Talk:Frances Arnold

A news item involving Frances Arnold was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 4 October 2018.

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Affiliation to Alphabet Inc.

I am very surprised to see that references to F. Arnold as director of Alphabet Inc. keep being removed or de-emphasised over time. These references used to be found in the info-box and the introductory paragraph.

I would think that being a director of one of the most powerful, influential (and controversial) companies in the world is quite noteworthy. One might also consider that position of particular interest given her senior advisory role to the US government. Especially since both sides have strong stakes in technological policies, albeit not always compatible. Wikipedia plays an important role in highlighting such connections to the readers in a manner which is more transparent than corporate or governmental communication and often more comprehensive and accurate than press coverage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.61.203.32 (talk) 13:42, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Honors and awards

Hi - I added some of Frances Arnold's honors and awards, but she (deservedly) has a ton of them. I'm not sure what the protocol is in terms of what to include/not include and/or if there's a way to split the list into 2 columns so it doesn't dominate her page. Thanks Biochemlife (talk) 10:50, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dr. Arnold's Research Group Retracts Research Paper

Retraction Watch just reported that this article's subject Frances Arnold announced in a Tweet that her research group at Caltech retracted a May 10th, 2019 Science paper, "Site-selective enzymatic C‒H amidation for synthesis of diverse lactams”.

WP:NOTNEWS indicates we ordinarily wouldn't rush to add this to our article, but there's no question from Dr. Arnold, her remaining group (the researcher whose error caused the retraction no longer works with Arnold's research group, according to the Retraction Watch article), or from the editor of Science that the retraction occurred, that it was voluntary on the part of Dr, Arnold and the other authors of the paper and that Dr. Arnold took responsibility for the publication of irreproducible results.

Dr. Arnold admitted in her Tweet "For my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams. The work has not been reproducible."

The Retraction Watch artcile adds that Science formally announced on January 2nd 2020:

"After publication of the Report “Site-selective enzymatic C‒H amidation for synthesis of diverse lactams” (1), efforts to reproduce the work showed that the enzymes do not catalyze the reactions with the activities and selectivities claimed. Careful examination of the first author’s lab notebook then revealed missing contemporaneous entries and raw data for key experiments. The authors are therefore retracting the paper."

According to the Retraction Watch article, the editor of Science said "As I said on Twitter, we are very appreciative of Dr. Arnold and coworkers and the forthcoming and proactive way they have dealt with this."].

The only part of this story I'd have qualms about putting in our article now is the name of the researcher responsible for the error which led to the retraction. WP:BLP counsels a conservative approach toward publishing information about living persons that cannot be absolutely verified. Perhaps after news of the retraction breaks in major secondary sources, we can cite them on that part of the story. WP:NOTNEWS also counsels we shouldn't be in a hurry to publish information on late-breaking stories that is at all contentious.

Science has already published the retraction online, and will print the retraction in their January 10, 2020 issue, according to the Retraction Watch article. That would be a good time to discuss mentioning the name of the person who secondary sources report as being responsible for the work having to be retracted for irreproducibility.

I'd like to acknowledge that Dr. Derek Lowe, author of Science's "In the Pipeline" medicinal chemistry blog reported this story in the January 3rd edition of his blog, which is how I became aware of it.--loupgarous (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of Interest

I have identified two users who have edited this page and are associated with the subject. This falls under WP:CONFLICT and as such the article may need to be tagged accordingly. As someone relatively new, this change may require discussion first.