this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
1319 points (98.0% liked)

Science Memes

11047 readers
3095 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] someguy3 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So I'm curious. The way I see it, the actual practicing of medicine doesn't advance the field itself. What advances it is research and development. Do the researchers actually go though med school or is that path more like biology PhD, chemistry PhD, etc?

[–] NielsBohron 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There are medical researchers that have MD's, but they are not practicing physicians (usually). There are MD/PhD programs that are aimed toward medical research fields (usually with the PhD being in biology or chemistry as you mentioned), and lots of biological and biomedical engineers working on certain medical fields as well (especially using stem cells and other chemical cues to regrow tissues). So yeah, biology- and physiology-adjacent sciences are where most of the actual advances are happening.

Actually practicing medicine is basically like being a mechanic that specializes in keeping one particularly poorly designed piece of equipment running.

[–] someguy3 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So was a wrong, most researchers go through MD/PhD programs? Like what percent of researchers go through medical school? 50/50?

[–] NielsBohron 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I don't know that you're wrong, because those MD/PhD programs are exceptionally demanding (but are a good way to avoid med school debt for some). It's more that even for pure MD's, research is a very, very different career path than practicing physician. I think researchers still have to go through residency, but after that they're mostly designing and arranging clinical trials, writing grants, interacting with related university departments, etc.

So, you know, research stuff rather than patient stuff.

edit: to address your actual question, I have no idea what the numbers for each path look like. A lot of those fields get so interrelated that it probably depend a lot on how you define "medical research." Does genetics count? Genomics? Biomedical engineering, definitely, but what about the material scientists that develop the new dental polymers? It all gets pretty hazy when you drill down on specifics

Edit 2: I also suppose I should say that my experience with science research is almost entirely in public/university research from about a decade back, so current private sector research could vary a lot from my experience. I don't think it's that different though, given what I've heard from friends and coworkers.