>This is why we shouldn't take medical advice from people who have read a few Wikipedia articles. >sometimes the experienced doctor or researcher made a mistak

>This is why we shouldn't take medical advice from people who have read a few Wikipedia articles. >sometimes the experienced doctor or researcher made a mistake, and the guy who posted something on Reddit is correct Both of those points are true, and we can reconcile them thusly: Broadly, the doctor is the fully educated, while the layman-interested-in-subject is making semi-educated guesses. However this relationship inverts on narrow subjects, like a particular rare disease: the doctor ends up making a semi-educated guess (based on his general medical education), whereas a layman with intense interest in this particular rare disease can easily be the fully educated one - again, on this particular narrow subject.