Quality vs Quantity?

[Dr. Death]

Just had a presentation at my school and one faculty member is essentially promising multiple high author publications, poster and oral presentations per year in the field of your choice.

The research is statistical analysis and bias research among other studies within a given field. Basically you read articles looking for their methodologies and then input that information into a statistical analysis. His credentials are stellar. They published 13 papers over the summer in reputable journals, they frequently travel to conferences, win research awards etc.

My question is that is this viewed favorably by residency programs since it doesn't "feel" like real research or will they just look at the CV and see 10 publications and not really care about the content?

I firmly live by the "if it seems too good to be true, it is." My BS meter is off the charts because other than a time commitment (1-2 hours weekly during school 4+ hours a day during breaks) it seems perfect.

Thoughts?

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[eteshoe]

I'd say it seems like BS (but I'm biased), however, it does seem like easy BS so it's ultimately your call

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Not knowing the details, it certainly is possible. This type of research is also known as "data mining". It really means that someone else collects the data, usually into a public or pay-for-service database, and someone else analyzes the data. Typically, the authors either hire or are very good at statistical analysis to create prediction models, multiple regression, etc. Pretty much all epidemiology research falls into this category and some end up in high impact journal, like NEJM.

As student, I would stay anything you can get involved in and hopefully write something on a CV/resume/application is a plus. However a large database paper would likely either land you as a buried middle author or potentially, just an acknowledgement. If you decide you help, I would ask the PI or whoever what you can expect to get out of it because you don't want to do a bunch of work only to realize at the end that your expectation were not in line with the PIs.

 

[Dr. Death]

Not knowing the details, it certainly is possible. This type of research is also known as "data mining". It really means that someone else collects the data, usually into a public or pay-for-service database, and someone else analyzes the data. Typically, the authors either hire or are very good at statistical analysis to create prediction models, multiple regression, etc. Pretty much all epidemiology research falls into this category and some end up in high impact journal, like NEJM.

As student, I would stay anything you can get involved in and hopefully write something on a CV/resume/application is a plus. However a large database paper would likely either land you as a buried middle author or potentially, just an acknowledgement. If you decide you help, I would ask the PI or whoever what you can expect to get out of it because you don't want to do a bunch of work only to realize at the end that your expectation were not in line with the PIs.

Definitely. So there is the main PhD who is running the program and he has a handful of MSII who are team leaders. They get 1st author generally and their team (3 or 4 students) get the other authorship. So if you get to be one of the handful of MSII you can pick your project and get 1st author. I think I'm going to do it because it isn't a huge time commitment and I really don't have much to lose on it.

 

[Donald Juan]

There are many ways of doing research that are very important to the field. A study doesn't have to take 2 years to complete to be worth anything.

And yes, as long as you can produce papers, are able to talk about what you published, it will look better to have 10 papers completed in a year vs 1 hard earned paper in a year.

 

[Phloston]

This is exactly the reason I hated doing research in med school. Everyone was infatuated with how many papers they were getting, or their status, or how things looked. My strong advice is to avoid doing research for the sake of the extrinsic and focus on the science.

 

[lymphocyte]

Just had a presentation at my school and one faculty member is essentially promising multiple high author publications, poster and oral presentations per year in the field of your choice.

The research is statistical analysis and bias research among other studies within a given field. Basically you read articles looking for their methodologies and then input that information into a statistical analysis. His credentials are stellar. They published 13 papers over the summer in reputable journals, they frequently travel to conferences, win research awards etc.

My question is that is this viewed favorably by residency programs since it doesn't "feel" like real research or will they just look at the CV and see 10 publications and not really care about the content?

I firmly live by the "if it seems too good to be true, it is." My BS meter is off the charts because other than a time commitment (1-2 hours weekly during school 4+ hours a day during breaks) it seems perfect.

Thoughts?

He has stellar credentials, a great publication record, and a system for integrating medical students into his research team. Seems like a no brainer to me. You can always just see how you go with the first one. Relationships with people like that are gold, and I don't mean that in some kind of manipulative way to get publications; I think they actually make you a better person and a better researcher in the long run (since you can see how it's done up close).

 

[Dr. Death]

Thanks for the answers guys. I'm definitely going to jump on this opportunity

 

[ACSurgeon]

Just had a presentation at my school and one faculty member is essentially promising multiple high author publications, poster and oral presentations per year in the field of your choice.

The research is statistical analysis and bias research among other studies within a given field. Basically you read articles looking for their methodologies and then input that information into a statistical analysis. His credentials are stellar. They published 13 papers over the summer in reputable journals, they frequently travel to conferences, win research awards etc.

My question is that is this viewed favorably by residency programs since it doesn't "feel" like real research or will they just look at the CV and see 10 publications and not really care about the content?

I firmly live by the "if it seems too good to be true, it is." My BS meter is off the charts because other than a time commitment (1-2 hours weekly during school 4+ hours a day during breaks) it seems perfect.

Thoughts?

Quality is better to an extent. I promise you that 10 crappy papers will look better than one well done paper. It's nice to have at least something meaningful in addition to the quick low effort pubs.