Talk:Keolu Fox

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: I agree that the grounds for having this page related to WP:GNG rather than WP:NPROF

Klbrain (talk) 15:23, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Removal of dubious claims not in citation

I have checked and am removing the following claims from the article, as the citation listed does not include any information about this. The text states:

"Fox is recognized as a global leader in Indigenous data sovereignty and the implementation of benefit sharing in biomedical research. Fox has been referred to as the "Robin Hood of genomics."

And, later:

"Fox is the first Native Hawaiian to receive a PhD in genome sciences.""

I've checked the NPR interview cited for these claims. Fox refers to himself as the "Robin Hood of genomics" and no mention is made of the otherwise unverified claim that he is the first native Hawaiian to earn a PhD in this field.

Sunjaifriþas (talk) 11:13, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Added early life

I have rewritten the Early Life section as it had almost nothing to do with his early life or the background of his immediate family.

I would also recommend that someone for familiar with the common format of Research section for academics consider rewriting this one, as it is basically a self-promotional PR release rather than being a brief description of Fox's actual research focuses. I was not able to find more than a couple early papers of original research in which he is actually a lead author ~2026-21236-77 (talk) 23:23, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

A user (User:User4135) is rapidly reverting changes, with no description

The eight revisions were made from a mobile app about an hour after I started. As stated by others, there are also many arguably dishonest edits in the history of this page from IP addresses located within UC San Diego, describing Fox as leading/performing reserach on papers where he is listed as having only provided feedback on manuscripts. I think it's reasonable to conclude it is Fox performing this vandalism.

Recent changes from IPs located at UC San Diego are:

69.196.34.83 (edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keolu_Fox&oldid=1278640035)

69.196.45.123 (several edits on January 14 and 15, 2025)

Mean as custard and Sunjaifriþas have both previously discussed (and helped to reduce) the excessive self-promotion on this page, and have far more experience with this than I do, so I would be happy for any recommendations they have. Is deletion of pages subject to long-term self-promotion a thing? ~2026-21236-77 (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

reversed edits from User:~2026-23882-47

the removal of info about the Safed Artist's Colony using abandoned homes and buildings is strange and unjustified (they state it repeatedly on their website and in public interviews such as the Haaretz one I added), calling it anti-Semitic verges on delusional. so that has been restored, with citations from the Artists Colony website and a Haaretz interview, all three use the term "abandoned" during the war. If User:~2026-23882-47 would like to point me towards historical evidence of another event which caused the mass abandoment of homes and properties in Palestine in 1948, I'm happy to revert these changes.

I restored the discussion on the "first Native Hawaiian with a PhD in genome sciences" claim. its pretty obvious that Fox is not referring to himself as "the first person with Native Hawaiian ancestry to have received a PhD from Universtiy of Washington's Department of Genome Science", but rather to opportunistically himself as the first person Native Hawaiian in the "field" of genomic sciences, which practically speaking does not exist as distinct from genomics. I added some background about Hawaiian language/names and their historical persecution, and why using UW alumni names in guesswork on their ancestry is fraught, if that's indeed what Fox is basing this claim on. In any event, the clarification between "first Hawaiian with a PhD from University of Washington's Department of Genome Sciences" and "first Hawaiian with a PhD in genome sciences" is the bigger issue. Fox is clearly making the latter claim in public fora and the former when pressed on it, and this bait-and-switch is inappropriate for uncritical inclusion in wiki

I concur with earlier sentiment re: this page being a candidate for deletion, and will submit if this kind of abuse continues. ~2026-24572-24 (talk) 21:49, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

I believe that the section violates Wikipedia:No original research, which would make it a Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons violation and will be shortly removing it.

The only citations on that section are a link to a different researcher getting his PHD, a list of alumni, and a study on what seems to be genetics (I'm not an expert). These sources come nowhere close of even mentioning the claims, accusations, or other stuff in the section.

Also, please don't threaten to delete the page "if this abuse continues." If you believe the page should be deleted, then mark it for deletion or make an AFD. I believe the article is fine and agree with the previous AFD closure, but if you think it should be deleted then nominate it. Calling others edits "abuse" is not assuming good faith. Realtent (talk) 22:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

There is good evidence to support that “the vandal” in this case is an ex-PhD student from UCSD and is attempting to vandalize Dr Foxs bio page. Please contact UW genome Sciences to confirm Fox’s recipe of degree. Please restore his accomplishments (scientific publications, major news articles, Ted talks, National Geographic awards, magazine features, TV and Radio interviews etc, podcasts, recognition from Cambridge University (Darwin lecture), and tenure award through the UC System). ~2026-24459-75 (talk) 23:15, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Please stop calling other users vandals as those are personal attacks. I will also not be restoring that info or contacting anyone. If you want to add content to the article, support it with a reliable source. Realtent (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

What evidence suggests that the individual is an ex-PhD student? ~2026-24455-41 (talk) 04:43, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Just as a heads up, associate and full professors in the US are referred to as Professor and not Doctor (even if they have a doctorate, which is of course nearly ubiquitous for tenure-track professors)

> Please restore his accomplishments (scientific publications, major news articles, Ted talks, National Geographic awards, magazine features, TV and Radio interviews etc, podcasts, recognition from Cambridge University (Darwin lecture), and tenure award through the UC System)

A full list of academic publications is generally not appropriate for a wiki, nor is the fact that an individual gave a TED talk or any other individual lecture unless something news- or noteworthy occured in conjunction to those, such as a major award at the national level or above. The majority of activities mentioned here are in the style of "in [x year], Fox gave an interview/talk/critique" in some medium, and are far below the threshold for inclusion, following this page's pretty clear trend of self promotion ~2026-24455-41 (talk) 05:02, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Where are the sources?

@~2026-24455-41 could you point me to the sources you mentioned in your edit summary? I couldn't find them. Realtent (talk) 04:37, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

"After the War of Independence the Arab population of Safed fled. New immigrants — refugees from Eastern Europe and North Africa — moved into the abandoned homes."

- from https://safed.co.il/artist-quarter-of-tzfat/

"The building that houses this gallery is known as the Market Mosque because it is adjacent to the old site of the Safed weekly shuk (market) and was previously used as a mosque by the city’s former Arab population. The building itself was built upon Mamluke foundations in 1902, and has the arches and domed ceilings typical of the local Arab architecture of the time. The mosque was used as a place of worship until the War of Independence in 1948... The founding members of the Artists Colony settled in Safed shortly after the creation of the State of Israel and took over the abandoned mosque to use as an exhibition center for their artists’ cooperative.

- from https://safed.co.il/the-general-exhibition/

"The artists who lived and worked in Safed before the founding of the state went to see the town's first Jewish mayor and proposed setting aside an artists' quarter. The houses abandoned during the war became their homes and studios," says Auerbach."

- from https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2002-01-25/ty-article/safed-by-the-sea/0000017f-e910-df5f-a17f-fbde355a0000

Originally, the biography of Fox's grandmother (which also used the term "abandoned" to describe these homes and public buildings) was the citation for this claim. When it was restored, all three of these links were included. The original removal cited it as "anti-Semitic": https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keolu_Fox&oldid=1349764723

"I changed a small detail that seemed presumptuous and potentially antisemitic in the early life section, where assumptions about "expelled arab populations" were made. As bio editors, please refrain from inserting recent political bias in wiki entries." ~2026-24455-41 (talk) 04:52, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Just for clarity in case it isnt' clear, safed.co.il is the Safed artist's colony's official website ~2026-24455-41 (talk) 04:53, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

A few things here:

• "the Safed artist's colony's official website" seems to be more like a blog, promotional, selfpublished, or a mix, and as per WP:RSOPINION, "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs and tweets as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material."
• The diff you linked doesn't remove any sources, it only removes the line that I also removed, so I'm not sure what sources specifically were removed. However, I don't agree with their edit summary.
• While some artists may have taken over abandoned homes and the like, unless you have a source that explicitly says that these people in the article specifically took over an abandoned home, that is original research, which is not allowed.
  • Same with the official website: unless it specifically says these people in the article did this, you cannot write that they did.

Overall, the evidence I'm seeing doesn't explicitly state that the people did that, only that people in general did it, so we can't conclude that these people specifically did. Realtent (talk) 05:05, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I've removed the sentences mentioning grandparents alltogether because they didn't seem to have an impact on his early life in general, and seemed off-topic from the article subject. Realtent (talk) 05:17, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

> Overall, the evidence I'm seeing doesn't explicitly state that the people did that

Three links, one of which is the Israeli newspaper of record, explicity state that the Safed Artists' Colony (founded by a small group including Fox's paternal grandparents, evidenced by multiple other bio citations of them both) used "abandoned" homes and properties when setting up the artists' quarter. It is almost unbelievable that you could not distill that from these sources.

> "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs and tweets as a source for material about a living person

Neither of Fox's paternal grandparents are living people, and the Safed website was used specifically to further hedge against baseless claims of anti-Jewish racism. The group itself says they used abandoned homes. Haaretz says they used abandoned homes. The UN says they took abandoned homes. How many sources do you need?

> unless you have a source that explicitly says that these people in the article specifically took over an abandoned home

All three sources say this. Fox's paternal grandparents founded the artists' colony. They, along with their son (Fox's deceased father) are famous Israeli figures in arts, philosophy, and science.

You should perhaps take a gander at Nakba denial, as you're doing that ideolgoical movement quite a bit of service here, and it is disturbing. ~2026-24455-41 (talk) 05:28, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I admit I do mix up guidelines for recently deceased and less recently deceased people, and I admit I was wrong there. However, I don't really see why they should be included in the first place. If they're "famous Israeli figures in arts, philosophy, and science" then they will have their own page whcih will be linked, or otherwise not be mentioned at all.

Also, please do not imply that I am trying to deny anything, I am simply trying to go by wikipedia's guidelines, even if I misread them. Your accusation is Wikipedia:Casting aspersions, and I would request for you to stop.

Additionally, I will be asking for a Wikipedia:Third opinion as I think it'll be valuable for future discussion. Realtent (talk) 06:22, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree with both of you that the phrase using the homes and public buildings of Palestinians killed or expelled is not antisemitic. And I also think it's probably true. But that doesn't mean we can put it on Wikipedia. It seems to me like original research, specifically WP:SYNTH. We can't synthesize one source that says Fox's grandparents were part of the "founding" of Safed with another source describing the way in which Safed was "founded". To include the disputed content, at the very least, we need a reliable source that specifically talks about Fox's grandparents in relation to Palestinian homes.

Although I'm a little bit wary of unnecessarily focusing on people's Jewish heritage, a brief mention of Fox's grandparents would probably be fine, since they're mentioned here and by Fox himself here. If we mention the "founding" of Safed, we can link to the Wikipedia article on it, which people can read if they want to know more. If we do that, we should also mention the fact that Fox's grandparents met in a concentration camp in Mechelen, Belgium, since both of those sources mention it.

Finally, I actually do think WP:BLP applies here. First of all, this article is a biography of a living person, so even if that specific sentence is talking about deceased people, I think it's still covered. And second of all, BLP applies to recently deceased people as well. Original research is still not allowed either way, but it's even more important in the case of BLPs.

@~2026-24455-41: per WP:ONUS, please don't add the material back again until you've achieved consensus here about adding it. Cadddr (talk) 16:28, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Notability criteria

Does this person meet WP:NPROF criteria?

Per the consensus:

1. The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.

As far as I can tell, of about 9 article Professor Fox is listed as an author on, 3 or 4 are actual research papers in genetics/genomics, including his PhD thesis. For a couple of the others, he is listed as having offered feedback on a manuscript or his contributions are not listed in the paper at all, so even if those papers were majorly impactful I do not think it would qualify as "this person's research", so to speak.

The remainder are commentary/critique pieces. Just to head off a predictable response here, I am in no way making a criticism or negative judgement of activism for the rights of indigenous populations.

2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.

I have not been able to find any such awards. Some of the ones listed in the infobox are not actually academic awards at all, just mentions of participation in things like a lecture series.

4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.

Fox does not list anything related this on his university bio, and I did not find anything supportive of this on the bio pages of his listed professional affiliations.

7. The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.

These, of course, are the more subjective of the criteria and thus I'm open to hearing arguments for their fulfillment. The critique/commentary articles are not connected to subsequent legislation, lawsuits, or other things in the indigenous rights space as far as I have been able to find. Open to seeing if someone has found something here. Personally I do not consider an individual having "founded a company/collective/etc" as a major impact as this can be done over the weekend with a few forms filed, and of course many peope do this as a CV filler. For example, the EarthFrame company listed under affiliations was launched a couple months ago (per their LinkedIn page) and seems to sell pre-built PCs and lists an open-source python package for managing AI pipelines? Which in effect seems like WP:COVERT to me.

All of the remaining criteria are explicitly unfulfilled:

3. The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (e.g., Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics).

5. The person has held a distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research, a named chair appointment that indicates a comparable level of achievement, or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon.

6. The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed administrative post at a major academic institution or major academic society.

8. The person has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area.

Re: the seminars and TED talks, those are also inappropriate for inclusion, though this is a separate issue from this being a valid wiki to begin with.

Also from WP:NPROF:

Ordinary colloquia and seminar talks and invited lectures at scholarly conferences, standard research grants, named post-doctoral fellowships, visiting appointments, or internal university awards are insufficient for this purpose.

Bioconda (talk) 07:40, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm too tired to go over it well at this time, but I'll ping @Ldm1954 and @GenomeFan92 as they seem to have been over this before Realtent (talk) 08:38, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I see no evidence of a pass of WP:NPROF. It appears that he is an untenured assistant professor in a fairly high citation field based upon his co-authors, see his GS profile. A lot of bloat has been added some of which I removed; based upon the history I would not be surprised to see this reverted. I suggest AfD. Ldm1954 (talk) 12:53, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

N.B., my early PROD was removed on the basis of SIGCOV. I only see one source here that qualifies as WP:42, which is not enough. Ldm1954 (talk) 15:51, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for this input, hopefully someone opposed can chime in with their thoughts against AfD. The simple fact is that historically, transient appearances in things like podcasts or pieces from broadcasting news corps (even a major one like CBC here) does not qualify for GNG. We'd have hundreds of millions of wiki pages in a matter of weeks, were that the case. More importantly, as "influence economies" have radically bloated in the past decade, many members of academic institutions have begun pursuing these avenues as an alternative to traditional scientific contributions as a pathway to notabililty. This should be taken into account when considering GNG, as it is basically tantamount to relying on self-initiated PR to define notability, which is obviously untenable for wiki.

Also, just a note that Fox appears to be tenured at UC San Diego (LinkedIn post), however this is well-established not to satisfy NPROF. There are half a million tenured professors in the US alone. It is not uncommon in population genetics papers for many authors to be very minor contributors due to the collaborative nature of the datasets, to a threshold that is often considered gift authorship in other fields of biology and even bioinformatics. However there is also a qualitative issue with those citations: the number of times in non-narrative/commentary articles (which are themselves a minority) he is not even listed under author contributions, or listed as things like "feedback given to manuscript" I think underscores the failure to meet NPROF. Many of the lead authors on those papers, who have hundreds of original research articles, who do not have wiki pages. A couple I noticed right away are the developers/maintainers of major R and python bioinf software packages which tens of thousands of researchers around the world use every day in their work, and likewise do not have wiki pages. Some reversions and additions (from temporary accounts, which I have also noticed) also seem to be wholly unverified, for example he does not appear anywhere on the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute's faculty or associate listing, nor does his current CV on his UC San Diego faculty bio (PDF link) list this affiliation.

Regarding COI, ~2026-24459-75 and other temps (with some UC San Diego-based IPs) pretty clearly appear to be Fox or someone with a close personal relationship. Demanding that volunteer editors reach out to BLP subject's former institution to verify a CV, and language like "please restore his accomplishments" is very strange and promotional. However, PROMO and COI are justifications for revision and (when severe) potential ban of accounts, not article deletion. The lack of NPROF is separate.

I will note that @GenomeFan92 seems to have a history of creating articles for people involved in indigenous genetics activism who similarly fail SIGCOV/GNG, and which have been both proposed for deletion (such as Alhaji N'jai) and previously rejected at WP:AFC under SIGCOV/RS/etc, for reasons similar to those related to this page (citations that are basically self-written PR pieces). For this reason I do not think it is appropriate that they are invovled in this AfD discussion. Wiki is not a place to promote one's activism space.

Given NPROF failure and that appearing in a CBC article does not satisfy GNG, I concur with AfD, but I am in this field and feel it may be bordering on COI for me to initiate it. Bioconda (talk) 21:07, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I've been participating in a project to add missing notable scientists of color to Wikipedia, modeled on similar efforts such as WP:WOMRED, on the theory that Wikipedia is likely to be under-representing such scientists due to bias. Often the scientists whom I can best argue are notable are those who have been in the news for activism work, because such work tends to attract press. I do end up writing a lot about scientists who might not meet WP:NPROF in their capacity as a professor, due to not (yet) having had enormous impacts on their fields of research, but I only create articles when I have what I think is a good argument that the person meets one of the ways that a person can be notable, most often WP:GNG. As I understand it, people who meet WP:GNG don't separately need to meet WP:NPROF to be considered notable.

Despite what I think probably has been WP:COI editing on this page, and a fair number of references that are to research articles that Fox is an author of, I also think that Fox can be fairly easily demonstrated to meet WP:GNG by going down the list of references currently on the article and counting the qualifying ones. Since WP:GNG is about whether sources exist, as I understand it, rather than whether they are currently cited, I'd be happy to go looking for more if people feel that, for particular reasons, there are not multiple currently cited sources that count as reliable, independent of the subject, and containing significant coverage. I really appreciate it when people can be specific about which sources in particular they don't think ought to count and why, and when Wikipedia policy pages can be cited to support judgements about sources. A lot of people seem to know a lot of obvious-to-them things about e.g. podcast or broadcast news pieces that I sometimes struggle to find support for elsewhere. GenomeFan92 (talk) 18:59, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, but you seem to have misunderstood WP:GNG. Please check the summary WP:42, the first two sentences of which are:

We need significant coverage. We need multiple sources that discuss the subject directly and in detail. Not: passing mentions, directory listings, government records, the subject getting quoted in an article. We want to see an in-depth description

It has to be in depth. Similar pages wikilinked from there go into this in more detail. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:19, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:42 links through to WP:SIGCOV, which I can quote in its entirety:

""Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.

• The book-length history of IBM by Robert Sobel is plainly non-trivial coverage of IBM.
• Martin Walker's statement, in a newspaper article about Bill Clinton, that "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice" is plainly a trivial mention of that band."

This is not all that helpful in evaluating where the line is between these cases; probably one of us should go edit WP:SIGCOV to add some less-obvious worked examples. If I'm misunderstanding this it's because there's a lot of understanding in people's heads that is not actually on the virtual page here. It definitely sounds like a looser standard than is at WP:42, which directly calls out a person getting quoted as something isn't significant coverage and hammers the "in-depth" point harder to imply that more depth is required.

Take the first source in the article, "Making Indigenous Peoples Equal Partners in Gene Research". This article's main subject is what they call in the subtitle "A new generation of indigenous scientists". One of those scientists is Fox, and he is named 7 times in the article, 5 of which are to attribute quotes of his and 2 of which are to explain who he is and how he is an example of the trend the article is about. This is definitely not a book-length treatment of Fox and his life, but neither is it a passing reference to something the author of the article didn't think was important: they set out to cover people like Fox, found Fox and others, and thought Fox was interesting enough to interview him enough to get several quotes about what he and others are up to, to put in the article.

There are obvious independence problems with taking quoted material from a person as the source for information about that person. And surely this could be in greater depth than it is, and some of the background information on Fox personally might be there because the reporter felt the need to explain who this person was that they were going to quote, rather than because they felt the background information was interesting enough for a whole article.

But to me it seems obviously different than a single line in a news article naming a jazz band. Is this "in depth" enough to count as WP:SIGCOV for someone who isn't "the main topic of the source material", or isn't it? Wearing my hat of someone who wants to add more articles on people to Wikipedia, I want to say "yes". If there's a consensus in the editor community that the answer is "no", we need to write that down! I'd be especially interested in some text reflecting a consensus on how interviews and substantial quoted material should be treated for significance, as opposed to independence: if a journalist interviews one or two people, and then publishes a story consisting of two paragraphs of fact-checked background and two pages of interview, does having the interview there make the source count less for WP:GNG than if they'd only published the background? GenomeFan92 (talk) 16:19, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

1. If I'm misunderstanding this it's because there's a lot of understanding in people's heads that is not actually on the virtual page here

Given you run into this SIGCOV issue so much, including the failure of your proposed page creations, don't you think it might be a good idea to consider that it is you, rather than everyone else, who is not understanding the context of this guideline?

"Significance" will always be a subjective and qualitative concept. We will never get a perfectly explicit readout of exactly what does and does not qualify. Everything you cited so far, though, are internet-only interviews, which are simply not the same as 10-page spreads in a printed magazine 20 years ago when the philosophy of these guidelines was laid out. Online media coverage is explicity pursued by the people being interviewed as a PR measure and this is *especially* true in activism, where coverage is the equivalent of publishing in academics. And what's worse is that we have little way of distinguishing the remainder.

As a test, see if you can find me a scientific article that relies on original, wet lab research of which Fox is the lead author. I have searched for this for a couple weeks now on my free time, including consulting some LLMs trained on Google Scholar, and have been unable to find any. Since his activism is ostensibly in his own scientific discipline, the claim of him being an influential activist is explicitly dependent on the claim of him as an influential academic. If the latter is unsupported, the former is as well. Bioconda (talk) 23:50, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

For some addition real-world context, see WP:Notability (academics)/Precedents. Note that some previously deleted pages have had substantially more visibility and publication history compared to Fox. Consider also they often did so prior to the explosion of self-initiated PR through contemporary social media. On that some note, many of the lead authors on the papers Fox is listed on have much, much broader publication history, and do not have Wikipedia pages. Bioconda (talk) 23:59, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the suggestion that it wouldn't be appropriate for GenomeFan92 to be involved in the AfD discussion. If they have anything helpful to add there, they should do so. Also, I haven't looked through GenomeFan92's contributions in detail, but unless they're a sockpuppet or have a COI, there's nothing wrong with creating articles about a subject you're interested in. Cadddr (talk) 21:32, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Just to be abundantly clear, in no way do I think @GenomeFan92 is a sockpuppet or being dishonest and I apologize full-stop if it came across like that.

I don't know whether they have a COI but even if they did (an answer on this may be helpful), but in my opinion that only disqualifies from direct addition of content on a page, not participating in a discussion. The problem is NPOV. They clearly are personally invested in the success of the indigenous genetic sovereignty movement and are making use of Wikipedia pages to increase the visibility of activists and academics in that space. This, I feel, is not appropriate, and their history reflects it. Interviews, no matter where they come from, are qualitatively no longer a reliable basis for SIGCOV in a world where the vast majority of them are solely on the internet and proactively cultivated in concert with self-promotion campaigns. Bioconda (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe I have a COI on Keolu Fox. We do both work for different universities in the University of California system, but beyond that we are not, as I can recall, collaborators, and we have no professional relationship that I can find; I don't believe we've met.

Reading WP:COI again, it does seem like I may have been applying it incorrectly in other cases, because while most of the examples are things like how "an article about a band should not be written by the band's manager", at WP:COISELF it suggests that in general one has a conflict of interest on the topic of everyone they know, and not only in cases where there's some kind of strong relationship like employer, friend, or spouse. While most pages I work on are about people I've never met, I have in fact meet a couple of people who I've also edited articles about. There doesn't seem to be a recommended way to retroactively tag that, but I can definitely make sure to follow the COI process not just for people I'm strongly connected to, but for people I know at all, in the future (if I'm reading it right).

I'm not really sure what you want me to do about your WP:NPOV concerns. I wouldn't say I'm personally invested in the success of the indigenous genetic sovereignty movement, although I find the topic interesting. Presumably, because I find the topic interesting, I pick more people involved in it to write about than I otherwise would. If you have advice for how to write about other people's advocacy work that reliable and independent sources frame as positive, with a better adherence to WP:NPOV than I've been managing, I'd be happy to hear it. WP:DUE covers the breakdown of coverage within an article, but it doesn't really seem to deal with the question of which notable people editors choose to cover, or what to do if the sourcing is thin enough that all the sources that can be found are positive.

I am attempting to expand Wikipedia's coverage of topics I feel have probably been unfairly neglected. But if I'm restricting myself to creating articles where there's a good argument that they pass the notability guidelines, and trying to adhere to WP:NPOV in what I write in the articles, I can't find anything that says I'm not meant to be doing that, and I can find evidence (like the existence of WP:WOMRED) that I am meant to be doing that. Is that not right?

Your point about interviews being unusable for SIGCOV because they are now much more likely than not, regardless of the reputation of the publication, to have been produced by the application of public relations, is interesting. I'm not sure whether it reflects a consensus or not, though. Can you (or should I?) edit it into WP:SIGCOV? GenomeFan92 (talk) 17:58, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Re interviews, see WP:Interviews. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

I have a strong personal bias regarding the existence of University media offices for academics (you can probably guess in which direction), so I don't think I personally have an NPOV on the topic sufficient to contribute to SIGCOV.

I am attempting to expand Wikipedia's coverage of topics I feel have probably been unfairly neglected.

This is kinda my point with the NPOV thing. Wikipedia is not a hierarchical institution where systematic prejudices prevent well-known people from historically oppressed groups from being included, it's the fact that the society itself does not consider people from certain groups to be notable. If someone has had real, functional impact on society and has been sidelined by such an institution in contrast with that impact, they are still notable and should be recorded. If someone has not had a major social impact, but carries some genetic heritage from a historically oppressed group, that doesn't make their lack of impact somehow more impactful (despite how much Fox seems to broadcast this at every opportunity). Further, his father is a famous Israeli scientist and philosopher, he is from the Bay Area and grew up on the East Coast, where he went to an elite public magnet highschool and then two elite American universities for his BS and PhD, despite no publicly recorded performance-based achievements anyone can find and add to this page, and currently enjoys tenure at a UC despite virtually zero original research to his name. This is a very strong basis of evidence for a career of relying on flying the flag of indigenous oppression for one's own personal benefit, and if you are a member of this activist space like me I'm positive you've seen it many times.

I'm not really sure what you want me to do about your WP:NPOV concerns.

I was only offering it as food for thought, there's no obligation to do anything for me in this regard. I would suggest that it does not actually help marginalized groups to perpetuate an atmosphere of reduced expectations for some people based on their lived identities. There are many, many academics and activists with Hawaiian heritage who are far more notable than Fox, and do not have pages. As well as many articles in this realm which I'm sure are missing factual and relevant information. You will find in this page's history a mention of a Native Hawaiian medical genomicist at the University of Hawaii Manoa who has a far, far larger body of more impactful scientific work than Fox, and has no page. He was mentioned for receiving his PhD in genetics several years prior to Fox, who claims he was "the First Native Hawaiian with a PhD in genomics", which has since been decided to be a dubious claim. Bioconda (talk) 19:48, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

The person I was talking about: Dr. Alika Maunakea

https://abp.jabsom.hawaii.edu/faculty/alika-k-maunakea-phd.html

And his lab page (something maintained by virtually every active PI I've ever heard of, which Fox does not have): https://maunakealab.com/alika-maunakea/

Check out his bio on the lab page, that is a hugely impactful Hawaiian geneticist who has done a ton of work to benefit Hawaii and communities of Hawaiian heritage:

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Maunakea led efforts to develop infrastructure for community testing and vaccine education to mitigate the adverse impacts of COVID-19 in underserved Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) populations in Hawaiʻi as part of the NIH-funded Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics of Underserved Populations (RADxUP) initiative. Notably, he led the development of the first CLIA-certified molecular diagnostics laboratory at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Hawaiʻi serving the largest population of NHPIs in the state.

He also directs the Consortium of Research Advancement Facilities and Training (CRAFT), a NIH COBRE-funded resource in the Integrative Center for Precision Nutrition and Human Health at UHM that includes a suite of multiomics core facilities and bioinformatic resources. By integrating these multiomic approaches, Dr. Maunakea seeks to better understand the socioecological determinants that influence epigenomic and gut microbial pathways that regulate inflammatory states that appear to underlie progression of diabetes, the prevalence of which are disproportionately higher among the NHPI population, to identify novel biomarkers that enable prevention in a recent R01-funded study called the Hawaiʻi Social Epigenomics of Early Diabetes (HI-SEED.org). Finally, Dr. Maunakea initiated and leads the Maui Wildfire Exposure Study (www.mauiwes.info), a longtitudinal cohort to better understand the immediate and long-term health impacts of those recovering from the mental/emotional and physical trauma of the wildfires in Lahaina and Kula in August 2023.

If you're looking to make a page for an underappreciated indigenous academic, you have my vote on this one. Running more than one NIH-funded multi-center research institute alone indisputably meets NPROF. Bioconda (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Keolu here - no sock puppets necessary.

Lets put this debate to bed: What is Dr. Maunakea's PhD in? What is Fox's PhD in? Perhaps this is a distinction you don't understand. UW Genome Sciences is a distinct degree program awarding PhDs in "Genome Sciences" (the first of its kind) not a molecular biology program. Hence this is NOT a dubious claim. So you're either willingly or woefully ignorant on the subject? Which is it? Are you spreading false narratives(lies/misinformation) about Native Hawaiian Scholars because you don't understand the difference between degrees and degree offering institutions? OR because you want to stir up conflict between Alika and I (who is my friend and colleague and knows that I am the first Native Hawaiian to receive a PhD is Genome Sciences). Secondly, why are you elevating NIH / R01 based science that dimes out precious Indigenous genome sequence data to the US Government OVER actually building out infrastructure "for" and "by" Indigenous people? Perhaps you should visit a reservation of stop by an IHS hospital for a field trip. What is your agenda here? I went from public housing to being a home owner. From EBT to PhD. You don't know anything about my struggle and how hard I worked for my education (all of which was on scholarship), to feed my family, to have the honor of representing my community. ~2026-26123-73 (talk) 16:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Please don't cast aspersions about other editors' motivations. Cadddr (talk) 17:11, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

More LLM from IP

There should be serious reconsideration regarding the removal and reduction of the research and publications section from Keolu Fox’s Wikipedia page. According to Google Scholar, Dr. Fox has authored or co-authored more than 50 scientific publications spanning genomics, biological anthropology, Indigenous data sovereignty, precision medicine, climate science, and population genetics.

Reducing his research profile to only a handful of publications does not accurately reflect the breadth or impact of his scholarly record. Particularly difficult to justify is the removal of highly technical, peer-reviewed publications in internationally recognized journals.

For example: “Evolutionary history of Mycobacterium leprae in the Pacific Islands” *a specialized peer-reviewed research article* in which Fox serves as corresponding and senior author, contributing substantially to Pacific ancient genomics and infectious disease history.

“Paths and timings of the peopling of Polynesia inferred from genomic networks,” published in Nature, one of the most significant population genomics studies focused on Polynesian migration and settlement history in recent years. These are not marginal publications or self-published materials; they are rigorously peer-reviewed scientific contributions published in major journals and widely cited within their respective fields. Their removal diminishes the technical and scholarly dimensions of Dr. Fox’s career and creates an incomplete representation of his academic contributions.

Wikipedia’s purpose is to provide balanced, verifiable, and well-sourced information. The selective removal of notable peer-reviewed research accomplishments risks creating editorial imbalance, particularly when those accomplishments are easily verifiable through institutional profiles, PubMed, Google Scholar, and major journal archives. The research section should therefore be restored and expanded in a manner consistent with Wikipedia’s standards for verifiability and academic notability. At minimum, the page should accurately reflect the scope of Fox’s contributions to genomics, Indigenous science, and Polynesian population genetics rather than disproportionately minimizing them. ~2026-26123-73 (talk) 18:14, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Keep, with cleanup and expansion based on independent reliable sources.

I do not think deletion is the appropriate remedy here. The article should be improved, trimmed of any unsupported or promotional language, and rebuilt around the strongest independent sources. The current objection argues that Dr. Fox fails WP:NPROF and that some article material is bloated or poorly sourced. Those are valid article-quality concerns, but they do not establish that the subject is non-notable. The better remedy is cleanup, not deletion. The discussion itself acknowledges concerns around WP:NPROF, GNG/SIGCOV, COI, promotional tone, and whether independent coverage is sufficient.

Dr. Fox appears to satisfy notability through a combination of WP:NPROF criterion 1, WP:NPROF criterion 7, and WP:GNG. WP:NPROF criterion 1 asks whether a scholar’s research has had significant impact in a broadly construed discipline, demonstrated by independent reliable sources; criterion 7 asks whether the person has had substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity. WP:GNG asks whether the subject has received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources that address the subject directly and in detail.

On scholarly impact, the claim that Fox has only “about 9 articles” is not supported by the publicly available Google Scholar listing cited by the nominator/user. Google Scholar identifies Keolu Fox as an Associate Professor at UC San Diego and indexes a broader body of work in genomics, Indigenous data sovereignty, bioethics, and population genetics. (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=keolu+fox&btnG=) Several of these works are in high-impact venues and have measurable uptake. For example, Fox’s single-author New England Journal of Medicine perspective, “The Illusion of Inclusion — The ‘All of Us’ Research Program and Indigenous Peoples’ DNA,” is indexed in PubMed, has a DOI, and is cited in the literature. His coauthored Nature article, “Paths and timings of the peopling of Polynesia inferred from genomic networks,” is also indexed in PubMed and Google Scholar-linked databases, with citations and coverage as a major population-genomics paper. His coauthored Cell commentary on a blockchain-enabled Indigenous data sovereignty framework is indexed as a Cell publication and has been covered by secondary science outlets.

It is also too narrow to dismiss commentary, perspective, and policy-facing scholarship as “not research.” In fields such as bioethics, Indigenous data sovereignty, ELSI, public health genomics, and science policy, agenda-setting articles in journals such as NEJM, Nature, Cell, Nature Machine Intelligence, and Science are part of scholarly impact, especially when they shape how a field frames consent, governance, data access, benefit sharing, and community partnership. Fox’s UCSD profile summarizes his research as spanning genome sequencing, genome engineering, computational biology, evolutionary genetics, paleogenetics, and Indigenizing biomedical research, and lists publications in NEJM, Nature, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

On impact outside academia, independent coverage is substantial and sustained. National Geographic profiled Fox in 2022 as a Native Hawaiian geneticist working to combat bias in genetics and clinical trials, specifically describing his work on Indigenous control of genomic data, the Indigenous Futures Institute, and the Native BioData Consortium. A separate National Geographic feature described him as using genetic research to understand Indigenous history, rectify injustices, and build new pathways in medicine and Indigenous-led research governance. TED identifies Fox as a TED Fellow, a professor at UC San Diego, cofounder of the Native BioData Consortium, cofounder/codirector of the UC San Diego Indigenous Futures Institute, and the first Kānaka Maoli to receive a doctorate in genome sciences. These are not merely passing mentions. They are independent, biographical, subject-focused sources that discuss his work and its broader significance.

The scientific-publication record should also be strengthened before any deletion discussion proceeds.

The current critique appears to undercount and under-evaluate Dr. Fox’s scholarly contributions, especially by treating work at the interface of genomics, Indigenous data sovereignty, bioethics, and public health as if it were somehow less “scientific” because it is also policy-relevant or justice-oriented. That is not a neutral standard. In modern genomics, questions of consent, data governance, benefit sharing, community partnership, and population representation are not peripheral activism; they are central scientific questions that shape study design, data interpretation, reproducibility, and clinical translation. Before proposing deletion, editors should do the basic scholarly due diligence of reviewing his full publication record, citation profile, author roles, peer-reviewed journal venues, and the independent reception of his work. The page should be improved by adding a more complete, properly sourced publications section, including his major contributions in New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Cell, and other peer-reviewed venues (See google scholar). A biography should not be weakened simply because a scientist’s work challenges extractive norms in the field. If anything, that intersection of science and public impact is precisely why the article merits careful enhancement rather than deletion.

~2026-26123-73 (talk) 17:55, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

|}

Sent to AfD

I do not think this is the right place for a long discussion of notability, particularly as there are clear LLM, SPA and autobiographical issues. I have sent this to AfD which is the standard place for that type of discussion. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:22, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Rewriting the whole article might be the best option. Deletion is not the right direction in this case. Dr. Fox has enough notability + scholarship to deserve a place and a page on Wikipedia. ~2026-28459-24 (talk) 18:32, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi there. Please disclose if you have a COI with this page subject Bioconda (talk) 23:53, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Selected Publications choices

This may or may not become a moot point given the AfD outcome, but of the three papers currently in Selected Publications, the first (in NEJM Perspectives) and third (in Cell Commentary) are non-peer reviewed commentary pieces, the latter being also a promo piece for a startup, Native BioData, of which he is a board member. From that article:

One prominent example is the Native BioData Consortium (NBDC) in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The NBDC, a first-of-its-kind non-profit Indigenous-led biobank and research institute, ensures that advances in genetics research provide material or immaterial benefit to Indigenous nations and hosts skills training workshops for aspiring Indigenous data scientists.

So, the only actual research article is the second (Nature), and in the Author Contributions section Fox's sole listing is as having provided feedback on the manuscript:

A.G.I. wrote the manuscript, and A.M.-E., E.H., K.F. and S.H.-C. provided feedback on the manuscript.

I could not find a section explicity dedicated to Selected Publications criteria or style guide in WP:SCHOLAR or the like (it may simply be a judgement call), but qualitatively these don't seem to cut it as an ostensibly notable geneticist's most influential papers. Virtually all seasoned researchers have authorship instances like this one across their careers, so on its own its nothing suspect. The temp which added them (~2026-26123-73) admitted to being Fox in the AfD discussion post where he states its an ethical duty to preserve his page. Bioconda (talk) 08:49, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Everything at NEJM is peer reviewed. ~2026-26123-73 (talk) 16:11, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

But you agree you listed in your "Selected Publications" the Nature paper where your contribution was limited to providing feedback on the manuscript? Bioconda (talk) 17:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)