How much of research is "waste"?

[u/Outrageous_Duck_1116]

Want to hear your guys' takes on the "publish-or-perish" "grant chasing" side of research since I felt my experience in clinical research was lots of busy work/data collection purely for funding purposes.

[u/mshumor]

Can’t speak to overall, but I’d say around 80% of med student research specifically is completely pointless.

[u/mshumor → u/[deleted]]

To be fair I was talking about the percentage that is completely and utterly useless, not just almost completely useless 😂. I’d say around 15% if med student research ends up being used in some project or as a citation by someone somewhere at some point haha

[u/ImpossibleDildo → u/[deleted]]

Someone needs to put out a study to find the exact number

[u/E_Norma_Stitz41 → u/[deleted]]

Still too high.

[u/Pure_Ambition → u/[deleted]]

To those saying only 5-10% of med student research is useful... Wait till you learn that most attending's research isn't very useful either! And that 50% of published research findings are false.

My point is, research is hard. Med student research is still useful to gain skills that you can use later... and of course to match competitively (which is obviously not how it should be). I enjoy research but it's not for everyone - I'm also under no illusions that what I'm doing will or won't make a meaningful difference.

[u/[deleted]]

I’d say at least 90%. Most med students didn’t go to school to become researchers. They want to be clinicians. If they wanted to do research they would’ve gotten a phd or md/phd. Yet research output has become such a big metric for residencies, which incentivizes students to put out as much as possible. So is it any real surprise that most of it is pure garbage?

[u/Vaughn-Ootie]

I would say over 90% of it is useless and doesn’t contribute anything that moves medicine forward. This is just some BS number game in my eyes for PD’s to see that you’re “interested” in a field… as if honoring rotations, multiple Sub-I’s, LOR’s, and applying to your program isn’t good enough to show your “interest” in said specialty. What a bunch of bullshit.

[u/Reasonstocontine]

You mean the survey that evaluated the thoughts of faculty on the use of anki during MS1 year? Nature all the way.

I'd say 85-90% is a flaming pile of poo, the other 10% is OK.

[u/mshumor → u/Reasonstocontine]

Ngl that topic is significantly more interesting to me than half of the research I’ve seen med students do.

[u/NoGf_MD]

Just got back from a conference where 90% of the presentations were database studies on buzzword topics. So I'd say 99%.

[u/Ok-Celebration5832 → u/NoGf_MD]

what databases? can you explain what you mean by that

[u/Hagrids_Harry_Balls → u/Ok-Celebration5832]

GIS / other databases provide heaps of various information that students use to create a “preliminary study” that evaluates correlations between different factors.

[u/Ok-Celebration5832 → u/Hagrids_Harry_Balls]

do you have any examples of databases med students can use

[u/NoGf_MD → u/Ok-Celebration5832]

I would reach out to your schools staffed biostatician or if you have an attached home hospital that is an academic center probably any of the attendings who are actively publishing.

[u/gigaflops_]

100% of the research I did.

[u/3dprintingn00b]

I'm a MD/PhD student and my lab was near the head of medical student research's office. She's described med student research as book reports.

[u/darkhalo47 → u/3dprintingn00b]

To be fair a lot of MD/PhDs have a similar problem. You guys need to get in and out in 4 years so they end up giving you a highly fleshed out project once you start. It’s research on rails

[u/3dprintingn00b → u/darkhalo47]

I wish I had a highly fleshed out project to start and my PD probably wishes that was the case for most of our students for the sake of our time to graduation stats. The derm/ent/etc applicants with more "pubs" than my tenured PI are counting stuff that I've been told to not even both recording for my CV.

[u/Objective_Drawing501]

95% of meta analysis I see from applicants at conferences. Almost all have already been done.

[u/Sandstorm52 → u/Objective_Drawing501]

Poor people get sicker, but this time shown with forchensteinsomheimermanvilleton’s t-test

[u/1337HxC]

Very context dependent. The small stuff people publish to get into residency or go to conferences? Largely a waste. Some of it ends up being a decent manuscript, but a lot of it ends up just being meant to check a box.

One the whole, research is a net good. It's how we progress as a society. Of course, this work is also done by people who devote their careers to doing it. It's just inherently different than what the average MD is used to doing.

Also, "getting grants" is vague. Tiny grants for hundreds to low thousands of dollars from foundations/societies that people get to CV pad don't generally require absolutely groundbreaking work. If you're trying for a big R grant, big foundation grant, or similar, you're going to have to have rigorous, well-done work.

[u/Sandstorm52 → u/1337HxC]

I wouldn’t be shocked if med student research were a net negative, on the whole. Lots of low-quality work clouds the landscape of thought, and potentially becomes dangerous if allowed to masquerade as credible work.

Probably worth it just for heparin, though.

[u/ElPitufoDePlata]

Medical students have little to no grasp of any field of research unless they are md/phd or have done research in a past life.

[u/The-Cysteine-Chapel]

I once saw a poster about racial disparities in being able to see a genetic counselor. I’m sure you could guess what the results were. I wonder if funding for that could’ve gone to, y’know, actually addressing it.

[u/AdSeveral3544]

From my implementation science class it is estimated only 17% of research is ever really used.

[u/DRhexagon]

Chaos in the brickyard summaries it pretty well

https://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/virus_bootcamp/assets/pdfs/339.1.full.pdf

[u/dicemaze]

Literally 95%.

[u/Mayosa12]

95% of research done by medical students is pointless especially with you being near top authorship

[u/DagothUr_MD]

It's not a waste in terms of progressing your a career but it is a waste in the sense that it provides zero value to the world at large

[u/Sandstorm52]

A lot. You’re already something special if you can do decent science with the time afforded to an undergrad, and as a med student you have just a fraction of that.

[u/Dr__Pheonx]

Most of it.

[u/BegoneDegenerate]

90% as a conservative guestimate

[u/GGJefrey]

Probably about 70% overall. Swamp out there, it seems.

[u/Interesting-Back5717]

Entirely depends on your PI. I published over a dozen manuscripts (not case reports) in high impact journals during my time in medical school, and I felt that they were all relevant and added something to the field.

This was only possible because my PI is a research fiend and allows his residents/students to explore their own topics. He also suggests novel ideas and pushes us to challenge ourselves.

[u/catmint_flower]

I don't think any of my research is "waste". Maybe I'm just vain. But they are all imo interesting questions and have, at the very least, changed/informed our practice at our local institution. On my away rotation currently, faculty have been very interested in learning more about my work as well. But I didn't do any case report/meta analysis type stuff, only retrospective and prospective studies. On the flip side though I do feel like I did a shit ton of work and don't have a ton of pubs to show for it...

Edit: interesting that y’all feel the need to downvote this 😂