Clinical Reader: Ooops! but not forgotten

This is my intended final post of substance (maybe this week's Friday Foolery, we'll see) over here.

Do Not Panic.*

As this year and Blogger gig comes to a close there may be another ending to report as well. If you're not already familiar with the Clinical Reader saga you can see the bottom of the original post or this summary: I blogged to call out false endorsements and images weirdness, they threatened to sue me on Twitter unless I took down my post, all sorts of weirdness occurred, and librarians are a pack of rabid wolves.

Here's what things looked like on November 28, 2009 according to Google:



Since then, there's been this:


Some subpages are still publicly accessible but dropping off the Google radar like flies, which still holds 'clinical reader twitter' steady as a suggested search term and has since at least September.



Speaking of Clinical Reader Twitter, another related Twitter account has been deleted (@allan_marks) though the highly inactive @Clinical_Reader still references it as a last tweet:



What's the scoop?

I don't know.

According to a comment supposedly made by Clinical Reader staff over at David Rothman's post last month about their unauthorized use of a New England Journal of Medicine video, "We’re currently in the process of being taken over by a large publisher who intends to integrate our technology into their own systems."

If anyone sees the publisher press release about that or the latest Clinical Reader Twitter account/website incarnation, do let me know.

Even if this strange story is now over and done, it showed us how ephemeral and difficult it is to efficiently reference and archive social media discourse. This will live on as a case study submitted by Marcus Banks as part of his chapter for a grey literature book that will be published in early 2010. I agree with Marcus' point that

it [Twitter, Facebook, etc.] is also not meaningless, from both an evidentiary and anthropological standpoint. This is how many people are communicating today.

QuoteURL was of great assistance in capturing deleted tweets in June yet it is already broken, TwapperKeeper and related services are helping to archive hashtags today, but what will be the WayBackMachine of social media discourse tomorrow?


*Very soon you'll see what's in store thanks to the awesome (thanks Cynthia!) fabulous (thanks Joelle!) hard work (thanks Mel!) of, as my beloved husband put it, winning the Boobiethon. I can hardly wait to share it all with you!

Evaluation 2.0: Clinical Reader

It's been two weeks since I posted my original critique of Clinical Reader.

Website Update

The good news is the 5-star 'according to' the National Library of Medicine and other organizations graphic and the 3 copyrighted images that were being used without permission are gone.

The so-so news is there is still no identification or specific contact information on the website about who is running Clinical Reader or on their Editorial Board. Does 'A junior doctor and a small group of forward thinking young tech programmers' make for an 'authoritative source' for health news and information? (About/Beginnings)

The bad news is in the multimedia section. I've created a one minute screencast demonstrating why



Below is SpringerImages Terms of Use policy section 5b, bold emphasis mine:

You shall not use the Content for commercial purposes, i.e., for the purposes of monetary reward by means of the sale, resale, loan, transfer, hire or other similar form of exploitation of the Content, direct or indirect, including the placement or upload of the Licensed Content on a commercial entity’s internet website.

The definition of a commercial or legal entity is a person or organization that can legally enter a contract, and therefore may be sued for failure to comply with the terms of the contract. (source)

Clinical Reader is a commercial entity. They are soliciting advertising contracts per their Advertising. The wording of Clinical Reader's Privacy Policy section 5 also indicates interest in working with marketing and pharmaceutical companies with We may share your personal information with companies performing services on our behalf (such as direct marketing agents or pharmaceutical companies) who will only use the information to provide that service. The Privacy Policy is about midway down through Clinical Reader's Terms of Use.

Hotlinking, or directly linking to an image and using an outside server's bandwidth to display it on your website, is not considered a good website practice with the exception of banner advertisements. The source of one of the images displayed on Clinical Reader is http://img.springerimages.com/Images/Springer/PUB=Springer-Verlag-Berlin-Heidelberg/JOU=00167/VOL=2009.17/ISU=8/ART=2009_798/MediaObjects/THUMB_167_2009_798_Fig3_HTML.jpg

This is a new development as the screencast of the Clinical Reader multimedia page from the Google cache dated July 24, 2009 22:54:29 GMT shows nothing from SpringerImages.

Social Media Update

Here is a sampling of blog coverage about this aspect of Clinical Reader, the variety of viewpoints from different audiences is quite interesting.

• Completely noir-bizarre (end of Act 5) - an honor and pleasure to be included in Vol 5 No 44 of Grand Rounds, hosted at Doc Gurley
  
  
• Sturm und drang - Roy Tennant of Library Journal's perspective largely drawn from both the
  
  
• 'toxic and dangerous' category - Steve Lawson, the first to blog what happened next, and
  
  
• Stranger and stranger - Disruptive Library Technology Jester's second (first here) narrative of the saga
  
  
• Don't piss off librarians - understatement of the month by Jill Hurst-Wahl of eNetworking101, also part 2
  
  
• Best bad marketing ever - by Iris of Pegasus Librarian (also part 2, notice theme?) and
  
  
• 'Legal ramifications,' my Aunt Fanny - David Rothman always tells it like it is

A comment from David Lee King includes

The web tends to magnify personalities. If you’re a good person, it will show. If you run a company that links to un(typo?)copyrighted stuff & posts fake recommendations, then posts defensive tweets about it … well, that shows too.

Indeed.

An Open Letter to Clinical Reader

July 19 '09 7:00am edit

Twitter links below have broken due to constantly changing Clinical Reader accounts so I have linked to screenshots.

The latest account on Twitter states that the previous www.twitter.com/clinicalreader account is unaffiliated with the real website and that they haven't officially started tweeting yet.

A screencast of the website's Google cache, dated July 17, 2009 1:43:11 GMT, scrolls to the bottom of the page to show their link to a Twitter account with a url of www.twitter.com/clinicalreader.


July 17 '09 6:40pm edit

Twitter links below have been changed from @clinicalreader to @clinical_tweets. The original account was apparently deleted then reinstated with a new name, and there's a different @clinicalreader account now.

Dear Whoever Is In Charge,

Previously, with your permission, I posted your co-founder's email apology for your company threatening me on Twitter. That was as a result of my critique of your online information resource that implied an endorsement from a United States government agency that does not issue them to commercial services, and using copyrighted images without permission from their creators.

I found two of those images although there were three including the image your company took, altered, told the owner of the image it was a purchased stock photo, then finally removed it.

I replied to accept your co-founder's apology (my reply is here) and stated at the time I also accept inclusion in the medical librarian's section of your page. At the time I believed your company was sincere, learning from mistakes made, and intending to conduct both your online information resource and social media communication channel with integrity and professional responsibility.

That was a false belief as your company has shown over the course of this week.

I have edited a Google Doc that I believe is the source information for the proposed medical librarian section. I no longer wish to be included. Some of the reasons why include your company making a mockery of your threat to me as 'all very funny and great PR', falsely attributing it to Ben Henley, then after 'taking control from... Canadians' (screenshot) once more twisting the words of others to imply endorsement for your company. I have permission from Martha to post the following screenshots since she has a private account:





Your company refers to your information resource as an 'authoritative source' (Beginnings, About) yet nowhere within your website do you identify yourselves by name nor the institutions you are affiliated with so users may verify your level of authority for themselves. Who are you and your Editorial Team (screenshot)? Where are you located?

Your contact information says to contact you via email and Twitter (your 'dedicated beta feedback form' goes to kampyle.com and nothing specific), yet your company now says 'pls use official channels' (screenshot). What are those official channels? Why are you 'happy to be open' one moment then 'not like your predecessors pls use official channels' (screenshot) the next since taking control from the Canadians? When will you decide upon your 'official channels' and have a consistent message to send across all of them?

How is Clinical Reader is an 'authoritative' resource that 'respects all copyrights and legal restrictions on content and access'? (source)

It is not by assessment measures for health information website quality I'm aware of as a librarian. Your website fails all of the Medical Library Association's suggested criteria for identifying sponsorship, for example.

Clinical Reader has, however, become a case study for why a company's social media presence should be included as part of information resource quality assessment measures. Iris is right on track except for one thing: it's not 'hundreds of people have gone from knowing nothing about this service to being sure that everyone at Clinical Reader is completely insane.'

As of Friday morning it's 3,031 people with 3,990 page views on Monday's critique according to Google Analytics.


Sincerely,

Nicole Dettmar, MSIS

Gratitude

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it, by*MizzEl*

What I had to say about Clinical Reader was not of massive importance.

It was a website evaluation and critique, something that librarians, students, journalists and everyone else should be doing on an automatic cognitive basis millions of times a day. My intent is and always will be education, and hopefully both my colleagues and the world now clearly know that United States government organizations do not endorse products or services. [edit: and using copyrighted sources for your own use without the creator's permission isn't cool either!]

What so many of you had to say when I was threatened as a result of my post is important.

I must say thanks for the immediate public support on Twitter to Jacqueline (multiple times), Rachel (likewise), Steve, John (and Patrick's RT), Peter, who brings up something about libraries I didn't see before; Nick (LOL), Amy (ha!), Amy, Connie (also multiple times), Sarah, Shamsha, Martha, Andrew, Erika, Luke, Mark, Laura, Sarah, all of you who commented on these related discussion threads, and everyone else I've likely missed. I wish I could thank you all personally. It is quite humbling to know I am part of an international network of information professionals that is so much greater than I.

I am thankful for blog coverage from Steve, Alan and David for those who aren't on Twitter, which is the overwhelming majority of librarians who should be aware of things like this happening in social media but were probably off in Chicago at the American Library Association conference.

For numerous private messages of support, and especially the dropped jaws and 'WHAT?!'s from my colleagues who are part of my everyday personal life... thank you.

I also must say thanks to Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre of Bad Science.

There was an interesting conversation that occurred yesterday about just what endorsement means and other topics between Ben and Clinical Reader. Some of the tweets have now been deleted.

However, I recorded them all earlier thanks to QuoteURL: one, two, three, and four.

Clinical Reader: Starry ethics fail

July 17 '09 7:40am edit

Closing this entry with an open letter to Clinical Reader.

July 15 '09 7:20am edit

Thank you for your support!

July 14 '09 3:42pm edit

With permission from the author, here is the email apology I received this morning from Clinical Reader. I have replied that I accept it.

I would also like to note that there is mention of the above apology on Twitter yet still not a public apology to me as there was for one of the artists yesterday.


July 13 '09 4:00pm edit:



As of this time, Clinical Reader is or already has removed all images I discussed below from their website. I commend them for their quick attention and responsiveness.

However, there was this before that:




I do not remove my blog articles. I am happy to edit when information within them is in need of updating, as am I doing now, or corrections with clear markings as to what is original and what is corrected.

Others speak well about that legal ramifications part.


Original, unedited post below

It is with concern that I've heard about some of my colleagues promoting and collaborating with the newly launched company, Clinical Reader.

Why? (red scrawl emphasis mine)


This above-the-page-fold graphic is intentional (not accidental, this is clear marketing intent to lend quick visual credibility to the organization) and currently displayed everywhere (homepage, sections pages, multimedia page, the newsletter, etc.) throughout the resource.

It is bogus as far as the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is concerned since the U.S. Government doesn't endorse or grant 5 stars to anything. The NLM Copyright Information page offers more elaboration, bold emphasis mine:

Endorsement: NLM does not endorse or recommend any commercial products, processes, or services. The views and opinions of authors expressed on NLM Web sites do not necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. Government, and they may not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

But wait, there's more.

Clinical Reader also currently uses two copyrighted images on their Partners (specific original source, copyright notice at bottom) and Advertising pages (from somewhere on Signalnoise). A 'credit' link to a source doesn't honor an image copyright. Even free open source images, such as this set of Springer Images, are often limited to usage for noncommerical purposes. Commercial organizations can well afford to purchase or design their own graphics.

As a medical librarian, I respectfully request that Clinical Reader remove all occurrences of these images from their website immediately. If not, this is my statement of intent that I'll request removal of my blog from their proposed medical librarian resources. I have already notified NLM and the artists involved about these images. All have replied and thanked me for doing so, one noting "They might have credited me, but not cool using my work to sell something."

I uphold the Medical Library Association code of ethics, the Library Society of the World Cod of Ethics, and my professional photographer friends deal with people stealing their copyrighted work all the time. Professional integrity means taking a stand to explain who, what, where, when & why when something is amiss. I'm a bit more direct than some.

Always carefully review new resources (and re-evaluate the old ones from time to time) for information. Any company that falsifies endorsements and displays copyrighted materials for their own use should raise immediate red flags for librarians. How does it reflect on our profession to recommend a resource that is not compliant for accountability to clinicians, faculty, students and your own colleagues regardless of how nice it looks and functions?

An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do. - Aggie Code of Honor, Texas A&M University, recipient of a 2003 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant that funded my MSIS education in partnership with the University of North Texas.