[Cz-biology] Merck proposal

[Anthony Sebastian]

Perhaps the 'disclaimer' should deal primarily, or exclusively, with the
issue that the articles include no references to sources supporting
assertions in the articles.

 

Anthony.Sebastian

 

From: cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org
[mailto:cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of Larry Sanger
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 9:09 AM
To: 'Biology Workgroup List'
Subject: Re: [Cz-biology] Merck proposal

 

P.S. Another option is what Anthony suggests here (we permit the links, but
we add a disclaimer on the links; links are supposed to be annotated anyway,
you know).  If we did that, though, I have to wonder how we would
distinguish between articles sponsored by for-profit organizations and other
articles.  Is it really possible to make such a clear distinction?  After
all, corporations sponsor universities and hence your research...in a CZ
policy, we would have to say something like, "Links to research that is
directly paid for by for-profit entities must be marked as such."

 

-----Original Message-----
From: cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org
[mailto:cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of Anthony
Sebastian
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:56 PM
To: Biology Workgroup List; Biology Workgroup List
Subject: Re: [Cz-biology] Merck proposal

All,

 

No reason to doubt Gareth's statements about Merck as an ethical company or
about the Vioxx affair.  

 

But I question the relevance to CZ "..that it is impractical to source
extensive original references for" their articles. Pehaps true for the
general public and practicing physicians.  For CZ, however, impracticability
of source-citing primary references does not apply, in my opinion.  The
Merck articles do not even cite review articles or quality book sources,
where the reader might have access to bibliographies of original sources.
Indeed, they offer no references, at least for the several articles I
sampled.

 

If I were to give a Merck article as an external link I would want to offer
a disclaimer to the effect that the articles cite no sources for its
assertions and that a for-profit organization sponsored the writing of the
article.

 

One possibility: Ask Merck to submit a relevant article as a subpage "Signed
Article", the signature comprising the Merck editorial group that composed
the article, and allowing us to apply workgroup consensus editorial comments
of our own to the article.  We would link to the Merck Manual webpage there
and not on our external links subpage.  Merck would get their recognition
and links to their site, CZ would get 'qualified' content.  That proposal
requires careful consideration, however.

 

We should also look into the Novartis Foundation's Symposia for some sort of
arrangement, as their publications meet high academic standards.

 

Anthony.Sebastian

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