Talk:Bette Korber

Message

I'm taking a Wikipedia Fellows class at Wiki Ed and I've been working on women in science articles. I see that a recent editor removed the husband and children and said these were not accepted as part of a WP article but I have seen them frequently on Women in Science and other biographical articles. Is the consensus not to put in these data? I find them of interest and would like them to be available in articles but if that's just not done, I will refrain from adding them.LLMHoopes (talk) 11:03, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Query about including husband and number of children

On my talk page, I've been having an interesting discussion about whether or not it's appropriate to include Bette Korber's husband and the number of children she has.  My feeling is that since many people seem to believe women who have children cannot do top flight science, it's important information for readers.  But I am interested to know what arguments there are against using it, besides that the article is mostly focused on the science achievements.LLMHoopes (talk) 19:08, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

LLMHoopes my two cents, on a living person, I would probably not include the information unless it was relevant to her career. You make an argument for why it would be relevant. If I included it, I would probably not give names, and am glad to see you omitted the children's names. You can always list them in an informational comment, using <!-- informational comment (sourced) -->. That way, the data is there for incorporation at a later time. I often do the comment with full birth information on living people, as their identifying information must be protected from identity thieves, etc. SusunW (talk) 16:19, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Added information on vaccine development and origin of HIV

=Responding to a suggestion from Ian Pigott, I have expanded this article while it's waiting to be evaluated as a possible good article. I have added more material on the vaccine development strategies created by Korber and also on her role in the debate about the date of origin of HIV virus in Africa.LLMHoopes (talk) 23:24, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Bette Korber/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ceranthor (talk · contribs) 19:09, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll review this. ceranthor 19:09, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

First of all, Dr. Korber is truly an accomplished scientist, and I look forward to reviewing this article. I think it needs work before it's ready to be considered a good article, but it's certainly in decent shape already.

Prose

• "Bette Korber is an American computational biologist focusing on the molecular biology and population genetics of the HIV virus that causes AIDS." - I'd add "HIV infection and eventually" between "causes" and "AIDS", for clarity
• "She has received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the Department of Energy's highest award for scientific achievement.[2]" - Why just the mention of this one award, and none of the others listed in the rest of the article?
• Lead seems a bit brief. Might be worth adding more details about her research focus or how she has specifically contributed to HIV vaccine development
• "From 1981 to 1988, she was in the PhD program, including working with Iwona Stroynowski in Leroy Hood's laboratory, at California Institute of Technology.[3]" - would mention the institution before the bit about collaborating with Dr. Stroynowski or Dr. Hood... something like "From 1981 to 1988... PhD program at California Institute of Technology, working with Iwona... Hood's laboratory"
• "She received the PhD in Chemistry in 1988.[3]" - isn't this implied in the previous sentence? Also, why "the" PhD rather than "a" PhD
• "Until 1990 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health." - any idea with whom she worked?
• "She became a Visiting Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute in 1991, continuing in that visiting position until 2011.[3]" - no need to repeat "visiting" twice in one sentence.
• "HIV, the AIDS virus.[4] " - is this totally accurate? I know HIV obviously causes AIDS, but I have always thought it's more the HIV/AIDS virus... that may be splitting hairs, though.
• "“I hate HIV,” she says, her voice rising with emotion. “I lost a couple friends to it. HIV kills in horrible ways. I think of what the epidemic has done to Africa and it motivates me.”[4]" - This quote is fine, but I would cut out the "her voice rising with emotion" bit per Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles#Tone
• "evaluates the evidence for the strength of each epitope" - to clarify, does this mean with regard to vaccine development? I think that could be more explicit here for a lay reader
• " In 2017, the group of collaborators announced a human efficiency test with that safe mosaic protein preparation, vaccinating 2,600 women in Sub Saharan Africa, who will be examined for several years and show how efficiently, if at all, the virus interferes with infection.[6]" - I think there might be a typo here - is it supposed to be "to show how efficiently" rather than "and show how efficiently"?
• "Korber explains, “Nobody had really tried this kind of thing before, where you assemble a whole protein to solve that immunological problem on the computer. Even after it worked, it was hard to convince people that this novel thing could be a vaccine because it hadn’t been done before.” [6]" - for the most part, the quotes in this article are appropriately used, but I think the first half of this quote might be better conveyed through text, followed by the last bit of the quote ("Even after it worked, it was hard... before").

References

• Ref 10 appears to be missing a space after "Epigraph:"
• Where possible, all references should have dates for when they were published/last updated
• Ref 6 mentions Santa Fe New Mexican, but not ref 24, despite coming from the same source
• Ref 23 lacks publisher/magazine information
• References should be consistent when it comes to providing author full first names vs. first initials

Comprehensiveness

• For a scientist with such an impressive h-index (Google Scholar gives her an h-index of 110), I would think there were more sources discussing her work and career, especially her earlier doctoral and post-doctoral research. Are there any other sources that might elaborate on her early work a bit?

The article is in good shape. The prose needs some fine-tuning, but I think it is well on its way to becoming a good article. ceranthor 17:35, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

These are my initial comments. I will read through again and see if I have any other suggestions.

Hi, Dr. Hoopes, I see you are going through and making changes. Let me know when you think you've gotten to all of them, and I'll read through and see if I have any more suggestions. Thanks for your work so far. ceranthor 22:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi,User_talk:Ceranthor, Thanks for all these good ideas. I've completed what I can do to respond to your first set now. I am sorry that sometimes I couldn't find full first names of authors so had to use initials. Also, when I used websites rather than basic form citations, I couldn't figure out how to make the first name before the last name by editing. I am sorry not to have re-formatted the references exactly as you wished. I think I've responded with revision to all of the other suggestions. I'm happy to do more if you see more that is needed. Cheers,LLMHoopes (talk) 03:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@LLMHoopes: I can go through and standardize the references and names today. Thanks for your work thus far, and I will let you know if I have additional suggestions! For future reference, if you want to give me a message notification, you can use {{ping|Ceranthor}}. Cheers, ceranthor 14:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Make that today! Sorry for the delay. ceranthor 18:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

@LLMHoopes: I have converted all the reference templates for you, using {{citation}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, and {{cite magazine}} for future reference. I will read over today/tomorrow and provide any additional comments tomorrow. ceranthor 01:59, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@LLMHoopes: After making some reference formatting changes and a few copyedits, I think this is ready to be listed as a good article. However, I have a few image concerns before I can pass it. ceranthor 14:14, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Images

• Why do you think File:Bette_Korber_with_Zulu_Basket.jpg falls within the public domain? It looks like it comes straight from a newspaper article, which makes me suspect it's not actually a freely licensed image.
• The source link for File:Bette_Korber_or_Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory.jpg doesn't work.
• The two diagram images seem fine.

Once these are addressed, I can pass the article. Sorry for any confusion - I neglected to double check the images at first. ceranthor 14:17, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Korber images

Hi Ceranthor, I did get the images from publications but they both were taken by Los Alamos National Laboratory where Korber works and the publications stated that the images were theirs. For the EurekaAlerts one (Science magazine news service) I corresponded by email with their editor and was told to ask Los Alamos. But my WikiEd teacher told me that since LANL is a branch of the national government, their photos are in the public domain, so I chose the US government on the form and the CC group accepted that. For the second one, I noted that LANL was cited as the source and just went straight into the citation of the US government. I will check the broken link and figure out what's wrong with it. cheers, Laura LLMHoopes (talk) 14:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@LLMHoopes: Thank you for the speedy response. I will go ahead and pass this then! :) ceranthor 14:31, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ceranthor: I clicked on the photo of Korber at her computer and the link it showed worked for me. I am not sure, given that, how to fix what went wrong when you couldn't get the link to work. Suggestions? Thanks, Laura LLMHoopes (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@LLMHoopes: That is odd - it works for me now. Thanks for letting me know. ceranthor 15:21, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Initial Response to First Review for Good Article Status

Thank you for considering this article for Good Article status. I agree with your suggestions/comments and have made changes to respond to them unless it's not possible. In some cases, the source website I was using had no date of origin on it so I could not add a date. I believe those are the only suggestions I did not follow in the current revision. I'm ready to consider any more suggestions that you have, Ceranthor.LLMHoopes (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2018 (UTC)