‘Architects’ mistakes should be covered\nwith ivy and doctors’ with sod’: Medical\nMalpractice, Morton Shulman, and the\n‘Conspiracy of Silence’
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Every year thousands of Canadians are killed or injured because of medical mistakes. Plaintiffs, however, face several challenges to suing doctors successfully for malpractice. One challenge is the reluctance of some doctors to criticize other medical professionals, sometimes referred to as the "conspiracy of silence." This article focuses on the attention given to the conspiracy of silence in Ontario in the 1960s when Dr. Morton Shulman, the pugnacious and flamboyant Chief Coroner of Toronto, alleged that doctors routinely covered up medical errors. Shulman drew media attention to irresponsible doctors, poor practice, and negligent treatment. He demanded more accountability and better care, and deplored efforts to silence him to protect the reputation of doctors. A decline in public trust of experts and of the professions created conditions that lent credence to Shulman's claims. However, many medical professionals chafed at the questioning of their professionalism, expertise, and ethics. The provincial government's responses, which included coroner system reforms, expanding the powers of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, and attempting to silence Shulman, primarily aimed to meet the concerns of the state and medical professionals, rather than those of patients and the public. Résumé: Chaque année, des milliers de Canadiens perdent la vie ou sont blessés à cause d'erreurs médicales. Les plaignants doivent cependant surmonter plusieurs difficultés s'ils veulent poursuivre avec succès des médecins pour faute professionnelle. L'une de ces difficultés est la réticence de certains médecins à critiquer d'autres professionnels de la santé, réticence qu'on appelle parfois « conspiration du silence ». Le présent article porte sur l'attention portée à la conspiration du silence en Ontario dans les années 1960, au moment où le Dr Morton Shulman, le pugnace et coloré coroner en chef de Toronto, a affirmé que les médecins camouflaient régulièrement des erreurs médicales. Shulman a attiré l'attention des médias sur les médecins irresponsables, les mauvaises pratiques et la négligence dans les traitements. Il a exigé une reddition de comptes accrue et une amélioration des soins, et déploré les efforts déployés pour le réduire au silence afin de protéger la réputation des médecins. Le déclin de la confiance envers les experts et les professions libérales a mené le public à donner du crédit aux affirmations du Dr Shulman. De nombreux professionnels de la santé ont cependant été irrités par la remise en question de leur professionnalisme, de leur savoir-faire et de leur éthique. Les réactions du gouvernement provincial–réformes du système des coroners, extension des pouvoirs de l'Ordre des médecins et chirurgiens de l'Ontario et tentative de musèlement du Dr Shulman–visaient principalement à répondre aux préoccupations de l'État et des professionnels de la santé plutôt qu'à celles des patients et du public.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".