re: The Boom in Politicized Medical Student "Research"

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Also, is this shift in "low quality research" a medical student thing, or just a medical research thing?

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It is only talking about papers done by students and nothing more.

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Reading into it, seems prospective neurosurgeons and dermatologists lead the pack in student papers. I can understand neurosurgeons feeling the need for a leg up in acceptance, but dermatologists I find shocking for some reason.

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Dermatology is probably more competitive to match into than NSGY. It’s at least close.

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Perhaps if one had the experience of both class rank and a scored Step 1 to separate him as wheat from "chaff" (all is relative), whereas these students don't, buy-in might be affected.

The former system is far preferable IMO from a residency selection fairness stance. More so, as the latter would obviously incentivize proliferative publication as a sole differentiator, even as quality suffers.

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All very fair points. In fact, I amend my position as you are probably right.

If someone of yesteryear trying to match into a competitive field just smoked Step 1, its human nature for them to not feel the "need" to also have to pump out a million papers since that score alone is going to open alot of doors.

But I 10000% agree. I knew it from the jump and its played out as predicted: Step 1 being p/f wasnt going to lessen the "stress," but just shift the stress to another area.

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The study was specifically focused on Med Students work, and heavily weighted on political rather than scientific topics.

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I guess my question is, is medical research in general now more political...and since medical students are publishing more....it make sense that you would find that trend when only looking at their publications. I.e is this trend inevitable given the research pressures on medical students.

We have a research assistant that works with us for one year. Usually its someone in the middle of med school or someone who didn't match. They leave with like 15-25 publications in one year. None of them are political. But are all of them high quality? I plead the fifth

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Where are you getting this from? Nothing in the OP says the med students are the only authors. I’ve actually never come across such a paper

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I read the link and even went to links the paper used as reference.

Basically, from what I gather, competition for spots in Med school is so tough, many seniors do this to make the application look better.

Unless published as a peer reviewed study, I see nothing wrong with the practice TBH.

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I read the link and even went to links the paper used as reference.

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One of them is a cohort of three medical students, but I think the others have non med student authors. And I don't believe the raw data only includes med student only publications.

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And I don't believe the raw data only includes med student only publications.

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I agree. It looks like it is papers written by seniors applying to med school and doing so to stand above the competition. As I said, as long as these papers are not published as peer review, more power to the kids. I do not have to agree with what they write.