Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/People speculated to have been autistic

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. Mailer Diablo 08:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People speculated to have been autistic[edit]

List is entirely speculative as the title and the introduction blatantly say. As speculation there is no way to support any of this with facts and speculation does not have a place on Wikipedia. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 04:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete as nominator. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 04:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Delete per nom.--Adam (talk) 04:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, pure speculation. Keep, article is indeed extremely well sourced, this is not original research. My bad... Grandmasterka 04:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as unencyclopedic original research. Remove all unreferenced entries in section 1 and 2, Keep the well referenced material on Einstein and Newton. Feezo (Talk) 08:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A lot of work has been done in the last decade by historians and psychologists about whether certain historical figures had autism. The article is well written and and large parts are sourced. JoshuaZ 04:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, original research, listcruft. --Terence Ong 05:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment It isn't listcruft at all, it has a lot of sources to historians and psychologists who have made the speculations, many of which appeared in actual journals. JoshuaZ 05:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just because someone else does the speculating doesn't make it encyclopedic. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 05:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Agreed. I was merely addressing the issues of listcruft and of OR. JoshuaZ 06:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. --Hyphen5 06:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Just toss out the unreferenced stuff. A few bad apples here don't spoil the barrel. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 06:52, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - as far as I know, Wikipedia does not "speculate". The only way to possibly keep this is strong citing, which, chances are, wouldn't be done. Wickethewok 08:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - But of course make sure everything is sourced. Cyde Weys 08:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - High quality and most of it is sourced. But perhaps the title is unfortunate. Henrik 08:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: I see this article as being about a controversy about whether or not certain historical figures were on the autistic spectrum. Perhaps it should be renamed so that the title includes the word controversy and not speculated. Q0 19:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, pay attention to concerns as above. Samaritan 09:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete Speculation is, by definition, not completely supported by facts. Delete, as per nom. Roodog2k 14:15, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Wikipedians should not speculate, but reporting on other people's speculations, such as leading autism experts, is fine, as long as it is sourced, verifiable, and labelled as such. Turnstep 15:51, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, as not verifiable. Any doctor will tell you that it's impossible to diagnose the dead. Last I checked, Wikipedia wasn't in the business of creating poster children for the autism rights movement. This may be a fine subject for a human interest story in a newspaper or magazine, but it's out of place in an encyclopedia because it is, as its title says, only "speculation." It may be educated speculation on the part of some of the doctors cited, but it's still speculation. Brian G. Crawford 16:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The standard is "verifiability, not truth" (see WP:V). Suppose well-known doctor X publishes an article in which he says "I think maybe Y was autistic." Then "Y was autistic" is unencyclopedic speculation that does not belong in Wikipedia, but "X said 'I think maybe Y was autistic'" is a verifiable fact and could well be properly included. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Excellent references, strong discussion of an issue of real historical interest. This is part of historical scholarship and is not a problem unless we make the claims. -- JJay 16:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • STRONG, Speedy KEEP, per JJay - of extreme historical interest - Paulus89 17:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Article cites its sources, and does not make its own speculations. It tries well to be NPOV and not be biased towards the autism rights crowd (as the first paragrah shows). We can report on others' speculations. (posted after edit conflict) — Kimchi.sg | Talk 18:02, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep: It is true that Wikipedia does not allow speculation. However, this article is not speculative, it reports the speculation that has been done outside Wikipedia. Someone once suggested that if Wired Magazine said in 1999 that Bill Gates might have Asperger syndrome, then it would be acceptable for someone to write, "In 1999, Wired Magazine speculated that Bill Gates might have Asperger's." Similarly, it should be encyclopediatic to say "Temple Grandin, PhD. and Arthur Caplan, PhD. speculated that Bill Gates might have traits of Asperger's", since Grandin and Caplan did indeed speculate this, as referenced in the article. I think there are dubious entries like Richard Nixon. That is why I tagged it as needing citations. Although it is against Wikipedia's policies to write a controversial claim in Wikipedia, it is not against Wikipedia's policies to write that a certain person or group supports a controversial claim. Similarly, the situation about whether or not Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, etc. are on the autistic spectrum is a controversial issue (and the speculation about Einstein appears to come up quite a bit in the autistic community) so it should be NPOV to state which people think Einstein and Newton are autistic and which people think they are not autistic. Q0 19:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: In addition there is another list about people speculated to have a condition at List of people speculated to have been syphilitic. Q0 19:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete There is too broad a spectrum of autism. Some will live their whole life and never know they had it. --mmeinhart 19:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Irresponsible to be speculating on such an important issue. Even these "medical studies" are speculations by doctors. Without proof, it doesn't make sense for this to be here. pm_shef 19:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per "This is a speculative list." --Rob 20:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could you please elaborate on your thinking here. If medical journals and other scholarly reviews are publishing works on the topic, why can't we discuss it here? Should we ignore the fact that the medical conditions of famous personalities are a real field of historical scholarship that is frequently echoed in the popular press? Going further, wouldn't that type of thinking eliminate the possibility of incorporating any new material into our historical articles since the new interpretations could just as quickly be branded speculation? -- JJay 20:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Why is this in any way better than adding the speculation to the notable person's biography? I can see that medical conditions of famous individuals are a proper filed of historic study (did Napoleon have severe piles, thus arriving at Waterloo shorter of sleep than Wellington, and less mobile?) but I can't see tha that is assisted by the historian having a list of people with piles, running his finger down it and picking out Napoleon to consider biographising. Is it a reflection of limitations in the search facilities available - a way of doing a search for Cat:people word:autis* ? Weak delete, or merge to talk page of main article on the condition. Midgley 02:18, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's the same logic as that behind categories and lists in general - it's a way of centralizing and grouping the information for a user whose interest is in autism/asperger's generally, rather than in a specific person who may have had autism/asperger's Bobby P. Smith Sr. Jr. 02:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete At best, this page can aspire to be original research! Absolute garbage, would love to see it gone. Ben-w 06:58, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep, but remove the large amount of dubious and badly-sourced material in it, and in future apply WP:V and WP:CITE punctiliously and promptly move unsourced items to the Talk page. There's nothing wrong with reporting well-sourced opinions, and there is some point in localizing this material in a single article than rather than having individual discussions biographies. But. This is a page where the verifiability policy needs to be applied punctiliously. I notice that a number of seemingly sourced items have pretty unsatisfactory sources; for example, Alan Turing is referenced to a page on a medium-credible website—it's about "sexual health" and the source is an RN with an autistic child, who in turn, cites "Tony Attwood 2000" but does not actually give a reference. Attwood in turn is quoted rather vaguely as saying "Examples of possible 'Asperger's Achievers' are Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Mozart, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Glenn Gould and Alan Turing ... such illustrious individuals could be valuable heroes to children with Asperger's Syndrome." I don't think that's good enough, particularly since the statement suggests Attwood is motivated by a wish to provide "heroes" to children with Asperger's, rather than a desire for encyclopedic accuracy. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - as long as Wikipedia is not doing the speculating, it's all right. It could be improved and better sourced, but the article is interesting and noteworthy. ProhibitOnions 20:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment we'll have People speculated to have been Shirley MacLaine in a prior life, People speculated to have voted for George Bush, People speculated to have enjoyed their martinis stirred not shaken, People speculated to be space aliens.. Or more seriously (perhaps)....People speculated to have been gay, People speculated to have been born out of wedlock, People speculated to have had plastic surgery, which are all fair game if this stays and Wikipedia isn't doing the speculating.... Carlossuarez46 01:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment The last three seem reasonable to me, especially given that when such speculation is common it is already on some of the individuals pages. JoshuaZ 18:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment: Nobody has mentioned that there are a very large number of articles on Wikipedia that already contain rumors or speculation. Future products, such as Nintendo Revolution are an example. Or most future years that have articles. Any article about something in the future (or otherwise) is game for speculation, and if it's sourced and is not a far-out fringe belief I don't see what the big problem is. Grandmasterka 23:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep: This page is not about Wikipedia or Wikipedians making speculations, but about scientific speculations. This is an acceptable Wiki subject, as it seems to be a genuine area of scientific interest. The article seems well sourced and with a lot of references, and is NPOV and does not contain original research. I see no reason to delete it, and many reasons to keep it. -- Ritchy 18:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep This is a good, interesting article. Kill it and wikipedia will die a little death. Sparsefarce 22:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep The article does no speculation. There are many scientists who believe some people in the past have been autistic and the article is about their speculation(which is pretty well known and could be considered quite important) and not the editor's speculations. This article could be useful and as long as everything is cited would not detract from the quality of Wikipedia. Shadowoftime 03:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I notice some people are saying that even if the speculation is documented speculation from experts it should still be deleted. By this logic, articles on evolution, quantum physics, or religion should be removed as well since not everybody agrees on their truths and being unprovable, they are speculations. Encyclopedias do, however, include articles on science, religion, history, and many other subjects that rely on speculation. As long as the speculation into the possibly autistic nature of historical individuals is well documented speculation from experts and not editors, the fact that this type of speculation exists should be included in Wikipedia. Shadowoftime 03:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Grandmasterka 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to set the record straight, there is no real scientific controversy over evolution. It's all manufactured. --Cyde Weys 04:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
However likely it may be that evolution is correct(and personally I believe it is), it is still speculation about something that happened millions of years ago. If Wikipedia can have well documented speculation by experts about things that happened a million years ago, I think it can afford to have well documented speculation by experts about something that took place within the last thousand years(the lives of these people suspected of Autism). Shadowoftime 04:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not only that, every single aspect of autism (from treatment to causes to whether or not it is a disorder) is controversial and autism itself is so poorly understood that I think it might be fair to say that all claims about autism are speculative. If this article is deleted for reporting speculation, then it would make sense to delete all autism related articles. Q0 05:40, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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