They seemed to take it is as part of their duties to walk patients through the reasoning that attends the scientific method. I experienced it myself and heard it described by others, so at age 12, when I first met a physician socially (a heart-and-lung surgeon, father of my brothers' new kayak buddies), I asked him about it. He counseled me to think of physicians as scientists, but ones who work with scalpels and medicine rather than with telescopes or particle accelerators. He confirmed to me that it was understood among physicians that their "calling" included acting as missionaries of science into the heart of America, and that in the 1940's – 1960's it was indeed part of medical school education to nurture in would-be physicians a broad conception of their role in society, including the role of fostering scientific thinking in the public through their practice of medicine.

Occasionally our families skied together. One after-ski evening in their condo in Stratton, Vermont, new neighbors dropped by. One man introduced himself as "Dr." so and so. He was quizzed, and it turned out he was a professor of history in a college in Vermont. When the introductions reached the surgeon, the surgeon said his name and then, "I'm a real doctor not a PhD." I knew what he meant, and it stuck in my mind. It did not seem out of place, either, to me at 12, for a physician to be imperious towards others in that way. They were, after all, scientists.

It would strange to me now, because of late, some physicians have fallen in exemplifying a scientific mindset for the populace. They have become political agents. I will avoid mentioning the ways they are mute before the advance of pseudo-scientific ideologies. But their abdication of responsibility is nowhere more profound than it is with regard to Covid. They have let themselves be bullied and pushed around into breaking the Hippocratic Oaths they made to the Greek gods, in practice they have provided substandard care to millions of patients, and their indolence has played a role in the destabilization of society.