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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 9 July 2024 [1].

Henry Rose Carter

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Nominator(s): ~ HAL333 02:00, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Carter is a nearly forgotten figure in the United States' war against tropical disease. Last year, I was surprised to find that Carter—a Nobel prize nominee—had no Wikipedia entry, which yielded this short article. Despite its brevity, but I believe it to be the most comprehensive account of Carter's life and career. ~ HAL333 02:00, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drive-by comment by TompaDompa

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The article is indeed brief. A cursory search for sources seems to suggest that there are additional ones that might be helpful in expanding the article. To wit:

I have not checked whether these are accessible or (thus obviously) the contents. TompaDompa (talk) 02:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't you know it, a couple of them were accessible through the Internet Archive. Still haven't checked the contents. TompaDompa (talk) 02:38, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Suggest adding alt text
  • File:Henry_Rose_Carter_Portrait.png: where was this first published? Ditto File:Orwood_School_House.jpg

750h

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Will leave comments. 750h+ 09:44, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Per WP:LEADLENGTH, the size of the lead should be shortened to 1-2 paragraphs (this has 929 words)
  • In a 1898 study conducted ==> "In an 1898 study conducted"
  • In 1915, he was appointed to assistant surgeon general by Congress.
  • Henry Rose Carter was born on August 25, 1852 at Clinton Plantation in Caroline County, Virginia. add a comma after "1852"
  • Carter was positioned at Ship Island, which lies off the coast of Mississippi, as quarantine officer. add "a" between "as" and "quarantine"
  • ship disinfection: sulphur dioxide fumigation and deck i believe "sulfur" is the preferred spelling in American English
  • He established a uniform seven day quarantine period add a hyphen between "seven" and "day"
  • allowing him to more easily deduce when transmission occurred. ==> "allowing him to deduce when transmission occurred more easily."

That's all I got. Fine work. 750h+ 10:25, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Tim riley

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A most worthwhile addition. A few minor points on the prose:

  • "In a 1898 study" – looks a bit odd: perhaps "In an 1898 study"?
  • "Carter retired in 1920 and died five years later" – I think the prose would flow more smoothly if you replaced the name with a pronoun.
  • "identify yellow fever as mosquito-borne" – in an adjectival phrase used predicatively, as here, you don't want the hyphen.
  • "sulphur dioxide" – Forgive my sticking my BrE oar in here, but isn't "sulfur" the normal AmE spelling?
  • "a uniform seven day quarantine period" – for this adjectival phrase, used attributively, a hyphen would be preferable.

That's my lot. I know nothing of the subject but the article looks to my inexpert eye to be balanced, comprehensive and well sourced (though I note the comments above). In passing, I disagree with 750h+'s last suggestion: it isn't the transmission but its deduction that was easier, which your existing wording makes clear. Tim riley talk 11:02, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops, my bad. I've struck that out 750h+ 11:12, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UC

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I'm afraid I'm not sure this one is quite there yet. There are quite a few things about the prose, comprehensiveness and general "weight" that need a look: I don't yet get the sense of professionalism and authority that I would expect from reading an FA.

  • The lead has his research and protocols were critical in understanding and preventing the transmission of both malaria and yellow fever. We get a fair amount on yellow fever in the article, and the fact that Carter tried to fight malaria in Panama and the US military, but we don't really have anything on either his research or his protocols as to it. Similarly, we later have At the time, he was regarded as the leading expert on malaria, but don't really get any sense of what he knew or discovered about it.
  • The third paragraph of the lead isn't really clear enough, in my view, in saying to a lay audience what Carter found out and why it was so important.
  • Alongside Finlay, Carter was nominated for the 1904 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work : their needs to be singular here, but I'd advise reworking the whole thing to have "Carter and Finley were nominated ..."
  • "yellow-fever victims" should generally have a hyphen, as a compound modifier (it was the fever, not its victims, who were yellow)
  • As a youth, he was shot in the leg during a skirmish between Union and Confederate sympathizers: we need to say that this was during the American Civil War. When did it happen? Was he fighting in it?
  • Why doesn't "Marine Hospital Service" link to Marine Hospital Service?
  • Amid a severe outbreak of yellow fever in the lower Mississippi Valley, Carter was immediately dispatched : as often in this article, I don't have a clear sense of the time we're talking about here: it's odd to have immediately to give such clarity on the gap between the outbreak and his posting, but no real idea of what year this was.
  • Over the following 9 years, he was stationed in MHS hospitals across the South and became fascinated by yellow fever.: small numbers are generally given in words, rather than figures, but that's a matter of taste. On the other hand, the final clause makes him sound like someone you would back away slowly from at a party: what about the disease interested him?
  • It's germane to this part of the narrative that yellow fever was a major problem in the American South, but we don't really say or demonstrate that.
  • For the following decade, Carter worked to analyze and refine U.S. quarantine procedures: we need a sense of what these were before Carter came along. We've also said that he spent ten years working to analyse them: what did he make of them? What did he think was wrong with them?
  • In all those ten years, the only change we've credited to him that's specifically about quarantine is setting its length at a week. Is that really enough to make him "the father of modern quarantine"? I suspect there's a bit more to this story.
  • Carter also instituted the use of flowing, steaming water as a disinfectant: to disinfect the bodies of ships, presumably? How did this fit together with the mercuric chloride we mentioned a moment ago?
  • a uniform seven day quarantine period: hyphen in seven-day.
  • For ships from Cuba and Mexico, he encouraged the disinfection procedure be conducted en route to expedite the process.: Grammar, first: encouraged that. However, I don't quite understand this one. Presumably we mean American ships sailing back from these places -- or did he send messages to Cuban and Mexican ports to inform them of Ship Island's expectations? Why only these places -- why not, for example, ships from Europe?
  • For these innovations, Carter is considered the father of modern quarantine: this is cited to a 1925 obit. Two problems here -- firstly, this might have been true in 1925, but that was almost a century ago -- we need a more modern source to justify the present tense. Secondly, obituaries can be expected to be positive about their subjects, so I think we need to be upfront about the nature of this particular source.
  • Carter traveled to a yellow fever outbreak in two remote Mississippi towns: Orwood and Taylor. The location...: the singular of the location only makes sense when you realise that these were fundamentally the same place (Lafayette County)
  • The location attracted Carter as the residents lived in isolated farmhouses, allowing him to more easily deduce when transmission occurred: this needs explaining to me. We've got a photograph of a schoolhouse from Orwood, so it doesn't sound as if the inhabitants were completely isolated from each other.
  • Carter observed 12 households, carefully recording the dates of incident cases: I would remove carefully as WP:PUFFERY. We would hardly expect him to do so carelessly, but I doubt we have any particular evidence that he was any more careful than a researcher would be expected to be.
  • The numbered list is ungrammatical: each entry needs to begin with a The. However, I'd suggest the whole thing needs to be looked at, rewritten and put into prose. I cannot make head or tail, for example, of Time of first infection to when environment is capable of transmitting disease to secondary person
  • the "period of extrinsic incubation.: open quote but no close quote.
  • This "environmental incubation" suggested the existence of an intermediate host.: hold on, what "environmental incubation"? What did that mean, and how did it suggest an intermediate host?
  • In 1899, Carter was assigned to Havana, Cuba by the MHS as Chief Quarantine Officer: MOS:GEOCOMMA after Cuba; decap on CQO via MOS:PEOPLETITLES.
  • the yellow fever vector: another one for a hyphen.
  • In his 1900 paper identifying the Aedes aegypti mosquito as the yellow fever vector, Reed cited Carter's work: presumably, he cited a whole bunch of people. What did he discuss with Carter and Reed that was of interest? What work had Carter done that was so important? Carter's Science obit suggests that Reed's debt to him was much greater than we have made out.

A few more to follow. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:25, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Carter wrote a series of seminal papers on the control and eradication of mosquito-borne diseases: seminal reads as WP:PUFFERY. Is this a particular person's opinion? On what grounds are these papers considered seminal? Did they have any discernible impact upon practice or outcomes?
  • Carter believed that, in public health efforts, it was essential to address the environmental conditions that allowed tropical diseases to thrive, rather than solely treating patients: did he manifest this belief during his time in public health work? How?
  • The link labelled "Biography of Dr. Henry Rose Carter" (2001)" in the footnote doesn't appear to go anywhere. When I hover over it, it seems to be pointed towards a Wikipedia article.
  • Was Carter ever a member of the American Public Health Association?
  • Carter died in Washington, DC following a long illness: MOS:GEOCOMMA. We're inconsistent throughout the article as to whether initials like DC or US have periods after them.
  • The citation style is strange: what's the principle behind labelling one source "1925 obituary" and another (also a 1925 obituary) "Science (1925)"?
  • The Schultz journal article has a publisher, but the others don't. It isn't usual to include a publisher for journals, but I can see the argument given that the CDC is both important and not obviously connected to the title.

That's my lot. Honestly, I'm probably an oppose at the moment, but very much as a "not yet" -- this could certainly be improved to FA level, I just don't think it's there in its current form. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:48, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from RoySmith

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I haven't read the whole article yet, but I'm afraid I'm not liking what I've read so far. The first two paragraphs of "Early life and quarantine work" are written in a stilted style. It's a series of simple declarative sentences that leads to a choppy feel. More than that, it's a very close rendition of Clements and Harbach 2027 ("2.3. Henry Rose Carter (1852–1925)"). It would be overly harsh to call it word-for-word, but it's certainly WP:CLOP which is item 1-f in WP:FACR.

Actually, now that I've read the rest, it's all in that same choppy style. Let me take a shot at rewriting the first paragraph of "Panama Canal Zone and later life" (working just from your text; I haven't verified this against the sources):

From 1904 to 1909, Carter was the director of hospitals in the Panama Canal Zone, where he managed efforts to eliminate malaria and yellow fever. During his tenure in the Canal Zone, he wrote a series of seminal papers on the control and eradication of mosquito-borne diseases; he believed in addressing the environmental conditions that allowed tropical diseases to thrive rather than solely treating patients. His work during this time earned him a reputation as a leading expert on malaria.

There's a good photograph of Carter in William A. Petri, Jr. "PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AMERICA IN THE WORLD: 100 YEARS OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE" (PDF). astmh.org. Retrieved 30 June 2024. which I assume is PD and would be a good addition to the article.

Between the style and the paraphrasing issues, I'm going to have to oppose. It will take a significant amount of rewriting to bring the quality of the prose up to FA standards.

(note added later)

To follow up on this, as I read the article, I knew I didn't like the style of writing, but was struggling to put into words exactly what it was I didn't like. I settled on calling it "choppy", mostly because that's a word I've seen other reviewers use, and it seemed to fit. But, what exactly does that mean? I think it means the individual sentences are disjointed. Each one stands on its own, with no real connection to the sentences around it. I hunted around a bit and found "Sentence Flow: Fixing Choppy Writing". Jami Gold, Paranormal Author. which I think does a better job of explaining it than I'm doing.

Gog the Mild mentioned in his comments that your other articles don't suffer from this. He's right. I had noticed that before I wrote my earlier comments, and wondered why this example was so different. Let me pull out one particular example from Badge Man:

Conspiracy theorists have suggested that this figure is a sniper firing a weapon at the president from the grassy knoll. Although a reputed muzzle flash obscures much of the detail, the Badge Man has been described as a person wearing a police uniform—the moniker itself derives from a bright spot on the chest, which is said to resemble a gleaming badge.

There's two things that makes this pair of sentences a joy to read. First, the sentences vary in length and structure. That's kind of a mechanical thing, but it's real. Second, introducing the later sentence with "Although" immediately sets up tension. The reader is put on alert that they're about to be presented with two assertions that are at odds with each other and they need to start filling in the blanks: "a reputed muzzle flash obscures much of the detail": boom, that's the first one, and "the Badge Man has been described as a person wearing a police uniform", that's the other. You can almost imagine watching a prosecutor summing up his case to the jury: "Ladies and gentlement, you've heard the defense tell you that the muzzle flash obscured most of the details. But you also heard witnesses explaining why you have to look past that and accept that they were wearing a police uniform". In that one sentence, you've told a story and captured the reader's imagination. That's what's not happening in this article. Anyway, I hope you find that useful. RoySmith (talk) 02:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose by Gog the Mild

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Recusing to review.

Unfortunately I find myself agreeing with Roy, the prose is choppy, pretty much throughout. I just can't see it as "engaging and of a professional standard". Given that your last several other FACs have not had this problem I don't feel the need to say any more.

Noticed in passing:

  • The lead seems a little long for a relatively short article, and MOS:LEADLENGTH suggests it should consist of "One or two paragraphs".
  • "Carter found that visitors to a recent infection never fell ill" seems oddly phrased. Do you mean 'Carter found that visitors to a recently infected person never fell ill? Or, given the context, 'Carter found that visitors to the recent site of an infection never fell ill'? Gog the Mild (talk) 20:30, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note -- early days for this nom but there are fundamental concerns that should be worked on away from FAC, so I'll be archiving shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 18:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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