Wiki Wars Is Wikipedia Reliable Information? Not in the health niche
Wikipedia is one of those 'authority sites' that many bloggers link to in their blogs, they also quote from wiki, and do their research from wiki because if anything it comes up first in the SERPs most of the time no matter what the question. Digital Assistants like Google Home, Alexa and Siri will often go straight there to answer people's questions so for some people wiki is the ONLY source of information! But is wiki reliable? Absolutely not!
**Wiki is openly editable material written by volunteers so what did you think was going to happen when there's a conflict of interest on a subject?**
- such as the health niche where it's Big Pharma vs natural medicine, or Monsanto vs traditional farming methods without chemicals, history is written by the victors - make no mistake there is an information war on out there so how exactly are you using wiki?!
Who are the 'anonymous volunteers' writing wiki content?
It admits to being written by 'anonymous volunteers' , actually it says written 'largely' by volunteers which means groups could be having their say on there too!
And I'm finding someone with an agenda who hates alternative and natural medicine has strategically targeted health niche topics and written lies and here are three examples:
- Coffee enemas - the science and latest research is all over these the past few years as upregulating gluathione, the master antioxidant in the body. Many people had been getting great therapeutic value out of them over the past 100 years but this is a case of the science catching up with the practice.
- They are being found to even outperform the very expensive liposomal glutathione supplements in recent times.
- They've been in use medically in hospitals since World War 2 as pain relief for soldiers, and were in the Merck Manual of conventional treatment till 1972.
- The MD Dr Max Gerson had them central to his Gerson Therapy originally for migraines and later for cancer treatment.
- And when I was told I was going to spend the next few years bedridden as a last resort I did a coffee enema and the very first one showed me it was giving me back my ability to stand and walk, they clean the liver and as such are a master detoxifier.
However on wiki you will find the exact opposite being written and I'm just lucky I hadn't read this first because it may have put me off:
- There is no medical, scientific evidence to support any positive health claim for coffee enemas. The process can result in sepsis, severe electrolyte imbalance, colitis, proctocolitis, internal burning, rectal perforation, and even brain abscess or heart failure.
On the contrary, over the years I've performed 1000s of coffee enemas and am now heading to the forest for an hour's walk, despite being told I should be dead 14 years already, also my heart was injured by doctors and has got stronger so nothing in the wiki article is true - in fact there's an agenda here to slate and destroy coffee enemas. There are entire sites dedicated to harming natural medicine and alternative medicine and the health niche as a whole, what's the bets this was written by one of them? Do you really want to be trusting blindly just anyone as an authority in your blogs, because that is what wiki is right now though as it is 'openly editable' can we perhaps go on there an edit with the facts and truth?
Other Examples of Wiki Wars Unreliable Information on the Health Niche
2. Gerson Therapy: Again wiki attacks Gerson Therapy bigtime - that's the therapy I did and many others have thrived on it and got their life back eg Professor Michael Gearin Tosh of Oxford had a rare blood cancer, even Gerson said they don't work for that and his docs told him chemo wouldn't work that he'd be dead in two years even with chemo - he taught on at Oxford for a further 11 years till his retirement without even having to take a day off - because he did Gerson therapy. I have lived a further 14 years and counting past what I was supposed to after medical error on behalf of conventional medicine, and I know Prince Charles in the UK was pushing for Gerson therapy to be used nationally at one point when some of his friends were healed on it. He is big into organic, funnily enough the media ridicules him - coincidence? Gerson therapy was supposed to have only lost out by 4 votes as the proposed standard treatment in the USA way back in the day but somehow wink wink Big Pharma got in with chemo. That is almost erased from history unless you go to original sources folks, not on wiki!
Prof Gearin Tosh eventually died after a tooth extraction when he refused to take antibiotics - again wiki will claim it was cancer but no, because I was talking to an official Gerson supervisor in the UK at that time doing Gerson Therapy myself and she said Gerson had advised him to take the antibiotics but he refused. In any case, functional medicine today can make these older therapies even more specific but juice therapy and coffee enemas are core to most good healing protocols out there the past 100 years. It's a lack of knowledge of these older therapies which used food that now lets something like keto and fasting sweep through the health niche like a forest fire. Gerson was loaded with food and people healed, today doctorpreneurs are saying 'no food' and promoting fear of food...and they are claiming it is 'traditional' but not if you look at original sources a found in books and history outside of wiki, such as the books by:
- Prof Gearin Tosh called A Medical Mutiny of his own journey
- or that by Charlotte Gerson on Gerson Therapy
These include a lot of history and research currently in the process of being erased by wiki.
3. 5G and EMF from Cell Phones misquoted on wiki
Again when I went recently to research the health effects of 5G I was astounded to see the false information on wiki, they are omitting all the latest research and all the science and they are quoting old studies done on outdated technology - no mention of the fact that 5G is stronger signals on new technology and designed to blanket the earth so that cars don't even lose signal strength, for example. There is actually a lot of information hidden while things like safer driving is being advertised - do you really want to play into advertising to make someone money and dismiss all the facts by quoting wiki?
- If you want to see someone overturning the so called facts of wiki on EMFs and cellphone safety ready Niclaus Pineault's books, he has an affiliate program on that too. But the original sources on this who really take on the arguments and the research are saferemr.com, bioinitiative.org, emf-prortal.org, manhattanneighbors.org, and others
What can you do, well 'openly edited by anonymous volunteers' hint hint!?
Wiki is open to being edited - that means we can write content to wiki!
Do you think the people who write the lies will take that lying down? No. So you need to quote proper sources and have your research done - all of which you would be doing anyway for a good blog except this time YOU are not swallowing whole what some sneaky person has put on wiki! They are not the authorities at all...it's fluid! Just don't ignore that and take action ;)
So that's just 3 subjects popped out immediately to me as being strategically targeted by the people who hate the health niche - you may know of others. At least now you know not to blindly quote wiki!
Mary
Recent Comments
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Very interesting and informative article. I am glad you pointed out these errors. I know you can post updated information on there...do you think if you pointed out the errors, your answers would be deleted? I would hope someone could go in and do some correcting.
I will try it for sure, and will see - but when someone writes something that is deliberately untrue and covers so many health topics I'm expecting they won't be too happy at someone proving them wrong!
oh it is my full intention to write the correct versions in wiki, that's what I'm really encouraging peeps to do here whenever they can - we'd be lazy not to try - also will report how I get on :)
Wikipedia is written by people not always having expertise in their field. But they try to do their best. They invite people knowledgeable in the field to write and at the end of the section, you can see their name, affiliations, the organization they belong to.
I know as a fact because one of the supervisors wrote about a topic and he was invited.
Not everything is anonymous.
When it is anonymous, I suspect its rigor and accuracy.
It needs to be updated as new information on the topic is available.
But is it? No.
I have come across multiple misconceptions, mistakes and anyone who is using them as a reference needs to cross-check with other research-based sites as appropriate.
I am sure many of us have come across blogs having conflicting information. For one question. there will be two entirely different answers.
Where do you go? You research, pick and choose your answer whoever you trust. I check authority sites, research-based sites, read books as per availability.
the writers I referred to went out of their way to deceive, I think if anyone decides to write on a topic then they must do better than the examples I showed up there. However, it is true that it is up to each of us to go in there an improve on them.
seems no updating going on whatsoever but I think partly because people don't realize we can be the writers
There was a time that Wiki is open to anyone to contribute on a particular article and I once had that time. I don't know if it's still open today.
Mary,
Graduate students are not allowed to cite Wikipedia in their research. If you are looking up scholarly, peer reviewed papers, you can use Google Scholar. This is the legitimate research.
Ellen
Hi Ellen, my first answer got lost to you as my internet is being weird here tonight.
Graduate students are the minority of people either writing content or using the internet and SEO wants links to authority sites like wiki, so we got to keep wiki moving the right direction imo especially when devices like google home or google mini will go straight there for huge chunks of the population
I've done graduate research but I see standards vary a lot eg humanities often do more comprehensive reading than science where you can get away with regurgitating
Graduate students passing exams need to aim higher than wiki but once graduated I find the doctorpreneurs standards usually slip in to total bias as to what they are promoting and they'll cherry pick the google scholar stuff to support their case
they still don't know the whole history of anything, despite being doctors and despite an inferior masters degree insists on knowing all the literature out there
but research in itself isn't comprehensive, it's a resource but it asks questions and answers those specific questions -not all questions have been asked yet, nor will they be in our lifetime, and it can be set up to be biased too depending on who is paying for it eg with herbs, very biased and incomplete
Interesting adjunct resource google scholar, but 'the legitimate research' in the health niche would only be a toe in the pond compared to the history and other sources
Very very interesting. I have also found misinformation within my niche inside Wiki. I compile my writing from a few different sources and only sometimes go to Wiki.
Great post
Regards
Dave
Hi Dave, thanks. People may find wiki before our sites though, we may have to think of changing up wiki or use it in the sense of showing it is wrong :)
This is a fantastic example of misinformation circulating on a site too many people take as the golden truth.
Wiki is not considered a reliable source to use either as research or to quote in the college I attend gratefully. Likewise we should all be mindful of getting our research from several sources and from sources that are legit with current research that’s not cherry picked.
Wonderful examples as well! I’ve read amazing things about coffee enemas by the late Dr. Nicholas Gonzales.
These are wonderful life saving treatments that should not be discredited.
Wonderful to hear they helped you in your healing!
Well said about the several sources and not cherry picked research either! The current health talks online so remind me of the way certain people thump the bible and all end up saying different things to suit their agenda. I'd hope that too is a fluid conversation that can be driven the right direction but I'm not so sure anymore with the tight digital marketing group influence there.
I remember even Ducky on NCIS complaining about peeps quoting wiki as true lol but it's scary that the majority of people going forward are actually trusting wiki!
Hi Mary you have blown a big hole in the wikipedia encyclopaedia, thanks for your time to investigate this and pass on your findings.
Excellent information, Mary. I agree wholeheartedly. When you add into the mix natural healing sites being censored, like Mike Adam's...the Health Ranger...the public is being sadly misinformed. Thankfully people like yourself help people learn the truth!
Debbie
Hi Debbie, my internet connection is bad at the mo and my answer keeps disappearing!
Mike has some good stuff and some wild stuff too, I don't follow him too closely but he hangs out with a tight digital marketing group, I'm not sure their priorities sometimes! He's big into conspiracy theories sometimes but I got to admire he has his own lab to test things and shook a lot of people up with that!
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Thanks a million for this, Mary. This idea of false reporting by the BIG PHARMA is not new my dear. It is the greed of comerciliasation. Money has blinded them to the truth. More and more people will continue to die from Doctors and medical errors, if they trust their health on them. We can only be grateful for the information age. Get this right, more die from chemo than from cancer, and they laud chemo as cancer breakthrough, isn't that funny. LET THE BUYER BEWARE!!!!
Well said! They really do keep lauding it but there's more and more peeps dying from cancer all the time!