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Comment by Obi_Juan_Kenobi | Hacker News Reader

The vast majority of medical professionals are not researchers, and are not trained in evaluating clinical trial data. They are notoriously poor at assessing such information.

You can be a remarkable clinician without ever interacting with the primary literature. These are simply different things.

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> The vast majority of medical professionals are not researchers, and are not trained in evaluating clinical trial data. They are notoriously poor at assessing such information.

Citation, please. This is a very strong statement.

> The vast majority of software professionals are not researchers, and are not trained in evaluating computer science research. They are notoriously poor at assessing such information.

Seem less ridiculous?

As someone who works in drug development, this is very accurate.

Understanding, designing and executing clinical trials is an entire specialty within medicine. Your average doctor will be familiar with the concepts, but not necessarily adept at evaluating a clinical trial.

You absolutely cannot be a remarkable clinician without engaging primary literature. Not sure where that claim comes from. Physicians need to know how to interpret and criticize findings from clinical trials to incorporate into their practice and communicate with patients. Plenty get away without doing that, but they are not counted among the best of us.

No they are the most common ones you will encounter. The average. Most will never see the best.

Recently I learned you can be a doctor without getting a baccalaureate.

It may not still be a thing, but I happened to run across the factoid while reading the wikipedia page of a middle-aged and famous doctor that just got the coronavirus.

I understood that medical professionals get trained in evaluating clinical trial data as advanced undergraduates, and certainly in graduate school.

Doctors typically go straight to med school from undergrad, which is focused on clinical application, not research.

Thanks for that perspective - it's something I had not thought of.

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