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

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

On 23/10/2010 13:46, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> 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.
>

Someone that is familiar with a subject can give appropriate weight to 
the information presented. I well recall going round to see some one who 
had just had cancer surgery, when I got there they were absolutely 
devastated as they'd just read on the internet that the 5 year survival 
rate was 90% and thought that meant that 90% died within five years. A 
mistake on their part that was easily put right. However if some one had 
been vandalizing a wiki page to say that the survival rate was 10% ...

Again go back to the MMR article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MMR_vaccine&oldid=6127791#The_MMR_controversy

the stupid CJD link lasted for 2 years or more. What was a parent that 
came across that supposed to think?