Last month, I wrote a posting called "When Transparency is Easy -Advisory Committee Transparency" suggesting that the transparency at FDA would be greatly enhanced if there were once again links from the rosters of advisory committee members to their CVs. Such links used to be common place, now they are only in place for about half of CDER's committee membership. Once I posted this, one reader made a comment that I should leave the information as a comment to the FDA's Transparency Blog. I thought that a good idea.
So I went to the FDA Transparency Blog during that week and left a comment in response to the FDA's Question on the blog – How Can FDA Use its Website to Improve Transparency at the Agency? to the effect that the transparency among advisory committee members was lacking. I put in my name, web address and was careful to craft the comment so that it was concise, clear and of course, respectful. I received a notice saying that all comments were moderated. No problem.
Except there was. The comment was never posted to the blog. There were a lot of comments about what a good job the FDA is doing. But mine never made the cut. And, I don't know why. No transparency available on that front.
Meanwhile, if you want to know the backgrounds of members of the Endocrinologic Drugs Advisory Committee, you'll have to guess for about half of them, because there are links lacking.
So how about some follow-up on why your comment was not posted? Is there a webmaster or moderator who can comment on how comments are selected and why yours wasn’t? Is the website really a place for transparency, or only the illusion of transparency that serves the interests of some FDA communications manager?
Mark, your comment dated July 17 on the FDA blog regarding the people on advisory committees is actually posted there, please look at http://fdatransparencyblog.fda.gov/2009/07/how-can-fda-use-its-website-to-improve-transparency-at-the-agency.html?cid=6a00e0097fa000883301157212c14c970b#comment-6a00e0097fa000883301157212c14c970b
Thank you so much for pointing it out. The last time I had checked in
August, it had not been posted, despite the fact that other comments made
subsequently had been. Appreciate the head’s up.
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:51 PM, wrote: