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Talk:Charles F. Lynch

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New life for a deleted article

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This article on Charles F. Lynch serves as a comparison of the professor test (WP:NPROF) against other standards of notability. For fun, I use the example of cricket. Under WP:NCRIC, a player who stepped once onto a first class pitch is assumed notable and eligible for an article. A single scorecard is all that is required. No press coverage is needed. We don't even need to know the cricketer's given name. To wit: S. Dhanayake
Dr. Lynch is an eminent cancer researcher. He and his staff have tracked every cancer case in Iowa for the last half century. He and the AFS staff track the history of 90,000 farm workers since 1990 to see what maladies afflict them. He is, apparently, happy with his job, and doesn't spend time polishing his resume or trumpeting his own success. Lynch and his teams work silently with no apparent self-promotion. He doesn't volunteer to take interviews. As a result, press coverage is skinny, like this [1]. It's easy to find a half dozen reasons to dump this article:

  • Lynch doesn't sit in a named professorial chair.
  • No significant impact ... demonstrated by independent reliable sources.
  • No "highly prestigious award" or "elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society."
  • The citation counts you provided did not come our only two trusted sources: Clarivate or Scopus.

Any one of these complaints may be used to support a speedy delete under G4.
The implications are clear: an egghead who publishes relentlessly and participates in long term scientific studies must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to belong in Wikipedia. A cricketer or dart-thrower with a single scorecard is a shoo-in. At the last AfD, the discussion turned on whether Lynch was a (full) Professor or Distinguished Professor. Further, there was discussion of whether his directorship of the AFS or the Iowa Cancer Study was academic or not. If it wasn't, the argument went, regular press articles were required. It strikes me that this is wikilawyering intended to keep dart-throwers in and academics out. I apologize in advance if this observation is interpreted as POINTY. You can watch his Youtube. He's not especially charismatic. Nevertheless, other academics appreciate his work enough to cite it 30,000 times. Consider that before you select WP:CSD.