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.

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.