Template:Did you know nominations/Thorlabs

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 ^talk 12:03, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thorlabs, Alex Cable

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( Article history links:

• Thorlabs
• Alex Cable

)

• ... that high school dropout Alex Cable collaborated on work that led to the Nobel Prize in Physics and founded Thorlabs, a company with US$200 million of annual sales?

• Reviewed: Helen Papashvily, Adventure Time (miniseries)

Created by ThaddeusB (talk). Self nominated at 21:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC).

• New/5x expanded (24th), long enough, neutral, no copyvio found via spot check (though [1][2] show some places that could use some variation), QPQ done. Alex Cable: (1) "has made a concerted effort to keep the business headquartered there due to his love for the area" seems non-neutral since it's subjective that his effort was concerted—who said so? (or rephrase neutrally), (2) the ¶ about starting the company talks about it without saying that it's Thorlabs, (3) based on the sources, I'm not sure Cable meets the general notability guideline, though with the h-index of 24, he might be fine (anyway, this is outside the scope of this review). The sentence that connects him to the Nobel Prize doesn't have an immediate ref in article (see 3b). Citation for founding Thorlabs and $200M sales figure are in the second article (doesn't need to be in both, though they would fit here). First citation checks out. Do you have an accessible source for that $200M part? Else I'd have to just assume good faith. Hook checks out just fine other than that. Thorlabs: (1) "The was was to", (2) "founded in a Cable's parent's basement" needs a quick copy edit. Please ping me if I don't respond. czar ⨹ 22:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Also

Lab Snacks have attracted a bit of a cult following, appearing, for example, in webcomics about graduate students.

appears to be original research. The webcomic isn't a reliable source for that kind of statement. (Also, for what it's worth, that section appears to have undue weight in the article—what's so great about their snacks?) czar ⨹ 22:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: Thank you for the thorough review. It's nice to get real feedback instead of the typical rubber stamp review... I believe I have addressed all the issues raised. I don't have another reliable source for the sales figure, but have added a figure from the latest company catalog which shows a similar number. The Lab Snacks material was merged per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lab Snacks (not by me). I trimmed it a bit earlier, but have trimmed it more now. The cult following bit is true, but I agree it is OR and removed it. You are also correct that Cable's notability hangs primarily on his h-index and being associated with the Nobel Prize research - I am confident that is sufficient for notability under WP:NACADEMIC. As an FYI, I have a bunch more sources and thus am still actively working on both articles. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds/looks good. A few more things: (1) The line of thought that links Cable to the Nobel Prize is a little janky. "The experiments ... led to three papers" veers towards original research when sourced to Google Scholar. All you can get from GS is that he co-published in the paper(s), not that they were from the lunchtime conversation experiments. Also the APS source does not say that the paper led to the Nobel Prize, but that it led to the Bose–Einstein condensate (the Sparta source says something similar), not to a Nobel Prize per se. Perhaps the logic would make sense if there was a source that says there was a Nobel Prize awarded for finding the condensate (or that Chu's award was for finding it). (2) What database did you use to access the Gale figures? Perhaps I'd be able to access it myself. czar ⨹ 17:46, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I see what you are saying. The GS link was intended to only cover the citation number, so I have adjusted wording according. The Nobel being related to the paper is cited to the PRL retrospective. It can also be seen in the Nobel PR: "he slowing down effect described above forms the basis for a powerful method of cooling atoms with laser light. The method was developed around 1985 by Steven Chu and his co-workers at the Bell Laboratories" [3]. Let me know if concerns remain.

As to the sales figure, my university library has a resource called "Business Insights: Global" the document in question is found by searching for Thorlabs which remains a few results including "Thorlabs, Inc." from "Company Profile, Gale Business Insights Online Collection, 2015" --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:46, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• It sounds okay, though I wish the source made the link between the paper and Nobel more explicit. I'll leave the final call to the closer. AGF on the business figures source. Good work czar ⨹ 01:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)