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The following Misplaced Pages contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. CorporateM (talk · contribs) This user has declared a connection.

Draft

I have a COI/financial connection/affiliation with Ms. Bresch's employer Mylan. I've put together a draft revised article at User:CorporateM/Heather Bresch for consideration by a disinterested editor that I believe presents a more reasonable balance between many of the glowing sources about her business accomplishments, as well as the more critical and controversial ones about the MBA controversy. The idea is to consolidate Heather Bresch M.B.A. controversy here. As a matter of neutral notification, I've previously pinged User:FreeRangeFrog, who is interested in BLP issues, as well as User:MrBill3, who attended the school during the MBA controversy.

I appreciate your time and attention on this article in advance! CorporateM (Talk) 17:02, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Well -- one of the key things I notice about your revision of the degree controversy section is that it omits any mention of Garrison and Mylan... Nomoskedasticity (talk) 17:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

He's mentioned a couple times, but as "the university president" as oppose to being spelled out by name. CorporateM (Talk) 18:43, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Worth naming. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 19:07, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

•  Done CorporateM (Talk) 19:48, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Leaves the Mylan question. Not thrilled that stuff like this has to be dealt with in this manner; slightly hard to take in good faith. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:42, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Like this? Not sure what you mean. Is there other stuff about Mylan that I missed relevant to her bio? CorporateM (Talk) 22:53, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

• If the goal is to reflect the stuff that's meant to be merged in, then this already reflects the content of Heather Bresch M.B.A. controversy. The company is only mentioned twice; once in the lead, and once when giving context for Bresch's employment. Unless there was impact on the company or negative commentary in RSes, I don't see what more can be added (though I should note that I am unfamiliar with the case). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:40, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

A piece of text that CorporateM's draft omits is: "Michael Garrison, WVU President at the time, was reported to be "a family friend and former business associate of Bresch" and a former consultant and lobbyist for Mylan." I don't think a good reason has been given for its removal. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Process

I am opposed to wholesale replacement of the current article with a draft written by a PR consultant. I appreciate that the draft was offered for discussion here; this accords with policy on COI at least in some respects. But as a matter of process more generally I don't see why we should do it that way. Apart from the concern about omission of the Garrison/Mylan sentence above, I would prefer that changes be proposed here, with reference to the defects of the current version and/or the merits of the changes desired. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The proposed draft said "Bresch was friends and former colleagues with the university president Michael Garrison" but did not make clear that they were former colleagues at Mylan; I fixed it. My suggestion would be that we do the more mundane stuff about the job titles she held, what she did there, etc. as a copy/paste, then go through the controversy separately and more slowly. My main concern is that there is a separate article that covers it in extensive depth, then rather than using Summary Style here, it's more than half the length of the full article and not much is filled out regarding the rest of her bio. If you're willing to spend the time with me hammering out the controversy one item at-a-time, instead of in a copy/paste, this is overwhelmingly the preferred approach to avoid the appearance of impropriety that can occur when even minor mistakes are revealed. Meanwhile, the rest of the article is much more routine and a copy/paste is probably the most sensible way to fill out the more mundane aspects of the page. CorporateM (Talk) 17:11, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Even fuller disclosure

I trimmed the explanation of the controversy down to a hyper-dense bare-bones synopsis, along with a link to the much-more-detailed article about the controversy itself. This is because we don't really need that much detail here, when we already have it there. I did this as the result of a chat on IRC with user:CorporateM, with whom I have never (to the best of my recollection) previously interacted; CorporateM is making an effort to do this properly. DS (talk) 19:55, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

It is requested that an edit be made to the semi-protected article at Heather Bresch. (edit · history · last · links · protection log) This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y". The edit may be made by any autoconfirmed user. Remember to change the |answered=no parameter to "yes" when the request has been accepted, rejected or on hold awaiting user input. This is so that inactive or completed requests don't needlessly fill up the edit requests category. You may also wish to use the {{ESp}} template in the response. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request.

Thanks @DS. DS summarized the Controversy section more concisely, since there is a separate, dedicated article (probably even more concisely than I would have gone with), but said that he didn't have the time/interest to review the entire draft at User:CorporateM/Heather Bresch, which should make the page GAN-ready by filling out the rest of the page (I usually bring pages where I have a COI up to GA). If someone has the time/interest to consider my draft, it would be greatly appreciated! Meanwhile, I think it was ideal that an non-affiliated editor took a shot at the controversy to avoid accusations of slanting. CorporateM (Talk) 20:02, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The only things I can see that seem missing right off are birth date and, maybe, any particular details about early, pre-college, life, and possibly the name of her current husband. Saying "she is married to a lawyer" or anything like that almost comes across as accusing her of some form of interspecies relationship. John Carter (talk) 20:50, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@John Carter I added her husband's full name and a sentence about growing up in a politically charged household. Unfortunately I don't have any good reliable sources with her birthdate. CorporateM (Talk) 21:16, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• The current draft is not acceptable. I can see why a PR consultant paid by Mylan (or is it Bresch?) would want it to appear that way, but it's not consistent with NPOV. There is no lack of electrons here; the existence of greater detail elsewhere doesn't mean we ought to eliminate most of the story here. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 00:02, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nomoskedasticity. I kind of had this thought in the back of my head, that you may have missed the ping I gave you at BLPN, because I was surprised you didn't comment there. The discussion is here if you'd like to take a look. You can also see some other discussions on user Talk pages here and here. Between BLPN, IRC and the two user Talk pages, there's about 4 or 5 editors that may disagree on some details or did not get that detailed, but seem to support something more along the lines of Dragonfly's version. CorporateM (Talk) 01:55, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I saw it; the point was to get other input and I saw no need to respond. User talk pages are not the place to form a consensus on a change that does not have agreement on the article talk page. As for "agreement" from other editors, your sense of that is quite selective: Ronz, for example, said the section should be shorter but also that it should say that she apparently lied about her degree. You've gone for "shorter" but omitted the other bit. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree completely with Nomoskedasticity. This is a bridge too far. Hipocrite (talk) 13:15, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I propose that the "degree controversy" article be merged into this article. I've never been in favour of having a separate article on this issue. There are of course sources to document it, but it doesn't have independent notability. Having a separate article here goes against WP:POVFORK, in my view. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 12:25, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Comment. The controversy is mostly about West Virginia University, not about her. She has many notable accomplishments separate from the controversy, which is a blemish on her life story, but primarily involves others. IMHO her article should definitely mention the MBA issue, give it a sentence or two, and link to the article about the controversy, which can/does include the gory details about WVU, its president and his resignation, the suspicion of political involvement by her father, etc. Lou Sander (talk) 14:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

It's entirely reasonable to take the view that the affair deserves its own article (though of course it's a view that I disagree with). But the section here is almost entirely about her -- the only passage that isn't about her at all is the final paragraph. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Please clarify that last statement. If you are saying that the section about the degree controversy here is more or less entirely about her, well, yes, that would make sense in my eyes, because this article is a biography about her, and the aspects of the controversy irrelevant to her are not really relevant to her biography. John Carter (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm only saying that the section about the degree here is almost entirely about her. I made that point because others (e.g. Lou Sander just above) seem to have said differently (and I think they're incorrect). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I just looked more carefully at this article. The section about the degree IS almost entirely about her. IMHO it should be shortened to a few sentences. The controversy is only a small part of her life, but is a big part of the history of WVU, has its own notability, etc. Lou Sander (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I think I'm hearing a pretty strong consensus that this article currently fails to meet our standards for a biography of a living person due to the question of undue weight. Like others, I'm uncomfortable with a cut-and-paste of CorporateM's version due to the COI issue. (And kudos to him for doing this the right way and engaging us in a discussion). One thing that I think we can do is bring some of the expanded material he's written over, one sentence at a time, carefully vetting it for personal endorsement. I'll do a little bit of that now. But there are obviously other steps that need to be taken, and reducing the size of the controversy section, even as a potentially temporary measure, would at least improve the article for the moment as we then take the time to review the whole thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:17, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

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