As more and more people “do their own research,” some end up consulting a website called PubMed. An argument I have encountered is that if a scientific paper is listed on PubMed, it must mean this is an all-around good and trustworthy paper. Alas, if only it were so simple…

PubMed can be thought of as the Google search engine of the life sciences. If I am looking for a published paper, if I am curious about a researcher’s publication record, if I want to see if a review of the evidence exists on a topic that has piqued my curiosity, my first stop is almost always PubMed. I was using it as a student; I kept on using it as a research assistant; and here I am, still using it as a science communicator. It is that useful.

PubMed is a way to query a database known as MEDLINE (and a number of secondary databases as well). MEDLINE is an inventory of publications that have to do with the life sciences and with biomedicine specifically, and it is administered at the National Institutes of Health of the United States of America. From 1971 to 1997, MEDLINE could only be accessed online through an institutional facility like a university. But in June of 1997, the search engine PubMed, which had been privately accessible for a year and a half, became available for free to the public. Anyone could access the PubMed website (after listening to their modem’s bloops and hisses) and search the vast database that was MEDLINE.