I admit, I've done it. Fess up, you have too. But using that fine silverware to help the medicine go down isn't recommended and could result in giving yourself a dangerously inaccurate dose, says a small study appearing in this week's Annals of Internal Medicine.

A pair of Cornell researchers decided to test whether people are able to pour the proper dose of medicine into a household spoon. They tried out their experiment with a group of 195 college students. Researchers gave them three spoons -- a teaspoon, a tablespoon and a larger spoon and asked them to pour exactly 5 ml of cold medicine into each.

The students tended to underdose with the medium spoon (by 8 percent) and overdose with the larger spoon (about 12 percent). Most had no idea they had made an error. In fact, they were pretty confident they poured the right amount into each spoon.

These folks were in a well-lit room and got a practice pour and still made some errors when trying to estimate the amount of the medication, the authors point out. More mistakes would be likely among sick, tired patients trying to eyeball a spoonful of medicine for themselves, they wrote.

The take home message: don't use a kitchen spoon. Use the cap that the medicine comes with, a special dosing spoon or a measuring dropper.