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Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

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Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#91

Post by spchampion2 »

GerryAdamsSF wrote: post #65
spchampion2 wrote: post #55

My potentially unpopular opinion: Congress should ban residency programs from using Medicare training dollars to pay for research. They should do this with the goal of speeding up the training pipeline for actual practitioners, many of whom are now required to spend a year of their residency doing research of some kind. If medical residents, or teaching hospitals, want people to do research, they should go get fundin…

This is wrong. It's medical students, not residents, who take research years, and that's only for extremely competitive specialties. The lack of doctors, as it has always been, is because of the shortage of residency spots. That cannot be addressed without Congress reversing 50+ years of neoliberalism trends and political failure and refusal to invest in public services and/or a communist revolution. Good luck fixing…

I just grabbed a random program listing for urologists at NYU Langone [1]:

> Residents spend the first (intern) year of the training program completing both general surgery and urology rotations, and years two through five in urology. During year three, residents also conduct clinical research with a faculty mentor in a subspecialty of their choice.

Emphasis added by me.

1 - https://med.nyu.edu/departments-institutes/urology/education...

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#92

Post by frollogaston »

eunos wrote: post #50

That aside I am a bit perplexed that almost absolute insistence of medical students to become researchers as well, it seems just become a pure practitioner is not a feasible option. To make it worse it looks more acceptable that a doctor really provide bad service or lacking communication and empathy to patients than not being a researcher.

It's kinda like saying high school students insist on taking AP or SAT Subject tests

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#93

Post by frollogaston »

tremon wrote: post #37
thomasfedb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a clinician-academic who published in The Lancet during medical school, I think this goes a bit far. Unfortunately student doctors are encouraged to publish whether or not they actually have an interest in research… but that shouldn’t discount the work of those who are genuinely engaged. But certainly we should always approach the literature critically, including the author list, journal of publication and its pee…

> student doctors are encouraged to publish whether or not they actually have an interest in research… but that shouldn’t discount the work of those who are genuinely engaged. How do you propose the interested public make the distinction between genuine engagement and forced encouragement? Isn't it the task of journals to make that distinction before publishing? I don't think you can fault the public for dismissing e…

Check the incentives. I know how much pressure there is for medical students to publish research just to get into residency programs. That match process often determines where they'll live for the foreseeable future. A few years later and suddenly they have MDs and things are more set.

Likewise view an MS (the degree itself) with suspicion if it was the only good way for that person to even be in the country.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#94

Post by eunos »

frollogaston wrote: post #92
eunos wrote: post #50

That aside I am a bit perplexed that almost absolute insistence of medical students to become researchers as well, it seems just become a pure practitioner is not a feasible option. To make it worse it looks more acceptable that a doctor really provide bad service or lacking communication and empathy to patients than not being a researcher.

It's kinda like saying high school students insist on taking AP or SAT Subject tests

At least AP or SAT Subject tests is not an independent researchs

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#95

Post by frollogaston »

eunos wrote: post #94
frollogaston wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kinda like saying high school students insist on taking AP or SAT Subject tests

At least AP or SAT Subject tests is not an independent researchs

I mean, the students don't want to take those, but they're heavily encouraged for getting into good colleges (well not SAT Subject anymore). Medical students are told that research helps get into residency.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#96

Post by fluidcruft »

jmalicki wrote: post #89
fluidcruft wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MD doctors (and even to a large extent DO doctors nowadays) are philosophically grounded on science. An MD fundamentally practices science. That used to be one of the key differences between MD and DO physicians, but science has been so successful at advancing the standard of care that DOs cannot ignore it anymore. That's just to say that MDs are expected to be fluent in science and it's not some arbitrary expectatio…

An MD does not practice science. Science is a process of discovering new knowledge through experiments. An MD is much more akin to an engineer that applies scientific knowledge (and yes, some proportion of both MDs and engineers do create new knowledge through experiments and thus do science, but it's not the baseline expectation).

"Practicing" something means applying it. It's similar to how practicing law and creating law are related but not the same thing.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#97

Post by sampo »

jmyeet wrote: post #43

I can explain what's going on here. For context, you need to know how somebody becomes a doctor in the US. 1. You get a 4 year degree in college. You hopefully get a very good GPA. You need to do so-called pre-med classes that really don't have much to do with medical education but are known as "weed out" classes, particularly Organic Chemistry. If you don't do these in your 4 year degree, you can do a program afterw…

> You get a 4 year degree in college

This is pretty uniquely a US-Canada specific system, that you first do a different 4-year BSc degree, before entering a 4-year medical school.

In most countries, you go a 6-year medical school right after high school.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#98

Post by jmalicki »

fluidcruft wrote: post #96
jmalicki wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An MD does not practice science. Science is a process of discovering new knowledge through experiments. An MD is much more akin to an engineer that applies scientific knowledge (and yes, some proportion of both MDs and engineers do create new knowledge through experiments and thus do science, but it's not the baseline expectation).

"Practicing" something means applying it. It's similar to how practicing law and creating law are related but not the same thing.

I practice medicine everytime I take a Tylenol then.

Am I guilty of a felony for not having a license?

Practicing law and the practice of applying legal regulations are quite different, just as practicing science and the practice of applying scientific knowledge are quite different.

Not that MDs are less than scientists. I stand firm that Flat Earthers who do experiments to prove the earth is flat are absolutely practicing scientists! They are complete idiots who don't know anything, but they set out to create experiments to prove or disprove their ideas.

Whereas an excellent physician who is extremely learned and takes medical studies at face value, and knows more knowledge derived from science than most scientists who created it, is only using knowledge derived from science, not practicing science.

It's like during COVID people had those signs "I believe in science!". I probably agree with everything they believe, but science is a process of testings theories and creating knowledge, it's not a body of facts you agree with.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#99

Post by mishellaneous »

gowld wrote: post #72
mishellaneous wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a friend of a friend who did a stint in biomedical academia told me that the researchers in their field did not hold research coming from the medicine community in high regard

How can you tell when you are reading a paper?

my impression is that inside these niches, people know each other personally, or are only separated by a small number of degrees. reputations form, etc. so any paper they end up reading, most likely does not have completely unknown authors from completely unknown institutions. without this information, yeah, it'd be harder to judge. surely anyone can find out anyone else's (using full name and institution) academic background online today, but it'd not be so easy to judge it without being an insider.

Re: Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

#100

Post by elendilm »

gowld wrote: post #72
mishellaneous wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a friend of a friend who did a stint in biomedical academia told me that the researchers in their field did not hold research coming from the medicine community in high regard

How can you tell when you are reading a paper?

There will be clues and leaks hidden in the sentences of the paper. Compression always leaks out.
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