And they ask me why I drink

Here’s a recent e-mail exchange I had:
I have redacted the name of the other person to protect the ignorant.

—– Original Message —–
From: [redacted]
To: nversel@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 9:42 AM
Subject: Link to BusinessWeek.com’s recent article heart stints research

Thought you and your readers might be interested in BusinessWeek.com’s recent article on a report that 72% of journal articles on heart stints in 2006 failed to note who funded the research draws sharp criticism of disclosure practices:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2008/db20080511_530371.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Feel free to link to this and let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks.

[name redacted]

—————-

From: “Neil Versel” nversel@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 10:45 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Link to BusinessWeek.com’s recent article heart stints research

Why exactly would I be interested in a story like this?

———
From: [redacted]
To: Neil Versel
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 10:48 AM
Subject: RE: Link to BusinessWeek.com’s recent article heart stints research

I just thought you might want to link to it on your Healthcare blog.
Apologies.

————
From: “Neil Versel” nversel@gmail.com
To: [redacted]
Subject: Re: Link to BusinessWeek.com’s recent article heart stints research
Date: Monday, May 12, 2008 10:53 AM

You mean my blog about health IT?
This is about a clinical trial. When have I ever covered that. And FYI, the word is “stents.”
You haven’t been doing this very long, have you?

I didn’t get a response to the last message.

Oh, and by the way, you didn’t hear this from me, but Ricoh will be building some of the underlying PHR technology for Google Health. Oh wait, you did hear that from me. But you won’t hear that from Google. In fact, try asking them simply for the name of their Google Health partners and you’ll get a link to a YouTube video of Eric Schmidt’s speech (the same one I posted at http://clinicalit.blogspot.com/2008/03/eric-schmidts-himss-speech.html) to the HIMSS conference and instructions to fast-forward to about 28 minutes to try to read the logos on the screen from Schmidt’s PowerPoint presentation. The company’s reasoning? They haven’t launched the product yet.

Yeah, their CEO showed the product to thousands of people at the largest health IT meeting of the year, but the company hasn’t introduced it.

The story gets worse, but if I say any more, the situation turns personal between myself an a Google employee I shall not name.

And they ask me why I drink!

P.S., Marissa Mayer, please call me. Your press people are not very cooperative. You are not the Google employee I shall not name.

——————–
Addendum, 5/20/08:
I just realized the unnamed pitch-person has won, since I did indeed link to the BW article on my blog. Know anyone in Fort Lauderdale who delivers crow to hotel rooms?