This is what I found within a couple minutes of Googling. Do you have any contrary information suggesting that the majority of doctors are in fact up-to-date with the latest academic journal articles published within their fields?
"One New England Journal of Medicine study found that patients get only 55 percent of the care that's recommended for the leading causes of death and disability. Similar research in children showed they get just 47 percent—and a mere 41 percent of preventive steps that are proved to help."[1]
"Despite 15 years of advances about what is known of [sinusitis], the information isn't making its way to internists because it is not been published in journals or other sources often reviewed by internists, who most often treat sinusitis. For instance, many internists are unaware that chronic sinusitis can cause serious chronic fatigue, Chester says."[2]
"It’s unrealistic to expect the majority of physicians to go back to the original literature or even to go back to systematic reviews of the original literature,” said Gordon Guyatt, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is credited with coining the term “evidence-based medicine."[3]
"In a 2005 systematic review in the Archives of Internal Medicine, most studies found a correlation between increasing years in practice and decreasing quality of care."[3]
"the information isn't making its way to internists because it is not been published in journals or other sources often reviewed by internists"
Implying that doctors do keep up to date with peer reviewed journals, and that if all you're doing is trying to read journals with none of the medical background require to understand them, you're certainly not going to be any more informed than your average doctor.
Gordon Guyatt, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is credited with coining the term "evidence-based medicine."
You quote him, yet you are so quick to discredit all evidence that you don't agree with.
"Implying that doctors do keep up to date with peer reviewed journals"
This implication, assuming that really is what they are trying to imply, is nothing more than speculation. But if you have better information then by all means post it.
The point is that your previous post does not imply what you thought it did, whatsoever. The original assertion was that by reading peer review journals you would be more qualified to preform medicine than a doctor. You have yet to provide any supporting evidence that shows that doctors don't read peer reviewed journals as well. The only thing that it indicates is that if information isn't published, then doctors are unlikely to know about it. What a fucking shocker.
I can't really say I'm surprised to encounter inexplicable lapses in critical thinking and logic here though.
That's not what you said at all. Here's what you said:
Most doctors get their information about medical issues by reading the marketing pamphlets from drug companies. If you actually read the relevant journal articles then you'd be significantly more knowledgeable about any given topic than the average doctor.
Why would doctors be so eager to prescribe Lexapro as late as 2009 even though they knew that the manufacturer had faked the science behind it, for which it was later fined over 300 million dollars? Especially since the drug was unambiguously shown to be no more effective than previous generic versions of the drug, which were only a fraction of the price? Obviously because they are getting most of their information from the marketing campaigns and not the science, plus the massive amounts of bribes and kickbacks. There are tons of examples like this.
As for the second statement, if doctors aren't up to date on the research about any given condition, then it shouldn't be that difficult to learn more about your doctor about any given condition. Almost all of the academic research in medicine is written for a lay audience, unlike in physics or continental philosophy where you really can't understand it unless you're an expert. Plus there are tons of other resources to help you make sense of the research, everything from wikipedia to academic search engines that show you which papers are cited by which other papers.
As for the second statement, if doctors aren't up to date on the research about any given condition, then it shouldn't be that difficult to learn more about your doctor about any given condition. Almost all of the academic research in medicine is written for a lay audience, unlike in physics or continental philosophy where you really can't understand it unless you're an expert. Plus there are tons of other resources to help you make sense of the research, everything from wikipedia to academic search engines that show you which papers are cited by which other papers.
Heh OK why don't I make you a deal: you read this paper[1], tell me what it studies and what the consequences are, and then I'll forward your response to my father and he can tell you all the things you got wrong.
If there's one thing I've learned reading papers it's that the way the author phrases things or what the author conspicuously leaves out is worth just as much as what's there. Even in my domain area I'm nowhere near qualified to judge academic papers as an expert.
I dunno, it squares with my experience, at least until you reach a specialist.
Admittedly this is anecdotal evidence, but ...
I have diagnosed several medical issues with myself and my wife by web research, only to have to pay to go to a family doctor, who hems and haws, then gives a referral to a specialist, who agrees with what I have already stated.
Specialists in my area will not take you in without a referral from the family doctor, so basically the family doctor is collecting a fee for being a gatekeeper, since he/she adds zero value.
Something similar occurred many years ago with an eye problem I had (tear in retinal wall) - the regular eye doctor had me coming back week after week, collecting his fee each time, until I specifically asked for a referral.
The specialist saw in 3 minutes, the tear that the doctor had missed from the beginning and on each subsequent visit - the reason - the specialist had me recline to flat on my back and used a very powerful magnifying glass, while the hack ^H^H^H^H regular doctor did not.
The symptoms (large eye blockage in one eye due to large black cloudy thing that appeared one morning) clearly pointed to only this cause.
Think about it this way: you want someone to design a website for you so you go off and find someone to do it. Now, you don't know how to program, don't really know anything about computers aside from how to perform a few functions (certainly nothing about how they actually work), and don't really have a professional frame of reference for evaluating the developers skill level.
This is basically what you have to deal with with doctors. There are doctors who are very, very good and doctors who are just barely bright enough to continue to practice. The major problem is how you distinguish between the two or, in other terms, how do you find a good programmer if you don't really know anything about programming? Honestly, I don't have an easily cut-and-dried answer. I generally rely on my family (a large subset of my family are highly skilled physicians) to use their professional expertise and circles to find a very highly respected physician in the area. Similarly, I generally help in evaluating technical issues for them.
