21. h-index is about 5.". Google Scholar search gives 153 results, and examining only the first page of 10 to start, all 10 are authorship by this person and the total number of citations to the 10 papers is over 500.

Is the problem that you are searching for "John D. Hawks"? In fact the man lists his name almost everywhere as "John Hawks". John Hawks was already a redirect to John Twelve Hawks and I made it into a disambig instead of putting the article on the paleontologist at John Hawks, which is a mistake in retrospect. I've never heard of John Twelve Hawks (and I would be interested in hearing the reasoning for his notability) but at the least he normally uses his name as "John Twelve Hawks" not "John Hawks".

More qualitatively, Hawks is one of the major figures in the debates on multiregional evolution, Neanderthal evolution, rate of human evolution in current and recent times, Boskop Man, Homo floriensis, and other topics. Among nontechnical publications, he has been published in Slate magazine. Also, here is a video of him speaking at Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

The editor who originally tagged the page, apparently simply because Hawks's rank is assistant professor (interestingly a look at that editor's bio shows he is a full professor himself!), has not made any further objection or comment since I explained notability and pinged him at his talk page. User:BaronLarf for his part replied on his talk page that "User:David Eppstein added a notability template on Jan. 22; I simply added additional issues tags.", apparently disclaiming responsibility for the assertion of nonnotability, yet insisted on keeping the article tagged.

The article is still a stub, however it is properly listed as a stub in the proper subject area. Being a stub does not in itself dictate deletion as there are of course lots of stubs which are taking some time to be filled out; just check its category and parent categories.

In short this seems to me to be mechanical application of overly strict criteria. --JWB (talk) 21:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good to hear from the article creator. I searched by "JD Hawks", but it seems that there are more articles by "J Hawks". The additional articles bring the h-index to about 11. However, the highest cited paper has MH Wolpoff as its first author, as do many of the other papers. Eliminating those, the h is about 8. Abductive (reasoning) 22:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, is there some threshold set for h or number of citations, and where are you computing/obtaining this index? Also, would this suggest that material on Hawks go into Milford Wolpoff instead? He is Wolpoff's intellectual heir in a sense, but is a separate individual. And should coauthored papers be counted as zero instead of some fraction? Needless to say, while the first author's fame helps bring notice to a paper, the second author has usually made major intellectual contribution. --JWB (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See h-index. Everybody who comments at these AfDs has their own standards regarding citation counts, h-indices and the letter and spirit of WP:PROF. I included the h-index numbers for their convenience. Abductive (reasoning) 01:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look at h-index (which ironically is itself tagged) and it says nothing about throwing out citations based on a famous first author. --JWB (talk) 08:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but in the AfD discussions people have made this argument. Think about it; this work is by Wolpoff, and the citations it garnered were based on his reputation and what he wrote. Abductive (reasoning) 21:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In many cases the second author does most of the work and the first author supervises and sponsors, although I certainly wouldn't assume this (or the opposite) in this case. With no specific knowledge, you are merely speculating and taking the most convenient case for your position.

I read through a good deal of the science AfD discussion list that David Eppstein linked at the bottom, and did not find any instances of this argument you are attempting to make. --JWB (talk) 08:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Within Wikipedia, we have no way of knowing if these instances of Hawks' name were inserted in good faith, and even if they were, Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source. You should present evidence that Hawks is a major figure. I'll bet that other professors in the fields of "multiregional evolution, Neanderthal evolution, rate of human evolution in current and recent times, and Boskop Man" have equal or higher citation counts. Abductive (reasoning) 22:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is of course not a source, however consistency in what is and is not worthy of mention seems desirable. If we leave the mentions of John Hawks as redlinks what does this accomplish?

Actually examining the mentions of Hawks should give you some idea of their legitimacy.

All of those four fields mentioned are not large ones. If there are other professors well known in those fields with similar citation counts, no doubt they are likely to be notable too, so I'm not sure where that line of reasoning is supposed to lead. --JWB (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wolpoff's h-index is around 31. Abductive (reasoning) 01:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if you are proposing this as a standard. Wolpoff has been active for many decades. I think Hawks has been active for one decade. In terms of thinking about current issues in evolution Hawks is now even more visible. --JWB (talk) 08:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

delete - in particular does not satisfy WP:PROF. Even for a stub there's no indication of why he's notable, e.g. what his contribution to the field of paleoanthropology is. None of being a student of someone notable, being an associate professor or having a blog count towards notability. As for publications it's usually a requirement of being an academic to regularly publish stuff that gets cited - he would an exceptional professor if he had none. --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Follow any of the topics listed and you will find this is one of the major players. If you're unwilling to look at these fields at all, you have no basis to judge except for generalities like "no assistant professors". --JWB (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

None of the arguments here seem to be even attempting to claim "I have a little familiarity with the evolution field and there are X number of people more prominent than Hawks". The assumption seems to be "You are presumed to be not acting in good faith, you have to prove notability to me without me knowing anything about the subject fields, dozens of existing references to the person already in Wikipedia are presumed to be spam unless you can prove otherwise, also without me having to know anything about these scientific fields, and hundreds of citations are presumed to be nonnotable, without being able to cite any specific standards, policies or statistics supporting this." This presumption of guilt is completely backwards and contrary to how Wikipedia is supposed to work. --JWB (talk) 00:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We are all here to improve WP. No-one is accusing anyone of not acting in good faith or being guilty of anything. It is not my requirement but WP's that articles should be on notable topics, established by references to secondary sources. In particular WP cannot be used to establish notability, so wikilinks or mentions on other pages do not make him notable. As for expertise, there is no such requirement to contribute or participate, but this is about WP:N, WP:GNG or WP:PROF, not whether any particular theory of paleoanthropology is correct or being correctly represented.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For example, WP:CREATIVE#Failure to explain the subject's notability says: If an article does not explain the notability of its subject, try to improve it by: *Rewriting it yourself *Asking the article's editor(s) for advice. If an article fails to cite sufficient sources: *Look for sources yourself *Ask the article's editor(s) for advice on where to look for sources. --JWB (talk) 17:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOFIXIT. Add something to the article beyond the two sentences that are there, make the article show notability on its face, and the chances of the article getting tagged for notability or deletion will go down. Why continue debating here rather than just fixing it?--Baron Larf 09:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

keep - Try looking for John Hawks on google. If you want to separate away from other people with similar names, then add a key word from his field like evolution. That 30 second search should be enough. He is clearly well-known and frequently cited outside of Wikipedia, including in publications that are not blogs. (A quick browse and I see Scientific American, Discover Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, MSNBC etc, and this is in addition to all the blogs which mention him and all the academic big name journals where he is mentioned. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs don't count. Being quoted as part of a story should be weighted less than a story about the person; for a blogging evolutionary biologist example see Massimo Pigliucci. The New York Times did an entire story on his wedding, for Pete's sake. Abductive (reasoning) 20:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you are talking about notoriety as a celebrity, maybe having your wedding covered counts. Needless to say this shows nothing about your contribution or significance in science. --JWB (talk) 08:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, the New York Times covers the wedding of a scientist, but they did so because he is famous for some other reason? No. Pigliucci's citation record looks like this: 1064, 421, 191, 124, 107, 106, 104, 84, 75, 73, 65, 61, 58, 56, 55, 48, 47, 44, 40, 39, 37, 35, 35, 35, 33, 33, 33, 32, 31, 30, 24, 23, 23, 23, 22, 20, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 16, 14, 14, 13, 12, 12, 12, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 7.... His h-index is about 30. Abductive (reasoning) 10:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you mention the wedding then? Judging from Massimo Pigliucci, he is most famous for taking on creationists, which is politics rather than producing new scientific results. His wife's fame is also covered. His actual scientific work gets a two-sentence paragraph saying only what fields he is in, and two article citations, the ones with "Phenotypic" in the names. This is about equal to what is currently in the Hawks article, or even a bit less in terms of papers with scientific results. His blog is listed as being about rationalism/secularism/fighting creationism; compare Hawks's which takes on complex specific open issues in human evolution and is the only place I've seen where these arguments are being explained to the public.

By the way, reference 1 backing up "is a professor at Stony Brook" in Massimo Pigliucci is [1] which in fact does not list him as a professor at all. Reference 2 does list him as department chair at Lehman, but in philosophy, not science. --JWB (talk) 15:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't write the Pigliucci article. AfD discussions address the potential article, not the existing article. Abductive (reasoning) 19:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or let's look at Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a big name in human migration. His citation record looks like this: 2658, 2410, 2070, 1782, 1072, 654, 643, 614, 612, 547, 540, 531, 485, 477, 440, 378, 341, 283, 278, 275, 268, 266, 256, 253, 252, 230, 222, 218, 214, 196, 191, 190, 187, 185, 180, 173, 166, 165, 165, 157, 152, 151, 149, 143, 140, 138, 133, 130, 126, 120, 119, 119, 117, 116, 111, 106, 105, 104, 99, 98, 95, 93, 93, 92, 91, 91, 86, 86, 84, 81, 79, 78, 78, 77, 76, 76, 75, 75, 74, 74, 74, 74, 71, 71, 71, 67, 65, 65, 64, 63, 60, 59, 58, 57, 57, 55, 55, 55, 54, 52, 52, 52, 51, 50, 50, 50, 49, 49, 49, 48, 47, 45, 45, 44, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 41, 41, 40, 40, 40, 39, 38, 38, 38, 37, 35, 34, 34, 34, 33, 32, 32, 32, 32, 31, 31, 31, 31, 30, 30, 30, 29, 29, 29, 28, 28, 28, 28, 28, 27, 27, 27, 27, 27, 27, 26, 26, 26, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 24, 24, 24, 24, 23, 23, 23, 23, 22, 22, 22, 22, 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 19, 19, 18, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16, 15.... His h-index is around 76. These guys are notable. Hawks is not. Abductive (reasoning) 10:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cavalli-Sforza is in fact the biggest name in that field by far, though more because of priority rather than because he is doing most of the current work. Again, this is a ridiculous standard. You would have Wikipedia cover only the top couple of people in a field.--JWB (talk) 15:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I must be missing something. I wrote a comment which mentioned that this person was discussed by "Scientific American, Discover Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, MSNBC etc" and the reply which came back was "blogs don't count"? The approach being taken here turns the Wikipedia guidelines on their head by making this an argument amongst Wikipedians about how important this person is as a scientist. This is not our job. He is notable for whatever reason you like to give, and the reason is not important.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I missed this comment. Being quoted in these sources is not the same as being the subject of a secondary source. Abductive (reasoning) 19:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding his blog, it is notable by WP:WEB#Criteria. --JWB (talk) 23:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Which of he criteria? At I'd guess it's 1, i.e. neither award winning or distributed in other media, in case what are multiple non-trivial works is the blog the subject of?--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As Andrew Lancaster said just above, "A quick browse and I see Scientific American, Discover Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, MSNBC etc" --JWB (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, but as my own web searches turned up nothing please add the references to the article to establish notability. The article still has none to reliable second party sources, only a link that searches first party sources, returning results that are open to interpretation so are of limited use.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I tagged the article for PROD two weeks ago, but User:JWB assured me that the subject was indeed notable. (There is a discussion of this here:User talk:BaronLarf#John Hawks). Despite all of the assertions and claims of notability, the article still consists of two sentences which do not show that the subject meets WP:BIO or WP:PROF. --Baron Larf 10:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any of the information in these two discussions (or that we can dig up now) that is judged to be appropriate and sourceable can go in the article, so please judge that set of information and help expand it. If the article is being deleted for subject nonnotability or a particular point is judged to be not appropriate, there is no point in adding it to the article. --JWB (talk) 17:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded - if the article is improved so it clearly demonstrates the subject's notability I will be happy to support keeping it, and that's the best outcome for this AfD discussion - better than deletion or the article being kept but unimproved.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course if the discussion was really about whether the article is too short, then this is true, but that does not seem to be the subject of discussion? I would imagine that no one has been working on the article, because it is being argued that it should be deleted on bases other than just being short? This discussion seems a circular and unconstructive to me. If people are worried about the article being short and saying they want to give it a chance to grow, then I think they should not be threatening to delete it for non notability?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Commment I did not nominate this because it was too short. I remain convinced that an associate prof whose highest cited paper was written by his advisor, no awards, a low h-index, no secondary sources, etc isn't notable. Abductive (reasoning) 18:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Andrew Lancaster (in Sci Am, Discover, etc). And also per the several good external sources already in the article. The article is pretty stubby now, but that just means it needs improvement, not that the underlying person is not notable. LotLE×talk 23:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep It is sometimes very difficult to distinguish the importance in a project of the professor and the graduate student or postdoc. I don;t think any general assumption can be made. The degree to which advisors typically get involved in the projects varies very greatly from advisor to advisor, and with many advisors, from project ot project. The extent to which an advisor puts his name on such papers also varies--James Watson made a point of never putting his name on. The position of authorship varies even more. To know the relative significance can often not be told from the published work; it is often necessary to know the specific situation. It's not until the assistant professor level that it becomes obvious to outsiders whether or not a former student can do important work independently. I have no idea who has the main responsibility for the idea or the execution--but I do see that it is very important work, and I think there's enough credit for both of them. DGG ( talk ) 02:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Still only brings his h-index to 11. Abductive (reasoning) 04:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What about his contributions to the multiregional hypothesis? Well, I went to the trouble of collecting all the citations for "multiregional hypothesis" and "multiregional origin" and got the following result. Hawks' three on the list are given in bold: 1353, 531, 433, 405, 365, 315, 272, 204, 202, 201, 184, 175, 161, 159, 156, 155, 147, 146, 136, 129, 126, 108, 104, 94, 91, 90, 88, 74, 72, 67, 67, 62, 61, 60, 58, 57, 56, 56, 53, 53, 48, 42, 42, 41, 37, 36, 35, 35, 34, 31, 30, 29, 29, 29, 29, 28, 28, 27, 25, 24, 24, 24, 24, 21, 20, 20, 18, 18, 16, 15, 15, 15, 13, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0. So there are 8,609 total citations, of which only 97 are citing Hawks. 28 papers are cited more than Hawks' highest, and that one has Wolpoff as a first author too. Or how about Homo floriensis? Hawks hasn't published any papers on H. floriensis; at least according to Google Scholar. Can User:JWB explain how s/he came to make this claim? Abductive (reasoning) 11:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Papers relevant to multiregional do not necessarily have that name. Looking at the top 10 GS results for John Hawks, several are analyses of recent African origin or "replacement theory" and mention those terms. The ones on Neandertals are relevant when they cover introgression. Actually, it appears you are missing papers where "multiregional" appears in the article text but not the title, as seen in this search. As far as prominently using the phrase "multiregional evolution" itself, Wolpoff has done this most. --JWB (talk) 16:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are very many physical anthropologists. A considerable number of them are notable. A few are famous. TAbductive, you cited Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. He's famous. Agreed that Hawkes is not at his standard. he criterion for WP:N is notable, much less than famous. Wolof is more highly notable than Hawkes--no question about it. That does not mean that Hawkes is not notable also. The multiregional hypothesis is not exactly a recondite academic question--it is a long-standing question that has in the past been very much involved with the question of racial superiority. It is therefore of great interest, and many notable people have worked on it. DGG ( talk ) 23:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that Wolpoff coined the term "multiregional" before DNA studies provided quantitative evidence of recent African origin. Today the question is whether there is any detectable genetic inheritance from earlier Homo off the main line, which is referred to as introgression into the main line. Papers addressing the latter may or may not use the word "multiregional". --JWB (talk) 02:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hawks is a commentator and secondary source on the Flores hobbits story. Access to the actual fossils is limited, which is one of the issues he discusses. Abductive, recommend you read the blog if you want to be able to make an informed evaluation of his role in the listed debates. --JWB (talk) 02:10, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody can blog, and I don't have to read his blog to dismiss his blog utterly. My informed evaluation is highly detailed; Wolpoff is the first author on Hawks' most highly cited papers, many people have higher citations in all of Hawks' fields. Hawks is not a full professor. Therefore he fails WP:PROF. Abductive (reasoning) 05:23, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep after reading the long discussion on this page. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:39, 5 February 2010 (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.