Talk:Paul E. Alexander

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A fact from Paul E. Alexander appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 September 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Paul Alexander tried unsuccessfully to tell Dr. Anthony Fauci what he could and could not say about the coronavirus?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Paul Elias Alexander.

Wikipedia

Is this really worth an article?

Hello, User:HazelAB. Thanks for taking the initiative to write this, but I seriously question whether this person is notable enough for an article. He is a part time assistant professor so he certainly doesn't meet WP:NACADEMIC. He has been in the news for a couple of days now but I doubt if it's enough to pass WP:BLP1E. I'm willing to be convinced but right now I don't see it. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:18, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, User:MelanieN. Well, I thought he was notable enough for an article. I also thought it would be useful for others who, like me, wondered who this person was, and what he was doing at HHS. HazelAB (talk) 00:34, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If all three criteria of WP:BLP1E have to apply for someone not to pass, I'm pretty sure the third one doesn't. His activities (not just one event) since June at least seem quite significant and his role is very well documented.HazelAB (talk) 00:41, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's why I posted a discussion here instead of AfDing it. I'd like to wait a day or two and see if other people come here, and why: to improve the article or criticize it. Actually I've found that almost every article that relates to the Trump administration in any way gets kept, either by consensus or at AfD. I know: in many cases I have been the one who nominated it for deletion - and was overruled. -- MelanieN (talk) 02:49, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And this is what always happens, when my immediate reaction to an article about a current political subject is to say that the subject isn't notable and doesn't deserve an article: before long I am editing it myself, and other people are expanding it, and presto, it's a solid article. Next thing will be to submit it for DYK! 0;-D -- MelanieN (talk) 04:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:MelanieN, It was great to see the article's expansion and improvement yesterday. I agree it's a great candidate for a DYK. Would that be up to me to submit? I've had some DYKs but not for awhile. Thanks, HazelAB (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I could submit it. But let's talk about what the hook would be. It has to be something interesting but neutral, not putting him in a bad light, not setting off any political alarm bells. I'll take a look at the article a little later today. We still have a few days when a DYK could be submitted. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:12, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Posssible DYK

In order avoid accusing him of anything, I was thinking about something like this:

Paul Alexander was an advisor to the communications director at the United States Department of Health and Human Services until his superior, Michael Caputo, took a leave of absence.

Not terribly interesting, I know, but neutral - and might attract clicks from people who recognize the names. What do you think? -- MelanieN (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BTW you moved the article to mainspace on Sept. 16, so we have until the 23rd to get a DYK together. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:31, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it would be more interesting if I said, "Canadian Paul Alexander was an advisor..."? Would it make people curious to know how a Canadian wound up in that position? Or would it seem like a red herring? -- MelanieN (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:MelanieN, I think the general idea is good and the Canadian angle is interesting (but then, I'm Canadian eh?). How about something like

the Canadian health researcher Paul Alexander worked at the United States Department of Health and Human Services until his superior, Michael Caputo, took a leave of absence.

It leaves out some detail about his actual job at HHS but that might be okay, I think. I like the leave of absence reference at the end. HazelAB (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I like that. I'll submit it today or tomorrow. (Love the "eh?"! My grandfather was Canadian and I remember his "eh?"s very fondly. Of course I thought he invented the expression!) -- MelanieN (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did You Know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:08, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

~~... that Canadian health researcher Paul Alexander worked at the United States Department of Health and Human Services until his superior, Michael Caputo, took a leave of absence?~~ Source for both hooks: "The agency also said that Paul Alexander, a top aide to Caputo, would be leaving the agency permanently."[1]
- ALT1:... that Canadian Paul Alexander was an advisor to the communications director at the United States Department of Health and Human Services until his superior, Michael Caputo, took a leave of absence?

Reviewed: Tolzey Court

Moved to mainspace by HazelAB (talk). Nominated by MelanieN (talk) at 15:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article was nominated within 7 days of being moved to mainspace. Well-sourced throughout with inline citations. No true copyright violations apparent according to Earwig; only quotes and things like "United States Department of Health and Human Services" and "Centers for Disease Control" show up as possible violations, which can be disregarded. The hook is interesting enough and appears in the article prose with a source. ALT0 is preferred out of the two. QPQ is done. Good to go. Aria1561 (talk) 17:12, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I came by to promote this, but I don't understand why either of these hooks is hooky. They sound like notices in an employee bulletin. Surely the subject has some notability of his own? Yoninah (talk) 21:35, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment, Yoninah. Yes, he has plenty of notability (notoriety) of his own: as a member of the Trump administration he exerted political pressure on health agencies, particularly the CDC, to make them change their public communications to be in line with what the president was saying; it was eventually reported and he got fired. But I hesitated to use most of that material because I didn't want to use a hook that would put the subject in a bad light; I am under the opinion that we discourage that. If you think it would be OK, I can come up with some livelier hooks. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MelanieN: you can say that he challenged them; you don't have to say the second part that he was fired. Yoninah (talk) 23:53, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a couple of more specific suggestions:

ALT2: .... that as an advisor to the ~~United States~~US Department of Health and Human Services, Paul Alexander tried unsuccessfully to tell Dr. Anthony Fauci what he could and could not say about the coronavirus? (source: "Emails show HHS official trying to muzzle Fauci")

ALT3: .... that as an advisor to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Paul Alexander tried to get the Center for Disease Control to make their reports about the coronavirus "more upbeat" so that people would go out and spend money? -- MelanieN (talk) 00:08, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah: Forgot to ping. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ALT3 exceeds 200 characters. ALT2 is certainly more interesting than ALT0 and ALT1, however. Aria1561 (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, MelanieN, these are much better! I shortened ALT2 a bit. Aria1561, could you review ALT2? Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 00:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Yoninah:

Shortened ALT2 is good to go. Aria1561 (talk) 01:04, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Aria1561: If it meets the requirements, please give it a tick. Yoninah (talk) 01:07, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the improvement, both of you! -- MelanieN (talk) 01:09, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Crime against humanity? or, would a Proper Historian need to first make such a finding?

Q1: Historically speaking, was Alexander's behavior criminal, or inhumane? The advocation of a policy of "Herd Immunity" by mass infection (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408) to me personally sounds like that is inhumane (see inhumanity discussed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity).

Q2: Is Wikipedia a place for Making such conclusions? Or is Wikipedia instead a place that Records a Proper Historian who has made such a conclusion? --Ncr100 (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We cannot reach such judgment by ourselves, but I'm working on creating and editing such shit-piece in Chinese Wikipedia. He deserves. Walter Grassroot |talk 04:50, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Falsehoods" and "Conspiracy Theories"

This article states "Caputo promoted a variety of falsehoods and conspiracy theories". The only citation is the New York Times. Is Wikipedia really in the business of making such confident statements, based only on the opinion of a hack journalist published in a low quality, rag newspaper? If so, Wikipedia has become an absolute joke...— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.2.204.195 (talk) 20:48, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The New York Times is one of the highest quality newspapers we use as a source. See WP:NYT.— Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 04:48, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Did you actually just say the new york times is a high quality newspaper? Lmao! Thats unbelievable. The new york times is a horrible source, they have a long history of corruption, withheld NSA spying on citizens, have completely lied about hundreds of things.. in no way shape or form should wikipedia cite such a biased media outlet as quality. Asailum (talk) 10:54, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Shibbolethink, the OP has a point -- that's a pretty strong statement that probably needs attribution, especially with a single source, even one that's as high-quality as the NYT. —valereee (talk) 18:07, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valereee, You are probably right, stronger sourcing is necessary. I will go look for some. But I want to emphasize, if the NYT has covered it, it is likely other RSes have as well! — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 18:20, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, totally! I didn't mean to imply I thought the allegation was iffy. Only that for such strong words, either attribution or multiple sources is probably a good thing. Belt and suspenders. :D —valereee (talk) 18:36, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valereee, absolutely agree :) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as they say! Let me know if you think a better breadth of sources or outlets would be more helpful than those 3. For instance, I think STAT also covered this on a topic-expert level.— Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 18:52, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Shibbolethink I think that sourcing is now good, but now that I've read it again honestly I'm wondering about how much of the content in this article is actually about Caputo. I mean, a lot of it is context -- Alexander's actions would be difficult to explain without going into Caputo's. Hm. What do you think? —valereee (talk) 19:08, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valereee, Absolutely agree, it's a clear case of WP:COATRACK in that section. I don't have the time or energy or dedication to do an overhaul removing all the UNDUE material, but it's clear to me that there's a fair amount in here! I will take a stab at helping when I get a chance, though. :) I think minute details of what Caputo said, for example, are not DUE for Alexander's article.— Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 21:50, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Shibbolethink Same. I don't actually have any interest in this article, it was on my watch because it came through DYK and I made a few edits (lol, including attributing NYT for the exact sentence the OP started this for -- that got removed somewhere along the line since). In general I try to get up the initiative to help with BLP issues for those on the right as we tend to bias left, which means I end up having to work on articles for people I don't much care for. :D I'll open a section on this to see what kinds of objections we get. —valereee (talk) 12:05, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valereee, Okay I've added sources from CNN and The Washington Post which corroborate the "conspiracy theories" phrasing, but use "accusations" much more commonly than "falsehoods," so I changed the wording of the article to match. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 18:29, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No NYT is not what it it once was ....objective journalism is dead there 50.29.191.14 (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Undue weight on Caputo

Per discussion above, I'm proposing we need to go through this article and remove anything about Caputo that isn't strictly needed for context. —valereee (talk) 12:06, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]