Talk:Leonard P. Guarente

Unnecessary mentioning of other persons in the BLP

Hey Jytdog, Why do you insist on putting "Cynthia Kenyon's lab at UCSF discovered that a single-gene mutation in (Daf-2) could double the lifespan of C. elegans" into the entry about Leonard Guarente? Daf-2 has nothing to do with rest of the text about sirtuins... Daf-2 has nothing to do with Leonard Guarente. I suggest this sentence is moved to Cynthia Kenyon page. One reason I suspect might be some sort of gunning for "universal fairness". Like who discovered aging manipulation first, but in this case it would be more accurate to include that first gene to extend longevity was AGE-1, identified by Michael Klass in early 80s??

References

--— Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.11.12 (talk) 00:03, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Nope, this is summarizing the source at the end of that paragraph. Please read the source and then reply. thanks Jytdog (talk) 00:11, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Read the source. I am curious how do you define "summarizing"? The article is about Sinclair. There is a sentence or two about Kenyon, which is technically also false. Kenyon was not the first to show that single gene mutation can extend lifespan. As I said, Age-1 was discovered 10 years before that. And also, why Sinclair article in Guarente text? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.11.12 (talk) 04:36, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Here is the Pubmed article for that work I think the way it stand now, it is not "summarizing", but pulling random, hardly relevant, and factually wrong statement. So, why?

References

-- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.11.12 (talk) 04:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

What we do in Wikipedia is summarize sources. You are thinking like an expert, and wanting to write what you know, and throw a source behind that.

What I mean by "summarize sources" is that we create content in WP by looking for sources about something, and we summarize what the source says.

What you are doing is backward from that.

What I did, was go looking for sources where somebody who knows what they are talking about, describe what Guarente did. Please actually read that source again, and look to see what it says about Guarante. You will see that it says that in the early 1990s, Guarante was just starting to think about longevity research. "The field was so new and unproven, though, that ­Guarente talked about it only informally–as, for instance, when a young Australian scientist sat down next to him during a group lunch." BUT in 1993 Kenyon made her finding, and that finding galvanized a lot of activity, including Guarente and Sinclair. That is why that source is important. If you are aware of other sources that discuss what Guarante did and when and why, please bring them!

Does that make sense?

I provided a link to WP:EXPERT at my talk page; you do not appear to have read it. You may also find User:Jytdog/How useful ( I wrote that to try to help get people oriented to this place).

This is probably the hardest thing for experts to wrap their heads around -- in Wikipedia we don't write what we know a stick a citation behind that. Instead we summarize what sources say. Sources are authoritative, not you or me. Jytdog (talk) 04:52, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

By the way, the book you cited above, this one - does not mention Guarente in the text. It is useless for working here. And PMID 6632998 is, as you said, the Klass paper. That is what we call a "primary source" and we don't much use them. We summarize what we call "secondary sources". The MIT Tech Review source that is cited, is a decent example of a good secondary source for this kind of content. Jytdog (talk) 04:56, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I did/do understand the difference between citation and summarizing. As I said, the problem is with what you wrote is that you did not summarize that source either. Even if you are trying to summarize just part about Guarente, your "summary" is still not a summary. If that text is given to million people to read and provide their summary, I think you are going to be the only one to come up with "In 1993 Cynthia Kenyon made her finding...". No matter how you spin it, what you wrote is not a summary of that text, not even a summary of the part about Guarente. Just from statistical point of view, that text includes "Sinclair" - 51 times, "Westphal" - 9 times, "Auwerx" - 4 times, "Kaeberline" - 4 times, "resveratrol" - 31 times, "sir2" - 12 times, "Guarente" - 21 times, "Kenyon" - 3 times, and daf2 - ONCE! And your "summary" of this text is "In 1993 Cynthia Kenyon discovered daf2" - LOL! Looks like you are referencing here! Nice try jytdog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.11.12 (talk) 14:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you understand how Wikipedia works, or do you not? If you don't, then please stop arguing, and please be open to learning. If you do, then please take the next step in the dispute resolution process.

Also, if you are getting interested in editing and we are are going to be doing this for a while:

• Please start to sign and thread your posts. This is basic etiquette here -- as basic as "please" and "thank you". We thread posts, by placing a colon in front of a comment, which the Wikipedia software turns into an indent. You put one more colon than the person to whom you are responding. I put one here, so you should put two when you reply, so your reply is indented once more than mine. To sign your comment, type exactly four tildas after the comment. The Wikipedia software converts the four tildas into links to the username or IP address plus a date stamp. Not doing this is like not saying "please" and "thank you".
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Answering your question - the source is used to generate content about what Guarente did and when he did it and why, at the time he got into anti-aging research. I didn't mention this before, but it also is used to discuss how Sinclair came to be in Guarente's lab. The two men's careers are very relevant to each other; I am glad you have not been contesting that sentence. It is a good source for these things, in Wikipedia, as it is secondary and independent, and from MIT Technology Review, which is a solid publisher for science reporting, generally. If you have other sources that are as good (also secondary and independent, and from a solid publisher), please cite them here so we can discuss. Jytdog (talk) 14:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I will consider, thank you. Meanwhile on the subject - No need to be glad or not glad about anything being contested. Doing so makes it seem that you have other interests in this matter apart from making/maintaining a good quality article that is as close to truth as possible. Actually what you said here, I like a lot, and in fact I think this is a pretty good summary of the article - "The two men's careers are very relevant to each other". I also agree that MIT Technology Review is a good publisher. Meanwhile, I do believe that in this case you contradict your own preaching. "Kenyon and daf2" is a single statement in this article. It is not a summary, it is not relevant to sir2, it is not relevant to Sinclair, it is actually largely irrelevant to Guarente. Kenyon an Guarente had a company, but that company had nothing to do with daf2. So the statement is REFERENCE, not summary. MIT article is not about state of the aging research field (it is about Sinclair's career). You cant pull one sentence out and claim you summarized state of the field. You almost make it sound that Kenyon discovered daf2, and it so impressed Sinclair (about state of the field) that he joint Guarente lab. If he was so impressed, he would have probably tried her lab, no? Anyway, if your ego prevents you from seeing that this is one shitty "summarization" of MIT Technology Review, suit yourself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.11.12 (talk) 05:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)