自治医科大学 | Message from the President

Message from the President

'' To students entering graduate school ''

Ryozo Nagai
President

My belief is that all students who enter graduate school do so having made the decision to advance to a higher level of study with a burning desire to carry out research. This passion will be precious to you throughout your lives, and I hope you will nurture it carefully.

The present-day system of medical science is more fragile than you may realize. You will all have seen how treatments that were once commonly prescribed are now largely avoided, while treatments that were formerly taboo are now in everyday use.Our understanding of the origins of life and disease has been enhanced by advances in techniques for analyzing cells and molecules, giving us an even broader perspective.There are several methods of research. One method is to think of the natural world as a machine, and to analyze its parts (components) and discuss causal relationships, or mechanisms, under limited conditions. Many aspects of life and disease cannot be fully understood, even when broken down into smaller pieces. However, research on reducing phenomena to their components is the foundation of science, and there are an immeasurable number of tasks to accomplish in this area. Alternatively, if you do not understand the principles, a wealth of information can still be obtained by use of inferential statistics to discover natural laws that go beyond chance or random dispersion. While this is not a method for clarifying causal relationships, important rules can often be discovered with this way.

The mechanistic approach and statistical analysis are concerned with natural laws, and so say little about individual phenomena. However, in clinical medicine, diseases are diagnosed and treated while taking into account the values of patients. Research in fields such as nursing and care that take the position of patients, and research into medical care from the view point of the administration or economics, will become more important in the future. I certainly hope you will endeavor to develop medicine as an integrated science.

Research has its own particular practices. First of all, you need to forge the ability to read, to write, to talk, and to think. This is because research has to be made into a thesis. Also, it is important to nurture a healthy mind that can think critically about subjects while paying due respect to the natural world and to human beings. Above all, you should take heed of the fact that medical science has both benefits and risks and depending on one’s point of view, it has a sinful side. When you carry out your research you will need to think carefully about what it means to obtain information from the patient as a subject, and to work with society while being held accountable. Numerous research guidelines have been established for this, and I hope you will study them carefully.

Furthermore, originality is required in research.It is essential to avoid copying the work of other researchers. Research theses that support the ideas of famous researchers have a tendency to be selected, and it is harder for highly novel theses to pass a rigorous peer-review. Consequently, research goes side-by-side with isolation. However, you can overcome the barriers if you have extensive knowledge and a broad mindset. Graduate school is where you should be able to broaden your perspectives by learning the joy of research. My heartfelt prayer is that you will all grow and develop through your time at graduate school.