Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genetic equidistance

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Molecular clock. MBisanz ^talk 06:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Genetic equidistance

Not a notable subject. Zero PubMed hits and only 15 Google Scholar hits. The only articles that deal with this as their topic are by a single author - S Huang, which does little to support the idea that this is a notable subject. The number of references in the article is misleading, since most of these do not deal with this subject, but instead discuss other topics such as the molecular clock or the neutral theory of molecular evolution. Tim Vickers (talk) 06:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —Tim Vickers (talk) 06:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep A sufficient distinctive concept. Sure, it can be included into broader concepts such as the molecular clock. But here is literature written about it specifically , and it helps the understanding of the subject.DGG (talk) 09:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What literature? There is one obscure paper written by Huang (the other Huang preprints don't seem to have been published), the only other literature uses the term in passing and does not discuss this as its subject. You are right that one possibility to deal with the absence of literature on the topic would be to merge and redirect to molecular clock. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

keep. Google Scholar for "genetic equidistance" gave several hits in addition to those of Huang. While many looked at best distantly related, this looks on target. Prima facie it appears that the article can be improved to establish notability, and hence that immediate deletion would violate WP:DELETE. --Philcha (talk) 11:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I read that paper, and was thinking about trying to incorporate it into the article but it uses the term only once, in the sentence "Because of the genetic equidistance of these three seals, this time has also been fixed for the divergence between harbor and gray seals." - how could I use this sentence to establish notability? Tim Vickers (talk) 16:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The paper represents a precise use of the term. I have now added this paper to indicate the use of this term in the literature.Nosti (talk) 16:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. There is no evidence that this a widely used or accepted term. What little there is to say about it can be better said in the relevant genetics/evolutionary articles. --Malleus Fatuorum 18:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and merge This is a poorly written article, to be sure, but that is not grounds alone for deleting it. Since there does not seem to be much to be said about it (judging from the lack of hits), it might belong better at molecular clock, as it seems to be simply a part of that subject. Anaxial (talk) 18:45, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can't keep it and merge it. Do you mean merge and redirect? --Malleus Fatuorum 18:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Anaxial (talk) 18:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I apologize for reading the Wikipedia article too quickly. I've now checked it against the sole source that it summarizes, the Huang Shi paper. [1]. The author is a moderately important biochemist whose name is given in Scopus as Shi Kun Huang, and seems appropriate for a Wikipedia article-- 40 papers, 5 with over 100 citations. He works usually on tumor gene suppressors at the very reputable Burnham Institute for Medical Research. This is not quite his only relevant published paper on the subject: he has one other paper on evolutionary biology,"Ancient fossil specimens of extinct species are genetically more distant to an outgroup than extant sister species are" in the established journal Rivista di Biologia - Biology Forum (Volume 101, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 93-108), which has a very similar conclusion: " Far more damaging to the hypothesis than data from extant organisms, which merely question the constancy of mutation rate, the study of ancient fossil organisms here challenges for the first time the fundamental premise of modern evolution theory that genetic distances had always increased with time in the past history of life on Earth." He uses this term in that paper as well, and gives it as an indexing keyword phrase. Of course, we cannot say that two 08 publications are non-notable because it has not yet been cited by early 09. I am not sure whether these papers will be ignored, or cited to refute them--or perhaps even be accepted, but a few years will tell. In any case, this term seems to be a nondistinctive way of wording the concept of equal genetic difference, and not particularly notable. He seems to be trying to use it in a special sense in relation to his hypothesis, but it clearly is not established yet. DGG (talk) 19:45, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete No real need to mention at molecular clock. - Eldereft (cont.) 20:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The molecular clock is an important hypothesis. The observation that directly leads to and supports this hypothesis is the genetic equidistance result. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nosti (talk • contribs) 21:01, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

unless i misunderstand, the intent of the author is to disprove the molecular clock hypothesis. DGG (talk) 05:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

there is a factual observation (equidistance) and there is an interpretation (clock). The fact deserves a permanent place in human knowledge since it will never be proven false, while an interpretation may change with time and scientific progress.Nosti (talk) 17:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The only place this appears to be significantly mentioned is in papers by Shi, which makes it a non-notable term. -Atmoz (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and redirect to Molecular clock. Both this article and MCH one are awfully written; but this one is worse. It appears that Huang is writing about a challenge to MCH; other challenges are mentioned in a rambling fashion in the MCH article, so I guess this fits in there. Huang's paper appeared in a journal that seems utterly obscure—at least judging by the title and unprofessional editing standards; they didn't even spell check their web page, and the paper is horribly laid out. Can't be bothered to check the impact factor at this hour. If what he's saying makes no sense whatsoever, delete. Xasodfuih (talk) 03:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per Xasodfuih into the molecular clock article. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.