On 01/11/2010 06:12, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 00:02, David
Goodman<dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
But then it should also be said what studies were
NOT funded by the
manufacturer, and we do not know that,m because most journals do not
specify--and almost none specified in the past.
Information about who funded research is just one more information
inside of an article. If it is possible to find that information, it
is good; if it is not possible, it is good, too. Wikipedia is not
about truth, but about verifiability. So, "study funded by X said
about Y that" seems as quite valid information, if available.
Quite right, the articles in other subjects are polluted with irrelevant
details so why not pollute this class of article too?
Mention it if it is a major factor in some controversy. For example if a
number of research results are saying that X is useless for Y, and one
report by the manufacturer says X helps in 90% of cases of Y. Otherwise
as others have said who funds the research is noise. You might as well
add in the funding for any research in the Computer Science articles, in
the history articles, in the social science articles, etc, etc.
Frankly if manufacturer research isn't providing correct data, for
policy makers, and other scientist to work from that is a major problem,
and probably illegal in some places too.