Study: Most Wikipedia articles about medical conditions contain errors
JONESBORO, AR (KAIT) - Doctors said relying on Wikipedia for medical information is a mistake.
A research article in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association compared Wikipedia to medical journals and found major flaws in articles regarding diabetes, high blood pressure, lung cancer and more.
People expect a simple Google search to give them a correct answer, but one local doctor said just because it's quick, does not mean it's right.
"Everybody uses Wikipedia and everybody uses Google, but it's not the place to go for your health care needs," said Dr. Shane Speights with St. Bernards Medical Center.
The research article did not give specifics but stated the biggest flaws in the Wikipedia articles were in how patients should manage and treat the medical conditions.
"If individuals start looking up high blood pressure and diabetes and start assuming that's all fact in there, that would be a mistake," Dr. Speights said.
He said people then make bad decisions based on bad medical information.
"When it comes to your health care, you want the right answer, not the quickest," Dr. Speights said.
To test the article's results, Dr. Speights looked up another major medical condition that was not included in the study: Ebola.
"I Google Ebola and the second one is Wikipedia," he said. "That's the first one people click on because they think, 'Well, it's the easiest and maybe it's the best.'"
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Study: Most Wikipedia articles about medical conditions contain errors