Hello,
I am a participant in WikiProject Medicine on English Wikipedia and know about this case. I also have talked to the researcher who published this paper since its publication.
Lots of people have lots of objections to Wikipedia. In my opinion, the study itself is correct for what it reports, but no newspaper or other media understands what the study is saying and they are reporting all kinds of silly things. Here is the discussion of this paper in WikiProject Medicine - < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_48...
That is in the archives, so if someone has more to say, post to the main forum.
While I think this study is being perceived negatively, I appreciate any research team who does any kind of research on Wikipedia's health content. Here is a list of what has been done: < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Research_public...
@geni - "The problem is the number of doctors who use wikipedia."
I disagree. I feel that the problem is that for all of history there has never been health information accessible to doctors and patients. Wikipedia at least says that people should have health information, whereas every government and health organization in the world (NIH, NHS, WHO and the rest) are still saying "Not yet, it is not important, nobody wants this" and not providing any alternative. There are no alternatives or competitors to Wikipedia for what it does, so of course doctors use it. The problem is that no one else thinks doctors need ready access to good information right now, and Wikipedia is just doing the best it can to meet the existing demand that is otherwise ignored.
@Todd Allen - "ask your doctor" should always be the end of the process."
The number of people how have as much access to their doctors as they wish is definitely not more than 20% of the English speaking world and the reality is probably closer to 2-3% of people. Doctors simply do not have more than minutes to answer questions and many people would like to study for hours over their lifetimes. Referring people to doctors ignores the problem that people do not get as much access to healthcare as they would like, and doctors are not ready to provide health information on demand. At the same time, patients are being encouraged to make more health decisions with their doctors, but not given educational resources to help them make those decisions.
I wish there were enough doctors, and people should try hard to ask them lots of questions, but something more is needed too.
yours,
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, "Don't diagnose yourself" is just generally good advice. Even if the medical information you have is accurate, there might be other possible causes or factors that need to be considered.
Internet information, Wikipedia or otherwise, might be a good place to get things to ask your doctor about, but "ask your doctor" should always be the end of the process.
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 05/27/2014 10:18 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
From what I remember from it is that what is called Osteopathy in the UK isn't the same thing that's called Osteopathy in the US
Ah, that explains it. :-)
Regardless, "Don't diagnose yourself with Wikipedia" seems to be infinitely good advice, regardless of any hyperbole about article
accuracy!
-- Marc
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