User:Ndaniels

(This essay is prolix, so that I can be brief in future)


 * Me and My Citation Database

Over the last years I've been engaged in medical literature searches during most 9 to 5 hours and have read closely hundreds of thousands of medical abstracts (I'm pretty sure not a million yet, but that will come.) In the course of different such research projects, I've compiled specific notes, excerpts and the citations and keywords for tens of thousands of individual studies within a highly searchable database. So if I come back at you fast with a bouquet of obscure citations, it's only because it's easy, not necessarily because I care deeply, know a lot more than that about the subject, or feel argumentative or anything. It was just easy.

During the aforementioned research I've made frequent use of Wikipedia, as a source of quick information when my own education fails me, and so I wanted to give back a bit by inserting citations as I read Wikipedia and am reminded of one study or another that might be useful; or which has been requested. At the moment, I can do that so long as I don't spend too much time doing it and don't identify either myself or those projects too closely, here. That may change, but what won't is that my time is limited and, as is true for many others here, the opportunities to contribute beggar what I can actually do.


 * Bias

Not to go on about it too much, but, what I've researched (and therefore provide citations for) is rarely of personal relevance or interest to me - so if you see me drop half a dozen citations into an article on a given condition (or treatment), it doesn't mean I have it, or even have much interest in it, much less an agenda; even if the studies seem pointed. In fact, if I drop six citations in one place, they were probably gathered at six different times during six different searches using six different sets of keywords, for six different purposes and were saved for reasons quite tangential to whatever section of whatever article they're now being dropped into, so you're almost certainly wasting your time inferring either an agenda or point of view on my part - I'm just dropping in the studies I happen to have, wherever I happen to be in Wikipedia. Almost certainly, there simply isn't a bias, or even opinion, however pointed the studies themselves may seem. (Although I do have some opinions, I don't usually go to Wikipedia in relation to them, but instead to fill a gap in my own knowledge.) Any apparent “point of view” you may wish to object to is far more likely to be a random artifact, so forgive me if I often simply ignore any comments implying that I must hold one or another point of view or belief, or refer you to this article.


 * No Way!

That having been said, my task over the last few years has often been to find overlooked or new (but solid) research, rather than what's in the standard textbooks or even known to most researchers in that field - in particular, research that upends common assumptions with empirical study (as in “[evidence-based medicine]”.) So, without my wishing it particularly, I expect there will be an above-average number of surprises in what I cite. Similarly, if you see a flood of citations regarding hot or breakthrough (or obscure) areas of research such as [ghrelin] or [motilin], it's not necessarily because I care, or even think that area of research is important (much less want to sell you some pharmaceuticals or supplements or something) it's because that's the sort of study I'm usually out there looking for, namely what isn't in the textbooks, or isn't there yet. I won't ever put anything into Wikipedia simply because it's surprising or entertaining. I'll cite what I can that's relevant and seems important enough to trouble to include. Still, given the nature of this database, the studies won't always have been highly publicized in the newspapers (although I do comb through medical press releases too) and may surprise. The history of science is little more than a serious of shocks, so IMHO, this is in perhaps an inevitable part of the scientific project and we'll all just have to live with it.


 * I'm often literally disinterested

Since I usually arrive at Wikipedia when my own knowledge fails (not infrequently) I'm probably less likely to annotate articles in the areas I'm most familiar with, or interested in, and I may well never return to the pages where I've placed the most citations. Therefore, I will not infrequently simply leave it to others to defend any contributions I might have made, and not even visit those areas I know best. (Although for the moment (March 2007) I'm interested in finding out how the editing process works and what I should be doing differently.) So, my apologies in advance. Please treat me as a resource, NOT a general expert in the areas to which I contribute.


 * Medical Interests

I do have a couple of hobbyhorses - 1) [atopy] since the increasing incidence is staggering, matched only by our own complacency about that, and 2) [reflux] for starts (I find it mysterious for some reason.) Here too, this doesn't necessarily reflect my own life, and won't necessarily be reflected in my additions, either. I seem to have a “Busman's Holiday” attitude to medical research by now and don't usually go out of my way to look at any condition relevant to myself personally, irrational as that may seem. For purely selfish reasons, I'd rather think about your pain.


 * More Bad Habits (that is, those relevant to Wikipedia)

I will link to pages with citations from time to time rather than “stripping out” a number of citations; partly because that doesn't feel especially ethical to me, and more honestly, because 1) as mentioned the time I can spend here is quite limited and 2) I do have osteoarthritis, and have had for some decades: therefore I begrudge having to type or deal with Dragon Naturally Speaking for that matter. It follows that I may be terse or not very communicative, or seem blind to some fine points of formatting, if they, say, take work. Given that Wikipedia is asking for more citations, and that's what I can best do, I'll try to spend most of my time actually doing that. I won't usually be available outside the hours of 9 to 5, Western North American time zone, and usually not then, either. My work week tend to be shifted with Monday off, but this isn't predictable.


 * Hopes

I look forward to the time when all educational and research institutions receiving public money are required by law to spend a certain low percentage of their funds adding to open source knowledge projects such as Wikipedia. (Many already do this, of course - but very many still don't.) In the meantime I'm happy to do a little when I can, somewhat randomly, I'm afraid.

“Knowledge not only wants to be free, it seems to want to slap my assumptions around.” Ndaniels 23:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)