On Medical Academia at Present

Abstract

A major mission in medical academia should be understood to be the teaching and advancement of the knowledge-base of scientific medicine. But the academia’s success in this mission is seriously in question already on the superficial ground that there now are two, very different, conceptions of the essence of scientific medicine; more to the point, that both of these conceptions are profoundly wrongheaded – as, most notably, neither one of these conceptions involves any role at all for the knowledge-base of practice! This situation is due, in part, to the absence of the kind of critical discourse that in truly progressive academia would be seen to be essential. Fundamental re-orientation in the culture of medical academia is urgently needed.

There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools.

They must be centers of criticism.

– Robert M. Hutchins