Talk:David Gratzer

message: User:Uroborus has deleted material with the edit summary I find it astonishing that somebody would create an article to launch a personal attack. I deleted the personal attack.  As I created the article I take this rather personally.
The deleted material was not a peronal attack by me but reported the critical view of a number of experts about claims for which Gratzer was the source, and the use of which was a matter of national (U.S.) and international controversy.  It (the deleted material) reported well sourced material some of which happened to be critical of Gratzer. That does not make it an attack by me!  Not only was it well sourced it was also balanced because it reported Gratzer's own response to the crticisms. Gratzer is employed by think tanks to write on the subject of medicine (amongst other things) about which some experts have criticized him. Because he informs politicians and political debate, his writings are therefore fair game for critical analysis and the inclusion of these analyses (positive or otherwise) is material worthy of inclusion in WP. I therefore will add the material back.--Tom (talk) 14:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reinstatement of deleted material 

message: This article is beginning to read more like Gratzer' curriculum vitae (or resumé) and the stuff copied from the dust jacket is pure promo material. It's a puff piece and not at all encyclopedic.  Wikipedia does not exist for this purpose. 
We need to know who Gratzer is, and why he has been in the public eye. We don't need to know what he did in each year at university, what his brother has achieved (unless that is remarkable), where his father came from (unless that is any way relevant to his fame), or even what his publisher has selectively chosen to appear on the dust jacket of his books.--Tom (talk) 19:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh very simply, the whole article reads more like this gentleman's Curriculum Vitae (or resumé). As far as I know he is famed only for his problems with statistics. But this got watered down quire remarkably recently. I am not sure who did that (I cannot be bothered to go back and look) but it was more an attempt not to spoil the CV. I know that he has written books but I am not sure that these are widely read. I have not seen any criticism of them.  I just want the article to be more encylopaedic.--Hauskalainen (talk) 16:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: H, I think you may be misunderstanding how notability works on Wikipedia. As WP:NNC states, The notability guidelines determine whether a topic is notable enough to be a separate article in Wikipedia. They do not give guidance on the content of articles, except for lists of people. [emph. added] Given the many independent reliable sources that substantively discuss Gratzer's work, we can be pretty sure that he is notable. It isn't up to us to decide that only certain portions of his work are notable. We should just strive to write a neutral, well-sourced biography that explains who Gratzer is. I think every biography should list all non-self-published books authored or edited by the article subject. In Gratzer's case, there may be selected articles that should be listed (any articles that have themselves been widely debated, for example). Our readers may encounter Gratzer's name in citation and want to confirm that our article is talking about the same person. DickClarkMises (talk) 18:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't misunderstood anything!  The content goes way beyond what is justifiable. I do not think that this should be a biography because he is only midly notable and that, as far as I can see, is for his testimony as a supposed expert on health care in Canada before the U.S. congress and for his involvement in the Rudy Giulliani misuse of statistics. Sure, his book is referred to by people opposed to public involvement in health care and THAT is why he is famous. I have never seen a respected (neutral) academic health care analyst quoting his books as a reliable source. Much of what is here in this WP article is boring and irrelevant volumonous stuff that, it seems to me, has only one purpose, and that is to hide or bury the fact that Gratzer has twice been caught out wrongly using statistics to mislead, despite being regarded as an "expert". --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Apatens, I am not sure that these acknowledgments are helpful to us here. If we were talking about an infobox on, say, Cynthia Ramsey's article, we could use this credit to list Gratzer under "influenced" in the infobox. We could, perhaps, work this into this article, but I would feel better about it if it were only a supporting source. (If we had a source saying that Gratzer worked for one of those people, we could supplement this part of the bio with a note that "Gratzer later acknowledged his former employer in his book...") DickClarkMises (talk) 19:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is not for his C.V. and´his book promo! 

message: In the past week, J.R. Hercules (talk), who has never contributed to this article nor made a comment on this talk page, has repeatedly engaged in WP:DRIVEBY tagging of this article with an Advert tag, with no discussion of their concerns on this talk page. Hauskalainen (talk), who originally created this article and removed almost all of my contributions to it nine months ago along with the promotional material added by G.h.szylowskyphd, has also engaged in WP:DRIVEBY tagging with an Advert tag with no discussion of their concerns on this talk page:
# 06:30, 21 July 2009 J.R. Hercules (talk | contribs) (added advert template)
# 21:57, 23 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 303458894 by Apatens It does indeed read like an advert!)
# 12:31, 27 July 2009 J.R. Hercules (talk | contribs) (Houston: We have a shill -- shilling on behalf of an unctious shill's Wikipedia bio page. (reinserted 'advert' template))
# 20:21, 27 July 2009 J.R. Hercules (talk | contribs)  (I look forward to bringing this arbitration, as there will lots of chuckles over the use of the word "unwarranted")
On July 24, 2008, I expanded this biography to answer the question: Who is this guy? 
* For Gratzer's three books, I listed whom Gratzer thanked in his books' acknowledgements for helping him write his books
* This is important since Gratzer's first book was published when he was a 24-year-old medical student, his second book when he was a 27-year-old resident in training to become a psychiatrist, and his third book when he was a 32-year-old newly-board-certified psychiatrist, and because several of the people he thanked were (or went on to be) notable and/or were helpful in Gratzer's subsequent career
On October 26, 2008, G.h.szylowskyphd (talk): made 63 edits to this article, adding:
* "From the Introduction: This book argues for meaningful choice and competition in health care. Americans ought to make decisions about their health care – and live with the consequences. In order for this to succeed, Americans ought to have choices when it comes to their doctors, their hospitals, and their insurance which, incidentally, ought to be portable from job to job."(the above does not appear in the Introduction of the hardcover edition, I do not know if it appears in the paperback version)
* the entire back of the dust jacket of Gratzer's 2006 book The Cure, with five promotional blurbs (including ones by the late Milton Friedman and by National Center for Policy Analysis senior fellow Thomas R. Saving, whom I had listed as two of the seven people whom Gratzer said in his acknowledgements section had helped him "understand the nuances of the issues")
* a long "Selected major articles" section with a list of 33 "Selected major articles" (from Gratzer's Manhattan Institute webpage, to which a link was already provided in the "External links" section)
* a "Testimonies" section with three testimonies before the U.S. House and Florida legislature (from Gratzer's Manhattan Institute webpage, to which a link was already provided in the "External links" section)
On October 27, 2008, Hauskalainen (talk): 
* retained G.h.szylowskyphd's "Selected major articles" section listing 33 articles from Gratzer's Manhattan Institute webpage
* retained G.h.szylowskyphd's "Testimonies" section listing 3 testimonies from Gratzer's Manhattan Institute webpage
* removed G.h.szylowskyphd's promotional material taken verbatim from the back of the dust jacket of The Cure (retaining only G.h.szylowskyphd's uninformative description: "This book argues for meaningful choice and competition in health care.")
* removed almost all of the expanded biographical material that I had added three months earlier, calling it "superfluous"
On July 17, 2009, I:
* removed G.h.szylowskyphd's "Selected works" ("Selected major articles") section 
* removed G.h.szylowskyphd's" Testimonies" section 
* restored a revised/updated version of the expanded biographical material I had added a year earlier, and that Hauskalainen had subsequently removed three months later along with G.h.szylowskyphd's promotional blurbs 
* replaced the uninformative "This book argues for meaningful choice and competition in health care" with a summary of Gratzer's three key recommendations in his 2006 book, The Cure  
* renamed the "Allegations regarding the misuse of statistics" indictment section to a chronological title: "Giuliani advisor and cancer statistics" and replaced its content with that from a revised section from the Health care reform in the United States presidential election, 2008 article 
Please indentify which specific portions of this article you believe constitute advertising, indentify what you believe they are advertising, and explain why you believe they constitute advertising. Thank you.
Apatens (talk) 03:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh very simply, the whole article reads more like this gentleman's Curriculum Vitae (or resumé). As far as I know he is famed only for his problems with statistics. But this got watered down quire remarkably recently. I am not sure who did that (I cannot be bothered to go back and look) but it was more an attempt not to spoil the CV. I know that he has written books but I am not sure that these are widely read. I have not seen any criticism of them.  I just want the article to be more encylopaedic.--Hauskalainen (talk) 16:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: H, I think you may be misunderstanding how notability works on Wikipedia. As WP:NNC states, The notability guidelines determine whether a topic is notable enough to be a separate article in Wikipedia. They do not give guidance on the content of articles, except for lists of people. [emph. added] Given the many independent reliable sources that substantively discuss Gratzer's work, we can be pretty sure that he is notable. It isn't up to us to decide that only certain portions of his work are notable. We should just strive to write a neutral, well-sourced biography that explains who Gratzer is. I think every biography should list all non-self-published books authored or edited by the article subject. In Gratzer's case, there may be selected articles that should be listed (any articles that have themselves been widely debated, for example). Our readers may encounter Gratzer's name in citation and want to confirm that our article is talking about the same person. DickClarkMises (talk) 18:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't misunderstood anything!  The content goes way beyond what is justifiable. I do not think that this should be a biography because he is only midly notable and that, as far as I can see, is for his testimony as a supposed expert on health care in Canada before the U.S. congress and for his involvement in the Rudy Giulliani misuse of statistics. Sure, his book is referred to by people opposed to public involvement in health care and THAT is why he is famous. I have never seen a respected (neutral) academic health care analyst quoting his books as a reliable source. Much of what is here in this WP article is boring and irrelevant volumonous stuff that, it seems to me, has only one purpose, and that is to hide or bury the fact that Gratzer has twice been caught out wrongly using statistics to mislead, despite being regarded as an "expert". --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Apatens, I am not sure that these acknowledgments are helpful to us here. If we were talking about an infobox on, say, Cynthia Ramsey's article, we could use this credit to list Gratzer under "influenced" in the infobox. We could, perhaps, work this into this article, but I would feel better about it if it were only a supporting source. (If we had a source saying that Gratzer worked for one of those people, we could supplement this part of the bio with a note that "Gratzer later acknowledged his former employer in his book...") DickClarkMises (talk) 19:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drive-by tagging with Advert tag 

message: Controversial claims about living persons should be clearly attributed. WP:BLP requires that such claims be sourced to multiple independent reliable sources. While it is certainly important for this article to cover the critical exchanges that Gratzer has taken part in, it is wholly inappropriate to assert, in the encyclopedic voice, that Gratzer might have gotten such and such statistic from "Goodman" or anyone else. If someone has made this argument, we can say that. WP:SYN states, Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Editors should not make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to reach conclusion C. This would be a synthesis of published material that advances a new position, and that constitutes original research. "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument in relation to the topic of the article. Please note that, as WP:BLP states, Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.... The burden of evidence for any edit on Wikipedia rests with the person who adds or restores material, and this is especially true for material regarding living persons. DickClarkMises (talk) 20:27, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Gratzer quoted Goodman himself when responding to the allegation in order to justify himself. It seemed to me perfectly reasonable to see whether Goodman did make such a claim and it seems he did. In this case I think the article was being fair to Mr Gratzer by demonstrating that Goodman had twice made the same error (even though Gratzer did not acknowledge that it was potentially erroneous). Your argument about WP:SYN does not seem to hold water. The fact that Gratzer had mentioned Goodman and we can demonstrate that Gratzer is telling the truth in what he says about the Goodman claims. I do not think that fits SYN.  I accept that the statement "Gratzer may have been referring to..." was perhaps going too far which was why I removed it. --Hauskalainen (talk) 20:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Your conception of "fairness" does not trump the very important policy on biographies of living persons. WP:SYN is likewise very clear. Unless you can cite a reliable source for your actual assertion, and not just for the premises that lead to your conclusion, you are synthesizing sources rather than summarizing them. As WP:SYN advises, Carefully summarizing or rephrasing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis—it is good editing. Best practice is to write Wikipedia articles by taking material from different reliable sources on the topic and putting those claims on the page in your own words, with each claim attributable to a source that explicitly makes that claim. Your claim about the Goodman source is not attributable to any reliable source--it is your synthesis of other sources, and is totally out of line in a biography about a living person. DickClarkMises (talk) 21:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

text: You have not said which element in the text you have removed is considered to be "unsourced" or "poorly sourced". I note that you claimed the congressional testimony was a not properly sourced, but I have seen the clip and the exhange definitely took place. The exchange is also visible on video at the congressional web site (though you have to view the whole testimony). The You Tube clip is not edited.--Hauskalainen (talk) 20:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If the exchange between Kucinich and Gratzer was in the context of a congressional committee hearing, why is it the case that only Kucinich's comments and not those of the other committee members are cited in the article? The video linked in the footnote for that exchange does not explain when this committee meeting took place, who took part in it, or what else happened. I think that Gratzer's congressional testimony, as well as questions, comments, and critiques directed at Gratzer by other participants, are all notable and worthy of being summarized in this article. However, the linked video is inadequate. Could you provide a link to the full video, so we can see what is there to work with? More generally, why is the whole section detailing Gratzer's work described as being about his "alleged misuse of statistics"? A neutral article should cover Gratzer's work without giving undue weight to either side of the debate. By characterizing every critical exchange he has participated in as somehow calling his character or expertise into question, rather than as being indicative of an active discussant in heated policy debates, the article clearly adopts a non-neutral point of view. As Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Impartial tone says, A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone, otherwise articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tone can be introduced through the way in which facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article. The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view. Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone. DickClarkMises (talk) 21:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  In answer to why only the Kucinich exchange is mentioned, I would have thought the answer was obvious. Its again in the context of the use of statistics. Kucinich asked him about national statisitics for MRI wait times and Gratzer wanted to talk about something else and gave a wait time that did not reflect the true wait time in Canada as reported by the nation's statistical body and as asked for by the committee. The fact is that Kucinich basically accused Gratzer of misleading the committee. That makes the incident noteworthy and why its included here. Gratzer is often called to give expert testimony in these matters and its rather serious if he misinforms rather than informs. For this reason it is IMHO something that justifies a section of its own. Putting all the other non-noteworthy stuff from that hearing in the article would be distracting. I do not think that this us WP:UNDUE given the allegations that Kucinich made and the fact that Gratzer and his employers regards him to be an expert in these matters. And of course ot is not a one-off because of the earlier issue regarding the relevance of comparison of 5 year prostate cancer survival rates. (I noticed on C-span that the GOP in their press conference today trotted out the same false prostate cancer survival comparison yet again!!  You would think they would have learned from the Giulliani episode last year!!)  I am sorry but you will have to go to the congressional web site to find that video. Look under the relevant committee and you'll find it.  --Hauskalainen (talk) 00:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: H, it is not the mission of Wikipedia to pick out who is "right" in public policy disputes. This encyclopedia article should summarize the information about Gratzer that is available in reliable sources. The article should not propound the point of view of any of the parties, and it should not pass judgment on Gratzer's work or on that of his critics. Our job as contributors to Wikipedia is to present the information in a neutral tone and with sufficient sources to facilitate further study by those of our readers who are so inclined. As for the video, it isn't immediately clear from the cited video when this committee hearing took place or what committee it involved. I would very much like to review the content of the original video, complete with the essential information about when it took place and who participated. I am not asserting that everything that was said in the committee hearing would be relevant to this article, however it is important to view the content in its context to avoid misrepresenting the source material. While I have no doubt that the YouTube video is authentic, it is not complete, and it was posted by someone who clearly opposes Gratzer's position. DickClarkMises (talk) 01:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

text: I have placed a request for help at the BLP noticeboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#David_Gratzer
Here is the link where Gratzer himself, justifying his own position, refers to Goodman as being a person who had earlier come to the same conclusion. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=279237711504195  I guess we will never know whether these two people independently did this analysis from the same data, though I doubt it. Goodman runs his own libertarian think tank and Gratzer works for another similar think tank.--Hauskalainen (talk) 21:47, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

text: The link is interesting, and would be useful to support an assertion that "Gratzer cited economist John Goodman as having drawn similar conclusions about X." It is not a good source for making the claim that "Gratzer probably got the data from Goodman," which is what the earlier article version at least implied. DickClarkMises (talk) 21:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: BLP concerns

message: I am reverting the following inappropriate edits for the reasons outlined below:
# 14:06, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (add back but drop "peer reviewed". The article did appear and did contain the statistic even if the used of the statistic had not been peer reviewed)
# 14:10, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (misleading maybe but false is maybe too strong. Use of survival rates was not meaningful and easily misleading. Gratzer not wholly responsible for Giulliani)
# 14:15, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (Disputed is perhaps better. Less offensive and more reflective of Gratzer's own opinion as expressed as per WP:NPOV)
# 14:19, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (I only recall one statistican. "foreign" > British,)
* 14:06, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (add back but drop "peer reviewed". The article did appear and did contain the statistic even if the used of the statistic had not been peer reviewed)
** This November 2007 article was not referred to in any WP:RS about Giuliani's July 2007 – November 2007 use of Gratzer's July 2007 false and misleading statistics.
** BWesley added a misleading WP:OR paragraph about this article on July 7, 2008
** This article contains similar false and misleading statisticsnot the false and misleading statistics from Gratzer's articlein the Summer 2007 City Journal of the conservative Manhattan Institute that wererepeatedly quoted for over three months by Giuliani in campaign speeches and in a New Hampshire radio adin an opinion piece "Con" by conservative economist John C. Goodmanin an "ethics" article by Robert M. Sade that was not peer-reviewedSade is the "ethics editor" of the The Annals of Thoracic SurgerySade (along with Gratzer) is one ofGoodman's experts atGoodman's conservative National Center for Policy Analysis "think tank"(a fact not disclosed by The Annals of Thoracic Surgery "ethics editor").citing—as does page 73 of Goodman's 2004 book Lives at Risk and page 177 of Gratzer's 2006 book The Cure—page 20 of the Commonwealth Fund report Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data, 2000 by Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health andPeter Hussey, health policy research associate at the Rand Corporation
* 14:10, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (misleading maybe but false is maybe too strong. Use of survival rates was not meaningful and easily misleading. Gratzer not wholly responsible for Giulliani)
** This article cites three WP:RELIABLE fact-checking websites:
:: Two of the fact-checking websites:
:: 1) FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
:: 2) PolitiFact.com, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project of the St. Petersburg Times
:: described Gratzer's cancer statistics as false and misleading.
:: The third fact-checking website:
:: 3) "The Fact Checker," a department of The Washington Post 
:: described Gratzer's cancer statistics as wrong and awarded them four Pinocchios—reserved for Whoppers (slang for a blatant or outrageous lies).
* 14:15, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (Disputed is perhaps better. Less offensive and more reflective of Gratzer's own opinion as expressed as per WP:NPOV)
** Per WP:Reliable#Statements of opinion: Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements of fact.
*** Canadian psychiatrist "Gratzer's own opinion as expressed" is not WP:RELIABLE for anything other than his opinion;he is most emphatically not a WP:RS on cancer statistics.
** "False and misleading" or "wrong" and "Whoppers" (slang for a blatant or outrageous lies) are the terms used by WP:Reliable sources.
** Several sources specifically note that "disputed" is an inappropriate term to use for Gratzer's indisputably false cancer statistics.
* 14:19, 14 July 2009 Hauskalainen (talk | contribs) (I only recall one statistican. "foreign" > British,)
** Four medical statisticians and cancer epidemiologists are cited by name in articles by the three WP:RS fact-checking websites cited in this article:
:# Marie Diener-West, professor of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
:# Milton Eisner, health statistician for the National Cancer Institute SEER program
:# Lorelei Mucci, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health
:# Andrew Vickers, associate attending research methodologist in epidemiology and biostatistics at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
** Three leading prostate cancer urologists are cited by name in articles by the three WP:RS fact-checking websites cited in this article:
:# Peter Albertsen, professor and chief of urology at the University of Connecticut
:# Brantley Thrasher, professor and chairman of the urology department at the University of Kansas and a spokesman of the American Urological Society
:# Patrick Walsh, professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute
** Two leading prostate cancer medical oncologists are cited by name in articles by the three WP:RS fact-checking websites cited in this article:
:# Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society  
:# Howard Parnes, chief of the National Cancer Institute Prostate Cancer Research Group 
** Alan Johnson, UK Health Secretary (2007–2009) was (the top) government health official in the United Kingdom;the source cited in the this article refers to Johnson in his role as a government health official,not as a "politician" which is a pejorative characterization added to the WP:LEDE by Hauskalainen on October 27, 2008.
** Howard Parnes and Milton Eisner at the National Cancer Institute are government health officials; Otis Brawley, formerly at the National Cancer Institute is a former government health official.
Apatens (talk) 23:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  False statistics and non-peer-reviewed opinion pieces  

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thread_title:  External links modified