I always think it is sooo sad when premeds comlain about research. Research is essential to medicine, and claiming otherwise only betrays naivety. Here are a few reasons:
1. Medicine is never static. The knowledge doctors use is never static. where do you think doctors get their knowledge - is it handed down by God? We are constantly revising our understanding of disease, medicine, and the human body through research. I shadowed some clinical research pepps this summer - and every decision they made went back to "in 2006, person X published Y paper on this disease, therefore we should treat THIS way." "No, I think we should treat THIS way because in 2008 there was this other paper..." the doctors made all their decisions based on research, and as physicians we need to have the capacity to interpret and critically examine scientific findings since we will base our practice on this knowledge. We can't blindly accept all that we are told, or make life-changing decisions based on rumor; we must test fact and truth. All that we know about the body is painstakingly tested and rigorously studied through RESEARCH. Research holds our knowledge to the highest standard. It is the fountain of medical knowledge, and our only source. Shouldn't we try to understand it?
2. Tomorrow's doctors are expected to carry the standard of the practice into the future. If our doctors aren't equipped to build on old ideas by asking new scientific questions, the field of medicine won't move forward at all. Research training teaches us how to ask questions about disease, how to examine disease, and how to think critically and apply what we know. Research is a way of thought and a practice and a study. Research is the way to tomorrow's future... and the only way to move medicine forward.
So in summary, our lives as patients literally depend on research and the knowledge created by research. Our careers as doctors depend on research. The field of medicine rests on research. In fact, all knowledge is built on research.
Now, given how essential research is to the practice of medicine, imagine throwing together a bunch of naive people who have never ever entered a lab in their lives, and asking those people to make life-changing decisions based on something that is COMPLETELY esoteric and foreign to them. If we can't speak the language of research, and understand research, we will never be able to interpret its findings and apply them to our lives.
Now imagine throwing together the same group of people and asking them to move medicine forward, to make new medical inventions and new applications to treat diseases. Are they going to make their inroads at random? Oh, we've never seen this disease before, why don't we just try random drug A. Of course those people would have to first take random drug A to the lab, PROVE that it works, and to do that they will need to know how to do science. That same group of naive people will do nothing for the field of medicine if they don't have a solid grasp of where their knowledge is coming from and what they plan to do with it.
Research is not a dumb job you have to do for your resume. It is a practice of education, a study essential to medicine, and all life-changing decisions you will ever make in medicine is built upon it. Research is our only hope for progress. Without an understanding of research, we will never understand medicine, or reach our full potential as doctors.