The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia—for Pay

The Atlantic - Quotes Sohail Mirza, professor of orthopaedic surgery and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in an article about how some medical device manufacturing companies pay their employees to make favorable edits to Wikipedia entries on surgeries and procedures that mention their products, and sometimes ask doctors with financial ties to their company to request edits to Wikipedia text. Mirza, who is not a proponent of the practice, notes that doctors can grow to prefer the medical devices of certain companies over others as a result of consulting arrangements. In the operating room, the manufacturer's presence can be more than some abstract notion: "Often the [sales] reps are in the operating room for all of these procedures … guiding the surgical team: 'This is next'; 'Here's how you mix this,'" says Mirza.