Where do you go first to get medical advice? To your doctor? Your pharmacist? Or do you do what many Americans do and go straight to the Internet?<\/p>\n
Describe to a search engine any health problem in English, and you’ll see that health advice is some of the most sought-after<\/span> information there is. Mixed in among the writings of established medical authorities<\/a>, however, are a slew of<\/span> medical-advice websites that exist only to earn ad revenue<\/span>. Their professional credentials<\/span>, if any, are slim<\/span>. Beyond those lies a realm<\/span> of random<\/span> blog posts<\/span> and forum comments in which opinion carries the same weight as fact.<\/p>\n This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The bookstores are filled with works promoting this diet or that diet, written by pretty much any schmo<\/span> at all. Sometimes simply writing such a book entitles<\/span> a person to call himself a “nutritionist”, not the other way around<\/span>.<\/p>\n What book authors aren’t doing, though, is writing reference works<\/span>. Internet users joke about the accuracy of online information, but at the same time, many see the Web as a giant encyclopedia.<\/p>\nShould we drink milk?<\/h2>\n