Talk:Mary Higby Schweitzer

message: The reference article makes this following statement:
The claim of discovering soft tissues in a 68 million year old fossil was disputed by molecular biologists for 15 years after Schweitzer's announcement
Although the following is not stated here, 3rd-party sources say that the B.rex fossil was discovered in 2000, and Mary Schweitzer's sample of it was given to her in 2001.  So how does 15 years of disputes get calculated?  Also, I can't find a date anywhere for Schweitzer's announcement, but surely it can't be BEFORE she even received the sample.  Perhaps it FELT like 15 years to her? (humorous aside there, folks).
Jimp69 (talk) 06:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  a small point of fact 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Mary Higby Schweitzer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090816161631/http://www.newsobserver.com:80/102/story/563694.html to http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/563694.html
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:39, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: We currently give 3 sources in support of a statement that a part of her work has been confirmed. Two of the sources are fine, but the first one confused me, because she is one of several co-authors of the cited work. I'm no expert, but I thought confirmation meant your work had been replicated by somebody other than you. Maybe somebody who knows more about such matters than I do might say whether the relevant sentence is fine, or needs some re-wording. Tlhslobus (talk) 09:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can she 'confirm' her own work? 

message: It would be nice if a more experienced editor obtained an appropriate picture for the article.  :)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.196.139.25 (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about a picture? 

message: User:Primal Groudon with regards to these edits   there are several obvious problems. 
Firstly if we put aside that neither of these https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/iron.htm and https://www.thebalance.com/metal-profile-iron-2340139 seem to be clear cut WP:RS especially not the latter, can you explain where either of them comment on the role iron particles may or may not play in preserving soft tissue? Both seem to be very general information pages. The first one has a bit more info including some small detail on the role iron plays in living cells. However it still doesn't talk about the role iron may or may not play in preserving soft tissue anywhere that I can see. 
Second you claim the first one is a detailed study but this does not appear to be the case. It's not a study at least as that term applies in science. I'd note that it's literally impossible to do a study on iron that would cover all such things. If you're doing a study, you're only going to focus on one specific aspect especially given all we already know. Instead this looks like a general information page on iron, just like our iron article. It only cites 4 sources with no inline sources. It doesn't seem to be have been published in a peer reviewed journal. It has a reasonable degree of detail but I don't think it's accurate to call it 'detailed' since it's still relatively short. I mean you could reasonably write a whole book on iron and I'm sure many people have. Maybe more to the point, while I'm not sure what journal would accept such a thing, it looks short for a review article on iron. 
Third you claim that age doesn't matter which suggests a basic misunderstanding of science. Science is not static. New studies may disprove long held beliefs or even earlier studies which were in some way flawed or didn't properly demonstrate what they were believed to demonstrate. Therefore something from well before the study is often not a good source in contesting the study. 
Fourth this specific issue seems to be a fairly minor thing when it comes to iron the element, I'm not convinced even if well supported it belongs on Iron although it would likely belong in other articles. In any case per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS the absence of the info from other articles doesn't demonstrate it should be excluded from this article. If you believe it belongs in some other article then per WP:SOFIXIT please add it yourself.  
Fifth, I do hope you understand that the study appears to be related to complicated chemical models which may resulted in the preservation of soft tissues in the right circumstances. I don't think anyone is suggest if you dump soft tissue in iron it's going to magically preserve all the time. 
Nil Einne (talk) 03:17, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: In retrospect, "dump soft tissue in iron" is maybe not the best way of phrasing my point, but hopefully I still got it across. Nil Einne (talk) 16:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with Nil, these sources and the argument made against Schweitzer appear to be highly generalized comments on iron, and not specific iron compounds or chemical systems. Having done some work with iron coordination compounds myself recently, this is not a simple issue that can be answered on a general article about iron. I've only been working, for example, on iron hemes and similar iron porphyrin compounds and derivatives. What oxidation state are we talking about with the iron? What spin state? Does the compound it is in modify the oxidation or spin state (spoiler, they absolutely do)? How does that impact interaction with other compounds? What other axial coordinations are taking place? If this isn't a porphyrin derivative, we get even bigger issues and variations. You aren't going to find this on a very generalized article on iron. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soft tissue