On 24/10/2010 12:40, SlimVirgin wrote:
On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 05:17,wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
On 24/10/2010 08:55, SlimVirgin wrote:
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 08:15,WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
See I took Atorvastatin and you wouldn't let the project report that the Stanford Medical Journal reported that it causes more damage to the heart than is acceptable. You want us only to report things once the controversy is over, in other words once 25,000 people have gotten sick from salmonella eggs... not just a thousand. No wait, actually after all the lawsuits are over and the people involved are all dead as well.
We should not be using our own judgment in these matters. If the London Times or BBC report problems with Lipitor, or anything else, that's a good enough source for us, and we should not be allowing editors to stop it from being added to our articles.
Yet both these sources can be sensational. The science reporting is abysmal at times. When they have a science scare I have to turn the BBC radio4 news off because of the crap reporting. If any one is in the UK they'll know exactly what I'm taling about.
By excluding high-quality media sources you're elevating the lowliest scientist as a source,
Not at all. By all means deal with peer reviewed articles. But many press reports, even in the 'quality' media are at best little more than an uncritical regurgitation of some press release, and at worse they have sensationalised the release. One should take such things with a large pinch of salt as they are mostly crap. Stick it in wikinews if you must but leave the main articles untainted.
and the vested interests that finance the research, above the most senior and experienced of disinterested journalists. That makes no sense to me.
They're not disinterested, most of the reports aren't being written by science journalists, or by any one that actually understands the issues. You and I both know that if a health scare arises, you'll find the exact same report on 100s of news sites and if you trace it back to source you'll find it comes from an single POV pushing 'interested' party with the juicy bits emphasised.
Where were the 100000s that Pig Flu was meant to kill last year, or the millions that Bird Flu was going to kill the year before?
Stick these things in an article labelled "Bullshit Science Reports" and move them out if they ever turn out to be true.
The whole point of NPOV and V is that we choose sources the world regards as reliable, and we run with them, presenting all sides of the debate even if we personally dislike some of it.
For six months this nonsense in Cervical cancer lasted: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HPV_vaccine&diff=133707538&...
the article simply lent itself to extreme POV pushing.