The Trouble with Wikipedia for Medical Information

The Medical Librarian of Laika's MedLibLog describes some of the pitfalls of using Wikipedia for Medical Information. Type just about any topic into Google and a Wikipedia entry will come up, and Laika discusses some indications that doctors use Wikipedia to get medical information. Although some entries are actually written by experts, anyone can write an article, and even more importantly, anyone can edit an article. Wikipedia bills itself as the "Free Encyclopedia" but is much more fluid than a standard encyclopedia. It's not that accurate information can't be found in Wikipedia, but that the potential for altering that information is very high.

Some Physicians are attempting to create community edited encyclopedias of medical information, where all authors are physicians, as a way to increase accuracy, such as Medpedia, AskDr.Wiki, and WikiSurgery.

David Rothman, author of Internet Cool Tools for Physicians, has an extensive list of medical wikis on different topics, some of which are edited by people with medical credentials, and some of which are not.