[fyfer]

Absolutely.

My doctor, who is a hotshot young doctor at a hotshot medical school, impressed me by telling me she needed to look up my symptoms and then showing me what she found (and, to be fair, also referring me to an expert).

Depending on field, part of being an expert is also knowing where to look for field-specific expert information. Google is a much better search engine than the NCBI PubMed interface, but I know as a biomedical scientist that I should use PubMed or else I'll miss important research.

(Though part of being a scientist is also realizing that you're trying to understand totally new results, and google is of no use past some point. I imagine this is also true of engineers. You're building on previous work but at some point you have to move past what's been done before.)

[pixl97]

My friends daughter was born with a lung disorder that showed up in the first week after leaving the hospital. The local hospital almost killed her in incorrect diagnosing and panic and she was emergency flighted to Childrens. Two of the doctors there quickly came back with a preliminary diagnosis of congenital lobar emphysema after a few internet searches on the symptoms. They had printed what information they could find off of a few websites at the time. Based on that they talked to surgeons that had experience in the field and within a day the surgery had been performed and all was well.

What I see is 3 information tiers. 1. You should know this off the top your head to be a professional. Common information, kind of like daily use of your first language. 2. Information that is not common or you shouldn't be expected to remember because of its rare usage. The type of information this thread is about. 3. Information you make, what you state at the end of this thread.

[fencepost]

Google (and others like IsabelHealthCare) help you catch the zebras you missed while looking at the horses.