Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mokenge P. Malafa (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 - Does not meet WP:PROF. A second point raised was that the article is (1) borderline Wikipedia content (2) related to possible COI promotion. However, there was not enough discussion on this second point to determine whether the borderline page is hopelessly promotional due to sophisticated efforts to advance outside interests over the aims of Wikipedia. Some of the editors noted that the page is not hopelessly irreparable per the Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over essay. The Blow it up and start over essay seems more general and may not directly cover a hopelessly promotional situation. It may help to have a hopelessly promotional essay to address situations like this in the future. -- Jreferee (talk) 13:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mokenge P. Malafa[edit]

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The previous AFD was incorrectly closed as "speedy keep" with no valid reason given for the "speedy keep" conclusion that was consistent with the original nomination. This has been explained to the closer. Barney the barney barney (talk) 22:39, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Move to WP:N/N as suggested in original nomination. Tonywalton ^Talk 00:23, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Nominator has twice failed to advance any policy-based reason for deletion. That's the reason why the previous nomination was closed as a speedy keep. Why do you want this article deleted? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:22, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I have twice provided the same valid reason for deletion. Barney the barney barney (talk) 11:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. I find this argument disingenuous. The nominator clearly called out the article as potentially failing WP:PROF in the original nomination. This is a completely valid deletion rationale, and the fact that he worded it as a question rather than a clear statement should not be a reason for keeping. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:26, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment You may consider my remark disingenuous, David Eppstein and I get your point. But I believe that (except in the case of procedural noms on behalf of IP editors or newbies), a nomination should clearly state that the nominator has concluded the article should be deleted, and why. A nomination shouldn't implicitly ask other editors to do the groundwork described in WP:BEFORE, and as DGG has so graciously done here. That's my view of the matter, and I'm not trying to be difficult. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:43, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 01:45, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 01:45, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 01:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 01:47, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~ as no reasons for deletion given by nominator. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:56, 25 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]
- Comment see my comment above reply to
Speedy keep - again - This user is on a mission to try and call my competence into question. As you can see Barney - there's a specific reason why it was properly closed before. Dusti^{*Let's talk!*} 03:37, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment as has been explained to you at some length, despite your refusal to listen, the reason why this has been nominated again is that it was closed imporoperly before - the reason for deletion is the same as the original policy-based reason for deletion. I do not see any reason why I have to repeat myself. Barney the barney barney (talk) 11:06, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Nope, Dusti's action was acceptable — you don't have to agree with their decision, but they were entirely within their right to make it. Your first nomination consisted of a question as to whether the article met WP:PROF or not — you did not advance a reasoned, comprehensive argument that it objectively failed to meet our inclusion rules, but merely asked for other people to investigate whether it did or not. As noted, there are things you can do — take it to WP:N/N, for example — if you have questions about an article's notability and want further investigation, but AFD is not the correct process to use until you can provide clear, unambiguous evidence that the article definitely fails to meet one or more of our inclusion rules and should definitely be deleted on those grounds. An AFD discussion without a deletion rationale can be closed at any time by anyone, and your nomination did not include a deletion rationale — and furthermore, the discussion had in fact been open for a full week already without anyone posting either a keep or deletion rationale. I am an administrator, and I might very well have closed it too if I'd seen it before all of this happened. You certainly do have the right to reopen a new discussion as you've done here — but I do have to warn you that if you don't stop criticizing Dusti and start discussing the article, you are running the risk of a temporary editblock for violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. Bearcat (talk) 22:38, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. As with Cullen328's comment earlier, this "keep" comment fails to address the deletion rationale (i.e., whether the subject passes WP:PROF), nor does it provide any other policy-based reason for keeping other than the failure to understand the clearly-worded and policy-based rationale for the previous discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
delete, possibly speedy delete as G11 The reason given for deletion was specified as it being questionable whether the individual meets WP:PROF, a perfectly good reason for listing an article here. Asking the nominator to specify it in more exact words insteadtead of saying " Can we check whether this meets WP:PROF please" is mere quibbling--the meaning of the deletion reason is perfectly clear. I consider it reasonable for people to bring a questionable article here and ask for opinions; I do this routinely when it looks dubious but is out of my subject. There is two additional very good reasons for deletion, even deletion via speedy: The biographical part of the article is in large part a copy or very close paraphrase of his bio at Moffit Cancer Center here, and it is an entirely promotional article that would need extensive rewriting beyond normal editing. Personally, I do not think the person is notable enough to be worth doing it. And there is another reason to avoid doing it: the author of this article appears to be an entirely promotional editor writing articles about physicians at the Moffit Cancer Center--and I see no reason to myself do properly the work they are (presumably) being paid for and doing improperly. There is a concentrated campaign at WP for articles on robotic surgery and its practitioners, and this is just one part of it. (I suspect it is an attempt to use us as part of a sales competition between the major manufactures of the multi-million dollar machines used in the field)

First, with respect to notability. The relevant criterion in WP:PROF is the person being a recognized authority is their subject. For scientific fields, this is normally judged on the basis of citations of the individual's papers. The citations for his most cited papers in Google Scholar are 123, 105, 91, in good journals. The h value is 21. This is not spectacular in the field, but it's good. He is not one of the leading workers in the field: a GS search on the subject shows many papers on vitamin E and cancer with citation ranging from 200 to 3000. ~~He has been on the editorial board of some important journals is his subject, though that alone is not notability, as these are large editorial boards of several dozen people.~~ He has not been on the editorial board of a major journal. (corrected, Aug.26) He is an officer in no national professional association, he is an elected fellow of no professional society, his academic positions have been only as Associate Professor

Second, about the promotionalism. The article freely uses adjectives of praise: "many papers"; ":most notable". the "Awards" section consists of directory listings, extremely minor awards, and student awards, and within-university awards. There's nothing here which should even be mentioned in a bio article. The professional work section consists of an overextend discussion mixing in his totally unimportant work with his more important work showing no signs of discriminating between the two. The section on surgical work and his work on preventative guidelines talks about activities where he was a "major player" , or had "involvement" or was "one of the first..." . Etc. etc.

I am not particularly happy at Barney letting me do all this checking, instead of trying himself, but he did find an article that needs to be removed. I shall be nominating other related articles for deletion. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Seems to meet the standards of WP:PROF specifically:
- 1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources In this case Malafa appears to have strong Google scholar rankings, author or co-author of a few hundred papers, cited all over the place. It is evident that he has made a significant impact in his scholarly discipline

That being said, I do think that the page could use some work. However there's a long stretch of road between "needs work" and "delete." Simonm223 (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete. In his specialty, the use of Vitamin E for cancer prevention/amelioration: Google scholar found citation counts of 1552, 960, 674, 651, 541, etc. I conclude from this that this is a high-citation area and that his own citation counts, 123, 105, etc (while nothing to sneeze at) are not enough to make a convincing case for WP:PROF#C1. What else is there? Chair of a department is clearly not a high enough level administrative position for WP:PROF, and the awards listed in the article are certainly too low-level to count for much. And I also agree with the promotional language and conflict-of-interest concerns raised by DGG. If he were more clearly notable, I'd suggest stubbing it down to something neutral and better-sourced, but in this case because of the borderline notability and COI issues I think WP:TNT is a better choice. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:40, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: While there are many articles and institutions investigating the role of Vitamin E in cancer prevention, each group investigates specific aspects of this problem: rectal cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, etc. A quick look at the articles which cite the subject's research will show that only he has conducted research on whether α-TOS can prevent melanoma, for example. Also, the fact that the subject's research is routinely cited, even when the article is dealing with a different application of Vitamin E than the subject deals with, demonstrates, in accordance with WP:PROF, the subjects' broad attribution as a pioneer in this area of research:
  - "the [subject] has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline." 72.184.149.224 (talk) 15:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - If you restrict the author's specialization to Vitamin E for melanoma, this will eliminate three of his five top-cited papers. And even in that highly-specialized subtopic, he does not have the most highly-cited paper (that one is by Prasad and Edwards-Prasad). —David Eppstein (talk) 00:19, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have copyedited a bit, correcting typos and errors. I have removed puffery and promotionalism, including two mentions of the brand name of the robotic surgery gear that he now uses. I have trimmed away some unreferenced material. I am not claiming that the article is without flaws, but I've tried to attack its most glaring defects. Two editors I respect, DGG and David Eppstein have recommending deleting while conceding that notability may be possible. DGG described the citation count as "good" but "not spectacular". David Eppstein called the citations "nothing to sneeze at" and conceded "borderline notability". Both expressed concern about promotionalism and COI editing, which can be addressed through the normal editing process, and which I have tried to do in recent hours. I concede that I am weak in assessing the notability of academics, since I am a guy with a bachelor's degree not now involved in academia. But I don't think that the TNT essay applies here, since I honestly don't see the article as "hopelessly irreparable". I encourage everyone participating in this debate to make a thoughtful, constructive edit or three to this article, and add it to your watch lists. Thanks. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:03, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A year ago I would have agreed with you. What I think we need to do here is add the most important academic people, with the priority for the notable ones, not the ones who havePR agents. If this were an isolated article, I would feel differently, but why should either you or I work at helping someone make all the articles for the borderline people at a particular medical institute? Neither notability nor promotionalism is a black/white issue. In the past I'd keep anything where Notability was borderline unless it was total advertising. Now I would remove anything borderline unless there is no taint of promotionalism, and I would personally not bother rewriting a promotional article unless the subject were actually famous. If I can find a way or proposing this as a formal deletion criterion I will. The danger to WP is not in including marginal articles, but rather is including promotionalism. With different standards of notability, we'd be a more or less complete encyclopedia; with respect to advertising, we wouldn't be an encyclopedia at all. But I will say, that if it is kept, I will fix it further, rather than have it totally misrepresent his importance. Incidentally, I mentioned that he is only an associate professor; a less sophisticated editor would have said this--this avoids saying he has any academic rank at a med school at all, because it would have to say what it was. This is sophisticated WP-aware promotional writing, and therefore all the more dangerous. DGG ( talk ) 04:31, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If this is "sophisticated" PR writing, then that industry is not capable of fooling people like you. I can see trying to slip in the brand name of the robotic surgery system, but twice? And scrambling up where he was raised? The reason I chose to try to improve the article is that I am a volunteer and it caught my interest. I can work on any article I want to, and I get some strange pleasure occasionally from saving articles I discover at AfD. I would rather work on a biography of a research physician than an article on an internet meme or anime character. As for him being "only" an associate professor, I don't think that is incompatible with notability at all. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:45, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

sophisticated = relatively sophisticated. For the usual really crude stuff, watch CSD. As for associate professors, although it's not a bar, very few of them have ever been found notable here, even from the most important research universities. Personally, I'd put the bar for WP:PROF lower, at a level which would generally include associate professors at major research universities on the same principle as we don't require musicians to have multiple hit records, or professional athletes to play at that level for more than one single game. I get greatest pleasure help in helping individuals, next greatest in helping borderline articles. I now get pleasure only in helping the ones not the products of PR. Tell me, if you wanted to add researchers who made a contribution to the relationship between vitamin E and cancer, wouldn't you want to write articles on the ones with the most notable work? And in fact the most notable work is that vitamin E supplementation has a detrimental effect on cancer, & this referred to in the relevant WP articles, although none of the lead researchers there have WP articles. . (not that his work shows otherwise--if you read careful--it's entirely pre-clinical studies on cell lines and mice.) The impression the article gives, however, is very different, and could best be helped by removing the word cancer from the article so it doesn't show up prominently in G searches for the subject, which it currently does. Unfortunately, this is impossible since whatever minor importance he has a surgeon is in treating cancer. So the net effect of keeping this article is to promote an untested theory which is against the weight of all medical evidence, If we do keep this article i will reduce section 4.1 to one sentence in the research paragraph. DGG ( talk ) 16:59, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BTW I made an error above: he is not on the editorial board of any major journal, just the minor journal published by his own research center: he "has provided ad hoc reviews" for major journals--something so utterly routine for any scientist with a PhD even with no faculty position whatsoever, that it doesn't even contribute to significant content, let alone to notability, and is always removed from articles along with the other fluff. DGG ( talk ) 17:07, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment He is a medical researcher and MD. I'm not sure why this was cross-posted to the Academic & Educators list. I'm not sure within the field of medical research whether he is considered notable but I think different standards apply than are used to assess academic notability. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Does not pass the admittedly high criteria for WP:ACADEMIC, and of course not even close to WP:GNG. He appears to be a successful but run-of-the-mill surgical oncologist. His citations at Google Scholar are OK but nothing to indicate he ~~is a thought leader in his field~~ has made significant impact in his scholarly discipline; his positions held are not remarkable; and the awards listed are trivial. --MelanieN (talk) 21:30, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Prof does not require a person to be a "thought leader". The "average professor" test is often invoked. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:41, 26 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Keep I am the creator of this page. First, I'd like to thank the editors who have taken the time to contact me with constructive criticism and clarification on the policies and expectations for Wikipedia writing. I want to improve and I appreciate your patience and welcoming demeanor. I'm sorry that many see my work as a harmful addition to the project-this is my first page. I understand that the creator of AFDs aren't always the best spokespersons for the articles, however, I would like to at least clarify a major misconception that seems to be impacting the discussion.
- A major question everyone is considering is whether or not the subject has a high enough citation score to merit notability, according to the WP:PROF criteria #1. The main evidence that has been cited by at least two major contributors is that they searched for "Vitamin E and cancer research" and found thousands of references. Please note that there are two different kinds of Vitamin E: tocopherols and tocotrienols. In conventional language, "Vitamin E" is a reference to tocopherols--that is the substance used in the Western vitamin supplements labeled "Vitamin E" and found in most foods. It's been a known substance since the 1930s and has been extensively researched. Tocotrienols, on the other hand, are lesser known family of Vitamin E agents which we know very little about. The research on these four compounds (alpha- (α-), beta- (β-), gamma- (γ-), and delta- (δ-)) and their medical potential is relatively new. All this can be confirmed on Wikipedia's own article for Vitamin E which I have never edited.
- If you do a Google Scholar search for "Vitamin E and cancer" as DGG and David Eppstein have done, you will indeed find many thousands of articles. That is because the search terms do not distinguish between the two families of Vitamin E. On the other hand, if you do a search for "tocopherols and cancer" in PubMed, you get 962 results, the oldest being from 1951; then if you do a search for "Tocotrienols and Cancer" you get only 256 results, the oldest being from 1989. Doing a similar search in Google Scholar (for "T... and cancer prevention") yeilds 36,000+ (for tocopherols) compared to 9,000+ (for tocotrienols). You'll see that most of the tocotrienol articles are cited less than 100 times, with a handful having been cited over 300-1000 times, with the highly cited articles being Review articles, not Research articles. This should be taken into account when considering the subject's impact on this area of research. Jcmeberhard (talk) 17:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete Looks like it doesnt quite fit WP:NPROF but I've seen less-notable professors with articles avoid deletion citing that same policy.

Stubify if kept

I would also like to note that the articles created by this editor, Jcmeberhard, all are physicians at Moffitt, and all spring out nearly fully formed, without either collaboration or AfC or extensive sandbox editing, as far as I can tell. This editor also has no other editing to speak of. It smells very much like someone needs to take a look at the conflict of interest policy and our simple essay on editing as someone with a CoI, ASAP. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 18:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete -- doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines, and the point raised by CommandLine above is very concerning. Has someone put this on the noticeboard? Lesion (talk) 18:31, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~I've tagged the other large article created by this editor, and cut out some of the extraneous stuff, but i havent posted at WP:COI/N yet. I'll leave that to you.~~ -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 18:38, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

posted at COI/N. this edit was just too much. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 18:54, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One thing mentioned above: the "average professor" test. Who is an average professor depends on the universe one choose to sample. If we take the approximately 3 million people in the world with some level of professorship title, the average professor is a junior associate professor at a second rate college. To say that everyone over that level is notable is way below our current standard. If we mean full professors at high intensity research institutions, then there's about 100,000 people, all of whom are probably notable, and representing the top 3% of all "professors". If we go by research expectations, the average h value for published authors is between 1 and 2. This is true in other fields also: who's an average football player? But if we limit ourself to full time professionals on top level teams, they're all notable. If the population of the world is 7 billion, then 3.5 billion people are above average. If we confine notability adults, as with rare exceptions we usually do here, that's 2 billion. DGG ( talk ) 02:53, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In another direction, the presumed publicist for Mofitt is out to claim that all of its physicians ate notable, for all of them cure cancer. And presumably they all do, on a case to case basis. To what extent this individual is a better cancer surgeon than others, or more notable than others, is unproven--it could only be proven by professional awards, and he has none. If the claim is rather that all of the researchers there are doing research that will cure cancer, then it has to be based on the fact that they are all doing research as he is on subjects that bear some relation to things that could be argued might prove to cure or prevent cancer. The specific argument from that ed. above, and the argument in the article he writes, is that this particular individual is working on specific compounds that happen to be unlike the general class of such compounds--a class of compounds well-known to promote cancer. And that they have some ability in experiments still apparently unconfirmed elsewhere to interfere with biological processes in cell culture that have some relationship to human cancer or in mice (when used in conjunction with unrelated compounds known to inhibit cancer in mice) . That's the sort of argument one uses to raise money--all fundraisers and other publicists in the field say some variant of it. It may prove notable, and we all hope it will be. In WP terms, it means what so much of promotionalism here does mean, not yet notable. This is why I and others here have come to take a very strong exception to the sort of "notability" found in promotional articles. The fact that an article is considerably promotional now in practice merits the presumption that what is discussed is probably not notable either. That's not always true, but it usually is. If it were already notable, usually one wouldn't have to come here to promote it. DGG ( talk ) 02:53, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete. GS h-index of 18 is a bit below the bar for WP:Prof#C1 in a highly cited field. Promotional nature of article strengthens my view. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:00, 29 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Comment: But, to quote WP:Prof#C1, although it's true that, according the second bullet, "The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has ... significant citation rates" (as might be measured by an h-index), according to the third bullet, "Criterion 1 can also be satisfied if the person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline." The only argument that has been raised against this second claim/criteria is that, in the grand scheme of Wikipedia, the individual methods of treating cancer are insignificant, according to DGG. However, within "the academic discipline" (to cite the wording of the policy) of Oncology, the individual ways we can effectively treat cancer are highly significant. And, to Wikipedia users in the medical community looking up information about specific treatments and research projects, this is useful information. The subject's research has focused on solving a major problem (what do tocotrienols do?) and in doing so, has made a discovery (they prevent pancreatic cancer growth, and how). The majority of literature on this topic will cite the subject's work (as other contributors have noted). Jcmeberhard (talk) 18:29, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment -- Everything you say is called into question by your conflict of interest. Lesion (talk) 20:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly the individual means to treat cancer are significant & notable. But at this point he has not yet found one. Solving a major problem is notable: he has not yet done so,. Making a significant discovery is notable; he is so far only trying to make one. As I said earlier, should his work lead to a treatment in practical use, or possibly even something that reaches stage III trials, notability will be present.

It is quite unusual for a promotional editor to try to keep an article despite reasonable opposition. Sensible people, when they see something is not likely to be notable here, do not keep trying to make the same unlikely case. If you are indeed representing him or the school, you are conducting this in almost the least effective possible way to enhance their reputations on WP. The way to do the least harm to your subject is to accept things now, so there won't be a bad experience on record when he does eventually do something notable. DGG ( talk ) 23:05, 1 September 2013 (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.