

Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Found Using Internet Data, Study Finds - erickhill
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/science/unreported-side-effects-of-drugs-found-using-internet-data-study-finds.html?hp

======
shirro
I have hung around a few health related forums and left a few in disgust. The
echo chamber for unproven alternative remedies, untested theories and
conspiracy theories totally dominates over rational discussion of evidence
based medicine. I am afraid trawling this data is just going to tell
practitioners that vaccines cause autism, lots of stuff about crazy diets and
detoxing and the importance of organic and non-gmo produce. And that would be
the least crazy stuff.

~~~
ericb
I agree about the poor data, but I don't think this is an issue chiefly
because you are trawling for an untested hypothesis, which you can then test
using more robust methods. This is more about _what_ to investigate, which is
nearly infinite in theory. If this points you in the right directions, all the
better..

------
short_circut
I am a bit concerned about how this will play out with the various drug
conspiracies. For example many many people search up antivaxx literature under
things like "vaccines autism". How do they distinguish real results from
popular myth results? The two drugs they mention may very well have the
negative interaction that they suggest. But, how do they distinguish this from
say if a site like Natural News were to publish some crazy idea about a drug
causing a spike in people searching for the terms together?

------
marcelsalathe
Does anyone have the link to the original article? I can't find it on the
JAMIA website, and there is no link on the NYT site either

~~~
jen_h
I'm assuming the original research they're building on is this:
<http://jamia.bmj.com/content/19/1/79.abstract>

However, I'm not able to figure out what the newest article in this month's
journal is, based on the most recent Table of Contents.

And even so, the article (including the original) is behind a paywall as per
usual. :/

------
tomweingarten
Does anyone know what the search toolbar is they're using? The article claims
they tracked 82 million drug related searches.

------
lignuist
The most interesting question to me: how can I get the dataset they used.

------
GhotiFish
I like this article, but I just want to point something out

    
    
       "With the aid of Microsoft researchers, he was able to acquire
        anonymized data taken from a software toolbar installed in Web 
        browsers by users who allowed their search histories to be 
        collected."
    

I'm thinking the users who consented to having their search histories exposed
were like how date rape victims "consent" to ruffies. Hey they drank from the
glass right?

This is not kosher.

~~~
parfe
Thanks for the wildly inappropriate analogy.

