I’m extremely dubious about mention of Harris in the lede. The first thing that went through my head was “this is Sut Jhally writ large”. How does the market Harris serves wish this term to function? Probably they want patients showing up at their doctor’s office requesting exotic medications for conditions of borderline concern. Does it help them if the negative, neutral, or confused interpretation prevails? It’s a non-trivial task to determine what is being spun and to whom.(endquote)

This goes toward the conflict of interest discussion we are having elsewhere.

So, the study is conducted by Ryen W. White and Eric Horvitz, 2 full time employees of Microsoft. That may start to explain why they publish on the research.microsoft.com platform. We have been talking a lot about conflict of interest when relating to misuse of statistical data.

Why not look into the potential reasons for Microsoft to publish research that demonstrate why the 80% of medical searches done by the American public using their favorite search engine, Google, “could” be dangerous.

Why not look into the potential conflict of interest of the 2 researchers in promoting a better way to get “scientific and proven” diagnosis by entering your data into Microsoft Healthvault PHR.

Are we all so numb that we never question what seems to be the most obvious problems of corporation funded research? Researchers working hard to resurrect a moribund term usually do so for a very good reason. I wish the so-called expert journalist from the NY Times would have abandoned for a while his role of groupie of Eric Horvitz, the President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and started to behave like journalists used to behave, asking hard questions.

In any case, it’s time to retire cyberchondria for another 10 years. It is also time for John Markoff to retire for the same length of time. By then the New York Times will probably be in a similar situation to where GM is today, an old and beaten whale, unable to survive in its former shape, if at all.

Informed patients will, by then, have no patience for transparent abuse of power by the experts of yesterday.

Second, they recognized the problem with analyzing only search queries versus the far richer navigational paths of users. A navigational path would provide more contextual information — information that would really confirm (or disconfirm) their hypotheses about “escalation.” Their failure to find a method to analyze this data is unfortunate.

Third, I believe it’s natural human curiosity to explore the “worst case scenario,” especially when it comes to our own or a loved one’s health. We want to prepare ourselves for the worst possibilities, so when we’re told it’s just hypertension, it’s a pleasant relief.

After all, when you investigate a new car, don’t most people nowadays check out the crash ratings of their car? Does that mean people are more inclined to imagine themselves getting into an accident? Or simply doing more research on the topic because tools like search engines make such research practically free (except for our time). The opportunity costs are the same, so this finding, if true, isn’t even surprising.

Thank you for naming a recurring elephant in the room. This is so wrong-headed. And, more to the point, it’s “doctosaurus” thinking, not patient-oriented. How dumb, when designing something for patients!

It’s quite as if a retailer designed its store based on what the engineers thought people would want to know about.

A year ago at the Kidney Cancer Association’s Boston “Patient Day,” as they called it, the entire agenda was designed that way. It was horrid! The #1 question on the mind of a new patient is just as in your migraine story: Am I going to die?? But they didn’t even touch on it.

Please please please, people in healthcare, ASK US! Ask the patients! It’s not hard!

When e-patient pioneer Doc Tom was asked once to present to first-graders about being a doctor, he did a radical thing: he got in touch with them in advance and asked them what they’d like to know about. He got some surprising answers: one little girl wanted to know what’s in blood, and several wanted to know “What’s this stethoscope thing all about??” So he brought stethoscopes, a microscope, and blood slides.

I know your academic training is to study in isolation and think what to present to others. Within HC that may be fine, but NOT TO PATIENTS! Arg!

And here’s the irony: I ultimately learned that for whatever reason, the KCA isn’t the least bit interested in what patients want to hear about. I outlined an alternate track of patient-centered topics, starting with:
1) Cancer is no longer a death sentence;
2) Understanding statistics;
3) Building a support community
… etc, 7 sessions for a day-long conference. I sent it to them via email twice, and wrote a paper letter, and never heard a thing back.

Especially ironic is that after the opening session, during Q&A I asked the speaker about the freshness of his data. He agreed that it was not relevant to anyone trying to understand their odds today, because all the data was collected before any of today’s treatments existed.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are people thinking when they dispense (valid) data like that, at a so-called “Patient Day”?

How does this apply to cyberchondriacs? I would venture to guess that those who lean that way spend a lot of time searching and reading, but not enough sleeping at night!

Could be most health searchers are far more balanced in their approach, but less exciting to watch.

C~