Healthy Skepticism Groups

HS Members Forums

These forums are for Healthy Skepticism members only. The focus is communicating about marketing practices, particularly inappropriate, misleading or unethical marketing of pharmaceuticals and other health products or services. Members can access the forums by using the menu at the top of the page > Members Only > Forums. The URL is www.healthyskepticism.org/global/forums

Email notifications

Email notifications re posts submitted to the forums are available for Healthy Skepticism Members only. Members can chose what type of notifications they receive anytime from the Members Only > Services page.

Privacy

Healthy Skepticism welcomes as members everyone who says they support our aims and gains nomination from 2 current members. Consequently we can NOT exclude the possibility that some of our members may not be genuine. For example, some may be conveying information about our members to others including pharmaceutical companies. If you would like to have a private discussion with a subgroup of Healthy Skepticism Members who you know and trust, you are welcome to ask .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to set up an email list for your group.

Moderation

Posts submitted to the forums via email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) will be moderated before being submitted to the forums. This involves a delay, usually less than 24 hours. Posts submitted via the forum website are available to all members immediately without moderation but may be edited or removed by the moderators if they are outside the guidelines below without good reason.

Guidelines

The following guidelines have been established by list members. They are guidelines rather than rules because we accept that sometimes there is a good reason for not following the guidelines, so please use your discretion. However we hope that the guidelines will be followed most of the time.

1. The focus of the list is communicating about marketing practices, particularly inappropriate, misleading or unethical marketing of pharmaceuticals and other health products or services.

2. Questioning claims, including our own, is essential for healthy scepticism. Consequently Healthy Skepticism welcomes vigorous debate amongst our members. However healthy scepticism includes trying to get the balance right between scepticism and being open to learning from everyone regardless how well they make their claims and regardless of occupation, qualifications, religion, political views, affiliations or nationality. To achieve our aims we need to be an association that people with a wide range of views and cultural backgrounds will want to join and stay in. Consequently we encourage all members do their best to treat each other with consideration and appropriate tolerance.

3. This is an international list. English is not the first language for many of our members. Please keep to International English or Globish unless a wider vocabulary is really needed. Please avoid slang, jargon and acronyms. If there is a good reason to use words or expressions that other members may not know and may not be able to learn about easily by using online dictionaries, please provide a link to an explanation.

4. Please ensure that the first line of your posts describes the contents of your message reasonably accurately because many people will decide to read your post or not based on that line alone.

5. If you would like to copy original writing posted to our forum to others, please get permission from the member who wrote it.

6. You are encouraged to share with the list anything published recently relevant to drug promotion that you have written yourself or you think is one of the most important new publications in the past year or you have written a commentary about. All other public domain information is best sent to Robyn Clothier at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to add to our library rather than posted to the HS Members Forum. HS Members who have opted to receive HS Headlines will learn about it via that service.

Help is available

If you need help at any stage, feel free to contact Peter Mansfield, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Choice of email notification options

To choose the option in the new system that will suit you best please consider what is most important for you:

1a) to be able to read the posts that are useful for you without being overloaded by posts that are not useful
OR
1b) to receive all posts as emails immediately when they are submitted

2a) to be able to read posts in context arranged in categories
OR
2b) to read posts in an email client without visiting the HS website

Please choose one preference from 1 and one preference from 2.

1a and 2a

For you we recommend the Indigo mf-daily option:
Receive one email per day listing the thread, author and first line of all posts arranged in their threads within their categories.

To read the full post in context or to reply, just click the hyperlinked first line of the post.

Indigo mf-daily emails also provide hyperlinks to all the forum categories to make it easier to submit new posts in any category.

You can also submit a post via email by using your email client’s Reply button but there will be a delay before we moderate and submit your post for you.

I have moved you to the Indigo mf-daily option so you can experience how it works. If that’s not ok with you, I’ll put you back in the old system until
you are ready to move.

If the Indigo mf-daily option is not ok for you, let us know and we’ll improve it if possible or help you chose an option that suits you better.

You can change options yourself any time at:
Members Only > Services
or ask us for help.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

1b and 2b

If part of the reason that you prefer to avoid using our website is concern about logging in then you need to know that you only have to log in once per computer with the 'Auto-login on future visits' feature on. After that you will be logged on automatically whenever you visit our website. Help is available if you have forgotten your password.

If you are still keen to avoid using our website then we recommend the Orange mf-posts option: Receive immediate emails with full text of all posts.

With all our options you can submit posts via email by using your email client’s Reply button but there will be a delay before we moderate and submit posts for you. You can also submit posts unmoderated yourself any time by clicking the hyperlink at the end of the post. That hyperlink also enables you to read the post in context.

I have moved you to the Orange mf-posts option so you can experience how it works. If the Orange mf-posts option is not ok for you, let us know and we’ll improve it if possible or help you chose an option that suits you better.

You can change options yourself any time at:
Members Only > Services
or ask us for help.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

1a and 2b

You want to avoid emails that are not useful and avoid using our website. Unfortunately, the only ways, that we know of, to enable you to choose which emails will be sent to you require at least a little use of our website.

We understand that many people don’t like logging into websites. That’s why if you use the ‘Auto-login on future visits’ option when you log in you only have to do it once per computer and you will be logged in automatically ever after.

The best option for you depends on which is more important for you: avoiding emails that are not useful OR avoiding our website.

Indigo
If the most important thing for you is to avoid emails that are not useful then we recommend the Indigo option: Receive only one email per day listing the first lines of all posts submitted during the past day. If the first line is interesting for you then you can read the full post on our website by clicking on a hyperlink.
This option does require one log on to our website using the “remember me” option. After that the Indigo hyperlinks will load the post in your browser in a fraction of a second unless your internet link is very slow.

Orange
If the most important thing for you is to avoid using our website then we recommend the Orange option: Receive immediate emails with full text of all new posts. This option is suitable for people who can cope with an increasing frequency of emails.

Yellow
If you want something in-between then we recommend the Yellow option: Receive immediate emails with full text only of posts starting new threads.
If you are interested in a thread then use our website for a few seconds to click a link to subscribe to that thread. If you do that then the system will send you emails with full text of all posts to that thread. You can unsubscribe from a thread any time by clicking a link in one of the emails from that thread.
(There is also a Blue option which is a daily digest version of this Yellow option.)

The warmer (higher frequency) the colour the more emails you will get.

You can try an option, then if you don’t like it try another.

Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to try one of those options. If you do choose an option I will set it up for you and tell you more about it.

1b and 2a

For you we recommend both:
the Orange mf-posts option: Receive immediate emails with full text of all posts
AND
the Indigo mf-daily option: Receive one email per day listing the thread, author and first line of all posts arranged within their threads within their categories.

To read the full post in context or to reply, just click a hyperlink provided in the either type of email.

Indigo mf-daily emails also provide hyperlinks to all the forum categories to make it easier to submit new posts in any category.

You can also submit posts via email by using your email client’s Reply button but there will be a delay before we moderate and submit them for you.

Let me know if you have any questions or would like to give the Orange and/or Indigo options a try. If you try it and find it’s not ok, we’ll improve it if possible or help you chose an option that suits you better.

Groups homepage