Science vs. Science Fiction
I wish I had audabee's avatar for "Yes, it IS rocket science!" or something like that. I don't know what my f-list's overall stance is regarding childhood vaccination, so I will attempt to tread lightly. In short, I'm pro, but I don't have a problem with parents grilling their doctors about the side affects and doing risk assessment to spread out the schedules.
The reason why this is bothering me is that I came across an article on Huffington Post where a doctor asked an honest question. "How do I get the parents of my patients to vaccinate their children?" I understand the frustration. I'm going to be deeply involved in the health care system and I can see the kind of opposition I'm going to get on this issue. We are living in the age of the internet, which means you can be a Jill of all trades and master of none with just a click of the mouse. Believe me, I'm glad that the science journals are making their stuff so available to look at (at the same time, it allows fake sites to spring up pushing pseudoscience). Too bad that some people looking at it don't have the background to analyze it properly to choose the good articles from the bad. Plus, they look into who sponsored said study and if it's Big Pharma, they decide it's bunk due to any number of conspiracies. Yes, Big Pharma is money hungry, but trust me, they're not making tons with vaccines (try diabetes medications).
Anyway, this post isn't about vaccinations, herd immunity or public health per se. What dawned on me in reading the comments is the kind of hostile working environment I'm getting myself into. People just don't trust doctors anymore. They think health professionals are sleeping with pharmaceutical reps, no lie! I suppose in the 1950s, no internet meant that people actually had to visit the library to get textbook information about the latest scientific discoveries. There was no Big Pharma to elicit suspicion from the masses and people just listened to their GPs, nodded as though they understood (or didn't want to hear the bad news anyway) and took a pill.
I'm not advocating for that time to come back, but once the internet genie has been summoned, you can't put it back. I'm not going into medicine for the money, so how do I extricate myself from the bad health practitioners out there? How can I possibly prove it to them that I do care about my fellow man and that I'm not hawking pills?
Currently, I'm spending probably more time tutoring (peer and private) than I am furthering my own work and just last week, my mother told me it was a waste of time. Why help your competitors for grad school? But after reading the comments from that article, I realize more and more that people scorn science because they equate it with the bad deliverers of health care they've encountered. There are bad scientists, doctors, chemists, etc. But the science? Please don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, please.
So it dawned on me today that maybe what's missing in med school and other places is the ability to teach someone else what you know. This is essentially what tutoring is. Pre-med students spend so much time memorizing in such a solitary fashion, they lose their ability to articulate and find analogies for some of the more difficult concepts of medicine. Nowadays it's more important to have this social skill set than ever. If the goal is patient compliance, I don't see any other way than to make sure graduates can teach what they know. Patients are armed with so much and the only way to gain their trust is through being convincing and confident about what you know.
So no, Mom, I'm not wasting my time. Science fiction is easy; it has absolute answers that human nature wants. Science itself is hard and by it's very fluid nature, difficult to sell to the public. I guess I have to find a way to sell it.
The reason why this is bothering me is that I came across an article on Huffington Post where a doctor asked an honest question. "How do I get the parents of my patients to vaccinate their children?" I understand the frustration. I'm going to be deeply involved in the health care system and I can see the kind of opposition I'm going to get on this issue. We are living in the age of the internet, which means you can be a Jill of all trades and master of none with just a click of the mouse. Believe me, I'm glad that the science journals are making their stuff so available to look at (at the same time, it allows fake sites to spring up pushing pseudoscience). Too bad that some people looking at it don't have the background to analyze it properly to choose the good articles from the bad. Plus, they look into who sponsored said study and if it's Big Pharma, they decide it's bunk due to any number of conspiracies. Yes, Big Pharma is money hungry, but trust me, they're not making tons with vaccines (try diabetes medications).
Anyway, this post isn't about vaccinations, herd immunity or public health per se. What dawned on me in reading the comments is the kind of hostile working environment I'm getting myself into. People just don't trust doctors anymore. They think health professionals are sleeping with pharmaceutical reps, no lie! I suppose in the 1950s, no internet meant that people actually had to visit the library to get textbook information about the latest scientific discoveries. There was no Big Pharma to elicit suspicion from the masses and people just listened to their GPs, nodded as though they understood (or didn't want to hear the bad news anyway) and took a pill.
I'm not advocating for that time to come back, but once the internet genie has been summoned, you can't put it back. I'm not going into medicine for the money, so how do I extricate myself from the bad health practitioners out there? How can I possibly prove it to them that I do care about my fellow man and that I'm not hawking pills?
Currently, I'm spending probably more time tutoring (peer and private) than I am furthering my own work and just last week, my mother told me it was a waste of time. Why help your competitors for grad school? But after reading the comments from that article, I realize more and more that people scorn science because they equate it with the bad deliverers of health care they've encountered. There are bad scientists, doctors, chemists, etc. But the science? Please don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, please.
So it dawned on me today that maybe what's missing in med school and other places is the ability to teach someone else what you know. This is essentially what tutoring is. Pre-med students spend so much time memorizing in such a solitary fashion, they lose their ability to articulate and find analogies for some of the more difficult concepts of medicine. Nowadays it's more important to have this social skill set than ever. If the goal is patient compliance, I don't see any other way than to make sure graduates can teach what they know. Patients are armed with so much and the only way to gain their trust is through being convincing and confident about what you know.
So no, Mom, I'm not wasting my time. Science fiction is easy; it has absolute answers that human nature wants. Science itself is hard and by it's very fluid nature, difficult to sell to the public. I guess I have to find a way to sell it.