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- Ralph W. Moss (writer) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Not really covered in reliable sources. Quite simply, there's just not enough information to make a sufficiently good, balanced article, and searches for good sources have apparently failed for many years.
Note that the only good, strong sources in the article... are just background sources, not specifically about him, used merely to provide the mainstream view on fringe theories he espouses. Once you ignore those, you end up with an incredibly weakly-sourced article, with no apparent hope of improvement. Source #3 is especially telling: http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/ralmosphdonl.html - this is used in close paraphrase to provide the history of Moss' life, despite coming from a questionable transcript of Moss talking about himself. It's not a suitable source for a WP:BLP, and fails pretty much every point of the guidelines for self-published sources by the article's subject, but it's arguably our main source for the article.
As for source #7, the only reliable source actually about Moss, it's available on Google books and from that, we can see the coverage is limited to a single paragraph.
For a biography of a living person, we need top-notch sources. Without these, we pretty much have to fail it under the general notability guideline, since we simply lack the material to make an article. 86.** IP (talk) 23:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
86.** IP (talk) 22:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
- Delete A search of Google News, Scholar and Books have not shown any substantial information with which to build an encyclopedic article from independent sources. Redirect to Amygdalin may be an option as most sources discuss his views on and involvement with Laetrile/amygdalin. Yobol (talk) 22:58, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:32, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
- Weak delete: I think this is really on the borderline in terms of notability criteria; it could probably be argued either way. But when you have borderline notability in the BLP of a controversial individual, I think we should default to delete, so that's what I'd support here. MastCell 03:16, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
- Definite strong Keep as a notable writer. Meets WP:AUTHOR with several notable books His Free radical : Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the battle over vitamin C has reviews in New York Times LA Times And it was on the New York Times Bestseller List for March 13, 1988. . We've always considered that by itself as notability. And it is is in 364 WorldCat libraries, including all major academic libraries.
- His books on cancer have reviews similar or greater holdings: The cancer industry : unraveling the politics has a review in the LA Times -and Publishers Weekly and Oncolink published by the Abrahamson Cancer Center of the University of Penna. -- and there are 464 WorldCat holdings, again including all major university libraries- The Cancer syndrome, his earlier version of The Cancer industry, itself has reviews in the Boston Glove and LA Times -- and 487 World Cat holdings, including the main academic libraries.
- The reviews prove notability. Library holdings are not a formal criterion and are not regarded a proving it, but they help show the notability. I can't imagine hundreds of mainstream health care libraries buying these books if he were not a major influence to be contended with. For most works by alternative medicine figures, there may be many public libraries, but only a few universities trying for completeness. Regardless of that, the reviews prove the notability of the author.
- In declining the prod, I gave considerable weight to his membership on the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health. The Toronto Star apparently agrees with me, for they found this appointment worth an article . The NIH also in its principal public review on Laetrile lists his work as the only non-academic reference they include. and gives him a profile I am really puzzled how the i.p. nom missed all this -- which is just from Google News Archive, supplemented with Google. Maybe he didn't look--I notice he does not say he made any attempt to check for references. The first commentator above right after him says he did look in G News--but he seems not to have found the many dozens of items, so maybe he didn't check in their Archive also. It's time people stopped judging by appearances. DGG ( talk ) 19:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC)