Most doctors drop the research once they get a residency spot. It's just the selection mechanism for residency.

Guidelines and standards can change quickly. It's important for clinicians to have a foundational understanding of statistical methods and to be able to critique studies.

For certain specialties, the number of residency positions is so limited that medical students have to publish research to be competitive, even if they have no interest in doing so later in their career.

But altogether I sort of agree, the incentives are pretty maligned such that for many it's just easier to become a bad scientist with more publications than a good one with fewer.

Clinical research is in a weird spot, where you need both clinical experience and research experience. Getting the former already requires long hours and you are swamped with work. The latter is highly age gated and if you want to pursue research you often need to achieve specific milestones before a certain age, e.g. to be considered for tenure etc.

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