The numbers being "softer" does not mean that it is "easier" to get into an osteopathic school. Historically, osteopathic schools have had a much higher percentage of candidates pursuing medicine as a second career, and plenty of other things that are not quantified in the "numbers" you refer to.

The problem is that winnowing the objective truth is very hard work. Or it's expensive to hire legitimate experts to do it for you. Some people think we should trust AI for potentially life or death decisions. I, however, still pay a lot of money for peer-reviewed, evidence-based expert opinions.

I have worked in very rural hospitals, in many cases where I am the only physician in the hospital at night. In some cases, I was the only physician within the entire county. I do feel your pain. It's far easier to not have consultants than to have consultants who don't want to work.

We have to be the second best Radiologist and the second best Cardiologist as a part of our job. I have lost count of how many times I found an abnormality that a Radiologist missed, or how many times I have diagnosed a heart attack in a patient with a "normal stress test" recently.

I concur with your assessment.
A practicing emergency physician, also trained in internal medicine

I would disagree with your second statement. I received letters of acceptance from two schools that granted MD degrees before I received the letter of acceptance to the osteopathic school from which I subsequently graduated. Osteopathic schools tend to look for different kinds of candidates.

As a physician, why anyone would want a corporation not bound by the confidentiality laws surrounding medical care to have their DNA information is entirely baffling.

Either they paid attention to Orwell or by sheer accident they reinvented "doublespeak," but if I were to gamble I would bet on the latter.

But the plan was to destroy the government from the inside. It's working perfectly as intended.

Kitty of Christmas Past:

I don't know about your hospital, but in ours the most expensive machine goes "buzz" or "bang bang bang" not "beep" and the inexpensive machines do the beeping. The ones in the middle price range make a whirring sound and speak phrases like "hold your breath" every now and then.

There are many common but very different imaging modalities. X-ray based modalities (such as CT and plain films) are very common, but MRI relies upon basic principles I had learned in physical chemistry and ultrasound imaging relies upon pure physics of sound wave propagation. There is more.

Having put 40,000 miles on the odometer since my last PA-required inspection, I do understand the PennDOT criticisms. However, being raised in NJ where our DMV was so bad it had to change its name, multiple times, PennDOT is quite decent by comparison. And they have a sense of humor.

Correct. So that either means 1) they intend to never reopen the government or 2) they have no idea what their job that they were elected to actually perform requires them to do. That job is not merely rubber stamping orange-colored bullshit.

I have some friends who years ago would have been described as "on the spectrum" then "neurodivergent" and now they feel that label is also derogatory. I am not aware of a better term that respects their uniqueness without causing offense.

But the end goal is anti-intellectualism. Many prominent intellectuals are neurodiverse in some way - that's how they got where they are. And the intellectuals are the ones with BS-ometers and the skills to use actual science to combat pseudoscience, so they must be discredited.

Next someone will say that playing Zelda caused my generation to be neurodiverse, because the Link was there all along.

When the thoughts are: 1) blame the mother and 2) come up with some pseudoscience to get headlines, there are very few medications one could potentially implicate. They can't blame ondansetron, because it is not old enough to be a good target. So, by default, they blame acetaminophen and the mother.

Agreed, and your choice of wording is rather appropriate. I don't understand people who decide to unlock the "Eating: Hard Mode" achievement for non-medical reasons. I really miss a good pizza now and then, but I absolutely don't miss what it would do to me afterwards.