Template:Did you know nominations/Florence Margaret Durham

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 ^talk 11:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Florence Margaret Durham[edit]

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~~... that geneticist Florence Margaret Durham, whose father was an alcoholic, studied the effects of alcohol on mice for nine years, concluding that parental alcoholism was not inherited?~~

Created by BenjaminDrury (talk), MartinPoulter (talk). Nominated by Edwardx (talk) at 19:58, 30 July 2013 (UTC).

Article new enough, long enough, no copvio problems. However, DYK rules require the hook fact to have an inline citation right after it, so the statement in the article "Their father was an alcoholic" needs an inline citation. Hook's good otherwise. No QPQ needed. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:35, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I inserted a reference citation to support the statement about the father's alcoholism.

However, the article seems a bit disjointed, probably due to a dearth of sources about a scientific woman of this era, and there are other passages (particularly the first paragraph in "William Bateson and the Newnham College Mendelians, 1900–1910", which is completely uncited) that would benefit from additional citations.

Also, I don't believe that the cited source for the other part of the hook fact fully supports the statement that she "concluded that parental alcoholism was not inherited"; the cited source only says her work "suggested parental alcoholism (in the mouse) was not an inheritable trait" -- "suggested" is not "concluded". A related concern with the sentence that describes the work is that it begins "She continued her work in genetics on the effects of alcohol on mice", suggesting that this research had been mentioned earlier in the article, but there is no earlier discussion of this research and no indication of when and where she started it. --Orlady (talk) 14:53, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

More problems with the hook (I should have picked up on this earlier, I know): I've found a review of Durham's paper, which says the experiment was conducted on guinea pigs, not mice, and that they were testing whether alcohol causes genetic defects in the offspring, not whether alcoholism itself is inherited. I think we need a completely new hook at this point; I've struck the original. DoctorKubla (talk) 16:12, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Any progress here? Time for fresh eyes? --PFHLai (talk) 03:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

This needs attention by the creators or nominator. The article hasn't been touched since User:DoctorKubla and I edited it (fairly extensively) on 14 August. --Orlady (talk) 22:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It has been more than two weeks since nominator was informed of need for a new hook and, despite being active editing on Wikipedia, has made no progress in resolving issue. --Allen3 ^talk 22:22, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Sigh... Let me adopt this as a charity case. This article was created at a Women in Science editathon, and presumably the DYK nom was part of the effort to bring more attention to the forgotten women in the history of science. If the article creators have dropped the baton, I can pick it up. --Orlady (talk) 03:40, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

How about ALT1: ... that geneticist Florence Margaret Durham was an early advocate of epistasis, the idea that genetic interaction was more complicated than merely dominant and recessive genes? Edwardx (talk) 16:58, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Too textbook-like for DYK, IMO. I'd prefer something more along the lines of "... that Florence Margaret Durham's experiments on the genetics of coat color in mice helped show that gene interactions are more complicated than dominant and recessive genes?" I'm not proposing that as a hook -- I'm not sure it's entirely accurate and the wording isn't great; my main point is that a hook about what she did is more likely to attract attention than a hook about a scientific theory she advocated. --Orlady (talk) 18:15, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Anyone? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:44, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm giving a final ping to Edwardx, who should have been monitoring this after his last hook proposal, and seen Orlady's objections the next day. A new hook is still needed, and without it this nomination will be closed at the end of the month. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:40, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Hook suggestion: ... that geneticist Florence Margaret Durham bred 6,983 guinea pigs over the course of several years, to study the question of whether daily doses of alcohol had hereditary effects ... Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 19:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

That looks like a good idea, though it's a bit wordy. I think I'd shorten it as follows:

ALT2: ... that geneticist Florence Margaret Durham bred 6,983 guinea pigs for her study of whether daily doses of alcohol had hereditary effects?

Agreed. BTW, I've done some more editing to improve the flow of the article.Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 01:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

New reviewer needed, to check both the ALT2 hook and the article, since no review has been done since the latest updates. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Article's looking better than ever, ALT2 hook checks out. We're good to go at last. DoctorKubla (talk) 07:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)