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Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists

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An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 4, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-29 16:26 (#1YP)

I read through most of that. They compare WP summaries with peer reviewed scientific journals, and find discrepancies.

What if they had compared against a print encyclopedia? Against a batch of NY Times articles? Against a stack of Dr. Oz books and videos? How would these other popular layperson resources stand up to this same scrutiny?

This seems like a stretch for attention on someone's part (the study authors or the subsequent publicizers).

Frankly I think Wikipedia does a great job of explaining most things, and completely unlike the other popular resources available to people (including most medical sites) WP cites the heck out of its claims right in the article.

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 2, Interesting)

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2014-05-30 18:07 (#1ZC)

What if you compare against what a doctor says? As much as we'd like to pretend Doctors know everything: They do not. Comparing against a source such as a peer reviewed scientific journal is going to be quite accurate..but do you look up every single answer in a book before giving one? I certainly don't, and I'm pretty sure most doctors do not either.

They make plenty of mistakes with medication and other things... So really that would be a much more fair comparison.

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2014-06-02 19:20 Interesting +1 renevith@pipedot.org

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