Yes. I think in times like this, one of the things we need to guard against is misinformation. Transparency is important but it must exist alongside trust -- i

Yes. I think in times like this, one of the things we need to guard against is misinformation. Transparency is important but it must exist alongside trust -- if the latter is compromised, the implementation of correct actions may be compromised. Crowdsourced systems have an implicit assumption that the downside of acting on incorrect information is small. I'm not sure if this assumption holds here. Imagine someone entering large swaths of data that are false but plausible, and then less scrupulous news reporters pick it up, arrive at the wrong conclusion and then fast feedback loops inadvertently propagate it without fact checks (you know how the news cycle works). With Wikipedia, there's at least the mechanism of curation (flawed as it may be) and citations. With an open patient database, there's no means of verification. There's also the assumption that people are good at entering data without constraints correctly. I see this assumption violated all the time.