[Cz-biology] Merck proposal

[Anthony Sebastian]

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


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gareth Leng<mailto:gareth.leng at ed.ac.uk> 
  To: Biology Workgroup List<mailto:cz-biology at voltaire.citizendium.org> 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:32 AM
  Subject: Re: [Cz-biology] Merck proposal


  Re Merck proposal


  I favour this idea strongly, as the Merck manual is an authoratative  
  source of the kind of dense detailed pharmacological and chemical  
  information that it is impractical to source extensive original  
  references for.

  I should declare an interest; I have long had colaborative links with  
  Merck and Co., and they have had a very long reputation as the epitome  
  of an ethical pharmaceutical company.

  This was challenged certainly by the Vioxx affair. I'm not going to go  
  into that here, but frankly in my view the idea that Merck behaved  
  deliberately unethically is not sustainable, if only because it was  
  inevitable that side effects if real would be recognised eventually,  
  and so it was very much in their commercial interests to warn of them  
  at the very earliest time to minimise the inevitable lawsuits. So far,  
  courts have endorsed that view.

  Gareth Leng
  Professor of Experimental Physiology
  Centre for Integrative Physiology
  School of Biomedical Sciences
  University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinary Sciences
  Hugh Robson Building
  George Square
  Edinburgh EH8 9XD UK

  -- 
  The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
  Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


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