Talk:James Watson/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jebus989 (talk • message • contribs • count • logs • email) 19:28, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'm happy to take this review. I've given the article a preliminary going over and will provide comments shortly. Jebus989^✰ 19:28, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments Overall, this article will need a lot of work to bring to GA standards. Referencing is the primary concern but the overall organisation could also be improved, as could the weighting of certain sections.

Specifics:

• Use of King's College Results has a large unreferenced section about Franklin's work, if this is verifiable through Judson (1996), it should be cited as such. Other references may be found from Franklin's article, but be sure to check them before inclusion. Examples of sentences in this section which certainly require a citation are found from "Franklin personally told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside." up to "Franklin's experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and Crick's discovery"

• In fact, this is a very long section which potentially places undue weight on Franklin's involvement. This is Watson's biography, after all. A heavily trimmed version could be favourable, perhaps with a link to the respective section in RF's biography.

• References are also required in 'Career in molecular biology', such as in the paragraph starting "At Harvard University, starting in 1956..." which contains no references and makes claims such as his start/leaving date, unattributed negative opinions of subjects and that he "discouraged their study"

• Another unreferenced paragraph immediately follows (the one starting "In 1968, Watson became the Director of..."). It makes several assertions of dates and facts ("Watson served as the Laboratory's Director and president for about 35 years,") as well as provided quotes from Bruce Stillman which are unreferenced

• The Career in molecular biology section could do with reorganising. You may want to consider a date-specific approach (as seen on Francis Crick). I added the 'Later career' heading to seperate two running paragraphs with did not run together chronologically... "He left the school in 1976. <p> In 1968...". This also claims he was both a full professor at Harvard (MA) and a permanent resident at CSHL (NY) for two years, which is possible but needs fact-checking
• The last paragraph of the lead needs minor clarification with respect to dates. It currently reads "In 1994, he started as president and served for 10 years. He was appointed chancellor, serving until 2007, when he resigned due to a controversial comment made during an interview". It implies he was promoted in 2004 to the level of chancellor, if this is the case, the sentence could read "He then was appointed chancellow" or they could be concatenated (e.g. served for 10 years as president and became chancellor in 2004. He resigned in 2007...)
• Some statements have excessive references (~10) of which some, on closer inspection, can be better placed after the sentence they directly verify. This issue is mostly confined to the UK book tour section

• This section could also be renamed, the focus and importance is on the 2007 interview/controversial statements etc., the book tour itself is not the focus of the text

• There were several peacock terms. Main offenders are "Watson's first textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, set a new standard for textbooks, particularly through the use of concept heads—brief declarative subheadings. Its style has been emulated by almost all successive textbooks" (which also requires a citation)
• The checklinks tool found 5 dead links, which have been tagged here

There are other issues, mostly lack of references, but I will continue if/when points begin to be addressed. As more general commentary, I think the article is generally well-written, and handles difficult sections without bias. However, similarly to the Crick GA assessment, it is a solid B-class, but some way off a GA at the moment. Jebus989^✰ 20:16, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Due to the serious lack of references and other issues above, I have failed this nomination and the article will not be promoted to GA at this time Jebus989^✰ 11:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

May I add something to this? What you say about the "Use of King's College Results" section is precisely correct, and yet this piece of history continues to be incorrectly reported in books and in the press.

In this article, one could start with a sentence like "...before this both Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had generated crassly non-illuminating models". The story seems to be quite misrepresented here (Watson had misunderstood an essential item of data from a talk Franklin had given), but worst of all is the description of models as being "crassly non-illuminating"...How about describing them as "incorrect"?

You can see a sort of desperation in the writing of those who are trying to 'protect' Franklin's reputation. Too much is made here (and in the article on Crick) of this one event where Franklin corrected W&C, as if that was vital to their solution. This is ignoring all the details of the fascinating story of how this discovery was made. In fact (according to Crick in 'What mad pursuit') when W&C discussed model building with the chains in/out, and Crick said "why not try [with the chains outside]?" which put them on the right track.--109.144.226.127 (talk) 12:11, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Francis Crick and James Watson

Being a Wikipedia editor does not give you the right to vandalise the FRANCIS CRICK and JAMES WATSON articles; the late Rosalind Franklin was not a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Please desist P.Schrey!

Martin Packer, U.K. Researcher for "Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets" by Professor Robert Olby — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.32.42 (talk) 09:10, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The reverted edit was not vandalism but was not supported by the reference. The Nobel Prize citation in the article does not mention Franklin. Editor Schrey, if you think her role is being slighted, please provide reliable sources to back up edits. In the meantime, the James_D._Watson#Use_of_King.27s_College_results section covers the controversy quite well. --Javaweb (talk) 15:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC)Javaweb

Thanks 2.24.32.42 and Javaweb for your contributions.

• First to 2.24.32.42: I can understand that you are upset if in your eyes wrong information is added to an article, and that you like to resolve this situation. The suggested flow is in that case to revert and to discuss on the talk page, see WP:BRD. However, be careful when to consider an edit as vandalism. Wikipedia has a stricter definition of the word "vandalism" than common usage. Please read Wikipedia:NOTVAND for more information on what is and is not considered vandalism.
• To Javaweb: It all started with the edit from 97.88.36.106 on article Francis Crick on 3 March 2012; reverted by user 2.27.131.155 with the edit summary "Vandalism deleted". Looking at the article Rosalind Franklin I saw that it was well referenced and describing her contribution to the discovery of DNA. So this edit was clearly no vandalism as defined by Wikipedia, but rather a content dispute. I reverted the edit of 2.27.131.155 on article Francis Crick, and the comparable edit on article James D. Watson, with the edit summary "No vandalism, Rosalind Franklin co-discovered". The next day user 2.24.32.42, same editor or related to user 2.27.131.155 (both from Birmingham UK), reverted my edits again with the edit summary "Vandalism" and left notes on several talk pages. My assessment is still content dispute instead of vandalism, but I didn't want to revert again. I'm not an expert in this matter, and I have not to all used references the access to provide a proper reply. I hope that another editor has, to describe the correct involvement of Rosalind Franklin to the discovery of DNA.

Thanks, SchreyP ^(messages) 22:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

For the record ROSALIND FRANKLIN had no involvement in the "discovery of DNA" either; the structure of DNA was elucidated by JAMES WATSON and FRANCIS CRICK. No other editor will be able to prove otherwise. The suggestion that ROSALIND FRANKLIN was involved is not supported by the facts. M.D.P.