Answer:
PART A
I don’t think that it is controversial to agree with Rudolph Virchow’s view that medicine “must enter the political and social life,” as medicine was never just meant to benefit researchers; instead, it has always been meant to benefit at least some population aside from the researchers (aka “the political and social life”). However, in terms of whether scientists should be advocates for their areas of research, I do think it’s controversial for me to say that I agree with the affirmative here: despite the many pros and cons to this position, I do believe that scientists should have the ability to become advocates in their areas of research. That’s for three reasons: the scientists’ proximity to their research topic, the scientists’ first amendment rights, and the scientists’ level of education compared with the general populace.
I believe that scientists should have the right to become advocates for their research because I believe that there’s no one who understands their research better. For example, just last week, I was helping a psychologist (with a PhD) interpret the results of a statistical analysis in a paper. She’s a veteran in her field, and after we talked (and later consulted with a statistician), it became clear that she had wildly misinterpreted the results of the paper in a number of lectures she had recently given. Had she at least consulted with the researcher she would have avoided this. Even better, had the researcher given a public lecture on this topic and explained the results in non-technical English, and then explained how it supported one argument over another, this mistake could have been avoided with no additional work from the researcher’s behalf. For this reason, I support scientist advocacy work.
I also support scientist advocacy work because I think that scientists are entitled to have opinions and also to express them, just like the general public. I believe that this is a constitutional-given right provided in the first amendment.
Finally, I support scientist advocacy work because I think that scientists tend to be highly educated compared to the general public, and therefore should hopefully make more educated statements on the outcomes of their research and its applicability to other topics than the average layperson.
All of that being said, I think that there should be different standards for scientists-advocates compared with traditional advocates, because of the need to balance advocacy with the objectivity expected of ideal scientific research. I think that these standards could include a requirement for the scientist(s) to spell out their values for the population and explain how they avoided making decisions based off of them in their research. I also think that these standards could include distribution of a scientist’s resume so that the public can understand a scientist’s affiliations (and the potential and direction of implicit bias).
PART B
I thought that one of the most interesting modules we covered in class was, “Multi-level etiologies of health in diverse populations, Part 4: Health systems and health care determinants,” because of what I learned about how physicians can unknowingly contribute to healthcare disparities. It’s a controversial topic for a few reasons; primarily, that in the Hippocratic Oath, physicians swear to do no harm, yet this module’s thesis would suggest that they can unwittingly harm disadvantaged populations in their everyday practice, and it allocates some of the burden of health care disparities to physicians. Both are “heavy” accusations.
I found this module interesting not just because of the controversy, but also because of the implied challenge of correcting this problem. If health care disparities are often due to implicit biases, how do we identify and correct these problems? How do we determine what problems are because of the physician’s care, and what problems are because of the patient’s environment?