Abstracting across a variety of people and thus a variety of hammers is the entire point of crowd sourcing. That's why you don't call it single-person sourcing.

I've dealt with a lot of medical professionals. They're biased by their own experience as well, plus they're biased by the latest medical fads (don't think they don't exist), and they're biased by the ads they see in JAMA. They're not selected for being clear thinkers - they're selected for being good at rote memorization and kissing authority ass, Gregory House notwithstanding.

Some doctors are fantastic. A lot are not - and a non-fantastic doctor plus a well-educated patient is a sure recipe for disaster, take it from me. Add an uncommon disease into the mix (and as our nephrologist says, there are categories of disease, like kidney disease, where every case is a new book) and the inescapable conclusion is that if you've got a chronic illness you are on your own. If you're lucky you'll find doctors that can give you good advice. But it's not likely to be the first guy down the road, either.

Your larger point, that Yahoo Answers is filled with garbage, is very accurate. Most forums on any topic are filled with garbage, but health garbage has centuries of history and its promulgators are untiring. You learn to filter that crap out.

What would be better - way better - is some combination of crowd sourcing and solid lay-medical journalism, investigating some of the extraordinary claims in search of extraordinary evidence (or usually lack thereof).

Mostly for people who already know what they have, not really diagnostic or symptom based.

There is some interesting talks from one of the founders on Stanford's EC Corner:

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?author=2...