Can the Professors of Medicine Stand Up?

To the Editor.  —In his recent EDITORIAL in the February Archives (1983; 143:212-213), Dr Landau raised an extremely important but sensitive point, ie, that the professors of internal medicine in the United States have failed to exercise required intellectual leadership. He correctly identifies their responsibility for preparing future generations of practitioners of internal medicine and correctly, I believe, compares the attitudes developed by these students and house officers with those adopted by an adolescent on the basis of his early experiences at home. It thus follows that leadership requires, first of all, being an excellent practitioner of internal medicine.Unfortunately, reality is different. Because of the well-known "publish or perish" concept, which equates advancement in academic rank primarily with publications, the physicians with academic aspirations will concentrate on publishing and will seldom become truly proficient in scientific medical practice. The role models for the new generation of physicians are the