I suggest that the example of modern medicine, is inapt.
I was present at my son's graduation from UT (Houston) medical school when
the dean said to the assembled graduates, and parents:
"Half of everything we've taught you is wrong; we just don't know
which half."
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It is apt because we are still doing the traditional things rather than the
research based things in education. All sciences including medicine went
through a transformation from just natural observation to using experiment
based evidence. Education has not done that. Medicine was much later than
the other sciences in doing that. Medicine is very complicated with a large
number of variables, but it works fairly well now.
Education is actually messier than medicine with hidden variables we know
are there but do not have a handle on. It is also essentially impossible to
do double blind studies in education because the instructor has to be aware
of what they are delivering, and the students can find out how the
instruction differs from other classes. Education also has its analog to
the drug companies, namely the textbook publishers. But unlike the drug
companies the publishers have generally absolutely no evidence that their
products work better than competing ones. But unlike drugs, the copyright
laws allow them to have a much greater lock on the market, and there is no
FDA breathing down their necks. We also have the analog to malpractice, as
teachers can be and often are sued, but the teachers unions have far less
power than the medical union.
We are at the same point medicine was when it changed from physicians in
stained tweed coats to sanitized gowns with antiseptic. Medicine including
psychology is a science which most resembles education. So the analogy is
quite apt. We have both cognitive science research and education research
in abundance to draw on. And the education practitioners need to be trained
in the scientific knowledge applicable to their specialty. We have people
resisting the new ideas because they do not fit into their paradigms, just
as they did in medicine. Actually all scientific revolutions have this.
Eventually all science education might be somewhat separated from practicing
science if the scientists do not have time to study both pedagogy and
science. But you will not get good results if this means that the science
educators are accorded lower status than the experimentalists and
theoreticians. It is ludicrous that universities assume professors can be
good teachers when they have had absolutely no training in it, and they do
not read the research literature in the subject. Would you allow your
mechanic to fiddle with your bowels, or your physician fix your car?
I really think that the dean's comments were a bit extreme. Maybe 10% is
wrong, especially when you count things like anatomy. Physicians are
essentially mechanics not scientists. And their training is similar to what
one does for a mechanic. This poses difficulties when a new treatment
demands a change in paradigm. This happened when it was found that bacteria
cause ulcers. Physicians were very slow to apply the research even though
it was extremely strong because it violated what everyone knew about ulcers.
They continued to operate instead of giving antibiotics. But some medical
schools are now dabbling with reforms similar to PER which will train
physicians to be a bit more like scientists, and to have greater
understanding.
Actually the dean's comment sparked a memory of a professor who said "We
know you won't need a lot we are teaching, but we don't know which part is
needed so we teach everything". A much better strategy is to get students
to learn on their own rather than sitting passively to be told things. The
aim of PER is the former, while conventional education is producing the
latter.
But in the end aptness of analogies is in the eye of the beholder.