[Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...

[SlimVirgin]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 16:26, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 15:59, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> And where there is a body of scholarly research, the peer-reviewed
>>> scholarly literature is the most authoritative literature around.
>>
>> Can you address the issue of vested interests? If a drug company has
>> financed all or most of the peer-reviewed work, your argument is that
>> we should nevertheless reply on those studies exclusively, and not
>> allow high-quality mainstream media who may be pointing to problems
>> before anyone else does.
>>
>> Why would you place so much trust in the companies who benefit
>> financially, and why do you feel that it would not be an NPOV
>> violation?
>>
>> There is no other area of Wikipedia where we allow the people who sell
>> things to be our exclusive sources on whether those things are good.
>>
>> Sarah
>
> Conflict of interest plays a role in determining reliability of sources.
>
It ought to, but as a matter of fact we don't note in articles who has
financed the scientific research we rely on.

We would not allow the people who make Coca Cola to be our sole
sources on whether it's safe, or on whether we all ought to be
drinking it. But when it comes to drugs and scientists, we lose sight
of the fact that there is often a very strong conflict of interest.

Sarah