It is just my opinion, that when someone accepts goods and services of that magnitude I view them as a less reliable source on that particular product. The appearance of bias is enough for me. I just prefer to get information on a product from a person that didn’t get a benefit of some substantial value from the company that created that product. I don’t want a judge deciding a case that I may be involved in if he has a financial relationship with the opposing party, even if that judge believes he has an ability to not let that relationship affect his judgment. I don’t want to rely on a study done by a scientist or doctor who may have received goods or services from a party that may be interested in the outcome of that study, even though the scientist claims that that relationship doesn’t interfere with his ability to reasonably conduct a study and interpret results (the recent retraction in The Lancent of the study that had linked autism to MMR vaccinations comes to mind, here). You may be entirely reasonable and reliable, but the fact that you accepted this service, in my view, gives enough of an appearance for bias for me to seek another source for information about the new product. That doesn’t mean I think that your judgment is more generally flawed, it just means that on this particular product I will probably prefer to get information from others.

I don’t disparage you the opportunity to interact with the vendor about their products. That is a great opportunity and we all should be educated about how to use new products. However, I would just point out, that you didn’t consider that opportunity of high enough value to be willing to pay for the trip yourself (even though you considered whether you should), because you declined that option and chose to accept the free trip.

By the way, I didn’t know that you were given passwords to use and try, and I apologize for that misstatement in my prior comment. That still, though, doesn’t affect my larger view, though, the one that I express here.

Was your trip a “junket”? No. As I said in my post, but I will repeat again because I really don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about the great respect I hold for you, I trust your judgment and don’t think you would have let yourself be bought. As Anne said, you would have been the first person to speak out about faults you find with WestlawNext.

But overall I’m not sure how I feel about the trip. I don’t know if I would have done it. (But I might have! I don’t know! I’d have to see how it was presented.) I don’t know if it would have been more appropriate for West to just do a webinar to explain this information to its beta testers. I don’t know if there is subconscious jealousy on my part because I didn’t get picked to beta test. Because of my unknowns, I held my tongue until I got the iPod and (I thought) I just briefly touched on the Minnesota visit in that blog post, but that seems to be the part that a lot of people latched on to. I’m sorry if you feel your credibility has been impugned by others because of my post – I don’t censor comments on my blog or really get into debates with commentors. I just post my posts and that’s my say. I really did not intend for your professionalism to come into question.

You’re fried gold, Jason Eiseman.

Because you made the trip, you had considerable time to ask questions and find out the story behind the product, time that most of us don’t have. TRL took a big risk in inviting you there; if you had really negative things to blog about, the word would have spread like wildfire. And it would have been believed.

So I guess I see a difference between a trip for a specific purpose, disclosed by those who benefited from it, and a junket intended just to win favor. You guys are not easily won. Thanks for going and reporting back.

When I read Sarah’s post, I was thinking one thought in particular, which you hit on nicely. You’re both a librarian and a blogger. As the later, you have the unique opportunity to be on the front of a major development and shape its debate, to ask questions of (and expect answers) the very individuals, as you say, “telling the story.” Taking the trip is an imperative precisely because you are read. As long as you disclose the benefit, your readers can decide for themselves whether you were swayed. But I can assure you, after having read the posts of everyone who attended, there is more good information and probing questions about this product than just about any CALR system I’ve seen or used. Information that will help decision makers (hopefully).

Now, with that said, I would be lying if I didn’t say it was cool to be invited. Whether you count the number of visitors or subscribers to your site or not isn’t important as much as the fact that Thomson Reuters thought enough about your opinion to preview the go-to-market strategy. And for anyone involved in that business, it’s flattering. Just don’t let it go to your head when you write the post. Like one that talks about how sucky secondary sources look on WestlawNext. (Thanks Tom Boone!)