Publish or Perish: The Research Arms Race in Residency Selection
“We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons.”1 So began a 1994 editorial in the British Medical Journal by statistician Douglas G. Altman. Noting that incentives for career advancement led many physicians to conduct research that was inappropriately designed, incorrectly analyzed, selectively interpreted, or outright fraudulent, Altman argued for abandoning the use of publication quantity as a measure of ability.One might hope that Altman’s words would have inspired systemic change in the nearly 3 decades following his eloquent editorial. Instead, it seems the publish-or-perish arms race has spread to medical trainees. The Figure shows the dramatic increase in PubMed-indexed research publications with medical student authors in the past 15 years. While these data are limited in their ability to represent all medical student research, they are a sample that alludes to an alarming trend.This trend would be worth celebrating if this increase in publica