This morning I wrote about NetBase Solutions’ healthBase, a semantic search engine that aggregates medical content from millions of authoritative health sites including WebMD, Wikipedia, and PubMed. But is it a semantic engine or an anti-semitic search engine?
Several of our readers tested out the site and found that healthBase’s semantic search engine has some major glitches (see the comments). One of the most unfortunate examples is when you type in a search for “AIDS,” one of the listed causes of the disease is “Jew.” Really.
The ridiculousness continues. When you click on Jew, you can see proper “Treatments” for Jews, “Drugs And Medications” for Jews and “Complications” for Jews. Apparently, “alcohol” and “coarse salt” are treatments to get rid of Jews, as is Dr. Pepper! Who knew? I’ve included the screenshots of the results below if you don’t believe me. Now, I don’t think that healthBase is being intentionally anti-semitic, but for a technology which is supposed to understand the nuances of human language, this is about a big a fail as you can get. It is plainly obvious that its technology needs to be fixed before it is parsed out to other companies and media corporations.
I emailed NetBase to figure out exactly how this could appear and this is the response I received:
This is an unfortunate example of homonymy, i.e. words that have different meanings.
The showcase was not configured to distinguish between the disease “AIDS” and the verb “aids” (as in aiding someone). If you click on the result “Jew” you see a sentence from a Wikipedia page about 7th Century history: “Hispano-Visigothic king Egica accuses the Jews of aiding the Muslims, and sentences all Jews to slavery. ” Although Wikipedia contains a lot of great health information it also contains non-health related information (like this one) that is hard to filter out.
Personally, I think such basic distinctions should have been ironed out before launching the site. This is just the most flagrant example of site giving non-health answers to health-related questions. If you look at the pros of AIDS (yes, it thinks here are pros to having AIDS), it comically lists the “Spanish Civil War.” One of the causes of hemorrhoids is “Bronco” (I don’t even want to know).
HealthBase is touted to be a showcase for NetBase’s semantic technology, which can supposedly understand language. Clearly, it doesn’t understand language well enough. And if the technology is going to be peddled to other companies to be used to power additional search engines, it needs to be improved immediately.
UPDATE: Here’s a more detailed response from NetBase:
Yesterday, we launched a microsite – healthbase.netbase.com – intended
to publicly demonstrate a new kind of semantic search technology that
actually reads web content and delivers more relevant answers to
health-related queries. HealthBase is built on our Content Intelligence
Platform that has been deployed successfully in different domains by
Fortune 1000 companies, global publishers, and the federal government
over the last few years for a variety of strategic applications. A
ready-for-primetime consumer search engine it is not.It is a powerful and automated technology, that when applied to
something as messy as the Web, will produce some amazing results, but
also some strange, funny and irrelevant ones. Our first release of
healthBase yesterday surfaced a few embarrassing and offensive bugs.
These were far in the minority of results but enough to keep us up late
improving the site. We sincerely regret and apologize in particular for
any offense caused.We’ve learned a lot in the last 24 hours and are fully committed to do
better in providing an effective and accurate demonstration of our
technology. This morning, we are a little tired and humbled, but even
more determined than ever to showcase the power of this new technology.
You will see improvements in the next hours days, and weeks, including
the addition of user feedback mechanisms. We appreciate the feedback and
please keep telling us what you think.Thanks,
Jens Tellefsen, VP of marketing and product strategy & The Netbase Team
hahahaha, with $9mill, they should re-brand this as a comedy engine for the racially insensitive
Try “Venture Capital” :
Treatments –> Entrepeneur, Funding
Cons –> Fool
It’s working like a charm !
Too funny.
The main cause of insanity is masturbation!
http://healthba...nity&Causes
and the best treament for masturbation is cocaine!
http://healthba...&Treatments
At least have the modesty to place a beta or alpha label on it like Mahalo or Wolfram (Alpha) or Yauba.
They should have learned from Cuil that proclaiming yourself the best thing since Google without even doing basic testing will pretty much cause them to lose all credibility.
* Yauba calls its engine experimental in late alpha/early beta
* Mahalo calls its engine alphaish
* Wolfram clearly states it is alpha
But Netbase? “The best medical search engine ever.” With claims like that, no wonder they are not getting any sympathy
The system went live with obvious flaws, but there are identifiable solutions. I advocated addressing these issues when I worked for the company in 2007 and there’s still no barrier to fixing those problems now:
http://nlpconfi...healthbase.html
You’ll love this : try “Twitter”
Treatments –> Facebook
Cons –>
Distraction
New craze
Storm presidency
Theft
Waste
Waste time
Try “Microsoft” :
Treatments –Viagra
Cons –>
Inferior product
Limit Access database
Lousy
Price
Security
It’s working , it’s working !
Honestly , it’s like a child … it tells what I think with out filters and if racist stuff came up, I think hat we all are responsible about the crap internet spread around sometimes.
Just dont mix milk and meat
That’s one of the problems.
This tragi-comic failure of Netbase can teach a lot to every company in the Semantic space.
Lesson 1
Don’t even try to boil the ocean of the WWW with this technologies. Internet is full of valuable information but crap (or opinions) is 90% , the cost of getting rid of this crap and save only the good stuff is very hight, that’s make so hard to succed even for Google and Microsoft with billions $$.
Lesson 2
Linguistic approaches are likely going to fail because search engines (and machines) can’t distinguish Joke/Seriousness , Sarcasm/Shame and sentiments in general. The semantic meaning is right there not in the words of a text.
Lesson 3
If you choose to apply such approaches to one specific topic like Medicine (good choice) then stick to that topic , that means accept as INPUT only medical terms and provide as OUTPUTS only medical terms.
It’s a rule of dumb , you don’t need MIT people and 6 year of work to get there.
This last point requires human intervention and predifined taxonomies/ontologies but Netbase claims that they don’t need them both, their engine id fully automatic —> the failure too.
Thi Company has a powerful technology , but still more to do. I wish Netbase to improve fast,….or a fast exit.
I was forgetting…
Lesson 4
If you see a nazi with a bottle of Dr. Pepper…you call the 911 !
biggest semantic-web fail of all time. The company’s explanation does a further damage by pointing out the semantic language detection doesn’t actually have the ability to detect context or topical domain.
Yes, it sounds anti-semantic to me.
http://healthba...&Treatments
Looks like you treat Arrington with Google Apps, an enzyme! Everyone knows that!
I make recommendation of Gypsy Tears against both Jew and Plague of AIDS.
+1
total fail moment
OMG! this is getting funnier by the sentence
Arkansas Cotton Pickers lol, honestly I can’t stop laughing. Somebody needs to submit some of these to digg or reddit.
While “semantic search” is a fun exploration into new tech, imo, it is extremely immature and raw.
The more I see, the more it backs up my initial belief that this is just not ready for prime time – at all. And right now it’s a fun “oh wow!” blip that will quickly be replaced with disillusionment and a realization that, in it’s current state, this is all fantasy.
“Basic” search is tough, and still an ongoing science. Semantic, intelligent analysis of unknown incoming data, is unbelievably hard and we’ve barely scratched the surface.
I disagree. Both Wolfram Alpha and Yauba are taking quite intelligent approaches to semantic search.
If you look for AIDS on Wolfram, it correctly understands the meaning of the word AIDS http://www.wolf...m/input/?i=aids
Same thing with Yauba: http://www.yaub...&target=all
Semantic search done right IS very powerful. Healthbase is just semantic search done very embarassingly wrong.
Yes, Yauba rocks.
+1
“an anti-semitic”
are you retarded? this is a bug. stop with your sensationalist bullshit man.
gawd i miss mike arrington and the TC from couple yrs ago.
I do agree : just a bug. Please let’s not see evil everywhere.
bug? semantic search is marketing bullshit for one the toughest remaining areas in computer science that’s yet decades away (if at all) – AI.
I think she was being facetious.
yep
No, its anti semantic. *groan*
Hmm, they might want to look into this as well: http://healthba...ricans&Pros
http://healthba...#Obama&Pros
Obama ruined NASCAR!
That’s a typo, it was, “Yomama ruined NASCAR!”; no offense.
What about pros & cons of ex president Bush Jr :
http://healthba...20bush&Pros
Cons : Frustrate Americans , Support abortion
It’s embarassing. Is this what they claim “Content Intelligence” ? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
Seems like this semantic recognition engine was concocted in the same oven as that of SpinVox. What shocks me the most -as in the SpinVox case- is the non-chalant attitude of the company. Oy vey! I am not a disease!
While it is a bug and not intentional, that’s the kind of thing that needs to be tested.
I am having lots of fun just typing random stuff in though. The Causes of ‘Pregnant’ are especially funny.
I once worked on a Question Answering system, which showed similar behaviour:
User Question: “Who killed JFK?”
System Answer: “The Jews”
Nice…
http://healthba...&Treatments
The treatment for the iPhone is Google Android.
Leena: http://healthba...ricans&Pros
Obama ruined NASCAR? Dang!
http://healthba...#obama&Pros
This is more fun than looking for a job!
Ha! The treatment for “Vietnamese” is Chinese. Nice and historically accurate.
http://healthba...&Treatments
It’s ok, they hate everyone across the board, it seems:
http://healthba...People&Pros
White People abuse black music and attack black people.
So it says Jews cause AIDS. What’s the big deal. If you’re dumb enough to believe the Jews cause AIDS, I don’t think that fixing bugs in some software is really going to help you much. That’s great that you’re personally offended, but in this case your opinion just isn’t all that interesting. Why not interview someone at Netbase about your opinion? Why not cover both sides of the story? You know I’m sure that this technology is actually useful in some ways. So it can’t be trusted on all points. Wikipedia can’t be trusted on all points either. You gonna demand that Wikipedia be yanked before all the bugs are worked out of it? Google results can return ridiculous stuff too… Google for “do jews believe” and you’re probably gonna get some off the wall results.
I think you failed at reading the article, sir.
http://healthba...etBase&Pros
Well what did you expect from a company that sponsored child pornography?
thats the best one I’ve seen…
but i think that honest reply might get him in trouble. it would have been better for the netbase image if they said a hacker or a disgruntled employee coded it in there
that reply just shows its buggy and not ready for a launch
Lol, now it’s removed. Surprised nobody from their company had discovered it prior.
Nope, Netbase’s con is still sponsoring child pornography! Priceless.
Cons of Web 2.0 sum up all that are wrong with the new web applications: Vague and buggy.
If you took the time to read what was posted about the ‘child pornography’ or the ‘erotic art’ being hosted on NetBase you would have read that these were allegations made by Jorg Haider – a neo-Nazi who, with his ‘Austrian Freedom Party’ (FPO) carried out smear campaigns against anyone that openly stood against their extreme nationalist agenda (much like the way the American Republican’s operate, in or out of power). Haider accused Netbase of sponsoring child porn in order to discredit them, but – fortunately – it did not work. Here is the text, unaltered:
**Sponsoring child pornography
Public Netbase
Haider accused Public Netbase of sponsoring child pornography and conflated Christina Gostl’s hosted erotic art with a commercial porn site in the British Virgin Islands during a speech in parliament. .
Involvement in politics. When the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) and its leader Jorg Haider began to rise in power in Austria, Public Netbase took an increasingly political activist role while facing increasing government pressure. Haider accused Public Netbase of sponsoring child pornography and conflated Christina Gostl’s hosted erotic art with a commercial porn site in the British Virgin Islands during a speech in parliament. Meanwhile, Public Netbase sponsored a “virtual alternative to Austria’s far right government” that offered Austrian Web Resistance Awards to web sites dedicated to opposing Haider’s government. Public Netbase’s actions earned considerable prestige.
+++ Quotation Ends +++
It is always easier to jump to conclusions rather than taking the time to read and understand the situation before making a judgment.
As for the possibility of this thing being inherently Antisemitic, that is, in a word, inherently idiotic. The explanation for the connection between AIDS and ‘Jews’ was well explained, having the excuse of homonyms and an imperfect computer architecture that is as yet incapable of separating context from the search data. This explanation is more than understandable, unless of course you are incapable of recognizing that some words have more than one meaning and may, at times, arouse a level of distress and confusion amongst some individuals who may feel intimidated by those demonstrating superior skills than what they possess. That’s fine, I can understand and recognize that there are some people without the same facility for language, or for the ability to utilize instruments capable of connecting to the Internet, but that shouldn’t excuse so many people of jumping to conclusions based on ignorant innuendo and precious few facts, making allegations of Antisemitism over something that is clearly more related to computer heuristics and limitations in the development of Artificial Intelligence than a true racial or political agenda.
It would be my pleasure to aid anyone in a deeper understanding of this concept, so long as you are not afraid of being tutored by a Jew – one who is not as easily offended as others, apparently, but who still disdains all forms of Antisemitism, racism, sexism, and violence in all of its forms.
Oh, bless your heart.
i cant think of much that could be funnier and the fact that it is completely innocent is wonderful. I mean you cant exactly call a computer program racist when it is mistaking AIDS for a hispanic visigoth king from 1300 years ago.
causes of hemorrhoids = bronco literal lol.
No no… I’m jewish and that’s all factual. Please keep it on the DL, and from the bottom of my heart we’re sorry about that whole “AIDS” thing…
It feels liberating to finally say that…
“We did it, signed Morty”
http://healthba...&Treatments
under foods for iPhone It says i should feed it my BlackBerry.
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t stop laughing, I haven’t seen anything this funny in a long time. I’m in tears right now :0 )
Apparently Asthma can be treated by.. smoking pot. I did not know smoking anything made Asthma better..
pros and cons: http://medicalm...estionID=000132
Hippies! It appears to them that the cure to religion is also marijuana!
http://healthba...&Treatments
Apparently, babies are caused by smoking, brain damage, and AIDS, among other things.
*facepalm*
hhttp://healthbase.netbase.com/#babies&Causes
Being a Jew, I can assure you that alcohol is a great way to get rid of me. Single malt, preferably.
Where should we pour the salt?
Healthbase should remain exactly as it is, and be labelled ‘comedy’. I don’t remember laughing so hard in a long time…
I know! It sez they’re fixing the “embarrassing” bugs. It’s a feature, not a bug!!
I think by alcohol + salt it means a Margarita. One over here as well, please.
Cons of Jews:
Enemy.
o.O
We are also aliens that aid muslims, attack Christians, attack Jesus and engage in Holocaust denial.
http://healthba.../#Jews&Pros
It also says that a treatment for racism is apartheid and a Pro of racism is to “motivate Bush Administration”.
Check it out: http://healthba...&Treatments
Treatment for “race card” –> African american majority
So that’s why you don’t see Jews at margarita bars. Dr. Pepper really IS misunderstood.
Just one more: http://healthba...lulz&Causes
I wonder if the investors can get a refund?
Dude, antisemitic, really, is it all about semitism? Cant you be a bit more genocentric? You cure Indians with tobacco and microsatellite markers, Gypsies with Retrotransposon and Protein and insecticide, african americans with cocaine and beta blockers, and caucasians with cytochrome and testosterone.
The problem with this search is not necessarily the search, I havent looked at the quality of the papers, the problem is the presentation of results. Condition and cure labels are a bit of a dumb front for what allegedly is an intelligent search. The results are grotesque and these guys deserve all the bashing you are going to lather on them because this kind of presentation is completely half assed.
This is one of the most unfair, unprofessional articles I have read anywhere. They have bugs, for sure, but why try to bury a startup company with this sensational baloney. I can think of many examples you could have used that would have been funny, on point and far more fair.
Please post your many examples, if they really exist. More LOLs are always welcome.
on second read, you are right their results suck as well, look at ‘aids’ and it confuses the verb to ‘aid’ with the noun we are most likely to search for with a direct object as in ’sleeping aids’
semantic search means it is supposed to understand something about the search from the grammar.
You can treat mac issues with WIndows, Clarithromycin, or cheese.
http://healthba...&Treatments
funniest website ever….
Go Jew power! We can do anything from cooking delicious latkas, to haggling over the best price, to causing aids! Whoo!!!
this seems like a harmless error to me.
Come on give us a break. As soon as something is criticizing the jews or Israel ( two different matters ofcourse) – even if it is totally unintentional, you guys start shouting anti-semitism.
How can a Journalist WONDER if this is anti-semitic, when two lines below you refer to a call to Netbase who clarified the origin of the mistake.
When someone is completely accidental and not serious about it, it is funny to sarcastically call it anti-semitism. Do you really think that techcrunch believes that the creators of netbase are anti-semetic?
yet another person who failed to read the article. I’m sure there will be plenty more if I continue to read the comments.
I would also feel confident in theorizing that the people who did not get the joke have the same problem that NetBase has with semantics.
Is that a new level of irony?
The problem is not semantic searching. I have it running on a couple of domains and it does extremely well. It depends on the implementation and optimization. I am sure it is something that can be fixed but with the right kind of people.
MedGoline Team
lol this is the funniest thing ive ever read on TC
The results that they have featured near the search bar in the “OR, TRY ONE OF THESE” section are flawed also.
At this point, it may be nitpicking, but as a person trying to find health information, one bogus result does poison the well. For example, under Diabetes the 4th treatment is “Mouse”.
Under Asthma, the 3rd Treatment is “SAG 4218 LENORE LANE” which appears to be an address.
On the flipside, I looked up a condition I have, which is bursitis in my knee and found that while half of the “treatments” were actually just descriptions of the bursa (”fluid-filled sac”,”gliding surface”), the sheer wackiness of the results may be good. In a way, this search engine is equivalent to me putting bursitis in google and looking through the top 50 results. For example, under “Food & Plants” for bursitis there was a entry for Cherry. Being intrigued, I clicked it. Unfortunately, it seems that HealthBase based this recommendation of a Cherry on this item:
“i read somewhere that cherries are good for bursitis, but at this point i’m not sure, every day i drink cherry juice for breakfast, eat cherry yohgurt for lunch and have fresh cherries for dinner. .”
From HealthLinkUSA which I guess has a comments section. Healthbase has several challenges, but qualifying the data sources should be a top one.
Yet, at the same time, you have to wonder whether anyone even bothered searching for anything before launching. I understand the “you should be embarrassed by your first release” philosophy, but for health information that relies on trust, it may not be great.
There is clearly NO semantic technology going on here. It’s basic keyword search, and hence confusing meaning all over the place. Their ‘homonym’ problem doesn’t even require sophisticated technology to solve – some simple term disambiguation would do it.
Not only is this a major PR fail, this company will now forever be linked to this article. I hope their clients don’t do a Google search. Pathetic.
Simple. Fail.
As a Jew I am shocked and appalled that our susceptibility to Dr. Pepper has been discovered, however they neglected to note that this only effects Jews when applied in equal proportion with the well know ‘Pop-Rocks’ candy. The combination is potent, and to use an arcane medical term, ‘Truly Rad’. Now that the secret is out, none of the tribe are safe.
Looks like the treatment for the serious disease of ‘Techcrunch’ includes ‘DNA based dating service’.
Looks like they have found a cure for Mike’s condition
Their suggested cures include: “Google Scholar, Election poll Research Activity, Bing, Dna based dating service and Facebook”
(sorry to reply to my own message, but they really should turn the site into a comedy destination). Complications of catching ‘Google’ include:
Price
Censorship agreement
Burn up bandwidth
Cripple case
Cut
Kill job search
Waste monumental opportunity
Waste time
Techcrunch raved about this same site just this morning…
Should we anticipate a similar turn of the blade after Mint.com suffers a security breakdown?
This site never worked to begin with, the first article was for PR obviously
What’s the cure for muslims?
“No search results for muslims”.
I think everyone at HealthBase is desperately typing controversial queries into a block list, to avoid even more fail.
I’m impressed that TechCrunch managed to manufacture an Anti-Semitic conspiracy out of an application bug.
Let’s travel the road of illogic a bit more. A search for the term ‘Jews’ on Techcrunch brings up a couple of ads for “Buy JEWS at B&H Photo-Video
Huge selection of JEWS.” and “The Jews at Amazon”. Clearly this is indicative of virulent anti-Semitism. I am *shocked* that TC is working with the Jew-haters at Overture, and disappointed that they did not test all the ads that appear on all their pages.
Shame, I say. Shame.
Idiots.
No, You type AIDS, and you get JEW as a result
READ.
Seriously? You went to a health search engine, typed the word “Jew” into a search field that says “Enter a health condition, disease, or sign” and were surprised when results you got back were random and ridiculous?
You neglected to mention that site also recommends taking cocaine and mercury for “Latino” and best of all African-American and Asian are listed as treatments for “Caucasian.”
Besides you can find much worse on Google:
http://www.ever...st-bastard.html
http://nynerd.c...ng-stereotypes/
As mentioned by a LOT of commenters (including the one right above your comment):
“No, You type AIDS, and you get JEW as a result”
Comment methodology:
1st step READ
2nd step UNDERSTAND
3rd step COMMENT
Thats fine, but the focus and title of the article was: “NetBase Thinks You Can Get Rid Of Jews With Alcohol And Salt” If you think that NetBase actually built anti-semitic search engine then you should make sure not to take off your tin foil hat before the aliens steal your brain.
Pros & Cons of humorless Found 1 Pros & Cons from 1 records.back
Cons of humorless (1)
Oppressive
Treatments for humorless (11)
Character
Vigorous peer review Health Care
Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly
Comedic moment
Comic
Excuse
Game
Humorless sort
Joke
Kakashi
Latest film
Finally – treatment for my condition!
http://healthba...&Treatments
I’m gonna run right out and get me some meth and leafy green vegetables. Not sure what I’ll do with the lesbian.
Pass ‘er over here, and save us some kale.