1. I agree with you 100%. I was just communicating what I have seen (granted n=1)... people applying to IR/DR who do NOT want to do DR. I'm not saying this is a good thing but it is happening.
2. True. There are also a lot of residents who went into DR with the explicit intent of going into IR... and then changed their minds and did DR. Why lock in med students so early if a significant percentage will change their minds?
3. Exactly. I said that "if only there was a residency" line tongue-in-cheek. The new IR/DR residencies, IMO, do nothing but lock in a MS4 when they don't need to be locked in. With any of the IR pathways, you end up with DR and IR certification, they are 6 (maybe 7 if you don't do ESIR) years, etc. Instead, with the creation of the residencies, med students feel they need to get in to the IR pathway now because who knows if they can later. I don't see what was so wrong with the old pathway personally.
Also, your analogy doesn't quite hold up because neurosurgeons don't get certified in both general surgery and neurosurgery. It's a very distinctive choice between completely different organ systems, styles of surgery, so on. Also, neurosurgeons don't spend 3+ years doing general surgery before going to neurosurg like IR residents will in DR. A better analogy may be integrated vascular and integrated CT surgery compared to general surgery. There are many in the vascular/CT surgery community who think the integrated residencies were a bad idea but they did them to get stronger medical students going into those fields.
I think we will just have to agree to disagree. I see your points, I think they are valid, but I still stand by my point that IR/DR residency adds nothing