Pop Quiz
Washington Post: September 12, 1996, Thursday; Pg. C07
Last week was the beginning of the semester at Georgetown University, and 160 brand new medical students descended on Dahlgren Memorial Library for their MDR (medical data reasoning) class.
Because of the explosive growth of the Internet, we decided to start this year's class with a Web treasure hunt. The students received basic instructions on surfing the Web and were unleashed to find such material as the Georgetown University phone book, a physician who diagnoses illnesses through people's portraits, and the calcium requirements for a 26-year-old pregnant woman.
Most of these questions were pretty straightforward: The answers could be found from the medical library's home page or by using a Web search engine. And the students whizzed through the first 11 questions. But many got stuck on the last question, which I made up: Find the address of a lab that tests for Kneist syndrome. Since my specialty is genetics, I'm familiar with sites of interest to clinical geneticists.
This question was tough to answer because the Web sites that could answer this question are password-protected and not in many Web indexes. This means you can't simply go to a Web search engine and type in "Kneist syndrome" to find the answer. I must confess, I took perverse pleasure in watching the whole '00 medical school class hunting down this information.
But in the end many did find it, in an obvious way. When the word got out that I wrote the question, they checked my home page. To help me in my work I had started a Webliography on human genetics, and the answer was sitting out there plain as day. On top of that, the students pointed out, the name of the syndrome is actually spelled "Kniest." I had simply copied off a Web page and never verified the spelling. I'm hoping the Medical Librarian Association doesn't find out and revoke my membership.
-- Len Davidson
