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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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I find that medical doctors and engineers both commonly suffer from huge superiority complexes and/or narcissistic tendencies (and I say that as someone with an engineering degree). I think a huge part of it is that everyone is constantly fawning over them and telling them how smart they must be to have made it through the schooling that they begin to believe it (combined with the fact that many people conflate academic success with intelligence).
As a chemistry major, I went to undergrad with tons of pre-meds that went on to become medical doctors and then I went to grad school in an engineering department. Believe me, plenty of idiots hold a degree (even an advanced degree) in these areas. Most medical doctors are just mechanics that specialize in troubleshooting one particularly poorly designed device, and many engineers are convinced that because they know how to fix or optimize one problem, they can spend a few days/weeks to learn more than experts in unrelated fields.
As an engineer (had to, very sorry) I noticed there is a 50/50 split between the “I am always right” and a massive imposter complex.
Doctors, never see the imposter complex. It’s kind of ridiculous. We also have to remember that science and engineering lead the advances in medicine, and most doctors fight us tooth and nail for the last several decades. They didn’t want to even wash their hands. Surgeons refuse to follow checklists thinking they are infallible, but when they do there is a measurable drop in patient mortality and infection.
Doctors and surgeons are glorified tech workers that need to be taken down several notches.
I definitely agree that the issue seems much more pervasive in doctors. Even my brother-in-law, who is about the least confident, most "imposter syndrome prone" person I've ever met has changed significantly since he graduated from med school, becoming first confident, then overconfident, so I definitely think it's a culture issue.
And while my experience with engineers was much more than 50% in the "I'm always right" camp, I am not a practicing engineer and most of my experience is from my time in a ChemE PhD program, so I was definitely seeing a skewed population.