All Your HealthBase Are Belong to Us (Updated 9/3/2009)
[Update]
The folks at Netbase have issued an apology:
Our first release of healthBase yesterday surfaced a few embarrassing and offensive bugs. These were far in the minority of results but enough to keep us up late improving the site. We sincerely regret and apologize in particular for any offense caused.
…I wasn’t offended. I just thought the tool was awful.
[/Update]
TechCrunch called healthBase “The Ultimate Medical Content Search Engine.”
I beg to differ. Rather than getting into what it is supposed to do, lets just try a few queries and see how its semantic technologies perform.
First, a search for causes of AIDS.
As a Red Sea Pedestrian myself, I’m fascinated to learn that Jews cause AIDS. Huh. What if I was a Jewish Physiotherapist? How would I live with myself?
Next, we’ll look at the “Pros & Cons of lithotripsy”:
Take a look at the “Pros” list. These are just partial phrases describing what lithotripsy is. This list of pros and cons make no sense at all.
Among the sources it searches:
- Wikipedia
- NaturalNews.com (Check out the embedded video in the right sidebar and listen to the lyrics- there’s some idiotic stuff there)
I’d recommend to healthBase that they dump these and instead search sites like MedlinePlus.
HealthBase isn’t even a good medical content search engine, much less the “ultimate”.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 9:30 am
TechCrunch called healthBase “The Ultimate Medical Content Search Engine.” I beg to differ. Rather than getting into what it is supposed to do, lets just try a few queries and see how its semantic technologies perform. First, a search for causes of AIDS. As a Red Sea Pedestrian myself, I’m fascinated to learn that Jews cause AIDS. [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 6:13 am
[...] with results that range from the hilarious to the offensive, with a fair few in between. (See also David Rothman’s take). But NetBase seems to think that they’ve cleared up most of the problems…. I… [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 6:30 am
[...] with results that range from the hilarious to the offensive, with a fair few in between. (See also David Rothman’s take). But NetBase seems to think that they’ve cleared up most of the problems…. I… [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 8:14 am
[...] See further commentary at davidrothman.net. [...]
September 10th, 2009 at 10:13 am
All of these problems are fixable, though, and NLP would look a lot better in the light of a post-fix version that I hope we see soon.
How to fix the problems:
http://nlpconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/09/medicine-for-healthbase.html
September 27th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
[...] “All your healthbase are belong to us (want em back) is about Healthbase, that TechCrunch called “The Ultimate Medical Content Search Engine.” this evoked some deadly critiques not only directed at Healthbase but also at Techcrunch. My number one fail was the search for the 1st cause of insanity?(wonder what the outcome is, see my tweet) [...]