Wily D wrote:
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:14 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
The vast majority of citations are to newspapers, new magazines, and online news and opinion sites, while very few are to peer-reviewed publications.
Can you point to any source in a BLP which comes from a "peer-reviewed publication" ? I mean any of them at all?
Of course, there are some. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alar_Toomre cites a few peer reviewed papers, although one is by the subject. But that's still only ~10% of the total references, and the biography mostly recounts the science he's done.
That seems reasonable enough. A biographical article is about the person, and not the place for a detailed explanation of his ideas. Where there is no controversy around someone's personal life any number of directories or the like should satisfy the need for sourcing. Controversies around someone's scientific views is best discussed in the article dealing with that idea. Sourcing standards there will necessarily be different.
Ec