Rising young faculty

[Guest]

^ Also unimpressed with Vanderbilt this year

[Guest]

(04-01-2021, 12:52 AM)Guest Wrote: ^ Also unimpressed with Vanderbilt this year

Resident that reviewed applications here, almost everyone i reviewed from Vanderbilt had 260+ Step 1 and 10+ pubs, from a top medical school, all personable during interview. I'd love to see what your application was if that leaves you unimpressed.

[Guest]

Unless you're an MD-PHD, it's very unlikely that you're going to have the time or resources to publish high impact work as a medical student. At places where med students are brought into the pipeline to help with research and get their names on paper, you generally have good match results. Vandy matched 9 med students this year which is a testament to their mentorship and getting med students involved

[Guest]

(03-31-2021, 11:58 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 10:36 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 06:48 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 06:11 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 05:54 PM)Guest Wrote: Been seeing rumblings on Dan Lim over at UCSF. His research seems to be on developmental neurobiology... seems so out of the wheelhouse from neurosurgery. Why even do neurosurgery if the man operates 1/2 a day a week and then does his non-neurosurgical research?

If you want to innovate in a field, you need top-tier physician-scientists in your discipline. High impact research is basic science research that is published in journals like Cell, Nature, Science and their sub journals. These faculty members with ability in this area need to be supported and trainees should be encouraged to pursue this path. The pressure on trainees specialty to churn out retrospective chart reviews and case series, does very little to move the field forward.

True, yet every program values med students with 10 4th author retrospective chart reviews.

Preach!!

Even worse is when you see the same 2-3 med student authors being shuffled around as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th author. Very common at places like Vanderbilt and TJU.

Like I said, more about quantity than quality and that hurts people from schools without programs or with less productive home programs (as much as faculty give lip service that they take into account when someone has one pub from a no-home-program place, we all know they're hard for the people with 20+ cohort studies and lit reviews)

Good for the students that take advantage of those things, it still takes work. But I'm just saying the same effort doesn't produce equal results everywhere

[Guest]

I'm an MD-PhD student who had the opportunity to meet with Daniel Lim during a guest lecture. He is exactly the type of surgeon-scientist that some of us should be striving to emulate. You might consider his work "non-neurosurgical" and he openly admits that he does not need to be a neurosurgeon to conduct his basic science program. But to ask why even bother is ridiculous. Would you say the same about the late Andy Parsa? Basic science, without regard to immediate translation, is what ultimately drives the field forward. Do you ever want to see truly restorative therapies for neurodegeneration or the like? Or are you happy with the current state of DBS? While not every institution is capable of supporting someone like Daniel Lim, and not every neurosurgeon can direct a basic science program, there is clearly a place for someone like him. You can relegate basic science to non-clinician PhDs if you want, but I think neurosurgeons can and should be participating in this type of research. To suggest otherwise is anti-intellectual.

[Guest]

(04-01-2021, 03:19 PM)Guest Wrote: I'm an MD-PhD student who had the opportunity to meet with Daniel Lim during a guest lecture. He is exactly the type of surgeon-scientist that some of us should be striving to emulate. You might consider his work "non-neurosurgical" and he openly admits that he does not need to be a neurosurgeon to conduct his basic science program. But to ask why even bother is ridiculous. Would you say the same about the late Andy Parsa? Basic science, without regard to immediate translation, is what ultimately drives the field forward. Do you ever want to see truly restorative therapies for neurodegeneration or the like? Or are you happy with the current state of DBS? While not every institution is capable of supporting someone like Daniel Lim, and not every neurosurgeon can direct a basic science program, there is clearly a place for someone like him. You can relegate basic science to non-clinician PhDs if you want, but I think neurosurgeons can and should be participating in this type of research. To suggest otherwise is anti-intellectual.

To relegate basic and translational science to PhDs would be a huge mistake. They may have better training as far as designing research questions, understanding the basic science, applying for grants, etc. but they have far less grasp of the clinical realities of disease. That's how you end up wasting money on therapies and avenues of investigation that don't make any practical sense ie. 90% of oncolytic virus research.

You need basic scientists to go down avenues that are riskier, but you need surgeon-scientists to help the rubber meet the road. That's how the field advances

[Guest]

Absolutely not a rag on Daniel Lim! I super respect him. It was an educational question and I truly wanted to know what people's thoughts were.

[Guest]

(04-01-2021, 03:38 PM)Guest Wrote:

(04-01-2021, 03:19 PM)Guest Wrote: I'm an MD-PhD student who had the opportunity to meet with Daniel Lim during a guest lecture. He is exactly the type of surgeon-scientist that some of us should be striving to emulate. You might consider his work "non-neurosurgical" and he openly admits that he does not need to be a neurosurgeon to conduct his basic science program. But to ask why even bother is ridiculous. Would you say the same about the late Andy Parsa? Basic science, without regard to immediate translation, is what ultimately drives the field forward. Do you ever want to see truly restorative therapies for neurodegeneration or the like? Or are you happy with the current state of DBS? While not every institution is capable of supporting someone like Daniel Lim, and not every neurosurgeon can direct a basic science program, there is clearly a place for someone like him. You can relegate basic science to non-clinician PhDs if you want, but I think neurosurgeons can and should be participating in this type of research. To suggest otherwise is anti-intellectual.

To relegate basic and translational science to PhDs would be a huge mistake. They may have better training as far as designing research questions, understanding the basic science, applying for grants, etc. but they have far less grasp of the clinical realities of disease. That's how you end up wasting money on therapies and avenues of investigation that don't make any practical sense ie. 90% of oncolytic virus research.

You need basic scientists to go down avenues that are riskier, but you need surgeon-scientists to help the rubber meet the road. That's how the field advances

Why don’t most oncolytic virus therapies make practical sense?

[Blue Fire]

(03-31-2021, 09:38 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 06:48 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 06:11 PM)Guest Wrote:

(03-31-2021, 05:54 PM)Guest Wrote: Been seeing rumblings on Dan Lim over at UCSF. His research seems to be on developmental neurobiology... seems so out of the wheelhouse from neurosurgery. Why even do neurosurgery if the man operates 1/2 a day a week and then does his non-neurosurgical research?

If you want to innovate in a field, you need top-tier physician-scientists in your discipline. High impact research is basic science research that is published in journals like Cell, Nature, Science and their sub journals. These faculty members with ability in this area need to be supported and trainees should be encouraged to pursue this path. The pressure on trainees specialty to churn out retrospective chart reviews and case series, does very little to move the field forward.

True, yet every program values med students with 10 4th author retrospective chart reviews.

This. Evaluators mostly emphasis quantity over quality (with the exception of something really massive like a paper in one of the highest impact journals like NEJM, Cell, Nature which most applicants won't have) - otherwise they care more about the number of resume lines

I’m a resident at a large academic institution, we regularly reject applicants on the basis of having 100 low impact/insignifiant pubs. Just says a lot about the ethos of quantity over quality. Our PD is very adamant about it.

[Guest]

That may say more about the mentor or institution than about the student? I also keep hearing about quantity over quality, and that’s from well intentioned faculty who want to give honest advice about on the current matching landscape. While I get the thought behind it, I believe that it’s quite unfair to lay the blame on students and reject them when the current system is actively encouraging that kind of scholarly ethos in applicants. And it’s only going to get worse with step 1 going p/f. I really appreciate that some institutions are actively going against mass publishing bs work, but I don’t know if rejecting students on that basis is the right call. No one in their right mind, as neurotic as medstudents are about the neurosurgical match, would reject working in one of the paper mills that we all know about, as much as we‘d want to do what’s right and publish solid work only. Just my 2 cents