[Foundation-l] Paid editing, was Re: Ban and moderate

[Fred Bauder]

> On 23/10/2010 08:02, SlimVirgin wrote:
>>
>> Look at our article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atorvastatin There
>> is criticism, no mention of how much money the drug is making for the
>> company, no mention of how widespread and unquestioned the
>> prescription of these drugs is. And I know from experience at another
>> statin article that it would be very difficult to add this material.
>>
>> Some examples of the criticism available in the media, which you
>> almost certainly won't find on Wikipedia:
>>
>
> OK this is going to be controversial but have you ever considered taht
> maybe you shouldn't have anything on Atorvastatin other than what comes
> as the medical advice in the packaging? One cannot provide any useful
> advice on whether someone should use the drug or not that should be
> between the patient and their doctor. I mean its not as if wikipedia is
> an expert pharmacopeia as wikipedia doesn't have experts weighing the
> evidence one way or the other, all you can do is mimic the day to day
> controversy which of its very nature is going to be conflict ridden.
>

A survey of doctors in the United States showed that about 50% at least
occasionally look at Wikipedia while about 5% edit at least a little.
Doctors, it turns out, are just smart, grown-up college students who need
information in a convenient accessible format. So, it turns out, we're in
the business. We had a long discussion about not giving detailed
information about appropriate doses of drugs, information that patients
might rely on to their detriment.

We are not experts in medicine, what we do is summarize the findings of
experts. The difficulty with that is that only brief abstracts of most
research are available to most of us.

Fred