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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ann Bishop (biologist)/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ian Rose 08:03, 17 December 2012 [1].

Ann Bishop (biologist)

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Ann Bishop (biologist) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Keilana|Parlez ici 01:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's Ann Bishop, a rare female Fellow of the Royal Society, for your consideration. I know this is a bit of a short one, but Sasata gave it a thorough GA review and I'm confident that it presents a comprehensive picture of her life and work. Thanks in advance for your time and comments! Best, Keilana|Parlez ici 01:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments; real life is eating all my time at the moment but I should be able to get to all of these in the next few days. Keilana|Parlez ici 16:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestions and recommendations

Just some suggestions and recommendations, taken 'em or leave 'em, not super serious, but I do think it'd help improve the article:

  1. There's eleven (11) redlinks on the page to potential other possibly notable article topics. It might be a good idea to create some of those as stubs with a few references, to help provide additional resources for the reader.
    I filled in all but three. Keilana|Parlez ici 08:45, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Education - suggest maybe expanding this section and breaking it up into two or perhaps three paragraphs. Particularly the info of her early research work whilst still studying at university would be most interesting.
    Unfortunately, there's not really anything else on her early education. The first two years of her undergraduate career were fairly unremarkable, she described ciliated protists and that was about it. Her first significant research was with Hickson, and since that's covered in the next section, I'd rather not repeat it. Sorry I can't find anything else! Keilana|Parlez ici 08:48, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Scientific career - recommend splitting this up into two or perhaps three subsections, with Scientific career remaining as their parent sect.
    That works for sure; I've separated it off into her early work, the bulk of her career at Molteno, and her various honors. Keilana|Parlez ici 09:00, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Image = File:Ann Bishop (biologist).jpg - was there any attempt made to try to contact the copyright holder Fellows of the Royal Society, to perhaps get this onto Wikimedia Commons under a free-use license? If not, that'd be a good idea of something to try.
    I've just sent them an email, we'll see if I get a response. Free images would be awesome! Keilana|Parlez ici 09:00, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Update: I received a response that said they did not own the image; Bishop's estate does and they had granted the Royal Society permission to use it. Keilana|Parlez ici 22:51, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Lede/intro - suggest breaking this up into at the very least two paragraphs and expanding them both a bit more with at least a couple sentences more.
    I split it and added a couple sentences; do you think it needs more? Keilana|Parlez ici 20:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Scientific career - last paragraph could be expanded a bit more, and could be its own standalone subsection titled Legacy or something like that.
    I split it off into a subsection and added a little bit more. Keilana|Parlez ici 21:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Any other info about recognition or perception of her work by other scientists? That could also be its own subsection.
    There's nothing specific as far as I can tell, none of my sources specifically say that she was respected by her peers for doing X, Y, and Z. It's heavily implied, however, because she was elected FRS and was asked to head the British Society for Parasitology. I just don't want to tread too close to OR by saying that outright. Keilana|Parlez ici 21:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this is helpful, — Cirt (talk) 06:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It was indeed, thanks so much for your comments. Keilana|Parlez ici 21:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • FN9, 13: should be endash not hyphen
  • FN15: can this be a more complete citation
  • Looks fine to me, thanks for that. 21:54, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • The life section has nothing between ages 13 and 90, reads a bit oddly going from early teens straight to death. I'd be inclined to amalgamate with "Education".
  • handed down to him after his father died.—inherited from?
  • Bishop had one brother, born 13 years later—later than what? Born when she was 13, or born 13 years after her perhaps?
  • spurred by the outbreak of the Second World War.—also alluded to in the lead, but a sentence or two clarifying the relevance would be good, many people think of this as a largely European war.
  • of the malaria vector Aedes aegypti. — I thought Anopheles was the main vector, and Aedes aegypti was responsible for dengue and yellow fever? needs clarification at least.
  • Yallow Fellow of Girton College, an honour she held until her death in 1990—was it unusual for honorary degrees to be for life?
  • None of my sources specified. A quick search showed only Bishop receiving that particular honor, but that wasn't specifically asserted in any of the sources I found. I'm not really sure what to do about that. Keilana|Parlez ici 22:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wonder if you have skimped a bit on her personal life? Just glancing at Goodwin and Vickerman, I see that in later life she developed arthritis and an interest in cooking. I appreciate that you don't want to just paraphrase this article, but perhaps you've been a little too parsimonious?
  • I'm happy with the changes, and Sasata's comments below are mainly quick fixes, so I've changed to support above. One thought I'll leave with you, but no big deal whatever you decide Bishop found a fascination with the history of biology and medicine, as her mobility was limited due to arthritis. She never published in the field. might be smoother as Because her mobility was limited by arthritis, Bishop found a fascination with the history of biology and medicine, although she never published in that field. Good luck Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The changes look good to me, and I think the article meets the FA criteria. My support comes with the following disclosures: I was the GA reviewer, I've made several mostly minor copyedits, and I'm a member of the fledgling Women scientist wikiproject. Sasata (talk) 23:29, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Sasata (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think it's a stretch to say that Bishop's malaria work was "essential for the British military in World War II." (and later "essential for the British war effort"); the source doesn't itself claim that her work was this important
  • Fair enough, I think I got a little bit excited there! I've reworded the first one to "useful to the British military in World War II" and the second to "aided the British war effort". How does that look? Keilana|Parlez ici 23:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • don't think links are needed for well-known words opera, ballet, London, rodent, human; some others are iffy (e.g. chemistry, physics), but arguably those could stay as they pertain directly to the discussion
  • the word "research" seems to be conspicuously overused in the career section (do "highlight all" in your browser to see what I mean); perhaps a few of these could be reworded?
  • "Her doctorate research at Manchester, with H.P. Baynon, concerned the identification …" are those commas really needed?
  • I've never heard about the redlinked antimalarial drug "maquin"; are you sure this isn't supposed to be primaquine, plasmoquine, or pamaquine? (Maybe it was an early precursor to all of these?)
  • I found a 1961 paper by Bishop in New Scientist that cited pamaquine - interestingly, she spelled it "pamaquin", which may have been the source for that specific misspelling. I've gone ahead and changed "maquin" to "pamaquine" and added the primary source as an additional reference. Keilana|Parlez ici 23:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "… an institution designed to provide intellectual fulfilment for women who left school at the age of 14." perhaps this is better "whose formal education ended at the age of 14."?

Sasata (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for another great review. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to these - I really appreciate the comments! Keilana|Parlez ici 23:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate notes

  • Images: I notice above that one file has received some scrutiny, is anyone prepared to sign off on all the article's licensing?
  • Lead: Couple of things that jarred for me...

Image check OK - all images have valid licenses (Switzerland-old, CDC, own work, 1 fair-use) and provide author and source information. While a permitted image usage for the infobox would be great, fair usage to identify deceased article subjects is commonly accepted. GermanJoe (talk) 11:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the image check, Joe! :) Keilana|Parlez ici 02:31, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I'm really pleased to see an article on an early female FRS up for featured status. However, after a quick peruse of the article, I'm worried that it feels very slight and rests entirely on online sources, non-specialist biographical dictionaries and newspaper obituaries. It seems likely that for a scientist active largely prior to 1960 most of the material written about her will not be online. Has contacting any or all of the following been attempted: Girton College, the Molteno Institute, Parasitology journal, the British Society for Parasitology, the Royal Society? People in any of those might be able to point you towards paper-published material that is relevant. In particular, I'm surprised that there's no obit from Parasitology nor in a Girton College publication in the refs. Does anyone live near enough to Cambridge to visit the Molteno & the Dept of Pathology (of which it is now a part), especially to talk to the librarian at the latter? It would also be possible to reference her own papers, at least to a certain extent. If more sources could be found then the unfortunate tendency to condense for fear of over paraphrasing would be easier to avoid. Has a parasitology expert looked the article over? I don't have time to check the article over in detail and check the sources, especially on the research side where I lack expertise, but a number of things jumped out at me on a quick read. — Espresso Addict 14:09, November 29, 2012 — continues after insertion below

Unfortunately, I live in the US and won't be in the UK anytime soon. I previously emailed the Royal Society, who said that they can't release the image under a free license and that their material was in the Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society. I have sent emails to the archivist at Girton College, the department head of Cambridge's Department of Pathology (I couldn't find any contact information for the Molteno Institute; this was the closest I could get), and the British Society for Parasitology. I also emailed the editor of Parasitology and got a response back before I could finish this comment. He said that he would be willing to help me track down an obituary and a professor from Molteno who might be able to help. I don't know how long it'll take them to get back to me but I'll keep you posted! I'm not a parasitology expert but I'll try and track someone down. I have access to the entire archives of Parasitology and as far as I can tell, there was no obituary published. Ditto for Girton College - their online archives had no obituary I could find. Thanks very much for your comments - I'll start in on those now. Keilana|Parlez ici 05:23, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Re the Molteno: the path dept secretary for microbiology & parasitology has an e-mail here: [2]; also, the two professors in the parasitology division give personal e-mails: [3][4]. Girton will *certainly* have published something, somewhere, but it might well not be online. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the links! I got an email back from the Girton College archivist with some helpful information this morning. I'll try to include all of that information when I sit down tonight. Keilana|Parlez ici 23:14, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Another update: I'm filling out forms today to request copies of her two obituaries from Girton College. It involves some effort and money and mail so that may take a week or two. I also got an email from the secretary of the British Society of Parasitology with some more information. Keilana|Parlez ici 17:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Throughout. Several of the wikilinks lead to redirects eg Cambridge University, Girton College, Fellow of the Royal Society, and that's just in the first sentence! Also later, that I clicked on, Halle Orchestra, tertian malaria, but there probably many others.
  • Throughout. Many of the paragraphs are overlong and could be split for ease of reading. Only one section currently has any subparagraphs.
  • Info box. Sherlock Close doesn't need to be redlinked. Is that in Cambridge? The city would be a lot more helpful.
  • Lead. University of Cambridge is formally written like that. It's only recently anyone's started calling it 'Cambridge University', so it feels particularly inappropriate in context.
  • Lead. 'She was native to Manchester'. Prefer born in, especially as she lived in Cambridge most of her adult life.
  • Life. Some of this should be in legacy.
  • Education. Could the microstub on Hickson be expanded slightly?
  • Perhaps nothing, however it would be helpful. Rather little makes me feel anyone who has worked on this page cares very much about parasitology, as opposed to getting a featured article. Since I'm the converse, these kind of responses grieve me. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:54, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Early work. First sentence refs are out of order.
  • Early work. Honorary is mispelled here too (see below)
  • National Institute for Medical Research could be wikilinked, assuming it's correct. If she did work here then does that contradict her entire professional life being spent in Cambridge, as stated in the lead?
  • Molteno Institute section. This is the section that strikes me as thinnest (nearly 40 years of research covered in three paragraphs?). There's little understanding of what exactly she discovered, how important it was, how it compares with other people's work at the time, what has built on it since.
  • Molteno Institute, para 1. The Molteno has no article. It should perhaps be directed to the Department of Pathology, which it is currently a part of, though that doesn't have an article either. The title at foundation (1921) was 'Molteno Institute for Research in Parasitology' [5] -- which mentions Bishop, by the way.
  • Molteno Institute, para 1. Medical Research Council should be wikilinked to Medical Research Council (United Kingdom).
  • Molteno Institute, para 1. 'Her doctorate research at Manchester...' why is this under the Molteno section?
  • Molteno Institute, para 1. 'Bishop's expertise with parasitic protozoa translated into her best-known work, a comprehensive study of the malaria parasite (Plasmodium) and potential chemotherapies for the disease.[6]'. Should probably be moved to introduce para 2.
  • Molteno Institute, para 2. behavior should be UK spelling.
  • Molteno Institute, para 2. 'During the war, she investigated alternative chemotherapies for malaria.' to what result?
  • Molteno Institute, para 3. 'in both the parasites and host organisms'. Needs another 'the'.
  • Molteno Institute, para 3. 'the studies that would earn her a place in the Royal Society.' Reference?
  • Molteno Institute, para 3. 'Significant work from this period of Bishop's life'. When, exactly?
  • Molteno Institute, para 3. 'a study showing that the parasite itself did not develop resistance to quinine, but that host organisms could develop resistance to the drug proguanil.' I don't understand how these are linked.
  • Molteno Institute, para 3. 'tertian malaria' should probably be explained. The refs are out of order on this sentence.
  • Honours & Legacy. This section is rather muddled and might benefit from restructuring. Parts might be better under Life or into a separate section about her work founding the British Society for Parasitology. As I wrote above, parts from Life might be better here. You might stress more that she was one of the first female FRSs (15th if the list is accurate).
  • Honours & Legacy. 'Honorary' is misspelled (doesn't have the 'u' even in UK English).
  • Honours & Legacy. 'The society was originally a subgroup of the Department of Biology at Cambridge'. This seems rather unlikely to me. There is currently no Department of Biology (it's the School of Biological Sciences but that's primarily a teaching/admin-related umbrella organisation); I'm not aware of there ever having been one, though I'm no expert. I'm not sure what the position was in the 1950s but Parasitology falls under the Molteno which became a subdivision of the Department of Pathology in 1987.[6] Also: 'Later that decade, the Department of Biology asked her to be the department head, but she declined because of the public nature of the role.' Again I think this is very unlikely and should be checked with someone who knows the history of the university. The source says 'Institute of Biology', in both cases, which seems more likely.
  • Honours & Legacy. 'the scientific journal Parasitology had Bishop on staff as an editor.' This sounds like she worked for them. I assume it means she served on the journal's editorial board? Also should not be in this section.

In summary, personally I don't think it currently meets the GA criteria (not disparaging the efforts of the GA reviewer, who has done a splendid job considering that this appears to be what was nominated) let alone the FA criteria. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:09, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - There seems to be some confusion over the dates of her degree awards. In the article it says "In 1932, she received her Doctor of Science degree." But according to the Oxford DNB article, she became a Yarrow fellow of Girton College in 1932. She graduated from Manchester with BSc (Hons) in 1921 and was awarded the John Dalton natural history prize, and in 1922 was awarded an MSc from the same university for her work on free-swimming microscopic ciliates, which was in her post-graduate studies, not "during her undergraduate years". According to the Oxford DNB article she was awarded a ScD degree from Cambridge, not a DSc. (I know these are very similar).

I think there are other inaccuracies; it says "Significant work from this period of Bishop's life included a study showing that the parasite itself did not develop resistance to quinine," - but they do. See this WHO source [7] which says, "Resistance to antimalarial drugs has been described for two of the four species of malaria parasite that naturally infect humans, P. falciparum and P. vivax. P.falciparum has developed resistance to nearly all antimalarials in current use." The tile of one of her papers, Bishop A, McCoonnachie EW (January 1950). "Cross-resistance between sulphanilamide and paludrine (proguanil) in a strain of Plasmodium gallinaceum resistant to sulphanilamide". Parasitology. 40 (1–2): 175–8. PMID 15401182. also indicates that the parasite develops resistance. (It says in the DNB article, "Ann was interested in observations made at the turn of the twentieth century that trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness could become resistant to treatment with arsenic compounds...Ann showed that malaria parasites would also develop resistance after prolonged exposure to drugs, and were still resistant after passage through the mosquitoes that transmitted them." (Trypanosomes are parasites). Unfortunately there is no abstract available.

This sentence is innaccurate, " She isolated one type of protozoan, aerotolerant anaerobes, from the digestive tract of Haemopis sanguisuga during this period of her life." Aerotolerant anaerobes are not really a type of protozoan, the term is used to describe a broad range of microorganisms including bacteria.

For a Featured Article, I would expect this to be a least as good as, if not better, than the short Goodwin article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Unfortunately this is not the case. Graham Colm (talk) 14:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate notes (2) -- With this nom open almost six weeks, no activity for at least a week and opposing comments still to be resolved, I plan to archive this so that further work can take place outside the FAC process. The article can be renominated after that, provided a minimum of two weeks has passed since archiving. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:55, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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