Teach

Shortly after I heard the opinion on globalization from two of my friends, I attended an urgent meeting – called by KL – to discuss the plan to have some of us spending a weekend in our sister university in the mainland and showing their postgraduate students how to conduct clinical research.

I must say this is not the first time I have such a request – or invitation if you like. Just two weeks ago, while I was in Singapore, Y asked me to do the same later this year in his institute.

In both cases, I put up a polite smile and (pretended to) accept. Frequent visitor may know, the eternal question of me is if there exists anything that actually could be taught.

Some of you may have heard of the famous saying of William Osler: He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.

But, the method of doing medical research is more than that: You can gradually accumulate experience and be a better investigator after you take part in it for long enough - even without studying any formal teaching of the so-called research method, but, you will not even be able to comprehend that kind of teaching if you have not started doing some research yourself.

Rather than learning medicine, the method of doing research is, in a sense, the same as learning the technique of stock trading: An ounce of practice is better than a ton of theory.

And, remind you, the experts who appear in TV or radio and give you all the numbers and advise are not the ones who make most money in the stock market.