Rapid Responses to:

OBSERVATIONS: Rebecca Coombes BMJ in "smug docs" storm BMJ 2008; 336: 1340-1341 [Full text]

Rapid Responses: Submit a response to this article

Rapid Responses published:

The professor doth protest too much, methinks

Paul W Dimmock   (13 June 2008)

The professor doth protest too much, methinks 13 June 2008
Paul W Dimmock, Personal comment Home Send response to journal: Re: The professor doth protest too much, methinks	McManus appears to be attempting to distance himself from some unwise reactionary comments in an editorial to a rather good piece of work from Garlick and Brown[1]. Several well meaning supporters have rallied around the good professor, but perhaps they should carefully look at what McManus actually stated[2] as opposed to what he is saying he stated. He said "UK medical students tend to come from higher socioeconomic classes, perhaps not surprisingly, as social class correlates with intellectual ability." What he and his supporters appear now to be saying is that social class correlates to performance at A-level, which is NOT what Prof McManus said. I would agree that A-level performance correlates with social class as higher social classes tend to be able to afford private education and other educational support mechanisms. The logical extension of his comments is that intellectual ability correlates to financial wealth, as children from wealthier backgrounds can afford the educational advantages required to perform at A-level. HEFCE statistics[3] clearly show that pupils from private education perform worse than those from state schools when at University - an example of what might be termed 'artificial intelligence'. McManus digs further down into his self-made hole in this observation piece saying what he meant was students should be chosen on aptitude not on social class, Garlick and Brown have clearly shown their intake have the aptitude to perform at medical school, they just didn't have the A-level results. The message I took from Garlick and Brown's paper is that prospective medical students should be chosen on the basis of actual intellectual ability, not just on A-level results, and that students with less good A-level results can perform just as well as the highly polished scions of the private school system. What we require are students with the most intelligence (real not artificial), who are the most suitable to become future medical practitioners. The subsequent comment[4] posted regarding the ethnic mix of students in the study is regrettable, and appears to promulgate the tabloid view that doctors are a bunch of white male 'dinosaurs' frantically shoring up their exclusive club against the onslaught of (horror of horrors) intelligent, working class prospective medical students who may not be male or white. Perhaps if McManus wanted to attract more publicity he could tell us his views on how intellectual ability correlates with ethnicity? 1. Pamela B Garlick and Gavin Brown, Widening participation in medicine, BMJ 2008 336: 1111-1113 2. Hugh Ip and I C McManus, Increasing diversity among clinicians, BMJ 2008 336: 1082-1083 3.Schooling effects on higher education achievement. HEFCE July2003/32 Issue Paper, 2003 4. Redman, CWE. Is the extended medical degree programme misguided?. BMJ 2008 336: 1264-1264 Competing interests: The author is of working class (bog standard comprehensive school) origins yet has still managed to scrape together enough intellectual ability to publish a few BMJ papers