Medical Research: A Prescriptive View

¹ Departments of Pediatrics and of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, National Health Research Scientist of the National Health Research and Development Program, Health Canada

Why should we do research? The word "should" here indicates that I am being prescriptive, rather than descriptive. (To be perfectly honest, these views do not even accurately describe my own research; I wish I had done a better job of following my own prescription.). If you are willing to play a collective Dante to my Virgil let me lead you up the five levels of the Mount Purgatory of Medical research, each representing a goal or reason for doing research (Fig 1).

The lowest goal for the medical researcher is Level 1, improving one's curriculum vitae. Unfortunately, all too many academics appear to be caught in pisitions where they are expected to do research in which they have no interest and which is highly unlikely to lead to one of the higher levels, and where the sole aim is to improve their CVs in preparation for promotion or tenure review. In my view, people who are doing research because they have to should be doing something else. Nor should academic departments expect all department members to be researchers, but that is a topic for another day.

Next on our upward journey is Level 2, where the goal is to derive personal satisfaction. Although it is obviously easier to recruit potential clinicians and others to a demanding activity like research when that activity is personally satisfying, Level 2 is an insufficient goal on its own to justify the time, effort, and money involved. Besides, researchers who reach one of the higher levels can gain additional satisfaction above and beyond that gained by doing the research itself.