Information Laundering

This is a "hot topic," which is being discussed quite widely, just now. Take some bullshit, give it a positive spin, sell it to a KOL, who disseminates it to frontline clinicians via seminars and papers, and the clinicians disseminate the information, completely free of nasty, negative stuff, to the patient.

Anyway, Clinical Psych has a post on it, just now. And Fidders touches upon it, in a broadside on a GSK spin document.

I'll leave you with a quote from the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group's "Prevention of Money Laundering - Guidance Notes for the UK Financial Sector - 2003 Edn". It's not a catchy title, but it's an important document:

Money Laundering is the process by which criminals attempt to hide and disguise the true origin and ownership of the proceeds of their criminal activities, thereby avoiding prosecution, conviction and confiscation of the criminal funds

Section 5., entitled "Recognizing and Reporting Suspicious Activity" is especially interesting, and there are several parallels in the process of "information laundering".

Matt