WebMD
Article
WebMD is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between January 25, 2021 and April 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “except on WebMD, which has the smallest sample size”; “My fear is that if I do this enough, I become WebMD. WebMD is the Internet’s most important source of medical information”; “I challenge anyone to figure out, using WebMD’s si”. It most often appears alongside Adderall, ADHD, CDC.
Metadata
- Category: Publications
- Mention count: 5
- Issue count: 5
- First seen: January 25, 2021
- Last seen: April 13, 2022
Appears In
- Know Your Amphetamines
- WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise
- Journalism and Legible Expertise
- A Look Down Track B
- Obscure Pregnancy Interventions: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Related Pages
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- Adderall (2 shared issues)
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- ADHD (2 shared issues)
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- CDC (2 shared issues)
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- FDA (2 shared issues)
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- Zvi (2 shared issues)
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- acetaminophen (1 shared issues)
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- AHS (1 shared issues)
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- amphetamine (1 shared issues)
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- Anthony Fauci (1 shared issues)
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- Arnold (1 shared issues)
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- Arthur Jensen (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
These are some amazing numbers. Adderall itself usually has one of the highest ratings of the thousands of drugs on the site, Dexedrine beats Adderall handily, and Desoxyn wipes the floor with Dexedrine (except on WebMD, which has the smallest sample size). This drug is getting ratings that shouldn't even be possible. And the patient summaries are in line with this - here are a few:
My fear is that if I do this enough, I become WebMD.
WebMD is the Internet's most important source of medical information. It's also surprisingly useless. Its most famous problem is that whatever your symptoms, it'll tell you that you have cancer. But the closer you look, the more problems you notice. Consider drug side effects. Here's WebMD's list of side effects for a certain drug, let's call it Drug 1:
Drug 1 is aspirin. Drug 2 is warfarin, which causes 40,000 ER visits a year and is widely considered one of the most dangerous drugs in common use. I challenge anyone to figure out, using WebMD's side effects list alone, that warfarin is more dangerous than aspirin. I think this is because if WebMD said "aspirin is pretty safe and most people don't need to worry about it", people might use aspirin irresponsibly, die, and then their ghosts might sue WebMD. Or if WebMD said "warfarin can be dangerous, be careful with this one", people might refuse to take warfarin because "the Internet said it was dangerous", die of the stuff warfarin is supposed to treat, and then their ghosts might sue WebMD. WebMD solves this by never giving the tiniest shred of useful information to anybody.
I heard from a journalist yesterday after writing yesterday's post on WebMD. They've been trying to write a coronavirus article worthy of Zvi or any of the other illegibly smart people writing on the pandemic. Apparently the bottleneck is sources.
Inline links: yesterday's post on WebMD
...g further attempts to replicate and explicate these interesting results. Prediction: 90% chance that no major academic or popular resource (eg UpToDate, NICE, Wikipedia, WebMD) will give this theory prominence equal to or greater than the standard serotonin theory in its explanation of antidepressant effects by 2030, unless this is because som...
A bunch of people (eg WebMD) say you should “avoid using citicholine” during pregnancy. This makes no sense to me and I’m guessing they don’t know what they’re talking about, but by Chesterton’s Fence maybe you should avoid this form.
Inline links: WebMD