PhDs vs. MDs - who's more knowledgable?

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jdh71 said:
lol @ obvious statements (Nooooooooooo? Reallllly? Since when?!?!?11?)

have you ever made a statement in here that wouldn't win the the "captain obvious" award? serious question
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You win the "needs anger management and an ego deflation" award buddy
 
I don't think anyone is understanding what jdh is trying to say; that current major medical advancements haven't really been found. The great technologies and treatments we have today are great and are based on on progression of already established ideas and discoveries. A breakthrough is based on a novel & oftentimes unexpected insight (penicillin discovery). The computers and digital tech we have now far surpass anything 10-15 years ago but these aren't breakthroughs; that word is saved for the development of the integrated circuit which got the ball rolling.
 
I like where this thread is going.

MDs and PhDs have two very different skill sets. I would say the average MD who has completed residency probably has more knowledge than an average PhD. The MD has probably just put in more hours at that point.
 
ToldYouSo said:
I don't think anyone is understanding what jdh is trying to say; that current major medical advancements haven't really been found. The great technologies and treatments we have today are great and are based on on progression of already established ideas and discoveries. A breakthrough is based on a novel & oftentimes unexpected insight (penicillin discovery). The computers and digital tech we have now far surpass anything 10-15 years ago but these aren't breakthroughs; that word is saved for the development of the integrated circuit which got the ball rolling.
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No, no, I get what he is saying...he wants me to have sexual relations with a close relative (see above).

Anyways...it comes down to the definition of "medical breakthrough". I consider the above mentioned discoveries "medical breakthroughs".

And btw.: even the discovery of penicillin was only made possible because good ol Fleming had the good sense to look closer at what was going on in his petri dish instead of tossing it out as a failed experiment. It takes good science and scientific minds to make breakthroughs, they don't just fall out of the sky.
 
Siverhideo1985 said:
.
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Nice try, but one does not equal the other.

I gave examples of "major breakthroughs". I never said there hasn't been an advancement in technology or treatment.

If you'd like to get indigent, at least do you and me the favor of actually trying to understand what is actually being said before taking the intellectually dishonest strawman road. This is the kind of thing that will help you out tremendously as you move through your education and training.
 
ToldYouSo said:
I don't think anyone is understanding what jdh is trying to say; that current major medical advancements haven't really been found. The great technologies and treatments we have today are great and are based on on progression of already established ideas and discoveries. A breakthrough is based on a novel & oftentimes unexpected insight (penicillin discovery). The computers and digital tech we have now far surpass anything 10-15 years ago but these aren't breakthroughs; that word is saved for the development of the integrated circuit which got the ball rolling.
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Someone actually spent the time to try and understand what I was saying instead of letting their knees jerk. Thank you.

This kind of calm and reasonable approach will serve you well in your journey.

What's curious to me is why you saw this and the others did not?
 
ToldYouSo said:
I don't think anyone is understanding what jdh is trying to say; that current major medical advancements haven't really been found. The great technologies and treatments we have today are great and are based on on progression of already established ideas and discoveries. A breakthrough is based on a novel & oftentimes unexpected insight (penicillin discovery). The computers and digital tech we have now far surpass anything 10-15 years ago but these aren't breakthroughs; that word is saved for the development of the integrated circuit which got the ball rolling.
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Those are breakthroughs. If we didn't have these advancements our progress wouldn't be nearly as far as it is today. Penicillin is nice but there is a thing called resistance. Many people have a smart phone that is hundreds of times more powerful than huge super computers decades ago and the world has changed because of that.
 
Siverhideo1985 said:
No, no, I get what he is saying...
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No you didn't. If you understood what I was saying you wouldn't have posted stupid bull****.

Anyways...it comes down to the definition of "medical breakthrough". I consider the above mentioned discoveries "medical breakthroughs".
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I see. After fulling admitting you understand what I'm saying, then how can you possibly be arguing with me about something you've decided has a different definition than I do? Are you always such an intellectually dishonest douche bag? Or are you especially so here because your knees jerked and you're embarrassed by it?

It takes good science and scientific minds to make breakthroughs, they don't just fall out of the sky.
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No one said otherwise. I fail to understand why so many people keep repeating this idea over and over again like it's an important point to the discussion. You don't actually think that people don't understand that science must do "science" in order to make breakthrough do you?
 
Brigade4Radiant said:
Those are breakthroughs. If we didn't have these advancements our progress wouldn't be nearly as far as it is today. Penicillin is nice but there is a thing called resistance. Many people have a smart phone that is hundreds of times more powerful than huge super computers decades ago and the world has changed because of that.
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A phone is still a computer. Advancement in an already existing tech is not a breakthrough. The "breakthrough" the the creation of a "computer". The next breakthrough in computing would be something like artificial intelligence.
 
jdh71 said:
Go **** your mother before you deign condescend to me *******

You must have a real problem with reading comprehension and/or understanding of the english language.

Most of your links were related to astrophysics or some other kind of nonsense - good for them.
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Jeez. Bad day at work dude?

Gonna be honest, kinda surprised they put your account on hold. Someone must have flagged you... kinda bush league.

Brigade4Radiant said:
You also didn't include sequencing of the human genome which was done very recently or transplantation of synthetic organs.


You also say STEM cell research is going nowhere fast which leads me to believe that you don't even read the literature on STEM cell research.
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And seriously, what has has sequencing of the genome gotten us in a decade... basically nothing.

And what have stem cell research brought us? Again basically nothing. that link you provided was not a transplanted syntetic organ- they basically made a pipe by doing some fancy cultures on a special petri dish shaped like a trachea. Not exactly earth shattering

What JDH is talking about is a true paradigm shift. There have been advancements but nothing like the advent of antibiotics or non-invasive imaging.

What the medical community is doing is using stuff it already has for things it hasn't used it for in the past (for instance- Cardiac MRI)



Physio Doc 2 Be said:
As far as being an instructor during the first two years, they are both more than adequate. There is huge variation and my experience is that clinicians tend to be much more direct and enthused (because they remember that they went to medical school to learn medicine, not a pure science) but I've met some PhD's who were excellent as well. My guess is that any PhD could step into the clinical arena and understand the language, but they wouldn't be proficient much outside of discussing the issues at hand. I think that any clinician would have a similar experience in most labs. But I would also put my money on the MD learning lab techniques and learning them well before I'd guess the PhD can pick up the 2/6 systolic murmur over in the left 3rd intercostal space.
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I have to say, it would be best if MDs taught all of the first 2 years. It would be much more clinically relevant and a lot of the useless crap would be taken out.

The MDs who teach the basic sciences actually have experience in the real world using that "book learnin." The PhDs dont so just can't know what is pertinent and what is not so we learn a lot of useless crap when we could be learning important things.
 
I think an MD is like having a knowledge base that is 1000 miles wide, and 1000 miles deep, whereas a PhD is more like 10-100 miles wide and 10000 miles deep.
 
They have timeouts on SDN? Interesting.

I maintain that some of these discoveries, especially in the fields such as gene mapping, microarrays, and stem cell engineering, will be hailed as paradigm shifts in due time (in the scientific community they are already handled as such, even if the medical industry has not been able to harness their full potential yet).

It took almost 15 years from the discovery of penicllin by Flemming to the useful mass production of the drug for the invasion of Normandy (and that was with the driving force of a world war to progress this development). I wonder, if we were having this discussion around 1930, if the same people that deny genome sequencing and SC engineering the status of medical breakthrough now would also have balked at the significance of penicillin before it came useful to the masses ten years later.
 
Siverhideo1985 said:
They have timeouts on SDN? Interesting.

I maintain that some of these discoveries, especially in the fields such as gene mapping, microarrays, and stem cell engineering, will be hailed as paradigm shifts in due time (in the scientific community they are already handled as such, even if the medical industry has not been able to harness their full potential yet).

It took almost 15 years from the discovery of penicllin by Flemming to the useful mass production of the drug for the invasion of Normandy (and that was with the driving force of a world war to progress this development). I wonder, if we were having this discussion around 1930, if the same people that deny genome sequencing and SC engineering the status of medical breakthrough now would also have balked at the significance of penicillin before it came useful to the masses ten years later.
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We're talking about going from not being able to treat infectious disease to being able to treat infectious disease. That is a paradigm shift. What gene arrays do is facilitate diagnostics. It doesn't shift paradigms. Gene arrays are short hand for what we can already do long-hand. It's like going from being able to get a CBC by counting the cells manually vs having a computer do it.

Perhaps one day the stem cell research will yield such a shift. It hasnt yet and isn't anywhere near it.
 
just get both--then you dont have to decide 😀

Honestly, though, they are completely different skill sets. I'd say my PhD probably makes me approach clinical problems a bit more analytically than my MD peers for whatever it's worth.
 
jdh71, I offer my condolences for this unfortunate circumstance. 🙁

Siverhideo1985, MCAT verbal must have been tough for you.

😎
 
rocketbooster said:
For example,
do you think a basic scientist with a PhD in ophthalmology is more knowledge than an MD ophthalmologist? Just wondering because most of our 1st 2 years are taught by PhDs, not MDs. Obviously it's flipped during the last 2 clinical years. If you ever have convos with MDs about basic science, you'd be surprised how much they have forgotten or seemingly outdated since basic science advances so quickly. The PhDs also teach our anatomy labs, teach us about different procedural techniques in lecture, etc.

Now, I know having the knowledge is different than having the practice of actually performing procedures on real patients. I'm sure part of the reason why I think PhDs are more knowledgeable is because I have not began clinical years. That's why I'm asking ppl's opinions on here. It would seem that PhDs could more easily adapt to a clinical setting than a MD could adapt to a research lab setting since the PhDs have the knowledge but just need the practice. The MDs are lacking the core knowledge in many cases due to years of only practicing the same procedure over and over and X amount of years since they had their basic sciences in med school.

What do you think?
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If somebody told me they had a PhD in ophthalmology I'd tell them to lick my ass.
 
zwitterion34 said:
Are you like a medical student that struggles with basic reading comp? :laugh:

😎
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It is pretty clear that he doesn't suffering from reading comprehension as much as jdh71 can't define what breakthroughs mean when there is a list of top scientific breakthroughs every year.

Lol at premeds trying to suck up.
 
Brigade4Radiant said:
It is pretty clear that he doesn't suffering from reading comprehension as much as jdh71 can't define what breakthroughs mean when there is a list of top scientific breakthroughs every year.

Lol at premeds trying to suck up.
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I have to say, I have to agree with JDH here. I think the things you guys call breakthroughs really aren't game-changers
 
MDs will typically have a better variety of knowledge but PhDs are stuck in their lab so early in their educational process that they know their own research topic better than any human on earth.

Which is why cross-speciality stuff is so tough.
 
mrwesticles said:
MDs will typically have a better variety of knowledge but PhDs are stuck in their lab so early in their educational process that they know their own research topic better than any human on earth.

Which is why cross-speciality stuff is so tough.
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If it weren't for review articles, no one would know what the f**k anyone else was doing in any other lab.

How many thousands of review articles are published every day across the sciences? It makes you wonder...
 
Brigade4Radiant said:
Thats because you can't drive yet 😎
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obama-you-mad.jpg


😎
 
Addressing the question that the OP had in mind, I would say DO's are more knowledgeable because they have OMM in their arsenal. MD's and/or PhD's do not undergo this grueling training. 😎
 
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