CLINICAL NEWS
Virtual Realities
Are medical school classrooms turning into ghost towns? According to results from a survey of
second-year medical students conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges, more
and more students are opting for virtual courses and lectures.
Of 13,467 respondents,
23.5% reported “almost never”
attending in-person courses or
lectures at their medical school,
up from 18.2% in 2015.
On the other hand, 58%
said they attended
virtual courses “most of
the time” or “often” –
up from 52.6% in 2015.
100
80
60
52.6%
58%
40
20
0
23.5%
18.2%
2015
2018
2015
2018
Too Big to Change?
Source: AAMC, “Medical School Year Two Questionnaire: 2017 All Schools Summary Report.”
The Pressure to Publish
The publish-or-perish research environment is affecting how bench scientists report their research
findings, according to a survey of trainees published in Clinical Cancer Research.
62.8
39.2 %
that the pressure to publish influences the
% admitted
way they report their data
reported being pressured by a principal investigator
or collaborator to produce “positive” data
Americans spend more on health care than individuals
in any other developed nation, and an investigation in
The Wall Street Journal suggests that the growth of the
health-care industry may make it too big to change.
For example,
health-care
companies’
revenues made
up 16% of the
total revenues
of firms in the
S&P 500
in 2017 – up from
just 4% in 1984.
1984: 4%
2017: 16%
Total
Revenue
Last year, the health-care industry also overtook
the retail sector as the nation’s largest employer,
representing about 11% of total U.S. employment.
As the health-care sector of the U.S. economy grew, the
authors stated, it has “created powerful consistencies
resistant to changing the way the system operates.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2018.
“Trainees believe that the pressure to publish affects honest reporting, mostly emanating from our
system of rewards and advancement,” the authors concluded. “The publication process itself affects
faculty and trainees and appears to influence a shift in their ethics from honest reporting (‘negative
data’) to selective reporting, data falsification, or even fabrication.”
Source: Boulbes DR, Costello T, Baggerty K, et al. A survey on data reproducibility and the effect of publication process on the ethical
reporting of laboratory research. Clin Cancer Res. 2018;24:3447-55.
ASHClinicalNews.org
ASH Clinical News
25