MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 2/18/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
George Chriss wrote:
If the AMA does provide such recommendations. Having a vandal change
specific dosage amounts is a scary prospect, as some people may actually trust our information at face value.
Seems to me that having people trust information from Wikipedia about drug dosages at face value _at all_ is the scary prospect. I wouldn't bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against outside sources first, whether the article's history showed vandalism or not. We already have medical disclaimers specifically intended to cover this, IMO we shouldn't have to go to great lengths to protect idiots against themselves.
I wonder if you think the same thing when someone dies because they trusted the info.
I would be thinking "Darwin Award, Special Wikipedia Category". Of course then we'd have the all-important [[List of Darwin Award winners who died from trusting Wikipedia]].
:-)
But to be serious, I think it's reasonable to be ruthless about sourcing and quoting this kind of info, and deleting if none is found. If a pharma company recommends a dosage on their website, and we phrase our text as "As of 2007, BigPharmaCo's website recommends 75mg [1]", then we're just transcribing what is already on the net, not playing doctor. (It would be ultra-clever to develop some kind of tool that tracks these, and flags the WP text for review if the website changes.)
Stan