Students, Research, and Wikipedia

As mentioned in Stephen's Lighthouse, there's an interesting article on student use of wikipedia in the latest issue of First Monday. 

Figure 2: Why do students use Wikipedia for course–related research?
Of the paper's conclusions, this was the one that caught mine eye:

Overall, college students use Wikipedia. But, they do so knowing its limitation. They use Wikipedia just as most of us do — because it is a quick way to get started and it has some, but not deep, credibility.

Which affirms my mostly unsubstantiated belief that the populations I work with most frequently (grad students) both a) understand the limitations of Wikipedia and b) continue to use it during their medical education.*  I don't necessarily see this as a problem as long as they understand how the information they find in Wikipedia compares to the information they find in an evidence-based resource.  In fact, for what it's worth, using Wikipedia as a comparison to, say, Cochrane would probably help highlight and clarify some of the key characteristics of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based resources.

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*  The paper deals exclusively with an undergraduate population, so my unsubstantiated belief remains unsubstantiated.