Saturday
Mar062010
Sat, March 6, 2010 Responding to a Critic
If you follow us on Google Buzz, you probably saw a reader call our article on the FDA’s recent warning letter blitz a “misleading synopsis” of an article by the Washington Post.
Just to clarify … we don’t “do” rewrites of other people’s work. Before we began this article, we were aware that this story had been covered by other media outlets—including the Washington Post. After all, knowing what’s going on in the world of “natural” health is an important part of what we do.
But we do not copy anyone. We got this story the same way we get all our stories about the FDA’s official Warning Letters—by going to the FDA’s website at fda.gov and reading the latest news, warning letters and advisories.
In preparation for the article this morning, we not only read the warning letters; we went to the distributors’ and manufactures’ sites and actually looked at photos of the products’ packaging to make sure we knew what we were talking about.
If you’re a regular reader at LisaBarger.com you know we’ve been very critical of the “me-too” writers out there who go to a site like Wikipedia or WebMD and simply re-write an article they then pass off as their own original research. We’ve never done that here and won’t do it in the future. And when we DO get info from another site, we tell you.
And regular readers also know that we have applauded the FDA’s past attempts to rid the internet of scam artists, charlatans and spammers. The “Is It A Scam?” and “Does It Work?” sections of LisaBarger.com were devoted to debunking the flood of bad info floating around out there.
So that’s the story. Thanks for being a LisaBarger.com reader.
Just to clarify … we don’t “do” rewrites of other people’s work. Before we began this article, we were aware that this story had been covered by other media outlets—including the Washington Post. After all, knowing what’s going on in the world of “natural” health is an important part of what we do.
But we do not copy anyone. We got this story the same way we get all our stories about the FDA’s official Warning Letters—by going to the FDA’s website at fda.gov and reading the latest news, warning letters and advisories.
In preparation for the article this morning, we not only read the warning letters; we went to the distributors’ and manufactures’ sites and actually looked at photos of the products’ packaging to make sure we knew what we were talking about.
If you’re a regular reader at LisaBarger.com you know we’ve been very critical of the “me-too” writers out there who go to a site like Wikipedia or WebMD and simply re-write an article they then pass off as their own original research. We’ve never done that here and won’t do it in the future. And when we DO get info from another site, we tell you.
And regular readers also know that we have applauded the FDA’s past attempts to rid the internet of scam artists, charlatans and spammers. The “Is It A Scam?” and “Does It Work?” sections of LisaBarger.com were devoted to debunking the flood of bad info floating around out there.
So that’s the story. Thanks for being a LisaBarger.com reader.
Reader Comments (2)
Making friends again, are we?
The thing is, we didn't actually read the Washington Post piece. I know some folks won't believe that but it's the truth. :-)
Later in the day, after he couldn't make his case for plagiarism, he accused me of "bias". Well, yes, opinion pieces are, by definition, "biased".
There's obviously more going on here than we know about and I'm just glad Buzz has that "Block" button. :-)