We are not scientists!

From where I see it, the skill of understanding and evaluating science is neither taught nor learned well in medical school – I have to come here for that!

“Most recent graduates are taught to critically appraise the literature. Practicing physicians seem much more interested in interpreting important clinical studies than the editorial suggests.”

And then you treat them to a Pfizer lunch for “educational” rounds. Or is it indoctrination rounds ?

Doctors don’t (Can’t?) implement simply done guidelines. Let alone appraise the literature.

Doctors can be scientists, but not with paper records. Doctors get paid to see people not to undergo the scientific process. And doctors do what they get paid for.

Aint it about time to change how doctors are paid ? How about some results-oriented payment ?

Pay raise for the psychiatrists and huge pay cut for Dermatologists ? Sounds refreshing.

I read the original post and most of the comments in total disbelief.

Not a scientist?

Gee…after obtaining the equivalent of 2 PhD’s, I’m thinking…what do I have to do?

That’s right. Two.

I’ve always marveled at how someone with a PhD gets treated as if he had conquered the academic world and at the same time people piss on doctors like they were road kill.

Four years of medical school = 4 years of intense and voluminous learning punctuated (unlike most doctorate programs) by constant testing and assessment and culminating in a huge and comprehensive set of tests (at 2 and 4 years) which need to be passed (= The National Boards); that certainly is the equivalent of a PhD degree.

Oh, then one must use one’s achievements during that process to enter another period of post graduate training called internship and residency during which many of us subspecialized in an entirely new field of medicine, learing another immense body of literature, again puctuated by peer review, tutorship and, again culminating in several days of written and oral examinations (= subspecialty boards) encompassing everything one ever learned (seemingly since kindergarten) and grueling beyond any description.

To boot, forever thereafter we are subjected to ongoing application of continued medical education and recertifying examinations.

In addition, doctors must, in their official positions, strictly apply the laws of statistics and empirical reasoning while keeping up with relevant published literature in everything they do, every day. This is enforced in many ways via the mechanisms of peer review, state licensure oversight, and, not the least, by a tort system that demands perfection and points the cannons of penalty at infinity.

Not a scientist?

I know no one, no professional, no worker, no politician who needs to know more about the scientific method and its application on a daily basis than does a physician.

It’s because we apply our science to the mundane and to the day-to-day physicial travails of human beings that we suffer in the eyes of the scientific elite — and society in general — who infuse their mystique while under the cover of academics or the laboratory.
I, for one, am tired of it. It smells of envy, and physicians should stop being apologetic for what we were, and what we are.

We were the best students of our generation. We are the most functional and practical scientists in the world.