Medicine Is Political

> Scientists often like to think of their work as perfectly objective, perfectly rational, free from any bias or influence.

Why do people keep saying this? I don't know any scientists who make such claims.

When politicians are trying to push an agenda one way or the other, they like to erect a glamour around the science making it appear settled. But then if you ask the scientists themselves, the answer is always "it's complicated" and "there is more work to do on this topic."

> Portraying patients as unscientific and irrational is the other side of the same coin for the myth that medicine is perfectly rational ... doctors are just as prone as the rest of us to biases, blind spots, and institutional errors.

This is true and all, but at the same time it would behoove us to differentiate when someone is an expert or "stakeholder," or someone "using the lay press" to "politicize" an issue! [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1448142256930758661/p...

One reason is because medical and clinical training is tied to the outdated apprenticeship system. There is no Khan academy for medicine. Train doctors at scale like software engineers and this sort of problem will naturally go away. Decouple medical school admissions from residency. Residency is not that important if your focus is on research. The unfortunate state of things in the biomedical field is that without the magical M.D. title next to your name, you are not taken seriously as an subject domain expert.

Where can one get reliable, relevant and complete data on long covid vs long flu?