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Wikipedia Medical Articles Found To Have High Error Rate
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "A group of researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association found that 90% of the Wikipedia articles they sampled contained errors regarding common medical conditions. Unsurprisingly, they recommend your General Practitioner as a more reliable source, while noting, '47% to 70% of physicians and medical students admitting to using [Wikipedia] as a reference.' At issue in the study is the small sample size the researchers used: 10 medical conditions. There are also ongoing efforts to improve the quality of Wikipedia's articles. According to a Wikipedia spokesman, '... especially in relation to health and medicine.' The BBC has more approachable coverage."
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But also, Osteopathy leaps a bit toward the âoealternative medicineâ side of things, it wouldnâ(TM)t surprise me if Osteopaths have some issues with medical articles based on more traditional medicine.
Having said that, how dare these quacks question the accuracy of Wikipedia! Donâ(TM)t they know they can run the gantlet of snooty Uber Editors with âoeownership issuesâ and correct these articles themselves? Of course you can be banned doing thatâ¦
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Well, I guess it's no fucking good at all, we should kill the site, eradicate the errors and force everyone to pay bazillions for equally dubious mainstream encyclopedias or megabazillions for medical references.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Like I am going to accept wisdom from a bunch of osteopaths???
Yes, I get that no article on Wikipedia is going to be 100% accurate, but this study is just plain bunk.
First off, they mention that they had "experts" review 10 articles for the most expensive-to-treat medical issues. They have all kinds of mathematical figures, but nowhere do they actually list key things like:
- Who was it that reviewed each article?
- Were they an expert in that field, or an osteopath?
- Which "peer-reviewed sources" were they using?
- How did they determine mistakes?
None of these questions are answered in the "methods" section of their paper. Further, their OWN SOURCES dispute what they found. For instance, they link to http://jop.ascopubs.org/content/7/5/319.abstract?ijkey=428353f0b3eb338fad1bf0f79139dd275c7670fe&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha , a study that looked at cancer information on Wikipedia versus information in a maintained professional database on the same subject. What did they find?
"Conclusion: Although the wiki resource had similar accuracy and depth as the professionally edited database, it was significantly less readable. Further research is required to assess how this influences patients' understanding and retention. "
This sounds like bunk to me.
Which is why you use Wikipedia as a source aggregator rather than a direct source of correct information.
Wikipedia like an old fashion encyclopedia, isn't the end point of knowledge but the start of it.
Back in 4th grade we had to do research and using the Encyclopedia was considered a valid source... By 6th grade, after we got use to using the encyclopedia, we were taught not to use it as a valid source, but as a start of information as to help you know what you don't know.
Wikipedia isn't a trusted source for facts or details... But it is good on giving you a broad overview on the topic, so you can know what you don't know and dig further using real references. To find the truth you are looking for.
The real difference between Wikipedia vs the Encyclopedia is Wikipedia is current with a huge amount of topic , but often with fad ideas. The Encyclopedia is often has less topics and older sometime out of date information, but it more better verified for the current science of the times.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The only useful comparison would be against a print-edition encyclopedia. What percentage of medical articles in a typical encyclopedia contain errors? The other thing is, just because it contains "an error" doesn't mean it isn't useful. We get through most days with a fairly flawed view of reality (most of us anyway).
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
If you want to support a conclusion like that, here's what you have to do: have some randomly-selected GP's write wikipedia-like articles, doing no more background research than they would do for a typical patient (i.e. within the space of about 7 minutes). Then do a blinded, comparative quality study between the GP-authored articles and the real wikipedia ones.
That's what all these wikipedia-critiquing studies have in common - implicitly comparing to an ideal that does not exist. (But since everything is flawed, does that mean everything is equally flawed? No!)