Crazy schools!!!?

Question

During one of the medical schools in the U.S, there was a big deal about a muscle discovered in humans that no one had ever seen before. It is in the jaw area. Medical students dissect and look at every muscle in the body, but none had seen this muscle. That was because they all used the same method for the dissection and that method destroyed the muscle. So my question is, do you think school is brainwashing us to act the same and think the same? All these medical students made the same error over and over again, because they all followed the same standard methods. Therefore, I think schools are creating "Robots" to act and think the same way, instead of having us invent or discover our own path and view of the world around us. I believe schools should let us create our own methods instead of following their's!

Thank you!

Answer 1

I found the article in the NY times this gentleman is referring.  

The practice of medicine comes is not simply the memorization of every single muscle of the body, chemical reaction and disease...if it was then you would be right that we would be robots.  

Discovery of new things and ideas are part of medical science, you will never know everything and what you know is right today maybe wrong tomorrow.  Remember this throughout your career and take humility in these facts.

Answer 2

Fine.  Do your own thing.

But, for the love of God, do NOT attempt to practice medicine until you have a good grasp of what hundreds of very smart people have already discovered (and rejected) using the scientific method.

The "robots" that I work with are creative, intelligent people, who constantly have to come up with new ideas.  You see, in real life, patients do not follow the textbook.

It is only by having a very good foundation of medical knowledge that one can reach beyond the textbooks and make appropriate (and sometimes novel) decisions regarding patient care.

By ignoring the mistakes of the past, you are doomed to repeat them.  By learning the successes of the past, you are lifted to a level where you can make new discoveries.

Answer 3

I agree that standard methods tend to produce standard results, but they also help us learn much faster.

If someone plonked a cadaver down on the table in front of me, and said "Dissect it!", I might discover a new muscle. I'd also certainly fail to identify any number of known muscles, organs, bones, and other body parts. Basically, I'd be lost without my robot-like methods.

I certainly approve when I see people using different methods and examples in teaching, but I think that most students need some kind of standard as a learning framework. The reason we're so delighted when someone discovers a new method is that it's so hard to do. Kind of unfair to expect students to come up with all this stuff on their own, don't you think?

Having said that, I do think there's a bit too much standardisation in education. When trying to explain different mechanisms of evolution to someone yesterday, it took me almost 10 minutes to find a decent example that WASN'T adaptive radiation. There are other mechanisms, but that's the one that is always used as an example. Makes it pretty difficult to learn sometimes.