Talk:Natural genetic engineering

Notability discussion

raekyt has raised the question of this article's notability here after I asked for assistance with this article. I consider this to be a legitimate question, although one I may need to take up in the morning. GaramondLethe 04:29, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Here's the case for notability:

• James A. Shapiro is a notable scientist who already has his own article.
• The book laying out the case for Natural Genetic Engineering would make a standalone article, having garnered at least nine nontrivial reviews. (If NGE proper isn't notable then it would be a simple matter to transform this article into one about the book.)
• There are probably a dozen papers on the topic. Shapiro's Trends in Genetics paper has been cited 90 times, his Gene paper has been cited 78 times and his Genetica paper has been cited 117 times. These are high-quality journals.
• The topic has gained some amount of noteriety outside of molecular biology due the interest of Intelligent Design proponents.
• There is some evidence the concept is being taken up by researchers other than Shapiro. The 2009 Natural Genetic Engineering and Natural Genome Editing symposium garnered 23 papers, only one of which was authored by Shapiro. (This needs to be incorporated into the article.)

And the case against:

• There are only 664 documents that scholar.google knows about containing the phrase "Natural Genetic Engineering". This is definitely on the low side. For example, the next lowest count I found for a similar theory was Nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution clocking in at 923 cites.
• I haven't been able to locate a textbook or reference book that discusses this work.

I think on balance I can make a good case for keeping the article, but there are good arguments to be made on the other side. I'm happy to have this discussion either here or at WP:AfD. Thanks to raekyt for prodding me to go back to the literature and see what else I could find.

GaramondLethe 13:40, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Notability of technical topics in the sense relevant to WP has little to do with the absolute number of hits one gets on google or google-like search services, and nothing to do with the fact that many a garage band's groupie articles get more hits. WP is an encyclopedia, please note, and as such it must cater for things that only a few people will look up; in fact, when very few other sources can offer sound reference material on important matters, it is doubly important that WP should fill the gap. There are positive reasons for retaining the article, and that being so, I cannot imagine the basis for deleting it. The fact that material fits into the structure of topics covered is plenty of reason to include it, because readers elsewhere might want it. It simply is reason to ensure that the appropriate links and categories are in place. Omitting sound information in case it turns out that no one might want it is no justification. Who is to say which items will not be desired from time to time? How many must read an article and benefit from it before we can say that it has earned its place? Note that large numbers of highly substantial topics have very low hit rates and that many sound articles on obscure topics, say Zaluzianskya and Lapeirousia none the less are justified because it is difficult to find material on them elsewhere. And those are a lot less obscure than many others that deserve their place on notability (much needed information deserving notice and filling a gap) rather than notoriety (a much needed gap filled by material not deserving notice on the grounds of any intrinsic interest). JonRichfield (talk) 19:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Possible source

Review by: Ulrich Kutschera, Institute for Biology, University of Kassel, of James A. Shapiro (2011), Evolution. A View from the 21st century. . . dave souza, talk 20:14, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Nice catch — I've added it to the article. GaramondLethe 00:22, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Mo' Sources

How life changes itself: The Read-Write (RW) genome by: James A. Shapiro. You can thank me later - this article needs some SERIOUS revisions. Who gives a hoot about intelligent design when the main thrust is against the Modern Synthesis and the obvious empirical evidence for adaptive, non-random mutagenesis? Isn't THAT what should be summarized in an article like this, a refreshing scientific theory with good explanatory and predictive power? MedDogg (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:28, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

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