> student doctors are encouraged to publish whether or not they actually have an interest in research… but that shouldn’t discount the work of those who are genuinely engaged.

How do you propose the interested public make the distinction between genuine engagement and forced encouragement? Isn't it the task of journals to make that distinction before publishing? I don't think you can fault the public for dismissing everything out of hand when both academia and the journals are actively turning scientific publishing into a market for lemons.

I was severely disillusioned about the quality of clinical studies.

Would you publish if the head honcho of your double-blind study insists to know what treatment a certain patient is receiving?

You have this discussion about research ethics and subsequent beratement once, and then you either mentally check out or go to another hospital.

I think this is the right distinction

Were you first-author on an unsupervised project and paper, or did someone stake their reputation on your work?

As usual HN posters are hyper aware of other's credentials while ignoring that their BS in CS (if that) doesn't magically qualify them to assess everything in every domain.

"I'm a software engineer, I'm sure if I had the time to study Neuroscience, I'd figure out what all of these researchers failed to realize all these decades! I (alone) have the magic of critical and logical thinking"