[Cz-biology] Merck proposal

[David Goodman]

Their manual s considered authoritative--and is advertising fort he
company only in the most indirect sense-- but if we were to do any one
class of links, for medical articles , I'd use Medline plus, which is
US Government.

On 10/31/07, Larry Sanger <sanger at citizendium.org> wrote:
>
>
> 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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>
>


-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.