Talk:Stanley J. Korsmeyer/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Schwede66 (talk · contribs) 01:03, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Let me focus on criterion 3, because that is where the article is clearly lacking. Unless this can be addressed, this cannot pass.

Sources

• I would expect authors to be wikilinked if they have an article. For example, the author of one of the obituaries is Luca Scorrano. From that article, I learn that Korsmeyer was their academic advisor.

Coverage – main aspects

• It's a very brief article and that gives immediate concern about coverage. What qualifications did he obtain and when?
• Should there not be more to say about his career?
• It talks about highly cited papers and in a GA, I would expect to see a list of some of those.
• Having a look around, I see that there is a Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award, yet this article does not mention it.
• On Wikidata, there is a list of awards won by this person; why are they not listed in this article?
• Notable students supervised by Korsmeyer should be listed (e.g. see Scorrano above).

Coverage – focus

• Should his non-notable children be listed by name? Is that a WP:BLPNAME concern?

Please let me have your thoughts on those more major points, Ajpolino, before I go any further. Schwede66 01:39, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

By the way, I've run Author Disambiguator on Wikidata and that linked a whopping 383 scientific papers on Wikidata to Korsmeyer. That's one prolific researcher! Schwede66 02:04, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

And that exercise then lets me identify many of the authors in the references that you've used. Here are the ones with articles on the English WP:

• David G. Nathan (Q5233942)
• Edward J. Benz, Jr. (Q16198917)
• H. Robert Horvitz (Q295659)
• Timothy Ley (Q7807352)
• Gabriel Núñez (Q63409996)
• Luca Scorrano (Q16854174)

Schwede66 03:19, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

He died young and of lung cancer. Interestingly, his German bio says that he was a non-smoker. If you can find a reference for that (the Germans are hopeless with referencing), that would be a meaningful fact to add. Schwede66 03:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Schwede66, thanks for the review. Responses to your notes:

• Author wikilinks - I admit this is an element of the citation template I don't typically engage with. If you strongly feel it improves the article, I can figure out the syntax and add the links. Otherwise, I'll leave it as is... Funny about how many of the authors have existing English Wikipedia articles. I suppose you know you're a big deal when your obituary writers are all subjects of Wikipedia articles!
• What qualifications did he obtain and when? could you clarify your question? I'm not sure what you mean by "qualifications" here.
• More on his career - I've filled in a few more details on his work. The basic issue is that there's only so much source material: a flurry of obits at the time of his death, and that's about it. Whether that's "enough" for the GA criteria, I'm not sure. I'll leave that for you as reviewer to decide.
• List of papers - I prefer not to have one as I'm not sure what criteria I would use to select a list. He authored too many papers to list them all, and none of his obits highlight a particular shortlist. If I can find some source that lists his "seminal papers" or some such thing, I'll happily list them. Otherwise I'm just some rando making up criteria for what's important.
• Korsmeyer award - Added!
• Awards list - added the ones mentioned in that obituary!
• Notable students/postdocs - I would very much like to have a list in this article. Especially since mentor lineages (for lack of a better term) are so important in academia. But I can't find a list published anywhere. I'll take another look tomorrow. Lacking that, it felt odd to list the few students/postdocs I could verify, knowing it would be such an incomplete list...
• Children - names removed, mea culpa

Lastly while looking back through an obituary I added a quote from another scientist -- do you think it fits ok? Or is it too much? Thanks again for your time and thoughts. Hope all is well. Best, Ajpolino (talk) 03:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I had missed your last note. Weirdly, several of his obituaries mention that he was not a smoker. I may have a twisted and/or overly medical point-of-view on this, but my strong preference is not to include it, as I don't think it's relevant. It smacks to me of "he didn't smoke, so he didn't deserve to die of lung cancer", when obviously those who smoke also don't deserve to die of lung cancer. Ajpolino (talk) 03:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a fair point. My immediate reaction when I saw that he died young and of lung cancer was to think "oh, he was a smoker". No value or judgement attached to it. But I was obviously wrong and others might draw the wrong conclusion, too, in the absence of the relevant information. I'm not sure that we should withhold information that is reported by reliable sources so that readers do not arrive at some value statements that aren't justified. Schwede66 03:38, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that... that aren't justified. Well said, and I understand your point here. I just disagree. Normally we could resolve this with a talk page discussion to gauge consensus, though here I'm fairly confident no one will be watching the talk page. Given the topic, I'm not really sure where to post for more eyes... Ajpolino (talk) 18:24, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I shall drop the non-smoking issue, noting that you haven't convinced me. The additions to the bio are useful. I've fished around and there certainly is more that could be said that would be useful:

• The obituary in The Washington Post is most useful. Apart from stating his place of birth (currently missing), they explain much more clearly his notability (ok, yes, the bio says so already, but the obit explains it in layman's terms). It is stated that he had initially started studying veterinary medicine (currently, the WP bio says that he was merely interested in that topic). It's one of several sources that I've come across that suggest that his common name is "Stan Korsmeyer". It expands on his family – "Survivors include his wife, Susan J. Korsmeyer of Weston, Mass.; two sons, Jason Louis and Evan John Korsmeyer, both of Weston; his parents; a grandfather; and three sisters." To me, it would seem useful to state that he was "survived by his wife, their two sons, his parents and a grandfather" or some such.
• His wife is still alive if you think that's of relevance.
• His father's obituary gives some more family background (he had three sisters who survived him and a brother who died in infancy). His mother—Carnell Korsmeyer—appears to still be alive.
• There is a Korsmeyer Memorial Lecture and that seems to be different from the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award. And this snippet suggest that this is something rather notable (and thus deserves a mention): "The Korsmeyer Memorial Lecture is one of the highlights of the academic year for the SPORE in Leukemia and the medical center. Four of the 15 lecturers have been Nobel Laureates, and all have been world-renowned experts in cancer biology."
• The obituary published by the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute is very detailed (as yet missing as a reference) and I suggest you have a look what could be usefully extracted. It says, for example, that he was diagnosed "in early 2004"; the way it's currently phrased in the WP article ("Despite his illness, Korsmeyer continued to work in the laboratory until the end of his life.") gave me the impression that he had been ill for longer than that.

I hope that's helpful.

With regards to wikilinking, you can simply use wikilinks within the vauthors parameter; I've tried it out. With regards to qualifications, that question is about when did he graduate with what qualifications from what tertiary institution? Did he obtain a PhD or a Doctor of Medicine? Schwede66 02:37, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Just a note to apologize for the weeklong silence. I'll get back to this asap -- hopefully this evening (but at least sometime this week). Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 16:20, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I’m not fussed. We are all volunteers and there are real life commitments, too. I won’t hurry you along. Schwede66 17:49, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Alright to your comments:

• Qualifications - the articles notes he received a BS from University of Illinois in 1972, went to medical school at U. Illinois @ Chicago, and then internship and residency at UC San Francisco. I added text to specify that medical school ended in an MD in 1976.
• Birthplace - already in the article, though phrased in an unclear way. Clarified.
• Veterinarian - When his career path changed is a bit unclear. The Science obit suggests it was pre-college based on the advice of a local vet named Robert Goodin, whereas the WaPo obit and the Harvard Gazette obit say it was during college from "a mentor". I wasn't sure which to believe, so I went with the vague language currently in the article.
• "Stan" - Added. The Nathan obit spells it out "Stan, as he liked to be called..."
• Explaining his notability more clearly - Hmm. I'll admit I mostly spend my days in molecular biology so I may have lost touch with what's clear to the layreader. I added a sentence to the lead to try to frame his contribution more clearly. Better?
• Survived by - Added.
• Wife/mother alive - I was fortunate that the Washington University library system was willing to "donate" the photos in the article when I asked (i.e. they released them under a compatible license), so I haven't reached out to any of his living family members. On the one hand they certainly may be able to resolve unclear history and provide additional references. On the other hand I don't want to bother them...
• Family details - Added a couple sentences on his parents.
• Korsmeyer lecture - Funny you should mention it, attending this year's lecture (by Peter Agre, excellent excellent talk!) is what inspired me to add to this article (you can see in the page history I started adding to the article the same day). Added mention.
• Dana-Farber obit - added with mention of his diagnosis time.

I think I got everything. Let me know if I missed something. Sorry again for the delay. Ajpolino (talk) 04:25, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Content-wise, that's looking heaps better! Thank you. Some minor things:

• Infobox

• Add birth place
• Any reason why you wouldn't list those awards that are undoubtedly notable (i.e. those for which we have articles)?
• Nationality shouldn't be shown as per WP:INFONAT
• Consider using the parameter | known_for

• References

• I've previously suggested that notable authors should be wikilinked, which hasn't happened yet. I haven't explained why I think it's important, though. We are writing for our readers and if there's something useful for them to look up, they should have the option to do so. With scientific sources, authors' first names are often given as initials only (which is the case in this article, too) and that makes it inaccessible for the reader. To counter that, we should at least wikilink those authors who have an article, hence my reason for identifying those for you.
• Regarding The Washington Post obituary, please use the Cite news template and the |work parameter for the newspaper; doing so will show the publication in italic font as it should be. I suggest that the author should be shown "surname, given name" to achieve consistency with other references.

• DrThneed, I made a suggestion above about inclusion of highly cited papers, with Ajpolino responded to under "List of papers" above. I recall that you once had a lengthy argument with another editor about a list of papers that you had included with a bio. Did that get resolved to mutual satisfaction and is there anything that was learned from that discussion that could inform this situation?

• Ah thanks for that trip down memory lane Schwede66, it was on Anne Wyllie's page during the whole DYK furore (pub discussion here) and involved several editors and an RfC. I wouldn't say consensus was reached (other than to keep the list), but the most sensible opinions seemed to veer towards including 4-5 papers (because she is a relatively junior scientist, obviously Korsmeyer would merit more), focusing on those where her contribution was greatest but also giving some thought to best representing the breadth and type of her research (I note with some amusement however that there are now 12 pubs listed on her page). Some editors wanted to just link to Google scholar profiles or pick the most highly cited papers according to Google or some other source, but that doesn't give any weight to representing someone's whole research and ignores that research has shown Google scholar profiles are frequently error-riddled and the citation counts are off (I can find a paper about that if needed). Some editors wanted explicit mention of criteria used for deciding which papers were listed, I surveyed a number of good article bios at the time and only found one or two that did this, so I think that is not necessary (but maybe a note on the talk page saying how/why certain one were picked is useful). If you have an obit or other source that points out the most significant papers then of course that is very helpful and should be cited. A link to a Scholia profile is very helpful alongside whatever selected list you make. DrThneed (talk) 21:10, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

• DrThneed, could you also please share your thoughts on notable students? Do we need a reference that gives us a list of notable students before we add such a list, or given that we don't have such a reference, should the article list those notable students that are known, acknowledging (to ourselves, i.e. not adding such a note or even a reference template) that the list would likely be incomplete?

• I am not aware of any guidelines covering what constitutes notability for students (which doesn't mean there aren't any but I cannot find them!). I have only once or twice seen an obit or other festschrift list someone's students, and then of course they are not using the same notability criteria as we do anyway, so I personally would not criticise the page for not being able to reference a notable list. I note that for alumni of institutions the rule is the person should be notable in their own right, ie every person listed should be either blue or red linked. That is probably a reasonable standard to fall back on, although will lead in most cases to relatively short lists of students. So you do need a reference that states that someone was Korsmeyer's student, and then use your own judgement about whether that person is notable by the usual standards. DrThneed (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick response. Oh, Anne Wyllie. How could I have forgotten that? Ajpolino, what do you think of the approach of focusing on those where [his] contribution was greatest but also giving some thought to best representing the breadth and type of [his] research? And what are your thoughts on the suggested approach of dealing with notable students? Schwede66 21:18, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks DrThneed for sharing your thoughts. I suppose I feel the same as before? Regarding papers, I'm looking at Korsmeyer's publications on Scopus now: 344 papers with ~67,000 citations. Scrolling through the most-cited ones, a list that would represent his research doesn't really spring to mind. Perhaps he's more known for his body of work than particular discoveries. Even the Bcl-2 discovery appears to be split over ~5 papers (in just two years!). For what it's worth, my opinion on the matter is that for many biographies of scientists (particularly living scientists) there's so little written about their work that a list of papers is one of the few ways to communicate to the reader what the scientist does. For the minority of scientists who have been the subject of much writing (typically obituaries) the paper list isn't so important -- we have a half dozen obituaries here based on which we've described Korsmeyer's work.

Student list - Ideally we'd have a list of Korsmeyer's students and postdocs, along with years served. Barring that, I don't feel too good about my ability to incorporate a list into the article. You mention Scorrano above - who was a postdoc in Korsmeyer's lab (per [1]). I'm not sure how to non-awkwardly insert that fact into the article. Even if we had just a handful of students/postdocs and years with Korsmeyer, we could make a "Notable trainees" section. The fact that his lab spawned dozens of professors suggests there should be plenty of material for such a section, though unfortunately even Academictree.org (probably not reliable itself, but usually good fodder for Google searches!) doesn't turn up much for Korsmeyer. I'll keep poking around and maybe I'll find enough to start such a section. Pulling up a few other scientist biographies, I'm not seeing lists of trainees there either -- I suspect because the referencing is hard to find. If you feel the article can't pass the GA breadth criterion without it, that's certainly your prerogative. Ajpolino (talk) 23:23, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps the library archives at Washington University or Dana-Farber would be willing to scan Korsmeyer's CV and send it to me. Sometimes academics list former mentees on their CV. I'll see what I can dig up. Ajpolino (talk) 23:41, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

In case anyone is curious, the Washington University archivists were gracious and helpful, but it turns out they just had a few odd news clippings. Nothing new for the article. Just reached out to the Harvard archives; wish me luck (and if you're secretly a Harvard archivist, please email me). Ajpolino (talk) 21:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Coming to the other criteria. Well-written first:

• Chocmilk03, as per your offer the other week, would you mind giving the article a read to see whether the article meets the criteria? the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct
• MOS issues

• "Stan" also belongs into the lead and should be shown in bold. Consider either Stanley Joel ("Stan") Korsmeyer or Stanley Joel Korsmeyer (June 8, 1950 – March 31, 2005), known to colleagues and friends as Stan Korsmeyer, was ....
• Please use Dana–Farber Cancer Institute using an endash throughout instead of a hyphen as per MOS:ENBETWEEN.

Verifiable with no original research:

• Referencing style has already been covered.
• Everything is nicely sourced. No OR.
• I've read the sources and there was no close paraphrasing anywhere; I don't even see the need to employ tools like Earwig. This is clearly the editor's own prose.

Neutral:

• No concerns whatsoever.

Stable:

• Yes.

Illustrated:

• Images are suitably licensed.

We are nearly there! Schwede66 19:17, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Infobox updated, authors wikilinked, WaPo obit switched to {{cite news}}, hyphens switched to endashes. Regarding "Stan" in the first sentence, it looks a bit odd to me. Picking the first nicknamed people that sprang to mind: Bill Clinton, Dave Chappelle, Jimmy Buffett don't have nicknames in the initial bold text. Skimming Wikipedia:Featured_articles (as examples of highly-scrutinized articles), I'm not seeing this as a pattern either. If it's all the same to you I'll leave it as-is. Ajpolino (talk) 20:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Schwede66, thanks for the ping! I've always read MOS:NICKNAME as meaning that short names like Stan for Stanley don't need to be in the lead.

It's a well-written article and I enjoyed reading it. I'm not a scientist by any means but was able to follow the importance of his work. I only have a few small comments/suggestions on the prose:

• In the lead, "the misregulation of a gene they called Bcl-2" reads slightly oddly to me, maybe because it's not immediately obvious who "they" are. I had to go back and read the sentence again to understand that it must mean his co-discoverers. Could this be reworded?
• "His parents were longtime hog farmers – Willard Korsmeyer inherited the farm started by his great-great grandparents; Carnell Korsmeyer was a past president of the National Pork Board". I would have a preference here for ", and" instead of a semi-colon, i.e. "Willard Korsmeyer inherited the farm started by his great-great grandparents, and Carnell Korsmeyer was ...", but it's not a strong preference if you'd prefer to leave as is.
• First paragraph in the academic career section, "spurring a long line of work" also gave me pause. Is there a clearer way to say what this means?
• Third paragraph, "which brings a renowned cell biologist to speak each year"; should this be "brings a renowned cell biologist to the school to speak"?
• Final sentence in that section, "colleague Robert Horvitz offered", offered seems an odd word to use here. I'd probably just use "said".

Hope that all makes sense! Cheers, Chocmilk03 (talk) 22:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Chocmilk03 for taking the time to read through the article. I've made all suggested changes. Hopefully I clarified the bits you highlighted. If I've made them worse (or failed to make them better) please do let me know. Ajpolino (talk) 23:36, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Quick work! That's perfect. Happy to confirm it meets the criteria, @Schwede66. :) Chocmilk03 (talk) 00:04, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's input and I'm much obliged to you for your good assistance, Chocmilk03 and DrThneed. Especially our Sydney conference goer, who I thought would be out sightseeing during breaks and attend to this once back home! Regarding "Stan", the relevant guidance is MOS:NICKBOLD and upon re-reading it, it does not need to be in bold in this case. Regarding the doctoral students, I'm swayed by the argument that it's better to have a few more at hand and then start a separate section; that can wait for later and it's not a show stopper. What we've got is much improved and in my view, it satisfies GA requirements. I shall now pass the article. It's been a pleasure. Schwede66 19:41, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Schwede66 for your comments. The article was much-improved by your suggestions! Ajpolino (talk) 20:18, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

References