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“…Most [medical] articles in Wikipedia contained ‘many errors.’ "

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Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, contains errors in nine out of 10 of its health entries, and should be treated with caution, a study has said.

Scientists in the U.S. compared entries about conditions such as heart disease, lung cancer, depression and diabetes with peer-reviewed medical research.

They said most articles in Wikipedia contained "many errors."

The study did not account for Wikipedia leaving out important information.

 

Full article - http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27586356

 

If medical information is this bad, what about something much less important?

Anyone care to run a similar review for numismatics?

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"They printed off the articles on 25 April 2012 to analyse, and discovered that 90% of the entries made statements that contradicted latest medical research."

 

I wouldn't be surprised if printed materials from bound encyclopedias would have similar rates of entries with mis-statements about the "latest medical research." And, as a professional statistician, I have to say that them sampling 10 articles and finding some menial error in 9 is FAR from the "90% of entries are wrong" take away message that most people will get from that poorly written "news" article.

 

Worthless media hype. Did you even read the entire article Roger, and look at how pathetic their methodology was? A litany of doctors telling everyone how they are the only ones who know what's best for patients. Hmmm...there's a reason why they call it "practicing" medicine.

 

Cheers.

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To me, it doesn't matter if the subject matter is posted on Wiki, the Wall Street Journal or the outhouse door. I've yet to read about any survey that wasn't published with an ulterior motive. If I wanted to prove that dog doo-doo was good for your health, I'm sure I could find someone, somewhere, who would gladly accept a few million dollars to prove it.

 

Chris

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Yep. Read the whole thing. It's an indicator, and not something to become defensive about.

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Wikipedia is definitely ripe with misinformation, disinformation, and intentionally and unintentionally excluded information. I just looked at the page for "Coin Grading". One thing that I noticed right off the bat is that the article mentions the plus grading that NGC and PCGS has, but it doesn't mention star designations. This is mostly like just unintentionally excluded information though.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_grading

 

And there are other things the article could mention but doesn't. One part says, "Series-specific strike distinctions such as FSB (Fully Split Bands) for Mercury and Roosevelt Dimes..." but stops there. For Roosevelt dimes, it doesn't mention that NGC and PCGS designates this at "FT" and "FB", respectively, and it could have differentiated between the TPGs offical definitions. But if the article really went into every single detail like that, it would be a novel.

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Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, contains errors in nine out of 10 of its health entries, and should be treated with caution, a study has said.

Scientists in the U.S. compared entries about conditions such as heart disease, lung cancer, depression and diabetes with peer-reviewed medical research.

They said most articles in Wikipedia contained "many errors."

The study did not account for Wikipedia leaving out important information.

 

Full article - http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27586356

 

If medical information is this bad, what about something much less important?

Anyone care to run a similar review for numismatics?

 

And the scary fact is that I know of SEVERAL medical students who use despite its obvious problems. No wonder there is so much malpractice.

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Here's something else from the "coin grading" page:

 

"The value of coins depends on their rarity."

 

Well, that's true sometimes. But not always. A coin might be extremely rare, but if there's no market interest in it, it won't command much value. So I don't know. Is that statement incorrect?

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It's easy to access and can be a useful pointer to substantive information; I got the impression that the original study was performed because some medical students stated they relied on it.

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Hey RWB,

Wikipedia can be truly horrific when trying to find accurate information on just about any topic. The first thing one of my professors told my class on my first day of graduate school was "Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable academic source, so don't even think about using or citing it." She was right. I've found so many inaccuracies on almost every page pertaining to an Ottoman Empire topic, mostly consisting of using old information that has been rendered obsolete with the opening of the Ottoman Archives to scholars in the beginning of the 21st Century. And that's just my area of expertise. I'm sure the same thing is true in other parts of Wikipedia as well. The problem is that ANYONE can edit the thing, from a PhD to a 14 year old kid joking around to any number of social/political crackpots. It can be good for a simple overview, but if you need an accurate and in depth knowledge of a topic, there are many better sources out there.

 

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Yep. A few years ago I was chatting with one of the curators at Dumbarton Oaks, and she was complaining about the misinformation people came in with and that many attributed the information "Wonderful Wiki."

 

Some months ago I mentioned on here that I would not allow any student to cite Wikidoodle as a source -- got lots of complaints that I was being too harsh.... Scholarship and meaningful insights take much time to mature, and volunteers - no matter how well intentioned - do not usually have the dedication or time.

 

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Yeah the more that I look just at the "coin grading" page alone, the more errors I see. The second sentence says,

 

"The grading of a coin includes the analysis of several criteria, the most important being the quality, the rarity, the interest factor, and the liquidity factor."

 

The "the rarity, the interest factor, and the liquidity factor" has nothing to do with "the grading of a coin" as far as I know. It fails to mention anything about surface preservation, strike, luster, and eye-appeal.

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I wonder if ANA, ANS, or one of the big coin companies would sponsor solid, basic level numismatic articles on wikidoodle?

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It's easy to access and can be a useful pointer to substantive information; I got the impression that the original study was performed because some medical students stated they relied on it.

 

:signofftopic:

 

Speaking of med students, has anyone heard from Hoot? I'm sure he's out of school, now, but it would be really nice to hear from him.

 

Chris

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Hoot should still be in the Army Medical Corps....maybe a colonel by now?

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On the medical "arts" in general have you checked statistics on estimates of unnecessary surgery or excessive, inappropriate and questionable medications prescribed? Not terribly inspiring from what I have seen. And whether people believe marijuana has medical value anywhere near the percentages it is granted a prescription for a patient that needs it, smoking in general was virtually unpracticed until the 1600s and whoever were any given societies moral arbiters, generally considered it a very bad practice. Fast forward to the latter half of the 20th century when medical science finally started issuing official health warnings. So those who think doctors tend to be more than half thoroughly competent, refusing to prescribe products that pander to, coddle, or enable patients and keep them in conditions that could readily be worked out with better lifestyle, diets, exercise or abstemiousness may not be on top of the realities of the system. But maybe I have just seen more of that than others. There are good ones that are cutting edge in terms of all the research and recommendations. Which reminds me, I need to take a two mile hike before the coin club meeting tonight.

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Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, contains errors in nine out of 10 of its health entries, and should be treated with caution, a study has said.

Scientists in the U.S. compared entries about conditions such as heart disease, lung cancer, depression and diabetes with peer-reviewed medical research.

They said most articles in Wikipedia contained "many errors."

The study did not account for Wikipedia leaving out important information.

 

Full article - http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27586356

 

If medical information is this bad, what about something much less important?

Anyone care to run a similar review for numismatics?

I don’t know about running a review but the numismatic material

on wikipedia runs the gamut from reasonably correct to absolutely

worthless.

 

 

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Another problem...

 

What happens when the experts are incorrect or too vague? I mean, just because you're an expert in a field, that doesn't mean you can't make mistakes or word something in a way that isn't technically accurate.

 

For example, the "coin grading" wiki page references an article from Douglas Winter.

 

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_grading#Components

Referenced from here: http://www.coinresource.com/articles/coin_grading_criteria.htm

 

You can see that the first sentence is just copy and pasted into the Wiki article. It says:

 

"A "grade" is a shorthand devised by numismatists to indicate the appearance of a coin."

 

Ignoring the somewhat confusing nature of the wording in the beginning of the sentence (...a grade is a shorthand devised...) I would say the its content is way too vague. Because, of course, a coin's grade is only partially determined by its appearance. The next sentence is a little more accurate:

 

"There are generally five main components which determine a coin's grade: strike, surface preservation, luster, coloration and eye appeal."

 

I do not consider myself as an expert. And who am I to really argue with Mr. Winter? However, it is difficult for me to ignore such a vague sentence like this.

 

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Yep. Read the whole thing. It's an indicator, and not something to become defensive about.

 

If you read the whole story (I mean, the actual PDF full article, not just the BBC spin of it) then you know that they only included 2 reviewers for each of the Wikipedia articles. Even those two reviewers couldn't agree on which statements in the article were concordant or discordant for the 10 different articles (Table 3 of the article). Not to mention, the reviewers were described in the Methods (p. 369) as:

 

"Each reviewer was an internal medicine resident or rotating

intern at the time of the assignment. This arrangement

created redundancy, giving the study 2 independent

reviewers for each article. Also, by using physicians as

reviewers, we ensured a baseline competency in medical

literature interpretation and research."

(bold and underline for emphasis)

 

-----------------------------------------------------------

 

Now let me tell you, I work as a researcher in one of the largest hospitals in the USA, employing more than 3,500 physicians and with hundreds of residents. Physicians are NOT trained in research methods, and residents and interns know next to nothing about cutting edge and "up to date" clinical practices.

 

The methodology is so poor in the article and so poorly written that I'm tempted to write a opinion debunking it to the journal -- but alas, I have better things to do than try to debunk every ridiculous poorly written article in some 4th tier medical journal.

 

Cheers.

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I wonder if ANA, ANS, or one of the big coin companies would sponsor solid, basic level numismatic articles on wikidoodle?

 

Roger, I think you are being quite presumptuous and condescending. The numismatic articles in Wikipedia are actually quite high level quality compared to many other topics. One editor there (Wehwalt) has spent years getting articles up to "Featured Article" status. Yes, they are not as encyclopedic as a book for each issue can be, but they are quite high quality and informative...and well cited.

 

For those who don't know, in the upper right hand corner of every Wikipedia article you can gauge the quality of an article based on Wiki editor reviews. If you see a star it is considered a "featured article" and is of the highest quality on Wikipedia in terms of completeness, citations, scholarship, etc. I'm sure if you nit-pick you can still find a word here or there that you disagree with, but in general the quality is high.

 

A few examples:

 

Barber Coinage

Walking Liberty Half Dollar

Winged Liberty (Mercury) Dime

 

These are just a few...

 

The full list of "featured articles" of numismatic nature can be found on this page by scrolling down to "Numismatics." They currently include:

 

Numismatics

Barber coinage · Oliver Bosbyshell · Buffalo nickel · Columbian half dollar · Draped Bust dollar · Eisenhower dollar · Elgin, Illinois, Centennial half dollar · Flowing Hair dollar · Flying Eagle cent · Franklin half dollar · Gobrecht dollar · Gold dollar · Indian Head eagle · Indian Head gold pieces · Isabella quarter · Jefferson nickel · Kennedy half dollar · Liberty Head nickel · Lincoln cent · Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar · Mercury dime · Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar · Morgan dollar · New Orleans Mint · Nickel (United States coin) · Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar · Peace dollar · Saint-Gaudens double eagle · Sacagawea dollar · Seated Liberty dollar · Shield nickel · Standing Liberty quarter · Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar · Three-cent nickel · Three-dollar piece · Trade dollar (United States coin) · Turban Head eagle · Twenty-cent piece (United States coin) · Two-cent piece (United States) · United States Assay Commission · United States Bicentennial coinage · Walking Liberty half dollar · Washington quarter

 

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On the medical "arts" in general have you checked statistics on estimates of unnecessary surgery or excessive, inappropriate and questionable medications prescribed? Not terribly inspiring from what I have seen. And whether people believe marijuana has medical value anywhere near the percentages it is granted a prescription for a patient that needs it, smoking in general was virtually unpracticed until the 1600s and whoever were any given societies moral arbiters, generally considered it a very bad practice. Fast forward to the latter half of the 20th century when medical science finally started issuing official health warnings. So those who think doctors tend to be more than half thoroughly competent, refusing to prescribe products that pander to, coddle, or enable patients and keep them in conditions that could readily be worked out with better lifestyle, diets, exercise or abstemiousness may not be on top of the realities of the system. But maybe I have just seen more of that than others. There are good ones that are cutting edge in terms of all the research and recommendations. Which reminds me, I need to take a two mile hike before the coin club meeting tonight.

 

Nutmeg, you are spot on! Good post! (thumbs u

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Everything in wiki has become a sort of "consensus opinion". If it needed to be accurate to have value then it would have no value at all. But the power of wiki is its ability to provide a broad and deep overview of any subject. Its value is its ability to provide an accurate and fast perspective of things.

 

Wiki is one of the most powerful tools available today.

 

It's always wrong. Until recently it said modern coins aren't collectable and pyramids were built with ramps. Believers have as much impact on everything as they ever did and wiki shows it. Beliefs drive human behavior and what appears in wiki.

 

 

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"Everything in wiki has become a sort of "consensus opinion""

 

I think that's one of the problems with Wiki. It's not supposed to be an opinion. Wiki calls itself an "encyclopedia". In mean, it's "Wikipedia", not "Wikipinon"

 

But of course some things are always going to speculative, such as your example of the pyramids. As far as I know, there are no primary sources on how the pyramids in Egypt were constructed. So archaeologist can only speculate how they were built based on conjecture.

 

But I don't think there is any reason to think that mostly factual numismatic WIki articles can't exist. (Disregarding the philosophical nature of fact and truth that is, see Descartes). And I say "mostly" factual because there are always going to be things in numismatics that are speculative, i.e. who took the 1933 Double Eagles? However, we can infer that the person/s who swiped the 1933 Double Eagles from the mint must have had direct or indirect access to the coins. A person who did not have any form of access to the coins could not have taken them.

 

14ui0dh.png

...By the way, I can't help but to notice the blaring similarities between our avatar images and signatures; Egyptian-inspired avatars and Latin signatures. What are the chances of that?

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...By the way, I can't help but to notice the blaring similarities between our avatar images and signatures; Egyptian-inspired avatars and Latin signatures. What are the chances of that?

 

Latin is our closest connection tothe Egyptians since Greek is so foreign to most English speakers.

 

As far as I know, there are no primary sources on how the pyramids in Egypt were constructed.

 

This is true only per Egyptological interpretation which might be shown to be highly mystical in time.

 

I think that's one of the problems with Wiki. It's not supposed to be an opinion. Wiki calls itself an "encyclopedia". In mean, it's "Wikipedia", not "Wikipinon"

 

Herein lies the root of the problem. Almost all "truth" is much more about opinion and perspective than it is fact. We all share a common perspective derived from language and expressed as "scientific understanding" but there is far more unknown than what's known. This makes "knowledge" little more than opinion. This is how wiki said for years that modern coins aren't collectable; this was established fact among experts. Indeed, Madison Avenue used pictures of old silver coins (usually dated 1964) in advertising right up until the '90's. The consensus opinion was there weren't any coins made after 1964.

 

All true knowledge is visceral and only scientific theory has validity beyond this. But scientific theory includes almost no more knowledge about gravity than was known to the pyramid builders.

 

It's virtually impossible to make true statements that are comprehensive about even simple processes or things. There are limitless exception and all statements depend on definitions in fluid language.

 

Wiki actually does a superb job of overcoming the shortfalls in language. But they're still always wrong. And even when they're right definitions are fluid.

 

But I don't think there is any reason to think that mostly factual numismatic WIki articles can't exist.

 

Coins should be easier to get right than many things (it might be why I'm drawn to them so much), but the same considerations apply. This is related to why I'm always seeking better definitions for terms and standardization in grading and processes.

 

 

 

 

edited to add- but don't take my word for it. ;)

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