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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unsolved problems in biology (2nd nomination)

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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 DELETE Ultimately the delete arguments that this is an inherently subjective list must prevail. -Docg 14:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unsolved problems in biology

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Unsolved problems in biology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

The mere concept of "unsolved problems" does not apply for biology. Famous single unsolved problems exist in the formal_sciences like mathematics (see unsolved problems in_mathematics) and in the applied sciences. For natural science, and especially for biology, the "unsolved problems" are hidden in -and dictated by- the respective objects of study.

The resulting lack of criteria for inclusion has resulted in an accumulation of randomly selected and often minor biological topics, vague questions, non-biology topics, already or partly solved problems, pseudoscientific problems, and problems that could never be solved by scientific methods (for examples see the revision before the last big clean-up [1] or check the history).

An introduction into biology topics and an impression about research in this field is already given by our biology article, by our list of biology disciplines (with currently more than 100 entries!), and by the respective biological sub-disciplines linked from there. A complete list of all existing biological topics would not be useful and is beyond an encyclopedic article. A random selection of topics would be inherently biased and would thereby violate Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and, perhaps, Wikipedia:No original research. It is also immanently impossible to find reliable sources for a certain selection or inclusion, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

For the given reasons (and judging from the contents on this page during the past two years since the last deletion discussion), this article can never become an encyclopedic article and should be deleted (the only alternative to deletion would be a precise definition of what belongs into this article and what not, but after thinking about this for a long time now, I could not come up with one). Cacycle 02:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. As I mentioned in the AFD discussion for the medical version of this page, in both physics and mathematics "unsolved problems" can be easily made finite and non-arbitrary. This is since most important issues not explained can be traced back to the limitation of some theory, as well as a few undeniably famous observations and conjectures with no clear explanation or proof. For biology, nearly every unexplained observation and uncured disease could be considered an unsolved problem. Unless someone can provide a non-arbitrary set of criteria to classify something as an "unsolved problem in biology," I must suggest deletion. Someguy1221 04:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Biologists appear to have come up with one.

    Young (Robert Thompson Young (1922). Biology in America. R.G. Badger.) devoted the whole of chapter XVII to unsolved problems in biology. There's a note in Science that the American Association for the Advancement of Science held symposiums entitled "Some Unsolved Problems in Biology" from 1956 onwards. There's a paper on unsolved problems in biology in Chrysalis, the journal of the Swedenborg Foundation. Ridley, from the University of Oxford, lists the existence of sex as one of the great unsolved problems in biology, in ISBN 1405103450. Harub and Thomson say the same in ISBN 0932859585. Then there are the biologists who wrote this paper on 20 unsolved problems in biology, and the several biologists who, like these two, think that he relationship between protein sequence and structure is one of the great unsolved problems in biology. Allen and Baker discuss unsolved problems in biology in chapter 1 of ISBN 978-1-891786-09-9.

    And all of those are to discount this discussion of the great unsolved problems in biology and this statement by the department of biophysics at the University of Idaho, which clearly thinks that the concept of unsolved problems does apply to biology. Uncle G 04:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I don't deny that this is a widely discussed topic. Now, if you could just mention a set of criteria...Someguy1221 04:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. If you are simply suggesting that we only list items that are mentioned as an unsolved problem by a reputable scientific source, that would be fine too. Someguy1221 04:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Actually, every second scientific publication contains the phrase "unsolved problem" in its introduction and it clearly makes a good title for a book or symposia. But this is just a rhetorical phrase and does not help at all in finding sound criteria for inclusion as well as exclusion for this Wikipedia article (including the problems of notability and verifiability).

Cacycle 22:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment If a reputable recent scientific journal says a problem is unsolved, it is unsolved for Wikipedian purposes -- to impose stricter standards is to engage in original research. As for notability, the issue of notability is a hybrid one -- does the field consider it notable, and does the lay public consider it notable. If multiple scientists are devoting their careers to pursuing an issue, then, it is fair to say that the field considers it notable (cf. Wikipedia notability standards). If a lay person can understand what the heck the issue is and care, then the general public probably considers it notable too.Ohwilleke 00:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment And what it does prove is that "Unsolved problems in..." articles are not, contrary to the nomination, limited to the formal sciences and the applied sciences. Biology, Chemistry, and Physics together make up the Natural Sciences; and stepping back from the specific difficulties this article has encountered, if Chemistry and Physics can manage to put a "finite and non-arbitrary" list of unsolved problems (to borrow someguy112's words) I see no a priori reason why Biology cannot. It is true that "nearly every unexplained observation... could be considered an unsolved problem"; but if we limit that to repeatable and verified unexplained observations, would this not give us a reasonable framework (or at least a benchmark) in which to work? -- Simxp 05:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I see a general problem: Readers (including voters in the current and the previous deletion discussions) who are not that experienced in the respective fields see a collection of very interesting and stimulating questions and topics in a "developed article". However, for biologists or chemists it is obvious that those lists are a random collection of minor or specialized topics, of which most are no longer considered unsolved or are formulated in a vague, broad, or unscientific fashion. It is not the purpose of an encyclopedia to keep purely entertaining articles (beside those eye-catchers on the main page). The chemistry page very obviously suffers from exactly the same problems as the biology page. Cacycle 22:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Without committing myself to a vote, surely if the problem is lack of content then the solution is not deletion but rather an {{expand}} tag? You can't add content to an article that doesn't exist, and deleting an article due to a lack of content seems a bit of a Catch 22... -- Simxp 05:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep On second thoughts, I think I will vote after all; on the grounds of this and my comment to Yechi above. -- Simxp 05:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The gutting of the article that already has occurred, and the AFD call, both smack of censorship of unpopular viewpoints. Articles like this are needed to keep us on our toes. Pollinator 05:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. & per my comments on the medical problems afd. Carlossuarez46 20:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (restating from Talk page): This category is basically synonomous with the major areas on ongoing research by credible scientists in the field to find new knowledge (as are Wikipedia's parallel pages in other scientific disciplines). An unsolved problem is simply a question that science has not provided a full answer for. Most questions biology are partially solved. We know some species extant, but not all. We know dark matter exists but not all the details of its operation and mechanism. One can be close minded to the extent that there are only two unsolved problems in biology, but that leaves as a mystery what biologists at the cutting edge of the field spend their time pondering. Because biology is largely descriptive and cumulative, these problems have a different character than say, an unsolved code, or an unsolved physics question, but assertions of "vagueness" and insoulable problems are overkill. The edits you made so far seem to be very focused on biochemistry and seem to deny other areas of research. Put another way, you seem to have read into the topic a narrowing to an implicit "unsolved fundamental problems in biology" that is unwarranted. For example, discovering the basis of allometric laws is not vague, insolulable, non-biological, or pseudo-scientific. Neither is an examination of the extent to which genetic change is horizontal (e.g. germ line viruses and hybridization) v. vertical (inheritance of random mutations and sexual selection). Nor, for that matter, is the grand project of biology of creating a definitive phylogenic tree of life. As noted above, biologists certainly don't agree that their field has no unsolved problems. Ohwilleke 23:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Surely this would then become a list of research projects carried out by biologists... There are no criteria for choosing what is a "problem", nor what is "unsolved": either is open to PoV. Physchim62 (talk) 13:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: What is so bad about a list of research projects being carried out by biologists. It is an unsolved problem if it presents a question that science doesn't have an answer for. The only PoV issue is notability, but that is true of every Wikipedia entry -- is a person, place, thing or idea notable enough to say anything about. If it is the subject of major debate in a scientific field or the focus of considerable scientific effort about something the informed layman can understand and care about, then that is a good thin to write about in my view. Unsolved may be ambiguous in some cases, but usually the question is rather easy to apply (what triggers parthenogenic reproduction in vertebrates?) -- either we know in which case someone can point to an answer, or we don't.Ohwilleke 00:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There are about 100,000 research projects being pursued by biologists. Essentially every article in WP dealing with biology is about a not yet totally solved problem in biology. We have a category for that. DGG 02:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I am not sure if you can imagine (after being here for only 14 days and 36 edits mainly in edit wars and policy discussion), how difficult it is to keep articles manageable if there is not the slightest agreement on what belongs there and what not. Cacycle 00:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The list is a misnomer. The problem isn't that biology doesn't have "unsolved problems" (one might waggishly claim that the field itself is a problem), but rather that having such a list suggests that biological "problems" can be solved in the same way that mathematical proofs are constructed or, in a more limited sense, in the study of physics. In other words, the list implies that biology is akin to the fields of math and physics in a way that it is not.
  • Not especially useful. If the article were constructed in a useful way - as, say, an encyclopedic discussion of how the limits of biological science illustrated a semantically-useful guide to those new to the field - I might argue differently. As it stands, the entry is a unreferenced mis-mash of half-questions (I refer here to the pre-cleaned-up version), hopelessly POV questions ("Is it safe and feasible to produce drugs and other substances through genetically engineered organisms (biopharming)?), unanswerable-by-science questions ("What species of plants and animals remain undiscovered?") and expansive-to-the-point-of-silliness questions (see "What functions does each known gene serve in the body?"). I bring-up these examples not because they are isolated problems, but rather because I think they point out the the problems inherent in trying to maintain a unmaintainable list.
  • Unmaintainable list. Wait, I already covered that....
In summary (finally!), this article is a problem not because of what it does or doesn't have listed, but because it falsely projects an entire field in a way it shouldn't be. Any list generated - by any set of criteria I can think of - is missing the boat at best and misidentifying the inherent basis of the field at worst. -- MarcoTolo 02:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep as per the [first deletion debate]. -Interested2 23:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Almost all problems in biology are partly solved, some to greater or lesser degrees. Whether something is unsolved enough to belong on this list is inherently POV. ike9898 01:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Biology questions are problematic because the ones we study today are complex and emergent in nature and, because of this, the understanding of an issue always exists on some point on a continuum. Inclusion on the list becomes a POV issue. These questions do not have the character of questions like "what is dark matter", I do not see them snapping into focus with some critical understanding. "What is the molecular basis for inheritance" had this character to it, but I can't think of modern questions that have this quality (although this could by my lack of imagination). Current problems are solved on a fragmentary basis because they have no single answer. --Madeleine 22:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
PS I am further convinced the list should be deleted after following and reading this link; I haven't seen any reasonable criteria for inclusion suggested, Madeleine 22:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Delete This will never be anything other than horrible. It's still not clear whether it's supposed to be A. biological questions whose answers are not known and that some biologists have expressed interest in or B. something like "major" or "fundamental" or "important" unsolved problems. Either way it's problematic. Option A would contain literally thousands of entries, most of them of little general interest (much of the historical contents of this article has consisted of arbitrarily chosen items from this list of thousands). It is also unmaintainable. Perhaps somebody, somewhere, could write a B that was worth reading, but it wouldn't belong in an encyclopedia; it would be something like an opinion piece. In any case, Wikipedia is not going to produce anything decent, and would often be outright wrong, and usually amateurish, as the historical contents suggest. Josh Cherry 18:01, 2 June 2007 (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.
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