No One Ever Said You Should Rely On Wikipedia For Drug Info
from the if-you-didn't-know-that-already dept
There are a bunch of headlines today about a new study that notes that you shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for drug info that I'm sure has various Wikipedia-haters feeling good about themselves. Of course, the details of the study suggest that Wikipedia comes out of the study looking much better than you might expect.First of all, who relies on any encyclopedia for comprehensive drug information? That's not the purpose of any encyclopedia. But, more to the point, the study didn't find any errors in Wikipedia info, compared to their review of Medscape Drug Reference, a peer-reviewed site. While MDR did provide the answers to many more questions than Wikipedia, four of the answers in MDR were inaccurate, while none in Wikipedia were. The real issue was that Wikipedia's info wasn't as complete, often leading to "errors of omission." Of course, again, things aren't as bad as they seem, as the researchers noted that while watching Wikipedia entries over a 90 day period, the entries improved greatly, a process that's likely to continue.
So, basically, the study pretty much points out the obvious: you shouldn't have been relying on Wikipedia as your sole source for anything, let alone something as important as questions about pharmaceuticals you're taking. But, as a starting point that is backed up with multiple other sources, it might not be that bad. And, that's exactly what Wikipedia is designed to do.
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Lack of critical thinking
When I was writing my thesis I absolutely did use Wikipedia - because it was a great way to get an overview of opinions on a matter, find further reading, and eventually use it to help me find relevant material in the huge libraries and vast amounts of material that I had access to.
I didn't use it as a source. I used it as a tool, and it's in my bibliography as such.
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There are probably a great number of people who truly don't understand how a Wiki works. It may benefit Wikipedia, or whoever, to maybe put a warning on the top of articles....
An idea I had would be to have the color of the text change as it ages. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Black. Each step of aging takes 10 days. Of course this would have to be an option to viewing the page in all black, but it would be an interesting way to visualize how volitile the information may be.
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The point of the news stories is to inform the public that the entries in wikipedia are not comprehensive. There are alot of people that have techie friends and see them using a tool and decide that it must be the best tool. You could make the argument that darwinism will weed these people out of society, but I think we should give them a heads up anyway, with it being the holidays and all.
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The point of the news stories is to inform the public that the entries in wikipedia are not comprehensive. There are alot of people that have techie friends and see them using a tool and decide that it must be the best tool. You could make the argument that darwinism will weed these people out of society, but I think we should give them a heads up anyway, with it being the holidays and all.
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Indeed, were I a bit less sophisticated about the nomenclature, chemistry, etc. -- i.e., an average Joe consumer -- I'd have a real problem with Wiki's entries on Rx drugs, because they are written with a highly technical orientation.
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Re:
Wikipedia already asks for more citations on some articles; maybe those could stay red. Having the world's foremost expert writing the article could get it printed in black (or blue until peer reviewed).
I'm really liking this idea of colored ink on Wikipedia.
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But the key point is that you shouldn't rely on it to be accurate. Trust, but verify. As others have noted, it is an excellent starting point, even if all you get from it is a few names that you can then do more research on.
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