Being well educated does not guarantee you'll always be right, and it certainly doesn't guarantee everyone will agree with you. But it still matters.  Or at least it used to.

There's a big difference between earning the right to express an opinion through years of training, professional credentials, the ardors of publication (books and peer reviewed papers), and the judgment of peers- and simply having an opinion, an Internet connection, and some time to kill. But in the blogosphere, both are equal...

I participated recently in Yale's inaugural conference on Integrative Medicine.  My talk was on the importance of respecting both science, and the needs of patients- which often go on long after the availability of relevant results from randomized, clinical trials run out.  My view, quite simply, is that dedication to responsible use of scientific evidence, and dedication to responsiveness to the needs of patients can, and must, be reconciled by the caring health care provider.  When the applicability of clinical trial results to the care of a patient is least certain, that patient needs options, and the help of compassionate, expert guidance more, not less.

In response to such heretical views as these, I've noted that I have been excoriated on numerous sites in the blogosphere devoted to exposing quackery.  I've been in the public eye enough to be unruffled by this; my feathers are thick, water off a duck's back, and all that.  But I worry about who will learn what from whom in an age when every opinion has access to the same megaphone.

If a comparable commitment to science and my patients is quackery, I would rather be a duck than a doctor; so I'm guilty as charged.  But in my view, this is just what a doctor, not a duck, is supposed to be.

But with all the squawking on the Internet, it sure can be hard to know what's what, or who's who.  So as information flies by you on the Internet, be sure to consider the source.  There is no filter on the blogosphere, and all quacking gets the same audience.  You will need a skeptical ear and a cautious eye to determine if and when what quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck...is a duck indeed.