It’s not just med ed, it’s a lot of papers in JNS and Neurosurgery. Survey based, bibliometric, very loosely related to neurosurgery is the name of the game recently.
Sure some of the results seem obvious, but we don't do science on what's obvious. We don't restructure the most important process around recruiting the next generation of neurosurgery based on what a couple of old guys in power think we should do, obvious or not. This paper simply reached out to applicants to get their views on the application process, with regards to the covid generated changes. What's wrong with that?
If the SNS just restructures the match without any data on what programs, as well as applicants, think, everyone will be mad either. So what's the hate here?
There certainly are a bunch of studies that seem to be useless or obvious, although I hate when the latter is mentioned as criticism, I don't think this one necessarily belongs to that cohort.
The point of papers like this isn’t to bring to light new information nobody has heard of, it’s to ask “why aren’t we doing this already”.
Lol that poor med student who pissed everyone off about the surveys didn't even get recognized as first author. Shame.