Talk:The Icepick Surgeon

A fact from The Icepick Surgeon appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 December 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the book The Icepick Surgeon discusses research by Henry Murray in which he verbally abused volunteers, one of whom went on to become the Unabomber?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Icepick Surgeon.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 21:38, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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... that in The Icepick Surgeon, the Henry Murray research that verbally abused volunteers is discussed and how the study was involved in creating the person who would go on to become the Unabomber? Source: "Sometimes, the victims take center stage in Kean's narrative. In an effort to discover the best methods of interrogation, Harvard professor Henry Murray designed a deliberately cruel psychological experiment inflicting brutal verbal abuse on his volunteer subjects. One student, a young genius who at 17 required parental permission to participate in the study, endured more than 200 hours of savage, needless ridicule. The young man's name was Theodore Kaczynski, and he went on to become the Unabomber." ( A history of horrors, committed in the name of science - The Washington Post)
- ALT1: ... that in The Icepick Surgeon, the attempts by Thomas Edison to portray alternating current as dangerous is discussed, along with the dozens of dogs and other animals he killed to do so? Source: "The great Thomas Edison and his colleagues had a hand in the killing of 44 dogs, six calves and two horses in their attempt to portray alternating current technology as inherently more dangerous than the direct current technology that Edison pioneered. This slaughter is one of the many tales that Sam Kean relates in “The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.”" (Animal Electrocutions, Lobotomies and Other Tales of Wicked Science - The New York Times)

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Fortune-499

Moved to mainspace by Silver seren (talk). Self-nominated at 22:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC).[reply]

@Silver seren: Just over 6000 bytes, and nominated for DYK one day after creation, satisfying date and length criteria. The sentence "The third chapter covers the graverobbing activities of Robert Knox..." is not supported by the citation, which refers instead to "celebrated Scottish surgeon John Hunter". Was Knox the individual hired for those services? The sentence fragment "...sacrificed the lives of..." is inaccurate, as sacrifice has a particular meaning not correctly applicable here. (I do understand the intention of avoiding copying the source phrasing.) Please avoid addressing the reader or using personal pronouns (eg - "While we can easily portray..."); also, that same sentence may have the opposite meaning to that from the source. (It states: "Which is another point Kean harps on: it is tempting to condemn all of the guys he profiles as sickos, or monsters, or just outliers and then not have to deal with them. But he notes that many of his non-Nazi subjects did lots of good things in the rest of their lives—not just they were good husbands and fathers, but they actually did really good things for humanity.") The hooks are both marginally under the 200-character limit and properly sourced. I think more concise versions could be created, particularly for ALT0, which I prefer. Mind matrix 19:26, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about ALT2, which trims about 50 characters from ALT0? Mind matrix 19:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2: ... the book The Icepick Surgeon discusses the research by Henry Murray to verbally abuse volunteers, one of whom would go on to become the Unabomber?

Fixed up the Robert Knox sentence, a different reference mentioned him and I've altered it so both of them are mentioned and both refs are used for the sentence. I've changed sacrificed to took. I rearranged the Nazi sentence entirely and shortened it to a more general statement. I'm fine with Alt2, @Mindmatrix:, so let's go with that. Silver seren^C 19:58, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that QPQ was completed. Good to go for ALT2. Mind matrix 20:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2 to T:DYK/P5