The role of medical school admissions committees in the decline of physician-scientists

Numerous articles written over the last few years have drawn attention to the disappearance of young physician-scientists (1–5). There are nearly 25% fewer physician-scientists on medical school faculties today than two decades ago (6) and now we know some of the reasons. The heavy accumulation of debt through many years of research training is one explanation (7). So is the difficulty of providing a useful research experience in the modern training curriculum (8–10), or reaching trainees who have no real understanding of what it means to be a physician-scientist before their career choices are made (3, 11). Some students attend medical schools that offer little investigative opportunity (3, 12, 13), and of course there are questions about earning a living from academic life. While these reasons partly explain the problem, I would add one more. Medical schools no longer matriculate sufficient numbers of students who are deeply interested in science.