Talk:Irwin Redlener

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A new article has been created from scratch and is in the temporary subpage. Please use this new article instead, which doesn't include copyright infringements. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirkfisher (talk • contribs) 7 November 2008

Thank you for your understanding and your attention to this matter. I have replaced the previous version as you requested. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A new article has been created for Irwin Redlener. It is fully sourced and does not include copyright infringements. What is the process for having the alerts at the top of the page removed? Thank you for your help. cmcfee 19:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

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Proposed changes[edit]

Dear Arms and Hearts,

I would like to remove the content under Dr. Redlener's Career section that reads:

In May 2020 Redlener said the development and approval of a COVID-19 vaccine would take at least another year; after a vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December 2020 Politico named Redlener's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".

My reasoning is, he has been in the media over 300 times since 2020. In Politico many additional. This is one news story that doesn't reflect his hard-earned reputation and I could replace it with many other links and citations. I would like to replace this with below:

In 2020, Cher and Dr. Redlener formed the CherCares Pandemic Resource and Response Fund to help underserved communities struggling with poverty and other adversities long before Covid-19 appeared. Dr. Redlener also formed the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative (PRRI), at Columbia University to provide information and perspectives on the evolving issues of COVID-19.

___ As a conflict of interest, I assist Dr. Redlener with some of his communications, but I tried to write the above replacement content in a neutral tone and state facts in a non-opinioned way. ___

Here is a link that validates his work at PRRI: https://ncdp.columbia.edu/microsite-page/covid-19-global-pandemic/home/

Here is a link that supports his media coverage over the last year and a half regarding COVID-19 and any one of them could be cited instead of the Politico article. https://ncdp.columbia.edu/microsite-page/covid-19-global-pandemic/media/

Here is an example where he talks about his efforts with Cher: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/cher-takes-on-vaccine-hesitancy-with-the-chercares-bus-115016261703.

Please let me know the best way to proceed.

LEsposito Lesposito20 (talk) 17:26, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lesposito20. Thanks for starting a discussion; I appreciate you proposing changes rather than editing the article directly. I've moved this disussion from my talk page to ensure the discussion is visible. Before getting on to your proposed changes, can you clarify whether you've read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI? As that page explains, if you're being paid to edit Wikipedia you need to follow the instructions to disclose that.
Another point to bear in mind is that Wikipedia is entirely uninterested in protecting Redlener's reputation. We are writing an encyclopaedia and trying to write from a neutral point of view. This means that negative aspects of the subject of an article will often be discussed, provided they've been covered previously by a reliable source (such as Politico).
As such, I don't see any basis for removing the quote from Politico about his mistaken prediction (though other editors may disagree, and it can be removed if there's a consensus to to do so). We might add other material as well though – I've added a sentence on the Cher Cares project as it's clearly been the subject of some coverage in reliable sources, and another on the Pandemic Resource and Response Center.
If there are other endeavours, achievements, etc. that you think belong in the article then you should specify them, and the sources you think should be cited, below. Some of the sources linked from the PRRI media page seem like they would be good additions, but I haven't looked in that much depth. The sources should be secondary sources – things written about Redlener rather than by him or anyone associated with him (interviews like the MSNBC one you link to are generally not secondary sources). And you should bear in mind the neutral point of view policy (linked above). If you follow the instructions at Template:Request edit that will mean editors who aren't closely following this article will see your request. I can't guarantee that anything else you propose will be added to the article, but I'll certainly look into it, as may other editors.
I hope that clarifies things somewhat. Let me know if you have any further questions. All the best, – Arms & Hearts (talk) 20:16, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Arms & Hearts, User:Lesposito20 as a long-time WP editor, I can see a basis for removing the quote from Politico about Redlener's mistaken prediction. (1) Content should be supported by multiple WP:RSs, not just one article, especially a derogatory opinion in a WP:BLP. (2) The Politico article is incorrect on the facts.
(1) According to WP:WEIGHT:
Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[3] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views.
As far as I could tell, including a Google search for "redlener vaccine prediction" (without the quotes) and other keywords, this opinion appears only in this Politico article, and no other WP:RS. So it seems to be a minority view. I could accept this in the article if it had been a significant viewpoint reflected by multiple WP:RS, but I don't think that one WP:RS has sufficient WP:WEIGHT to appear in this article.
Can you find any other WP:RS that repeat this opinion? If not, and you don't have another good reason for keeping it in, I would lean towards deleting it, since it's a WP:BLP.
(2) Politico was wrong on the facts. The FDA didn't approve the vaccine.
According to “We’re not going to see an effective (coronavirus) vaccine proven safe until well into 2021, if then”:
Even so, that record was smashed in December, when the FDA approved the first of several coronavirus vaccines in development after it passed its rigorous safety standards.
This is incorrect. The FDA did not approve a covid-19 vaccine -- it granted emergency use authorization, which is different.
According to | FDA NEWS RELEASE: FDA Takes Key Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for First COVID-19 Vaccine:
“While not an FDA approval, today’s emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine holds the promise to alter the course of this pandemic in the United States,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
But my big objection is that it's a derogatory opinion by only one source in a WP:BLP. --Nbauman (talk) 03:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nbauman: Apologies for the delay in replying to this. On #1, I think you're relying on an unreasonably restrictive reading of WP:WEIGHT, and one that if applied more broadly would leave a lot of articles without a lot of content. Redlener is an individual about whom evaluative perspectives are not commonplace in the mainstream media (nor, I suspect, in the specialist literature, though I wouldn't really know where to look), so if we're to include any perspectives weighing up whether he was right, wrong, audacious, etc. we're going to have to include perspectives that only appear in one source. We could just not include any such perspectives, but I think they have their value (and this is in part because they're rare – commentary on commentators isn't published much, but it's useful to have critical perspectives on people we read and cite). There may still be weight issues, but in that case a better solution would be to expand the article with other perspectives on his other work (reviews of his books, for example).
On #2, you're right that Politico seems to have gotten it wrong, but the inaccuracy doesn't specifically pertain to what Redlener said, which was that there wouldn't be "an effective [coronavirus] vaccine proven safe" until 2021 – "proven safe" being the operative phrase. So my proposal is that we keep the Politico claim and also try to find some other sources that comment on Redlener's work or evaluate it so this one doesn't have undue prominence; some of those identified by Lesposito20 might be useful here. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:35, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, I'm basing my reading of WP:WEIGHT on my 14 years of editing Wikipedia, where other editors have objected to my adding text based on one citation, and the consensus went against me. I think they were wrong, but I have to live with it.
I think this understanding of WP:WEIGHT applies here because this Politico source seems to be a light, snarky, opinionated piece which doesn't pay too much attention to accuracy, fairness, or the significance of the supposed mistake. And it's BLP.
I wouldn't object to an addition like that if it were significant, which I would define as being sourced by multiple WP:RS. For example, David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute said that if Rudolph Guliani had his prostate cancer treated in the UK, he would probably have died, because the UK survival rate for prostate cancer was much lower than ours. This was reported repeatedly in the NYT and other major newspapers, and the UK ambassador published a letter in the NYT quoting the statistics saying that the survival rate in the UK was as high as ours. In addition he was factually wrong and the number was significant for the health care debate. [1]
If you met those criteria for the Redlener story -- or if you could even find one more WP:RS -- I would accept it. But you can't.
I think I know what you're getting at, but you're giving excessive WP:WEIGHT to a casual, offhand comment which isn't even reported accurately.
Second, there's a difference between what Redlener actually said, Politico's paraphrase, and Wikipedia's paraphrase of Politico, which makes Redlener look worse as you go along:
Redlener: there is a very important limitation to how fast we can create a ... vaccine without creating a situation where many many people could be in very serious danger.... we're not going to see an effective vaccine proven safe until well into 2021... [2]
Politico: Dr. Irwin Redlener, a public health analyst with NBC News, spoke for many in the medical community when he suggested this past spring that a safe and effective vaccine was at least a year away — after all, the previous record time for vaccine development was more than four years.
Even so, that record was smashed in December, when the FDA approved the first of several coronavirus vaccines in development after it passed its rigorous safety standards. [3]
Wikipedia: In May 2020 Redlener said the development and approval of a COVID-19 vaccine would take at least another year; after a vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in December 2020 Politico named Redlener's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".
Redlener's opinion was widely held in the medical community at that time, and it's not clear that they were wrong. They couldn't create a vaccine that quickly without sacrificing safety and effectiveness. The original study in the NEJM [citation omitted] which Pfizer used for its FDA emergency use authorization was only powered to demonstrate that the vaccine reduced mild disease with an effectiveness of 95%. It couldn't give the effectiveness in preventing major disease or death. (Nobody died in any group.) If they had done a traditional, four-year study, they would have known all that before they approved it.
So, (1) The vaccine does have dangers. One virologist had said, "We could be creating Typhoid Marys," and he was right. Now, according to this week's news, it now turns out that people vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine can get asymptomatic disease, and transmit it to others who have been vaccinated (and become carriers); and to unvaccinated people (who get sick).
And (2) We don't know how effective it is, because we don't know how well it protects against asymptomatic disease (which can be transmitted to others), or death (which is the main end point of interest).
Redlener made a precise, cautious, qualified statement. Politico accused him of being wrong about a different statement.
I don't think it's acceptable to keep the Politico claim in until we find more WP:RS. This is WP:BLP, and as such the burden of proof is on you and it has to be removed immediately until it meets Wikipedia standards. It should have been removed earlier. --Nbauman (talk) 22:10, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your first point is really just reiterating your point above. Which is fine, but you'll forgive me if I don't reply point-by-point as (I hope) I've already made my own views reasonably clear. The only point I would query is your description of the Politico piece as "a light, snarky, opinionated piece". Opinionated, certainly – an opinion is precisely what we're taking from it. Snark may be in the eye of the beholder. "Light" seems misleading, though, insofar as this is a year-end "worst-of" list, in which the author's specifically picked out consequential or representative happenings some months after they occured, thereby attributing a significance that goes beyond just commenting on an ephemeral story as it happens. In other contexts we ask for WP:SUSTAINED coverage, and coverage of a remark in a reliable source seven months later is a good suggestion that the remark, and probably the coverage, is worth including. (And since you mention it, I see your first edit and mine were a month apart – actually closer to 15 years though!)
Your second point is (as I said above) fair enough, but it's a matter of wording and so easily fixable, and I've now done so (feel free to tweak further). I wouldn't entirely agree that Politico mischaracterised Redlener's statement (at least not egregiously), but the current wording doesn't weigh in either way on that question, it just says what Redlener said and then what Politico said.
If the revised wording is agreeable to you we can leave it there, but if it isn't then requesting a third opinion seems like it would be a sensible next step. What do you think? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:36, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, that edit isn't agreeable.
1. You're adding WP:OR. The Politico article said one thing; you're saying another thing (that you have no source for). Redliner said "we're not going to see an effective vaccine proven safe until well into 2021." Politico accurately paraphrased him but then inaccurately said that it was approved and "passed its rigorous safety standards." You changed the subject to "distribution" and "authorized." Redliner never said that a vaccine wouldn't be given an AUA and distributed, he just said that it wouldn't be proven safe and effective into 2021. If the FDA thought it was "safe and effective," they would have approved it. "Safe and effective" is a term of art. Redliner said (corectly) that it wouldn't be "safe and effective." Your edit accuses him of being wrong about "authorization" and "distribution," which he never said.
2. It clearly violates WP:WEIGHT as I explained above. The derogatory mocking of Redliner has only one WP:RS (which is factually inaccurate and not credible). If you could find one more source, I might consider it, but without at least one more source, it's clearly a fringe view.
3. It's WP:BLP, so the burden of proof is on you. It violates WP:BLP, and should have been removed while we argue about it.
4. Since there are questions of clinical medicine, this should follow WP:MEDRS, which Politico does not.
I didn't delete this immediately because I don't like to get into editing wars. I realize there are some people who enjoy arguing, and there's a place for that, but I think we've exhausted the debate and I'm getting tired. I think deleting it according to WP:BLP would be the next sensible step, but if you want to get a third opinion, I'll wait for that. --Nbauman (talk) 18:08, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely agree that there's not much more to say here, so I'll request the 3O shortly (please check the wording and amend if necessary). (I wouldn't have objected if you'd removed the sentence pending discussion,though I obviously don't agree that it should be removed for good.) For the sake of whoever might respond, though, I'll address at least some of your points. Simply put, you're putting words in my (and the article's) mouth: the prose as currently written makes two separate factual claims ("Redlener said X"; "Politico said Y"), from which you've inferred something incorrect, and what you're objecting to is your own inference (something like "Redlener said X and this wrong because Y"), not what the article says. You're right that Redliner [sic] never said that a vaccine wouldn't be given an AUA and distributed, but wrong if you think the article says he said that. You're similarly wrong to claim he used the specific phrase "safe and effective" (he said "an effective vaccine proven safe"), though I don't share your sense of the importance of that wording. And you're making another leap, which goes well beyond what we can reasonably expect our readers to conclude, when you say that any of this constitutes "derogatory mocking" – he said something that was probably unduly cautious or pessimistic (though for our purposes it could be entirely correct and it wouldn't make a difference); it happens; people make mistakes (people making pandemic-related predictions especially so) – but we write articles on the basis of what sources say, not what intentions or temperaments we read into them. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:05, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here from 3rd opinion. I am for inclussion. Politico is a great source. What I would suggest is explaining the reasoning behind his prediction. And I do not see it as a shameful event, making a wrong prediction is common among those who do not posses a crystal ball. On politico being wrong: it is not our bussiness to correct RS. Cinadon36 09:12, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How do you answer my objection that one WP:RS does not satisfy WP:WEIGHT? Isn't one article a "tiny minority"? Nbauman (talk) 04:38, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a standard case of attributed opinion, and Politico is a pretty major source, so I don't see any concerns of undue weight with inclusion of what they had to say about it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:42, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

COI editor requested edit[edit]

Moved from request by Lesposito20 at COIN. --- Possibly ☎ 20:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To whom it may concern:

I am trying to update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Redlener page with correct information. I am not paid through him, but I work for a larger institution of which he is part. Some of the content on the page is factually incorrect and I would like to update this for accuracy.

For instance: As of 2021, Redlener is head of Columbia's Pandemic Resource and Response Center.

This should say as of 2020 (not 2021), Dr. Redlener is the director of the Columbia University's Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative. (It should say University as well as Initiative, not Center.

https://ncdp.columbia.edu/microsite-page/covid-19-global-pandemic/home/

It looks like because that I need to resolve the conflict of interest disclosure in order to make these updates which is above. What is the best way to move forward?

Sincerely,

L Esposito

Done, thank you. --- Possibly ☎ 20:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request June 2022[edit]

 – – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:36, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello,
I would like to make the following edits to the main article text. I added in Dr. Redlener's new initiative, the Ukraine Children's Action Project as well as a few other grammar modifications.
__
Irwin Redlener is an American pediatrician and public health activist who specializes in health care for underserved children,, and disaster planning, response, and recovery with a special interest in the well-being of refugee and displaced children. He is the author of The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for 21st Century America (2017) and the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now (2006).[1]
Dr. Redlener is co-founder, along with Karen Redlener of the Ukraine Children's Action Project (UCAP), created in May 2022 in response to the massive displacement of children and families consequent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. UCAP focuses on supporting the educational continuity and mental health support of displaced children in Ukraine and Poland.
Redlener is also president emeritus and co-founder (with singer-songwriter Paul Simon and Karen Redlener) of Children's Health Fund (CHF), director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. [2][3] and Professor of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Redlener was a special advisor to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, with a focus on emergency management and planning to support and advise the administration's citywide disaster preparedness and response efforts.[4]
_________________
Career Edits (The name of the school has changed to the Columbia Climate School) as well as some of the information was out of date.
In 2003, Redlener established the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University, Columbia Climate School. He is the founding director and research scholar of NCDP where he works to understand and improve the nation’s capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. At NCDP he focuses on the readiness of governmental and non-governmental systems; the complexities of population recovery; the power of community engagement; and the risks of human vulnerability, with a particular focus on children.
Lesposito20 (talk) 15:23, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Lesposito20. I've made some of these changes, but others probably won't be made as they conflict with Wikipedia policies or guidelines.
I've added a sentence about the UCAP with the source suggested, and made a few tweaks ("educational continuity" feels like a buzzword and "supporting ... mental health support" is repetitive). I'm happy to remove "health care reform" from the lead section as it doesn't seem to be strongly supported by anything in the article body (WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY).
I don't see, however, why the lead section, which already says Redlener specializes in health care for underserved children, disaster planning, response, and recovery, needs to list specialisms within specialisms – this doesn't seem like good writing and seems like puffery. I haven't added the sentence about the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as you haven't cited a reliable source supporting it. I haven't added the external links to the UCAP, NCDP etc. websites, as Wikipedia articles very rarely contain external links in the article body per WP:EL. I haven't changed "Redlener" to "Dr. Redlener" because MOS:DOCTOR says to avoid using titles like that unless a person is widely known by that name.
Finally, I haven't changed The Earth Institute to Columbia Climate School as they seem to be separate institutions, rather than different names for the same institution. The Earth Institute website, for example, says "The Earth Institute is proud to announce that we will take on a central role in the new Columbia Climate School", not that it's been renamed the Columbia Climate School. The claim that "In 2003, Redlener established the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University, Columbia Climate School" seems unlikely to be true, as the Columbia Climate School wasn't established until 2020.
Let me know if I've missed anything or if I can clarify any points. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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