Talk:D. Gary Young/Archive 1

Slanted

This biography appears to have been written by someone who had a beef with Donald Gary Young and most of the info is quite slanted. Some of the cited information sources have very little to no credibility. What is the best course of action for correcting the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aulonocara (talk • contribs) 18:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

The first step to find reliable sources, specifically secondary sources which are independent of Young and Young Living. The usually rules out press-releases and promotional material. If you are involved with Young Living, you should also read about having a conflict of interest. Grayfell (talk) 20:18, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

There is some information in this article that I believe falls into WIkipedia's policies on Biographies [of living persons] and disparaging remarks. The section about Young's daughter drowning during child birth seems to be in conflict with the policy on prolonging the victimization. In addition, the section about Young being arrested for practicing without a license seems to be in conflict with the policy on a living person being innocent until proven guilty of a crime and convicted by a court of law. There is no record or Young ever being convicted.--Aulonocara (talk) 18:32, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I've adjusted the wording of the criminal conviction. According to this source, he was convicted and sentenced to a sixty-day suspended sentence, a fine, and one year probation. It also says there was an outstanding bench warrant out for him for violating that probation, but details are sketchy enough that I'm not sure how or if we would include that. WP:AVOIDVICTIM is mainly people notable for only one or two events, which is not the case here, but regardless, it's not intended to be a rationale for omitting important factual information just because it's unfortunate. Avoiding victimization means that such info needs to be handled with care. The paragraph factually describes events which are significant to both his personal biography, and his professional history as a medical personality. Can you figure out a way to rephrase this to be more respectful without removing any important details? Grayfell (talk) 22:11, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Here are the proposed edits to the section to make it more respectful yet continue to retain the important information. I asked a 3rd party to write this to insure that there was no problems relating to the policy on conflict of interest...

In 1982, Young experienced the tragedy of losing a child. During a water birth, Young’s baby girl died from oxygen deprivation.[4] While the practice of water birthing is more widely accepted today, in 1982 Washington State health department caseworkers and prosecutors had threatened the Young’s with prosecution if they attempted a water birth. [6] In Young's case, authorities ruled the entire case as accidental. [6] However, Washington State authorities continued to target Young as a part of an ongoing initiative against any non-licensed medical practitioners.

Initially, law enforcement officials sent a woman undercover to convince Young to help with a water birth. With the tragedy of his daughter's death recently in his mind, he refused to help her or anyone else carry out a water birth. Unable to force him to do a water birth, she convinced him to start discussing prenatal care. She also told Young that she had a mother dying from cancer who needed help. After he tried to help the woman out, she revealed that she was an undercover officer. Washington state police later arrested Young for practicing medicine without a license, a charge in which Young pled guilty to.[5][6][7][8][9]​Aulonocara (talk) 15:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles use neutral language and avoid euphemisms. That the child's death was a tragedy should be obvious and can remain unstated. That may seem clinical, but this is an encyclopedia, and that's part of writing with a formal WP:TONE. The section also included too much editorializing language. We cannot possibly know what was on Young's mind then or at any other time, so we must state facts, or for unverifiable content such as opinion, we can quote statements from experts with clear attribution. Grayfell (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you tall me some specifics on what wasn't approved with the last edits? We simply revised the content to make it cover just the facts and be more respectful to Mr. Young. The way the article is currently worded makes it come off as being negatively biased towards Mr. Young, which seems to me as being against Wikipedia's policies on keeping a neutral tone. It seems pretty obvious to me that the original author intended to attack Mr. Young's reputation by only highlighting controversial information in Young's life and doing it in a disrespectful manner.Aulonocara (talk) 18:22, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@Aulonocara: Hello. When you say "we", I need to tell you that Wikipedia accounts should not be shared. Please carefully review Wikipedia:Sock puppetry, especially WP:ROLE, and confirm that you understand, and that your account is limited to one person. This is important.

As for your comments, information must be supported by reliable sources. Many of the specific details you added were not supported by the attached sources. This is a problem for several reasons: it misrepresents the sources, and it also goes against Wikipedia's policy of verifiability. Comments about the relative commonness of water birthing in Washington were editorializing. By introducing subjective opinions as facts, you are creating an emotional impression of Young's behavior which is not supported by an impartial assessment of the sources. Although water-birth might be slightly more common, it's far from mainstream, and by implying that it's now considered normal, you're downplaying the specifics of the incident, such as that it was not held at a facility designed for such procedures.

Since Young is a medical professional, this information is biographically significant. If you can articulate how this is disrespectful, that would help, but describing it as such doesn't give an editor free rein to remove or alter sourced content.

Again, please confirm that you have read about sock puppetry, and that only one person is using this account. Grayfell (talk) 18:38, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, when I said "we" I was referring to having a third person writer with no affiliation to Gary Young, write the edits, which I then posted with my account. Only one person has access to using this account.Aulonocara (talk) 19:41, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

That still appears to be account sharing to me, and it just raises more questions. Why are you not writing your own contributions directly? Why doesn't this person create their own account? Does that mean that you have an affiliation with Gary Young? If so, having another person write your contributions still means you have a conflict of interest. You alone are responsible for edits made by your account. Grayfell (talk) 20:08, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I see your point on conflict of interest and account sharing. My only desire with editing this article is to make it more neutral. Right now it just focuses on the negative and controversial events from Mr Young's past. I am the only one that uses this account, but I do get another person to write the edits because I wanted it to be completely neutral as to avoid it potentially being in conflict with the policy on conflict of interest. Additionally, I have web development experience and am more familiar with editing articles on Wikipedia. So the article is written by a professional writer with no affiliation with Gary Young, and then published by me. Perhaps the solution to the negative focus of this article is not to try to change it, but to add more to it, so that it doesn't just focus on the controversial events in Mr. Young's past.Aulonocara (talk) 18:33, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Okay, do you see my point, though? Are you saying you will stop sharing your account? You should only publish what you write. Hiring a professional writer (!) makes your COI problems worse, not better. If you do not agree to stop this behavior, I will bring this account to a noticeboard for wider attention.

Trying to add more to this article just to change the supposedly negative focus would be false balance. Content should only be included based on reliable, independent sources. WP:PRIMARY sources should only be used for non-controversial details. If you know of reliable sources which discuss Young, but are not affiliated with him or his companies, then please link them here for discussion. Grayfell (talk) 22:13, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok I see what you are saying about only using the account to publish content that I have personally written. I'll agree to your request and will only use my account to publish my own content, written by me.Aulonocara (talk) 23:53, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposed content on humanitarianism

The content below added by Lithuanianlady is one instance of humanitarian activity insufficient to substantiate it to be included in the article per WP:UNDUE. More rigorous secondary sources are needed to confirm Young's supposed humanitarian activity per WP:SECONDARY. --Zefr (talk) 16:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Donald Gary Young and a Japanese team distributed warm clothes and blankets to the quake victims of the April 25, 2015 earthquake, and reached more than 150 households in Yarsha Village who struggled to find shelter and warmth, reaching the Mirge Village Development Committee-9 of Dolakha District.[1]

3 references were added regarding this material, all 3rd party sources. Zefr is taking off material that is correctly cited and sourced. --Lithuanianlady (talk) 17:00, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Bibliography content in the article

This source below, which is a duplicate of Young's bibliographic information on his own website, was entered by Lithuanianlady. I do not feel any of his bibliographic information needs to be displayed because Young's website is shown in two locations in the article. --Zefr (talk) 20:31, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Donald Gary Young authored books including:

• 1996: Young, Donald Gary. Aromatherapy: The Essential Beginning (2nd ed.). Essential Press Pub. ISBN 978-0-964-81870-5.

Zefr: The edit war to delete this information is hostile. If you are using two accounts to try to delete this information and other relevant information, that is against wikipedia's policy WP:SOCK. The source above does not link to his website, it is a credible source and something that he wrote. It is not a link to his website, and there are many other books and publications that he has written that should also be included, showing that he is a researcher and author. This is relevant information that should be allowed on this article. --Lithuanianlady (talk) 20:43, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

The book is the first entry on his website. That is sufficient; we don't need to display his works in the article when they are conspicuous on the personal website. Please wait for feedback from other editors. --Zefr (talk) 20:48, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Bibliographies are common and well-established components of biographies of authors. I do not see much value in including every paper he's coauthored, but a list of published books seems like it could be acceptable with caution. Most (all?) of his books are self-published in some way, and any bibliography should explain that to limit this being used for undue promotional content. ISBNs are useful for this, as they provide an easy, non-spammy way to link to more info. If there is no ISBN, or only Amazon's in-house ASIN exists, that's a bad sign for the book, and again, it must be made very clear that this is self-published (ISBN books can also be self-published, though). Bibliographies belong near the end of articles, per MOS:ORDER.

I do not think it would be helpful or appropriate to include every paper he's authored or coauthored, as the article did before. Most of those are from niche journals of unestablished reliability and his role as 'co-author' is too vague to be particularly informative. His academic qualifications as a 'researcher' are very thin, to say the least. Including that kind of detail gives the impression of authority beyond what has been established by reliable independent sources. Although not directly applicable, WP:MEDRS is worth a review for things like this.

Accusation of sock-puppetry are strange and disruptive in this context, and should be either backed up with evidence, or dropped now, per Wikipedia:No personal attacks, which is a policy that all editors must follow. Grayfell (talk) 22:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, although I feel that any entry on his article page is a duplicate of this and is clearly both WP:PROMO and non-compliant with WP:MEDRS, i.e., pure BS, as stated by the FDA, and misleading to the typical WP user who may believe there is actual truth and value in such publications. --Zefr (talk) 23:08, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Hmm... Yeah, I think I agree. Duplicating content found on other websites isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself, but I share your caution. MEDRS is useful for assessing the quality of medical sources, but the existence of non-MEDRS complaint sources can still be mentioned by Wikipedia when relevant. If such sources are supporting medical claims, that needs to stop immediately, but I don't see that this is the case. WP:MOS-BIBLIO is clear, but it hinges on a specific and subtle point. Is Young an "author" as defined by reliable sources? The article doesn't currently say that, it just calls him a businessman (it also said entrepreneur, but I removed that because it seems redundant and promotional). As a businessman, his self-published books could be considered more products he's selling, in which case they're inappropriate to list, per WP:NOTCATALOG, but if sources of substance are describing him as an author, this should be assessed more carefully. Grayfell (talk) 00:07, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

• Is Young an "author" as defined by reliable sources? I can't find any evidence for WP:RS to indicate his publications are accepted or referenced by scientists or clinicians. WP:PROMO resides in the background because the books promote the overall Gary Young story to Young Living members and customers. It's a point to address for anyone wanting to highlight his publications in the article. --Zefr (talk) 02:47, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
• Zefr, Please explain why you then removed his clinical work? As that work has been accepted by clinicians, published in journals and has been presented in front of clinicians at conferences; one of the highest honors a clinician who publishes can receive from peers. They were also appropriately cited. FunWithTesla (talk) 16:35, 21 October 2016 (UTC)FunWithTesla

Objectively, medical science in general and Wikipedia require WP:MEDRS sources to support any scientific statement or interpretation about clinical qualifications of scientists and clinical effectiveness of drugs or candidate drugs. None of this applies to Young who is not a scientist, not a physician, not a valid doctor and not an expert on anything medical or clinical; simply, he is a fraud as the minimal section under Controversy and any Google search will reveal. Anyone wanting to edit the article about his supposed clinical work needs WP:MEDRS secondary and review evidence to support it. --Zefr (talk) 19:52, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I've removed the lone bibliography entry. Aulonocara, Lithuanianlady, FunWithTesla, and others have now been blocked for sock puppetry, and there's also the whole undisclosed paid editing thing. This is a pretty good example of Wikipedia's hallowed legal principle of "whoever smelt it dealt it", so we're done here. Grayfell (talk) 22:43, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Narrative flow

This article has a very poor narrative flow - the size of the "controversy" section suggests that this content should be in the main body of the article, as it appears to constitute the bulk of information about the subject. I'll take a second look tomorrow, but this is very disjointed in a way that is likely to confuse the reader, and needs a lot of work. bd2412 T 04:56, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

After further review, it has become clear that this article requires administrative action. I have moved the following content here from the article to address WP:BLP concerns, particularly WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPREMOVE. Some of this material has been written in a confusing manner that creates negative inferences unsupported by reliable sources, or which singles out relatively unimportant events for WP:UNDUE focus. This discussion is not intended to permanently excise this material from the article, but to discuss and develop consensus for which pieces meet our stringent WP:BLP requirements, and how these pieces should be presented in the context of the article as a whole. bd2412 T 15:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Controversies

In 1982, Young's daughter died in childbirth during a water birth; the cause of death, according to Rachel Lori Young's death certificate was attributed to cardiopulmonary arrest. Another source attributes the death to oxygen deprivation. Young had previously been warned against the practice by health inspectors and prosecutors when he planned a similar underwater birth; state officials advised Young and his then-wife Donna that they could be prosecuted if the infant was harmed.

Washington State police arrested Young for practicing medicine without a license, a charge later leading to conviction. No criminal charges were taken against Young but an investigation took place into his practices. In early 1983 an undercover police officer approached Young about performing underwater birth. He refused, but offered prenatal care and alternative treatment for her dying mother, whom she said suffering from cancer.

From 1986 to 1987, Young was running the Rosarita Beach Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico where it provided blood analyses by mail. The Los Angeles Times reported that analysts for the clinic misdiagnosed samples and failed to differentiate between human, chicken, and cat blood, a difference which a trained hematopathologist would notice immediately.

FDA warning

On September 22, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a Warning Letter to Young and his company that many of the essential oil products listed on the Young Living website or in its social media are "promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs ... because they are intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease," yet have no scientific evidence for being effective against any disease.

References

Instead of this drama, why not just fix it? There are like 6 secondary sources there; not even a little difficult to trim the primary sources. Not difficult to intergrate into the flow. You appear to have acted administratively in moving this here so I will not restore it and fix it myself but what you have done here is overly complicated. Jytdog (talk) 16:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

It takes time to evaluate these claims and fully research the subject. The issue with the primary sources is that for certain claims, there are no secondary sources. For example, I can not find a reliable secondary source asserting the significance of the FDA letter. I do intend to fix it, but this will not be done overnight. I am seeking further opinion on certain of these matters from other BLP experts. bd2412 T 16:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I am restoring the primary point of controversy (the misdemeanor arrest/conviction) to the article. I am satisfied that the sources support the inclusion of this matter. However, I am specifying that this was in fact a misdemeanor, and working it into the flow of the body of the biography. bd2412 T 16:31, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

FDA letter was reported in a newspaper. Not hard to find secondary sources for this stuff. I don't understand the .. High Process here - was there an OTRS request or something?

References

-- Jytdog (talk) 16:46, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The Herald article on the FDA letter does not mention Donald Gary Young, and is not usable for a BLP. Although they name the CEO in the address block, FDA warning letters are directed at businesses, not individuals. We do not include them in articles on individuals unless they make some further assertion of wrongdoing by the individual. An example would be the FDA warning letter issued to Whole Foods Market in the past year, but not mentioned on the pages of Whole Foods Market co-CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb, despite both of them being named in the address block of the letter. I don't think there is anything "high" about the process here. Articles with overwhelming "controversy" sections are a red flag both for attack pages and BLP violations, and for plain bad organization. I am actually planning to start a project to find and flag articles with "controversy" or "criticism" sections that constitute more than half the article body text, so I have been looking for such instances. bd2412 T 16:58, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The comparison between this multi-level marketing outfit and a legit (if overpriced) normal retailer like Whole Foods is not apt nor is the comparison between the people. It is.... concerning that you would make it. FRINGE business selling FRINGE products. here is a daily beast article discussing the letter, the company, and the founder. Jytdog (talk) 17:40, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

For BLP purposes, the basic issue is the same. The person and the company are distinct entities. I have worked on FDA matters in the past (I wrote the article, Regulation of food and dietary supplements by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and am very familiar with the significance of the claim. As for the Daily Beast - well that, as a source, is another kettle of fish, but one that also makes the same distinction. It specifies that the FDA letter is in the context of the company ("the FDA issued the company a bureaucratic fatwa"), and discusses other things in the context of the individual (the "uncomfortable cult of personality" aspect). I would reiterate, I am not seeking to permanently exclude the removed material from the article; I am seeking to find airtight BLP-passing reliable sources for every controversial point (i.e. no WP:SYNTH cobbling together of controversial points, no WP:UNDUE controversies), and to restore those things which clearly pass that stringent standard, but in the complete context of the subject's narrative. That is why I have already restored the arrest and conviction material, which is undoubtedly the most controversial claim in the section. As for the other assertions in that section, I intend to come back to this article and fully vet them, but there is no particular urgency. This is not a particularly high-traffic page, so I am more concerned with doing it right than doing it fast. bd2412 T 18:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh for pete's sake, now you are trying to shove your views into the article based on your putative personal knowledge and even repeating the irrelevant claim in your edit note. Concerning that an admin would be doing that, and you are also conflating your admin authority and functioning as an editor when you do things like this revert, in a context where you are acting as an admin. I am running away and unwatching. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I am merely trying to abide by BLP. As noted before, I fully intend to restore materials which meet those high standards, once I have had time to vet the claims and insure that they are sourced up to BLP standards, and not undue. As for my "putative personal knowledge", I've pointed to a substantial article that I have written on that agency as evidence of my familiarity with the agency. I have also pointed to the fact that all FDA letters are address-blocked that way. The fact that Whole Foods is a "legit retailer" underscores the fact that the name of the corporate officer in the address block does not make such a letter a source with respect to that individual. As for the "revert", I was agreeing with you - I merely provided useful context. It would be incorrect to write "Young started using essential oils and these successfully eased his pain", but it would be equally wrong to say ""Young started using essential oils" as if his doing so was random and without explanation. My edit preserves your effort to remove the implication of "efficacy", while still explaining the reason as set forth in the sources. That is what an article with good narrative flow does, it explains things and connects developments to show the complete progress of the subject's life. bd2412 T 19:27, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Death of daughter

I have restored mention of the death of his daughter, but in the personal life section, as this is unrelated to the subject's source of notability. bd2412 T 20:22, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Sharon Reynolds incident

I have been unable to locate any reliable source asserting involvement by the BLP subject beyond ownership or operation of the business. Since the article ascribes all questionable acts to one identified employee, Sharon Reynolds, and makes no mention of Young other than his ownership of the establishment, inclusion here is would fall under WP:COATRACK. If sufficient sources exist, we should make a separate article on the Rosarita Beach Clinic, and move to that article mention of the fact an employee is alleged to have made such a diagnosis. If anyone can find a reliable source indicating that this was at the instruction or with the explicit knowledge of this article subject, please provide that here so that we can determine if there is consensus to include it, per BLP. bd2412 T 20:32, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

"Claim"

about this, see WP:CLAIM -- "says" is strongly preferred to "claims" ,especially when there are (ahem) BLP concerns. Really. Jytdog (talk) 22:54, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

• It says that because "claim" is more dubious than "says" - I thought you were trying to be more dubious there. However, per your objection, I will revert. bd2412 T 23:14, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Removal of well-sourced material from the article

Hey Hyperbolick, why did you remove this material from the article? What exactly is your BLP concern, given that the material you removed was sourced to The New Yorker, a magazine with one of the most unblemished reputations for fact-checking in the English-speaking world? A Train^talk 23:10, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

New Yorker or not it's trivial and overweighted to include. And Tijuana clinic material seems misrepresented. WP:COATRACK were raised before - weasel words to conflate actions of others. Hyperbolick (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

How is it trivial, exactly? The New Yorker found those facts significant enough to include a profile of the article subject, for obvious reasons: the medical misadventures of a medical practitioner are entirely germane. Also, I would argue that the New Yorker profile itself is now the single greatest argument for the subject's notability. The key facts in that profile are obviously important for this article. A Train^talk 23:25, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Out-denting to discuss something slightly different: Hyperbolick, did you intentionally roll back this edit? Or was that just collateral damage from you removing the material from the New Yorker article that I added? A Train^talk 23:29, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Simply maintaining pre-edit situation for discussion. And yes good sources can include trivial detail. Hyperbolick (talk) 23:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok, do you want to revert yourself and restore that edit please? I'm happy to discuss the inclusion of the New Yorker article's material but the specific edit I linked above was removing material that is not present in the sources. You have restored a demonstrably false assertion into this BLP. A Train^talk 23:45, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Go ahead, I won't complain of it. Hyperbolick (talk) 00:39, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay Hyperbolick, I've pinged some of the other users who'd been discussing this article recently but for the moment it looks like it's just you and me. Let's find a way to come to an agreement. I assume that by now you've read the New Yorker article in question. If not, please do so that we're both same page. It's right here.

When you reverted my edits, you said, Seems there was already discussion to remove these for BLP reasons. Better discuss first. The key issue I see here is that the discussion between bd2412 and Jytdog took place before the New Yorker article's publication. Given the high profile of the NYer and the magazine's reputation for fact-checking, I would argue that the biographical facts about Young presented in the article are now the things that he is most widely known for. Not having those things in the article is like omitting pyramid schemes from the Bernie Madoff article.

Just as an aside, you mentioned coatracking earlier. I invite you to look through my contributions over the years and see if you can find any evidence of me pushing any POV. I have never editing this article before, and my intent is simply to improve it. Let me know what you think. A Train^talk 09:40, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The New Yorker source is solid journalism and applies as a valid source. This version represents the facts and is not a violation of WP:BLP, as it is neutral and verifiable based on the sources with no original research. --Zefr (talk) 17:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I do have some reservations. This article was originally created basically as an advertisement. An editor who was correctly displeased by that nevertheless went too far in the other direction, turning it into an attack page, with relatively poorly sourced positive assertions being removed and replaced with equally poorly sourced negative assertions. Neither approach serves the purpose of encyclopedic balance. I don't think that the New Yorker article does much to change that. Frankly, the critical parts of that article look like they could have been copied directly out of the previous version of this Wikipedia page. The concern with the inclusion of the Tijuana clinic materials was never about the sourcing, but with the drawing of inferences not specifically stated in the text. Yes, you could get the impression from reading the New Yorker article that bad information was provided by the clinic from Young himself, but if you read carefully, it switches from telling the reader about something Young did to something another person did, stating that "she" replied to inquiries. In short, everything after the statement "Young opened a clinic in Tijuana" is no longer about Young. As noted in discussions above, this would be permissible in an article about the clinic, but it is deceptive to include it in an article on a specific individual other than the individual to whom the reporter spoke. Incidentally, the previous source identified that person as Sharon Reynolds; the New Yorker article is less informative as a source, since it omits that contextually important information.

Looking at the proposed revision, it would also be incorrect to use "Malpractice" as a header, as this is a legal term of art, and specifically implies legal accusations or determinations about the individual. Practicing medicine without a license is distinct from malpractice (an unlicensed practitioner can still provide competent medical treatment, and a licensed physician can still provide incompetent medical treatment). As noted, the material relating to improper conduct by the Tijuana clinic is not specifically about Young. Ownership of the clinic is attributed to Young, but no malpractice or other wrongdoing is specifically attributed with respect to that. Separating out the material also confuses the chronology of the article (see my essay on WP:Narrative flow), making it seem like something happened in the early 80s, followed by something else in 1989, followed by something else in 1993, followed by something else even more important in 1982, followed by something else even more important in 1986. However, none of these relate to the sole reason for which Young is allegedly notable, which is the sale of essential oils, which began in 1993.

Finally, with respect to the death of his daughter, if feels exploitative to group that with other issues. This incident is already covered in the personal life section, and I think that is the appropriate place for it. The New Yorker article, like the previous source, notes that the coroner's finding was that this was accidental. There is no direct allegation of fault or malpractice. If the implication of the Tijuana clinic matter and the criticism of essential oils is that Young is some kind of fraud who doesn't believe in the things that he is selling, then the death of his own child is not consistent with that narrative. The most glaring problem with the article in its current state is that it jumps from 1993 to 2015, with no sense that anything happened in between even though the New Yorker itself says that his company surpassed a billion dollars in sales in that time. bd2412 T 19:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

BD2412, thank you very much for that thoughtful response. Let me try to lay out my point of view.

First of all, with regard to the 'Malpractice' header, I entirely agree that that implies a legal finding that Wikipedia shouldn't be alleging.

For the rest of it, I think that the publication of the New Yorker piece has shifted the balance of WP:UNDUE in the other direction. Young's prominence in the article is by far the highest-profile, most reliable coverage of him that now exists. Compare the New Yorker's reputation for fact-checking to literally every other source in the ref section. To put it another way, the single most important secondary source about this subject is now that article -- and the corresponding Wikipedia article should reflect what the secondary sources say about the subject.

The New Yorker article is very clearly written to cast doubt on the efficacy of Young's products and pseudo-scientific worldview. Again, to put it another way, the most important secondary source on this subject thinks he's selling snake oil. This cannot be gleaned from the Wiki article as it stands. The point of WP:DUE is not to be nice, or to exhibit an artificial "both sides"-style of fairness -- it is to reflect what the best secondary sources say.

The facts in the New Yorker article are there for the express purpose of casting doubt on the efficacy of Young's products and business. If you've read the whole article, I think there is no other conclusion to be drawn from it. The Wiki article as it stands just reads like a profile for any old entrepreneur, and not the guy running a company where [a]ccording to a public income statement, more than ninety-four per cent of Young Living’s two million active members made less than a dollar in 2016. A Train^talk 21:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree, but the current article already states that Young "was arrested for practicing medicine without a license, leading to a misdemeanor conviction" and that he later ran a clinic in Tijuana (which inherently sounds dicey), spelling out in scare quotes the names of the treatments offered, and noting that other offerings include laetrile (which people should generally know was of questionable medical value) and naturopathy treatments (which are generally viewed with disdain). In short, the article already contains more negative information than the typical "profile for any old entrepreneur". I would also point out that all of this material appears to come from about a five year span (~1982 to ~1987) that ended thirty years ago. If you want to say that the New Yorker describes his essential oils business as a questionable venture, describe that in the context of what has happened in the last twenty-five years. Doesn't it seem odd, after all, that the notability of this person is predicated on what happened since 1993, but that 4/5 of the narrative content of the article is about what happened up until 1989? bd2412 T 21:28, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle that we've got a big "narrative gap", but we have to work with the sources we have. I'd love to be able to write about what D. B. Cooper did on the day he hijacked the plane, but we don't have the sources. I definitely do not think that it is better to leave well-sourced, relevant information out just to conform to an idealized form of the article we want. Again, the New Yorker thought this stuff was relevant—that has to matter to us, the guys who are creating a collection of information from the best secondary sources.

I disagree with you that the article is too negative. I don't think the Tijuana clinic sounds scary to the sort of person who signs up for Young Living, to be honest. If there is a lot of distasteful stuff to write about, is that our fault, or are we just reporting what's in the secondary sources? I'm sure that some people think that Cigarette is too negative, but that's what's in the sources. A Train^talk 21:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think the article is too negative. I think it contains about the right amount of negative information to give due coverage to the issues raised in that particular time period. With respect to the more encyclopedically significant ~25 years since the formation of Young's essential oil company, there really is a good amount of information (both positive and negative) in the New Yorker article, and there are at least some other sources covering that time period that can fill in details. bd2412 T 22:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't know myself, just was stalking the page after watching the similar issue a while ago. Do agree that this is not informative if it doesn't cover recent matters. Hyperbolick (talk) 12:39, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Can you rephrase this, Hyperbolick? I don't understand what your point is, it seems like you're saying that content that isn't recent shouldn't be in the article? A Train^talk 12:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) I am trying to agree with BD2412 without just repeating. Old information is fine in this or any article. But what use is it if there is barely a sentence on the thing the person is supposedly notable for? Imagine this guy has a heart attack and drops dead 20 years ago. There'd be no article on him at all now, nothing he did before that would qualify for one. It is background, and useful background, but distant background. Many notable people have misspent youth. Their articles touch on this and move onto more about more important later years. Hyperbolick (talk) 13:11, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd be curious to know A) what Wikipedia policies and and B) what portion of what BD2412 said you think any of what you just said aligns with. A Train^talk 13:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

(Out-dent) BD2412, thank you for the thoughtful discussion so far. I think we're in agreement that the New Yorker article is an important new source and that that should be reflected in the article. You have concerns that the article pays insufficient attention to what the subject is most notable for, namely running a large (and by some measures, very successful) multi-level marketing company selling alternative medicine. I am 100% behind this. I propose that:

• We get rid of the personal life section entirely. This guy is not notable for having a wife.
• I find additional material in the New Yorker article (or other WP:RS )that discusses the rise and growth of the company, and work that into the article. The aim of this is to address your concern about the narrative gap, and to add at least a good paragraph of material about Young Living.
• We keep the bit about the Tijuana clinic, but pare it down to one sentence. A medical clinic run by a guy who is notable for selling medicine is relevant to the article.
• We keep the bit about the death of his daughter in a water birth that he facilitated. I don't love that I just wrote that sentence, but the simple fact is that the most important secondary source (and even his own self-published primary sources) about this figure discuss the death in the context of his health clinic in Spokane that provided unlicensed water birthing services. It's in the sources and it is germane, given that he is notable for offering medical products and services. However, we keep this to one or two sentences and we do not belabour the point.

With the addition of more material that discusses Young Living, we will have a more balanced article that puts more weight on the period of the subject's life for which he is notable. What do you think? A Train^talk 13:09, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

• I think we are moving in the right direction, but will comment further after I get back from running some errands. bd2412 T 13:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Awesome. I'm in no particular rush, I just want to make sure we can arrive at something that we both agree on. I'm very confident that we can do that. A Train^talk 13:51, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts on the above proposal.

We get rid of the personal life section entirely - I disagree with this. We routinely, almost automatically, have personal life sections for article subjects if there is anything to say. It's true that this is usually not a point of notability, but that's why they go at the bottom of the page.

I find additional material in the New Yorker article (or other WP:RS )that discusses the rise and growth of the company - that would be exactly what is needed here.

We keep the bit about the Tijuana clinic, but pare it down to one sentence - the article currently contains the sentence "As of 1986, Young was running a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, called the Rosarita Beach Clinic, where he offered a "Blood Crystallization Test", "Orthomolecular Cell Therapy," laetrile, and a procedure in which electrical current was run through blood taken from a person and then infused back into them, along with other naturopathy treatments for diseases like lupus and cancer". I don't think we need to pare it down, particularly; we could note somewhere in there that conventional medical authorities frown on such treatments.

We keep the bit about the death of his daughter in a water birth that he facilitated - the article currently says in the personal life section, "Young and a former wife had a daughter who died of oxygen deprivation just after being born in a water birth; they had attempted a similar birth with a prior daughter but a prosecutor and health worker had threatened prosecution, and that daughter had been born safely". Perhaps this can be clarified further, but I still have a very uncomfortable gut-level feeling about including this in the body of the article. My basic feeling on this is that if it is included in the body of the article at all, then it would also need to say that the death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner, which would cause this to occupy an entirely disproportionate amount of the article. There is also another contextual problem - water births were considered an exotic fad in the 80s, which would have led to more skeptical reporting, but have since become much more commonplace. I think there is a tendency of sources to try and make this incident fit a narrative that it doesn't necessarily comfortably fit. I am certainly open to reaching some intermediate position on this.

I do think that the key to this is find an appropriate amount of material to cover the last thirty years, so that the article is primarily focused on the source of the subject's notability. bd2412 T 19:04, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I think the next steps are clear. Next week, most likely, I'll come back (and ping you when I do) with some more material for the Young Living section of the article. I will also re-write the Tijuana clinic line, and I will take a stab at the Spokane clinic lines as well. I'm confident we can cover all of the major bio points that the New Yorker does without spending a disproportionate about of time on the pre-Young Living stuff, but I hope you understand that I still feel strongly that this is germane.

Thanks again BD2412 for your collegial attitude and the effort you've put into explaining your views and trying to see mine. This is the kind of thing I edit Wikipedia for. A Train^talk 19:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

• I am opposed to the paring down of description of the FRINGE activities of this person. I respect BLP very much but this is going too far to downplay the FRINGE activities of this person and this goes beyond what BLP calls for. Generally I don't favor including personal details about where people live and their spouses and children, but in this case, that his activities have extended to their personal life (the drowning death of his own child) is very relevant to their public life, and i believe that including that would pass any RfC. Jytdog (talk) 20:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I don't believe anyone is proposing to pare down any of that material at this point. The question is how best to present that in the context of the subject's entire life. I would also point out that the subject's more recent activity - selling "essential oils", in part through an Amway-like sales structure - is itself easily characterized as a fringe activity, and on a much larger scale than the previous activities. There is good language in the New Yorker article to that effect. It's not as though we are trying to say that he did fringe things in the 80s, and has since moved on to mainstream medical activities. bd2412 T 20:17, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay ladies & gents, I have re-factored the article as proposed above, including material from every reliable source I could find after an exhaustive search: the previously discussed New Yorker article [2], the original LA Times story that definitively links Young with the clinic in Tijuana [3], a Daily Beast profile from 2014 [4], and another article from the Salt Lake Tribune [5]. This is now an exhaustively referenced article that (in my opinion) accurately reflects what all of the reliable secondary sources have to say about the subject. What do we think? A Train^talk 14:18, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that it is a good expansion towards material remain concerned about a few things - first, the article seems very tilted to the negative, although I grant that this reflects the bulk of coverage. Second, I continue to believe that it is inappropriate to include reference to the death of his daughter in a position that associates it with the controversies asserting quackery. I understand that sources like to group these things for dramatic effect, but we are not in the dramatization business. I also think that it is important to distinguish the acts of the person from the acts of their businesses. With respect to the Tijuana clinic, if we are going to include the animal blood misdiagnosis, we should specify that the Times "submitted cat and chicken blood to clinic employee Sharon Reynolds, who failed to recognize". Otherwise, it seems to imply knowledge of Young's direct involvement in that specific incident. With respect to Young Living, imagine that every sentence had to start with "Donald Young did X" - what would we include then, and how would we phrase it? For example, the execs who left to form doTerra include people who were not merely fired from Young Living, but (per the New Yorker) fired by Young personally. bd2412 T 15:42, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks as ever for your thoughtful collaboration BD2412. Let me start with our point of agreement: the Young Living section. I agree that it is suboptimal, and I even thought that as I was writing most of it. The problem is that we are effectively hamstrung by our sources. There is very little discussion of Young Living in the mainstream press (i.e. reliable sources). Almost all of it is negative in tone and intent, and much of it fails to discuss Young's hand in the company's actions; it's a privately held business, they have no public shareholders to whom they are accountable, so that makes sense. In fact, most of what is in the article about the company's actions with regard to Mr. Young come from terrible sources that I have left in out of inertia: stuff like Direct Selling News, which I may go nominate for deletion, actually. I will attempt to refactor this section.

With regard to the daughter, I agree to the extent that the subject is sensitive and should be dealt with carefully. However, I strongly believe that it belongs in the article. To a certain extent, I believe that our hands are tied: we are creating a synthetic document that combines the reporting of the most important reliable sources. The most important reliable source about Young is beyond question Rachel Monroe's New Yorker article, which gives prominent place to the story. We have a duty to the reader to transmit the entire story of this person, not to pick and choose based on our own comfort or lack thereof about the facts. The reader deserves to know that a man offering controversial unlicensed childbirth services caused a child to die as a result of that practice—not because we have some moral duty, but because it's in the most prominent sources.

I feel similarly about the Tijuana clinic. Again, we are not the ones drawing inferences between the clinic and Young: the New Yorker, the Spokane Chronicle, and the LA Times are. We are transmitting what is in the sources. I could make an argument that it's Young's clinic and the buck stops with him, or that to name the receptionist as the person at fault is original research, but frankly I think those arguments are superfluous. We have invented none of these facts, they are simply the facts as they are reported in the sources.

So to sum up: I agree that the Young Living section needs another pass or two. I strongly disagree about excising the TJ clinic and the water birth. Have I swayed you? A Train^talk 11:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that the most significant issue to resolve here is how to address the death of the daughter. I absolutely agree that this must be included in the article, but would include it in the personal life section. Creating a synthetic document that reflects the information provided by the sources does not require that we mimic the order of presentation in the sources. Again, it doesn't really fit the narrative (even in the sources) that Young is some kind of snake-oil salesman who can't really believe in what he's selling. It feels like a personal tragedy shoehorned into that narrative. I note that, according to the Doug Clark article cited in this article, when undercover officers approached Young to perform an underwater birth in 1983, he declined to do that (although he did offer unlicensed prenatal care for the mother and cancer treatments for the grandmother). Perhaps we need to solicit additional opinions on the question.

With respect to the Tijuana Clinic, I added the name of the employee directly identified by the primary source to report the incident. I am fine with it as it stands now. As this is a BLP (and really, even if it weren't), it is important to avoid creating inferences that the careless reader will be likely to misinterpret. The current phrasing strikes that balance.

Direct Selling News is a different issue, and one that we haven't taken up before. I am of the opinion that if information is out there in dubious sources, the solution is not to omit the information, but to appropriately qualify the source as dubious. People and companies make all kinds of claims about themselves through sources like these; we can report these claims as claims (e.g., something like "through Direct Selling News, a promotional outlet for such businesses, Young claims that in 1989, he started cultivating plants in Spokane, Washington and built two distillation units"). The information is not inherently suspicious, because there's no good reason for a person to lie about the date or the location where they started doing something like that. If it is not sourced anywhere else, then it does no harm to provide a dubious source with a "per this dubious source" qualifier. bd2412 T 16:07, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that's all fair. I think you have made some insightful points about the daughter. I think it's a very good idea to solicit more opinions; I'm sure if we give it a week we'll have a few more voices here on the talk page or we can go actively solicit some. A Train^talk 20:03, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I am still hoping that some additional editors will weigh in with their perspectives. One other point I would reiterate is that the issues primarily raised for their questionable nature are the blood analysis and the promotion of essential oils. Including the water birth in that grouping makes it appear that water births are a far more questionable practice than current literature would suggest. bd2412 T 19:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

There's a lot going on here, but including the Tijuana clinic employee's name doesn't seem appropriate. Just because she was named in the source doesn't obligate us to pass that on as though it were vitally important. The employee's behavior also has potential implication of criminal incompetence, and that dances around WP:BLPCRIME and WP:BLP1E. There are a lot of problems that would need to be handled to include it, but little benefit to the article. We can just say 'an employee'.

Current literature on water-birth is not relevant. If sources come along and exonerate him, we can adjust. Even if he was using best practices according to the literature of the time, that still has nothing to do with how it's performed decades later, and it also has nothing to do with how qualified he was, or the medical resources he had access to. If sources say this reflected poorly on him in a professionally capacity, so be it. Grayfell (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I am persuaded that saying "an employee" is a reasonable compromise that sufficiently captures the sequence of events. With respect to the water birth, I am not proposing to remove that from the article, merely to return that (and Young's marital status) to a "personal life" section, as it was before. To paraphrase User:SMcCandlish in the related AfD for Direct Selling News, painting the worst possible picture of a disreputable subject isn't part of WP's mission. There is plenty in the body of the article to characterize the subject as a snake-oil salesman without mixing in something that isn't actually snake-oil selling. Also, if the employee's behavior "has potential implication of criminal incompetence", and "dances around WP:BLPCRIME and WP:BLP1E", the same applies to the article subject, who was never charged with a crime relating either to the Tijuana clinic, or (critically) to the death of his daughter. bd2412 T 21:23, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I think, BD, that there is a major point of difference between the lady at the clinic and Young that your analogy elides: namely that there are numerous in-depth articles in reliable sources about Gary Young, and none about the woman at the counter. To make special mention of the employee is to (unfairly) elevate her to a level of significance that the sources do not confer. The reason that we discuss it in Young's Wikipedia article is because the sources feel it is an important datum about Young. I think this argument transfers to the water birth as well.

I think the only reason that we are wringing our hands so much over the water birth is that the tragedy befell this man's daughter. If someone else's child had drowned in Mr Young's delivery procedure, I think there would be no ambiguity about including it in the article. It is entirely relevant that a notable alternative medicine practitioner allowed someone to die unnecessarily in the course of practicing alternative medicine. A Train^talk 22:09, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Well said. Grayfell (talk) 22:46, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree about the difference between the article subject and the clinic employee, and I therefore agree to the compromise position, mentioning that an employee of the clinic said what was said, without specifying the employee's name (which is an improvement over the previous disjunctive text that said "the clinic" said those things). As for the water birth, it is true that we would be discussing this very differently if it it was not his own child. I think it is notable the 1986 Doug Clark article says (on page 4), "In early 1983 an undercover officer approached Young about performing an underwater birth. Young declined but said he would handle the woman's prenatal care for $700". It doesn't actually say in any source that Young ever actually attempted to deliver a child that wasn't his own. We could point that out (in fact, you removed that exact fact from the article - did you miss the quoted sentence in the source?), but that also tends to bloat that article section. It is therefore better to either leave it out altogether, or include it in a personal life section, since there is no evidence of attempted water birth deliveries outside his personal life. bd2412 T 23:08, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

BD2412, I'm slightly at a loss here. The reason that I removed that sentence from the article is because the assertion is false. In fact, the sources say the exact opposite: "Young allegedly offered to deliver a baby and to treat cancer." Source 1, Source 2. It doesn't actually say in any source that Young ever actually attempted to deliver a child that wasn't his own. That is exactly what these sources say Young offered to do, point blank. The New Yorker makes the same assertion. A Train^talk 23:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Then the sources are conflicting. The source that I quoted above specifically states that "an undercover officer approached Young about performing an underwater birth. Young declined...". The New Yorker article does not say that Young personally offered or attempted to deliver any child other than his own. It merely says, "he opened a health center in Spokane, Washington, that included birthing services". Just like the Tijuana clinic, this is very carefully phrased in the impersonal sense, and avoids stating that Young offered to personally perform those services. The Doug Clark article certainly goes into the most detail about this. Doesn't it seem likely that Clark's account is correct? bd2412 T 23:34, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Clark's article is based on an interview with Young 3 years after the arrest. The two Mike Prager articles are based on contemporary reporting at the time of the arrest. I don't think that Clark's account is more likely to be correct, no. He's conveying Young's defense, not reporting.

You are right that the NYer says "included birthing services", but this now seems to be a new level of special pleading to separate this man from his actions. Charles Manson never personally killed anyone, though I suppose you could say he "opened a clinic offering murder services". :) A Train^talk 23:40, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

We're arguing over the death of a man's daughter here - frankly, a distasteful argument to be having at all. As it stands, there is at least one source that specifies that Young declined to perform that service for another. We could spend a paragraph of the article describing the conflict between the sources (we can't, in a BLP situation, pretend that Clark's version doesn't exist), or we could find some less obtrusive way to deal with the issue. As for Clark merely conveying Young's defense, this seems implausible. Clark's story is relentlessly negative towards Young, and although it does incorporate an interview with Young, it also discloses interviews with numerous other people both supportive of and opposed to Young. I suspect that the New Yorker avoids saying that Young offered to deliver the babies of others because it has its own BLP policy, and is following it more scrupulously than we are at the moment. bd2412 T 23:49, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

BD, what you're saying, effectively, is that we should indulge an enormously naive reading of what the New Yorker says and ignore what two other sources say in order to twist them into supporting what one source says. Does that seem logical to you?

Our job is create an article based on the most important secondary sources. The most important secondary source, beyond question, is The New Yorker, a magazine with a vaunted reputation for fact-checking accuracy. The NYer cites the waterbirth story in the context of Young's career as a medical practitioner. You are asking us to engage in magical thinking to ignore this.

We are transmitting what is in the sources. We are not editorializing by rendering the material in the same manner that the secondary sources do: that is our entire job. Multiple recent editors to this talk page agree with this approach. It is logical and policy-based. I agree that it is an unfortunate topic, and a distasteful one. But our responsibility here is to the reader, not to Donald Gary Young. A Train^talk 00:08, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

What I am trying to do (which I think we are all trying to do here) is avoid providing an imbalanced narrative, and carefully observe WP:BLP. If we can't ignore the two Prager pieces, we can't ignore the Clark piece can we? As I have noted before, I am not proposing that we exclude the water birth story, merely that we present it in the most appropriate context for an encyclopedia article. The New Yorker article is, what, 6,000 words? At least five times the length of ours - but with less than one percent of its length dedicated to the water birth, and that is in the bottom half of the article. Note that if we are following the vaunted New Yorker, it says with respect to Young's misdemeanor arrest, "Young said in the presence of undercover detectives that he could detect cancer with a blood test; he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license and, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge". No mention of offering to deliver a baby, which would seem to be important to mention if the arrest was based on that. bd2412 T 00:38, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok BD, you've worn me down. For the record, I think that the current state of the article complies with BLP and is editorially responsible. I think that moving the water birth material down to the personal life section is an abdication of our responsibility to the reader. But I'm genuinely tired of arguing about it. I have the utmost respect for you and your record as an editor: if you're so sure that I'm wrong here then maybe you're seeing something I'm not. If you want to move it, I won't object. A Train^talk 23:49, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

My intention is merely to reach a compromise that presents the information in a manner appropriate to the whole of the subject's life. Let's try this. I'll make the changes and we'll see how it reads. bd2412 T 00:03, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

If he were noteworthy for being an actor of historian or something this would be more reasonable, but he isn't. He is notable for his connection to alternative medicine. Therefore this event reflects on both his personal life, and his professional qualifications. I admit it was a while ago that I carefully reviewed the sources, but I recall that this was covered by them in that context, which is how it ended up in the article in the first place. Grayfell (talk) 23:23, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that the material be removed from the article, merely that the article should be organized to avoid giving undue weight to one particularly tragic and personal event that long preceded the events for which the subject is actually notable. bd2412 T 23:37, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for showing what you meant here, BD2412. That is really helpful to show what you would prefer. I do not support adding the personal "log cabin" mythology nor the downplaying of his career in quackery. I don't know if others found that set of edits acceptable or not. Jytdog (talk) 07:25, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately, your reversion went too far, also restoring typos to the article, and restoring the name of employee Sharon Reynolds, who everyone agrees at this point should not be included. With respect to the "log cabin" mythology, that is reported in the New Yorker article, and is substantial a biographical claim as anything else. For any other article subject we would include it, I can't see why we wouldn't here. I have not downplayed his career in quackery. The information relevant to that (the Tijuana clinic and the misdemeanor conviction) remain, and I added the fact that (according to at least one source) he also offered unlicensed prenatal care and cancer treatment at the time of his arrest. If you want to restore the prior organization in terms of the death of his daughter, you can just move the sentence back where it was. You don't need to add back typos that were fixed. bd2412 T 11:11, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Please see your talk page about some matters related to this. Jytdog (talk) 18:33, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
    • I completely object to the log cabin stuff - that is 100% part of his personal marketing. Please get consensus for that. More to come. Jytdog (talk) 18:33, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
      • In that case, let's discuss and obtain consensus for any further changes going forward in the article. There was a reasonably longstanding status quo ante, which applies until editorial disputes are resolved. bd2412 T 18:47, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
        • Please see your talk page. Jytdog (talk) 18:51, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
          • I only protected the page because you suggested that consensus be obtained before any further changes were made. I expect that we will proceed with talk page discussion, rather than unilateral edits to the article, to achieve that consensus. bd2412 T 18:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
          • Please see your talk page. Jytdog (talk) 18:57, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
            • I would note that I did not protect any "preferred" version - i.e., I did not restore my proposed addition, and then protect the page to include it. I protected your last version (with my correction to the placement of the sourcing), only to prevent this from devolving to an edit war. bd2412 T 18:58, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Note: When there is an editorial dispute in an article, we typically restore the article to the status quo ante from before the dispute arose. In this case, that would be to the period between March 27 (when a stable organization of the article was substantially agreed to by editors then working on it) and October 8, when some materials were added and rearranged due to the publication of the New Yorker article. I think we all agree that the New Yorker article should be included as a source, and the facts cited in that article that have been added here should remain. If there is a dispute as to other aspects of the article, then those aspects should remain as they were prior to October 8, which is presently the case. I don't see any urgent need to enact further changes without first resolving legitimate editorial concerns about them. bd2412 T 19:16, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss your behavior nor to decide what version of the article you will "allow" to be unprotected. Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps you need to purge your browser. The page was only protected for five minutes, and only then to head off an edit war, which I was concerned about based on your rather aggressive statement on my talk page about how you planned to treat me; I removed the protection almost immediately after I placed it there. It seemed to be the best way to actually move to a process of discussion and consensus. The article is, and has been, unprotected, and the two issues that appear to be in dispute - the "log cabin" claim, and the placement of information about the death of the daughter - are just as they were before the dispute began. bd2412 T 19:25, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for unprotecting. Onwards. Jytdog (talk) 20:04, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

As you may be aware, I usually find about a half dozen major disputes into which I have managed to insert myself at any given time, leading to all manner of aggravation. After all, someone has to do it. I may sometimes be a bit curt in addressing one or the other of them. I think we may have the same habit in this regard. bd2412 T 20:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Yep :) what got me all fiercified was the protection. we got through it. Jytdog (talk) 20:24, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

If you ever get to my neck of the woods, I'll buy you a beer. bd2412 T 13:36, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Edits

So I am OK with keeping the death of his daughter in the personal life section. this diff was OK. But the division of his career and putting the personal life section away under the publications was odd, so I blended early/personal life and made his career one whole section. Am Ok with the other edits. Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree, in retrospect, that the personal life section should have been before publications, at least. I think we typically put personal life sections after the main body of whatever the subject is notable for (unless they are notable for their personal lives, which is rare), but before things like publications and discographies. That is particularly reasonable in this case, where the books appear to be self-published. bd2412 T 19:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

So you are suggesting flipping career and personal life? am fine with that. Jytdog (talk) 20:04, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Let me give it a try and see how it looks. bd2412 T 20:06, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I think it's basically fine this way. The article leads with most encyclopedically notable aspects of the subject's life. bd2412 T 20:14, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Let's see what the other folks watching/participating say :) Jytdog (talk) 20:23, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Reading the New Yorker article, this guy is a PT Barnum. Flashy showmanship, kind of a big-stage slight of hand, with the dog-sled entrance or the zipline entrance to a show. Not sure that picture is fully painted. But agree with the rest. Don’t include the log cabin bet, that is just part of the showmanship. Daughters death with personal life after career, otherwise it is confusing whether it was part of the criminal conviction. Hyperbolick (talk) 04:36, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Reads pretty well to me right now, fellas. A Train^talk 14:06, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Very good - I think we have our consensus. bd2412 T 15:26, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Request edit on 13 December 2017

Reviewing the statement "and the child drowned after being submerged for an hour.[15]" - the link (to the source) does not provide this information to support the statement.

Please replace and the child drowned after being submerged for an hour.[15] with the child died during birth.[15] 68.199.92.125 (talk) 19:22, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

 Implemented The child drowned during birth, not after. The amount of time (1 hour, unreferenced) was irrelevant, and removed from the text. Spintendo ᔦᔭ 20:18, 21 December 2017 (UTC)