Talk:Kristina Baehr

Notability and dubious claims

@Dclemens1971 I'm concerned about this article for several reasons, including notability and for repeating unsubstantiated medical claims. Additionally, some of your edits (like on Red Hill water crisis) seem to contain material that is written like an advertisement.

There are 1.3 million attorneys in the US. I don't see any justification for why Kristina Baehr meets Wikipedia standards for notability. Several of the sources are completely credulous about concerns attributed to "toxic mold", which lack scientific support. (Australian government, CDC, AAAAI, The Myth of Mycotoxins and Mold Injury) Therefore, they are not reliable in accordance with WP:MEDRS. ScienceFlyer (talk) 05:32, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey there @ScienceFlyer. First, I have zero connection to the subject of this piece and had not heard of her until reading news coverage of the trial. Writing an advertisement was not my purpose. I specifically used terms like "alleged," "reported," etc. to maintain NPOV so it's clear the claims related to toxins are hers (and that the Red Hill cases will determine, legally speaking, any nexus of toxin exposure and sickness in that situation). After reading your message I made a couple more changes to enhance that NPOV. I think the article stands on its own separate from medical conclusions about mold exposure sicknesses; it's about a lawyer who is bringing (and has won) cases finding liability for sickness due to toxin exposure rather than claiming that mycotoxins caused the sickness. Again, I don't think the way I've written the article is making unsubstantiated claims as much as using reliable sources to say that a notable individual has made legal claims about them. However, I'm more familiar with law subject matter than medical subject matter editing on WP, so I welcome improvements from you and others who have better insight on this article!

As for GNG, this subject clearly qualifies. She is herself the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable, secondary, independent sources. (See Law.com, CNBC, KXAN) The sole primary source used in this piece was to source an early career fact (a permissible use) and not to establish notability. Dclemens1971 (talk) 11:36, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Independent maybe, but I don't really see any of those three articles as containing the analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources of Baehr required to be considered secondary by policy. It is however, ambiguous enough that I'm inclined to leave it to other people (including ScienceFlyer probably) to continue the discussion. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:45, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

(Arriving via WT:LAW) FWIW I am not seeing the notability issue here. Seems to be no question that there is sufficient nontrivial coverage in independent reliable secondary sources to meet the WP:GNG's expectation of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." It would be a massive break in Wikipedia practice to redefine (non-breaking-news, not otherwise problematic) articles in reliable mainstream newspapers as primary because they aren't ... evaluative enough, I guess? I can understand the unease with this article in its current state, but I'm not seeing how the existing citations would fail an objective standard.

The biomedical information concern is valid. It might be helpful, though, if specific passages of concern were flagged. On an initial read I don't see any obvious biomedical claims. It looks like the most recent edit improved things considerably.

And there is definitely a promotional issue with this article, which is of course especially problematic in a BLP. The direct quotes from the subject about the Hawaii litigation seem especially out of step with our encyclopedic purpose. I am not convinced we should have any such quotes at all -- but we definitely shouldn't be building whole paragraphs out of them. -- Visviva (talk) 02:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@Visviva Thanks for making improvements. No promotional tone was intended and as I mentioned above I have no connection to the subject or the litigation but after reading about it saw an opportunity to add an article about a female lawyer who appeared notable. @ScienceFlyer I appreciate your contributions as well. I almost never edit on medical subject matter and am not as well-versed on WP policies on that subject matter. I think both of your contributions have improved the article greatly, and I've learned from your interventions here. (Not sure if additional medical sources are needed, but it appears that your work has addressed the primary sourcing, notability and promotional language concerns. I will leave it to other editors to make the decision about whether to remove the maintenance templates.) Thanks to you both! Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:48, 6 May 2024 (UTC)