Wikipedia at the NIH

Earlier this week the National Institutes of Health kicked off a collaboration with an unlikely partner -- The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia used by 300 million readers each month.

The NIH was to host a "Wikipedia Academy," at which NIH researchers would learn how to contribute to Wikipedia. Video of the event will put online for other researchers across the country -- thereby hopefully increasingly the accuracy of health information available online. The two organizations believe collaboration "will begin what is hoped to be a long-term dialogue aimed at improving public knowledge about health, science, and medicine."

A good idea, but I wonder if there will be a lot of takers, considering the demands on researchers' time is so high already. Would you consider being a volunteer contributor to Wikipedia? Is this a good way to improve public knowledge about health, science and medicine?

-Alla Katsnelson, news editor, The Scientist

While we are all stretched for time, but contibuting to Wikipedia has many intrinsic rewards. First, it allow a person to make a direct contribution the the store of human knowledge (and we'd all like to do that from time to time). Second, it allows a contibtuor to help frame the dialog around a given subject and that can give that contributor all kinds of professional advantages. Finally, making quality contributions to Wikipedia can confer a certain amount of status on the contributor, at least in some communities.

I would only qualify to contribute in VERY limited areas but, that said, yes, I would do it.

Researchers whose work and careers are funded by the taxpayer have at least a moral obligation to share their knowledge with those who made their work possible. Contributing expert content to Wikipedia seems like one easy yet high-visibility way to do this. Not many people read PNAS but we all use Wikipedia from time to time. I hope other research agencies around the world will emulate NIH.

Considering how vast a store of information (and misinformation) Wikipedia has become for non-scientists (and non-specialists) hoping to learn about something outside their direct experience, I think it's a much-needed service to the human condition that Wikipedia be vetted by professionals. My organization routinely consults Wikipedia for "background information" that we then seek to confirm with peer-reviewed publications, so anything that improves the veracity of this tool is helpful (particularly given that many other people DON'T confirm what they find - my 15-year-old daughter, for one!)

Yes, I am already a Wikipedia contributor, and I intend to increase my rate of input. As more rapid upload mechanism are deployed, worldwide awareness and education is enhanced. Widespread access to information about how the human body works in health and disease can tip the balance toward informed health care rather than automaton-like medicine of treating symptoms without thought of producing higher levels of wellness as an outcome.