Talk:W. Ian Lipkin

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Freely licensed photo available here. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:39, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://web.neuro.columbia.edu/members/profiles.php?id=55. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see

In reviewing the two maintenance tags attached to this article: citation style and BLP sources, are they still relevant? The citation style tag was added in April 2011 and the BLP in May 2010. I believe the BLP tag can be taken down. However, I was unable to find what Wikipedia's citation style is to see if that has been remedied. Help?Kh2907 (talk) 17:33, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The "Fact-Finding Mission to China" is especially bad. Most of the information is sourced to a podcast, and there's tons of extraneous material that is

Anyways, I've shortened all this SARS-CoV-2- and gain-of-function-related material down, while still hitting the major points. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:53, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Thucydides411, Just read your reasons for deleting data from over 50 different references. Sorry for my delayed reply - due to other commitments I may not always be able to immediately respond. Can we discuss the points you mentioned, hopefully resolve them?

You wrote: “The "Fact-Finding Mission to China" is especially bad. Most of the information is sourced to a podcast.”

The podcast was one of over 20 references cited for that section, but yes, it is a key information resource. It includes Lipkin’s view that he would “absolutely not” advise US workers to wear facemasks (“because people don’t know how to use them”), ^[1] details his meetings in January with Chinese ministers and the premier, Li Kechiang, and explains why he praises transparency from China's central government.^[2] Conducted by Professor Vincent R. Racaniello from Columbia, it’s an hour-long public broadcast of two experts discussing/describing the virus (Lipkin has it at the time) in a period when it was taking off in the US. Is that not valid information? Why? Before the Bang (talk) 00:03, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

A podcast is not an acceptable source. It's a spontaneous conversation and may not be entirely accurate. Any claims have to be backed up by reliable secondary sources - in general, textual media.

There's another issue, however. This article should not be dominated by SARS-CoV-2. Ian Lipkin has had a nearly 40-year career in virology (so far), and SARS-CoV-2 is only a tiny part of his overall career. A comment about facemasks made in a podcast is not important enough to merit inclusion in this article. Given the length of this article, there should only be a few sentences, in total, about SARS-CoV-2. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:38, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The podcast is an interview between two Columbia professors. Are you saying you deleted it because no interview material is allowed on Wikipedia? The quotes from it are not "claims", they are Lipkin's own words. Which part is not accurate?

An extemporaneous discussion is a very poor source, even if the two people talking are professors. People can misspeak, misremember things, etc. Written sources, especially in publications that do fact-checking (or which are peer-reviewed) are generally better sources of information. But beyond that, SARS-CoV-2 does not merit more than a few sentences in this article. An opinion about whether to recommend face mask usage, voiced in a podcast interview, for example, is not notable enough to be included here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:16, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All interviews are live discussions when they are conducted. You're saying all pages on Wikipedia that include interview references should be deleted? Please give a quoted example where you think he misspoke. Even if there was a rule banning interviews (which of course there isn't), you also wiped references from over 10 different published scientific papers, including ones from Lipkin. Why did you do that?^{[3][4][5][6][7]}Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]}

Before the Bang (talk) 23:52, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Please stop re-inserting the same material over and over again. What you're trying to insert is

WP:BLP, which deals with how biographies of living people should be written on Wikipedia. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply

]

Lipkin did emphasise the importance of “sharing as much as I could” on these platforms saying: “That’s really where you need to push - you need to go onto Oz and talk to people who reach the entire country.”[14] With Fox he said, “I never turn down Fox - it’s an opportunity to preach in the wilderness.”^[15]

This is Lipkin’s considered messaging, to “the entire country”. Why is that extraneous to an account of his advice on SARS-2? Before the Bang (talk) 21:43, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Please re-read what I wrote above (in the sections "Use of Columbia podcast" and "Lots of extraneous material"), because I've already addressed the questions you're asking here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:12, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, you haven't. You're evading the question again Thucydides. Why's that? Let me rephrase them as simple 'yes' or 'nos'.

1. Is Lipkin an "extremely poor source" for his own views?

2. Is Lipkin's considered messaging to "the entire country" relevant to an account of his advice on SARS-CoV-2? Before the Bang (talk) 00:02, 7 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Having not received a response to these questions, the deleted referenced material has been partly restored. Before the Bang (talk) 21:52, 7 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Thucydides wrote: "Some of the material was a clear BLP violation (e.g., accusing him and other scientist of "conspiring" to misinform the public about masks)."

No, didn’t accuse anyone or use the word “conspiring”; you’ve made that up, Thucydides - then used it as your rationale for deleting over 60 different references. What's your motivation here?

Below are the quotes from Lipkin that you deleted:

“Back in 2003 there was a WHO investigation that showed that face masks whether surgical or N-95 had a dramatic impact on community transmission.” Lipkin described the study as small but “particularly compelling.”

He then said: “I thought a long time about trying to publish this... but it would have deprived - you know - people on the frontlines... So I didn’t proceed. So that’s something that unfortunately is going to go in the memoirs rather than the written record.”^[16]

You've argued above that these quotes are not valid because Lipkin may have "misspoken, misremembered things". To clarify, did he misremember seeing the 2003 study? Or did he misremember not making it public?

Can we agree at least that Lipkin did say he knew masks “would have a dramatic impact on transmission” but didn’t proceed with informing the public in the US? Before the Bang (talk) 23:53, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Thucydides wrote: "Some of the material seriously misquoted Lipkin (e.g., turning his statement that SARS-CoV-2 was more concerning than flu into the exact opposite)."

If you’re going to say there are misquotes - why not just give the quote? Wouldn’t that be an easy way to prove your point?

Here is the quote:

“One of the things I try to emphasize whenever I talk about this virus is - we will almost certainly have additional fatalities, this virus will continue to spread - but it’s not as dangerous as some people may suggest.

“So if for example, we look at this like seasonal flu - it’s gonna be much less than say 1% of people - that’s not to say that we won’t lose lives and it’s not important.”^[17]

Which part of that is a misquote? Before the Bang (talk) 23:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Here's the content I removed:

On the Feb 10 he told NBC that SARS-nCoV-2 is "not nearly as challenging for us as influenza."^[18]

The CNBC article this quote is referenced to is titled, "Ian Lipkin, scientists worry that coronavirus could become worse than the flu" - the exact opposite of how the sentence I removed characterizes Lipkin. Here's the relevant section from the CNBC article:

So far, more than 900 people who had the coronavirus have died.

The coronavirus is “not nearly as challenging for us as influenza” when seen strictly by the number of deaths, Lipkin said.

But that is not the only lens through which the outbreak should be viewed, he cautioned.

“We don’t know much about its transmissibility. We don’t necessarily have accurate diagnostic tests. And we don’t really know where the outbreak is going to go,” Lipkin said on CNBC’s “The Exchange.”

“The only thing we have at present, absent vaccines or drugs, is containment,” he added.

Presenting the phrase "not nearly as challenging for us as influenza" in isolation completely reverses the meaning of what Lipkin was saying. He cautioned that comparing the relative number of deaths (between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza) as of early February was not the only way to compare the two viruses, because no one knew (again, as of early February) how the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak would develop. Whoever added this content to this article phrased it so as to try to convince the reader that Lipkin was downplaying the seriousness of SARS-CoV-2 by saying influenza is more challenging, when he was actually cautioning that comparing deaths so far didn't give the full picture.

This is one of the things I find objectionable about the large mass of SARS-CoV-2 material that was recently added to this article. It appears to have been added in order to attack Lipkin. Some of the material completely misrepresents his statements (as I've just showed above), some of it is bizarrely accusative (claiming he "conspired" to mislead the public), some of it has little to do with Lipkin and is simply material added in to argue against his views (much of the gain-of-function material). But most of all, this huge amount of material about SARS-CoV-2 was completely

undue. SARS-CoV-2 should only get a few sentences of coverage in this biography. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:19, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply

]

Before the Bang (talk) 23:21, 9 July 2020 (UTC)Before the Bang[reply]

Thucydides, you didn't respond to the questions so the material was restored. If you have a problem with any of the referenced material then please take it to an open discussion and seek consensus. In the meantime, please stop arbitrarily vandalizing this page - it's unethical. Before the Bang (talk)

There is a discussion at

Now that the frightening period of censorship of anything contradicting the CCP's version of Covid origins has collapsed, am assuming it's once again ok to include referenced factual material on Wikipedia without it being vandalized and the author blocked. Welcome discussion and constructive edits, but not arbitrary blanking. Before the Bang (talk)

You previously tried to edit-war this very same material into the article: [2][3][4][5]. You reverted multiple times after a number of different editors removed this material. Adding this same material back in is not acceptable, and in my view, constitutes edit-warring. The additional material you added in ([6]) does not appear to even mention Ian Lipkin, and I have removed it as well. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:33, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:CIVIL policy, which all editors are instructed to follow. I hope that helps explain expectations. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:08, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

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