Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Szatmari (geologist)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was KEEP. postdlf (talk) 14:47, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Szatmari (geologist)

Peter Szatmari (geologist) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Article dePRODded by creator. PROD concern was "Article is basically unreferenced (only "reference" is to an article published by the subject". Web of Science lists only 25 articles, cited 327 times in total with an h-index of 10. GS gives an h-index of 6 (searching for "Peter Szatmari and geology" - there is another researcher in a different field of the same name). Szatmari is first or last author on only a few of these articles. The external links go to an interview in his employer's magazine (therefore not independent), a poster abstract, and another primary article. No other independent sources available. Does not meet WP:PROF." As the only change to the article since it was PRODded was the removal of the PROD tag, the concern still stands. Hence: delete. Crusio (talk) 03:42, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the Web of Science - h-score of 10 (61 46 44 34 34 21 13 13 12 12 12 10 10) also might be enough for this field! (Msrasnw (talk) 12:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • I have occasionally seen "honorary presidents" of meetings before and it is an honor, especially if this concerns a major international conference (but in those cases it is very rare). However, this seems to be a fairly small local symposium, not the kind of major honors mentioned in WP:PROF. An h-index of 10 (like I already mentioned in the nom) is far from establishing notability, even in this field (there are many journals with impact factors above 2, for example, indicating that this is not an extremely low-citation-density field). --Crusio (talk) 13:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - the h-numbers, sheer number of citations ("widely cited"), and presidency of a major conference, are enough for me. Bearian (talk) 21:39, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In most fields, including this one, this amount of citations and h index are rather below the median. And what makes you think this is a "major conference" and not some local event? --Crusio (talk) 22:36, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 13:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure we have to revisit it more than what is already there: "2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level." From [1]. Bearian (talk) 00:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anyone can call their conference 'international', but would a conference with an international attendance have a website only in Portuguese? Qwfp (talk) 07:19, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • And with most talks also having Portuguese titles? Also, look at how the program is produced, this does not look like the product of a major conference, it's what small societies do: produce a program with Microsoft WORD... --Crusio (talk) 17:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Seems to me sufficiently notable to meet WP:prof via a h-index of 10 and via his presidency of the conference. We seem to have surprisingly few Brazilian (or Hungarian) geologists (Msrasnw (talk) 00:05, 11 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
Note: The article under discussion here has been {{rescue}} flagged by an editor for review by the Article Rescue Squadron. Yaksar (let's chat) 06:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm sorry to remain a skeptic here, but what evidence do we have that this conference was "major"? The program lists 90 posters. Generally, most participants at such a meeting will have a poster. Adding speakers and a few without a poster makes this a meeting of perhaps 200 participants. Calling a symposium "international" is easy, but doesn't make something "major". (Back in '97 I organized an international meeting myself and we had about 40 attendants from all over the world, but despite being "international", that meeting was decidedly "minor"). Geology (especially related to oil and such) is a huge field. I think that being honorary president of a symposium this size absolutely does not count as a "major honor" and an h-index of 10 is absolutely way below the notability barrier (and that in itself casts doubt on the value of this "major honor"). I agree that we don't have many articles on Hungarian or Brazilian geologists, but that doesn't mean we should have different standards for them, that would be patronizing. Before accepting this symposium presidency as a major honor, I really need to see evidence of that. --Crusio (talk) 07:16, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep How many newspapers or other sources from that area have articles online and open to searching from that long ago? Google books for his name and the word "geolist" gives two results mentioning his work. [2] Google for his name and the word "evaporites", which is what he was famed for studying, and you get 409 results. [3] Sorting through that for just the results on educational and government sites, those that end with .edu, .gov, or .org, and filtering out any that mention Wikipedia, there are 28 results.[4] He may be notable for work other than just the evaporites of course. The same search without that word in it, shows 7,110 results[5] but that's because other people have the same name. His work as a geolists does seem to be widely cited. Need an expert on the subject. Dream Focus 21:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since when are numbers of Ghits an argument in AfD discussions? So he's cited in two (!) books, which really is miles from being enough to meet WP:PROF. Searching for his name and evaporites gives 34 results for me (one of them WP), none of them substantial. As has been remarked above multiple times, his work is far from being widely cited. --Crusio (talk) 22:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • How many educational and government webpages mention him counts to his notability, since it means his work is cited. And for a geologist, that's counts as a lot of citedness. ;) Dream Focus 06:05, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A notable geologist who is working on finding oil off Brazil. More than enough for me. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:59, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whether he's "notable" is what we are discussing here. If he's a "notable geologist", we could close this AfD right now. Could you perhaps tell us why you think he's notable? What criteria of WP:PROF are being met? --Crusio (talk) 17:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW (Talk) 03:26, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep He seems to have been interviewed and reported on in some good sources. In general that is enough for an article to be kept. I'm not a big fan of special requirements for members of different occupations. Kitfoxxe (talk) 04:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry, but which good sources interview him? We only have one link to an interview in the bulletin of his employer. Which good sources report on him? We only have a low number of citations of his work. These are not the same thing as when somebody is mentioned in a newspaper article or something like that, they really mean much less than that. Because this is different and because this can easily be misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with academics is the reason we have a special guideline here. Every academic (generally already when they're still graduate students) publishes some works that are cited at least a couple of dozen times. If that established notability, any academic from grad students up should be covered. I'm fine with that, but then we should do away with the whole concept of notability and reduce WP to LinkedIn or Facebook... --Crusio (talk) 10:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the interview being refered to is the Norman Gall interview in O Estado de S. Paulo. A worry I have is would someone writing in Portuguese and working in Brazil require the same kind of h-scores as someone in the US or UK to prove notability. It seems to me we are setting the bar too high for non-US/UK academics and are perhaps losing some non-US notables in order to keep out US non-notables. (PS I have added some refs/cits to the other Brazilian geologist AP Crosta who also seems notable to me) (Msrasnw (talk) 11:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • That's not an interview. It's an article on the risks of oil exploration and deep (ground) waters in which Szatmari is mentioned in passing. As for your suggestion that people working in non-US/UK countries should be subjected to more relaxed standards, I think that is a really bad idea. I know that such people have a harder time in science (heck, I'm one of them): they have to publish in a language not their own, they often have less generous funding, etc. However, science is an international enterprise and within science people are all held to the same standards. If somebody applies for grant funding, the money goes to the best proposal (or so one would hope), not to whom had to work hardest to get that proposal together. In addition, applying different standards would be impractical: not a few of these non-US/UK scientists at some point end up working in the US, so now we would have to distinguish between native-born or not? Finally, I would really resent it if my work would be held to a lower standard, just because I'm not from the US/UK. I am certain you did not intend it that way, but you surely can see that accepting such a proposal would be condescending. To get back from this more general point to the current topic, Szatmari's employer is Pertrobas, a huge oil company, so he certainly did not face the same funding problems as academics working at Brazilian Universities do. Many Hungarians that I know speak excellent English, the current universal language of science (including geology), and there is no reason why Szatmari could not have published high-impact articles in English. Fact is, he didn't, which is what this discussion is about: he definitely does not meet WP:ACADEMIC and I don't see any evidence of him meeting WP:GNG either. --Crusio (talk) 10:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The Sociedade Brasileira de Geologia has 6 different awards. If Szatmari was an important figure even only within Brazil, I would have expected him to have received at least one of these (and note that these national awards obviously don't classify as the "major international awards" mentioned in WP:PROF). --Crusio (talk) 11:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another reply: My worry is more along the lines of - a leading Brazilian (or Estonian or Argentinian academic ) notable in their own country would not be allowed in - whereas anyone notable in the US or UK is deemed internationally notable. For example being "honorary president" of a national science symposium organised by national science organisation would be ok for notability if it was in the US or UK but not if it is in Brazil. This seems to me to indicate we may have a bias. The language issue compounds things. Somehow publishing/researching in Portuguese seems to be being dismissed. I tried web of science for P Szatmari and it calculates a h–index of 11 for him (26 things cited 350 times with an average citations per item of 13.46 and a h-index of 11) – but for example this paper (Szatmari, P., Batista, J., Francolin, L., Zanotto, O. & Wolff S., 1987. Evoluçao Tectônica da margem equatorial brasileira. Revista brasileira de Geociências, 17, no. 2, 180-188). is not included in that. This paper seems to me a fairly well citated paper. Using this (Googling it) it seems to have many more than 20 citations. Also there is another brief mention in the notable Brazilian paper - DIÁRIO DE S. PAULO 20/11/2010 País explora camada há meio século. Where he is described as "Peter Szatmari, um dos principais especialistas sobre sal no mundo e colaborador da Petrobras". I hope I am not being condescending rather my aim is to try to be fair by trying to reconize that we might have to try harder to find evidence of notabilty and perhaps be more flexible on interpretation of our guidlines. Also I would like to suggest that your reference to the "major international awards" mentioned in WP:PROF, seems to be potentially misleading. My reading of WP:Prof 2 "The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national ... level." and "Some lesser significant academic honors and awards that confer a high level of academic prestige also can be used to satisfy Criterion 2. Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, of notable foundations and trusts (e.g. the Guggenheim Fellowship, Linguapax Prize), etc. Significant academic awards and honors can also be used to partially satisfy Criterion 1". And would therefor like to note that national awards such as those given by the Sociedade Brasileira de Geologia might well count as the "major national awards" of notable notable academic societies mentioned in WP:PROF. In an argumentative spirit but with sincere good wishes :) (Msrasnw (talk) 16:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • Comment I would not consider being honorary president of a 100-200 participants national symposium in the US a sign for notability either. As far as I am concerned, there is no double standard here. And like it or not, if a scientists wants his work to have some impact, it has to be published in English (personally, I think Dutch would be much easier, of course...) Twenty-odd citations for a paper really is not very much. An in-passing mention in a newspaper, be it Brazilian or American, does not establish notability. And as I have argued above, I am not even convinced that he is notable on a national level, given that the has not received any of the several awards that the Sociedade Brasileira de Geologia gives yearly, has not been president of that society, or has been the subject of significant coverage in any national newspaper. --Crusio (talk) 18:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—Difficult; it's a page I'd like to support, but it doesn't quite meet our notability criteria. He may satisfy the criteria later though, so it could perhaps be archived under the geology wikiproject.—RJH (talk)
  • Keep — the page is well-referenced, demonstrating notability. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 17:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The biography is well referenced, and this geologist is working on the very important search for oil off the coast of Brazil. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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