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 ... _Wikipedia
>
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 ... blications
>
@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,
