On 4/21/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting. In this case, apparently, a Special Master, appointed by the court under the Vaccine Act, introduced items from the internet, including one which originated as a Wikipedia article. On the evidence in those unverified documents, she dismissed a case for damages because evidence could not be presented to demonstrate that the nature of the child's seizures following vaccination was as described in the internet documents. There was no evidentiary hearing and so neither party had the opportunity to challenge that internet evidence introduced by the Special Master.
The federal court, naturally, was not impressed.
Wow. That's disturbing. There are times when the influence of Wikipedia makes me distinctly uncomfortable...if I make a mistake in what I write, if I screw something up, I have changed "knowledge". Yet again, I wish that the world understood that Wikipedia is a beta.