How Good is Wikipedia for Health Related Issues?

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I’m a fan of Wikipedia. I go there often for all kinds of information including health and medical knowledge. So I was deeply interested in a recent study about the relevance of information on Wikipedia. Often we read that info on the Internet, including Wikipedia should be considered with disdain. “It’s not worth the a paper it’s written on” was how one physician I recently saw referred to web info I brought with me. He didn’t even read it!

Well guess what?

Surprisingly, info on Wikipedia is pretty accurate, says a research team lead by Yaacov Lawrence M.D., assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. In their recent study on cancer information found on Wikipedia verses standard oncology text books, they discovered that Wikipedia scored very well in terms of accuracy.

Additionally the researchers compared the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query (PDQ) web-site as well. Dr Lawrence and his colleague Malolan Rajagopalan, a medical student from the University of Pittsburgh, started by choosing ten cancer types and selecting key factual statements for each cancer from standard medical oncology textbooks. They then compared this information both on Wikipedia and the (PDQ web-site).

For both web sites, inaccuracies were extremely rare. In fact less than two percent of the information on either site was conflicting with that presented in the medical textbooks. There was no difference between the sites in depth of coverage. However, what they did discover was that both sites inadequately discussed controversial aspects of cancer care.

Interestingly they found that the PDQ site was notably more readable. It’s written at a level suitable for a 9th graders. Wikipedia on the other hand was written at a level suitable for a college student.

Readability is of course very important and it’s not surprising that the (PDQ web-site) is more readable because of its “professional editing”; said Dr Lawrence. Wikipedia on the other hand is written by a variety of people and editing is done by its community.

The strength of Wiki is its community. Almost all of the info on it is vetted by many, many people. Those articles that are not, clearly state that they are “not complete”. The weakness of Wiki info appears to be the verbose nature of language that filters into the content as many people edit articles. Ease of readability appears to be sacrificed for content. Then again, most encyclopedias I’ve ever read all seem to be like that anyway. I think I’m OK with complex language and syntax and now reassured through Dr Lawrence’s study that I can depend on the majority of information I get through Wikipedia.

Finally I would always encourage everyone who uses the Internet for health research or for that matter, any information on any subject to ALWAYS confirm any stated facts from one source with as many other sources as you can. To be safe is better than to be sorry.

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