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[OM] No hitting below the belt! [was Oh My Heart!]

Subject: [OM] No hitting below the belt! [was Oh My Heart!]
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:43:52 -0700
On 6/28/2010 8:40 AM, John Hudson wrote:
> I have a brother in law who read physics at Oxford, followed by a PhD in
> nuclear physics and then graduated from London University in medicine.
>
> He once told me that there is no way on this earth could one do a worthwhile 
> PhD concurrently with medicine .........I believe him.
>    

This seems to me a bit disingenuous. There is essentially no overlap 
between nuclear physics and medicine, whereas there is a great deal of 
overlap between biology and medicine. I believe that is the reason the 
double degree programs exist, whilst there are none between other, far 
less related fields.

> Isn't a PhD supposed to be a full time three or four year all-research based 
> undertaking?  Where would one fit in the rigors of a full time medical school 
> education?
>    

Now, time for the opposite side. I have a friend with a PhD in biology 
or maybe biochem who is a professional researcher. She says she and her 
like credentialed colleagues feel obligated to make fun of the limited 
research knowledge and skills of the combo degreed docs - even those who 
may competent researchers. A matter of professional pride, or some such.

She would likely question this researcher's credentials from exactly the 
opposite direction, the shortage of practical research experience.

Keeping in mind Chuck's links and latest post, who would you rather have 
researching the efficacy and safety of drugs you are going to take, an 
MD with great diagnostic skills and bedside manner, or perhaps a 
surgeon, neither with any training in statistics or epidemiology, or an 
expert in biological function, biochemistry, statistics and epidemiology?

Drug research is a specialty field, the practice of which has not that 
much in common with the practice of medicine.

> I suspect that there are a number of degree mills around.
>    

Now that's just a cheap shot. I have no idea at all what this woman's 
credentials really are, much less her actual competence, but absent 
presentation of actual information about the source of her degrees, I 
don't think such a comment is either meaningful or proper.

May I hear your credentials and some evidence for judging the degrees 
and competence of this person, other than the life experience expertise 
in cynicism to which you refer? Certainly, there are degree mills, but 
to imply that someone's degrees are from one without presenting evidence 
seems to me to smack of slander, even libel, as it was "published" publicly.

Again, I know nothing about her, nor did I read the study. I simply 
distrust ad hominem attacks.

Did you know, to use an extreme example, that most physicists were so 
outraged by certain aspects/implications of Einstein's Special Theory of 
Relativity that huge, vituperative fights broke out in the field, 
including personal attacks on Einstein (and each other) that ignored the 
theory itself?

When I hear someone attacking the researcher, and not the research, I 
immediately wonder whether it's about their dislike of the results. 
Common enough among apparently real scientists who have an emotional 
and/or economic/career stake in the opposite view, and even more so 
among us simple folk. I have no idea whether that's why you went after 
her credentials, whether you may perhaps have a case of MD-idolatry, or 
some other reason.

Ever wonder what happened to aether/ether, that invisible medium through 
which electromagnetic waves were thought to propagate? Ask the average, 
relatively well read non-physicist, and you will likely hear that it was 
disproved. Most contemporary physicists in the appropriate fields 
'believe' it exists, because it makes their experimental and 
mathematical results work, but nobody uses that name or even discusses 
it in such a direct way, as an aftermath of the ugliness of the 
relativity wars. They are embarrassed by this incident and want to 
forget it.

A part of the scandal is that Einstein didn't receive the Nobel Prize 
for his work on relativity, arguably one of the 2 or 3 greatest 
discoveries in the history of physics. He later got his Nobel for some 
lesser, more obscure work.

Moose
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