Talk:Richard Wurtman

A timeless scientist *chuckles*

Honestly, a biographical article with this much text but no birth date? I wasn't able to find one myself, but maybe the people who wrote it are more familiar with the person. Chymæra (talk) 16:15, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Developing the article

I'll leave the adding of biography messageboxes etc to editors more familiar with those things, since they already know what to do and I'd have to find out - something I can't justify at this stage.

Nor can I do much in the way of developing this article because time does not permit. I recognise the name of Richard Wurtman of course: it's impossible to study neurotransmitters and their precursors without stumbling onto Wurtman's works, and reference to his works in other articles and (of course) standard textbooks. So this fellow is notable, and it's good to see someone has made the effort to create an article.

The messagebox currently atop the article page is justified. The brief synopsis of Wurtman is succinct and nicely laid out. But as an article in Wikipedia it needs development using unafilliated sources. That can be easier said than done, if the person is not someone about whom whole books and articles have been written. In such cases you have to build the article somewhat piecemeal, and you have to be able to tolerate developmental phases the article may go through, such as a bit of structure loss, or undeveloped structure.

The easiest way that I can see to build this article is to capitalise on the three dot-point areas of research that Wurtman has been involved in. If there is enough to write on each area, you can turn them into sections. Or perhaps subsections within a section called "Research" - this latter would be easier I think.

You could jump straight into that - but you'll likely have sections or sub-sections which are empty or contain a handful of sentences. Another way is to add text under each dot-point, until it gets to a point that the need for a sub-section is self evident. This latter is what I will do in the first instance with anything I come across. I may also add some publications to the publications section. But any input from me is primarily designed to get the ball rolling, and indicate how you can do it.

If you're unfamiliar with article development, there's lots of ways to get familiar, including simply building this one. Don't be shy to make links to other articles and contribute to their development, even if there's no obviously direct return for this article. You can be certain that by developing other articles, you will come across information that will facilitate development of this article, and you'll develop your skills along the way. And anyway, the cleverest of all marketers know damn well that if they contribute to areas that are not clearly and directly related to their own area of interest, they'll get an indirect benefit. So for example those articles which have been generated by people working for or affiliated with various organisations are shooting themselves in the foot if the articles are clearly not neutral - write as a skeptic, even if you think there is merit in that which you are showing skepticism about. True skeptics can never be ideologues, even though this doesn't prevent them having strong views. So try not to get stuck on any ideological style - ideology is the antithesis of free-thinking. At its very best, it limits otherwise good thinkers. At its worst, it literally prevents any meaningful intellectual growth. And don't be shy to register rather than using an i.p. address. Wotnow (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Update

I think this page really needs to be cleaned up, and I'm not sure I'm the person to do it... B (talk) 23:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I did some. more to go. he apparently sued Wiley and another scientist over a letter that Wiley published. Back in the late 1990s. hm. Jytdog (talk) 04:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)