Comment by fn-mote
15 hours ago
My assumption is the credibility of a non-PhD-holding medical student’s research is 0, just like (almost) any other inexperienced researcher.
15 hours ago
My assumption is the credibility of a non-PhD-holding medical student’s research is 0, just like (almost) any other inexperienced researcher.
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 peer-review practices, and the methods.
> 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 everything out of hand when both academia and the journals are actively turning scientific publishing into a market for lemons.
I was severely disillusioned about the quality of clinical studies.
Would you publish if the head honcho of your double-blind study insists to know what treatment a certain patient is receiving?
You have this discussion about research ethics and subsequent beratement once, and then you either mentally check out or go to another hospital.
I think this is the right distinction
Were you first-author on an unsupervised project and paper, or did someone stake their reputation on your work?
As usual HN posters are hyper aware of other's credentials while ignoring that their BS in CS (if that) doesn't magically qualify them to assess everything in every domain.
"I'm a software engineer, I'm sure if I had the time to study Neuroscience, I'd figure out what all of these researchers failed to realize all these decades! I (alone) have the magic of critical and logical thinking"
A lot of us here have masters, PhDs, have published in academia, worked in the hard sciences or different engineerinf disciplines.
But I agree, when youre on the internet no ones knows you're a dog.
Well, that is a statement..! As an MD PhD with over 60 (co-)publications including multiple in top 1% journals I can say for sure that this is untrue. Of course this may be different per topic and country, but there is perfect research being published by non-PhD scientists. In fact, the PI from a top-tier US university I collaborate with for over 10 years doesn't even have a PhD.
Both your statement and the OPs are an appeal to expertise which is not a substitute for the scientific method.
You can be a PI without having a PhD?
I've seen this a few times- for example, my manager at Berkeley Lab was a PI but only had an undergrad degree. This is very rare, however.
Even Hassabis found time to do a PhD. This is extra strange.
This is really far too broad a brush.
Do most medical students publish useless case studies trying to jockey for residency spots and signal hustle/devotion? No doubt!
But there are a good handful of medical students who are still (surprisingly) in it for the medicine and not the money. And that handful is exceedingly capable; no reason they can’t publish valuable work with the right collaborators and resources.
> no reason they can’t publish valuable work with the right collaborators
Despite h-index claiming to balance quantity and quality, it obviously incentives quantity over quality (no single publication can increment h-index as much as churning out a few worthless publications that cite each other); med students overwhelmingly follow those incentives trying to secure better residencies
in that case, it's a question of proportion. we cannot automatically conclude that a (supposed) "good handful" doing good research makes up for "most students" doing bad research.
A med student can absolutely contribute useful work, especially with good supervision. The issue is more that inexperienced authors plus publication pressure plus easy tooling is a bad combination
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
Knew a professor statistics from a world renowned institution. He worked in nephrology for 10-20 years and would tell many stories about the worst practices he's seen and researchers pushed him to allow.
Medicine was among the worst if not the worst according to him. Didn't really want much to do with it anymore. Basically a case of subpar statistical knowledge and bad incentives.
How can you tell when you are reading a paper?
The author list will show "M.D." instead of (or in addition to) "Ph.D.". The paper terminology will be skewed towards medical terms.
LLVM was a masters thesis project (not medicine related but research by non PhDs should not be disregarded imo)
LLVM was a thing that demonstrated its value by working when you used it. And you can't judge a population (all non-PhD theses) by its tippety-top performers, particularly when there are poor incentives involved.
I guess it depends on who the coauthors and PI are - some academic mentors can be overly trusting and ‘hands-off.’ A lone medical student’s self published paper shouldn’t be worth much though…
In the end it is about personal integrity and idealism, no matter what the titles are.
Totally different if someone's self image is that of a researcher for benefit of humankind or if they pick the career because they want to drive a Porsche.
What has PhD got to do with anything. Research is research regardless of who does it if using proper scientific method.
Such obvious common sense appears not obvious after all.
Since we have seen that 50%+ of findings even in medical and other natural sciences are not repruductible it's obvious that even PhD people are mostly incompetent.