[Cz-biology] Merck proposal

[Oliver Hauss]

Anthony,

with all due respect, but competing interests is nothing limited to
people working for for-profit organizations. In this day and age where
countless university professors buff their salary with patents or even
spin-off companies, to look at who is officially listed as someone's
employer is highly disingeneous. What's more, argumentation like that is
actively discouraging people working for for-profit organizations from
contributing to Citizendium, period, because you question their
integrity. If you want to point at the difference between referenced and
unreferenced sources, that's one thing. But as someone working in the
diagnostics industry, I feel your arguments as you present them here are
inches away from defamation. If information is good or bad, it is so
regardless of who pays the person putting in the link. And if it is bad,
then it is no way of defending scientific integrity by suggesting this
is demonstrated by who put in that link. If you demand source-citations
from others, you can just as well be expected to provide them yourself
in the individual case, instead of resorting to generalized ad-hominems.

If we are to uphold integrity, this is not done by indescriminate
industry-bashing, but by upholding scientific standards.

Oliver Hauss


Anthony Sebastian schrieb:
> All,
>
> The Merck Manual supplies seemingly authoritative articles, with many
> assertions, but no source-citations.  Linking CZ articles to corresponding
> Merck Manual articles implies a recommendation without disclaimer.  I would
> vote against external links of that sort, even by Ph.D's/M.D.'s if they
> receive pay from a for-profit organization.
>
> Content, one thing; source-cited content another.  Especially about medical
> conditions.
>
> Anthony.Sebastian
>
> P.S. CZ authors/editors might profit by consulting the Merck Manual, for
> example, to see if they missed some potentially important aspect of a topic,
> but then research that from primary sources or creditable secondary sources,
> and put the source-citations in their article.
>