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Talk:Kathleen Collins (scientist)

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Article may be combining multiple people

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We received an OTRS message (ticket:2020092210019304) that indicates that there is information from a couple of different Kathleen Collins-es in this article. The OTRS ticket says that there are two different scientists named Kathleen Collins of similar age and working in somewhat similar areas. From what I'm gathering, one goes professionally by Kathleen Collins and the other goes professionally by Kathleen L. Collins. See also this recent edit to the article [1]. I'm not an expert in this area at all but this probably needs some untangling - @Jesswade88: It looks like you've been the main author here, can you assist? ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 14:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think turning this article into one about Kathleen Collins who works on telomerase at Berkeley [2] is the correct course of action. It's possible Kathleen L. Collins who works at the University of Michigan [3] is also notable, but the case is less clear. Kathleen Collins is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and so meets WP:Prof. Nil Einne (talk) 14:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I spent ages trying to figure out how to disambiguate the 2 scientists and can't think of one. Birth year is problematic since even though it seems like someone associated with the subject added it, I can't find an RS. Career, even something specific like molecular biologist doesn't really work. Institution even if probably unlikely at this stage of their careers, is something that could change. Field of work seems sort of a weird way to disambiguate. I can't find any middle name for Kathleen Collins who works at Berkeley. Any ideas? I belatedly realised it doesn't actually matter until and unless we decide we should have an article on Kathleen L. Collins, still it's something worth considering for the future. Nil Einne (talk) 15:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think everything in the article should now be about Kathleen Collins of Berkeley. Most of the early life stuff is now gone. I left the stuff in the infobox added by the subject. The educational details concurs with the info on LinkedIn [4] and this Berkeley primary source [5]. I had a quick look to try and find sources to expand this, found this [6] which is an interview and doesn't really seem to say much about her education but perhaps could be useful for expanding on her work. Probably we could add the educational details into the article from the Berkeley source although it lacks dates. WP:LINKEDIN has dates, but although I'm sure the profile belongs to her, I'm not sure if we can be sure in a Wikipedia sourcing requirement. The 2016-2017 Fellows source does give a date for when she joined Berkeley. I changed that date as it also concurs with LinkedIn. The old date was 1992 from this source [7], but I can't see any 1992 date in there. It does mention she had been working on telomerase for 26 years at the time giving roughly 1992 as when she starting working on it (as the source was dated 2018) although from something she said later it could be 1991. I wonder if this could be how the confusion arose, but I don't see anything about this being when she joined Berkeley. I did a quick check of the other sources but couldn't find any mention of a 1992 especially with Linkedin, I think 1992 must be wrong anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 16:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oh should mention I'm done for now. Don't worry about stepping on my toes if anyone wants to expand the article. Might also be good if someone double checks I didn't miss anything about Kathleen L. Collins although I'm fairly sure I didn't. I did keep the Whitehead Institute source. The actual links to the subject of this article are maybe not so clear cut except the subject of that source was associate professor at Berkeley in 2004, and also worked under Paul Matsudaira at Whitehead suggesting molecular biology (ORish I know, but we're mostly evaluating the source) although I think that's implied by Whitehead anyway. And LinkedIn does suggest Kathleen Collins was at MIT at roughly that time. So I'm fairly sure it's about the right person. Still it doesn't really add much, so if people want to remove it, go ahead. Nil Einne (talk) 16:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]