Talk:Richmond Pharmacology

Contested deletion
This article should not be speedy deleted as being recently created, having no relevant page history and duplicating an existing English Wikipedia topic, because I have set out to provide factual information about the Company. The previous entry is a biased viewpoint intended to portray the Company in a negative light. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Swelgemoed (talk • contribs) 12:20, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Note - in this dif, rewrote this article and added a speedy delete tag.  The tag was removed by   in this dif.  So the message above is strange and not apt.  Swelgemoed also created two new articles, Richmond Pharmacology Limited and Richmond Pharmacology at St George’s University of London with the same content implemented in their edit above.  Those articles were tagged for speedy by  Seagull123 in this dif and this dif and Swelgemoed placed the message above on the Richmond Pharmacology Limited article's Talk page as well. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Swelgemoed please engage with the community, and please start by acknowledging your conflict of interest. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Anon comments
Comments from the anon (who is pretty obviously Swelgemoed) include: "£2000 is not backed by the reference you provided, suggest deletion". Given that the title of the article is "Is £2,000 enough to be a drug guinea pig?" I'd be interested to know how he comes to that conclusion. Guy (Help!) 18:29, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * actually no where in that article does it say that Richmond per se pays £2,000. The source is here - you can check yourself. Two other notes - since they are a CRO, they implement what clinical trial sponsors want done, so it was.. inaccurate to say that they paid, as if they were deciding to do that. Other note - it is common to pay something to clinical trial participants - some ethicists think it is important to do so; there are also well-known ethical concerns. (see this for example). Those were the reasons why I removed that. But perhaps Swelgemoed has other comments. Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You're doing a good job on the article - possibly better than the company's marketing department is capable of. Deb (talk) 08:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and not a blog for opinionated people
The entry about Richmond Pharmacology should provide some insight in what the organization does (like for example publish lots of papers). Cross references to other Wikipedia content such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_I_clinical_trial or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Clinical_Trials_Unit or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trials_unit would be useful and provide context. The company has published 100+ peer reviewed papers listed on google scholar and similar sites, the trials they sponsor (as opposed to the contract research referred to) are registered on www.clinicaltrials.gov/ Instead there is reference to two law-suits which are hardly defining the organization. There is anyway much better commentary on the cases and it is hard to see why a poorly researched and written summary would be of interest to someone searching Richmond Pharmacology on Wikipedia. This all smells of badmouthing a company for an undisclosed reason. Transparency!

The entry should either be deleted as a whole (the company has not initiated their entry) or written up properly. 188.29.165.205 (talk) 17:25, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that the balance in this article should be changed and the entry expanded as their notability and justification for inclusion in WP is greater than the two legal cases. There are around 100 citations on Google Scholar and 30 trials on Clinical.trials.gov as of August 2015.  Their work on drug safety looking at the QTc, ,  is of interest. (I have no relationship to the company). Jrfw51 (talk) 19:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You are proposing development which is contrary to Wikipedia's original research policy. Wikipedia articles are developed sort of mindlessly by summarizing published commentary about a given topic and less by new research and editorial judgement. The precedent of practice and discussion about this goes back almost to Wikipedia's inception in 2001. This line of discussion has happened already not less than many thousands of times, and it always has had one conclusion.
 * If you wish to pursue this line of thought then I might suggest that you consider Wikipedia's nature and how the simple ruleset here has been able to produce what it has. Some of the injustice you see here probably has roots in your thinking that this article has been developed through someone's whim, instead of the reality that it came out of a cookie cutter and was made by people following a rubric who may not have understood anything about the topic. Practically all of Wikipedia was made in this way.
 * I really appreciate attention to Wikipedia by research professionals and hope that you stay around, and continue to think about how Wikipedia works and talk about it with others. From what you both say, it seems likely to me that you both would be unable to articulate the routine processes of Wikipedia, even if you yourselves did not think they were fair or ideal. You might be able to better propose rule changes if you first acknowledged the rules you wanted to change.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  01:17, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure -- public databases like Pubmed, Google Scholar and Clinicaltrials.gov are common tools for biomed writing, perhaps in a way similar to legal or financial databases are for others. Will consider this.  Jrfw51 (talk) 08:04, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Anything that's reported in reliable independent secondary sources is fair game. So newspaper and journal coverage of the number of trials is fine, but counting them in PubMed obviously isn't. I'm sure you were not proposing to do that. Guy (Help!) 10:03, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Guy?
I don't understand your changes. It was a big deal to retrospectively put requirements on trials that were already underway. The HRA tried to impose that, and after Richmond filed suit, they backed off that. That is one of the way that the suit changed along the way - one of the matters under litigation was resolved outside the court room... yes? Jytdog (talk) 20:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, Richmond's other point, was that HRA said that the transparency regulations were based on law. The EU law doesn't kick in til next year. So the court said, "well duh". i don't know why you made it seem so complicated. Jytdog (talk) 20:07, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Richmond started out with a massive list of things, none of which would stick. In the end they got a judgment on the declaration for phase 1 trials specifically around a change made in April 2015 that made a retrospective change and implied it was the result of EU law. The judge made a pretty clear statement that they have the right to make regulations (which Richmond had challenged, and would have remove *all* mandatory registration) but said that the HRA's changes to its website were poorly executed. The case would have been uncontroversial if Richmond had started out with that single narrow point, but they didn't, and the £75k is likely to be a very small part of their legal costs since most of their original complaints fell. Guy (Help!) 20:33, 14 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You are kind of surprising me here, Guy with advocacy-like editing! You also seem to know more about the background; I am just going by what actually happened, legally. however bullshitty Richmond was in their arguments, they seemed to actually have had a point at the end of the day. It is a big deal to say that you are legally required to do X, vs. we will only give you ethical approval if you do X. I do need to read more about it.  The two sources in our article don't communicate what you write above. (this seems helpful and probably reliable and has a link to the decision which i want to read. will look for more sources on this too. Jytdog (talk) 20:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What happened was, they went in with a laundry list of claims, most of which were knocked down. They got a narrow judgment on one specific point, the retrospective change to registration requirements. I have no idea why they were so determined to go to law, since pretty much every major pharaceutical firm in the EU (and indeed the world) appears to be on board for these changes. The main bone of contention at present is trial data for currently-approved medicines, where we know damn well there will be a lot of data left in the file drawer. Clinical trial transparency is incredibly important, it is a necessary step in rebuilding public confidence in the medical treatments the SCAM industry have been systematically undermining for decades, but it is also, much more importantly, a vital ethical necessity. Guy (Help!) 22:05, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * so... um. You don't hear that advocacy in all that?  you sound like Mr Bill Truth to me.  my goodness.  Jytdog (talk) 04:35, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What I see is, for example, the BMJ source being used to make statements that go far beyond what the article says. I'm all for an accurate and neutral article, just not one dictated by their PR. Guy (Help!) 15:58, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The BMJ source says that it came down to 2 points - the retroactive application (which fell out of the court case after the HRA voluntarily dropped that, and the questions of whether the regulations were actually required by law; they are not b/c the law is in not in effect yet. Their public statements and importantly their website made it seem like it was. Jytdog (talk) 16:44, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I think I have read most of the actual sources. But whatever. Guy (Help!) 22:31, 23 August 2015 (UTC)