A fact from Louise Pearce appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 October 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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This article was the subject of an educational assignment in 2014 Q3. Further details were available on the "Education Program:California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo/ES 350 (Fall 2014)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.
Overall, I think this article is extremely lacking in many aspects. For example, there is virtually nothing about her early life, minus her birthday, place of birth, parents, and college. I believe that a person’s beginnings are an essential part of their life story, and Louise Pearce’s “early life” deserves a much more in-depth description.
Her “education and training” section is also extremely brief and I believe it should be much more substantial. More research should be done about her education so that it can stand as its own section of the article, and should include things such as projects she worked on during her school years, awards, clubs or events she participated in, and anything else of importance that occurred during her education, especially anything that is related to science and may have contributed to her later discoveries and achievements. The “training” portion of the article could include her year of work in the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, and it should go into detail about what exactly she did there and how it prepared her for her work in the future. The section claims that Dr. Welch from Johns Hopkins, where she attended medical school, called her a “promising medical pathologist”, but nothing is said about her time at Johns Hopkins or how she excelled, minus the fact that she graduated third in her class.
The section about Louise Pearce’s time at Rockefeller Institute is much too succinct as well. She was the first female to be appointed to a research position at the institute, which I believe is a critical moment in women’s history, especially in a scientific field. However, not enough is said about how she got there or what exactly she was researching and working on. Much more is said about the men that she worked alongside, which could potentially be seen as bias. For such an important and influential woman, who happens to be the first woman to ever be appointed to the position she attained at the Rockefeller Institute, very little spotlight is given to her.
I noticed that the sections about Pearce’s work regarding things such as sleeping sickness, syphilis, and cancer are more about the diseases and discoveries rather than what she contributed to them. The syphilis and cancer sections are better about this, at least mentioning her more than once, but the sleeping sickness section, which is arguably her most notable work, focused more on sleeping sickness as a whole and how she helped with some processes rather than highlighting her contributions.
There are lists of “professional associations”, awards, and honors, which are extensive. However, at the bottom, there is a small section about her “personal life”, which discusses that she lived with Sara Josephine Baker and Ida A. R. Wylie and that she participated in a biweekly discussion group that included bisexual and lesbian members. However, it glosses over the fact that she was a member of the LGBT community, which I think is an important part of her personal story and is a point of pride for members of the LGBT community, especially those who are involved in or interested in STEM fields.
I realize how difficult it is to find information on Dr. Pearce; however, the biography that the National Library of Medicine is very useful and I think it could be a good start.
