Dr. Irwig’s Propecia study, was it funded by attorneys suing Merck?

[gmonasco]

Using the same reasoning you could say that the mainstream media is really comprised of glorified blogs. The Examiner has a smaller circulation and does not have as strong a name brand as CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC etc but they do the same exact job.

Writer Admits She Spun Crazy-Ass Nonsense for Examiner.com -- And Didn't Get Caught Until Lawyers' Letters Showed Up

Writer L.J. Williamson admitted she began intentionally spinning bigger and bigger bullshit stories in hopes of generating profit while deriving joy from publishing truly ridiculous content on the Net -- and her Examiner.com editors never bothered reading the material.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/05/writer_admits_she_spun_crazy-a.php

[SoothSayer]

You'll see these kind of controversies about any newspaper. Here is one about CNN from a couple years ago.

http://gawker.com/5304469/twitter+addled-cnn-refers-to-tweets-as-a-source

And of course I imagine you heard about Rupert Murdoch's wire-tapping scandal this past year. I'm not saying the Examiner is a candidate for Pulitzer prize reporting but the article presents a written quote from Dr. Irwig that is displayed in his article verbatim. He would be putting himself at risk for libel if he is falsely attributing quotes to interviewees.

[gmonasco]

You'll see these kind of controversies about any newspaper. Here is one about CNN from a couple years ago. And of course I imagine you heard about Rupert Murdoch's wire-tapping scandal this past year.

Neither of those "controversies" compares in the least to deliberately making stuff up and passing it off as news.

[PayDay]

The bottom line is if Irwig took the money a lot of questions should be raised about the motivation behind his study. That’s all I’m saying. I am not saying that his study is worthless.