Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Consumer Reports

Suggestions welcome
Does anyone have ideas about what a Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports ought to do? Please share!  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   15:27, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you please ask them if they'd consider releasing their medical articles under the CC-BY-SA license? If they don't want to release them straight away, perhaps after a few months? I'd be pleased to incorporate any well-sourced relevant content from them into this encyclopedia. Their integrity and motivation seem beyond reproach. I wouldn't cite them myself, but I would definitely trust them to write article content. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * (I would cite them.) Where their tertiary reports comply with Wikipedia's guidelines (such as WP:MEDRS) we could paste them, or parts of them, straight into article space. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:40, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have already been talking to them about this. Consumer Reports does a lot of things - there are about 600 employees in the organization, mostly in New York City, but in several other offices as well. This is some policy overlap also with partner organizations. If Consumer Reports decides to adopt different copyright policies it will happen after broad organizational discussion and then talk with other organizations, and probably with the intent of promoting precedent so that other organizations follow the lead. A lot of people would need to come to understand the nature of Creative Commons before this kind of policy change could happen.
 * Consumer reports has different kinds of media content. One way of talking about the content is to say that some is free/gratis (not libre) content and some is subscription content. Almost all of the health content is free/gratis content, and I also think a lot about the benefits and drawbacks of releasing this under a CC license. If I were going to characterize the biggest barrier which I have identified to Consumer Reports releasing its free/gratis content it is that I cannot find any example of any other similar organization doing the same thing. The idea of Creative Commons is a new and radical concept and practically all non-profit organizations which have as their mission a directive to get educational messages to as many people as possible still, without much consideration, license every educational message they produce under the traditional restrictive copyright. We could talk about why this is so, but I wanted to set the tone for this conversation by saying that orthodoxy is a default behavior, and orthodoxy often develops because if everyone has been doing something for a long time then that behavior is usually good, and unorthodoxy is typically a risky behavior, and if almost no one is doing something then usually it is because the behavior has drawbacks. This is the first impression that anyone has when exposed to the idea of Creative Commons, and I think it is fair for anyone to ask why things should change and if they are to change, is Creative Commons the way to do it.
 * Consumer Reports' recognition of Wikipedia is already unorthodox as most organizations are directly antagonistic to Wikipedia. I give general Wikipedia presentations several times a week to all kinds of people at Consumer Reports and the concept is still new, even though everyone uses Wikipedia as readers. My general plan is to demonstrate some models for how Consumer Reports can develop Wikipedia, then to request that some other organizations partnered with Consumer Reports develop Wikipedia in the same way, and from there, branch into other ideas such as broad media releases with Creative Commons. In the meantime I have been talking to some people about a limited release of some media, which would be the first step and a fair experiment.
 * There are several ways that this conversation on this board could go between us Wikipedians. One could be to talk about the steps to making a proposal for Consumer Reports (and all other organizations in the world) to release content under a CC license. Another could be about the health content which CR has to release - since not all content could conceivably be released at once, what content would set the best example? Another issue is that perhaps this should be part of a coordinated effort to request that other organizations do the same, if Consumer Reports does it. I wonder also about the Wikipedia community's opinion of having an organization tie itself so closely to Wikipedia, because that has never been done before. I feel that other instances of the outreach:Wikipedian in Residence program have a more narrow scope than heavy influence on the entirety of the world's most popular source of health information, and Consumer Reports certainly does not want to do anything without full support from the Wikipedia community. Releasing CC content which gets integrated into Wikipedia amid community complaints would be a disaster for the future of all Wikimedia collaborations. Many people may mistrust Consumer Reports itself for any number of reasons - it promotes access to healthcare in the United States, for example, and many people because of the current political election climate will indiscriminately oppose anyone manipulating anything to do with healthcare. There are lots of issues. I am happy to have the conversation and grateful for your interest in doing so, but the big restraint that I need to advertise is that no one at Consumer Reports is going to change policy without understanding the implications of policy change, and understanding the nature of the Internet, Wikipedia, Creative Commons, open access, gratis versus libre, decentralized community organization, and new media is going to take a few conversations because practices associated with these concepts are still unorthodox. Thoughts?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   12:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah. It's a big, new step. Let's talk about it. I've emailed you. It's bedtime here so I'll catch you later. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Tertiary sources of information in medicine
Consumer Reports produces primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of information, which means that Consumer Reports has scientists, engineers, and researchers who conduct research, and staff who publish reviews of research done by others, and staff who publish reviews of reviews of research done by others.

Often, when Consumer Reports makes statements on complicated topics it gives statements which are conservative and in accord with the publications of many established organizations, and never or rarely does Consumer Reports make broad statements without having support and backing research. An example of this is when Consumer Reports recommends best practices for health care, it bases these statements on review articles in journals and publications by medical specialty professional societies, which ideally people would interpret as proof of broad consensus in a field.

The standard in what WikiProject Medicine calls WP:MEDRS, Identifying reliable sources (medicine), is to use secondary sources. I think that in many cases a tertiary source is preferable, especially for top-level broad articles, but MEDRS currently does not say much about tertiary sources except that they often are not detailed enough. It is not uncommon for review articles (secondary sources) on Wikipedia to be more detailed than many people would want. How do other people feel about tertiary sources published by either medical specialty societies or an organization which interprets secondary sources with a particular viewpoint, as Consumer Reports does when it interprets (and cites!) secondary sources to produce something for a non-academic audience? To what extent is using a tertiary source any more controversial than the process of having users create the tertiary source that is Wikipedia?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * In general, I think it is good to cite CR/medical society tertiary source material alongside traditional WP:MEDRS secondary sources (such as a clinical practice guideline) to give those sources context. Neglecting this tertiary material entirely might raise POV concerns. But I don't think we should cite the tertiary sources instead of these secondary sources for the recommendations themselves. Similarly, I don't mind citing a NIH website to give some useful accessible prose, to compliment the traditional reliable medical sources. Biosthmors (talk) 19:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * In most cases I have been citing both secondary and tertiary sources to add anything. You and I had talked about deep vein thrombosis and you saw what I did there - a lead with a tertiary source giving a non-technical interpretation and then two secondary sources on which the interpretation was based. Currently that addition is Deep_vein_thrombosis. What do you think of this model, both in terms of technically providing the citation and in terms of presenting a tertiary source's interpretation of secondary sources?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   20:18, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm uncomfortable with citing the tertiary source in this scenario because the secondary source the rest of the article uses said the same thing (if not more and better), so in this case I didn't think it was valuable. It also seems to expand the reference list for no reason. Biosthmors (talk) 03:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Consumer point of view in healthcare
Consider the example of the Wikipedia article on a popular drug, such as metformin It is likely to contain the following information:
 * 1) information for prescribing physicians, such as all popular medical uses of the drug
 * 2) information for chemists, such as chemical structure, mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, and something about making the drug
 * 3) information for pharmacists, such as different formulations and names of the drug as well as information about international distribution
 * 4) information of broad use to a healthcare worker who will be monitoring patients, such as contraindications or interactions with other drugs

What is not obviously available here is information targeted to the untrained layperson who will be taking the drug for the single purpose of treating their own condition. Metformin is an inexpensive generic drug broadly recommended as a treatment for type 2 diabetes. As of September 2012 its Wikipedia article receives more than 100,000 views per month, putting it well within the top 1% of Wikipedia articles if popularity can be measured with pageviews. Who is going to this article and accounting for the traffic? Is it physicians, chemists, pharmacists, other health workers? I have no data to back this, but I believe that most of the traffic is coming from consumers who are using this drug, and that they are seeking consumer-targeted information.

Wikipedia should serve all points of view, and the less technical kind of information which most people want should be a concern for Wikipedians developing health content. Having excellent sources and providing reliable information is paramount, but this has to be balanced by serving information which people want. I added this statement recently - history

So much more can be said about metformin and this statement leaves out a lot, but I think that introductions like this are what most people want from Wikipedia and this is more useful to more people than the information targeted for the groups which I listed above. I provided excellent consumer-targeted sourcing also, and the source is itself a review of medical literature as listed on the last page. I assert that no where else in the article was there such a summary with a citation. A thought leader in developing the health articles on Wikipedia questioned this addition - see here - so I feel strongly that I ought to get feedback on this.

Does anyone have thoughts about whether this sort of information should be in Wikipedia? To what extent am I representing the situation properly, accurately, and fairly?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with your edit. I'm still reading and thinking about this situation. Bluerasberry, can you point me to an independent review of CR's methodological rigor and trustworthiness? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:09, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No, I cannot give you an independent review of CR's methodology and rigor. See the section below called "Reviews of Consumer Reports".  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Reviews of Consumer Reports
user:Anthonyhcole asked for a review of CR's methodology and rigor. I have not been able to identify one, despite the organization being profiled by major media sources every year for decades. Below are some reviews but nothing rigorous. I have hundreds of reports about individual studies. Consumer Reports rarely publishes anything in academic journals. Part of the problem with reviewing product testing is that historically, most of this has been non-transparent. Sometimes the industry has tests which are trade secrets and cannot be shared, and sometimes Consumer Reports keeps its tests secret from industry so that companies cannot design their products to pass CR's specific tests when they might fail generally otherwise. There are data archives on Consumer Reports' research products and services for the entire company history which are cataloged so that if a producer legally disputes Consumer Reports testing procedures years after the report then the organization can show the rigor that United States courts would expect to defend their claims. I have yet to discover good sources on the history and philosophy of grading consumer products and services. I have more sources than what is below but I am still trying to decide what I ought to do with all this. Consumer Reports is also part of an international organization called Consumers International and there is an equivalent organization to Consumer Reports in many countries, so a lot of the standards Consumer Reports uses also apply to other countries, and there may also be reports elsewhere or in other languages.
 * Automakers jump when Consumer Reports pans their cars
 * Automakers jump when Consumer Reports pans their cars
 * Automakers jump when Consumer Reports pans their cars
 * Automakers jump when Consumer Reports pans their cars

It it not for me to put the burden on anyone else to sort this material and I regret that it does not directly answer the original concern. I would hope that it is enough that someone could glance at it and see that some people feel that Consumer Reports is reputable, but I cannot put numbers and data on the extent to which it is reputable in various fields. Consumer Reports employs scientists and engineers in all kinds of fields and in all cases the nature of different products means different limits in the extent to which products can be tested, so making generalizations is difficult. Eventually I need to have some plan for developing the Wikipedia articles related to Consumer Reports but that is not my priority because of conflict of interest and attitudes on an organization editing its own article. Still, I recognize that if CR is sharing health content then people will ask what CR does, and the Wikipedia article does not give good information.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Videos about Consumer Reports product testing
 Blue Rasberry   (talk)   16:26, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * How Consumer Reports tests cars
 * Behind the scenes at Consumer Reports' test track
 * How we test: Appliances & Home products
 * How we test electronic products
 * How we rate health-care products and services
 * How we test health care products and services
 * Testing Products With Consumer Reports - ABC News

Access to consumer health information on pricing
Consumer Reports information on healthcare often includes information on pricing of medical procedures and medicine. This assumes that patients care about the prices of the treatment they get, which is not part of the experience of many patients who live in either the developed world outside the United States or who have access to health insurance or government healthcare. In contrast, many people in the United States and many parts of the developing world do need information about pricing because they have to make decisions on the procedures they have and the medicine they take because they cannot afford all the healthcare which doctors recommend that they purchase.

A common example is that imagine there are two drugs, one generic and one under patent. The generic drug is old and has been demonstrated safe in many people, and the new drug is expensive, less-understood, and has side effects. The old drug is the standard of care and universally recommended as the first-line therapy. In some economies and in some situations a patient may take the new expensive new drug rather than the old inexpensive one, and they may do this for reasons other than thoughtful health considerations. Here are some reasons why this may happen: In all of these cases, if the patient had access to consumer health information about the drug then they might choose to take the old drug instead of the new one. Without access to consumer health information, the patient may assume that taking the new drug is the preferred therapy.
 * 1) The patient saw an advertisement for the new drug and not the old drug, so they asked for the new drug by name
 * 2) The patient got a rebate coupon for the new drug so developed brand loyalty to it before trying the old drug.
 * 3) The doctor gives free samples of the new drug, but then the patient continues to purchase that drug after the samples are gone.
 * 4) Some people or some organizations encourage the doctor to recommend the new drug in preference to the old one and against medical consensus
 * 5) Somehow there is a conflict of interest somewhere in the health industry and somehow patients are being encouraged to consume more health resources than the standard of care dictates

"Consumer health information" is its own field. It refers to the information which consumers ought to have about healthcare. I am not suggesting that patients need information which doctors think patients need not know, and I take a conservative view on what constitutes consumer health information. Consumer health information, in some cases, includes giving information about pricing. There is an industry taboo in some cases on doctors considering pricing, and for example, a doctor may recommend a financially cripplingly expensive procedure which always works over an inexpensive procedure which almost always works when from the patient's perspective they might like to try the least expensive procedure before the more expensive one. When sourcing is available which says something like, "Organizations recommend the less expensive generic in preference to the new expensive drug" then this is useful information to include in Wikipedia. Thoughts from anyone about this?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The article on Metformin had a reference deleted because it didn't conform to WP:MEDRS. The reference was a Consumer Reports article on 'Diabetes drugs compared - Consumer Reports Health.pdf'. I was disappointed this reference was deleted, especially with the consumer's point of view and pricing information included in it, a rarity in other medical references. I feel the wording in WP:MEDRS should be adjusted so material such as this by a neutral and competent organization such as Consumers Reports is permitted. WP:MEDRS should not suppress this kind of information. Darrell_Greenwood (talk) 19:29, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Darrell. I am seeking comments on this and I appreciate yours. Here is the edit in question and the section above, Wikipedia talk:Consumer Reports goes into more detail about this.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   20:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That's my view too. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Does anybody mind if I ping who may not be aware of this discussion? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I do not but I would appreciate having a call with you first. I sent you an email. I make the open offer to talk with anyone else by phone or Skype also.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:30, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've replied to your email. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:34, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename project
It is very unusual and confusing to have a wikiproject without the word "WikiProject" in its name. I propose renaming this project to WikiProject Consumer Reports. That would also make the project name consistent with the category name (Category:WikiProject Consumer Reports). RockMagnetist (talk) 17:59, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I second that proposal. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I do have one concern, though - is this really a WikiProject? It doesn't manage any articles, so maybe it is better classified as something else. But I don't know what that would be. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:29, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This is well worth considering, but since User:Bluerasberry, the creator of this project, is more or less on wikibreak until Feb. 20, I hope we can hold off on any final decisions until he's had a chance to respond. -Pete (talk) 17:05, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:32, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I did this rename months ago but failed to close this conversation. This seems resolved.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   20:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * And I failed to notice you changed the name, so we're even. Thanks! RockMagnetist (talk) 23:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Deprecated outreach models
These pages were designed in 2012. Now I know that these are not viable outreach models.


 * Health Article Review Project
 * Guide for staff

I marked them as historical and removed them from the Consumer Reports navigation template.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Best Buy Drugs criticism
One of Consumer Reports' educational campaigns is "Best Buy Drugs". The premise of the campaign is for Consumer Reports and academic partners to research medical journals to identify which drugs are the safest and most effective then among those, which drugs cost the least. Sometimes physicians and patients consider which drug to take for a given medical condition, and when there is a choice, Best Buy Drugs recommends taking the one which is most proven to work safely at the lowest cost. This is the opposite of a drug advertisement, except instead of patients and doctors getting a prompt to consider the drug chosen by manufacturers for a profit motive, instead they base their conversation around nonprofit independent information for safety and low price.

Wikipedians have criticized some of the information which I have shared from Best Buy Drugs. One basis of the criticism is the view that these publications fail to meet the Identifying reliable sources (medicine) quality standards. I recognize that Consumer Reports is not publishing the traditional academic information which is common on Wikipedia, but at the same time, the academic literature rarely makes safety and efficacy comparison and almost never acknowledges that price is a factor in patient drug access. Much of the safety and efficacy information in these reports came from a combination of data review by the Drug Effectiveness Review Project at Oregon Health & Science University. Consumer Reports employees physicians and health care experts who use this and other information to choose and publish a recommendation. I acknowledge that Wikipedia needs to present medical consensus first, but once we establish that as the ultimate authority, I think that medical articles should include the consumer perspective to discuss cost and safety and to present first choices in drugs to clarify that if many drugs are available, not all of them are reasonable first options for typical patients.

Another criticism which I have received is that I have presented information in an inappropriate way. This was always fair criticism. At Talk:Suvorexant I presented an experimental infobox which said, "What precautions should I take?" as a way of introducing safety alerts about side effects for the drug. This was obviously a misstep because Wikipedia does not speak in the first person, and while safety alerts are useful, editors are cautious to avoid giving medical advice. In a few places over the years I have presented some Best Buy Drugs content in too much of a way like advice.

Another criticism was that I presented information which is out of scope for Wikipedia. In June 2015 I proposed that Wikipedia include information about drug prices. Some discussions happened before that time and more discussions happened after, but currently, many people feel that Wikipedia should not report prices for several reasons. To advance the discussion I set up an essay page at Prices so that anyone can read past conversations on this topic. I made other proposals at that time about the infoboxes for Wikipedia's drug articles. In April 2017 there was a proposal to use more structured data for medical conditions, which I think advances the conversation in a similar direction by avoiding some of the problems associated with using structured data for drugs. I still think that the future of Wikipedia is to use structured data for drug infoboxes including some consumer information but there are other barriers in the way currently, like doubts about getting quality data, problems with the Wikidata interface, and questions about what sorts of fields should be in an infobox.

Here are some other on-wiki discussions about what I have shared from Best Buy Drugs.
 * Talk:Opioid
 * A user who has since left Wikipedia removed most of the information I added said, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opioid&diff=626272000&oldid=626271803 remove consumer reports as source for health related statements per WP:MEDRS" and "Consumer's reports is not a reliable source for medical information, see WP:MEDRS". If I had time and could recruit someone interested, then I would go through what they removed and talk about why anyone would say that either the information or Consumer Reports' expertise is inadequate. Of course I respect MEDRS but some of what I posted here is relevant information which is not best found in academic sources, and perhaps not present at all in medical reviews.


 * Talk:Triptan I shared information here in a way that does not suit wiki. One problem was that I put information in a table. The other was that the voice of the information seemed too much like advice. I feel invited to re-add the information in another way.

 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  20:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Criticism of my editing the dishwasher article
See
 * Dishwasher
 * Talk:Dishwasher

I started editing the article on dishwasher. About 60% of the article was without citations. I did the cleanup I could, and proposed deleting content which was unsourced. A user said, "How about rather than being a deletionist, you work on those citations that you are demanding be present for every sentence? Finding good citations is a lot of work and many people don't want to bother because it often requires paid access to journals and engineering libraries and technical documents that are not freely available. We are not being paid or reimbursed for trying to do quality citation searches on our own private time and money, so it is understandable that citations may be lacking. You are apparently a professional and probably an engineer so it is likely you have access to these technical documents and libraries that most of us here do not."

Here are some of the complaints which I see in this criticism -
 * If experts engage with Wikipedia, then those experts should support the volunteer content additions
 * People should be cautious deleting content from Wikipedia, even if that content is not verifiable with citations
 * No one should use wealth or access to better research materials to disparage the contributions of editors who have less access.

I posted to talk some of this through with the editor. I am sharing this here because I think that any expert who comes to Wikipedia should expect to encounter this kind of criticism. I have heard these kinds of comments before and I think that experts should be prepared to receive and address these sorts of comments. Personally, I would like to try to edit Wikipedia in a way that avoids making anyone worried about these issues. Of course I want Wikipedia to have the best information and to respect and accept contributions from everyone.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  19:58, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

"Inside the Clock Tower" by Cory Doctorow

 * "Inside the Clock Tower"

Consumer Reports published a science fiction story by author Corey Doctorow and I archived it at Wikisource.



 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  22:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)