Talk:Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

Links
This article has a lot of external links which should be turned into regular references, like this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest (CoI) notice
My work on this page between 2 February to 31 August, 2019 is as a paid but unaffiliated consultant. I was hired as an outside, 3rd-party writer to improve this and related pages to Wikipedia encyclopedic standards, and to bring remedy to some of the prior concerns about single-source data. I have no other employment or financial relationship with the Foundation. DeknMike (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the transparent disclosure, I have added the standardized template for this on top of this talkpage (please feel free to tweak it if necessary). Please also read the detailed information at WP:COI and WP:PAID, and suggest further changes in affected articles on article talk instead of editing these articles yourself. I'll post some additional links fyi on your user talkpage. GermanJoe (talk) 05:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Contract is concluded, and I have been paid. I am no longer affiliated with OMRF, and no longer have a CoI. DeknMike (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Some proposed changes
Information to be changed: Change the title for the second section from 'Research' to 'Areas of Research' and add the following:

From its beginnings, much of the research has been focused on understanding the nature of what made a person healthy, and understanding what happens when immunity malfunctions. OMRF scientists continue to study how the human immune system forms — or fails to form — immune responses, and to create and test effective treatments.

At one time, the Foundation operated a research hospital, where patients would come for ongoing study and experimental treatments. The 14-room hospital opened in July, 1951 and the first patient was Lillian Sims. Other patients allowed researchers to study the effects of idleness and of nutrition. Many children came as a last-ditch hope in their waning days of serious illness. The hospital closed in 1976 and now only does out-patient study and consults to nearby hospitals.

OMRF uses a cross-disciplinary approach to medical research that has helped its scientists generate more than 700 U.S. and international patents. The top areas of study are heart disease, Cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and immune-response diseases such as Lupus, Sjögren's syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis and Arthritis

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Explanation of issue: The purpose is to provide a summary of the overall goals of the OMRF. In a separate request, I will adjust some of the research paragraphs to reflect current status. DeknMike (talk) 03:23, 23 October 2019 (UTC)


 * ❌ The article already contains a large amount of information referenced by OMRI OMRF . I am disinclined to add more information which isn't referenced by reliable, WP:SECONDARY sources unconnected to OMRI OMRF or the healthcare industry. Regards, Spintendo  10:41, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit request
Request minor revision to 2d paragraph:

OMRF’s scientists (remove 'who include a member of the National Academy of Sciences,') conduct quality health research at lead to commercial products. Together, they hold more than 700 U.S. and international patents and have spun off 11 biotech companies. Example discoveries at OMRF are technologies that led to Xigris (the first FDA-approved drug for the treatment of severe sepsis), Ceprotin (a therapy for people suffering from a rare and life-threatening blood disorder known as protein C deficiency) and the enzyme believed responsible for Alzheimer’s disease, which laid the groundwork for OncoVue,[2] a breast cancer risk assessment test.

DeknMike (talk) 18:25, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Recommend changing the last paragraph and renaming 'Funding'

OMRF is funded through individual contributions and foundation and government grants. Although most of the current funding is from federal grants, the bulk of the remainder comes from within Oklahoma. In the early days, Oklahoma oil companies funded the majority of the work, although contributions also included passing donation buckets at college football games, farmers dedicating the profits from one acre of wheat, and even Foundation staff soliciting contributions on the city streets. Memorial grants continue to play a meaningful role in funding, and social societies routinely make significant bequests. All but the first of its seven buildings came from major gifts to the Foundation.

Independent rating service Charity Navigator notes 91.1% of the charity's $75 Million of expenses are for the programs and services it delivers and only 6.1% on administrative expenses. Charity Navigator has a rating score that assesses financial health, accountability and transparency; for 2017, they assessed OMRF as Category 4 of 4 (the highest) with a score of 93.94.

One of the more unusual contributions is a share in the royalties of the musical Oklahoma!. Lynn Riggs wrote one of the play's songs, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” When he died, he willed his 1% royalty to his 4 siblings. When his brother William Edgar Riggs died, OMRF received rights to that one-quarter share. As of the end of 2018, it has generated over $700,000 in earnings.

Recommending adding a new section about the President of the Foundation, titled 'Leadership'

Dr Stephen Prescott became President of OMRF in 2006. He had already established his credentials as a leader in studies of the basic mechanisms of human disease, authoring more than 250 scientific articles and training 40 research students and postdoctoral fellows. At the University of Utah, he founded the Eccles Program in Human and Molecular Biology & Genetics and was executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute. He has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Physicians, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, and the Royal Academy of Medicine in Spain. He is the founder of the biotechnology company LineaGen. In addition to serving as President of a cancer research center, Dr Prescott also serves on medical and scientific advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society.

DeknMike (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Reply 28-JAN-2020
Regards, Spintendo  23:54, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It was previously asked that reliable, independent, secondary sources be provided for this information. The sources provided thus far do not meet that expectation. In particular, sources from the OMRF — including one written by Art Cotton, who is the vice president of development for the OMRF — continue to be proposed to be added. These sources are unacceptable.

Conflict of interest, sources
Firstly, it looks as if the bulk of this article was added with this edit on 25 May 2007, and as if that edit was made by or on behalf of the institution itself ("Update from the organization"). Secondly, there are essentially no reliable, independent, secondary sources at all in the page (the few that are not to the website of the thing appear to be connected and/or press releases). I suggest we (a) remove the bulk of the self-references, other than those that verify basic facts such as where it is; and (b) remove whatever text then remains unsourced. The real question, of course, is whether there is enough solid independent coverage elsewhere for it to meet WP:NCORP – there certainly isn't here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:45, 29 January 2020 (UTC)