1. Wikipedia as a source of scientific
information
Tim Vickers
Washington University, St Louis
Michael Laurent
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
2. Scientific literacy is low
• 60% believe they have not eaten GM foods.
• 54% heard "nothing at all" about nanotechnology.
• 70% either "not very clear" or "not clear at all" on difference
between reproductive and therapeutic cloning.
• 9% can say what a stem cell is
National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
• Funding dependent on public support
• Issues hard to discuss without background
• Evolution
• Animal testing
• Viruses and antibiotics
• Internet and TV sources of science information
3. Wikipedia: a prominent information source
• 4th most-accessed website
• Search engines
• Wikipedia has high visibility
• 3,600 keywords, in first
10 results in 80% of
cases
• Free access.
• Over 270 languages
Laurent MR, Vickers TJ. “Seeking health information
online: does Wikipedia matter?” J. Am. Med. Inform.
Assoc. (2009)
4. H1N1 influenza
Swine influenza article access
• WHO announcement 1400000
about H1N1 S-OIV on 24th 1200000
April. 1.3 million per day
Article requests per day
1000000
• Traffic spiked on 29th April, 800000
levelled off at 30,000 per
600000
day.
400000
• By end of May total of 6.3
200000
million readers.
0
• In June 2009 vitiligo was April May
most-accessed medicine
article, with 74,000 hits
per day.
5. Up-to-date: “2009 swine flu outbreak”
• Created April 25th.
• One day later, article contained:
• 22,000 words and 44 references
• Mostly news articles
• Rapidly updated:
• Dawood et. al. “Emergence of a novel
swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus
in humans.” NEJM on-line May 7.
• Cited in article on same day. 2009 H1N1 S-OIV
• Articles as summaries of the literature.
• Puts current research into context.
6. Coverage in depth
• About 18,000 medicine articles and 19,000 cell biology articles
• Range from 2-acetolactate mutase, adipokines to asprin
• Articles on every enzyme, most human genes, ncRNAs
• Approx 60-70% of diseases have articles (ICD-10 codes)
• News media main
alternative to internet
• Difficult to treat science
in depth
• What does H1N1
mean? What is a
pandemic? What are
“flu-like symptoms”?
7. Articles form a web of information
• Blue links to another article, defines terms, gives background.
8. Articles form a web of information
Swine influenza
Virus 2009 flu pandemic
RNA virus Influenza Influenza pandemic
RNA Influenza vaccine 1918 flu pandemic
Immune system
Vaccine
Paul Ehrlich Vaccination policy
Influenza treatment
Amantadine Antiviral drug
9. Articles for a diverse audience
• Detailed background or Introduction to genetics
technical terms discussed in
sub-articles.
DNA
• Each article part of a nested
hierarchy, general to technical
content.
DNA structure
• Readers find level they can
understand.
• Includes even technical and DNA supercoil
specialist topics.
Linking number
10. Articles vary in size and quality
• Majority of articles are short, but important topics discussed
in more depth. Quality versus importance of
Molecular and cell biology articles
• "Influenza“, good, 7,900 words.
• "M2 protein“, poor, 385 words.
• Studies assessing accuracy
• Giles “Internet encyclopaedias go head to
head” Nature, 2005
• Devgan et al “Wiki-Surgery? Internal
validity of Wikipedia as a medical and
surgical reference” J Am Coll Surg, 2007
(35 articles)
• Clansom et al “Scope, Completeness, and
Accuracy of Drug Information in
Wikipedia.” Ann Pharmacother, 2008 (80
questions)
11. Summary
• High visibility
• Rapidly updated
• Interlinked articles
• Background
• Nested structure
• Articles generally accurate, but many short or incomplete
• Expert contributors needed
