The Annals of Pharmacotherpy (Vol. 43, No. 11, pp. 1912-1913): “Approximately 80% of pharmacists use the Internet to obtain drug information.1 Wikipedia, often found at the top of Internet search results, is a free-access, collaborative, online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.2 Incidents of vandalism have occurred, since the site allows anyone to contribute. For example, an incident occurred in which a fake biography was created as a joke to implicate prominent writer and journalist John Seigenthaler for the assassination of John F Kennedy. It took about 4 months until the fake biography was detected and deleted by Wikipedia.3 Although Wikipedia does have an internal quality review, the ability of internal editors to find and correct erroneous information may not be timely. As reported by Clauson et al.,4 the information found on Wikipedia may not be complete and accurate, especially in regard to drug information. Published data regarding pharmacists’ use of Wikipedia to obtain drug information is lacking. Therefore, the objective of this study was to measure pharmacists’ use and perception of Wikipedia for obtaining drug information.” – This letter to the editor discusses the results of a questionnaire given to pharmacists regarding the use of Wikipedia for drug information. I was disturbed to read that 28% of respondents reported using Wikipedia for drug information. Strange that it doesn’t appear on any of my drug information resources lists, and never will. I expect better from pharmacists.
I occasionally use it but would take the info there with a pinch of salt. Also I might be inclined to check if there was anything there that I could correct or improve on. Unless we pharmacists take an interest in Wikipedia it will be guaranteed to include errors. It always will anyway, but at least we could help to minimise them. Alternatively it would need a disclaimer on the top of each article. Better still if we could have a ‘pharmacist verified’ stamp of approval, and a locked page.
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I agree with Pauline that Wikipedia is useful for background reference materials. Just as I would never risk a patient’s health with medicines information from the Encyclopaedia Britanica, I wouldn’t risk it with Wikipedia. – and I believe there’s some research comparing the two?
One should know the distinction between the quality of different grades of resources and how to interpret the appropriately. 28% might be fine for a casual query of what incretin does, but not for the incidence of side-effects of sitagliptin.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by jfahrni: Pharmacist perception of Wikipedia as a drug information resource http://ff.im/-bl9n7…
You point is well taken and the reason I don’t use Wikipedia for any type of drug related information. The information simply can’t be verified accurate without comparing it to something else first and if I have to verify the info somewhere else, I might as well start there first. We have too many great resources on the list before Wikipedia. Of course, mileage may vary.
I think your comparison of Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britanica is pretty accurate. As I mentioned on Paulines comments, I believe we just have too many readily available references at our finger tips to use Wikipedia. As I said, just my opinion.