Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henriette Mertz

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 was no consensus. ‑Scottywong | [talk] || 07:33, 28 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Henriette Mertz

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Fails WP:NFRINGE, no substantial coverage in mainstream sources Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Archaeology-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:48, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Yep. There doesn't seem to be any WP:MAINSTREAM sourcing that I can find. jps (talk) 20:20, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You looked at the references in the article, right? Johnbod (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Among others. Odd that you think there was "mainstream rubbishing". jps (talk) 20:26, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You don't think Joseph Needham CH FRS FBA is mainstream? That's odd. Johnbod (talk) 20:38, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately Google Books only allows access to page 541 for me. But that's still not extensive coverage on Mertz herself it seems, more a mention? —Paleo Neonate – 04:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@PaleoNeonate: I agree that what is pretty much a casual dismissal isn't enough on its own. I also can't find her name in Garrett Fagan's book - she not in the bibliography, Google books doesn't show anything, and I can't see anything in my copy. Have I missed something? So far I reluctantly don't find anything that meets our criteria for notability so although I like to have articles debunking fringe writers, I don't see a justification for this one. So far as McNeil goes, his book is sadly another example of a publisher publishing a purely fringe book - you can read the last chapter in his book to see that he's trying to convince people that most of the fringe claims are real. Doug Weller talk 10:16, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep As often, the mainstream rubbishing of her theories provides enough coverage for GNG. Johnbod (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The coverage from Childress falls under WP:FRIND and that from McNeil appears to be a mention, both not satisfying WP:NBIO's "significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable". Please ping me to reevaluate if someone comes up with enough satisfying sources. —Paleo Neonate – 04:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep Considering that Pburka found various sources that appear to be about Mertz and her career. —Paleo Neonate – 02:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A passing mention and some sources that are themselves within the fringe bubble don't add up to a notability case. In principle, mainstream criticism can raise a fringe author to notability, but I don't think that's happened here. XOR'easter (talk) 07:29, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Without fundament, there can be no building. Without good sources, no article. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:49, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Her book, Pale Ink, was reviewed in Western Humanities Review (1974). It's also discussed briefly in Parables of Possibility (Martin, Columbia University Press, 1995, pp. 7,222). She appears to be referenced fairly frequently by mainstream scholars as a well known fringe theorist. pburka (talk) 15:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I'd be interested in where these "fairly frequent" mentions are, because I certainly couldn't find any GScholar, ProQuest, or JSTOR. The only significant coverage is a small handful of mentions in newspapers in the 70's (which, upon further investigation, falls easily into the junk food news category) or Childress and other fringe authors. I don't see any actual scholarly coverage absent the one book review. Almost all of the mentions in scholarly or RS are mere passing mentions. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Where are the "fairly frequent" mentions? Examples in scholarly texts include: Parables of Possibility ("for example, Henriette Mertz proposes..."), Trans-Pacific echoes and resonances (..."the equally curious book of Henriette Mertz..."), A Floating Chinaman ("a Chicago patent attorney and independent researcher named Henriette Mertz fell under...", Bulletin of the Geological Society of Greece ("...concerning the location of Ogygia, there are various viewpoints, such as...Mertz"), Eastern Mediterranean Cartographies ("According to Henriette Mertz from Chicago..."), From Continent to Continent ("Fu Sang was the subject of another book, Pale Ink, by Henriette Mertz, published first in 1953 and reissued in 1972..."), Antiquity ("One may find many precursors in the 1960s such as The Wine Dark Sea...by a patent lawyer, Henriette Mertz"), etc. These aren't significant coverage, but they do suggest that she was familiar to mainstream scholars. pburka (talk) 19:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

None of Parables of Possibility, Trans-Pacific echoes and resonances, A Floating Chinaman, From Continent to Continentand Antiquity are more than passing mentions. Your quotes are nearly all that is said about Mertz in all of these sources. Whatever level of familiarity that she has to mainstream scholars, they spend nearly no time discussing her work in any serious sense. The exception is the piece in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of Greece. This is actually a lecture delivered at the 12th International Conference of the Geological Society of Greece and is an utterly woo-woo filled piece of nonsense. The author, I.D Mariolakos, claims an affiliation with the University of Athens but that university's web site has no reference to them and they appear to specialize in "geomythology". That is, claiming that Greek (and specifically and only Greek) myths are real histories by suggesting that places mentioned in those myths are real places that are well-described. This is not a lecture that inspires confidence. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reminds me that the editor who started this article in 2006 also seems to be LTA pushing Greek pseudohistory (SPI archive)... If one of her books has decent reviews and is more notable than Mertz herself, and independent material mentions those in the context of her hypotheses, an article on that book would also be a possibility, or short mentions of her in the relevant articles may be WP:DUE, like in the literature on those topics. —Paleo Neonate – 00:37, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Fringe theories, but well enough known to be reviewed in scholarly journals, e.g. The Geographical Journal (Crone 1965), Geographical Reviews (Carter 1965) and Western Humanities Review (Rickett 1974). Given that the subject was active in the 60s and 70s, it's plausible that there are more sources offline. More recently, Greek Reporter (Tsolakidou 2012) also reviewed her work, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a reliable source. Above, I also provide evidence that mainstream scholars were familiar with her theories. pburka (talk) 00:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

... there's also a review of Pale Ink in The Notebook (Stephenson 1975) but I can only find citations, not the actual text. pburka (talk) 01:54, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

More offline sources is plausible, —Paleo Neonate – 11:26, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to coverage of her fringe theories, I found a nine paragraph story about her legal career in the American Bar Association Journal Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan 1949), pp. 35-36[1]. pburka (talk) 01:14, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I found a Chicago Tribune Obit but it was very short. scope_creep^Talk 10:14, 12 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 16:49, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete There is not a significant enough reaction to her fringe ideas within mainstream publications to establish notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:14, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete It seems like she's mentioned in some places, but it's questionable how much impact or influence her ideas had outside of other fringe authors like David Hatcher Childress. I'm tempted to suggest a merge or redirect to Hyperdiffusionism, but it's not clear how much influence she had there either or even how much she wrote about the subject. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:39, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. pburka has it right: the cumulative coverage of the subject's work, only partially documented online, is more than sufficient to establish notability. Of equal importance, references in scholarly literature take Mertz's research seriously, even if her conclusions are rejected -- not characteristic of pseudoscience and fringe theories. Her books show substantial library holdings -- for example, Gods from the Far East is still held by a few dozen, mostly academic libraries, surprising for a 1975 paperback original, while a recent edition of Pale Ink is held by hundreds of libraries. It's important as well to keep in mind that Mertz's writing fell into a school, for lack of a better word, of historical speculation running from Thor Heyerdahl at the rational end to Immanuel Velikovsky at an opposite extreme, which received extensive print coverage in the 60's and '70s. None of the delete proponents have attempted to assess this coverage, resting instead on plainly inadequate, cursory Googlish searches, a practice not conducive to properly maintaining an encyclopedia. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 20:50, 22 September 2020 (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.