I'm all for petitioning to stop making research a soft requirement. No reason as a med student I should feel the need to study the effects of COVID-19 on gooning habits so that I can comfortably match into residency. Let me focus on activities that will make me a competent clinician instead of bullshit gibberish papers that create noise and take away from the genuine and valuable research by dedicated researchers. How did this come to be??? Like I get it... it's important to develop a strong scientific inquisition so that you can develop the ability to look into literature and evaluate up-and-coming treatment modalities. But there are better ways than the cutthroat rat race they turned this whole thing into.