[Cz-biology] Merck proposal

[Larry Sanger]

Thanks to everyone for your comments, on the lists and privately.  I'm
finding this pretty fascinating.  Clearly some decision has to be made, but
if people still have more comments and debate, I would like to see them.  I
will not prejudge the matter, but I would like the reserve the right to
actually make the decision, as this concerns a possible (low-level)
organizational "partnership."  But it really does seem to turn on whether
the partnership would enhance or detract from our own reputation (among
professionals) for credibility.
 
--Larry
 

-----Original Message-----
From: cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org
[mailto:cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of Clinton
Jenkins
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:49 AM
To: cz-biology at mail.citizendium.org
Subject: Re: [Cz-biology] Cz-biology Digest, Vol 3, Issue 21


I'm against this idea of letting a pharmaceutical company link its material
into all of the medical condition articles. The authors of the individual
citizendium articles should decide if such a link is appropriate or not. I
suppose there is nothing to stop someone at Merck from adding those links to
individual pages, but I'd be wary of allowing such a clear commercial
interest be in an approved version.

I agree though that there could be good information in the Merck articles,
but a direct link would imply that we view them as a primary source of
information. Aren't there similar sources of info, like at the CDC or NIH?

Clinton

-----
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:44:39 -0400
From: "Larry Sanger" <sanger at citizendium.org>
Subject: [Cz-biology] Merck proposal
To: "'Biology Workgroup List'" <cz-biology at mail.citizendium.org>,
    <cz-health-sci at mail.citizendium.org>
Message-ID: <004b01c81b2d$4f6bc400$0202a8c0 at D7WRQ591>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"

All,

The following is a proposal we received.  I have some comments after it.

========
First, let me applaud your effort to provide a wiki with content from expert
contributors. There is a great deal of information available free online,
though not all of it is reliable.

Second, I propose a collaboration between Citizendium and the Merck Manuals
department at Merck & Co., Inc. This department, of which I'm a staff member
(Executive Editor, Electronic Publications), publishes The Merck Manual, a
print and online textbook created by expert contributors.

We are prepared to place links in your External Links section of Citizendium
topics to related material in our online version of The Merck Manual. Two
examples:

Subject: Guillain Barre Syndrome. 
Your page: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Guillain-Barre_syndrome 
The link in External Links would go to:
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec16/ch223/ch223d.html

Subject: Otitis Externa. 
Your page: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Otitis_externa  
The link in External Links would go to:
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec08/ch088/ch088c.html

Unfortunately, we are not in a position to author material for you, but we'd
be delighted to add value to your pages with links to our material. We
invite you to visit The Manual at http://www.merck.com/mmpe/index.html to
determine for yourself whether links to this content is acceptable and
desirable. In a preliminary review, I found 40 to 50 Citizendium topics to
which we could contribute.

Please let me know if you are interested in such a collaboration.
========

I can say (publicly on this list) that this would be welcome to me.   Merck
has an excellent reputation, and it seems unlikely that there would be
anything in their manuals that we should not send users to.

More important, perhaps, is that this very small request (it's basically
just a request to add 50 links to CZ) might be the beginning of a useful
collaboration.

I'm inclined to say "yes," but I wanted to get your feedback first.

--Larry


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