<p>Care to convert any of those statements into something that makes sense? You have four sentences. The first two are manifestly false, at least based on my experience of the world, not to mention a great deal of so-called “outcomes” research. The third may well be true, but I wouldn’t brag about it. The fourth is gobbledegook.</p>
<p>I might be tempted to agree with your original statement that “STEM usually has only one correct answer” if you made clear that the usually correct answer to any complex question is “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>"Care to convert any of those statements into something that makes sense? You have four sentences. The first two are manifestly false, at least based on my experience of the world, not to mention a great deal of so-called “outcomes” research. The third may well be true, but I wouldn’t brag about it. The fourth is gobbledegook.</p>
<p>I might be tempted to agree with your original statement that “STEM usually has only one correct answer” if you made clear that the usually correct answer to any complex question is “I don’t know.” "</p>
<p>I know one gets a zero if I dont know is the answer on any subject.</p>
<p>None of your arguments are tied to a class room. Can you explain why I would be wrong in stating that in medical school, you are taught to treat a specific way based on specific diagnosis?</p>
<p>That’s a very balanced and fair position. Unfortunately, not all Profs have the same pov. Thus, taking a contrarian view is always a risk, unless the student knows with absolute certainty that s/he will get a fair read with a difference of the ‘correct’ response.</p>
<p>If one is to take a contrarian pov, one must support that pov up a whole lot more. And since it becomes more work to make the counter argument, it is often easier to go with the flow and ‘regurgitate’ for the easier grade. :)</p>
<p>C’mon. If there weren’t divergent views, there wouldn’t be medical “second opinions.” One says you need corrective surgery and another says here’s why you should wait and let it heal naturally. They can’t even agree, nowadays, on whether you should wear a Band-Aid. Or take Advil.</p>
<p>In some cases, when every bit of medical detail available points incontrovertably to some named syndrome, they can tell you what the response is that has had the most success. They cannot always guarantee that success for you.</p>
<p>I have been in the med classrooms and alongside docs and their students, in the clinical breakouts. They do not teach them that 2 + 2 always equals 4.</p>
<p>What’s more, physicians in different specialties have different points of view on how to treat certain illnesses.</p>
<p>I continue to think that the takeaway in this discussion should be that if you find you disagree with your professor on some important issues, air that with him BEFORE you have to write a paper or take an exam. You need to know if he thinks your view is so preposterous that he won’t respect it. Even if he thinks he’s reasonable and openminded, he may not be willing to read a paper that argues (for example) that evolution didn’t occur (or that it did, at some colleges).</p>
<p>"I have been in the med classrooms and alongside docs and their students, in the clinical breakouts. They do not teach them that 2 + 2 always equals 4. "</p>
<p>I do agree there are multiple ways to skin a cat but each way is usually a very specific path. It is not an “opinion”.</p>
Sure it is, in many cases. A prime example is how to treat cancer cases–oncologists will disagree with each other, and they’ll all disagree with the surgeons.</p>
<p>Med school involves learning to question and observe, decide on the need for further tests, carefully weigh whatever facts may be present against their body of knowledge, carefully assess what this may add to, what course to take- all with “do no harm” in mind. If your leg is broken, it’s broken. You can see it on an x-ray. You can assss whether it needs surgery, a rod- or just a cast. Each of those has procedures, yes. </p>
<p>But medicine is not a static field. It’s constantly evolving. If you roam through NIH or Mayo, etc, sites, you can see the variety of responses that may or may not make sense for a given individual. Treatment, in many cases, is also incremental: try this, see if it does the trick, then try that, before radical approaches. It’s very intuitive, alongside the scientific.</p>
<p>And, sadly, yes, cancer is the big example. A doc can read bloodwork, look for markers, check tech reports for organ size and function, tumor spread, etc, assess recent progress or lack of it- and not know next action should be.</p>
<p>And, for OP, there is no easy black and white, either. She didn’t necessarily produce the best paper and the prof isn’t necessarily so fixed in his views that he can’t abide dissent.</p>
<p>That depends on the individual Prof. An older supervisor and several friends/colleagues had math/CS Profs who gave no partial credit. </p>
<p>Any error on a test meant the entire question was marked wrong. </p>
<p>When the supervisor’s classmates all complained to the math Prof in a class of mostly engineering majors, the math Prof replied “You build a bridge. Bridge falls down due to one or more careless miscalculation/errors. In such circumstances, why do you think you’re so damned special as to be deserving of partial credit?!!”</p>
<p>Granted, I doubt Profs can be as harsh about it as my supervisor’s engineering math Prof was sometime in the mid-1970’s. </p>
<p>On the other hand, my supervisor said he wouldn’t be surprised if said Prof now endlessly rants about how undergrads from the '90s onward are “encouraged to be careless” because most Profs…including STEM profs do award partial credit.</p>
<p>"Sure it is, in many cases. A prime example is how to treat cancer cases–oncologists will disagree with each other, and they’ll all disagree with the surgeons. "</p>
<p>What option to use to treat is not an opinion. This is what they are licensed to do. </p>
<p>It is an opinion if they are saying go to Africa and find a Shaman to treat you since we don’t know how.</p>
<p>The treatment option is also considered an opinion when the patient is harmed and there is a malpractice lawsuit.</p>
Sure it is. In fact, it’s so well-known to be an opinion that we use the well-worn phrase “second opinion” when you consult another doctor to get another take on what to do. I can tell you (for example) that an oncologist often has a number of potential treatments for a given case, and it’s something of an art choosing which one to use. Individual doctors will have treatments that they prefer based on anecdotal experiences. Some will be more aggressive than others in seeking out new or experimental treatments. And on and on. There may be fields in which there is one answer, but medicine isn’t it.</p>
<p>Heck, I can remember two dentists disagreeing about what my new fillings should be made of.</p>
<p>Should we use chemo? Which agent, and how many rounds? With or without radiation? It’s just not that specific. It may be for some diseases, sure. But not for the hard cases.</p>
<p>I confess that I was somewhat unnerved when I realized that doctors don’t always know exactly what to do–even if they convey to the patient that they do. They are often making a more-or-less educated guess.</p>
<p>It’s not like when a plumber comes to fix a leak in a pipe–he finds it, he fixes it. (Although perhaps somebody will tell us that it’s not that simple for plumbers, either.)</p>
<p>And to bring this back to the issue of partial credit–in many disciplines, you aren’t only teaching how to get right answers, but also how to think, how to address problems, what processes to use, etc. So it seems to me that it might make sense to distinguish between somebody who understands a lot of how to do it from somebody who doesn’t get it at all.</p>