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Template:Did you know nominations/Robert E. Finnigan

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:06, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

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Robert E. Finnigan

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Created by Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk). Self-nominated at 19:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC).

New enough, long enough, QPQ done, Earwig detects no copyvios. I'm having trouble verifying some of the statements from the cited sources.
  • "Finnigan Instrument Corporation's GC/MS was the technical underpining that made it possible for the EPA to carry out its regulatory efforts in the 1970s." This is a bit too much on the side of WP:SYNTHESIS, since it is implied but not explicitly stated in the source, which also mentions systems from Hewlett–Packard and others.
  • added better 1979 citation to support this. Hopefully avoids WP:SYNTHESIS. See below.
  • "In 1979, the EPA listed the Finnigan GC/MS as its standard instrument for the analysis of environmental pollutants in water and wastewater." This is cited to an alumni award biography, but it's unclear whether they were "listed" or just widely used. The other source for that citation merely mentions that EPA's standard manual was generally based on the Finnigan instrument.
  • I've rephrased to avoid the word "listing" and added a better citation from 1979, which should support ALT2 cleanly and possibly, if you feel WP:SYNTHESIS is now avoided, ALT or ALT1 as well. For the Wikipedia article's sentence "By 1979, the the Finnigan GC/MS was the standard instrument at the EPA for the analysis of environmental pollutants in water and wastewater", See this reference: Middleditch, Brian S., ed. (1979). Practical Mass Spectrometry: A Contemporary Introduction. Boston, MA: Springer US. p. 220. ISBN 978-1461329848. Retrieved 23 February 2017. It states: "The EPA has made a major commitment to GC-MS instruments... Most of the GC-MS instruments in the EPA are Finnigan quadrupoles with DEC PDP-8 minicomputer data systems... The many needs for firm qualitative organic identifications include ...{i) the causes of taste or odor in drinking water, (ii) the distribution of toxic compounds in surface or wasterwater..." Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 19:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
  • "By 1984, all public water was to be tested by using a Finnigan GC/MS or accepted equivalent." I don't see this in the referenced source.
  • Charalambous, George (1984). Analysis of foods and beverages : modern techniques. Orlando: Academic Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-12-169160-8. Retrieved 6 February 2017. "In 1971, the EPA, already concerned with this problem, selected a computerized GC/MS system as its principle tool for the analysis of drinking water and of industrial and municipal effluents that are returned to the public water supply. [Finnigan was the only system available from 1968 to 1971.] ... by mid-1984, all public water in the United States must be controlled using these or equivalent methods."
These points need clarification or revision, but once fixed this article should pass. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 21:51, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
@Mary Mark Ockerbloom: Thanks for the changes. I'm maybe being a bit nitpicky, but "standard" implies to me that there was a formal decision to obligate themselves or others to it, but the quote only says that "most" of the GC/MS systems were Finnigan's. The Charalambous source says that the EPA selected "a GC/MS system" as its standard, which I interpret to mean that the method was selected over alternative methods, but it doesn't say that Finnigan was formally chosen as a standard vendor. I'd approve ALT2 with a word like "preferred" or "predominantly used", which would be more in line with the sources.
As for ALT0/ALT1, I think they can be fixed with some rewording. The current wording implies to me that without Finnigan's instrument, the EPA's work would have been impossible or much more difficult. However, the sources (e.g. Grayson) make it clear that HP had a similar system that was in contention for being selected by the EPA, and a smaller number of these were later purchased. A more accurate way to present it would be that the GC/MS technology itself was fundamental to, or the technical underpining of, the EPA's work, and that Finnigan's instrument was the first, and was selected by the EPA as its initial vendor and/or the vendor predominantly used in the 1970s. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 03:44, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the revisions! All three revised hooks good to go. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 17:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
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