[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia-X-Files

[Chris Lüer]

At 05:45 AM 5/10/2006, Mathias Schindler wrote:

>How the death after a gene therapy was first kept secret and made
>public anonymously via Wikipedia - for 16 minutes

mscrm.de makes several TV news shows. Journalists often learn about 
news items that they can't use for the same reasons that Wikipedia 
can't use them -- because there is no reliable source, and they will 
get in trouble if it turns out to be wrong.

Many people must have known that this gene therapy patient died. 
His/her relatives, hospital staff. I would guess that one of them 
called a news reporter, who couldn't use the information because the 
caller was anonymous and the official sources were still denying it. 
So he decided to post it to Wikipedia and see what happened.

         Chl