Talk:Martin Kulldorff

Brownstone Institute Essay

A new proposal for the problematic paragraph about Kulldorff's Brownstone Institute essay, which lacks balance and has poor sourcing. I propose the following change which includes a citation to Kulldorff's essay to balance the biased secondary source (an essay about the essay). Also removed Wikipedia's editorial judgement on which claims were false, which was unsourced, and removed the last sentence fragment that synthesized numeric data from two years later in an apples to oranges comparison to the numbers presented earlier in the paragraph.

In December 2021, Kulldorff published an essay for the Brownstone Institute in which he argued it was not "a no-brainer" for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before the vaccine risk profile was known, claiming that influenza was a greater mortality risk to children than COVID-19.[1] In a critical response published in Science-Based Medicine, Jonathan Howard claimed there were errors and factual inaccuracies in Kulldorff's essay and pointed out that influenza was responsible for only one child death in the 2020/21 season, while COVID-19 killed more than 1,000.[2] In addition to this, Kulldorff's essay omitted that children who are infected with COVID-19 are at risk for rare but serious conditions, such as MIS-C.[2]

[1] https://brownstone.org/articles/vaccines-save-lives/
[2] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/i-disagree-with-an-article-called-vaccines-save-lives/

The existing problematic text reads:

In December 2021, Kulldorff published an essay for the Brownstone Institute in which he argued against children receiving vaccination against COVID-19, falsely claiming that influenza was a greater risk to children than COVID-19. In a critical response published in Science-Based Medicine, Jonathan Howard noted errors and factual inaccuracies in Kulldorff's essay, pointing out that while influenza was responsible for only one child death in the 2020/21 season – while public health mitigation of COVID-19 was in place – COVID-19 killed more than 1,000. In addition to this, Kulldorff's essay omitted that children who are infected with COVID-19 are at risk for rare but serious conditions, such as MIS-C, with 8,862 confirmed cases of children with MIS-C by March 2023. Tikitorch2 (talk) 00:04, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Obviously a self-serving primary source, the use of which is WP:PROFRINGE (along with editorial bias in the use of WP:CLAIM). So no. Bon courage (talk) 00:17, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

We can say “Jonathan Howard said…” instead of Jonathan Howard claimed. Primary source is appropriate to use because the secondary source is a critique of the primary source per WP:USEPRIMARY Tikitorch2 (talk) 01:14, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

The secondary has all we need/want. Bon courage (talk) 02:07, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Is there a reason why you are opposed to the first sentence clearly stating what Kulldorff argued before the critique is presented with more words? Because he didn’t say kids shouldn’t be vaccinated in his essay Tikitorch2 (talk) 02:36, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

He argued aganinst them getting vaccintaed. We follow reliable sources, not your blatant PROFRINGE spin. Bon courage (talk) 02:41, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Sorry can you please find a part of his essay where he argued that? Tikitorch2 (talk) 02:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Yup. Bon courage (talk) 02:57, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I am assuming you are taking a minute to find it, but this terse response is not constructive see WP:HTBAE Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:06, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

No, I knew already. At this point I'm going to start ignoring you because engagement does not help the Project. Bon courage (talk) 03:08, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

That's the whole topic of the essay. MrOllie (talk) 03:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

No I think that is original research to conclude that. his essay is about how public health efforts for Covid should be focused on the elderly and that attempts at childhood vaccine mandates are not justified, along with other similar things like that. I almost quoted his position in my summary that it was “a no brainer” for elderly to get the vaccine but that this wasn’t yet so for children because of not knowing the vaccine risk profile for risk comparison. Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:11, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

It is clearly stated in the essay and clearly pointed out in the secondary source. So no, it is not original research. MrOllie (talk) 03:20, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

If it is clearly stated, could you please point it out? Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:23, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Quoting Kulldorff's essay: COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children. MrOllie (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

the full context of that quote from the beginning of the essay:

Earlier this year, I was censored by Twitter for writing that “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

in other words this essay is an explanation of that tweet with more nuance Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:36, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

“For older people, who are at high risk of dying from Covid, the benefit of the vaccine greatly outweighs the small risks of a serious adverse event, so it is a no-brainer to be vaccinated.

The same is not true for children. Their Covid mortality risk is miniscule and less than the already low risk from the annual influenza, so the vaccine benefit for healthy children is very small. It will take a few years until we know the Covid vaccine risk profile, and until then, we do not know whether there is more benefit or harm in vaccinating children. When government officials ignore these important issues, trust in vaccines declines among everyone.” Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:42, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

And SBM: I was dismayed that it mostly argued against vaccinating children. MrOllie (talk) 03:28, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

FYI, others have tried this same argument, that the essay doesn't say what it plainly does say. Check the talk page archives. It didn't work then and it won't work now. MrOllie (talk) 03:31, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

This is the secondary, essay about the essay, it is already cited a lot in the paragraph which is why we need a basic statement of the original essay from the primary source for balance Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:40, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia specifically rejects your version of 'balance', see WP:FALSEBALANCE. We'll stick with the mainstream view and the secondary source. MrOllie (talk) 03:45, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Beyond just reading comprehension of the primary source and being honest about including the full context instead of truncated quotes, summarizing that essay by saying that Kulldorff was against childhood vaccination doesn’t make sense from an ethics and science perspective—to learn about the vaccine risk profile you would want a statistically meaningful portion of parents to choose to vaccinate their kids based on the best information available at the time about risk. Comparing the risk to influenza, a virus for which about 50% of kids are vaccinated is perfect for this Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like you have some ideas for a publication. You should consider writing them up and submitting them to a reliable source. If they get published elsewhere, we can discuss that source. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:13, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

To the extent that there is a story here it is just that Wikipedia editors don’t follow their policy on primary sources, and even that policy itself is contrary to how kids were taught just a decade or two ago. Unfortunately that story would require investigating how and why that policy changed, and I have a day job Tikitorch2 (talk) 04:27, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Our policy is that secondary sources are more relevant for our purposes than primary sources (despite the name), and always has been. See WP:PSTS for more info on this. Preferring secondary sources to primary sources is completely in-line with Wikipedia policy. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 04:38, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes I was just observing that this is the opposite of what we were taught in grade school. and that Wikipedia says a perfectly good time to cite a primary source it when it is literally the subject, such as a summary of a book—your allowed to look at the book and see if green eggs and ham is about the wizards at hog warts. Tikitorch2 (talk) 04:55, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Do you really think that there's nothing to learn beyond pre-teen schooling? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 06:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia purportedly still allows some of those basic good practices that they teach in grade school, such as using the primary source when there is to be a summary of the primary source WP:PRIMARYCARE. But like any organization wikipedia’s policies are more about what the editors editors conduct than those all caps WPGUIDES.

I am curious though when Wikipedia stopped generally being allowed to consider primary sources when determining which secondary sources were credible, would be interesting to go back and look at those debates if you know when that happened? Tikitorch2 (talk) 08:19, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Again, Wikipedia has always preferred secondary sources to primary sources; there was no "stopping" or "debate". In other words, Wikipedia has always been more interested in what reliable sources say about a subject than what a subject says about itself. The reason for this is hopefully obvious--a subject talking about itself will naturally present itself in the most favorable light. If a secondary source says "X is fringe", it's not interesting or useful to counter that "well, X says that it itself is not fringe", because, well, it would say that, wouldn't it? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 12:44, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I looked at the history of the WP:PSTS link you provided and that does not appear to be true, for example in 03:12, 3 April 2005 it said

In some cases, where Wikipedia articles make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, or evaluative claims, Wikipedia articles may be based entirely on primary sources (examples would include apple pie or current events).

In most cases, however, Wikipedia articles are based on both primary and secondary sources. In order to avoid doing original research, and in order to help improve the quality of Wikipedia articles, it is essential that any primary-source material used in an article has been published or otherwise made available to people who do not rely on Wikipedia.

To bring this back to the topic at hand, we are discussing an essay on a third party publishing platform, not a person. The essay presumably is not changing what it "says about itself" as you imply. Tikitorch2 (talk) 15:10, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

But Kulldorff was against childhood vaccination against Covid then, was also against adult vaccine mandates then and now, and it appears that he is now against (at least MRNA) vaccines, full stop. The first of those statements is backed up by The same is not true for children. Their Covid mortality risk is miniscule and less than the already low risk from the annual influenza, so the vaccine benefit for healthy children is very small, which you offer as his justification/explanation for Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.

The primary supposition of the explanation (that children were at "miniscule" risk from Covid, and that this risk was lower than the risk of seasonal flu) was simply false, empirically, for the period during which he wrote it. The argument he was using this false statement to support was that children didn't need to be vaccinated against Covid. That is the plain meaning of what he wrote, and I question the reading comprehension of any editor who would try to assert an interpretation contradicting that plain meaning. Newimpartial (talk) 04:26, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I don’t know Kulldorff ‘s full history this paragraph is about an essay Kulldorff wrote in 2021. First off the “nor children” is taken out of context, the whole essay is him explaining that past statement and walking it back a bit and being more nuanced. I think it is original research to conclude that a quote taken out of context, that itself was a quote from an earlier published statement, is an accurate summary of the essay.

second the risk being less than influenza is not an argument against vacinnation for Covid, unless you think influenza is not worth being vacinnated against, in which case it would imply Covid is also therefore not worth being vacinnated against. Short of that it is sort of a “no need to panic” statement

You say false empirically about the relative risks of influenza and Covid to kids but just like the Wikipedia article offer no evidence. By the time of these essays over a third of kids probably had natural immunity and every year since more kids have died from influenza than Covid so if you are going to claim that you should find someone to cite so it’s not on Wikipedia. Tikitorch2 (talk) 04:51, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Briefly:

• By the time of these essays over a third of kids probably had natural immunity - you offer no evidence for this statement.
• every year since more kids have died from influenza than Covid - but not in the relevant year, when Kulldorff was arguing against vaccinating children.
• [I] say false empirically about the relative risks of influenza and Covid and you have previously been presented with evidence of this, for the respiratory infection season in question, on this talk page. Let's leave the dead horse alone.
• if you interpret Kulldorff as walking back his social media statement in the essay, I believe you are alone in that interpretation, which makes it WP:OR.

Newimpartial (talk) 05:02, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Your right I have talked you through why each of your first three points are either incorrect or why I say it not scientifically known which is worse during that year in past threads sections, and none of that is really relevant here other than the fact that the current Wikipedia text does not have a source for its claim and does not attribute it Howard. Why bring something up and then in the next reply suggest I am beating a dead horse? Sounds like bad faith.

Do you think my summary of the relevant part of his essay in my proposed text is innacurate? It is just a segue to get to his claim that influenza has higher mortality risk than influenza, so I’m not sure why we can’t just summarize the one or two sentences before this claim like I have done. I don’t think it is really that much different other than being a closer summary of the argument immediately leading up to that claim. It’s almost verbatim, not this original research high level summary being made based on an earlier twitter post.

if you really want to say Kulldorff is anti childhood vaccination, then cite it to Howard instead of doing original research based on your knowledge of his history and your interpretation of his essay. Tikitorch2 (talk) 05:37, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

To answer your question, yes, I think your summary is inaccurate. You aren't summarizing Kulldorff: you are offering your interpretation of his essay, with which other editors disagree. Previously you have assembled information Kulldorff didn't have - in a misleading way - to show why "he was right". This time you don't do that, but instead you leave out the clear central thesis of Kulldoff's piece while emphasizing his "well, actually", retrospective rationalization for said thesis. That still results in an inaccurate, misleading summary.

As far as I can tell, you are still advocating the same WP:POV as you have in many prior discussions on this page. You seem unable to grasp that this is essentially a WP:1AM situation, where the community does not accept the view you have "talked us through". We do have sources for the way article text interprets Kulldorff's piece, and we have consensus that that interpretation reflects consensus reality in the broader speech community.

You disagree - we get that - but I think the general sense here is that WP:DROPTHESTICK now applies. Newimpartial (talk) 10:50, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? My summary says:

[Kulldorff] argued it was not "a no-brainer" for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before the vaccine risk profile was known, claiming that influenza was a greater mortality risk to children than COVID-19.

based on the primary source text:

For older people, who are at high risk of dying from Covid, the benefit of the vaccine greatly outweighs the small risks of a serious adverse event, so it is a no-brainer to be vaccinated.

The same is not true for children. Their Covid mortality risk is miniscule and less than the already low risk from the annual influenza, so the vaccine benefit for healthy children is very small. It will take a few years until we know the Covid vaccine risk profile, and until then, we do not know whether there is more benefit or harm in vaccinating children. When government officials ignore these important issues, trust in vaccines declines among everyone.

The existing text, which is either original research or not properly cited to Howard says:

[Kulldorff] argued against children receiving vaccination against COVID-19

It seems to me this essay presents a middle-of-the-road opinion, not particularly for or against childhood covid vaccination, so I have a problem with the unsourced characterization of Kulldorff's essay. Tikitorch2 (talk) 15:28, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

@Tikitorch2 to answer your question: saying that vaccination is not necessary for children - a statement Kulldorff repeats in this piece - is arguing against vaccination for children. More precisely, he is arguing that doses should be given to older populations, anywhere in the world, rather than being given to children in the US. That is arguing against vaccination for children; it is not the middle-of-the-road opinion you are attributing to him. So your summary simply fails to represent his WP:verifiable views.

What is more, he is arguing against vaccine mandates for children and working-age adults, and when he credits himself as having been fired for being too pro-vaccine, this is characteristically misleading. The position he actually went out on a limb for was his preference for viral vector vaccines over mRNA vaccines, and his refusal to be vaccinated that led to his eventual firing by Harvard was apparently also grounded in his skepticism about mRNA vaccines. Presenting any of this as "he is just really sincere about protecting older adults" - in an situation when older adults were typically already vaccinated and certainly had access to vaccines - doesn't follow the reliable sources and isn't a plausible reading of his text.

As with the Great Barrington Declaration prior, Kulldorff isn't being "moderate" about vaccinating children and working-age adults because he wants to protect seniors. Rather, he is singling out seniors as the only group to be protected (as though bringing down infection rates around them wouldn't help protect seniors from health risks) because he strongly believes that children and working-age adults should be able to live their lives unburdened by restrictions and vaccine mandates. Regardless of what you say, this was a FRINGE view in 2021 and remains a fringe view when looking at 2021 conditions, even with hindsight. Newimpartial (talk) 18:03, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia's analysis of the primary source, which you defend above, is against Wikipedia's OR policy--it is not straighforward to conclude that arguing something is not necessary is the same arguing against it; I don't need to get a burrito tonight but I am pro getting a burrito tonight. For primary sources we have to only make straightforward, descriptive statement of facts, such as Kulldorff claimed Covid had lower mortality risk to children than influenza when arguing that it was not known if the the relative risk of Covid or the vaccine were greater. Tikitorch2 (talk) 23:48, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

We have secondary sourcing to support the article, so no, there is no violation of the OR policy.

On the other hand, cherry picking things from a primary source to misrepresent what it says or to try to 'balance' the 'sides' would be a violation of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:FRINGE - that is why your proposals get no traction. MrOllie (talk) 00:12, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Then it should say "In December 2021, Kulldorff published an essay for the Brownstone Institute in which he argued against children receiving vaccination against COVID-19, falsely claiming that influenza was a greater risk to children than COVID-19, according to Jonathan Howard." Tikitorch2 (talk) 00:44, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

No. We don't over attribute facts to make it appear as if the mainstream position is just somebody's opinion. MrOllie (talk) 00:46, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes it is needed per WP:CITETYPE because it makes statements of uncertain fact. Not only is is a questionable summary of Kulldorff's essay, it makes an extraordinary claim that Covid posed a higher mortality risk to children than influenza.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8436910/ Tikitorch2 (talk) 01:37, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

@Tikitorch2 no, we don't. instead we rely on secondary sources. And you are leaving out the key point made in secondary sources: that Kulldorff was wrong in his claim. There was a mainstream view and a fringe view, and his was the fringe view.

And you can repeat until the cows come home that stating that Covid was a greater risk to children than the flu (in the US, in the 2021 respiratory virus season) is somehow WP:EXTRAORDINARY, but in consensus reality that is simply a settled fact. WP:1AM very clearly applies. Newimpartial (talk) 01:51, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I corrected the poor sourcing of the contentious material in the article with in-text attribution. The burden of evidence is on you if you think that is a settled scientific fact. Tikitorch2 (talk) 02:34, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

The burden of getting consensus support for your proposal is on you - you know very well that you do not have it. MrOllie (talk) 02:42, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I am seeking consensus for a better solution, the fix I made was minimal and somewhat clunky, but contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:04, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

It is neither unsourced nor poorly sourced. That you really, really disagree personally does not mean something is unsourced. We've talked about this before. MrOllie (talk) 03:11, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Please see WP:INTEXT Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:16, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Please see the talk page archives, where someone else tried this exact argument, edit warred, and ended up indefinitely blocked for it. MrOllie (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Actually I guess it is more WP:REDFLAG. So doesn't surprise me someone else tried to fix it and is now gone Tikitorch2 (talk) 03:21, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

It does tend to happen when someone will not accept that consensus is against them and refuses to WP:DROPTHESTICK. MrOllie (talk) 03:22, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

In general there's an attempt in the wider world to retcon the lies and errors of of COVID contrarians into seeming like they were sensible and correct. Wikipedia isn't going to be part of that stunt. Bon courage (talk) 03:49, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with the logic in this statement a bit. If there was an attempt to retcon these issues or reinterpret them in the wider world, then we could cite it. The issue is that I have tried to find sources discussing this and they seem to have mostly moved on. I don't want to make judgment calls on the objective Truth of what happened or what was said, I want sources for that, and we don't have any. This is the issue, we would be doing original research by interpreting this document ourselves one way or the other. We aren't taking a moral grand stand against some stunt, if there is a stunt, it hasn't given us appropriate sources to cite. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:55, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

There are entire books attempting the retcon; one is reviewed here - which also has some material that could be useful for Kulldorff. One could argue that the entire complexion of US senior healthcare in government (of which Kulldorff is now part) is an attempt at the same: established science out! crankery in! But this risks getting off-topic. Bon courage (talk) 04:08, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Also the central argument of his essay is that Covid vaccination efforts should be focused on the elderly, we are getting contorted about this because we want a segue to his claim about children and Covid vs influenza and that is not as direct a segue Tikitorch2 (talk) 05:52, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Minor text edit

Apologies, I'm new to Wiki editing. In "Career" it states that "In March 2024, Kulldorff announced that Harvard had dismissed him. Kulldorff had refused a COVID vaccination that was required by the hospital through which Harvard Medical School faculty are employed." There is not a *single* hospital through which HMS faculty are employed. Some HMS faculty are employed directly by HMS, while the majority are employed by Harvard teaching hospitals, of which there are ~15, none of which is owned by the University/Medical School. Brigham and Women's Hospital is one of those teaching hospitals. The sentence would more accurate stating, "In March 2024, Kulldorff announced that Harvard had dismissed him. Kulldorff had refused a COVID vaccination that was required by Brigham and Women's Hospital, one of the teaching hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School." Anewenglandscientist (talk) 20:47, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

I specified that he was employed through Mass General Brigham and added a supporting cite. I didn't use your version of the text because that makes it sound like he could have switched to one of the others, which isn't really true. I trust the change I made addresses your concern, though. MrOllie (talk) 21:19, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Your edit is still not quite correct. MGB required the vaccination, but it is not itself a hospital, it is the parent company of BWH. Further, Kulldorff was employed by BWH, not Harvard, though he had a HMS faculty appointment. (HMS has 10,000+ faculty, only a small fraction of whom are actually employed by HMS -- most are employed by the affiliated, though independently operated, teaching hospitals, such as BWH.) Anewenglandscientist (talk) 01:44, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Article class

I don't believe the article warrants a B-class based on the project criteria. Specifically, "Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher." I think currently, it is "Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study." Kulldorff was a fairly prominent researcher before the COVID-19 pandemic, however this aspect of his career is reduced to 6 sentences in the "Career" section. If the subject was not involved with COVID-19, I think they would still pass verification as a notable professor. We fail to capture that adequately, which I think disqualifies it as a "B-Class" article.

I also think that "Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and solve cleanup problems." The Career section is essentially a bulleted list without the bullets, and "Views on COVID-19" is not much better. We can and should elaborate on the content to flush this out a bit, and aim to make properly structured paragraphs longer then two or three sentences. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 06:45, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't care at all, but I encourage those who think the pre-COVID content needs expansion to find reliable, independent sources that discuss that work. Previous editors (including me) have put in considerable effort to find such sources to help with expansion, but I'm not sure anyone has looked since 2022 or so. The existing content is already over-reliant on non-independent sources. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:36, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

100% agree. The biggest resource for sources discussing his work will be those related to SaTScan. For example, The national cancer institute has a web page discussing the software, specifically mentioning Kulldorff's association with the Biometry Research Group at the Division of Cancer Prevention, NCI here. I don't believe we mention this beyond the National Cancer Institute list under his affiliations. There are several journal articles that discuss the application of the software that give a bit of background on it, such as Using the SaTScan method to detect local malaria clusters for guiding malaria control programmes. If you look through his Google Scholar account here his publications are clearly listed, and many have many citations. It should not be particularly challenging to find discussion of this pre-COVID-19 research within the literature reviews of the publications that cite these. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:49, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. What we have is B-class. The Satscan stuff was already a bit over-strained/puffy so I trimmed it a bit. I doubt much more has appeared on this - I mean what more is there to say than he co-wrote some software? If however new decent secondary sources exist they could be used. We're more likely to see more significant sourcing emerge to cover Kulldorff's role as a player in the Trump/RFK antivax circus. Bon courage (talk) 00:56, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

On Scopus, Kulldorff has an h-index of 68 and 18,836 citations on the 221 documents. While there are problems with Scopus, this represents a fairly exceptional CV. If Kulldorff was not involved with COVID-19, a large Wikipedia article could likely be written about their research career. We have several Wikipedia articles that longer about less impactful researchers. I'm not saying we should not cover the current events and political stuff, but failure to discuss the research before the political stuff is not giving the full picture. Kulldorff didn't materialize from the aether, the reason he was in a position to be as heavily involved in COVID-19 discourse was because of the research he did before the pandemic. We fail to cover this and instead focus on current and controversial events. There are 18,836 citations to his work, I'm sure there are some literature reviews in those that we can use to expand on the coverage. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:17, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

If what he did was worthy of coverage, that coverage would exist. Where is it? If it wasn't for the COVID/antivax stuff he'd likely fail WP:NACADEMIC, and NPOV requires that our material mirrors the weight accorded in sources, which is (and wil be more) focussed on stuff he did after an unremarkable early career. Bon courage (talk) 02:27, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

To pass verifiability, an academic needs to only meet one of the notability criteria. I have demonstrated already that Scopus gives him an h-index of 68 with 18,836 citations. This is not an "unremarkable early career." His work with SaTScan could be considered a "technique." There are 18,836 possible sources that could talk about his work in their literature reviews. I do not think that we have adequately screened these sources, and believe that discussion of his 221 documents listed on Scopus is lacking. If he was any other professor/academic, this would be how we would go about discussing his work. There are more citations then most researchers with a Wikipedia page, and less content related to his research then most of those other researchers. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 16:59, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Nothing about h-index in WP:NACADEMIC. How many citation were post-COVID? And co-writing some widely-used software could garner a lot of rote citations. One only needs to look at his co-developer's bio to see that there's nothing of deep encyclopedic worth in contibuting to a software development effort. Once again, if these sources exist let's see them! I doubt they do. Bon courage (talk) 17:23, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

The co-developer having a bio that needs more work is not an excuse to avoid elaborating here. We should, and likely could, elaborate on that one. The biographies of academics on Wikipedia are really depressing, and I believe that is a problem with the project that should be fixed.

I recommend reading the "Citation metrics" section of WP:NACADEMIC, as it specifically mentions indexes used on Scopus. An h-index of 68 means that 68 of his publications have been cited at least 68 times.

While it isn't as accurate as Scopus, you can see his Google Scholar account has 72% of his citations before 2020. There are several thousand papers citing papers Kulldorff wrote. I have one above in Springer Nature that refers to "SaTScan™ software using the Kulldorf method of retrospective space-time permutation and the Bernoulli purely spatial model." Specifically calling this the "Kulldorf method" in a Springer Nature journal is not insignificant. This is ONE citation I found after a very short search. I believe it is possible to elaborate significantly on his work before COVID-19, but I believe that the controversial nature of the subject is making it hard for you to look past the past 5 years. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 21:20, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

You'd need secondary sources. So far as I can see, such sources do not exist. Bon courage (talk) 04:50, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

There are several thousand publications that reference his work. A bit of my professional research touches on SaTScan, so I can tell you there is are many literature reviews that dive into Kulldorff's work on this specific topic and would count as secondary sources. I've already given one Springer article in this discussion that refers to the Kulldorff method. A quick Google Scholar search found a 2016 article published by a Springer affiliated journal titled Using the Kulldorff’s scan statistical analysis to detect spatio-temporal clusters of tuberculosis in Qinghai Province, China, 2009–2016, and a 2013 paper titled The spatial distribution of overweight and obesity among a birth cohort of young adult Filipinos (Cebu Philippines, 2005): an application of the Kulldorff spatial scan statistic. Both of these mention Kulldorff in the title. There are sources available, we just need to dig into academic literature a bit, rather then relying on news articles. For example, Comments on the Papers by Williams et al., Kulldorff, Knorr-Held and Best, and Rogerson discusses research Kulldorff was a part of. Kulldorff was instrumental not just with the software, but with the space-time scan statistics in general, the literature reflects this, yet we have no coverage beyond SaTScan. Thousands of sources reference Kulldorff's work, I'm sure we can find more about his career then we currently include. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 06:18, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

there is [sic] are many literature reviews that dive into Kulldorff's work on this specific topic and would count as secondary sources. I've already given one Springer article in this discussion that refers to the Kulldorff method. A quick Google Scholar search found ← really? Well you're all set then to expand the article with these "dive in" sources you say exist. Something that merely "refers to" or "mentions" a topic is not, of course, WP:SECONDARY in nature. Bon courage (talk) 18:27, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

I have given you multiple peer-reviewed papers that mention statistics named after Kulldorff in the title. We do not include mention of these methods in our article. Another discusses his papers, again mentioning him in the title. There are several thousand articles that cite Kulldorffs work, these are just some that include his name in the title of the article. Just like any other academic, we can use these as secondary sources to discuss research that Kulldorff has been involved in. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:15, 28 August 2025 (UTC)