Talk:Joshua Lederberg

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[edit] Lederberg & Planetary Protection

I recently came across this statement:

"Planetary protection became an issue for the scientific community in December 1957 when Joshua Lederberg wrote a letter to the National Academy of Sciences. He was concerned that it would not be possible to test the panspermia hypothesis for the origin of life if the Moon became contaminated with terrestrial organic matter as a result of spacecraft missions." Task Group on the Forward Contamination of Europa(CB). Preventing the Forward Contamination of Europa. Washington, DC, USA: National Academies Press, 2000. p 3. [1]

L Hamm 23:58, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Esther Lederberg

His ex-wife who was an important biologist in her own right just died[2] and I noticed we don't have an article about her but she clearly meets WP:PROF. JoshuaZ 03:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BLP problems caused by recent edits to this article

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons provides that:

Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article...

See the concern that I expressed at Wikipedia:COIN#User:Shadow600 responds to Pairadox 3, about information added to J. Lederberg's article in January by User:Shadow600. I believe that www.estherlederberg.com, as a personal self-published site, does not qualify as a reliable source. Negative commentary about Joshua Lederberg has been sourced to that site. This article's reference to that site and all the claims that are sourced to it need to be removed, under our policies. I would welcome comment about this from neutral editors. If any criticism of the conduct of J. Lederberg needs to be expressed, that criticism needs to be quoted from a published source. EdJohnston (talk) 05:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)