Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer?
On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC. The RfC is designed to answer the question whether Wikipedia should provide a more prominent disclaimer template for medical and health-related content, drawing readers' attention to the fact that articles' content can be changed by anyone at any time.
| “ | We all know the shortcomings of Wikipedia. The encyclopedia that anyone can edit is a frequent victim to hoaxes and trolls who litter it with misinformation that can sometime last as long as a half-decade. Most of us use it anyway.
But what if you rely on Wikipedia for medical advice? As Wikipedia exerts a growing influence on our common knowledge of medicine, some Wikipedians are wondering if the site should do more to warn users about the quality of the advice they're receiving. |
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Sampson reviewed an earlier Boston Globe article by Nathaniel P. Morris, published in November of last year and titled "New operating system: Wikipedia's role in medical education brings awesome promise—and a few risks", which detailed just how widespread use of Wikipedia for medical information is among both the general public and medical students.
As a crowdsourced work, Wikipedia already has a medical disclaimer. However, this is very much hidden away: users wishing to read it first have to click on the "Disclaimers" link present in the small print at the bottom of each Wikipedia page, and then click on the "Medical disclaimer" link at the top of that page. As a result, the medical disclaimer is typically viewed less than 100 times a day.
Sampson quoted User:SandyGeorgia, who said,
| “ | I encounter people in real life who do not understand that Wikipedia articles are not necessarily 'vetted' in any way by experts, and medical content on Wikipedia may be written by JoeBloe your next-door neighbor. | ” |
The RfC offers four options for more visible disclaimers to be added to medical articles. While there is currently a slight majority in favour of adding such a disclaimer, other Wikipedians including James Heilman, an emergency room doctor, are opposed, fearing the disclaimer might drive away editors while having little effect on reader behaviour.
An RfC wishing to institute such a highly visible change in Wikipedia would need to end in fairly clear consensus and have the benefit of broad participation, something not many policy RfCs achieve. The Wikimedia Foundation acknowledged the debate via its spokesman Jay Walsh, but did not take a side: "The outcome may be no outcome, but the Foundation recognizes that the conversation is happening," Walsh said. Even so, Sampson noted,
| “ | ... supporters hope a change can be effected before a calamitous medical error is attributed to bad information originating from Wikipedia. As one user put it: "To those who say that no real harm has ever come to anyone as a result of Wikipedia, why should we wait for an incident to happen?" | ” |