Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neil Hanchard

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. Consensus is that this topic meets NPROF. As a point of order, the discussion could not be closed by nominator withdrawal because there are intervening significant "delete" votes, so therefore "speedy keep" does not apply. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 21:58, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Neil Hanchard[edit]

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

Neil Hanchard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

The article has been tagged for notability which has been interfering with another editor's DYK nomination for a while now. I'm seeing if this professor is notable or not per WP:PROF to move things along either way. SL93 (talk) 23:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]


  • Tentative Keep He does have a reasonable number of citations according to Scopus, but the article appears pretty dang promotional and he doesn't really meet the other qualifications at Prof clearly either- he's very very border line. Nightenbelle (talk) 00:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nightenbelle a "reasonable number" of citations is not the bar to clear, the bar to clear is the "Average Professor Test": When judged against the average impact of a researcher in a given field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished? (see WP:NPROF). --hroest 16:46, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 08:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I read WP:NPROF Which is why I felt, and still feel he is a tentative keep. Just because I read it and reached a different conclusion than you does not mean I did not read or understand the essay. Nightenbelle (talk) 14:51, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak delete this is a WP:TOOSOON scenario where the current citation count is rather low for his field (genetics) and it is as of yet unclear if he will pass WP:PROF#1 in the future, but he clearly does not now. --hroest 16:46, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep Hanchard's recent publication in Nature "High-depth African genomes inform human migration and health" (which he is the senior author on) is among the most high-profile recent work in the field (featured on Nature's cover, described in a Nature editorial as "a milestone in genomics research," covered extensively in the media). This is clearly a contribution to genetics "widely considered to be significant" per WP:NPROF. Combined with his already strong publication record (substantial number of publications in top journals with significant citation rates), I think this makes him clearly notable. His service on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Human Genetics and on the advisory board of Cell Genomics provide additional evidence that he is a leader with significant impact in the field. Philepitta (talk) 17:58, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Philepitta of course the journal itself will call things they publish "a milestone", they want to sell subscriptions and create buzz, whether it really is a milestone will be shown over time. So yes, that is why its WP:TOOSOON. Also, a single publication will not make the author notable, see WP:BLP1E. The inclusion criteria on WP:NPROF are more restrictive than this. Service on an advisory board by itself is also not an indication of notability but it can contribute, it is not part of WP:NPROF for good reason. In genomics, a "high" citation count is in the 100s of thousands or at least 10k or more, see Genomics on GS. Note how only PIs with 70k+ citations are in the top 100 of the field. This professor has 35x lower citation counts. So while accomplished, this person does not seem to be more than "average", see WP:NPROF "Average Professor Test": When judged against the average impact of a researcher in a given field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished?. --hroest 20:14, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not just "of course the journal itself will call things they publish "a milestone," this is Nature! Having a senior-author article published on the cover of Nature and featured in an editorial clearly indicates that Hanchard has much more impact than an "average" genomics professor. And this is also not a case of notability by single publication because it is on top of a distinguished career with a solid publication record in top journals. The ASHG and Cell Genomics leadership positions are secondary factors also pointing towards notability. And as pointed out below citation counts are pretty irrelevant in genomics. I think it's pretty clear Hanchard easily passes the "Average Professor Test." Philepitta (talk) 22:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am well aware what Nature is, this doesnt mean that they dont have (financial) incentives to promote the papers that they are publishing. Simply because he has one paper as a last author in Nature does not mean that he is extraordinary. As you say, he has a decent career with decent publications but nothing outstanding, this is what is expected of an average early career researcher (assistant professor/associate prof) in this field. See also the analysis from JoelleJay below that pretty much confirms this. --hroest 00:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • COMMENT. Ok, so I'm going to need y'all need to forget everything you think you know about what a "high citation count" is, because today we are in MEDICAL GENETICS, which is up there with particle physics in both insane numbers of coauthors per paper and, consequently, extremely inflated citations. This is a field where someone with an MS in genetic counseling can be a middle author on 60 papers and achieve an h-index of 22 without even having a profile on their institution's website (just a name listed with all the other techs). Dr. Hanchard has 2029 coauthors, which is 2029 people with a vested interest in citing themselves. With a paper cutoff count of 20, I looked at the 51 coauthors on his most recent 15 papers (excluding those with a million authors), and the 96 people he has written 24 or more papers with (147 coauthors total). Keep in mind these coauthors include techs, non-academic industry partners, and clinicians, so overall numbers will be substantially lower than if we were to compare him only to others holding professorships/senior researcher positions ("average professor test" for C1). Here are their Scopus metrics:
Total citations: average: 6229, median: 2187, Hanchard: 1880.
Total papers: avg: 111, med: 75, H: 94.
h-index: avg: 29, med: 23, H: 26.
Top 5 highest citations: 1st: avg: 716, med: 288, H: 192. 2nd: avg: 390, med: 180, H: 157. 3rd: avg: 306, med: 140, H: 92. 4th: avg: 250, med: 114, H: 69. 5th: avg: 217, med: 90, H: 67.
68/147 coauthors have 5 papers with more than 100 citations. This is an extremely high-citation field. His highest-cited first-author paper has 38 citations, and his highest-cited last-author paper has 15 citations. From the citation metrics alone I will say I do not see him clearly standing out above others in his field -- much less so if I was to evaluate only professors/senior scientists at research institutes. That doesn't mean he doesn't meet other criteria of NPROF, however, so I will wait to !vote after seeing what materials others bring up. JoelleJay (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Right, pure citation count is not a good way to determine notability in genomics for many reasons -- as you point out an individual might have a minor contribution to many papers and end up with an extremely high citation count, but not be notable at all. It's also worth pointing out that genomics is a VERY broad field, and some types of papers within the field tend to be more cited than others. For example a computational tool that is widely used might rack up thousands of citations -- this doesn't say anything at all about the notability of a genomics paper on a focused biological question. It doesn't make sense to look at a paper and claim "oh, but it's a genomics paper, that means it's not important unless it has hundreds of citations." So rough citation metric analyses are mostly irrelevant here. Philepitta (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Philepitta citation metrics are still relevant here because they compare like with like. They are not the only measure, but they pretty much confirm that Hanchard is "average" in the sense that his papers are cited about as much as an average researcher (postdoc/technician/professor) in the field. It is therefore pretty clear that he fails the "Average Professor Test". On top of that, his two most cited papers [1] and [2] have him very much in a middle author position as one of 54 or one of 243 authors, further diluting his claim on having a strong impact on the field. --hroest 00:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think hroest has the more reasonable takeaway from my data here. NPROF really depends on establishing significant impact, which is almost always ultimately based on citations (whether directly, or indirectly through professorships/editorships/awards). It sounds like he has made a promising discovery that merited very recent attention from Nature, but that still falls under BLP1E since it's unclear what the actual impact will be. Why not wait until that paper receives healthy citations and he gets a few more well-regarded papers? JoelleJay (talk) 05:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
hroest JoelleJay So, citation metrics do have some relevance, but they need to be interpreted carefully. A couple of points:
  • (1) Strong people in a field tend to work with other strong people, so comparing someone's citation count with their co-authors is not a reasonable test of whether or not they are "average." An individual coming out of a strong training environment/working with high-profile collaborators may be well above average, yet have many co-authors with significantly higher citation rates.
  • (2) In particular, highly cited papers in genomics sometimes come out of large consortia where many of the authors work together repeatedly on high-impact papers -- someone who occasionally participates in consortium papers, or who recently joined a consortium effort, could well have a lower than average impact factor for participants on these papers. Again this doesn't say anything about the notability of their papers.
  • (3) The fact that someone is a middle author on their most cited genomics paper also doesn't relate to their notability at all -- just means that they made a minor contribution to an especially influential paper. The paper alone wouldn't make them notable, but the fact that their independent first/last author papers are less cited is completely normal and expected.
  • (4) I think that media coverage of scientific articles in reputable third-party sources should, in science as in other areas of Wikipedia, also be used as an indicator of the notability of individual papers, in addition to citation counts.
  • (5) While some types of genomics papers have extremely high citation rates, others do not. It doesn't make any sense to compare the citation rate of a strong paper from an individual lab with, say, the top cited paper on Daniel Levy's publication list (#2 prof for total citations in hroest's link above), "Heart disease and stroke statistics—2012 update: a report from the American Heart Association." (~33,000 citations). Obviously this sort of report will be highly cited -- this is not relevant at all to what sort of citation count we would expect from an individual lab. It's comparing apples and oranges.
  • (6) I think a more relevant metric for how many citations an "average" paper in the field would be is the impact factor of an average journal in the field. Here's a list of genetics journals--it doesn't include all journals in the field, but gives a rough idea: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=1311. The metric here is SJR which is a weighted impact factor, but spot-checking for a few of the journals, this seems to be roughly equal to impact factor. Note that even the very top journal in the list (Nature Genetics) has an impact factor of only about 30, and BMC Genomics, not on this list but a totally reasonable journal that top labs will frequently publish papers in, has an impact factor of about 4. I think that a solidly above-average paper in the field would be published in a reputable journal and have on the order of roughly 10 or more citations. Philepitta (talk) 23:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Philepitta I totally agree, as a scientist myself I concur that citations metrics are clearly not everything, can be biased and manipulated. What would be best if we would have a committee of experts that can independently judge the impact of a person in their field. This is generally hard to assemble even in a University, and much less so on Wikipedia.
  • I agree with your point (1) and that is clearly a bias in the analysis of JoelleJay, similarly it is easier to be "a big fish in a small pond", if you only choose to work with weak people you would comparatively appear strong.
  • I agree with (2) and (3) but that would speak for an analysis where we only look at first and last author papers since it will be hard/impossible for us to judge middle author contributions.
  • I dont agree with (4) because according to WP:BLP1E in that case we should actually write about that one paper or add the coverage to Human Heredity and Health in Africa and not to the author. Unless the coverage is specifically about Hanchard, his career, life etc and not about this one paper it would be WP:BLP1E. On another note, I dont think that coverage in main stream media of scientific results helps with WP:NPROF since these are not the people to evaluate criteria #1, but it may help with WP:GNG. Often these results are "strawberries cause cancer" type of reports that a press office hypes up and may have little scientific value in the long run. I am not saying that is the case here, but for WP:NPROF it is really long-term impact in the field and not short-term hype that counts.
  • I agree with (5) and again say that we can also simply look at his first/last author publications.
  • Regarding (6) I only partially agree. In my field I often see the most impactful publications in low-tier journals since they may be useful methods or other discoveries, so looking at the impact of individual journals and the long-term impact on the research field of a paper or a whole lab is often a better assessment than just looking where they publish. Publishing in high impact journals often also has something to do with working on topics that are currently "in fashion" and may actually not have any long term impact. Again, please note that WP:PROF#1 looks for people who have a very clearly above-average impact on their field.
  • In conclusion, we can try and ignore his contribution to large consortia papers where it is hard to judge if he only made minor contributions or had a major role (unlikely given his position in the paper, I have been on such papers myself). If you do that, then from JoelleJay's analysis we have "His highest-cited first-author paper has 38 citations, and his highest-cited last-author paper has 15 citations" which would put him clearly in the non-notable side of the bar and would follow from an analysis based on your points (2), (3) and (6). So overall, this looks like a pretty average (or somewhat below-average) scientist that recently had a single high-profile paper whose long-term impact in the field has not yet been fully established. Does that sound about right? So the argument against is that he fails WP:NPROF, the argument in favor is that we recently kept similarly weak cases. --hroest 03:24, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Philepitta -- I largely agree with your and hroest's points. I recognize the bias in analyzing coauthors, particularly those involved in large consortia, which is why I looked at ~50 coauthors of his most recent non-consortium papers (addresses (1) and (2) to skew towards people he works with as senior author; if he's personally sought out for high-profile collaborations the metrics should be higher) as well the ~100 collaborators he's published 24 or more papers with (removes the bias you note in (5)). For (1), I do want to reiterate the fact that he has about two dozen coauthors (just among his most frequent collaborators) with h-indices above 10 (multiple above 20) who are clinical genetic counselors (h-index of 24, no Duke profile I could find), "research coordinators II" (with just a bachelor's this person has achieved an h-index of 13), or nurse practitioners (h-index of 23). This strongly suggests the field itself (or at least the Undiagnosed Disease Network) is saturated with high citations rather than high-impact research professors specifically seeking to publish with him. JoelleJay (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. After thinking about this a lot, I'm convinced by Philepitta's arguments. I also think from a risk assessment perspective, there's much more of a down side to deleting this bio than not deleting it. Guettarda (talk) 00:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Guettarda just curious, what is the risk here in your "risk assessment"? --hroest 17:08, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The fact that he's Black means that, rightly or wrongly, people will perceive this as yet another instance where women and non-white people are subject to greater scrutiny. That perception would exists even if Hanchard there was little chance of Hanchard meeting our notability requirements. And if this whole discussion makes me feel uncomfortable as an experienced Wikipedia who knows how harsh AFDs can feel, it's a given that this discussion will be seen as "proof" of Wikipedia's anti-Black bias by our many observers. Guettarda (talk) 17:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even more so when there's decent evidence that women and Black men are cited less often by white men than white men are cited by white men, suggesting that there's systemic bias in citation numbers. Guettarda (talk) 17:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sure that is true, but I feel a little uneasy about a US-based researcher being singled out for credit in a multi-author paper that is supposed to be boosting Africa-based researchers. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:09, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. While Philepitta over eggs the pudding Hanchard meets WP:NACADEMIC on citation grounds, and lead author on a Nature cover story is significant. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 09:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Jonathan A Jones What are you basing the citation grounds on? Within his field he is below average across the board compared to other researchers (not even just professors). JoelleJay (talk) 20:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, I went through the 147 coauthors I analyzed earlier and filtered out the genetic counselors, clinical research coordinators, techs, nurse coordinators, and instructors to get 78 people with professorships or senior research positions (the people he should be compared to for the average professor test). Here are the citation metrics now:
Total citations: avg: 10049, med: 4961, H: 1880.
Total papers: avg: 162, med: 115, H: 94.
h-index: avg: 40, med: 32, H: 26.
Top 5 citations: 1st: avg: 1049, med: 541, H: 192. 2nd: avg: 575, med: 301, H: 157. 3rd: avg: 457, med: 252, H: 92. 4th: avg: 382, med: 201, H: 69. 5th: avg: 334, med: 170, H: 67. JoelleJay (talk) 22:06, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
4meter4 Do AFDs still last 7 days? I don't feel it would be appropriate for me to withdraw it when I nominated it to make clear if the article is notable or not for its DYK nomination. SL93 (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and this is passed 7. I was merely pointing out that it's clear this article meets GNG and NPROF criteria 1, and that there is a clear policy based consensus to keep. You can feel free to let the conversation continue, and have an admin close it, but frankly there is no chance that this article will be deleted and its just a formality at this point. A withdrawal saves having to wait for an admin to close up the AFD, and lessens the burden on admins.4meter4 (talk) 01:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
4meter4 The burden would have to be on someone, admin or non-admin, because I don't know how to close the discussion. I'm fine with the formality too and I feel that it might be needed for the reason I nominated it for. We will just have to agree to disagree. SL93 (talk) 01:27, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unless the rules changed, I can't withdraw it anyway when there is one outstanding delete vote. SL93 (talk) 01:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's perfectly fine. I could have closed it out on a withdrawal, but you are well within policy to wait for an admin to make a ruling. Best.4meter4 (talk) 01:29, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
4meter4 But does he clearly stand out as far above the average professor in his subfield? If based on citations, do you at least recognize the degree this metric is inflated in medical genetics? A discipline where a tech with a bachelor's and no institutional profile can get an h-index of 15 in 5 years certainly cannot be evaluated with the same benchmarks we use for other professions (unless we want to create 1000+ articles on genetic counselors...) JoelleJay (talk) 03:11, 10 April 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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Neil_Hanchard&oldid=1017461929"