Print This PageFor Health Information, Enter Wikipedia at Your Own Risk
Thanks to KevinMD for highlighting a hilarious post by anesthesiology resident Michelle Au about residents using (aka misusing) Wikipedia to look up health information.
The idea behind Wikipedia is admirable, and I think it works well in many categories - looking up places, historical facts, etc. But in the areas of health - at least in the 100 or so pages I've worked on editing - it is such fodder for commercial interests it's scary.
For example, on the Back Pain page some phrases are clearly commercial - eg. "Dr. John Keating talks about some of the ways to treat the pain in this VIDEO LINK" (links to Youtube video of a dr. talking about his approach to fixing si joint dysfunction). Other interests are presented less obviously. Dr. Sarno's approach to treating back pain used to dominate the page and still keeps popping up from time to time.
But even if one were to zealously hunt out and delete the obvious commercial plugs, there are some intrinsic problems with Wiki that will always make it unreliable for health information.
- Conflicting information. Example: the Back Pain and Low Back Pain pages give conflicting information - each presented by "authority" sources - about whether various treatments (spinal manipulation, epidural injections, acupuncture) work or not.
- Lack of detail. I don't really care about the above conflicting treatment information, because it's so high level its moot. Who cares if epidural steroids "may be" beneficial for low back pain? Patients need to know what specific back conditions the injections work for - do they work for patients with low back pain from degenerative disc disease? Do they work for low back pain from muscle strain? Otherwise, who cares.
- Poor writing. Typos, grammar problems, redundancy .... don't even get me started.
- Lack of balance. Since anyone can insert (or delete) anything at anytime, the pages often come across as ramblings rather than anything cohesive. For example, on the degenerative disc disease page, following two very high level paragraphs about the full range of surgical and non-surgical treatments, there was a third paragraph that dives deep into osteopathic treatments and why it is preferable. I fully support osteopathic treatments for low back pain, but it is given way too much weight here.
I used to be very active with helping build Wikipedia. I thought the idea of so many people who were experts in a given field contributing to make a common, free educational resource was very exciting. Now I'm just frustrated.
All IMHO.
(P.S. Just went back and fixed the Degenerative Disc Disease page - couldn't resist!)
Posted by: Stephanie
