{"id":513,"date":"2009-09-16T17:14:06","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T22:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=513"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:30:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:30:13","slug":"the-internet-cannot-replace-an-actual-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/the-internet-cannot-replace-an-actual-human\/2009\/09\/16\/","title":{"rendered":"News Flash:  The Internet Cannot Replace an Actual Human"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/09\/abbott-and-costello-whos-on-first1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-515\" title=\"abbott-and-costello-whos-on-first\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/09\/abbott-and-costello-whos-on-first-150x1501.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Interested in researching the cause of AIDS?\u00a0 Well go ahead and give NetBase Solutions&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/healthbase.netbase.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">healthBase<\/a> a try, but don&#8217;t expect much in the way of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2009\/09\/02\/netbase-thinks-you-can-get-rid-of-jews-with-alcohol-and-salt\/\" target=\"_blank\">filtering<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the most unfortunate examples is when you type in a search for &#8220;AIDS,&#8221; one of the listed causes of the disease is \u201cJew.\u201d Really. The ridiculousness continues. When you click on Jew, you can see proper \u201cTreatments\u201d for Jews, \u201cDrugs And Medications\u201d for Jews and \u201cComplications\u201d for Jews. Apparently, \u201calcohol\u201d and \u201ccoarse salt\u201d are treatments to get rid of Jews, as is Dr. Pepper!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To be fair, the site seems to have cleaned up its act quite a bit since this report &#8212; here&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/healthbase.netbase.com\/#AIDS&amp;Causes\" target=\"_blank\">example<\/a> of a search I just did.\u00a0 Most of the results are now much more plausible, but there&#8217;s still some wacky stuff there.\u00a0 HIV is the number two cause of AIDS (number <em>two?<\/em>), and number five is &#8220;Abbott&#8221; &#8212; and I don&#8217;t they&#8217;re referring to the guy up there in the baseball uniform.<\/p>\n<p>Look, I&#8217;m all for using the internet for medical information, and acknowledge I can barely function without it these days.\u00a0 But this kind of advanced search engine takes lots and lots of human oversight, and for now the swarm of medical data out there in web-land can be as misleading as it is vast.<\/p>\n<p>(Hat tip to Graeme M for the link.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interested in researching the cause of AIDS?\u00a0 Well go ahead and give NetBase Solutions&#8217; healthBase a try, but don&#8217;t expect much in the way of filtering: One of the most unfortunate examples is when you type in a search for &#8220;AIDS,&#8221; one of the listed causes of the disease is \u201cJew.\u201d Really. The ridiculousness continues. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,7,8],"tags":[44,157,285,423,503,606,839,840],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-misc","category-patient-care","tag-aids","tag-cause-of-aids","tag-dr-pepper","tag-hiv","tag-informatics","tag-medications","tag-search","tag-search-engine"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}