Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists

in science on 2014-05-29 12:02 (#3N4)

Concerns over errors in health articles on Wikipedia have caused some scientists to warn against using the free encyclopedia to self diagnose medical conditions.

Most Wikipedia articles representing the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States contain many errors when checked against standard peer-reviewed sources. Caution should be used when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care.

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: 3, Insightful)

by spacebar@pipedot.org on 2014-05-29 17:14 (#1YQ)

Agreed. Not to mention they have one of the most anal groups of editors (the users...) of any website. While not all of these people are qualified, it seems like the ones who are are the most whiny--which is great.

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-30 12:44 (#1Z4)

I remember the days when Wikipedia was "not to be used as a reference". People still pay lip service to this principle, but increasingly I see myself and others using Wikipedia as the first go-to-place to quickly get up to speed on something unfamiliar. One can progress to more "authoritative" texts, of course, but in so many cases the Wikipedia summaries are sufficient. I actually think the new mantra could be "you can use Wikipedia for a reference and you will only be penalized for doing so if it is shown that a given Wikipedia summary was wrong."

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-30 13:38 (#1Z8)

It would, however, be nice if there were at least SOME competition in the sorta-trustworthy, sorta-authoritative, crap-free general interest information marketplace.

But you know, there just isn't. :(

WP owns that space the way that Google owns search or Facebook owns social networking. (Interestingly WP is the only one of those three that I use.)

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.