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 delete as a confirmed (and reportedly admitted) hoax. RL0919 (talk) 04:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

William Henry Farrow[edit]

[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)

Hoax article according to admission on Twitter by supposed creator. No reliable sources found. The first source to the Durham book is a real book but a Google Book search inside has no results for "Farrow" or "synesthesia". The second source The Lower Canada Journal of Medicine appears to be a bogus non-existent journal? A full-text search of Internet Archive finds nothing for a William Henry Farrow of this type.

If this is determined to be a hoax, it would be the third oldest hoax in Wikipedia history at 15 years and > 11 months. -- GreenC 04:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and list here. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 04:54, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
~~Hold on a minute~~Delete Now that I think about it, shouldn't keep even if it isn't a hoax. Better to have this referred to in the synesthesia article, which already has a bit about the history of recognizing the syndrome. Would like to see pages 374-376 of that book. The article's originator, User:Babynator, wrote a passage on John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (ID 97193681) reading "It was during Durham's trip to the Canadas aboard the Hastings that he experienced one of the first recorded cases of synesthesia. The observations were made by a friend of Durham's, Dr. William Henry Farrow, who was a young doctor traveling to the Canadas on Durham's invitation[1]." and searching the book shows that the trip is described on page 375, so it is not implausible that there is something there. However, I can't find any reference to "doctor" in that section, nor "synaesthesia" anywhere. At the time of that trip, the term synesthesia would not have been used anyway. The reference to synesthesia has been removed from Lambton's Wikipedia page since, but persists on the Spanish version of the article.

I've requested a copy of the book through my library. May take a couple of weeks to get it. Getting my hands on the book would make this an open and shut case, one way or another. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 05:32, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An abridged copy and full copy is online with 'search inside'. As a test search for "Durham", it will not show all results but does say how many results (87). The words "farrow" or "synesthesia" have 0 results. Search on "375" shows it to be the first page of a chapter (in the TOC), but the citation is for "374–376" meaning it crosses a chapter boundary which is very odd. You might say 374 is a blank page, but it's not, there is content there according to the index when searching on "374". So we have a citation that includes the last page of a chapter the first two pages of the next chapter. -- GreenC 16:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, and I hadn't seen the reference to the tweet. I'm still interested in getting the book, but as I said in my amended comment, this page shouldn't exist, even if it weren't a hoax. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 17:07, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Let's see if more information can be provided by rsjaffe before deletion occurs. Super (talk) 06:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Would that single book even qualify as meeting WP:GNG? I guess being the first person (or one of the first people) to ever describe synesthesia could potentially qualify for criterion 2 of WP:ANYBIO and so would make WP:GNG unnecessary, but we would at least need a source confirming that this is actually true. Mlb96 (talk) 08:46, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but perhaps it relates to this person and article started from scratch? --CappellsFromSkelmersdale (talk) 11:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've blocked CappellsFromSkelmersdale as NOTHERE. Fences&Windows 15:27, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as hoax. The article creator, André Babyn, has admitted the hoax on Twitter as noted by the nominator. His first edit as Babynator set the tone for his brief history of contributions. On the specifics of the article, the journal Lower Canada Journal of Medicine never existed and no article by that title is in literature databases. Farrow's existence is not verifiable and there is no need to wait for rsjaffe's book to arrive - if he existed then he would surely appear somewhere else in the historical record and this is an admitted hoax with information that is assuredly false. I don't understand why CappellsFromSkelmersdale thinks finding a photo of a British WWI captain by another similar name means we should keep an article about a supposed doctor who died well before that war began. Trying to pretend we were not duped makes us look even sillier. Fences&Windows 14:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
delete Clear hoax. Due to longevity, should be noted somewhere but there's no reason to keep an article here. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The twitter account claiming to be the original author says it is a hoax. It's clear that no other references to the subject person exist. It's clear that the original author fabricated the existence of a journal cited in the article. The twitter account claims that the book reference is also fabricated. We could wait, but it seems extremely unlikely. And even if the book turns up, why are there no other references? I would probably still vote delete. Chris vLS (talk) 15:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and send to the hoax museum. Per all above. wizzito | say hello! 23:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Purely a hoax.VirenRaval89 (talk) 12:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed hoax Got my hands on the book. No mention of synesthesia or Farrow. Lord Durham did suffer from severe "attacks in the head", which sound like migraines, and one was described in the referred pages, but definitely no synesthesia. Since there was a reference in the hoax, I thought it best to check that reference before listing this as a hoax. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 19:31, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well sorry you went through all that trouble but glad you went the extra mile to verify the third oldest hoax. If the twitter user had a waited just a few more months to reveal, they could have claimed a gold medal for oldest hoax in history. -- GreenC 19:36, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm not sorry. I felt like checking it because 1) I was curious, 2) wikipedia tends to be "blind" to written sources, as opposed to on-line sources, so I thought it was appropriate to read it, and 3) before enshrining something as a hoax, I felt it was appropriate to make sure we weren't being fooled by a hoax hoax, as improbable as that may seem. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 20:05, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A hoax-hoax, the mind reels. Hopefully we don't start seeing those. -- GreenC 20:15, 8 December 2021 (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.