#DEI doctors

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: May 23, 2024

Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles's David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee's meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

"Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued,  because "we need people like this in the medical school."

Even before the Supreme Court's landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. "We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants," the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "This is troubling."

"I wondered," the official added, "if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion."

Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university's Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said one former member of the admissions staff. "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."

This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school—six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.

Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country. The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence.

"I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," a member of the admissions committee told the Free Beacon. "People get in and they struggle."

It is almost unheard of for admissions officials to go public, even anonymously, and provide a window into confidential deliberations, much less to accuse their colleagues of breaking the law or lowering standards. They've agreed to come forward anyway, several officials told the Free Beacon, because the results of Lucero's push for diversity have been so alarming.

"I wouldn't normally talk to a reporter," a UCLA faculty member said. "But there's no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school."

Within three years of Lucero's hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, according to internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

That uptick coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants and tracks the subjective impressions of faculty who say that students have never been more poorly prepared.

One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.

"I don't know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors," the professor said. "Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students."

And for those who've seen the competency crisis up close, double standards in admissions are a big part of the problem. "All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races," an admissions officer said. "For other people, those criteria are completely disregarded."

Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA's anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

The bar for underrepresented minorities is "as low as you could possibly imagine," one committee member told the Free Beacon. "It completely disregards grades and achievements."

Lucero did not respond to a request for comment.

Several officials said that they support holistic admissions and don't believe test scores should be judged in isolation. The problem, as they see it, is that the committee is not just weighing academic merit against community service or considering how much time a given student had to study for the MCAT. For certain applicants, they say, hardship and community service seem to be the only things that matter to the majority of the committee's 20-30 members, many of whom were handpicked by Lucero, according to people familiar with the selection process.

"We were always outnumbered," an admissions officer told the Free Beacon, referring to committee members who expressed concern about low grades. "Other people would get upset when we brought up GPA."

Lucero hasn't been kind to dissenters. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, six people who've worked with her described a pattern of racially charged incidents that has dispirited officials and pushed some of them to resign from the committee.

She has lashed out at officials who question the qualifications of minority candidates, five sources said, suggesting naysayers are "privileged," implying that they are racist, and subjecting them to diversity training sessions.

After a Native American applicant was rejected in 2021, for example, Lucero chewed out the committee and made members sit through a two-hour lecture on Native history delivered by her own sister, according to three people familiar with the incident. No applications were reviewed that day, an official present for the lecture said.

In the anesthesiology department, where Lucero helps rank applicants to the department's residency program, she has rebuffed calls to blind the race of candidates, telling colleagues in a January 2023 email that, despite California's ban on racial preferences, "we are not required to blind any information."

That alone could get UCLA in legal trouble, according to Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action nationwide.

Asking for information about an applicant's race when "no lawful use can be made of it" is "presumptively illegal," Mortara said. "You can't have evidence of overt discrimination like this and not have someone come forward" as a plaintiff.

Lucero has even advocated moving candidates up or down the residency rank list based on race. At a meeting in February 2022, according to two people present, Lucero demanded that a highly qualified white male be knocked down several spots because, as she put it, "we have too many of his kind" already. She also told doctors who voiced concern that they had no right to an opinion because they were "not BIPOC," sources said, and insisted that a Hispanic applicant who had performed poorly on her anesthesiology rotation in medical school should be bumped up. Neither candidate was ultimately moved.

Lucero's comments from the meeting were flagged in an email to UCLA's Discrimination Prevention Office, which has received several complaints about her since 2023, emails show. The office has declined to act on those complaints on the grounds that they aren't "serious enough" to merit an investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The Discrimination Prevention Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The focus on racial diversity has coincided with a dramatic shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the medical school, where the number of Asian matriculants fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2022, according to publicly available data. No other elite medical school in California saw a similar decline.

As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.

Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline, per internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

"UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor said. "But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."

The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA's decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.

First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in "Structural Racism and Health Equity," a required class that covers topics like "fatphobia," has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. They spend an additional seven hours a week in "Foundations of Practice," which includes units on "interpersonal communication skills" and, according to one medical student, basically "tells us how to be a good person." The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.

"This has been a colossal failure," one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. "The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations."

Nearly a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams, data from the school show, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone a different test, the Step 2 licensing exam, that is typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs.

Around 20 percent of UCLA students have not taken Step 2 by January of their fourth year, according to the data. Ten percent have not even taken the more basic Step 1—an "extremely high number," one professor said, that will force many students to extend medical school.

"It's a combination of a bad curriculum and bad selection," another professor said, referring to the admissions process. Some students are accepted with GPAs so low "they shouldn't even be applying."

UCLA did not respond to a request for comment.

As medical schools around the country adjust to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ban, the experience of UCLA offers a preview of how administrators may skirt the law and devise public-spirited excuses for violating it.

Lucero has told the admissions committee that each class should "represent" the "diversity" of California, including its remote and rural areas, so that graduating students will return to their hometowns and beef up the medical infrastructure there, officials say.

Race is rarely mentioned outright, and unlike the committee for anesthesiology residents, the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants.

Instead, officials say, Lucero uses proxies like zip codes and euphemisms like "disadvantaged" to shut down criticism of unqualified candidates, citing a finding from the Association of American Medical Colleges that, technically, most students with below-average MCATs make it to their second year of medical school. How well they do after that point goes undiscussed and undisclosed.

"We have asked for metrics on how these folks actually do," one committee member said. "None of that is ever divulged to us."

==

Hope your next doctor isn't from UCLA.

Wokeness has a body count.

[melbush]

collecting eightsabbath coded posts like they’re stamps

[gallifreyanhotfive]

People who have not read the EDAS (or this specific book), tell me what you think is going on here.

[familyparadox]

Can’t wait for Rogue to rip out the Doctor’s heart and put it in his own chest.

[nitronine]

[crystalromana]

meanwhile on the jonah

[doyoushipthisdweuship]

(submitted by @a-shard-of-quartz-lol)

[gregor-samsung]

" Chi sono gli uomini, i quali, senza che noi ce ne accorgiamo, ci suggeriscono cosa pensare, ci dicono chi dobbiamo ammirare e chi disprezzare, oppure come dobbiamo considerare la proprietà dei servizi pubblici, le tariffe doganali, il prezzo del caucciù, il piano Dawes* o l’immigrazione? Sono sempre loro che ci consigliano l’arredamento della nostra casa, il menu quotidiano, il modello di camicia più elegante, gli sport da praticare, gli spettacoli da vedere, le iniziative benefiche meritevoli di aiuto, i quadri degni di ammirazione, e perfino i termini gergali da inserire durante una conversazione e le battute di spirito che ci dovrebbero far sbellicare dalle risate. Se volessimo compilare l’elenco degli uomini e delle donne che per la loro posizione sociale devono essere considerati come opinion maker, avremmo una lunga lista di nomi recensiti nel Who’s Who. […] Una simile lista comprenderebbe migliaia di persone. Tuttavia sappiamo che molte di esse sono a loro volta sotto l’influenza di individui, spesso noti solo a una cerchia molto ristretta. "

*Piano Dawes: definito da una commissione di esperti finanzieri appartenenti alle potenze vincitrici della I Guerra mondiale presieduta dall’americano Charles G. Dawes, contribuì molto alla ripresa del marco e degli investimenti Usa in Germania. [NdT]

---------

Edward Louis Bernays, Propaganda. Della manipolazione dell’opinione pubblica in democrazia, traduzione di Augusto Zuliani, Fausto Lupetti Editore, 2008.

[Edizione originale: Propaganda, New York: Horace Liveright publisher, 1928]

[thought-42]

Honestly shoutout to Sabbath for seeing The Doctor and going 'is anybody gonna emotionally-complicated-arch-nemesis that?' and not even waiting for an answer. Unfortunately the answer was in fact 'yes and also he's a centuries old regenerating alien with a best frenemy and an entire race of evil salt shakers with prior claim', but like. If it had been anyone besides The Doctor it would have been perfectly narratively set up, A+ for efort my guy

[k-d-t-art]

She was in my head all last night so I HAD to design and draw her

this is Manslaughter, a robot doctor/mad scientist of sorts. she likes cutting things open!

her namesake came from a post about how in the Transformers universe, the medic characters have names like Flatline, Knock Out, Kaput, etc so I was like "lol what if there was a medic named Straight Up Murder or something" and lo and behold she was born

[deductivisms]

director holmes and the current doctor watson heads of an unconventional detective agency known as oculus dei whose maxim goes the eye of god sees all!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Elizabeth Weiss

Published: Dec 7, 2023

The American Museum of Natural History’s newest “revitalized” hall—the Northwest Coast Hall, which reopened in 2022 after five years and $19 million spent—includes a case with a warning label:

CAUTION: This display case contains items used in the practices of traditional Tlingit doctors. Some people may wish to avoid this area, as Tlingit tradition holds that such belongings contain powerful spirits.

Even if you disregard this caution, you’ll have difficulty seeing the items since “the case lighting has been darkened at the request of Tlingit advisors to reflect the cultural sensitivity of these items.” And just to be sure, the case bears a “no photography” sticker.

The case contains masks used by traditional Tlingit shamans, once referred to as witchdoctors; that term is no longer considered appropriate at the American Museum of Natural History, so they are now called simply “doctors.” According to the somewhat confusing text on the case, “By wearing masks that contained the spirits, doctors tapped into their power,” and presumably this power was what they believed helped heal people of diseases—both physical pathologies and spiritual ailments.        

Though some questioned whether the items should be displayed at all—the official story holds that these materials were stolen from graves—Tlingit advisors wished to keep the display. The “American Museum of Natural History staff, with support from Tlingit experts, concluded that displaying the materials honored Tlingit cultural history—but that it was crucial to acknowledge the sensitivity and ongoing power of these objects.”

The presentation and treatment of this display case epitomizes what has gone wrong in the remodeling of the Northwest Coast Hall: museum staff are allowing creation myths and other religious and supernatural beliefs to be depicted as historical facts and scientific truths.

Another example of the Northwest Coast Hall’s blurring of fact and fiction can be found in the text on the origin of the Northwest Indian tribes, provided by Iris (Nunanta) Siwallace, a cultural researcher for the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola, British Columbia. “Our first Ancestors who descended from the heavens down to Earth either came in the form of animals or on the eyelashes of the Sun,” she writes. This may be a beautiful creation myth, but exhibit designers should distinguish the tale from the factual story of human origins. Exhibit halls created earlier, such as the 1970 Hall of Mexico and Central America and the 1989 Hall of South American Peoples, do a far better job of telling visitors when something is believed, when something is true, and when something is unknown. By depicting these stories as factual, the museum is no different than a creationist museum portraying an Adam and Eve biblical story as empirical fact.

In some cases, the lines between fact and fiction seemed to be even more deliberately blurred, as in the case showing painted panels of the Nuu-chah-nulth, formerly referred to as the Nootka, which states:

The painted panel displayed above commemorates events experienced by Sin-Set, a Nuu-chah-nulth Chief of the Huupa’Chesat-h Nation, around 1850. While taking salmon from a trap on the cascading Sproat River, the Chief lost his balance and fell in a deep pool. Two supernatural Whales called out to him and took him on a journey. In the course of his travels, he entered the lake above the river, met a Thunderbird and a Lightning Serpent, and visited the House of Wolves.

This text depicts a supernatural event as a real occurrence, even providing a date. This is not the only example of such deceptive practices. In reference to a panel by the ‘Namgis of British Columbia, the accompanying text informs us:

According to ‘Namgis history, the supernatural Kulus, a down-covered Thunderbird, lived above the Sun. One such bird named Tlalamin came down to the human world and built a house near Nimpkish Lake decorated with clouds, stars, and the Sun. Then Tlamamin took off his Kulus clothing and became a man.

This is not history. It is mythology.

And the use of such folklore is not limited to the past; upon entrance to the exhibit, visitors are greeted with quotes from indigenous collaborators appealing to the supernatural to argue for repatriation of artifacts. For instance, Judith Dax̱ootsú Ramos, a professor at University of Alaska Southeast who is also Tlingit, states:

What we have in the Museum are not just works of art—they’re spiritual beings. And, when we see them, we know they’re calling to us, “We want to come home.” I’ll always remember an Elder who went to a museum, and she could see the mist of an object coming out of the drawer where it was contained. She said, “We’ll bring you back home.”

More simply, Morgan (Secəlenəxʷ) Guerin, a member of the Musqueam First Nation, noted that “There’s a lot of Ancestors’ souls within these pieces.”

When fact and fiction are blurred as in the Northwest Coast Hall, the museum fails at its stated mission: “To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.” By allowing indigenous collaborators to set the terms, the museum fails to educate the public—both indigenous and non-indigenous. Five million people, including “hundreds of thousands of K-12 students and teachers,” visit the museum annually; they are being misinformed by arguably one of the nation’s finest public institutes of science.

Throughout the museum, one sees signs that New York State is making changes that will “address aspects of our history, colonialism, and the broader legacy of museum collecting.” These changes, we’re told, will “increase diversity of voices and perspectives” with the “goals to offer history and context and to enhance cultural understanding.” In short, the changes are motivated by a desire to atone for past wrongs and erase the racism experienced by indigenous people. A far better way to compensate for past mistakes is to educate people with historical and scientific information, rather than patronizing them with mythology masquerading as fact.

==

"Other ways of knowing" is what happens when your scientific institution succumbs to DEI activists.

Creation myths are not science. It shouldn't be necessary to explain that.

[melbush]

if there’s one thing about me, i love an alignment chart

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 63

Adric had programmed the route back to E-Space into the TARDIS before he died. When the TARDIS came close into a CVE, Adric set the program to automatically travel into E-Space, specifically to Alzarius. This is how the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough ended up in E-Space. (Audio: Mistfall)

The Eighth Doctor once took a ton of a drug called Om-Tsor in order to psychically stop a lot of missiles. (Novel: Revolution Man)

Meglos considers himself to be the Doctor's greatest enemy because the Doctor only defeated him once (while they have defeated Daleks, etc many times). (Short story: Meglos)

The Seventh Doctor hates swimming. (Novel: The Also People)

After Sabbath removed the Eighth Doctor's heart and implanted it into his own chest, the Doctor could not die. Even when he was absolutely crushed by sandbags, one of his hearts was still beating in Sabbath's chest, so he would survive. (Novel: Camera Obscura)

The Brigadier liked Persephone a lot. As in he fell in love with her. As in fighting Hades for her. As in kissing her. As in thinking that she had a perfect bum and that she was both delicious and delectable. Yeah. (Novel: Deadly Reunion)

One time, Ace mentioned that it was a bit of a coincidence that both Gallifrey and America had a "CIA." Narvin said she could think it was a coincidence if she wanted and that his people "get around," thus implying that there are ties between the two. (Audio: The Quantum Possibility Engine)

The Mara once possessed Kamelion through Tegan's subconscious. Kamelion assumed the form of a Gorgon and used his abilities to turn people into stone. (Short story: Mark of the Medusa)

One time, the Eighth Doctor tried to get his companion Izzy to go exploring in a new city with him, but she was too busy reading a history book on it. Annoyed after arguing with her, the Doctor explored by himself, going into a jam shop only to find that the merchant had been murdered by a guy with a hook for a hand. While trying to remove the hook, the Doctor was knocked unconscious, so when the police came, he was found with the dead body and the murder weapon. He was charged with several murders and sentenced to die, but Izzy was able to phone in a tip using information she knew from the history book to vindicate him just before he was executed. (Comic: By Hook or By Crook)

If the Valeyard had beaten the Sixth Doctor during their battle in the Matrix, he would have messed with time so dramatically that it would become catastrophically damaged. Eventually, he would have left hiding away in his TARDIS, afraid that any action he took would make things worse. The TARDIS would have confined him inside, immobilized with force fields. The TARDIS would only still be alive due to the symbiotic nuclei connecting her to her pilot, and the Valeyard would only be alive because of his connection to his TARDIS. Unable to do anything, they (including Mel) would be trapped there seemingly forever. (Audio: He Jests At Scars...)

Fitz Kreiner had a dream where he and the Eighth Doctor were both naked in the TARDIS console room, their bottoms touching each other's. The Dream Doctor made sure to tell him that he didn't think this was his subconscious telling him anything about his sexuality. He panicked when he realized he couldn't feel the Doctor's bottom anymore - which was because they were merging into one. (Novel: Halflife)

The Mara eventually entered the Fifth Doctor's mind, using him as a primary host to try to subjugate Manussa in an earlier time period. He was freed when Tegan and Turlough used a circle of cameras and screens (similar to the mirrors). (Audio: The Cradle of the Snake)

The Eighth Doctor, Anji, and Fitz were once made to wear collars and leashes while walking around on all fours naked. They had been provided with plastic chew toys. The Doctor and Fitz didn't appear to be bothered by this. (Novel: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)

The Eighth Doctor once commented that he could potentially have a bunny slipper fetish. (Novel: Grimm Reality)

While on Trenzalore, the Eleventh Doctor lost a leg while fighting a tsunami snake. (Short story: The Dreaming)

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[familyparadox]

My two personal theories on Ruby’s mother

1. Sabbath’s Daughter. Sabbath Dei is named after Saturday. Ruby is named after Sunday? Sunday is the Sequel to Saturday. She has a mysterious time past with paradox and stuff.

2. Scarlette’s Daughter. Ruby is a type of red and so is scarlet she was found on a Sunday and Scarlette has a past with Saturdays so would make sure to avoid them being called Saturday.

The Doctor may be the other parent in both cases. (Eight did get pregnant a lot.)

[milo-knight]

bitng and chewing and biting amd chewing amd bitm g amd chewing amd biting and cheweing