Talk:Memorial Medical Center and Hurricane Katrina

message: DES (talk) 15:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

message: hopiakuta 03:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[otorhinolaryngology]] 

message: I have just done a clean up and update on this article, which was in a truly disgraceful state. It had false statements, claims unsupported by the accompanying citations, massive WP:BLP violations, etc. Much of this was inserted by a SPA, , in October 2008.
I added some important facts to the article: the charges against Dr. Pou have now been expunged, the state will reimburse her legal costs, and "several lawmakers have apologized for the accusations against Pou", sourced to this AP story.
This article is still quite bad, but at least it is no longer an abomination.
Several questions remain:
*Does anyone know which lawmakers apologized? Should we mention them in the article?
*Does anyone know what happened to Dr Pou's suits against Charles Foti and the state Office of Risk Management, as reported in this 2007 Times-Picayune item? If anthing came of them, should we mention them in the article?
*That 2007 item reports that Dr Pou's lawyers accused Foti "of playing politics with her life and the dead from Katrina" and "improper and unethical activities". The SupportDrPou.com website states that Foti staged her arrest for maximum news impact after agreeing to let her quietly present herself to authorities. I did not add anything about this to the article. Should we mention it?
*Given that the article is really about the failed prosecution of Dr Pou, not about Dr Pou herself, should we rename it?
CWC 17:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disgrace corrected 

message: I've decided that the answer to my immediately preceding question is "yes", so I've renamed the article from "Anna Pou" to "Anna Pou case". Then I went further: instead of just changing it from a Biography to an article about a (non-)murder case, I rewrote the whole thing. Why? The article previously had lots of detail about some things (eg., what Dr. King said and did) and not much about others (eg., the conditions at the hospital during Katrina, the political process by which Louisiana decided to pay Dr Pou's legal fees). So I rewrote it in a chronological fashion, trying to achieve an even tone and pacing.
This also let me work around several links that had gone dead, and incorporate some useful information from a forthcoming article in the New York Times magazine. (Incidentally, that article is a classic case of what would be called WP:SYNTHESIS here.)
Another change I was glad to make was to include a good quote from James Varney, a Times-Picayune reporter:
:[the arrests] ignited a furious debate in New Orleans and elsewhere about whether sharp ethical boundaries can be drawn around decisions on patient comfort made in a crisis.
I'm no expert in assigning Categories to articles, and I'd be grateful if some knowledgeable could check/correct the categories I used. And its very likely I made mistakes I haven't noticed yet, so feel free to improve my edits. Cheers, CWC 14:25, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: August 2009

message: It should be mentioned that she and her colleagues are still facing numerous wrongful death suits for ruinous sums. It will likely be easier to prove the accusations given the lower burden of proof in a civil trial.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.245.238.133 (talk) 19:55, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we should mention the lawsuits. (The ProPublica items says there are three of them.) I added a short, vague sentence at the end of the article. That sentence is really just a placeholder until someone can add more detail. Has there been any press coverage of the 3 lawsuits? Cheers, CWC 05:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrongful death suits

message: Support showing the article was clearly an attack directly toward an individual.  The article titled "Anna Pou case" was put in three categories: Biography articles of living people, Start-Class biography articles, WikiProject Biography articles   Schwartzenberg (talk) 13:48, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how this is a personal attack. The article is based on numerous references and has been here many years. It concerns a public figure who was arrested for second degree murder and not indicted, and whose case inspired articles, a book, and a television segment. The doctor has an active career speaking about her arrest and this case. It would be a shame to allow this editor to rewrite history.AccuracyObsessed (talk) 02:31, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: , please use the talk page appropriately.  Please stop removing documented references that are cited from reliable sources.  No one is disputing the individuals were arrested for second degree murder and not indicted.  Please stick to the facts.  Please cite the "articles, a book, and a television segment."  Please cite where the information in regard to "the doctor having an active career speaking about her arrest and this case can be found."  No one is attempting to "rewrite history."  Nevertheless, we are working to make certain the facts are correct and documented.  There was information on this page was that factually incorrect.  The title of the page suggested the case was singular when more than more person was involved.  Everyone involved needs to be documented.  Reliable sources with documentation can not be erased.  The sources were properly cited and up to date.
It is quite true that this article started as an attack on Dr Pou. When I came across it in 2009, it was a disgrace to the whole Wikipedia project, so I tried to clean it up. I also renamed it from Anna Pou to Anna Pou case, which I now regard as a poor choice of name on my part. I should have fixed the categories when I did that, but I just forget. Sorry! (For details, see my comments above under Disgrace corrected and August 2009.)
So: the article was an out-and-out attack, clean contrary to just about every policy Wikipedia has. My edits changed that, but I don't think the article has ever been properly neutral. On the whole, I think we probably should delete this article, for reasons I'll explain elsewhere on this page. Cheers, CWC 13:57, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories supporting attack 

message: All of the individuals involved need to be properly referenced.  The previous title suggested this article was singular. Schwartzenberg (talk) 03:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Individuals involved 

message: Moved here from my talk page just now.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:43, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: We decide on whether the subject of an article is notable using the criteria described in WP:N. You can read that to see the kinds of arguments that are relevant in a discussion of whether there should be an article on a given topic. Once it's decided that there should be an article, we decide on its title using the criteria described in WP:TITLE. You can read that to understand the kinds of arguments that are relevant in this discussion. You're right that anything from a grand jury is not relevant here, but you should read the relevant policy and guidelines and try to make arguments that address the issues that are singled out there as dispositive. The rest of it is a distraction and will, ideally, be ignored by the closer of this discussion. That should be true for irrelevant arguments on both sides of the discussion. I hope this helps.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

text: Also it's really not helping your case to accuse editors of having a conflict of interest without some kind of evidence.  If you have any you can present it to impartial editors at WP:COIN, but if you don't, it would be better if you'd stop making the accusation.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:51, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that does help. I appreciate your assistance. Schwartzenberg (talk) 01:20, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversial Move 

message: There is a major problem with this article. We rely heavily on the Pro-Publica report, but do not mention the strong attacks Dr Pou and others have made on the credibility of the report and its author, Sheri Fink, at http://www.drannapou.com/ (the whole website, not just that page). (It is also possible that http://www.memorialhospitaltruth.com/ is a citeable primary source.) For NPOV, we should mention those attacks. But doing so will tend to turn the article into a he-said/she-said mess, which
# is a problem, because readers of the article will not know who to believe
# is sorta The Right Thing, because readers of the press reports and books and websites and so on will not know who to believe, either.
Another approach is to trim the article down to uncontested claims. It would then be a lot shorter, perhaps short enough that it should be merged into Ochsner Baptist Medical Center. A first-draft outline:
# People died.
# Foti tried to prosecute Dr Pou
# but couldn't get a grand jury to indict (!).
# The coroner accepted Dr Karch's advice, and did not categorize any oHere are some unarguable facts:f the deaths as homicides.
# The state government expunged the charges (a declaration of innocence)
# and paid her legal bills.
(Actually, AFAICT, Louisiana regularly pays the legal bills of exonerated state employees, so #6 is somewhat redundant, but is simpler than explaining the context.)
As I write, our article is too close to an attempt to re-prosecute Dr Pou. (A close reading of the Pro-Publica article will show that it was written as an attack on Dr Pou, then toned down during editing to be less assertive. It is easy to construct an attack on Dr Pou by picking out bits of the PP article which were not toned down. Such an attack has no place on Wikipedia, and ought to result in instant banning.)
So I think we should have a discussion about what kind of article we want here. I'm sure there are options other than the ones I've spelled out above. If necessary, we could hold a formal RFC.
(I don't have much time for Wikipedia at present, so won't be able to participate heavily in this discussion.)
What do other editors think? Cheers, CWC 13:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think dropping 2K of text on the talk page suggesting that everything needs to be fixed and a discussion should be had but you don't have time to participate in it is ludicrous.  Articles get written when editors discuss changes in the text one at a time in detail.  If you're not planning to do any of the work or even talk about it further, why should anyone care about your grand theories of the structure of the article?  Also, your feelings about http://www.memorialhospitaltruth.com/ make your whole theory suspect anyway.  If you don't want to edit the article, don't edit the article, but don't expect anyone to pay attention to your opinions about the article.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I am likewise troubled by the suggestion and attempts over these past two weeks that we make the history of a disturbing episode simply disappear. We can have deep empathy for Dr. Pou because she was put in a terrible position during Hurricane Katrina. At the same time we must strive for clarity, honesty and fairness in the portrayal of these consequential events. We have an ethical duty to portray them accurately, not to whitewash them. It would reflect everything that is wrong with the echo chamber effect of extreme or interest-conflicted views on the internet to equate, in an encyclopedia, the integrity of the two sources discussed above. One is an article and subsequently a book written with a neutral and sympathetic point-of-view by an author with no connections to anyone involved in the events--in other words, no reason for bias. It was published in respected publications, based on years of research, and its accuracy has never been challenged in any substantive way. There has not been a single correction or retraction. The book, at nearly 600 pages, was extensively referenced and end-noted. Both have received objective accolades, often with comments about the fairness and sympathy to Dr. Pou. Again, fairness and empathy do not mean a lack of clarity or honesty about her actions. The website, by contrast, while it contains attacks on the character of the author, certainly contains no evidence that would cast doubt on the accuracy of her article or book, let alone any of the details in this Wikipedia article. Anyone attempting to make major changes to this article by reading an attack website without having read the 600-page book would be doing a disservice to history. My $0.02. AccuracyObsessed (talk) 18:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No one is making an attempt to change history. This has nothing to do with empathy for Dr. Pou. There are people who say the author of the book and article has a bias. It is important to identify any biases that any authors may have toward the subject matter. The author takes a certain perspective in regards to the information. There are people saying they never said what the author wrote. "We can have deep empathy for Dr. Pou because she was put in a terrible position during Hurricane Katrina" What position was Dr. Pou put in? "fairness and sympathy to Dr. Pou" this is not about Dr. Pou. A lot of the sources in the book are hearsay. Nevertheless, I support working to make certain the article is accurate and fair, which means discussing everything that happen and everyone involved on the talk page. Schwartzenberg (talk) 00:59, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whither this article? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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