Study: Wikipedia accurate, but poorly written source for cancer info Options

[Newsfeed]

<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />Cancer Information on [b]Wikipedia Is Accurate, but Not Very Readable[/b]
Newswise (press release)
Newswise — It is a commonly held that information on Wikipedia should not be trusted, since it is written and edited by non-experts without professional ...

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[thekohser]

Working link.

It is a commonly held that information on Wikipedia should not be trusted...

[Milton Roe]

Working link.

It is a commonly held that information on Wikipedia should not be trusted...

Thanks for that-- that link works for me for the first time. None of the others I tried (about six of them now here on WR) worked, and obviously I'm not the only one. Could the mods please just delete all those other newsfeed-started threads (which are duplicates), and leave THIS one?

For both web sites, inaccuracies were extremely rare: less than two percent of the information on either site was discordant with that presented in the textbooks. There was no difference between the sites in depth of coverage. Both sites poorly discussed controversial aspects of cancer care. But the PDQ site was notably more readable: whereas PDQ was written at a level suitable for a 9th grader, Wikipedia was written at a level suitable for a college student. This difference was highly statistically significant.

Wikipedia has never really discussed what reading level it's aimed at in its general articles (obviously we're not talking about the high-powered math stuff). 9th grade? 12th grade?

This has gotten me interested in what words the reviewers decided would not be understood by your average 9th-grader, but that a college student had a good shot at. "Autofellatio" anyone?

[CharlotteWebb]

Guess they could try the "Simple English" WP, but it probably would err too far in the opposite direction.

Obviously I don't know the exact methodology of TJU's study but as they did say "standard algorithms" it couldn't have differed materially from mine. See I found a page which purports to calculate readability of inputted text based on five (apparently standard) algorithms:
http://www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/

For amusement purposes only I asked it to compare the text of the Cancer article vs. a sample of my own shittily turgid prose. In both cases the selection began at the first paragraph and ended before the ==Notes== section.

I'd hesitate to put much faith in these algorithms as they gave me the following results (higher numbers meaning "harder to read"):

For the Cancer article:
13.40 15.90 14.40 12.10 13.00 (average 13.76)

For the paintball thing:
14.30 15.90 13.20 13.10 14.80 (average 14.26)

I accidentally out loud.

[sic]

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb: Wed 2nd June 2010, 12:28pm

[ulsterman]

Obviously I don't know the exact methodology of TJU's study but they did say "standard algorithms" it couldn't have differed materially from mine. See I found a page which purports to calculate readability of inputted text based on five (apparently standard) algorithms:

These algorithms are all based on things like word length and sentence length. They take no account of the difficulty of the concepts or the clarity of the writing. To be fair, these are of course far harder to measure. I believe that people have poked fun at these readability analyses by pointing out that textbooks on advanced physics can apparently have better scores than popular novels. (Of course, some popular novelists are completely unreadable!)

[Newsfeed]

[url="http://news.google.com/news/url?fd=R&sa=T&url=http://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/article/study_says_wikipedia_accurate_but_badly_written_04634633333/&usg=AFQjCNHB2qLimvCN4JDRuY66N3cOvih4Gg"][img]http://nt2.ggpht.com/news/tbn/_maUZmphMx0z_M/6.jpg[/img]
College News[/url]
<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />[b]Wikipedia accurate, but densely written, says new study[/b]
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[dogbiscuit]

College News
Keep it clean. Any post with language that we consider obscene, vulgar, lewd or sexually-oriented will be automatically deleted. ...

<a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&ncl=djGLX0zezfnoS-M" target="_blank"></a>

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Pity they can't automatically delete Commons then

[ulsterman]

Pity they can't automatically delete Commons then

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikia_Girl_9.jpg
(A "Wikia girl"? Actually, please don't delete that one. Me likey.)

The admired photo is actually on Commons, not Meta.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikia_Girl_9.jpg

I suspect she's under 18.

[Emperor]

They must not have bothered to read Lung Cancer.

Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth may lead to metastasis, which is the invasion of adjacent tissue and infiltration beyond the lungs.

Second sentence is an error, contradicting Wikipedia's own definition of metastasis.

[Milton Roe]

They must not have bothered to read Lung Cancer.

Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth may lead to metastasis, which is the invasion of adjacent tissue and infiltration beyond the lungs.

Second sentence is an error, contradicting Wikipedia's own definition of metastasis.

Yep. Moreover, "cancer" is not simply "uncontrolled cell growth." That's the definition of "tumor," and some tumors are not cancerous (malignant). To be cancerous, a tumor must ALSO be invasive (at mnimum) and usually (though not always) capable of metastasizing also. It's not just "growth" that does this, as the first part of the second sentence wrongly suggests. Invasiveness and ability to metastasize are separate properties that are different from mere ability to grow and grow.

For example, people have occasionally been relieved of non-cancerous tumors weighing over a hundred pounds (growing in the abdomen, for example). After removal, they were fine. And as another example, there are a few rare cancers which invade but never seem to metastasize. Physicist Richard Feynman died from one of these. It kept invading until removing it fouled up his kidney function and he died. Had his doctors kept better track of him (perhaps he never went for checkups often enough) they could probably have prevented that.

Gak, WP screwed up that article.

[Emperor]

The sad thing is that people could be dying because Wikipedia screws up their thinking so much that doctors have to devote resources to deprogramming and reeducating them.

Not to mention Rabies which still gives people the idea that they don't have to worry about it until before the onset of "severe symptoms".

Rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms.

Eh sounds like that bite is no big deal as long as you see the doc as soon as you start to feel weird.