Medicine articles on English Wikipedia: Quantifying the presence of pharmaceutical industry edits and analyzing their content.

Abstract

Today, Wikipedia has developed into a prominent source for health queries to the vast public. Over the years, some studies have been performed to understand what the webpage can and cannot offer. However, the current literature lacks knowledge of how the pharmaceutical industry is present in Wikipedia’s medicine articles. The immediate objective of this research was to quantify the presence of the pharmaceutical industry and find factors associated with such presence, through a cross-sectional design. Moreover, this study aimed to analyze the content written by the industry, through an inductive approach to content analysis. Further, it was aimed to study the connections within the editorial team through network analysis. The articles were randomly selected, and the newest Covid-19 medicines authorized in Europe were also included.

This was the first study to analyze the editors of the pharmaceutical companies and their content in such detail: The key findings of this research show that the pharmaceutical industry is present in Wikipedia’s medicine articles, although the presence is small. Also, no factors were associated with such presence. The content written by the industry was mainly promotional; however, there was no malintent or misinformation behind the edits. Lastly, it was observed that regardless of affiliation, the articles shared more than one editor. Many editors kept recurring in different articles, suggesting, a lack of anarchy in these articles.

For Wikipedia, the pharmaceutical industry is an unwanted presence, as it goes against the webpage’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, which need to be addressed by the community. Furthermore, the results of this research add nuance to the debate regarding Wikipedia’s usability.