This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There was a shooting at Brown University yesterday. Two people were killed. This is of course a tragedy, the kind of tragedy that has been well-litigated both here and everywhere else on the internet.
Brown decided to follow this up with another tragedy: canceling all outstanding exams and operations for the remainder of 2025.
One of the issues with our education system is that it is fundamentally unserious. Final exams are, or ought to be, a big fucking deal. Ten thousand of our supposedly best and brightest students will now pass an entire semester of advanced classes without a comprehensive examination of their skills and capabilities. Medical classes. I hope the physician you visit to get your unusually yellow skin checked out didn't take hepatology at Brown University in Fall 2025.
Well don't worry about that, Christmas vacation is one of the few times off that Medical Students get, so they won't be missing too many classes. Additionally exams will be actively rescheduled or effectively rescheduled (students will need to learn independently for the boards).
Clinical rotations are long enough (usually, 4,6,8,10 weeks) that it won't make a difference. Some schools will have a student miss out on scheduled elective time but that's a meh.
In terms of missed coursework...actual classes have been functionally replaced by professional teaching resources that the students pay for separately.
What are these? Does this mean there are no teachers teaching in med school?
The preclinical (academic classroom instead of clinical rotation) portion of U.S. medical education involves getting together a knowledge base for several very very large all encompassing standardized exams in which ANYTHING is fair game (and a mix of non-core learning things like group activities, cultural competency building and kinds of other stuff that is a mix of reasonable and bullshit).
Just like many academic professors in less specific institutions are often better at research or writing than teaching, many teachers in medical education are more researchers or clinical staff. Historically they were also quite bad about adding useless details about their specific research into the curriculum.
For this reason students have switched to high quality, battle tested, well taught and high yield online materials.
These are so good that some of them have near 100% utilization rate by U.S. MDs and for some schools its possible to never look at your school's course materials and still get a great outcome of school.
The teachers are still there though, and they are annoyed at being replaced which has resulted in things like an increase in problem/case/team based learning.
Before this recent bump in those modalities it would not be uncommon for literally zero students to show up to lecture, the forward thinking schools have stopped standard lecture and just provided online lectures.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link