View source for Molecupedia:Conflict of interest

{{Ombox|type=notice|text=This page documents a Molecupedia content guideline. It describes a conflict of interest that the encyclopedia cannot remove, and therefore declares.}}
{{Ombox|type=content|text='''In a nutshell:''' Molecupedia is written by the company that most of it is about. That is a conflict of interest. It is declared on this page, flagged on the article it affects most, and permanent.}}
A '''conflict of interest''' exists when someone writes about a subject in which they have a stake: themselves, their employer, its products, its investors or its competitors. Wikipedia's guideline on the subject calls such editing "strongly discouraged". On Molecupedia, every article about [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] was written by Molecular Reality Corporation, and so was this guideline.

The conflict cannot be fixed by editing, because the company is the only editor. This guideline therefore does three things. It declares the company's interests in full, it sets out the rules the company holds its own articles to, and it explains why the conflict-of-interest banner on the company article will not be removed.

== Declaration of interest ==
Molecular Reality Corporation declares the following interests in the content of Molecupedia.
* It is the subject of the article [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] and of most of the articles linked from it, including those on its instruments, games, characters, quests and websites.
* It wrote and published every page of Molecupedia, including this one, and every page was produced at its expense.
* Molecupedia appears at all four addresses of the company's website: molecularreality.com, epicquest.bio, demonpore.com and keltar.ai.
* Its founder and chief executive is [[Kent Kemmish]]. Its co-founder is [[Charles Gaillard]].
* [[George Church]], [[Esther Dyson]] and [[UPMC Enterprises]] have invested in it, and it has raised about $1.6 million in total. Church was the first formal member of its scientific advisory board.
* It writes the articles about other companies in its field, among them the makers of commercial nanopore sequencers, and about the companies that build artificial intelligence models for science, which its own front page described in August 2026 as "racing to build the brain".
* It writes the seven news publications that many articles cite, from ''The Picoampere'' to ''Ludicious''.
* Its mascot, [[Keltar]], a felt puppet, narrates the company's guide for visitors, which is the public source the company article cites most often.
Molecupedia carries no advertising and sells nothing. The company has no other financial interest in it to declare.

== Rules for the company's own articles ==
Since the conflict cannot be avoided, articles written under it follow five rules.

Every fact about the company has a source: a public page, a video, a commit, a patent, a domain record or the company's records. A claim that could not be checked was left out.

Unflattering facts stay. The article on the company reports that its patent lapsed in February 2025 when a maintenance fee went unpaid, that its own reader had been "Designed. Simulated." and not yet built, that none of its sliding-occlusion work had appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and that its guide describes "one instrument in one lab". Removing such facts to improve the company's image is not allowed.

Promotional language is quoted, never adopted. The company's description of itself as "building the world's first utility-scale molecular sensing infrastructure" appears in quotation marks, attributed to its About page and followed by {{Tl|Peacock inline}}.

Other companies are treated fairly. Articles about competitors must be accurate enough that the people who work there would recognize their company, and must make no claim about their finances or legal affairs that is not well documented in public sources. The company's quiz game calls one of them "our kin-spirit in many ways".

Only five people connected with the company are named: its two founders and three investors. Everyone else who has built its instruments, software and games is credited by role.

== The banner ==
The article on the company carries {{Tl|Conflict of interest}}, which states that a major contributor "appears to have a close connection with its subject". The banner stays for as long as the company is the article's author, publisher and subject. Since October 25, 2026, that article has been the front page of the company's websites, so the banner is the first thing a visitor reads. The question has been discussed at [[Talk:Molecular Reality Corporation]].

== Paid editing ==
Wikipedia's terms of use require anyone paid for their contributions to disclose their employer, client and affiliation. Every page on Molecupedia was written for Molecular Reality Corporation and paid for by it. This page is the disclosure.

== See also ==
* [[Molecupedia:Neutral point of view]]
* [[Molecupedia:About]]
* [[Molecupedia:General disclaimer]]