I have both personal and close family experience of being actively encouraged by a doctor to research something myself on the web (with the caveat that those so encouraged were known to the doctors concerned as being people with some experience in sifting wheat from chaff in a survey of the existing literature). As one said, there is simply no way he can keep up with all the specialised literature for each and every condition even in his own field, but a patient who brings him a bundle of decent quality literature with citations can make sure he sees stuff that's relevant to their problem.