Don’t trust ‘inaccurate’ and ‘harmful’ Dr Wikipedia
pharmafile | May 28, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | American Osteopathic Association, online, wikimedia, wikipedia
Doctors are warning that patients and members of their own profession are increasingly turning to Wikipedia for medical information, but that most of its material is wrong.
This is according to new research by US doctors published this week in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, which finds that nine in ten medical entries on Wikipedia are inaccurate.
The authors are warning that diagnosing yourself on the internet could now be harmful, given the level of misinformation.
The online encyclopaedia is set up as a charity and asks for donations from the public. It was established as an open access platform, meaning it can be edited by anybody.
But there are checks and balances and many volunteers from the medical profession check the pages for inaccuracies, says Wikimedia UK, a medical arm of the site.
Despite these checks the open access nature has ‘raised concern’ among doctors about its reliability, as it is the sixth most popular site on the internet according to the authors in the journal.
And it is not just patients who are at risk – up to 70% of doctors and medical students use the online tool, they add. The 10 researchers across America looked at online articles for 10 of the ‘most costly’ conditions in the US, including osteoarthritis, back problems and asthma.
They printed off the articles on 25 April 2012 to analyse, and discovered that 90% of the entries made statements that contradicted latest medical research.
Lead author Dr Robert Hasty, of the Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine in North Carolina, says: “While Wikipedia is a convenient tool for conducting research, from a public health standpoint patients should not use it as a primary resource because those articles do not go through the same peer-review process as medical journals.”
Hasty adds the ‘best resource’ for people worried about their health was their doctor. Stevie Benton at Wikimedia UK, says there are a ‘number of initiatives’ in place to help improve the articles, “especially in relation to health and medicine”.
Benton adds Wikipedia was also working with Cancer Research UK to review cancer-related articles by clinical researchers and writers to keep them accurate and up-to-date.
But he says that it is “crucial that anybody with concerns over their health contacts their GP as a first point of call. Wikipedia, like any encyclopaedia, should not take the place of a qualified medical practitioner”.
A growing trend
But more people seem to be turning to the site for health information, and this may be difficult to manage. In January a new report from the IMS Institute found that Wikipedia is the leading single source of healthcare information for patients and providers.
According to its study 50% of surveyed doctors who use the internet have consulted Wikipedia for information, especially on specific conditions.
The most searched for health-related topics on the free, publicly-edited site was the term ‘tuberculosis’, which received 4.2 million page views. This was closely followed by searchers for Crohn’s disease, pneumonia, multiple sclerosis and diabetes.
The IMS report made no mention of the accuracy of the site’s offerings, and many in the media covered its findings without discussing any problems with errors.
Ben Adams
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