Liability from Wikipedia?
On Monday afternoon, word got around on Facebook and, I’m told, on Chicago sports radio, that someone had altered the Wikipedia page of Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones to include the obviously false line, “His dad raped him every night after school.” (Click here for a screen grab.)
Within minutes of the publicity, someone had fixed the page. But before that happened, I mentioned in a Facebook discussion that this is additional evidence that Wikipedia should never be the primary source for any kind of research. But people rely on Wikipedia all the time when they look up information online.
Another participant in that discussion said that I should have corrected the information as soon as I had seen it. “I suspect there will be a case before long when a health professional spots an error on wikipedia and doesn’t correct it. A patient then takes notes of or acts on the information & the health professional could then be liable for not correcting the error – a part of professional practice?” this person said.
(Dramatic pause as a chill runs down your spine.)
Yeah, what happens when a patient gets wrong information from Wikipedia that his or her physician/nurse/family member saw but didn’t bother to fix? Medical error? Malpractice liability?
Has anyone ever thought this through? Am I reading too much into this or is this a real concern?
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For it to constitute malpractice my, extremely limited, knowledge of current legislation also includes that it must breach relevant standard of care.
I’m not sure keeping 3rd-party information up to date is included in relevant care for any medical specialty. If it was information provided by the physician, then I would be more open to discuss malpractice. And as such, the physician who recommends wikipedia (a dynamic and moving target) as a source of important medical information for his or hers patients is taking risks.
Liability might be a different ballpark – however in most jurisdictions I would believe this is a non-issue. American medical malpractice law, however never cease to amaze me in the extremes some go to in order to claim malpractice (both lawyers and patients).
The above comment is right on. I’d add one more thing. Even if you see something on Wikipedia, you may not be able to freely edit it. Yes, for most pages, anyone can make edits, but some are locked or restricted to certain account types. In addition, you might make the change only to have it reverted back.
The point is that you don’t own or control Wikipedia, so you can’t be responsible for the content. Wikipedia isn’t even responsible for the comment (thanks largely to the DMCA). I think it would be a wild stretch for someone not acting to correct content on Wikipedia to be held liable for anything that resulted from it.