So the best of the best neurosurgeons needs a search engine to come up with schizophrenia and brain tumor for possible causes of halluzinations?
I know most writers (or maybe it's the producers fault who knows) think their audience is stupid but I think most of them would have come up with that themselves. Would have worked better without that ridiculous scene.
Get off yourself . . . seriously, shut up! I swear there are more desperate morons posting the most ridiculous garbage for comment threads on imdb. This is the best you can do?
shareI'm just now watching the premiere. I actually saw this question posted a few hours ago when I was looking up info on this show deciding whether or not to bother watching it. I just came to the part in the episode where he sits down to use Google to search hallucinations. Haven't watched past that, yet, because I wanted to come write this.
To me, his actions make PERFECT sense. He's a neurosurgeon who thinks he is having hallucinations. That's someone who is no longer going to feel as if he can trust his OWN brain. He's also world-renowned, famous, and the top in his profession... which means he's not going to take even a chance of talking about his symptom (hallucination) with another doctor and potentially risk his own reputation/standing. So he can't trust himself, he can't go to someone else, but he needs third-party input, as it were.
Now, I don't know where he goes from here - as I said, I literally came to write this as soon as I got to the part where he is Googling his symptom... but I don't find his actions, as yet, to be at all unexpected given his situation.
Just wanted to toss that out there for consideration. :)
If he had used his computer to access some text-heavy medical database, it wouldn't have been as readily apparent to the 99% of the audience who is NOT in the medical profession that he was doing online research. See "dramatic convenience."
Plus, there may have been product placement dollars provided by Google.
Why is it ridiculous that a doctor would consult medical web sites to figure out why he was having delusions?
shareIt's not ridiculous. I am a doctor and I use Google everyday to begin a search, then narrow it down quickly from there.
shareAnytime anyone searches anything they must be confident the sites they use are reliable and trustworthy. A doctor would have to know what sites they would want to choose from before doing a general search engine search.
That being said, I do know doctors who use Google everyday. But most of the time it is to look up a drug that they want to know what it looks like or some other kind of static information. Beyond that they generally search medical tests on the Internet or in the databases in their handheld devices.
I am curious as to why you would prefer a general search engine over references that have been peer-reviewed before publication and more specific to medical issues?
Thank you for your reply.
Life is like Wikipedia: There are no Facts, Just Popular Opinion
I don't know why you took such a beating on this question. I haven't watched this show, but I know what you're talking about. Little things like that bug me too because they insult the audience. It's akin to how a character rehashes some storyline or relationship history to someone who already knows it in this totally unnatural way because the writers want to accommodate some person who only watches once a month. Or, when a character asks a doctor or a lawyer for 'layman's terms' for something that was already just said in layman's terms. Whenever a show can't work that in naturally, I know it won't last long.
The explanation of him not trusting his brain is great, though I doubt the writers thought that deeply. In reality, I would think this neuro-specialist would access some sort of medical tome in his office, or at least have it bookmarked.
As a non American, I love your reference to "when a character asks a doctor or a lawyer for 'layman's terms' for something that was already just said in layman's terms"...
For years I've noticed that American screenwriters aren't ashamed to showing a character (often the hero) as a mumbling ignoramus of some elementary information which any normally educated person should know.
It's like the writers are catering for the lowest common denominator; they want to be sure that even the most "lumpen" of their viewers will understand what's going on. In the way, they make the character look like an idiot and they are hinting that the American public is basically ignorant... but who cares?
On the main subject, to be credible the doctor should be shown consulting sites which would look like the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet, not Wikipedia...
I *completely* agree with you! Just went on the boards to see if anyone else has posted about this. He is a NEUROSURGEON, apparently "the best" in the States, and he needs to Google some fairly basic looking website about 'schizophrenia' and 'brain tumour' (and, note, he's not even Googling specific info on hallucinations, just generic 'schizophrenia' and 'brain tumour' info sites).
Wow.
I wonder if he does that on all his consults:
"What do you think it is, Doctor?"
"Hang on, let me just check Wikipedia... Yep... Yep... OK, I think it might be a broken arm. Always good to check the internet first though."
I get it is a dramatic conceit so the audience is aware: he thinks he's going mad! he is a man of science! men of science do not believe in ghosts! But nevertheless. It jarred me, and I find it hard to take Dr Holt-Google seriously as a neurosurgeon now. Nevermind, I'll sit back and enjoy the escapism.
Here's a shocker... It's a TV show and not a documentary... Get a grip.
sharekjbear do you mean HALLUCINATIONS ???????? Good thing you're not the writer....
share