Comments on: Breaking the Chain of Inquiry — When Journals and Journalists Fall Short

By: Dr. Gunn

Dr. Gunn — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:00:07 +0000

Kent, you’ve done a fantastic job here, as did Mark. Incidents where the meat of a story wasn’t written in the original article but required followup is truly on of the main advantages a blog has over traditional journalism. That, and the “go for the jugular” instinct that so many pro reporters seem to have lost.

By: Olivier Wenker

Olivier Wenker — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:21:41 +0000

As the publisher responsible for our site I need to clarify that we have over 1,000 editorial board members around the world who volunteer their time to review our thousands of articles. Some boards are better than others and the composition of the boards is in a constant flux since we publish now 77 medical journals. We welcome discussions about our publications but at the same time I would like to defend our volunteers.

By: Eric Hellman

Eric Hellman — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:43:00 +0000

It's an interesting example of whether the ethical responsibilities of an open-access publication (such as a blog or the Masters paper) is different from that of a traditional research publication as a result of search engine indexing. I think that providing a direct link to an unethical resource is unethical (don't want to bunp their Page Rank), but it's still important to "show your work". In an article in which I recounted how I used Google to find pdf's of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was careful not to link or mention the name of currently infringing sites, but I included links to the Google searches that found them. Did I draw the line in the right place? By publishing and linking directly to the IMSO facebook page, aren't you driving traffic and attention their way? (There's no such thing as bad publicity.) Perhaps Masters (or the publishing Journal) was worried about liability issues if they named names.

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:01:50 +0000

Thanks Phil (and Mark — you out-Googled me)!

Knowing what the site was demystifies the entire thing. This demonstrates to me the value of reporting fully.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:46:10 +0000

Yesterday on Liblicense-l, Mark Funk wrote up a little detective work he did attempting to identify “the site.”

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0911/msg00066.html

But as you rightly argue, we shouldn’t have to speculate on the source nor validity of the data.