Talk:Ariel Fernandez/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Recommend reinstating

This edit was reverted because of "so what?" for the reader. I am not even sure what that means. The "so what" is that he got into a conflict with retraction watch. That's relevant to the biography. WP:ONUS seems satisfied. I recommend reverting Animalparty (talk · contribs). jps (talk) 08:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

The fact that there exists controversy over the retractions and issues with certain papers written by Fernandez is missing from this article. Thus, I have tagged the article with "Too Few Opinions". I am happy to see any means to include these opinions in the article that are verifiable, relevant, and included prominently in a pretty remarkable reliable source. jps (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I recently raised a similar issue in #Revisiting the deleted passage about retractions, just above. I was somewhat persuaded by other editors' arguments about BLP concerns over the absence of significant notice in independent reliable secondary sources. However, each time another editor (in this case, you) raises the argument in favor of inclusion, I see it as chipping away at the assertion that there is a consensus against inclusion. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:24, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but I've never had that much real estate devoted to me in The Chronicle for Higher Ed. But then again, I'm not notable. BUUUUUT.... I can name many, many people who are notable who also have not had that kind of attention paid to them in The Chronicle. If it is considered noteworthy enough to include in that publication as the lead-in to their discussion of Retraction Watch it seems somewhat bizarre that it is not mentioned at all at Wikipedia. Perhaps an argument could be made for including the source and a link back to Ariel Fernandez from Retraction Watch. Maybe that's a better way to start? Still has the BLP issue, but I don't think someone can argue that the source is completely unusable for WP. jps (talk) 17:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

For convenience, here is a link to the Chronicle piece: [1]. I feel that there is no valid concern about that journal as a reliable and independent secondary source on university-level academics. I went through the article, and I count 11 paragraphs devoted specifically to Fernandez, about a quarter of the article as a whole, and the article begins and ends with the Fernandez affair. I don't think that's just a passing mention in an article about something else. I know that editors at the BLPN discussion dismissed the source, but I'm very much starting to doubt that they were correct about that. Perhaps consensus should change. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:40, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I reread the BLPN discussion. Most of it is not about the Chronicle. Towards the end, that source comes up, and editors pointed out passages where the piece asked questions like "What did this mean?" Those editors took that as evidence that the Chronicle was not taking the Retraction Watch material as actually demonstrating problems – just that it raised questions about it without answering them. But that looks to me like cherry-picking passages from the article. Reading it as a whole, it treats the RW material as uncovering conduct that is significant enough for the Chronicle to give attention to (and even notes that a retraction would be significantly more definitive than an EOC, although it treats EOCs as unusual and significant), while it also devotes space to Fernandez's denials. It seems to me that we can include this in a BLP-compliant manner, so long as we also include the denials. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:55, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Right. I am having a hard time understanding the claimed "not good enough source" justification there. It seems that some people are not familiar with how weighty The Chronicle is for meta-matters in academics. It's the equivalent of having a decent write-up in a trade magazine, for example, which I think WP uses all the time as reliable sources in BLPs. jps (talk) 19:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Interruption by sock
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Please stop vandalizing! As I said before, this matter has been settled. Consensus is against inclusion. I don't know what this sock business is all about. TheodorKlein (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC) Admin's comment. TheodorKlein is a new account with few edits outside of this area. This fits the definition of a single-purpose account, and given the history of this article, it is plausible that the account might have been created by a blocked user. —C.Fred (talk) 19:43, 30 September 2022 (UTC) To this sock: You're a sock of Arifer. It's unmistakable. You aren't fooling anyone here. And you aren't fooling our readers, either. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC) I'd suggest semi-protecting the talk page. The daily socking is getting rather tedious. Spicy (talk) 19:52, 30 September 2022 (UTC) I came across AF corrections to another page (on QFT). The corrections were right on the mark and you reverted them. That's why I am looking at this biography now. What is this sock business all about and why is editor Tryptofish deleting my contribs? Something is really wrong here. TheodorKlein (talk) 19:53, 30 September 2022 (UTC) And that's referring to [2]. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:57, 30 September 2022 (UTC) You keep banning dissenting opinions with your sock business. I came across AF because of all this sock stuff (Russian dolls?) Now I am reading this page and opining on it. The matter you keep bringing up over and over again has been SETTLED. Consensus has been reached and the issue is a nonissue. It is insignificant in light of the sizable output of the subject of this BLP. TheodorKlein (talk) 20:13, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Now, as we return to our regular programming, I want to propose some edits here in talk. The "too few opinions" tag at the top would be removed, with the addition of this paragraph:

In 2006, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, the editor-in-chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, ordered that a paper coauthored by Fernandez be retracted from the journal because of duplicate publication of copyrighted figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the website Retraction Watch had documented other incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez vigorously denied.

References

Obviously, I won't put anything on the page without consensus here. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:56, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

It looks good to me, too (although "documented other incidences" can have the "other" removed). JoJo Anthrax (talk) 21:13, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

About "other", unless I missed it, the RW blog pieces linked in the Chronicle piece do not include the PNAS retraction, just the EoCs. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

That's fine. It just seemed like too many "others." JoJo Anthrax (talk) 21:44, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. I struck it. I had missed until you pointed it out that I already had "other publications", and that covers it. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, The Chronicle piece was written prior to the PNAS and prior to the recent humbug commentary about COVID as well (which I think is probably too obscure to worth mentioning at all). jps (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Not that it matters, but the PNAS thing was in 2006 and the Chronicle piece came out in 2015, but the Chronicle still doesn't seem to talk about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh! I misread the decade *slapforehead* Yeah. Retraction Watch was founded in 2010. It's not particularly surprising, then, that they didn't cover the PNAS retraction. jps (talk) 03:36, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like the "According to...." framing. It's accurate, of course, but it's also a weird attribution. I don't think anyone disputes that Retraction Watch has been *commenting on* Fernandez. If we say that such is "According to The Chronicle...." it makes it sound like it is an opinion when it is more or less a fact. What the Chronicle did was bring attention to this particular bout. Why they chose Fernandez we cannot say, but we can say that they chose Fernandez. I would prefer a wording closer to the one that I had used which just describes the article as a story that was told about Fernandez. jps (talk) 03:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I could go either way on that, depending in part on whether other editors join the discussion and express BLP concerns. You make a good point in terms of simplifying the writing. The flip side is that it might help to emphasize that there was secondary source notice, as opposed to the primary source report from a blog. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I get the desire to insulate text according to our WP:PAGs, but I worry when Wikipedia concerns bleed over into article text. "THIS TOPIC is notable because there are at least two independent sources which mention it in a serious and extensive fashion." would be a great way to start an article to insulate it from arguments that it failed WP:GNG, but it does the reader no service. jps (talk) 21:20, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Based on the comments so far, I'm thinking of implementing the edit sometime soon. However, I was very sincere when I said above that I wanted to propose it in talk space and would not move into main space without clear support for doing so. Obviously, I don't want to make the edit and then have it reverted without prior participation in this discussion. If anyone has concerns about the material, I'd be very receptive to discussing it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for my tardiness in responding. As challenger of the disputed passage, the "So what" question is essential to WP:ONUS (also WP:NOTEVERYTHING). Should an encyclopedia include every verifiable traffic ticket, home purchase, or media appearance by the subject? Every lawsuit or legal filing a company is involved in? (hopefully one would say no). Stating "it's relevant" or "it should be in a biography" does not make it so. I recognize there is a problem with many low-profile academics who may have almost zero third party coverage: such biographies are highly susceptible to noise and news spikes: a distinguished department chair may have zero news coverage until he or she retweets J. K. Rowling or makes a statement about a controversial protest on campus. That does not mean such content must be in their Wikipedia biography, and omitting it does not equal whitewashing. I think when I reverted, I had @Morbidthoughts:' comment in mind from the last BLPN discussion: "But once again, what does any of that mean? What is the significant thing we are brushing aside?". The CHE article states "The implications of the note were hard to parse. What exactly had gone wrong? Could the paper be trusted, or not? What did “due caution” mean? Retraction Watch was set up to answer questions like those." However, in this case it appears Retraction Watch never did. Can we responsibly answer the question of how did these COEs (and 1 retraction) impact Fernandez's career or biography? If we can't say anything more than "they happened", then inclusion is debatable. If we imply they are more nefarious or controversial than they actually are, then we risk casting a negative impression on a BLP. As I've said before, the news may reliably report the fact that someone ate a peanut butter sandwich, but unless the result was "they subsequently died from a peanut allergy", inclusion in a biography is questionable. And I fail to see how having a spat with a blog warrants encyclopedic inclusion. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:42, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

And addendum, I see 4 people here advocating for overturning consensus, only two of whom participated in the last BLPN discussion from January 2022 that established current consensus. Should we return this discussion to BLPN for further debate, or invite an RFC here? I'm not fond of local consensus on seldom-visited talk pages overruling broader consensus. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:55, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

For me, the interest is the conflict between Fernandez and Retraction Watch rather than the retractions/notes themselves. Retraction Watch is a known commodity -- a big deal -- in the academic world. The article in question devotes a lot of discussion to Fernandez, I think, because it is so unusual for the PvP to be Retraction Watch and a particular author. This is one of the primary means of notability of Fernandez and it is also a relevant story to Retraction Watch. I am not saying that it has to be some sort of be-all for the biography and maybe it belongs at Retraction Watch instead of at this page, but there is something here, it seems.

As for questions of changing consensus: If you're worried about local consensus, just ping all the BLPN participants and place a link to the discussion at the board. No need to make a big deal over it. jps (talk) 12:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I hope this does not derail discussion of the CHE article, but I wish to emphasize that Retraction Watch is not just some guy blogging from their parents' basement. It is overseen by The Center for Scientific Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that secures external funding from sources that include the MacArthur Foundation, has a board of directors, and files tax returns (see here). The principal content providers are experienced, professional journalists and writers. Previous discussions on enWiki (for example, here) have not come close to a consensus that it is unreliable or otherwise inappropriate as a source. That editors (or article subjects) might not like a source, or its mission, is perfectly fine, but that does not define the source as unreliable or non-secondary. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:38, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

It still can be regarded as a primary source. The good news is that we don't have to rely on RW, either way. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I understand that RW need not be relied upon here. I don't understand, however, why RW should be regarded as a primary source. Several journals produced the primary announcements of a retraction and expressions of concern, and RW secondarily reported those announcements. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 20:29, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

It's admittedly an ambiguous point. Editors in the previous discussion took the position that RW was a "party" to the dispute, on the side opposite to Fernandez, that they had done the "research" that dug up the EoCs, and that we needed to have observers who didn't come into the dispute on either side to tell us that what RW found is significant enough for WP to make note of, based upon the high standards that apply under BLP. My preference is to concede that point, and move ahead with something that works without it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Animalparty, for bringing that perspective back to this discussion; I wanted to make sure that it could be heard before doing anything on the page, and I'm happy to discuss it. However, let's not verge on WP:IDHT by repeating things that have already been refuted, as though they hadn't been discussed yet. As I noted earlier, there were indeed comments at BLPN about "The implications of the note were hard to parse" and so on. But, as I said, it's cherry-picking to take that out of context. Unlike jps, I don't care what Retraction Watch did or did not figure out, because it's a blog, and we discount self-published sources for this sort of thing. But we know now what the Chronicle of Higher Education said. They are a reliable, secondary, independent source, and they devoted about a quarter of the article specifically to the Fernandez material, starting and ending the article with it. And if one reads the entire thing, it's entirely clear that the Chronicle regards the Fernandez stuff as being something real and something of significance. They aren't saying that, gee, Retraction Watch raises these disturbing questions but nobody knows what the truth is. (They do acknowledge that Fernandez disputes the accusations, and so should we.) There comes a point where treating the BLPN discussion as having established a consensus that should not be reexamined here is a weak argument. There weren't a lot of editors there, either, and very little of the discussion, and none of the closing statement, addressed the Chronicle source. Nobody seemed to have read that source in its entirety; they just focused on that "hard to parse" phrase. The consensus was about using RW without a secondary source. I think the editors interested in this issue are already watching here, and they don't need to be cajoled into commenting, but if anyone else wants to start an RfC I won't stop them. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:30, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my comment implied that I thought Retraction Watch should be used as a source on its own. I think the notice by the third party source is what makes the entire thing interesting, but, for me, it's the conflict documented by The Chronicle which is interesting prominent rather than the arguments Retraction Watch made per se. jps (talk) 19:25, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that. For me, what changed from the discussion at the top of this talk page is when I read the Chronicle piece in its entirety. In the previous discussion, I was won over to the principle that we should only present negative material in a BLP when we have independent secondary sources taking notice of it. That's also what the BLPN discussion concluded. And I still agree with that. But now that I realize that the Chronicle piece is exactly such a secondary source, I feel like that's a game changer. For editors who said, correctly, that we need to wait for such a source, well, here it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

It is my view that the text I originally reverted ("Fernandez appeared in the blog Retraction Watch ... His conflict with the blog was profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Education...") and the proposed text above ("In 2006, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli...") are worded in ways that seem to direct the reader to sources or events, rather than summarize them, and have a bit too many editorial flourishes for omfort. From the PNAS retraction notice, I think it's loaded and unclear to say that Cozzarelli "ordered" the retraction (he may have authored the notice, but he writes "the editors note" and "PNAS is withdrawing it"). And why does he need to be named at all? And while I see mentions of denials in the Chronicle piece, "vigorous" is subjective. The proposed edits seem to be digging too deep in the weeds for usable content, perhaps understandable for a subject with scant significant coverage. But with such slim content, the margin of error is high. There's a subtle difference between summarizing a story and shaping one. The reporting of events should not be construed as a story itself, even if the events are deemed encyclopedic. --Animalparty! (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think we can move past the earlier version that you reverted, because no one is proposing that version any more. For the newer version that I proposed, I think that you have made some very astute points about flaws in my wording, and I would be happy to revise it accordingly. If you can see a way that we might be able to agree on an improved version, I'd like to pursue that. As for naming Cozzarelli, I felt like it's better to give an attribution, as opposed to saying something in Wikipedia's voice, so I'd like to keep his name in there; also, he was a very prominent and respected person. I agree with you on "ordered" and "vigorous", and am very receptive to changing other things as well. I agree that we shouldn't "shape the story", but I also think we can frame it according to the Chronicle source. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

"vigorous" is subjective Entirely disagree. The piece spends quite a bit of time documenting the contortions of the dispute. I don't think there is any dispute that the Fernandez was vigorous in his opposition to RW. jps (talk) 02:41, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm good with it either way. My primary interest is getting to a version, probably via compromise, that everyone can live with. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

If for style reasons people want to use different wording, that's okay with me. But I remain a bit troubled by some of the rhetoric surrounding The Chronicle source which, I believe, is pretty clear about what the story is and why they thought it worthy of elaboration. A single sentence here at Wikipedia should not be considered somehow slander or BLPVIO which is the subtext I am reading here. But I'll try to wear some WP:AGF glasses and we'll move forward. jps (talk) 23:30, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought it might be helpful for editors who are not subject experts in scientific publishing to see what some scientific journal editors say about what EoCs and retractions mean. These external links provide some helpful context: [3], [4], [5]. The terms are used in ways that might not be apparent from the dictionary meanings of the words. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:16, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Revisions

I want to keep the ball moving on this discussion, so here is my suggestion for a revised version that tries to address the points that have been made above:

1 In 2006, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, the editor-in-chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, announced that a paper coauthored by Fernandez was retracted by the editorial board of the journal because of duplicate publication of copyrighted figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the website Retraction Watch had documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez denied. References

2 In 2006, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, the editor-in-chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, announced that a paper coauthored by Fernandez was retracted by the editorial board of the journal because of duplicate publication of copyrighted figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication. The Chronicle of Higher Education in an article on the website Retraction Watch profiled ongoing conflicts between the site and Fernandez over incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez denied. References

Personally, I'm quite content with that version, and I'd like to know if other editors would agree to go forward with it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:21, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I provided an edit per my concern above. jps (talk) 17:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's an improvement, and I'll explain why in a moment. I've put the two versions side-by-side above, for comparison. The one that I posted is on the left, and the one with your revisions is on the right. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:05, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, so to explain. I feel like the changes you suggest for the second sentence make it too wordy, with too many subordinate phrases. And more substantively, I think it's a mistake to frame this in terms of the conflict. I disagree that the fact that there was a conflict is what makes it interesting for our purposes; it just makes the whole thing sound like an unimportant back-and-forth between two equally plausible points of view (and I can just see editors using that as an argument against including this at all). If there is a conflict, then it's redundant to say separately that Fernandez denied it. I could suggest pruning it to:

"The Chronicle of Higher Education has profiled conflicts between the website Retraction Watch, which has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, and Fernandez, who denies these claims."

I could be OK with that, but I still prefer the version on the left. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about it, if, hypothetically, this were a choice between a version focused on the conflict, or simply omitting the whole thing from the page, I'd favor omitting the whole thing. I would find myself agreeing with the editors who see it as a "so what?" But I want to say very strongly that I don't think that the Chronicle source is simply about there being a conflict. It certainly describes the conflict, but as I've been trying repeatedly to make clear, it is also presenting the RW material as something significant and substantive, not just a co-equal side of a debate. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I see the two versions as different mostly stylistically. I actually think they contain largely the same content, but I really dislike the "ccording to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the website Retraction Watch had documented incidences of scientific concern..." It's a silly thing to attribute. It is simply a fact that the website documented such incidences. It doesn't need to be "according to" anyone. jps (talk) 21:36, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, I think you're right about the "according to" issue. The source is, after all, given inline. If you can accept the left-side version with that taken out, then that works for me too:

3

In 2006, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, the editor-in-chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, announced that a paper coauthored by Fernandez was retracted by the editorial board of the journal because of duplicate publication of copyrighted figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication. The website Retraction Watch has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez has denied.

References

--Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with 3 or 4. jps (talk) 14:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Seeing this revision is making me feel differently about the need to attribute the first sentence to Cozzarelli, something that other editors have already raised. I know that I said differently earlier, but I think now that we can treat both sentences as "simply facts":

4

In 2006, a paper coauthored by Fernandez was retracted by the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America because of duplicate publication of copyrighted figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication. The website Retraction Watch has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez has denied.

References

I think that makes the writing "tighter" and to the point. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I think we need to evaluate whether the shorter version still makes clear how we are basing this on independent sources (I worry about editors coming along later and reopening the same debate, if that's not clear to them), but it does have the virtue of directness. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry for thinking out loud here, but I'm starting to feel like I still prefer "1" over "4". Although "4" is nice and direct, it sounds like a BLP violation (even though it isn't), and risks taking us back to step zero. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I still don't think any of this belongs in the article yet, but out of all of these revision, #4 is the best. Succinct, concise writing is better for an encyclopedia (especially a short article like this), and namedropping the editor is needless in the case (presumably the retraction would occur regardless of editor-in-chief). Far too many Wikipedia articles treat the the source or the routine reporting of an event as part of the encyclopedic story (e.g. it's much better to write "in 2009 Blah occurred" than "In 2009 it was announced by Jeff Smith in the New York Times in an article called "Blah will occur" that Blah was going to occur. Later, Blah occurred, according to The Wall Street Journal.") Also, a crucial point (I think) in the retraction is that the duplicated content was from a previous paper by Fernandez. And there is no need to emphasize the term "copyrighted" (nor sneaky-link it to copyright infringement). If the article were to expand in content such that the tone and structure of controversial material doesn't seem as tacked-on, then its inclusion might be more justifiable: at present no single articles are mentioned, and no other persons, so it'd be somewhat of an awkward tone shift to go from general background info to this one paper was retracted by this editor because of these issues in such a short article. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Animalparty, thank you for some more very helpful observations, and for working towards meeting me halfway. Given what you and jps have said, I'm now comfortable with something like #4. If you regard it as getting closer to acceptable, then I can accept that my worries about sounding like a BLP violation were misplaced. Good. And I think you make a good point about the "copyrighted" part. I agree that it should be deleted. And I also agree with adding "by Fernandez". I'm not sure what I want to say about the issue of it being in a short article. To some degree, it gets us into a circle of the article needing to be lengthened, but not lengthened by this. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

It occurs to me that, with the consensus to add back the list of books, there should be less concern now about the issue of it still being a short article.

I was thinking about the reference to "sneaky-link", and it occurred to me that there is something that I'd like to clarify about that. For many, many decades (maybe close to a century), it has been standard practice at scientific journals to require the authors to sign a contract upon acceptance of a paper, that reassigns the copyright for the work from those authors, to the publishing company. As a result, duplicate publication is not a matter of Fernandez infringing on his own copyright (which obviously would indeed be a little silly to draw attention to), but rather the copyright held by a publishing company that is not the publisher of PNAS. What I said there has no bearing on the fact that I still agree to omit the words about copyright – no argument from me about that – but I just wanted to clear up what might have been a misunderstanding. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

My objections based on NPF[6] still stands for every version while the Chronicle article, which only discusses one EOC incident, was considered in the BLPN discussion and did not sway consensus there. Morbidthoughts (talk) 06:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Not my reading of the BLPN discussion. I think most of the people there did not evince an understanding of the depth of the Chronicle piece and a few seemed to not understand how formidable that publication has been for coverage of stories such as this one. Spats over academic publications are reliably sourced to only a few places and Chronicle is perhaps the one that serves as a source of record. I don't think the BLPN commentariat dealt with that point substantively. jps (talk) 14:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Or... Consensus did understand and disagreed on its weight in overcoming BLP scrutiny. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Seems like we're at a bit of WP:KETTLE here what with WP:AAGF and some WP:IDHT potentially coming from you directed towards me, but ok. jps (talk) 20:28, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm happy to take this cautiously and discuss concerns with editors who do not like the proposal(s). But I'm not going to accept arguments along the lines of the BLPN discussion ruled out using the Chronicle source, and that cannot be overruled. I'm repeating myself now, for the multiple time, but nobody at BLPN discussed anything from that source beyond the first few lines of it, and the closing statement did not mention it, only the blog. If one actually reads the source in full, about a quarter of it focuses specifically on Fernandez, beginning and ending with that focus, and it's not a matter of a conflict between him and RW that is unresolved. The source – and it's reliable, secondary, and independent – makes it clear that it regards the RW findings as significant and substantive. It reports Fernandez's disagreement, but does not take his side. To quote the part of the source that is about "hard to parse" and dismiss it as that is just cherry picking something to make it sound different than what the source actually says. Editors have said that we need secondary source notice of what happened and, well, here it is. And I don't want to have to repeat that yet again. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

How many incidents did the Chronicle article document? Did it document the PNAS retraction? Why did you join them together in a paragraph? Morbidthoughts (talk) 00:48, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

How many incidents did the Chronicle article document? Leaving aside the bad faith implications I see in the pipe, the question is still a little hard to parse because it's not exactly clear what constitutes an "incident". I would argue that article focused mostly on the tension, conflict, and drama surrounding the relationship between Fernandez and RW. Others seem to think that the conflict is not the relevant thing for our purposes, the relevant thing is the documentation that RW has done on multiple occasions. Some of those occasions are arguably repeat "incidents" and some are documenting the quasi-legal machinations that were ongoing. I would say that there are at least three incidents that the article describes, but I don't think an enumeration is precisely necessary here. jps (talk) 11:44, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The Chronicle article discusses only the conflict over the BMC Genomics EOC post by RW. One EOC/publication. How did that extrapolate to support "documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications"?! Did it cover the PNAS retraction? Where is the independent RS of the retraction/dispute to show that is WP:DUE or satisfy WP:NPF or WP:PUBLICFIGURE? Why are those two proposed sentences in the same paragraph? The Chronicle article does not directly support either and that is OR/synthesis to follow the PNAS retraction with oh, here are some other documented incidences. Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:31, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The Chronicle article discusses only the conflict over the BMC Genomics EOC post by RW. One EOC/publication. This is incorrect.

In the meantime, the blog continues apace. On Thursday it flagged yet another “expression of concern” on a paper by Mr. Fernández, the Argentine scientist. When a staff writer for Retraction Watch emailed him for comment, he answered her questions patiently. Mr. Fernández never sued Retraction Watch. But he has not retracted his disdain for the blog. “I thought about suing RW,” he told The Chronicle in an email this month, “then I quickly realized that nobody with scientific credentials takes RW seriously.”

Did you just miss the last few paragraphs of the piece?

jps (talk) 18:41, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

That I did, indeed. The interspersed advertisement threw me off, making me think the end of the article was "The ultimate goal is more ambitious: to build a comprehensive database of retractions that researchers can check before they cite an article." My other BLP objections still stand. Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:56, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm very sincere about wanting to engage with concerns that editors may have. One of the issues raised by Morbidthoughts is whether the Chronicle can be considered to source "has documented incidences", with "incidences" in the plural. I will note that the proposed language does not specify a number, so as long as the Chronicle makes clear that it is covering more than one incidence, and it does, I don't think we have a problem putting this in the plural. It's not necessary that the Chronicle list, one-by-one and by name, each of the Fernandez EoCs. It's not OR to use the language that is actually proposed here, so far as that goes. In fact, the Chronicle says On Thursday it flagged yet another “expression of concern” on a paper by Mr. Fernández, the Argentine scientist. It didn't say "another", but rather "yet another", which unambiguously makes it clear that the source considers Fernandez's problems to be a pattern. The more substantive concern is about tying the PNAS retraction to the Chronicle source. I actually had been thinking about that, too, before it was raised here, so I want to make clear that I can see both sides of this issue. Literally, it's true that the Chronicle does not specifically name what happened at PNAS. I recognize that. However, it clearly makes retractions the focus of the piece. The PNAS retraction occurred years before the Chronicle piece was written, so we don't have to worry about the problem of the Chronicle not having covered something because it hadn't happened yet. The way I see it, the Chronicle is the secondary source that opens the BLP-compliant door to treating Fernandez's series of controversies as a pattern that occurred over time, and that includes the PNAS retraction. The way the piece is written, I just don't think it's necessary that it has to name a particular incident for us to include that incident. Then there's the issue of whether the PNAS retraction announcement, itself, is a primary or a secondary source. As noted, this was discussed in an earlier talk section, above. I'm still not convinced by the argument that the PNAS editorial board were a direct party to the dispute, the ones who took it onto themselves to investigate Fernandez's earlier paper and decided to take a side opposite to him. Someone else, perhaps another scientist or a reviewer or someone from the publishing house of the earlier paper (who owned the copyright and would want to enforce it), would have been the one to raise the issue to the editorial board. The editorial board, an extremely distinguished scientific panel assembled by the US government, examined both sides of the issue, and made a public decision. We're not dealing here with an allegation of illegality, so I see this as somewhat different than the BLP considerations of not reporting an arrest until there is a conviction, but what the PNAS editors did was loosely akin to a verdict, not an indictment. I think we have enough here to satisfy the BLP requirement that there has been independent recognition of what happened, as opposed to just a primary source accusation. I recognize that this is not a black-and-white case, but I think it's reasonable to see the proposed language as BLP compliant, and not to just take a not-now-not-ever position in this discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The PNS retraction announcement is where we disagree because I view it as primary source. The editorial board is a party to the dispute because it retracted the publication of the article. Even with your court verdict analogy shifting the board's role as being an arbiter instead of a party, BLP does not allow editors to directly report on court decisions or its opinions without secondary coverage per WP:BLPPRIMARY. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:53, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, let's continue to work with that, thanks. So I'm looking at BLPPRIMARY to see the exact wording there, and the relevant sentence is Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. What it actually says is not to use transcripts or records of proceedings. That (along with things about personal information in the next sentence) is what it says not to use. Is the announcement from PNAS a transcript? No. Is it a record of notes or minutes during the process that led to the retraction? No. It is an announcement of the decision of an impartial scientific board. That's really not the same thing as a transcript that the policy defines as the kind of primary source that requires a secondary source to justify. I also looked at WP:NPF, and what it actually says is Material that may adversely affect a person's reputation should be treated with special care; in many jurisdictions, repeating a defamatory claim is actionable, and there are additional protections for subjects who are not public figures. Nothing we would be saying here falls under that description. We already have a reliable secondary source in the Chronicle, that devotes a lot of focus on Fernandez, and they say rather sweepingly that retractions result from "scientific misconduct" or "fraud". That goes way beyond anything that I would want us to say here. If they are not guilty of defamation with that, then we are not violating BLP simply by reporting that there was a retraction, based on something that is not a legal (and obviously not a criminal) matter. You see the editorial board as a party to the dispute, whereas I'm inclined to see it as an independent body that evaluated the information from both parties and published an impartial conclusion. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Under your analogy, the PNAS announcement is the equivalent of the publication of a court decision or opinion which is forbidden to rely on by itself under WP:BLPPRIMARY because they are considered records of the decision. See [7][8][9][10]. NPF requires greater scrutiny than WP:PUBLICFIGURE ("there are additional protections for subjects who are not public figures") and PUBLICFIGURE requires multiple RS reporting on a negative incident. Morbidthoughts (talk) 19:18, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I want to be careful about what the policy actually says. PUBLICFIGURE says that for genuinely public persons there will be multiple secondary sources, and with that, the information should not be omitted from the page. It doesn't say anywhere that we always require more than one secondary source, and certainly not for less prominent people. Parsing each of the discussion links you provided, the one about Tim Ball is about "a brief statement of the terms of order in the British Columbia court registry". I'm no lawyer, but I think (?) that the meaning of "terms of order" is given here: [11]. If I'm right about it, that's a very different kind of source than the PNAS retraction. For the one about James Bicher, the diff describes a medical board filing accusations against the BLP subject. I agree that accusations are not what we want here, but as I've said, the editorial board was who evaluated impartially the accusations made by others. For the one about Larry Klayman, the rejected sources are a court document and a blog piece that was not taken up by a secondary source. Again, the PNAS announcement is a published journal article and not a court document, and we're not relying on the RW blog for sourcing here. Finally, the one about Dov Seidman seems to have been sourced to a web link that now gives an error message, but the content appears to have been about accusations made in a suit, and the fact that the court had rejected a preliminary motion to dismiss the case. By my reading of BLP, I would agree that all four of those failed BLP. But I don't think they are the same as the source here. I get it, that "there are additional protections" for nonpublic figures, but I'm not seeing how the two sources proposed here objectively fail to live up to that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:36, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

The two proposed sources are discussing similar but different incidents. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:48, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it was dumb of me to word that last sentence that way, and it's the PNAS source that we are disagreeing about. So I'll revise it: I'm not seeing how the PNAS source is the same as the sources in the discussions you linked to. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

At the risk of sticking my neck out for something I'm not sure I understand completely. I don't think a court transcript or ruling is at all comparable. I also don't think it is fair to claim that PNAS or Cozzarelli are primary sources when it comes to this matter. The source in question is a notification that has been published about a paper and its author(s). As such, this is a secondary source that is evaluating the paper and its author(s). I imagine we wouldn't be having this conversation if, say, Nature had done a scicomm story on a paper published by an author in the same journal, which I would argue would be just as valuable as a source (and just as secondary). As to whether putting these two sentences in succession inappropriately implies a connection between "different" incidents, I'm not really seeing that either. This is a paragraph about instances where papers have been commented upon by others. It's not Wikipedia's fault that it happens to be a situation where it's less-than-flattering. jps (talk) 21:50, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and in fact WP:SECONDARY defines a science publication that analyzes other (primary) science papers as usually being a secondary source. I'm seeing Fernandez's paper in PNAS that was retracted as a primary source, and the editorial board announcement as a secondary source about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Why is it necessary to explicitly name the journal that published (and later retracted) one paper? Would it be any less meaningful if a lower-impact, niche journal issued a retraction (if we summarized and cited the retraction notice at face value than we could theoretically summarize and cite every EOC, which would further imbalance the article and stray further away from consensus)? Again I think neither sentence as of yet rises to the level of mandatory inclusion, and focusing on one single retracted paper implicitly overrules every other paper that didn't get retracted. This may speak more to the fundamental flaw of Wikipedia in being enslaved to its policies even when it results in bad articles: people rarely write about all the planes that don't crash, or the papers that aren't retracted, but a competent encyclopedia writer (maybe not on Wikipedia) would take them into consideration. And again, if we can't say anything more about a retraction beyond "it happened", then its inclusion in a biography is disputable. The CHE article doesn't give any mention or context to the PNAS retraction. The EOCs it does mention seem to have had no significance beyond RW dutifully reporting them. For a NPF with scant secondary coverage I think the conservative approach is better for now. Can we say what the results or ramifications of the retraction or EOCs were? If not, then omit until sourcing exists to better contextualize them. Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. --Animalparty! (talk) 00:50, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

The Chronicle piece, as far as I'm concerned, identifies the conflict between RW and Fernandez as being relevant to the very issue you are highlighting. However, it seems that others are not interested in such conflicts -- thus the "so what?"? I find the conflict very interesting and decently contextualized, and I also don't think the correct editorial approach to WP is to look for things to include in articles that are mandatory. jps (talk) 01:26, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Why is it necessary to name the journal explicitly? If, by that, you mean why have the journal name in that sentence, it would make no sense to say that an unnamed journal retracted the paper. But I suspect you mean why include the sentence at all, and I'll get to that in a moment. Would it be less meaningful if a lesser journal had done it? That's a hypothetical, but probably, yes – when the editorial board is such a prominent one, that makes their decision particularly interesting. (I don't think anyone here wants us to list every EoC, and while covering the retracted PNAS paper does not simultaneously cover all of his other papers, the same thing would happen if, for example, we wrote that one particular paper of his got some kind of prominent positive recognition. If you'd like, I'd be happy to add a sentence about the total number of publications he has, which is encyclopedic and would provide that context.) Is it mandatory to include this? No, of course not. It's an editorial decision, which is why we are discussing it. But not being mandatory does not mean that it's impermissible to include it. Do we know anything more than that the retraction and the EoCs happened? Yes, we do, because the Chronicle says that retractions result from duplicate publication or fraud. And the retraction doesn't just say that it happened, but that it was because of duplicate publication, which the Chronicle characterizes as a form of scientific misconduct. The fact that the Chronicle treats what happened with Fernandez as something worth about a quarter of the article, and begins and ends with Fernandez (gee, have I said that before?) means that a secondary source considers this to be worthy of note. That's what the BLP policy asks for. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Revision 5

In light of what I discussed with Animalparty above, here is revision #5:

5

In 2006, a paper coauthored by Fernandez was retracted by the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America because of duplicate publication of figures and text, without acknowledgment, from an earlier publication by Fernandez. The website Retraction Watch has documented incidences of scientific concerns about some of Fernandez's other publications, claims that Fernandez has denied.

References

I've removed the mention of copyright, and I've clarified that the earlier paper was also by Fernandez. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Version #5 is fine with me. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 21:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

This may be obvious and redundant, but editors should also see #Just to make sure I understand, below. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I am happy with this version too. jps (talk) 11:29, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

It's been 5 days since discussion quieted down, and I'd like to offer some observations on where I think we are at. I think that I've been courteous, respectful, and patient in responding to other editors' concerns. And I've tried very hard to really engage with those concerns, to respond to comments thoroughly and point-by-point. As far as I can tell, I've responded to every issue that has been raised. If there is still something further that editors would like to address, that's fine with me, so long as nobody just asks the same things again, pretending that you didn't hear what I or anyone else already said. Please remember that the fact that an answer to a question wasn't what you were hoping for doesn't mean that the answer wasn't given.

Looking over the recent discussions, there are 4 of us (jps, JoJo Anthrax, SilverSeren, and me) who have recently said that we support adding this material, and 2 (Morbidthoughts and Animalparty) who disagree. Going back to where I first started to raise these issues, there are an additional 4 in favor (Trialpears, SnowFire, LongTimeObserver, and Nomoskedasticity) and 1 opposed (AndyTheGrump). The total of 11 compares quite favorably with the turnout at the various BLPN discussions. Obviously, WP:NOTAVOTE, but taken with how all opposing points have been responded to, and how issues not explored at BLPN have been examined here, I think that there is an emerging consensus that the proposed addition complies with WP:BLP and WP:DUE, and that its continued omission would leave the page lacking a needed balance of perspectives. Please remember also that consensus does not mean unanimous agreement.

I also want to suggest that this is not a hill worth dying on. Out of all the BLPs at enWiki where there are real, serious needs to fix BLP violations, this simply isn't something where it's worth defending every square inch of territory against material that is, in fact, BLP-compliant. As I said, I'm happy to continue to discuss anything that needs further discussion, but I hope to be able to implement the edit soon. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree largely with what you are saying here, Tryptofish. I think we implement the version that got the least pushback and see if WP:SILENCE reigns. jps (talk) 14:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I too agree, and I also agree with what Trypotfish has written below. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:59, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to canvass, but I know that other editors have commented more briefly in favor of inclusion, and I suspect that many of them are watching here, so I invite anyone who is watching and wants to comment, to comment. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Local consensus cannot overturn more global consensus set by the BLPN.[12] As Animalparty suggested long ago, consensus for inclusion should be achieved through a revisit at BLPN or through a RfC. Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:36, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I didn't know that we were discussing infoboxes. The assertion that BLPN sets some kind of overwhelming consensus is nonsense. As I already said, there were about the same number of editors participating in the discussion here, as there were at BLPN. As I already said, we evaluated things here that were not evaluated at the BLPN discussion. As I already said, I do not appreciate editors expecting me to repeat what I already said. If you actually have something substantive to raise, I'm all ears. When consensus was against me over the photo and over the book list, I was willing to accept consensus. I suggest that you do the same. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:45, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Look at WP:CONLEVEL to see why that ARBCOM was cited. You've already acknowledged NOTAVOTE, but don't understand that the number of participants in a discussion does not matter as much as the depth and level of scrutiny, especially over a BLP. Morbidthoughts (talk) 19:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I know perfectly well what CONLEVEL, and indeed what the entire Consensus Policy, is about. As for depth and level of scrutiny, I've already said that editors here examined the secondary Chronicle source at a depth and level that was not attempted at the BLPN discussion. I've already said that the closing statement at the BLPN discussion focused on the primary RW sources and did not even mention the Chronicle. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

No, the closing statement did not pinpoint RW as "not meeting the threshold of reliable sourcing required for this kind of material in a BLP". It means the sources thrown about in the discussion, including the Chronicle, were not adequate to permit inclusion. Morbidthoughts (talk) 19:22, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I didn't say that it pinpointed it, I said that the focus was on it ("the EoC"). The focus of the entire discussion was on RW as the primary source that it is, with the Chronicle only coming in at the end, and the Chronicle is never mentioned in the closing statement ([13]). As I've already said, the editors at BLPN focused only on a few sentences at the beginning of the Chronicle, once it came up very near the end of the discussion. As I've already said, those sentences were cherry-picked to make it sound like the Chronicle treated the matter as unresolved. But, as I've already said, if one reads the source in its entirety, it's clear that it is a reliable, independent, secondary source that treats Fernandez as a central figure, who did things that the Chronicle characterizes as scientific misconduct. There is no way that an incomplete discussion at BLPN would constitute something that cannot be questioned by a much more in-depth reading of the source here. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I do not think it appropriate that Morbithoughts is attempting to proclaim unilateral veto power on the part of a prior noticeboard discussion. Noticeboard discussions and determinations are not policy, they are not binding, and they do not represent the be-all-and-end-all of conversations. We have considered the previous discussion and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of actual engagement with the substance of the points about the reliable sources being proposed here. Anyone is free to come here to discuss these matters and I think there is no reason to drag out the discussion. The discussion had ended with Tryptofish's points unanswered. They are still unanswered. Include the paragraph. jps (talk) 20:42, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. For anyone wondering why I'm taking this slow, it's because I don't want to make the edit, and then have it reverted (reverted by a non-sock, that is). This being a dispute over BLP, I feel that it's necessary to be extra careful. WP:There is no deadline. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Caution is certainly commendable, but I worry that your accommodating spirit may end up being taken advantage of here. It's easy to filibuster, but if Wikipedia operated on the unanimity principle then I think the encyclopedia would never get written. jps (talk) 21:55, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'm not going to let anyone thwart consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

• I've been checking in on this page occasionally since the BLPN discussion awhile back, but am mostly uninvolved here. If this were an RfC, I would close this as definite consensus for including this content. In terms of actually weighing consensus, the supports have strong secondary source in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is even further removed than we'd sometimes require commenting on the controversy with this BLP. That source really gives significant coverage of this BLP subject for this small amount of content. This comes across as what should be an uncontroversial (from a policy standpoint) WP:DUE inclusion for a BLP subject who has run afoul of ethical issues in science publishing. The content is crafted to allay any legitimate BLP concerns that have been brought up too.

Those opposed meanwhile don't offer anything substantive for why the content should not be included. Superficial arguments or misunderstandings were more than adequately rebuffed with policy above. In seeing issues with common arguments there, the previous BLPN discussion really did not address content coming from the Chronicle source in this fashion, nor do we need permission from BLPN for each bit of new content or sourcing. Article talk pages are where consensus is determined instead. I did see comments attempting to portray this as not a big deal, but that would be personal editor WP:OR contradicting how sources actually portray it. At this point reading through the conversation, insisting that this pretty straightforward content that arguably already has consensus requires an RfC or a noticeboard discussion would violate WP:NOTBURO policy. KoA (talk) 23:00, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not afraid to be the minority or dissenting view, and if consensus view is ultimately not mine that's fine. But the word "interest" is tossed around a lot, e.g. For me, the interest is the conflict between Fernandez and Retraction Watch... I find the conflict very interesting and decently contextualized.... The recent links to various journal explaining their editorial policies reinforces my gut feeling that pro-inclusionists may be motivated in part by how serious or interesting they feel the issue is, or should be taken, a seriousness I simply don't see reflected in the secondary literature: it appears no RS has commented on the PNAS retraction beyond the editorial notice itself issuing the retraction. Are my readings of sources different than some editors? Sure, but does that mean my readings are wrong and theirs are right? Everyone is using WP:OR to assess whether the proposals are warranted. I think It's robotic to automatically add content merely because it exists, or some may find it "interesting". For non-public figures who get little secondary coverage, any incident (be it positive, negative, or mundane and banal) may be among the only things plastered in their article until the subject (and all of us editors) are dead and buried. An article can be 100% accurate but also clumsily written; of the type that would never be seen in any legitimate encyclopedia. I think everything proposed could and should be included in a hypothetical feature length magazine article about the subject that can explain the context and impact. But in such a short article, and no way to convey the effects or significance of the events without WP:OR, I advocate a conservative, buffered approach. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:05, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I definitely don't think the issue is one of being "serious". I think the issue is one of conflict between RW and Fernandez as verified by The Chronicle as well as the unusual situation where a PNAS article is retracted for being a duplicate. This stuff does not happen that often. It's not that it is "serious", it's just that it is unique and has been the subject of some notice by third parties. If your concern is that the article cannot break out of being properly contextualized because of the obscurity of the subject, well, I can only suggest that you consider making a deletion case. I rather think we are too forgiving with our notability rules at Wikipedia, but I suspect that the community would say that there are enough sources out there to keep the article. jps (talk) 01:12, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

As for "interesting", I use that as a synonym for WP:PROMINENT or WP:NOTABLE. The "interest" has to be from reliable sources, not myself. jps (talk) 13:36, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate KoA's comments, and I want to thank Animalparty for saying "I'm not afraid to be the minority or dissenting view, and if consensus view is ultimately not mine that's fine." That's all that I, personally, would ask. Since I was the editor who added the links to information about retractions, I want to clarify why I did it. It's not to push the idea that the material should be taken seriously. I was re-reading the BLPN discussion for the umpteenth time, and it occurred to me that there were editors there who said that they didn't know much about retractions in scientific journals, and it looked to me like they were, as a result, missing what the Chronicle source was actually saying. I'm someone who, in real life, was very much involved professionally in scientific papers, so it occurred to me that things that are obvious to me might not be obvious to everyone else. And that's the reason that I posted those links. I did it for the reasons that I stated, and there was no unspoken agenda.

I also want to observe that the consensus here is becoming stronger. As far as I can tell, we have at most one editor who has not expressed a willingness to go along with the consensus. It's fine for editors to disagree about it. That's what discussions on WP are all about, and I respect editors who disagree but cooperate. I'm probably going to implement the edit pretty soon, and all that I ask is that editors who might disagree be cooperative about it, and hopefully not edit war. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:19, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

 Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 20 October 2022 (UTC)