Wed 19 Sep 2007
The double-edged sword
Posted by Mark under Library Users
Mark Rabnett of “Shelved in the W’s” has a recent post that points out the potential danger of physicians doing “quick and dirty” Internet searches upon which to base clinical decisions. As Mark points out, many physicians have received proper training (many times from a librarian), and can use the Internet to answer clinical questions intelligently. But the publication of a “how-I-do-clinical-research-using-a-complete-sentence-I-typed-into-Yahoo” article in a peer-reviewed journal is very discouraging, and points out the importance of librarians’ training efforts. The Internet is a very powerful sword, but it cuts both ways. Does anyone have any horror stories they can share? (Please change the names to protect the guilty.)
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September 19th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
The irony of this case is that had he used his search strategy in ACP Journal Club or PubMed he would have found the same article. In PubMed he would find the ACP citation and the JAMA article within the first 20 citations. So how do you explain to someone that they are using the “wrong” resource when it works so well for them? We usually talk about being “lucky” and silently curse Yahoo! (or Google). But it’s hard to convince medical students.